Smartphones are becoming near ubiquitous. Even in developing countries and emerging markets smartphones are becoming extremely popular.
And in advanced nations just about everyone seems to have a smartphone in their pocket or tablet in their hands.
If fact more than half of Americans between the age of 18 and 45 now have a smartphone and the percentage is increasing day after day.
Worldwide it is estimated that more than 1.2 billion people now regularly use a smartphone to stay in touch.
And that means if you want to reach those millions and billions of people you will have to target smartphones.
Business Communications Landscape
The landscape of business communications has evolved. In the past, professional business communications were made through landline phones. But internet connectivity now makes it possible to communicate with others across the globe using computers, smartphones, and voice over internet protocol or VoIP phones.
In addition, it’s now possible to conduct enterprise call tracking to boost conversion and sales with the use of a call tracking and analytics software program such as BizCloud phone systems. The system tracks and reports all calls so companies can attain insightful data for return-on-investment or ROI reporting. Having highly organized and accessible data can help marketing teams determine the touchpoints that customers prefer to engage with the business and which marketing campaigns work.
Now more than ever, mobile communications make mobile marketing possible and essential using smartphones. Thus, businesses should look for ways to learn more about and implement short messaging service or SMS marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, and other forms of mobile marketing. These enable consumers to view sales and marketing messages right through their hand-held devices while they’re on the go.
Businesses can also target their leads more easily using mobile marketing solutions. Raising brand awareness will be faster and more effective. You can get instant feedback and results using analytics tools. At the same time, businesses can save money, effort, and time from offline and traditional marketing campaigns such as television, newspaper, billboards, and radio broadcasting.
Everything in One Place
Smartphones offer a ton of features and can be used for a whole wide range of things. This is one of the main reasons why people love them so much.
For example a smartphone can be used to:
- Browse the web for key terms
- Make purchases online
- Compare prices for products
- Look up discounts, promotions, and coupons
- Get directs and maps
- Find contact details for local businesses
- Tell other people about great experiences
- Play video games
- Find out weather reports
- Arrange calendars and appointments
- Listen to songs and watch videos
- Snap photos
- Send text messages
Oh, and every once in awhile people might use their phone to call people too.
Many of the previously mentioned activities gives your company an opportunity to market itself and build its brand.
You can build simple video games, for example, or offering promotions through a special app.
These applications can help you integrate your company and its products into the daily life of smartphone users.
You can also make a mobile website that allows customers to look up and view your business with ease.
This website should have an easy-to-access map and easy-to-find contact details. You can also give customers the option of making purchases through their phone.
At the end of the day your mission is to make things easier for the customer and to provide them with help.
By doing so you will gain loyalty and eventually build trust.
So whenever you see the chance to use applications and websites on smartphones to aid your customers you should capitalize on that chance!
Smartphones and Your Business
Smartphones offer many distinct advantages over their regular PCs counterparts and also offline advertisements in general.
For one, people are practically attached to their smartphones, having them on their person pretty much all of the time.
This means you can get in touch pretty much any time during. This gives you a wide window of time in which to get your message across.
Of course, you should be careful not to abuse this fact and message customers at inconvenient times.
Most importantly, perhaps, is the simple fact that mobile marketing has higher response rates than online marketing targeting PC users.
This is due in large part because mobile users are more focused on their activities than PC users.
Smartphone users are almost always in search of something specific and if you happen to have that info then you will also have the customer’s full attention.
In the past mobile phones were far slower then their PC counterparts.
While a mobile phone usually won’t be as fast as a regular computer, communication and download speeds have increased considerably.
Not only that but customers are no longer tethered to one spot so you can get in touch anywhere, for example, by sending coupons to someone who walks past your store.
Becoming a Smartphone User
Looking to launch a world class mobile marketing campaign? The first thing is to study up on smartphones and other devices.
Seriously, if you are going to launch a smartphone campaign you need to be a smartphone user.
By becoming a smartphone user you will greatly increase your understanding of how the device and the mobile marketing industry work.