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.

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.

Photo: http://bit.ly/1JGXQu5