5 Mobile Marketing Practices Every Profit-Minded Business Should Adopt

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With millennials checking their phones 150 times a day and the average person regardless of age spending five hours a day on his or her smartphone, mobile devices are firmly entrenched as today's leading media.By 2019, mobile advertising will represent 72 percent of all U.S. digital advertising.

Related: 104 Facts You Didn't Know About Mobile Marketing (Infographic)

This applies to all ecommerce sites; even product-review sites like Yelp or BestAdvisor are in this mix. The message is that if you're not being smart about reaching your customers via mobile, you're leaving a ton of money on the table. So, how can you be smart?

Here are five mobile marketing practices companies must adopt in the age of "the mobile moment."

1. Location-based marketing

The era of location-based marketing is here. Businesses send customers notifications when they pass a store and promotions when they are near strategic locations where the brand's products or services would be useful.

In this context, Foursquare recently released Foursquare Analytics, which grants client businesses and marketers access to location intelligence and technology for more than 90 million geofenced locations around the world.

The company has also moved to integrate Uber into its system, enabling users both to discover places to go and also get there, using the same app. In fact, users can now order a ride from inside Foursquare without having to switch applications. No need to type in the address, look up directions or struggle through translations.

2. In-app marketing

Google Play currently offers 2.8 million apps, while Apple has 2.2 million. With such intense competition, apps must offer the most personalized service possible, or risk being ditched. In-app marketing fuels relevance and engagement, which in turn drives retention, loyalty and lifetime value.

An example of this is the challenge faced by India's Federal Bank as a result of that country's 2016 "demonetization plan" (when it replaced its 500 and 1,000 rupee notes with 2000 notes). Within months of the plan's implementation, over 14 million Indians downloaded the bank's new apps, and digital-payment use surged up to 80-fold among India's 260 million smartphone owners.

Related: Top 7 Reasons You Should Make Mobile Marketing a Priority

To capitalize on this deluge of new app users, the bank turned to Insert, an in-app marketing platform that allows marketers to create and publish targeted campaigns quickly, independent of development resources.

It further deployed contextual campaigns around a national holiday, as well as other targeted promotions, directly in the app. This resulted in an immediate uptick in conversions and retention.

3. SMS marketing

Mobile text marketing is the focus of many misconceptions, but with 91 percent of millennials text messaging weekly, marketing is essential. Many corporations, including Coca-Cola, Walmart and Toys 'R' Us, have integrated text messaging into their mobile-marketing strategies.

When a Domino's pizza franchise in North Carolina wanted to improve advertising at college sports games, it turned to EZtexting, a short messaging marketing service (SMS). Previous campaigns had displayed Domino's web address in ads, but the franchise found that most fans didn't bother jotting down a URL during a basketball game.

In response, Domino's reconfigured its new ads to tell viewers to text a certain number to get free or discounted pizza. Responses skyrocketed.

4. Mobile marketing measurement

Mobile ad revenue recently surpassed the amount spent on desktop ad revenue. With billions of dollars being dedicated to reach customers on their mobile devices, a scientific approach to mobile marketing has become necessary. AppsFlyer illustrates this approach, as a mobile attribution and marketing data-analytics company that helps marketers pinpoint their targeting, optimize their ad spend and boost their ROI.

Take the example of Game Circus, creators of the smash hit mobile video game Coin Dozer. Without the right data, mobile game developers were having difficulty reacting quickly to changes in the market or determining if the quality of users generated by certain ad channels was improving or declining over time.

The marketing team took action: It began using AppsFlyer to link attribution data to the engagement and LTV metrics it was monitoring at the game or campaign level. The result? Coin Dozer subsequently achieved a 2.3-times increase in total installs and more than a 40 percent increase in gross profit.

5. QR codes

One way to swiftly provide relevant information to mobile users is through the use of QR codes. These digital bar codes act as shortcuts for getting valuable information into the hands of customers and prospects. QR codes are highly versatile and can function as a Facebook "like" button as well as offer coupons, provide tourists with information and perform other functions.

One memorable QR campaign was the "Guinness QR code on a beer glass" action brilliantly dreamed up by advertising agency BBDO. When customers poured a Guinness -- and only a Guinness -- into a special glass, the beer's black color filled out a code on the glass that was scannable with a smartphone. Once it was scanned, customers could tweet about their pints, update their Facebook status, check in via Foursquare, download coupons and promotions and invite friends to join them.

The QR code could even launch exclusive Guinness content.

Final words

Each of these tactics can be duplicated -- by you. What's more, each tactic offers your company the ability to increase exposure, grow, attract and retain clients in ways that are relevant, timely and appealing to their interest in digital media.

Related: 4 Tips For Mobile-Marketing Success in 2017

So, give one or more of these a try: By continuing to develop your business's mobile-marketing activities, you'll be positioning your company exactly where your customers are hanging out.

Toby Nwazor

Toby Nwazor is an consumer-goods entrepreneur and freelance writer. Get in touch with him for ghost writing, website content creation and other professional writing services.

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