Close Close
Sign In
Newsletters
Popular Financial Topics Discover relevant content from across the suite of ALM legal publications From the Industry More content from ThinkAdvisor and select sponsors Investment Advisor Issue Gallery Read digital editions of Investment Advisor Magazine Tax Facts Get clear, current, and reliable answers to pressing tax questions
Luminaries Awards
Podcast Center Video Center Webcasts Resource Center Events
About ThinkAdvisor Contact Us Advertise With Us Asset & Logo Licensing Sitemap Terms of Service Privacy Policy Copyright © 2024 ALM Global, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
ThinkAdvisor

Practice Management > Building Your Business

4 ways to make the growing mobile market work for you

By Lauren Jaeckel

X
Your article was successfully shared with the contacts you provided.

Whether you are team iPhone or team Android, there’s no denying the fact that we are officially waist-deep in the mobile generation. Admit it: On any given day most of us are too busy looking down at our phones to even notice what the weather is like.

Aligning your business strategy with the growing smartphone market is critical for staying competitive today, and luckily there are several ways you can make your business more mobile-friendly to capture the attention of your target market.

 Mobile marketing simply means catering your marketing strategies to as many devices as possible. These could include smartphones, tablets, texting applications, email and more. Why should you care about tapping into this market? Here are some persuasive stats:

  • 4 billion cell phones are being used worldwide
  • 1 billion of those cell phones are smartphones
  • 3 billion are SMS and MMS capable (fancy words for texting, basically)
  • The mobile web is predicted to take over the desktop experience by 2014

Here are four things your business should be focusing on when it comes to mobile marketing.

smartphone

1. Mobile email.

Email open rates on phones and tablets are on the rise. Did you know that more people read their email from a mobile device than on a desktop computer or webmail? One rule of thumb to follow is make sure your email content is optimized, meaning it’s action-oriented and compatible on each device in both HTML and text formats. Include one easy, actionable button for readers to click if they’d like more information. Keep it simple.

tablet

2. Mobile web. 

Last year, mobile traffic made up about 10 percent of global internet traffic, and this year even more people are using mobile phones to get online. You could be losing dollars if your business’s website isn’t mobile-optimized. Prioritize what items should be included on your mobile website to keep file size and load times short. Check to make sure your site is to scale on multiple devices and browsers. This will allow users to easily browse your website and services while on-the-go.

texting

3. SMS.

The typical U.S. mobile phone owner now sends and receives more SMS or text messages than telephone calls.  Several businesses are already utilizing text messages to send alerts, coupons and special promotional offers to customers. It’s important to give customers the option to opt in to your SMS updates instead of sending unsolicited texts. Treat each text as well-targeted content.

apps

4. Mobile apps.

An app is a single purpose program designed for a mobile device. There are over 1.5 million apps out in the market and that number is growing day by day. Depending on your business, an app might not be right for you. When conceptualizing an app, make your idea as original as possible. If your idea is not the first of its kind, try to alter that existing category into a newer, unique way that adds value. Marketing your app is even more important than developing it. You could spend money on development costs but unless anyone’s actually using it, what’s the point?

Keeping these four pillars of mobile marketing in mind, you can broaden your business strategy to reach more of your customers at all times of the day and take advantage of the growing smartphone market. The most important thing when optimizing for mobile? Remember to simplify and make things as convenient as possible for your customers.  

For more from Lauren Jaeckel, see:

NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.