All websites these days need to be mobile-friendly. Most of the users like to browse websites and apps on their mobile phones instead of desktop. It is a lot more convenient to access a new website on a mobile device than to wait to get to a laptop or desktop computer to open it up.
Businesses are also aware of this. That’s why most of the advertising and marketing done on the internet is geared towards the audience that’s accessing websites through mobile devices. Before a site is developed, its mobile strategy is designed. It is made sure that it will be responsive enough to be browsed on both iOS and Android phones.
Just like an advertising strategy takes time to be devised, creating mobile strategy also consumes time and attention. If not done correctly, it can become the cause of huge losses for a business. A website that cannot be effectively opened through a mobile phone can totally go to waste and get close to zero visitors.
To avoid this from happening, smart and successful entrepreneurs like to do some research on developing a mobile strategy that works. There is nothing wrong with learning a new skill or gaining knowledge on a contemporary topic, even if you already have years of experience and exposure in your field. That’s exactly what these successful businessmen understand.
In this post, we will be discussing a step-by-step guide on developing a mobile strategy. But before that, you need to know how a mobile strategy is defined, and why you need to spend time and money on this aspect of your website.
What is a Mobile Strategy?
A mobile strategy is a way or all tactics combined that are taken to incorporate all kinds of mobile devices into the overall corporate strategy. It does not only include making your website mobile-friendly. It includes everything a business does to ensure mobile devices are a part of its branding and budgeting procedures.
A good mobile strategy example would be one that is aligned with the company’s vision, mission, and marketing plan. It would help the company initiate the buying actions of users, and distinguish the brand from the competition. It should also be feasible in terms of financial resources and must fall within the marketing budget of the company.
Businesses with successful mobile strategies are those that understand the importance and value of mobile devices, and the role they play in promoting a brand. Due to the convenience of using smartphones, customers these days like to associate everything about a brand with the way they interact with it through their phones.
For example, if they hear about a new brand name, they would search for it on Google using the Chrome or Safari browser on their phone. If they need to sign up for an app, they would again straight away install the app on their phone. If they are visiting a website to get information about a specific product, they would prefer to open the website on their phone, in which case the website better be responsive, or else the seller would lose a valuable potential customer. Even for purchasing products online, users expect the payment methods on an online store to be fully functional via mobile phones.
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Building up a strategic plan to ensure all the above activities of users are successful is part of developing a mobile strategy for a brand. A typical mobile strategy does not have to be costly, consuming most of the company’s marketing budget. It can be simple steps taken from the very beginning of positioning a brand that is feasible, cost-effective, and measurable enough to be able to analyze the results.
The purpose of creating a mobile strategy is not to ignore the other aspects of marketing. Its purpose is to complement the joint marketing and promotional efforts that a company carries out, with the ultimate goal of increasing sales.
Benefits of Having a Mobile Strategy
There are several specific benefits of developing a mobile strategy that effectively helps your business grow. A few of them are discussed below.
1. It Provides a Massive Reach For Your Adverts
When you target your advertisements to be displayed or played on mobile phones as well as desktop computers, you are able to reach a very broad audience. This is the very first benefit of having a good mobile strategy. If your adverts are only shown on desktop, you will be missing out on a huge portion of the population that could become your loyal customers. Brands these days become popular and advertisements go viral on mobile phones first. Partially, the credit for this goes to social media. Since it is very easy for anyone on social media to share an ad that they really like, small companies are also able to get their ads viral if only they are able to excite social media users with them.
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2. It Enhances Brand Awareness
Having a broader reach for your advertisements and the brand name eventually enhances your brand awareness. This means you have to spend less financial resources in building your brand awareness, as it will automatically build up when more and more people view your ads. Strong brand awareness can help a business grow at double or triple the pace. That’s because when your prospects have already heard about your brand and products, it is relatively easier to persuade them to purchase from you.
3. It Positions the Brand as Being Up-to-Date
Mobile phones are a relatively newer technology than all the other media for advertising, such as television, radio, billboards, and desktop computers. If you have a mobile strategy that successfully makes your brand stand out through mobile devices, you will be seen as being up-to-date with the latest technologies. Brands that are only involved in using the conventional means of marketing are often seen as outdated, old-fashioned, or even obsolete.
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4. It makes the Marketing Team More Creative
Creating advertisements to be run on mobile phones or designing a mobile website really forces your marketing team to be more creative. The point is to get as many different ideas as possible to make your brand stand out through its mobile strategy.
5. It Increases the Sales Revenue
Eventually, all the benefits of having a good mobile strategy stir together to grow the company’s sales revenue. The ultimate goal of any business is to increase its sales and get more profit margin. Creating mobile strategy contributes to helping a business achieve this goal.
Steps For Developing a Mobile Strategy
Here are the steps you need to follow in order to come up with an effective mobile strategy.
1. Understand the Overall Corporate Strategy
Since your mobile strategy must match up with the overall corporate and marketing strategies of your business, it is important that you keep all the strategies and action plans in mind when you are developing a mobile strategy. Having everything aligned with each other helps in maintaining balance and efficiency in your business operations and procedures. If there is a clash among the different strategies you are trying to adopt, your business would face hiccups in making sales, and customers won’t be able to have smooth shopping experiences with your brand.
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2. Conduct a SWOT Analysis
You might want to conduct a SWOT analysis to identify the strengths and weaknesses in implementing a mobile strategy. A SWOT analysis would help you appreciate any opportunities that you can look into by adopting the latest technologies, and recognize the competition you would face when you build creative marketing content.
3. Develop a Mobile-Friendly Website
Building and running a mobile-friendly website is key to successfully implementing your mobile strategy. Your brand website would serve as a one-stop platform for you to run all your marketing activities from. For instance, you can gather subscriptions by building a signup form on your site. You can post explainer videos and use video marketing to promote your brand through your web pages. You can integrate your website with your social media pages to drive traffic back and forth among all platforms.
Building a website could turn out to be a very simple process if you use a suitable website builder for it. At Strikingly, we provide our users with most of the basic features in our free plan to get them started with a basic website in just a couple of hours. The most amazing part is you can create your website all by yourself because you don’t need to know any programming languages or coding skills to build a website with our tools.
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Further, the website that you build on Strikingly can easily be made responsive enough to be browsed through mobile phones.
4. Promote Your Mobile Website
Once you have a website up and running, the last step is to promote your site, especially to mobile users. This is a very critical step in the process of implementing your mobile strategy. It will make you utilize all the resources you have consumed in building the marketing content and tools for promoting your brand through mobile devices.
Now that you know how to develop and implement a mobile strategy, you can begin with reviewing your overall corporate strategy and registering for a free account on Strikingly to begin building your mobile website.
If you take things one step at a time, you won’t feel overwhelmed. Before you know it, your website will be attracting tons of new users and customers who will be loyal to your brand and keep coming back for repeat purchases.
