Gone are the days when you can assume that your target customers will interact with your website on a desktop or a laptop. And the days when you can get by without a solid mobile business strategy are long gone as well.

Why You Need a Mobile Business Strategy

Think of it like this. Suppose you’re a bubble tea seller, and your bubble tea is famous for your pleasantly chewy and unique tapioca pearls.

However, you have definite ideas about how you want to serve your tea to customers. You do not offer to-go glasses nor big-hole straws. What you do is insist your customers have their tea in your shop and use a spoon to enjoy your tea and boba pearls.

Does it work? It does. But, soon enough, your customers are going to feel frustrated about being unable to enjoy your bubble tea the way they are accustomed to or the way they prefer. What will they do next? They’ll probably just learn to live without your bubble tea and find another shop that offers a viable alternative.

The hypothetical example above is essentially what happens when a business refuses or neglects to develop a mobile marketing strategy. It ignores those who are always on their mobile phones, going online to visit websites, do product research, shop, and do all sorts of activities.

Insisting that your target customers consume your online content (i.e., your website, at the most basic) on a desktop or laptop is akin to telling people who wish to be served bubble tea to-go with a big-hole straw to stay in the shop and eat their tea with a spoon.

And businesses cannot afford to ignore mobile users.

According to Statista, there are 7.1 billion mobile users worldwide, and around 6.38 billion of these are smartphone users. For this, read: More than six billion people can do almost anything they can do on a desktop on their mobile phones.

And according to StatCounter, as of September 2021, mobile phones have a greater market share than desktops and laptops. Mobile phones have around 55% of the market share, while desktops and laptops have approximately 43%. Tablets account for the remaining market share.

What does this mean for you? It means that the chances are high that your target customers have smartphones.

And what do your target customers do online on their mobile phones? They shop, search for product details, and check product reviews – all of which are valuable customer touchpoints no business, including yours, can afford to ignore.

Developing a Mobile Marketing Strategy for Your Business

Yes, you need a mobile marketing strategy. In fact, some would argue, businesses need to use a mobile-first approach.

So read on for the basic steps on developing a mobile marketing strategy that works for your business.

1. Identify your customers.

Who are your existing and target customers? How old are they, are they male or female, where do they live, and what product or service of yours will they find useful?

Answer these questions, and you will come up with your customer or buyer personas.

2. Plot your customers’ journey.

How do your customers (target and existing customers whose essence is captured in your buyer personas) end up buying from you or availing of your services? Plot the customer journey of each of your buyer persona.

Do your customers go online to do some product research before they commit to buying something? Do they use social media, and to what extent? Do they prefer apps over websites?

These are just a few of the questions you need to ask and answer at this step. You don’t want to miss any stage in your customers’ journey. They will tell you which of these steps are valuable touchpoints you can take advantage of with a mobile strategy.

3. Decide on your mobile strategy.

Depending on the answers you’ve garnered in the first two steps, you will decide on or design your mobile marketing strategy.

For instance, if you have mainly millennial and Generation X customers, you can be pretty confident that they are very active online and spend a lot of time on their smartphones.

You don’t just have to assume, though. You can also reach out to existing customers to see whether they use their mobile phones a lot, especially in interacting with businesses or doing their due diligence online.

And by knowing your customer journey, you will be able to decide how to incorporate a mobile strategy. Perhaps, you need a mobile app, in which case, you will need to reach out to one of the top mobile app development companies in Dubai.

The following are five mobile marketing strategies you can adapt according to your particular needs.

a. Mobile-friendly website

You probably already have a website, so start there. Optimize your website for mobile phone users by making sure the website responds to varying screen sizes

More than that, make sure to optimize your website content. It must be concise yet informative, therefore offering better value to your customers.

b. Mobile app

If you understand your customer journey, then you should find it easier to design a mobile app that your customers would find valuable and pleasurable to use. What your mobile app should do is offer something that:

• they cannot do on your website,
• that your competitors are not doing, and
• that your competitors are not already doing better.

To achieve your mobile app vision, don’t settle for just any mobile app development company. The best mobile app design company is a mobile app development agency that has deep marketing expertise.

This way, they don’t simply understand codes and hooks and API calls. They also understand how the app streamlines the customer journey, improves the customer experience, and reinforces brand loyalty.

c. Geofencing

Take advantage of geofencing to trigger recall. Whenever your customers are physically at a place that makes buying from you or availing of your service easy, send them a reminder on your mobile app or through a third-party app; say, their social media app.

d. Social media advertising

Since a lot of mobile users are on social media, you can use this to your advantage. Run mobile-friendly ads on the social media sites your customers frequent.

e. Text message advertising

People are constantly using their mobile phones, so you can use text message advertising to promote your products and services to your customers.

f. Permission marketing

And you should definitely use opt-in forms to encourage people to sign in for your promotions. If you have people’s permission to market to them, as they are much more likely to look at and check your messages.

Of course, make sure not to abuse your customers’ permission by spamming them with countless ads.

A Mobile Strategy Is Essential

Your business has to have a mobile strategy. In this day and age, not having one means losing a significant chunk of potential customers.

And developing a mobile strategy that works for your business requires only three simple steps: identifying your customers, plotting their customer journey, and deciding on mobile-friendly methods of marketing.