Tag Archives: Android applications

Mobile Marketing To Millennials Doesn’t Have To Be Hard. Read These 3 Tips.

 91 percent of teens ages 13–17 go online using mobile devices

91 percent of teens ages 13–17 go online using mobile devices | Photo: Omar Jordan Fawahl (Flikr)

If your brand appeals to a younger market you probably already know by now that mobile marketing is crucial.

The numbers are somewhat staggering. According to Pew Research Center an astounding 91% of teens ages 13–17 go online using mobile devices, at least occasionally, while 73% of teens own smart phones. This isn’t occasional activity either, as 92% say they are on the Internet daily, while 23% say they use the Internet ‘almost constantly’.

But businesses need to understand that when marketing to Millennials it takes more than just understanding that they have embraced mobile devices.

When you start your mobile application development make sure you take into account specific tendencies of your audience.

Pew Research Center’s research describes Millennials as wanting to forge a distinctive path, while past generations tried to fit in or ‘be cool’, Millennials like to do things their own way.  Being less traditional than previous generations, research has found with Millennials that loyalty is harder to earn as they often question the norm.  Often the traditional advertising tactics don’t get through to Millennials.

How then do you market to Millennials?

Go Visual

Teens love visual content and mobile apps that have focused on visual content such as Instagram or Snapchat are a big hit with Millennials.

Be Real

The content you deliver needs to be real. Contrived efforts to impress them may not only fall flat but can backfire in terms of a social media backlash. Millennials respond negatively to things that feel fake.

Think Mobile First

Given the overwhelming importance of mobile to Millennials it is essential that your marketing is mobile-friendly and and that you take a mobile-first approach with content. If you are not preparing for your content to be viewed on a mobile device it might be displaying poorly and turning away perspective customers.

Some exciting examples of a using these principles are provided by Snapchat.

Stories, which is Snapchat’s most popular feature, lets users to string together a collection of photos and videos into a longer-form format that is a mix of user generated and brand generated content. Snapchat has also created Discover which showcases curated material from media publishers, like an interactive news magazine inside Snapchat. Each outlet releases a daily bulletin with a limited amount content that users can view or skip. This makes for an exciting opportunity for advertisers that might change the way many approach mobile advertising. Discover is built to showcase a blend of content, including images, video and what they call gorgeous ads.

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How to Improve the Performance of your Mobile Application Program

Mobile is more important than ever. In fact, smartphones now make up an incredible 75 percent of the mobile market (comScore), which is up from 65 percent of the market only a year ago.

Mobile has taken over and become the primary way that users engage with and access digital media.

While many businesses and entrepreneurs have experienced success with mobile applications and mobile web site, there are opportunities for many businesses to improve the results of their mobile program.

Whether you are using a mobile web site, iPhone application, Android application or all three, these four tips can help you improve the results of you mobile program. Look them over and discuss them with your mobile application developer to improve your mobile program.

Understand How A Customer Interacts with Brands

There are several opportunities for businesses to improve the results of their mobile program

There are several opportunities for businesses to improve the results of their mobile program | Photo: tyrande101 (Flikr)

In 2015, smart phone users (practically everyone), will find themselves regularly bouncing from one device to another across the course of the day.  From laptop to smartphone to tablet and back and forth, a  customer may interact with your brand in several ways before making a purchase. From doing research at home or while in the office to showrooming, you need to anticipate customers interacting with your brand in a multitude of ways.

Businesses must understand this a present a clear and unified path to purchase regardless of the medium consumers choose to use to interact with your brand, You should anticipate customers starting searching on one device and continuing doing research on another and possibly making their purchase by another medium all together.

What Do Your Customers Want?

Often when mobile apps don’t catch on like brands want it is due to them failing to consider their consumer and their wants and behavior. You need to analyze what customers would want from mobile offerings from your brand and give it to them.  Far too many brands fail to understand what consumers are looking for from them and create apps that offer little or none of the features that consumers are looking for.

Include a Call to Action

When it comes to mobile media many have forgotten marketing basics like including a call to action. Mobile is a new medium where new rules apply but that doesn’t meant that proven principles should be thrown out the window.

Don’t Plan Your Mobile Program In A Vacuum

Don’t have only one group in your organization responsible for your mobile application, marketing or IT won’t see the whole picture and be able to create the proper digital experience. Today mobile is how we do business and brands must include input from all parts of the organization to create apps that perform.

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3 Hot Trends in The Year of Mobile

There is no denying that mobile is no longer the “next big thing”.  Mobile is here and mobile is now.

Regardless of what statistic you look at, mobile tends to show growth, and if you are like many business people, making your business mobile friendly is still sitting on your list of things to do.

But you can’t wait any longer.

As consumers are getting more comfortable with mobile their expectations are rising

As consumers are getting more comfortable with mobile their expectations are rising | Photo: Kārlis Dambrāns (Flickr)

According to Marin Software, in a recent report, ad clicks on mobile devices have now overtaken clicks on desktops. Mobile devices now account of 44.8 percent of all ad impressions and 50 percent of clicks. On top of that, IMRG and Capgemini’s recently found that that mobile devices now account for 40 percent of all online retail sales. This number is growing at a rapid rate as it accounted for 37 percent in the previous quarter.

As consumers are getting more comfortable with mobile their expectations are rising. Retailers that are not delivering the experiences that customers want simply move on to businesses that do.

With mobile shopping getting more popular we are seeing growth in related areas as well, for instance 27 percent of customers plan on using mobile payments in the next six months.

Obviously mobile is where business is headed and if you don’t have a mobile application yet, plan on talking to a mobile application developer soon. But when you do keep in mind where the industry is headed and be prepared for the state it is in when you are able to present your business’s mobile friendly face to the public.

The trends are obvious when it comes to mobile in general, but what are the more specific trends to look for in the industry?

Personalization

The relevance of your message is more important than ever. Is your messaging tailored to your individual customers? Are you asking your self if your customers will value your message?

Don’t fall into the trap of putting too much emphasis on trendy messaging while ignoring relevance. You will want to put yourself in your consumers’ shoes when they are using that app.  Would you messaging be considered welcome and relevant from that perspective?

Location

Context is more important than ever when it comes to conversions. Mobile is all about location. With mobile it is easy to reach consumers in specific geographies or even at a specific location. By providing the context of location, you increase the power of your message. By reaching people at the right moment, you increase your chances of creating sales.

Travel

When it comes to travel mobile is growing at an accelerated rate. Last year 28 percent of people used their mobile device to book their daily commute, a figure double that of 2013. (BuzzCity) Look for mobile to rapidly become the de facto tool in the travel industry. This presents great opportunities for mobile friendly businesses to appeal to consumers while traveling or commuting.

Photo: http://bit.ly/1FvKxO1

Take Advantage of 4 Proven Tactics of Mobile Marketing Success

Driven by the rapid growth of smartphone use business has changed dramatically over the past several years. Change has been rapid as people moved from desktops to laptops and now smart phones as their primary computing devices of choice.

Thinking mobile first rather than retrofitting your desktop website

Think mobile first rather than retrofitting your desktop website | Photo: Matthew Pearce (Flikr)

This surge in mobile usage has forced a shift in the way businesses approach communication with its customers. Savvy companies are now thinking mobile first rather than retrofitting their desktop website into a mobile platform. Beyond simply taking advantage of your mobile web sites and applications to build your business and engage with consumers, mobile presents several opportunities for advertising. Facebook, for instance, now makes 62 percent of its advertising revenue from mobile (which is even more impressive when you consider that about a 1/3 of their users are logged in via mobile devices).

A mobile first approach allows businesses to create mobile web sites and applications that are not only faster loading but also optimized for the smaller screens of the mobile experience. This includes a focus on proper font display as well as using mobile friendly navigation and movements amongst other items. User experience certainly is crucial and is something that you can discuss with your mobile application developer in detail.

But how do you maximize the value of your mobile marketing program?

It all start with a great plan.

Often looking at examples of what other companies are doing can be a source of inspiration. One such company that is finding success with their mobile marketing program is National Oil and Gas.  On top of trying to encourage consumers to choose their stations over the competition, they wanted to encourage customers to enter the stores where the higher margin items are located.

Here are 4 tactics to the success of their mobile marketing program:

Utilize Location Based Messaging

Delivering personalized location based messaging to consumers near stations, National Oil and Gas found a 15 percent acceptance rate. Tailoring offers to users real-time locations, will increasing message open rates and redemption rates. But it is not just about getting more customers, in a separate study, Locaid found that customers that entered into stores because of location-specific mobile marketing messages spent on average 24 percent more

Make Sure You Reward the Right Behavior

To encourage customers into the stores, the offers would require that consumers redeem the offers inside the stores, right where National wanted them. This carefully considered part of the program enabled them to  promote sales of higher margin items.

Don’t Forget In-Store Offers

National delivered in-store offers based on the shoppers locations in the stores that turned out to be so effective they could prompt teenagers to make purchases 74 percent of the time. In-store is becoming a bigger focus for modern retailers looking to create compelling shopping experiences for shoppers utilizing mobile applications.

Leverage Loyalty Programs

When prompted to do so, 54 percent chose to join a loyalty program. National integrated these with social media campaigns that allowed them to create future interactions and improve the customer lifetime value. Loyalty programs are somewhat expected it the modern economy by cost conscious consumers and consumers are known to choose vendors based on availability of a loyalty program.

Their success went beyond these individual components, but they are great ideas that can help you get the most from your mobile program. Crucial to the effectiveness of their program is the fact they were able to use mobile to generate data that they were able to analyze to create personalized offers that were tightly tied with the physical location to not only improve profits but to benefit the customer with relevant offers.

Modern retailers know that mobile drives guest engagement by leveraging some of their successes for your business you can experience some of the same successes.

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5 Key Advantages of Mobile Marketing that are Bound To Make An Impact on Your Business

If you are like most businesses, then you are looking for the ways to acquire new customers.

Mobile marketing has some tremendous advantageous

What do your potential users intend to do with your mobile application? | Photo: Jorge Quinteros (Flikr)

Wise fishermen always go to where the fish are to drop their lines and wise business people do the same. Right now mobile is where customers are which makes mobile the place to be to acquire new customers. It’s growth has been phenomenal and in the near future there is no slowing down.

Mobile marketing has some tremendous advantageous over some of the more traditional methods.

Engagement

Never before have businesses been able to engage with their customers in as many ways as they can now.  Savvy businesses give their customers the option to personalize communications to meet their preferences, so you may find the same promotion going to millions of customers via push, SMS, email, in-app notification and other ways, all to meet the individual preferences of the modern consumer.

Broad User-base

Mobile devices are used by practically everyone today and are not limited to particular audiences. Mobile is not just for Millennials, it is for adults as well, in fact the fastest growing demographic of smart phone use is between users between 55 to 64.

Quick Conversions

Mobile is a terrific medium to capitalize on impulse purchases. Businesses that provide a easy to use, intuitive path to making purchase via mobile device can capitalize on the impulse nature of consumers on mobile devices, while business that are unprepared are missing out on sales.

Mobile Messaging Gets Read

Messaging on mobile devices gets read and gets results. According to a recent study by Localytics, 52 percent of mobile users enable push messaging on their devices. Of those receiving the messaging Localytics reported  observing an exceptional 7 percent open rate for segmented push messaging.

Search Leader

There are more searches on mobile now than desktop searches and the gap will continue to increase in the upcoming years.  Businesses need to make them selves easy to be found where customers are looking for them. Much like businesses needed to be in the Yellow Pages in the 1970s for customers to be able to find them, businesses now must consider both mobile friendly web sites and mobile application development for interested customers to be able to find them.

While mobile web sites allow customers to find you with greater ease, for long term engagement, users prefer mobile applications. Users prefer the functionality of mobile apps and 89 percent of their mobile time is spent on mobile apps rather than the web based versions. (Smart Insights)

Before you contact an iPhone app developer or Android application developer, you should consider your potential users and what they intend to do with your mobile application or mobile web site.

Don’t add in unnecessary features. Focus on key features that your potential users want and don’t confuse them with unneeded features or clutter, if your applications lacks a focal point and clear path users will just delete it and move on.

Make sure you organize those features into and easy to use package that is intuitive. When it comes to user interfaces remember that there is no one-size-fits-all answer, but that if you keep abreast of development trends you will understand how users are used to performing certain tasks. Leveraging this familiarity can make your application easier to use.

Key is to learn basic principles and then adapt them to the specifics of your user base to learn what’s right for your project.

Photo: http://bit.ly/1DAJiHK