Despite the fact that our lives revolve around our smartphones, the word on the street – at least according to one recent report – is that most companies are lacking a formal mobile strategy (to the tune of 84%).
There are a few reasons for this trend. For starters, it takes serious planning to get a mobile marketing campaign off the ground.
Beyond that, mobile introduces a new set of challenges to marketers everywhere. Knowing how to tailor experiences to different screens to reach audiences across multiple marketing channels is easier said than done.
Luckily, there are tons of experts writing about this sort of stuff. Here are seven posts that will help you launch your first mobile marketing campaigns with a bang.
Let’s get to it.
1. Mobile Landing Page Optimization: 10 Best Practices for Success
If you’re reading this blog post, you’re likely well versed in the art of landing page optimization.
Mobile landing pages, however, are a completely different ball game because you’re dealing with limited screen real estate and a different set of behaviors.
In this article, CRO expert and marketing advisor Angie Schottmuller will walk you through a basic checklist for making your landing pages more mobile-friendly.
Lessons learned
- If you have a phone support team, make it easy for audiences to find your phone number and call your company. Test using a phone icon for quick, visual association.
- Provide a clear and easy-to-find breakdown of your company’s office hours to reduce friction.
- Keep copy brief so that audiences can easily scan your page. As Angie says in the article, “Every single word should add value or get cut.”
- Write copy for your landing pages mobile first – as an exercise in being concise but also to avoid variation across different screen sizes.
2. What 22 Billion Newsletters Tell Us About Designing for Mobile Email
Email allows you to speak directly to prospects. And if you do it right, it’s also a great way of sending qualified traffic to your campaign landing pages.
With more and more people checking their email on mobile, it’s important to understand how these users read and react to email on their phones.
In this post, Ros Hodgekiss of Campaign Monitor spills the beans about what the company learned when it looked at year-over-year trends of open rates and click-through rates across a variety of devices.
This blog post will help your team become more familiar with the mobile email marketing ecosystem so you can drive qualified traffic to your landing pages and get more conversions.
Lessons learned
- Mobile users have different goals, motivations and behavior – understanding them is part and parcel of designing an effective mobile email marketing campaign.
- To avoid cognitive dissonance (and unnecessary friction), make sure that your mobile emails send traffic to a mobile landing page with design and message match.
3. How “Best Practices” Change When You’re Dealing with Mobile-Responsive Landing Pages
Optimizing for mobile landing pages isn’t that different from the LPO you know and love. For example, you still need a compelling offer, convincing social proof and an enticing CTA.
But not all “best practices” hold true. In this article, Amanda Durepos from Unbounce turns to eight seasoned conversion rate optimization experts to answer the following question:
What do you need to know about your mobile visitors to optimize your landing pages for them?
The result is a post packed with battle-tested mobile LPO tips from a variety of experts.
Lessons learned
- Mobile users have different expectations when they arrive on your landing page. Understanding them can help you craft a more compelling offer that is aligned with their interests.
- If you can’t keep your CTA above the fold across all mobile screens, consider a smaller button that jumps to the web form to expedite action.
- Like many of the experts in the post, you may find that your mobile users are less likely to purchase via their mobile device. Find out how users are behaving and decide if you should be prioritizing lead gen, calls or sales.
4. Mobile Commerce Calls to Action: Eight Best Practice Tips
This article by David Moth, deputy editor at Econsultancy, was written for an audience of ecommerce marketers, but it’s packed with tons of great advice for your mobile landing page CTAs.
The tips were written under one fundamental observation:
It’s hard to purchase stuff on your phone.
Though people are becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea of purchasing from their smartphone, we’ve all experienced the frustration of having navigate a poorly designed page with a single finger.
This blog post will walk you through some best practices for encouraging prospects to click your calls to action – with a few timeless examples from big brands like Walmart, Asos, Next and Sears.
Lessons learned
- Create a sense of urgency so that audiences don’t abandon, thinking they’ll just do it on their computer later.
- Make your CTAs big and thumb-friendly – and don’t include other hyperlinks in the vicinity that might accidentally get clicked.
- Give people a telephone number to call in case they get stuck during your sign up process. Filling out opt-in forms on mobile may be tedious, but placing a call isn’t!
5. Conversion Optimization in a Multi-Device World
Okay, you get it. Your campaigns need to work on any mobile device – but what’s the best way to make your pages mobile-friendly?
As CRO expert and WiderFunnel founder Chris Goward explains in this article, you’ve got to have a plan of attack; will you create (static) mobile pages for mobile traffic? Or will you make your pages mobile responsive so they can adapt to any screen?
Chris lists some of the pros and cons of going with either approach, explaining which of the options is better for SEO and effective conversion rate optimization.
On top of the detailed comparison, you’ll also get a simple framework for mobile CRO, with a case study that shows it in action.
Lessons learned
- Responsive landing pages, from a CRO perspective, are a valuable long-term investment because online experiences are becoming increasingly mobile. According to one report, a mobile-friendly website makes someone 67% more likely to buy a product or use a service.
- Mobile landing pages are tough to build due to higher maintenance costs, inconsistent user experiences across devices and lack of future-proofing.
6. How to Optimize Your Mobile Landing Page for Conversions: Hulu.com Example
Smart marketers know that high-performing landing pages need certain essential elements in order to convert.
But in the process of trying to cram images and copy into half the space, it’s easy to accidentally leave out important elements.
In this article, Bryan Eisenberg (founder and CMO at IdealSpot) analyzes a mobile landing page from Hulu with the help of five smart marketers.
He summarizes where Hulu fell short – and then shares a framework for gut-checking your own mobile landing pages to be sure they’ve got what they need to be winners.
It’s an excellent case study that shows mobile landing page optimization in theory and practice.
Lessons learned
- Instead of asking users to fill out a lengthy sign-up form, give them something short and sweet to get started. Then send them an email so they can complete the rest of the signup process later, when they’re at their computer.
- Be mindful of slower internet connections. Don’t rely on a single image to communicate your brand’s core value proposition – it may fail to load.
7. 3 Tips for Better Mobile Marketing
Beyond optimizing for a mobile-friendly landing page, you have to understand how mobile affects the other moving parts of your marketing campaigns.
This blog post by Ritika Puri, marketing strategist and advisor (and author of this roundup ;), will give you strategies for managing your mobile marketing campaigns on paid advertising networks.
Plus, you’ll learn how to constantly improve your marketing campaign strategy through ongoing experimentation.
Lessons learned
- As you build campaigns, create a cohesive brand experience that connects the dots between your desktop, tablet and mobile campaigns.
- Run experiments to target users based on geography, devices and seasonality so that you can develop a traffic stream that is more likely to convert.
Final thoughts
Sure, mobile marketing campaigns have their differences – you’ve got limited screen real estate, and your most valuable conversion goals have to be achievable through a series of taps and swipes.
But even with all these differences, the same conventional wisdom applies:
- Simplicity trumps complexity – audiences want information that’s easily digestible and to-the-point.
- CTAs need to be clear, compelling and focused on the “next step.”
- You need to understand the needs and desires of your audience.
What have been the most valuable mobile CRO lessons that you’ve learned? What are your biggest challenges, and which resources keep your marketing team inspired?
Join the conversation in the comments section below!
