This is a guest post by Sophorn Chhay of Trumpia, a mobile marketing automation company.
The mobile lifestyle is taking over. People are spending more time on their smartphones than they are on their desktop computers, and they’re spending money as they’re doing it. For businesses to get to the top of the heap – or stay there, as the case may be – they need to step up their mobile marketing strategy big time. Along with the reasons why it all matters, here are the 7 steps towards achieving mobile marketing success in 2016.
1. Have a Presence
The first step to mobile marketing success is to be out there. Have a presence! You have to play to win. One example: while 64 percent of consumers reported making a purchase on their smartphones that was inspired by a mobile ad, a disheartening 74 percent of respondents from the same survey had never seen mobile ads touting their favorite brands. That 74 percent never had a chance to be enticed by the brands they already favored, and they never got to conveniently click on an ad and buy a product they may already have been thinking about for ages. Don’t lose out before you even have a chance to succeed.
2. Optimize Your Website
Optimizing your digital network for mobile use is a hot topic these days, and that optimization can take many forms. Having a search-engine friendly blog will improve your rankings, but after you attract the traffic you’re after you need to make sure that the website they encounter will load and read appropriately on whatever device they use. There are a lot of ways to achieve optimization; the important thing is that you make the effort to try and that you deliver the product your consumers want to whichever device they’re currently wanting it on.
3. Tie it to Your In-Store Strategy
17th-century English poet John Donne one said, “no man is an island,” but rather a piece of a continent, a part of a larger whole, 
and your marketing strategy needs to be similarly integrated. To achieve success with any advertising campaign it needs to multi-faceted and well organized, and when you have a brick-and-mortar store that means making sure your in-store and mobile ads are in line with each other.
4. Use Mobile Coupons and Deliver SMS Deals
You know what’s more fun than clipping coupons out of the Sunday paper? Well, pretty much anything, but, in particular, we’re talking about the convenience consumers experience when they get coupons for the products they love delivered right to their phone. Shoppers have spoken, and 76 percent of moms and 64 percent of dads are saying that they are more likely to purchase a product using a deal coupon they get on their smartphone.
5. “All Signs Point to Video”
In a rundown of content marketing predictions for 2016, Jay Baer (President of Convince & Convert) said, “Whether it’s Facebook Live, video on Twitter, Periscope, Blab, Instagram, Vine, or the old standby YouTube, 2016 will be the year when video becomes a primary content marketing consideration for all brands – even B2B.” Video offers businesses another way to frame and deliver their message, and it gives visually motivated consumers another way to absorb messages and be inspired by them.
6. Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
Mobile ads really do have an awful lot going for them, but as much as they’re already inspiring sales they also have some drawbacks. When 72 percent of mobile users say they don’t click on mobile ads simply because their phone’s screen is too small, that’s worrying. When 54 percent say they don’t click on mobile ads that pop-up during smartphone use because they get frustrated that their mobile activity is being interrupted, that’s something to take into consideration, too. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and ditch mobile altogether, just diversify. It’s worth it.
7. Learn to Delegate
One of the most amazing things about mobile marketing is that you don’t have to be hands-on to make it work. Mobile marketing automation allows your business to give consumers what they need when they need it instead of when you’re around to take care of it. It’s a win-win, and that’s what the future of marketing is all about.
About the Author
Sophorn Chhay is an inbound marketer specializing in attracting targeted visitors and generating sales qualified leads. Through Trumpia’s SMS marketing automation solution he helps businesses and organizations communicate effectively with their customers or members. Watch Trumpia’s 5-Minute Demo on how to execute an effective mobile marketing strategy.
