6 Mobile Marketing Tips for Cyber Week
Mobile retail sales are huge, and still getting bigger. In 2017, 34.5% of all retail eCommerce sales in the US were made on a mobile phone, amounting to $156.28 billion dollars. By 2021, this is predicted to hit $420.17 billion. On Cyber Monday alone in 2017, $2 billion were spent on mobile sales, or just under a third of all revenue.
It’s a trend that’s reflected globally as well. Worldwide, mobile eCommerce sales hit $1.4 trillion in 2017. 52% of all online eCommerce orders in the UK were made by mobile, and 51% of those in Japan. 58% of people in South Korea and 68% of Chinese made a purchase via mobile in the third quarter of 2017. In India and China, mobile commerce sales already surpassed desktop shopping.
Mobile sales play an important part in eCommerce, so here are our mobile marketing tips for improving your mobile sales during Cyber Week.
1. Maximize Social Media Marketing for Mobile
Research shows that consumers mainly interact with social media via mobile. Instagram and Pinterest lead the way, with over 90% of activity taking place on mobile rather than desktop.
Share appealing product images with #CyberMonday, #BlackFriday and #BFCM hashtags to draw interest. You can also create your own Cyber Week-related hashtags to encourage customers to join an ongoing social media conversation.
Remember that hashtags are cross-platform. Your mobile marketing message and conversation should be consistent on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat. Your post-purchase screen and follow-up messaging should also promote your Cyber Week hashtag. Ask consumers to share their shopping experience or upload a photo of themselves using their new product
Make sure to include a prominent share button on your web pages and in marketing emails, one that’s easy to spot on mobile versions. Integrate social media share buttons in your app and your in-app marketing as well.
Don’t hyperfocus on Facebook and Instagram. Snapchat is a mobile-only platform with millions of highly engaged users who check the app an average of 18 times a day. This means Snap Ads could bring a better ROI for mobile marketing than Facebook. Pinterest is also a very effective mobile social media platform. Consider creating Pinterest gift guides with a Buy Pin button that turns your Pinterest feed into a mobile marketing funnel.
2. Use Mobile Video Ads Effectively
Google research reports that 40% of millennials trust YouTube videos, and millennials are your key target audience for mobile marketing. YouTube reports that over 50% of all videos are watched on a mobile phone, Wyozl says that 90% of consumers watch video on their mobiles and Twitter claims that 90% of Twitter videos are watched on the mobile. That means that mobile video ads have a powerful reach.
When preparing marketing videos, have the mobile experience in mind:
- Most mobile videos are watched with the sound muted, so include subtitles or make the video understandable without sound.
- Millennials, who consume the most mobile video ads, want an immersive, storytelling marketing experience.
- Shoot your marketing video for vertical viewing, because over 30% of mobile viewers won’t rotate their screen to watch your ad.
3. Integrate Mobile Marketing
Effective mobile marketing strategies mean using mobile devices as part of an overall marketing plan. Don’t ignore your traditional digital marketing methods.
- Integrate push notifications marketing on your other channels. Keep them short and to the point. Push notifications are an ideal medium for abandoned cart notifications or follow ups on a marketing email with a push alert notifying the contact that time is running out on your best Cyber Monday deal.
- Remember that people need to see your message an estimated 7 times before they’ll act on it. By presenting the same deals through emails, social media and push notifications, you can get your promotions in front of more eyes.
4. Prepare Graphics for Mobile Presentation
Visual marketing is key for mobile marketing, since images are processed faster than text-based ads. Posts with images convert far faster than those without, so make sure to use mobile-friendly graphics on all social media platforms.
- Make sure that all graphics resolve clearly to the format of a smartphone screen and a tablet.
- Keep images simple, so that they don’t look cluttered on a small screen.
- Make your images clickable for one-step mobile purchases.
5. Make the Mobile Shopping Experience Seamless
The best mobile marketing campaign in the world will fall apart if it’s difficult for customers to actually buy your product. Omnichannel shopping means that consumers expect to meet the same brand messaging online, offline, on social media and email and via push notifications, so it’s important to pull all of these platforms into line.
- Make it easy for people to buy your product via social media platforms. Use the Buy pin on Pinterest, include one-click to buy buttons on Instagram and Twitter and add Buy buttons to Facebook posts and messages. You can also place click to call and click to buy buttons on in-app marketing and text message marketing.
- Make sure that your emails are optimized for mobile viewing. More than half of all emails are now opened on mobile phones. Provide clear images and a bold CTA, so readers can click through straight to your offer page.
- Ensure that your mobile website is easy to use. Remove clutter, shorten webforms, and make sure that the user experience flows smoothly from landing page to checkout.
- Mobile shoppers are more likely to be interrupted by a message or alert before they complete their purchase, so make sure that your mobile checkout experience is fast. Include steps like removing the need to register before making a purchase, and add auto-detect and auto-fill fields.
6. Use Only Mobile-Friendly Popup Ads
In early 2017, Google introduced changes which penalize businesses that use intrusive popup ads on mobile devices. This just reflected the fact that interstitial ads that come up too soon or are too large are simply annoying, which is something you want to avoid. Here are some of the best practices for effective mobile ads:
- Google doesn’t penalize you if the user opened the ad themselves. So smaller floating ads or top or bottom screen banners that open up when the user clicks on them are a good idea.
- Use top or bottom banner ads that don’t obscure the main screen.
- Exit intent ads are only triggered when a user has spent some time on the webpage or app page and is ready to leave, so these ads aren’t considered to interfere with the mobile experience. Connect your exit intent trigger with a timer trigger so that the ad doesn’t open if a user lands on the page and then decides to leave immediately
- Exit intent ads are an ideal vehicle for abandoned cart notifications.
By using the right mobile marketing strategy, you can boost your cyber week sales sky-high and harvest your share of the mobile shopping revolution.