5 things you need to kickstart your mobile campaign

The evolution of mobile phones into more than just physical calling devices has opened up brand new ways of promoting your brand, services, and products. It’s not the future we are talking about, it’s happening right now across the globe. With a dedicated mobile marketing strategy, you can reach targeted audiences in a private and personal way. The web is growing quite rapidly and in a marketplace flooded with marketing messages and information, mobile marketing is an effective way to reach consumers.

Even though you might think that mobile marketing is exactly the same as normal online marketing, this is not true. Mobile marketing should be treated differently, not exactly the same as other internet marketing strategies. How do you get started? Here are a couple of tips.

Mobile marketing made easy

1. Mobile website

This is really easy and not that difficult to set up, unless you are planning a major CMS style mobile site. You will find a few web hosting companies that offer automated mobile formatting services for mobile devices. One of the easiest ways (if you don’t want to struggle getting a mobile website) is to use a plug and play platform such as WordPress or Joomla. Mobile websites should always be simple and clean with a clear logo and an easy to use navigation system. Never overdo a mobile site.

2. Make use of geo-targeting services

Make your business visible on various social media platforms, utilizing geo-targeting such as Foursquare, Google Places and Facebook Places. There are quite a few of these services already and it is a great idea to register and target the popular ones. Once you have set up your business profile on these services, you can start running platform specific mobile promotions on these channels.

To give you an example: if anyone checked into your restaurant on Foursquare, you could offer them a discount on their bill. This gives them an incentive to promote your business and brand to their network and it can give your company a great boost with your marketing strategies.

3. Always be involved

Until you have started using the mobile web and experience mobile marketing, you will never really understand how it works. Get a smartphone, check in on Facebook Places and Foursquare, do a voice search on the Google app, and experiment with all the ins and outs of the mobile web.

4. Ad campaigns

Mobile advertisement campaigns are also easy to set up. It is great for companies with a physical location as you can arrange for the advertisement to only display when someone searches for local businesses near your area. This will also help you start local SEO for your company.

5. QR codes

Mobile bar codes have been popping up everywhere and these can be used to allow users with smartphones to access coupons, offers or just links to your website and blog with a touch of a button. This is an easy way to invite users other than sending them the URL of your website. They are easy to make and all you need is the URL that you want it to direct to and a relevant app that creates these QR codes.