subject: Mobile Marketing: I Want It Now [print this page] If you're out in an unfamiliar city, desperately craving a particular food, what's the logical next step? For most people, it's consulting a mobile device. You might use a general app to browse reviews of area restaurants, use a particular chain restaurant's app to find their nearest location, or simply search for what you want on Google.
Whichever approach you take, though, you're seeking a specific thing (a particular type of restaurant), in a specific place (wherever you are), right now. This increased desire for immediacy and specificity is a major factor differentiating mobile users from people seeking information via computers. To get the maximum ROI out of a mobile campaign, marketers must ensure they're properly appealing to it and thus enabling users to find exactly what they want as soon as possible.
In terms of mobile site design, SEO and usability are key. A mobile user is seeking information fast, and, as a result, is even less likely to scroll through search results or wait for Page 2 to load. Small screen sizes augment the importance of mobile SEO, as fewer search results are going to show up "above the fold." For these reasons, marketers need to ensure that their mobile sites are optimised in order to maximise rankings.
Once a mobile user has reached a site, they are usually seeking a specific type of information: reviews, recommendations, contact info, facts about a particular topic, etc. A website should load quickly, boast simple, intuitive navigation (users should be able to find what they're looking for in one or two clicks), and illustrate knowledge of what visitors would be looking to find there. Since mobile users are generally seeking information that can be utilised right now, features like "click-to-call" links and store locators can make a huge difference in terms of encouraging transactions.
Native apps, if integrated into a mobile campaign, should also be carefully designed to give users as much practical utility as possible. Apps can add convenient user benefits by moving beyond what a browser can provide to work with a device's other features. For example, several banks have designed apps allowing users to deposit checks via iPhone camera, and integration with a smart phone's GPS capabilities results in apps that locate what users want and instruct them as to how to get there.
Like mobile websites, well-designed mobile apps--and even more so location-based apps--encourage users to take immediate action. As a result, the best mobile marketing campaigns provide marketers with a great ROI while they provide users with what they want from a company, where they are, right now.
