Mobile has friends in all the right places

According to this 100,000-blogger, Pulitzer Prize-winning source of breaking news, video, features and entertainment, the growth of mobile has been "astronomical" in recent years. That much we knew, but it's always reassuring when great minds collide!

Forget building a separate mobile-friendly version of your website, brands need to focus on a "mobile first mentality", says the HuffPost. Without a strong mobile presence, and a mobile marketing strategy that is driven and effective, your brand could easily fall behind in terms of capturing the interest of users and converting them into long-term, valuable customers.

It's not surprising this group which makes its first venture into sub-Saharan Africa next month is a mobile fan.

123RF

Upon announcing its foray into SA, the HuffPost's SA-born CEO extensively quoted mobile figures that included South Africa's expected cellphone user base of 41.5 million people. This savvy company knows that the vast majority of media consumers tend to use mobile devices as their primary device for consuming web content, whether news platform or social media.

The platform that enables mobile marketing, the cellphone, is so ridiculously widespread that it's almost silly providing statistics to back up this assertion. It's probably more useful, by way of illustration, to provide stats illustrating who doesn't have a cellphone - if that's even possible.

With smartphones being the most important means of customer research on a product or service for almost 40% of mobile users, and with almost 60% of users buying something within an hour after conducting research on their mobile devices, there are tremendous mobile opportunities for marketers who can provide the best and most relevant brand experience at the all-important optimum time.

Recognising the above, the final quarter of any year is traditionally when a fair amount of panicking takes place as companies realise they have one last chance to achieve the marketing goals they set out in the first quarter of the year.

October, November and December are the 'last chance saloon' months of the mobile marketing strategy, so the usual scaremongering goes. Well, not really. Mobile marketing is a process. It's a well thought out, considered and long term approach to satisfying the mobile consumer's needs and it doesn't end with December and begin with January.

Mobile marketing doesn't have a clear cut start and finish because the adoption of mobile devices by consumers didn't happen overnight. The fact that most of us are never more than three feet away from our devices isn't a phenomenon that we suddenly woke up to. Many small decisions implemented well in consultation with a mobile marketing specialist gradually emerge as a winning mobile strategy.

Speak to a reputable mobile marketing consultancy about working with your brand to tweak social media, tailor content for mobile, develop mobile friendly email, and create hyper targeted ads to ensure that you’re reaching the right audience, at the right time, with the right content.