The importance of mobile marketing for multi-location businesses

Are you reading this on your phone? Have you used your phone for a few hours already today? If so, you are far from alone! The average person spends about 4.5 hours per day on their phone, and checks their phone about 58 times per day. While this might not be great for our eyes or physical health, with people spending so much time on their phones already, there is significant value in investing in mobile marketing strategies, especially as a multi-location business. Innovations in mobile marketing have made it more convenient and more engaging than ever before, delivering consistent results to businesses.

The continued importance of mobile marketing

Mobile has steadily become more important for multi-location business over the years. Currently, it’s estimated that traffic rates are higher on mobile vs. desktop, which makes sense considering the amount of time people spend on their phones each day. For multi-location businesses, mobile presents numerous opportunities to create distinct, relevant customer experiences. The ultimate goal of mobile marketing is to improve the customer experience and drive conversions by delivering content and interactions where they spend the most time.

Before implementing a mobile marketing strategy, or when updating your current one, make sure to understand your key audience’s demographics. This will help you create campaigns and messaging in line with their preferences and outline achievable goals. Consider the following questions:

Are your customers or potential customers already on mobile?
Will you have to drive new traffic to branded apps or a mobile site?
Where are clients making purchases or scheduling services?
Are there clear service lines that work better on mobile?

Start by optimizing your website and content for mobile devices

It goes without saying that if you want to leverage the advantages of mobile marketing, you need to optimize your website, content, and applications for use on mobile devices. If your website does not provide a great visual and tactile experience on mobile, your customers are not going to use it and they might even go to a competitor with a better mobile experience. Make sure you test all your website features on mobile and tablets, including buttons, menus, dropdowns, shopping carts, scheduling, and more. If you need help getting a mobile website right, be sure to reach out to the MDG team.

Optimizing for mobile will also help with local SEO. SEO is incredibly important for multi-location businesses as local SEO can drive traffic and conversions to specific locations. Make sure your page load speed and font sizes are optimized for mobile as this also impacts SEO. Ideally, if you have a strong mobile customer experience, you’re more likely to have strong SEO and rank for your preferred keywords.

Mobile friendly content is also vital as you drive more traffic through mobile sources. If people are trying to read a blog on your website and the font is too small to see on mobile, they most likely will not engage with the content. Make sure to increase the font size and layout for mobile viewing and try and keep mobile content short and sweet with obvious headers, breaks, and easy-to-click links. Additionally, make sure videos are short and easy to view.

Utilize mobile apps to enhance customer engagement

While a website is almost a non-negotiable these days as it provides credibility and valuable information to your audience, a mobile app is unique and may provide a better customer experience. Depending on your industry, there are white labeled applications you can buy and apply your branding to, especially in the fitness, wellness, finance, and healthcare industries. Buying one of these solutions is great if you do not have the budget or in-house resources to build a custom app, which requires an initial investment and ongoing maintenance.

An app gives you the freedom to engage with your audience based on their preferences and provides a plethora of customer data. It also ensures privacy when dealing with sensitive industries, like banking and healthcare. A branded app for multi-location businesses provides a singular space for customers to interact with their local business and not the larger brand, providing a more personalized experience.

The gamification of mobile apps is another way to drive additional engagement. While the gamification of your app can attract and retain customers, make sure it’s relevant to your industry and your audience. It’s great for the wellness and fitness space as gaming elements like badges and leaderboards encourage increased engagement with your brand.

Implement mobile marketing strategies to reach customers on the go

Outside of optimizing your website and content for mobile and implementing a branded mobile app for both android and iOS, there are a host of strategies you can adopt as a multi-location business to drive conversions and improve the customer experience.

SMS marketing – With people on their phones upwards of 4.5 hours per day, they are more likely to view an SMS message than ever before. This can be a great way to tell customers and leads about upcoming promotions, send scheduling reminders, and deliver updates about loyalty programs, among many other things. For example, lots of retail stores are offering a percentage off for first time buyers if they sign up for text and email announcements. SMS can be especially beneficial for multi-location businesses as you can target a very specific audience.
Location-based marketing – As a multi-location business, location-based marketing is one of your best resources. For example, you can choose to target customers that enter your store. And, you can tailor messages to a specific audience to take into account the different providers, services, promotions, and loyalty programs at each location.
App notifications – In-app notifications, push notifications, and promotions are useful tools that are only available when customers have access to the app. You can send personalized recommendations based on their purchase history or engagement. Push notifications can be used to remind customers of events or services. However, just remember that users can opt-out of push notifications so be sure to include that information in an easy-to-find place in the app as well.
Social media – Building an online community is a great way to drive better customer experiences and stronger brand loyalty. Social media is a great place for mobile marketing as most people use social media on their phones, and conversion rates for social ads are very high.

Mobile marketing should be an integral part of any marketing strategy for multi-location businesses. By implementing some of the ideas above, you can start seeing more mobile traffic and higher conversion rates. Your customers will appreciate the improved experience. If you’re looking for a mobile marketing partner, contact MDG today!