Everybody’s heard the old tired adage of ‘Content is King’. Google enforces it, Bill Gates swears by it and every marketer, blogger and SEO specialist repeats it as a mantra every time they get to work. And yet content has never had more of a royal presence about it than in the case of mobile marketing. Because mobile marketing is different from desktop digital marcomm, in the sense that the user expects it to be responsive and perfectly tuned to their mobile needs. As such, the best strategy for your business or blog, when targeting mobile platform users is to focus on content. This is not to say that design isn’t just as important in the mobile world – especially what with all the talk that has been going through the grapevine about responsive mobile web design. But content should by no means be overlooked either: here are our top reasons for making this claim.
Mobile Marketing and Data
Unlike computers and even tablets, smartphones have the distinct advantage of being gadgets with a single owner. It’s rare for two or more people to share the same smartphone, so you can be sure that when somebody accesses a page or clicks an ad, they are really interested in your product, brand, or page. Misclicks are certainly more common on these smaller devices (as well as on tablets), but they don’t represent a large enough ratio of total inbound traffic to be seriously considered. The main reason for which content marketing is perfect for smartphones, is that they are the ultimate content reading devices, especially when it comes to small, bite-sized bits as calls to actions and content. Even simple search queries are much more valuable when you consider all the data that a phone provides. A query for dog grooming from a certain location is immensely more valuable than the same query from the potential customer’s home, as it means that the user is much more likely to convert into a client. By providing such specific services as store locators, mobile marketing allows the kind of targeting and ad customization that almost no other type of marketing can.
Mobile Marketing and Sharing
This is where the true value of content marketing specifically targeting mobile devices can truly be seen. Smartphones are generally always online and quintessentially social devices. While content and media content can be accessed on any device, the very nature of the mobile medium ensures that your content has a perfect audience.
- For one thing, when people consume content on phones they are completely dedicated to the experience. You may casually watch a video on Youtube while watching your twitter feed in another window but on a mobile phone the small screen size and app-based infrastructure of the major OSes ensure that whatever you are doing, be it watching a movie or reading an article, you are likely giving it your full attention.
- Secondly, think about the users’ content consumption habits: most often, the places where content is accessed from, usually on morning commutes or during breaks make the phone the only media device around, keeping the user focused on the content. This brings to mind the fact that the current Facebook app for the iOS is in serious need of implementing a better link sharing mechanism, since Android already boasts this function and threatens to take over Apple’s market on more than just one count.
- Lastly, when it comes to conversion rates, mobile sales have been steadily growing and have proven more reliable than sales figures for other platforms during the year past. Better yet, for most conversions the purchase of a product takes place within an hour of the initial contact with the product. If you’re shopping online while mobile, it’s usually a clear indicator that you are in serious need of the product you’re shopping for and, as such, less likely to change your mind about the purchase.
Content marketing isn’t always easy to strategize for, but it is becoming increasingly important in the field. Fortunately, the mobile market, as it stands today, provides ample opportunity for experiment, which all webmasters should be taking advantage of.
