Social media marketing can be a cost-effective way for businesses to keep their customers engaged. Not only is it easy to interact with customers through social media, but it can also save a lot of time and money in the process. Besides being a great way to interact with customers, social media marketing can also be leveraged to attract new business.

Unlike traditional marketing channels like television, radio and print which only promote one way interaction between a business and its clients and prospects, social media allows two-way communication. In traditional media, the business conveys a message that it wants its market to hear. But in social media, customers can react in real time to what they hear or see.

With the evolution of social media, clients and prospects can now express themselves to the business through blog comments, send them email and react on their social media profile walls. Businesses can take advantage of this opportunity to connect with their target market.

Connecting with social media marketing

Besides two way interaction, social media also allows lateral communication, since customers can also connect with each other.  Peer communication takes the interaction to a new level that businesses can use to gain new customers and fans by encouraging customers to become their marketing evangelists. Triggering a viral marketing message can start a wave of word of mouth advertising that spreads the business’ message across multiple networks, taking it to audiences the business would not even have dreamed of reaching.

Conventional word of mouth propaganda involves A telling B about something she liked. B tries it and tells C, who in turn relates her experience to D, and so on. While social media takes a similar route, the reach is gigantic because A “tweets” her “like” to a thousand followers.  A few of her followers will, in turn, tweet to their own followers, taking the message to thousands of people in a matter of seconds. On its own, a business would take far longer to reach so many prospective customers. That is the power of social media in attracting new clients. When people see a recommendation from someone they trust, they are more willing to try the product or service.

There is truth in the statement that social media marketing is marketing on steroids. Even though word of mouth advertising is not new, before social media came on the scene, it was not scalable. At most, the news spread to some friends and some friends-of-friends, family members and colleagues. Compared to social media, this was certainly limited. Social media, with its multiple channels allows people to convey and share their news much faster to more people.

The secret behind word of mouth promotion

Word of mouth marketing is highly effective because it focuses around relationship marketing.  The people in an individual’s network trust each other and go by their recommendations. Thanks to social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare and more, any content shared can travel rapidly. When a business leverages this power, it can have its products and services endorsed across multiple networks, and in a short span of time. People share information because they can and because they have the means readily available to them.

Traditional media can be expensive and it is often difficult to monitor and measure results. Social media’s ability to amplify a message across many networks automatically results in savings, enabling the business maximise its return on investment and also minimise its cost of customer acquisition.

According to IDC, the worldwide smartphone market is expected to approach shipments of one billion units in 2015. Mobile marketing is no longer an option for businesses – it is a necessity. Businesses cannot afford to have just a website, it must also be mobile friendly so that the business don’t miss out on the traffic from mobile users. According to global mobile statistics, 77% of the world’s population is mobile subscribers. Mobile browsing is on the increase and there are more mobile devices using Wi-Fi networks than desktop computers.

Once you have decided to invest in mobile marketing, the first step is to determine what you need to do. A mobile strategy takes more than creating an app. Here are a few tips:

Study your competitors

Obviously you do not want your competitors to be a step ahead of you. Look at your competitors’ mobile initiatives as that is your first threat. Going by the current trend, mobile-savvy customers will prefer brick and mortar stores that can keep them engaged through mobile marketing. You have to be innovative to make sure you meet customer expectations. If you don’t, your competitor probably will.

Consider your budget

Mobile strategies can tend to cost more and are more complex than one-time website initiatives. However, the good news is if you do it right, the return on investment will be more than worth it. Team up with a consultant who can help you strategise and successfully implement an initiative that suits your business’ specific needs.

Restructure your business

Create an organisation structure that facilitates mobile marketing. Your operations division should be able to collaborate with the mobile team to come up with a multi-channel plan that permeates the entire business. This visibility will enable you reach your mobile marketing goals.

Keep everyone in the loop

This is a critical part of your mobile marketing strategy. The best way to let everyone in your business know about your mobile marketing plan is by offering incentives to promote it. One example is a mobile app that lets users shop easily via their mobile. This facility must be promoted via all marketing channels at all levels.

Make it multi-platform friendly

Since different mobile devices have different access patterns, build your services to match them. Your business decisions should be made based on your servers and not the mobile device, since it will allow you the flexibility to make future changes rather than rewrite the entire app.

Develop a forward thinking strategy with your entire business in mind. Once your campaign is up and running, install analytics to monitor your results so that the necessary adjustments can be made, making mobile marketing a tried and trusted part of your marketing mix.

For marketers who are looking for an interactive channel that shows immediate results, mobile marketing is an ideal strategy. It lets marketers reach their target audience effectively and enables them get good ROI on their marketing money. By using mobile marketing, marketers can choose whom they want to reach, the location they want to cover and the specific devices they want to focus on.

To ensure that these benefits are derived as expected, here are some tips to launch a successful mobile marketing campaign:

Identifying your target audience

As with any kind of marketing or promotion campaign, determine who your target customer is based on the demographics of different carriers. This will help focus the ad to the appropriate group. First, identify who your prospective customers are, then explore the best ways to connect with them.

Leverage click to call ads

One of the biggest benefits of mobile marketing is the availability of the device with the customer at all times. To make them take action, use click to call ads that will take prospects to your website or your social networking profiles, like Twitter and Facebook. Click to call ads produce instant results and almost all mobile ad networks let you allocate a daily budget for a specified amount of time.

Simplicity works best

Bear in mind the mobile screen’s size and plan the ad accordingly. The ad should neither be full of text nor loaded with graphics. Avoid using any kind of web form since it can be very annoying to try and complete it.  Limit yourself to asking for the minimum information required to qualify. The ad must be designed in such a way that it can be easily viewed across different devices and load quickly even when the data networks are busy.

Choose ad placement wisely

There is a variety of options you can use to reach the mobile customer. This includes apps, games, the mobile web or a text message. Depending on your brand’s goal, place the ads in the most appropriate channel since customers do not like a stream of ads interrupting what they are doing.

Finally, the mobile marketing campaign must be launched at the right time, when the recipient is likeliest to respond.  Unlike other media where the audience can respond any time, with a mobile campaign, one could be viewing the ad anywhere and at any time. Make it easy to respond with a single click where information can be sent to their phone to allow them to respond as soon as it is convenient for them.

After the above tips are implemented, track your mobile ad campaign metrics for performance so that the necessary changes can be made to improve the effectiveness of the campaign. It is worthwhile experimenting with different mobile networks to find out which one is the best for your mobile marketing campaign.