The case for mobile sites
Mobile sites are fast becoming a popular and necessary choice for any company brand or agency. It is estimated that by 2014 half of Americans’ web browsing will be done on mobile devices and with smartphone penetration growing year after year, markeeters are making sure they present a good impression for users on their mobile devices.
The mobile smartphone also opens up a whole new array of use cases an internet connection is available on most smartphones and can be used as a communication channel.
How mobile sites are accessed
More often than another, mobile sites are usually accessed by an URL. Because typing is cumbersome on a phone, QR codes have gained plenty of prominence. It eliminates the need to enter a browsing address as it directly opens up a browser and brings the user to the website when it is scanned.
Redirection from the main website to the mobile is another method of accessing a mobile site. Always, websites have a redirection script that detacts users browsing from a mobile phone and point the way to the mobile site URL instead.
Lastly, mobile site links along with their marketing messages can also be pushed to users via digital channels like SMS or email.
Mobile is in an unique position where it is the only medium that is personal and ubquitous. The mobile device is rarely shared and it usually beside each person for the majority of the waking hours. Therefore it is in a position where it can also be the glue that can connect every marketing channel like outdoor advertising, broadcast, print and digital media together.
How to use Mobile sites as glue for multiple marketing channels
Print (Newspaper, Magazine)
- Go beyond Print – Allow users to learn more if your Print advertisment perks their interest
- Analytics for Print– For the first time, you can track interest in your printed advertising campaigns and optimise the creative based on response.
- Do direct response – Your printed ad campaign can have a call to action for users to find out more information or put in their details for a lucky draw or content.
Outdoor (Posters, Billboards, Flyers, Mobile vehicles)
The most likely scenario for someone who has an interest in your outdoor advertising and wants to find out more is by using their mobile phone.
- Location Based – Mobile websites can be bundled with outdoor media to provide a content that is location based. Direct each outdoor media to a unique mobile URL , in this way, you will be able to track the effectiveness of individual billboards. A QR code might bring even more site visits as the call to action is much more straightforward.
- Provide Directions – Given that a user encounters the ad outdoor, you will want to link it to a location feature such as find nearest store location.
- Capture passerbys – Put up a poster of your mobile site address on your storefront so visitors and passerby can visit your mobile site on the go, this is an effective and cost saving method as you don’t need to purchase any ad space.
- In Store – Give your customers a channel to give you feedback. This practically can improve and help manage your brand reputation. Make your customers happy, help them directly before they post damaging reviews on sites like Yelp.
Digital (Desktop, Web & Mobile)
- Desktop website – Smartly redirecting mobile users by adding redirection scripts to detect mobile visitors and send them to a mobile friendly site
- Let your users know about your mobile site – Show a banner ad indicating that you have a mobile site. Your visitors might want to bring your mobile site with them too even when they are on their desktop.
Mobile (SMS, Apps, QR Codes)
- Landing site for Ad Banners – Make a good impression with your ad. Direct visitors to a specific landing page for your campaign.
- SMS Ads – SMS is limited to 160 characters. Include a URL in your SMS ad that users can tap to find out more. Make sure your marketing message acompanied by the link is enticing enough for the customer to click.
- Survey forms – For branded marketing purposes, you can setup a form on a mobile website and email/SMS the URL to your existing customer base.
- App or web banners -Mobile inventory is relatively cheap right now. Instead of making a full fledge app, why not use a mobile site to run a focused mobile campaign to distribute coupons or demo a new product
- SMS Responses – Conventional contests facilitated with SMS only permitted manual input of details to SMS to a designated short code. Additionally, users were restricted by a format to key in user details – separated with spaces between their user information. Not only is it difficult to remember the addressed mobile number, it is tedious to remember the format required for a correct input. With a mobile site, a user can easily enter their information in provided fields and you can even set input validation thus saving you the headache getting the correct information later.
- Info Pages– Need a quick info page for your app? Simply setup a webview and point the webview to a mobile site. A great boon for developers who can just tell the designer to design the info page using HTML instead of having to code the info page in Objective-C or Java.
- Apps – Did you know that some iOS/Android Apps in the app store are built using HTML like mobile sites and just wrapped up as a iOS and Android App? This is what the techies call Hybrid Apps which means that the app are partially built in HTML and native code.