A Good Mobile Marketing Plan Can Have a Huge Impact on Sales This Holiday Season

Mobile marketing, which drives mobile commerce, comes into its own during the holiday season. The number of app installs and sales sees a massive spike during the months of November and December. With mobiles and tablets to use for making purchases, people no longer need to stand in line all night long and make a mad rush for the deals as soon as stores open for Black Friday and Christmas shopping. In fact:

• Statistics from past years have shown that foot traffic in bricks and mortar stores have declined while the number of people shopping online has increased.
• Americans now spend more time with their mobiles than they do in front of the television. Further, the bulk of the time is spent with mobile apps as against mobile websites.
• This is interesting, useful information that provides marketers with actionable insight on how to make the best of mobile marketing for the holiday season.

Here are steps that you can take to encourage existing users and attract new users to peruse their mobiles to purchase from your online store.

1. Gather data on customer behavior via the app. You can conduct polls and surveys. Encourage participation in such endeavors by offering discounts on purchases or upgrades in existing loyalty programs. Don’t have an app? Use Google Analytics and Webmaster tools to find out where your customers are coming from, how they’re getting there and why they’re coming.
2. Get an app for your store. There are a number of businesses that produce inexpensive app for local businesses. You can find a good article about them in the Quickbooks Resource Center.
3. With data in hand, you can send personalized SMS messages and newsletters to offer targeted deals. Use SMS to inform users about the arrival of their ordered or desired products in a retail store close to their location. This can produce foot traffic that can lead to in-store purchases.
4. Use product review videos to inform mobile users visiting your online store. Add emotional appeal to these videos and a call to action embedded in the review.
5. Create mobile gift guides that offers your audience fresh ideas about the stuff they can purchase for friends and family. Such downloads can be linked to app installation. Your visitors won’t mind downloading the app because of the value such guides would provide.
6. Simplify the process of shopping directly via the app. Make the app as user friendly as possible.
7. Reach out to your customers any time they are in the proximity of a store. This is proximity marketing and can drive mobile customers to retail outlets nearest to them. Dynamic content can be geo-targeted to people who visit your website via apps or mobile browsers. NFC, Bluetooth, and WiFi hotspots are opportunities that businesses can use to push marketing content.
8. Encourage shopping during the holiday season by offering discounts and the first shot at purchasing the merchandise. If you want to, you can link these attractions to purchases made solely via the app or mobile device.

Use your CRM to manage marketing messages that you send to your mobile-using targets. The key is to make the messages as personalized as possible.