Mobile phones continue to be dominant in digital marketing. Research from AppGeek shows that although more consumers spend 59% of their online time on mobile, marketers only allocate 15% of their budget to mobile and the biggest chunk to desktop.
What’s more, over the years, the bounce rate on mobile has decreased while click-through rates have increased on average by 20%. With relevant content, you should expect to see more conversion from your mobile marketing strategy.
One of the main factors that impede effective marketing on mobile is the everchanging nature of mobile phone platforms.
For a marketer, this means having to constantly adapt your mobile marketing strategies so as not to miss opportunities for reaching and engaging potential customers.
In this article, we will show you 9 time-proven techniques that you can use to generate qualified leads through mobile marketing.
How to generate inbound leads through mobile marketing
1. Create a mobile-friendly website and lead capture forms
Having all the essential requirements in place is important for you to stand a chance at generating qualified leads through mobile.
The most important requirement for a successful mobile marketing strategy is to ensure that you create a mobile-friendly website.
If your website is not optimized for mobile, your users will have a bad experience when they try to access it on their mobile phones.
Make sure your website is easy to navigate and that files are optimized to display properly on a small screen. In addition, make your lead generation forms mobile-friendly to encourage more sign-ups.
Through tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Tester, you can check the mobile-friendliness of your site.
You can also outsource the task to a third-party lead generation company should the task prove too technical or time-consuming.
2. Optimize Email for mobile
Email is key for attracting and nurturing b2b leads. Recent statistics show that more people read their emails on mobile than they do on the desktop.
Additionally, an average of 47% of people access campaign emails first on their phone. (Vision 6 2017 Email metrics Report through Email Monday)
But all these statistics won’t mean anything for your lead generation strategy if your subscribers cannot read your emails.
Just as with your website and lead-gen forms, you should also optimize your emails so that readers can open, read them and respond to your calls-to-action with ease.
3. Use geotargeting for your mobile ads
As your customers spend most of their time on mobile, placing ads where they will see them will allow you to reach more leads.
By embedding native ads in social media feeds, your customers can access them while on social media. This way, you can promote your content, product images or run video ads that redirect viewers to your website.
With geotargeting, you can make these efforts more effective by creating content or ads that target people from a specific area or who meet certain demographic characteristics.
Google My Business is a great way of using geotargeting.
When you register for google my business, all your business information, including business name, location, photos, hours of business, among other details, will display when users perform a relevant search.
You can also include a phone number and a “CALL US” button.
4. Run paid search campaigns
Today, when people get the urge to learn something new, they just use their browser on their smartphones. In the US alone, search traffic stands at 57% as compared to 43% for desktop.
Therefore, as you develop paid search campaigns for desktop, you shouldn’t neglect to do the same for mobile.
Don’t forget to take advantage of local SEO while creating paid search ads to ensure you appear in local searches.
5. Create interactive content
Creating a mix of education and interactive content will increase engagement levels.
Surveys, quizzes or contests will encourage your audience to interact with your brand, especially if there is something to be gained.
You can embed these types of content in your videos or webinars, whereby audience members can opt-in and participate through their mobile devices. When your target audience members opt-in, you generate more leads.
Social media tools like twitter poll allow you to create polls and engage prospective leads in a b2b environment.
6. Capture leads via SMS
If you are running a tradeshow or holding a conference, social media isn’t the only platform you should capitalize on.
With everyone at events connecting through their mobile phones, SMS is yet another way to grab their attention.
With open rates of between 90% to 98%, SMS represents a key and untapped opportunity for generating leads.
Below are some ways you can leverage the power of text messaging to capture leads:
- You can send notifications about upcoming speakers with links to their social media accounts or publications
- Text about special offers or other exciting events planned for the day,
- Send teaser text messages to build anticipation and curiosity for a “big reveal”.
- Send links to connect or subscribe
- Ask your audience to opt into interactive team sessions
Before you run a text messaging campaign, you will need to iron out some technicalities with your mobile service provider. You can work with your b2b lead generation agency to help you with the specifics.
7. Harness the power of video
In 2019, it is projected that marketing spend worth $20 billion will go to video advertising and that 85% of internet traffic will be generated through video ads and live video.
As such, if your target audience frequents video platforms, your lead generation strategy needs to incorporate video. Create different types of videos for each stage of the funnel and for different platforms.
For instance,
- Educative product videos highlighting features will resonate with top-of-the-funnel crowds
- Product demo videos are good for anyone who is ready for a free trial
- Testimonial and review videos are good for anyone who needs extra convincing before they buy
Include a call-to-action in each video, inviting prospects to view your other videos way down the funnel, or, inviting them to buy or speak to a team member.
8. Use virtual assistants
Current mobile marketing trends show that by 2020, users will perform 50% of their searches by voice.
Rather than typing on the browser, people will use Alexa, Google Home, Siri, among other platforms, to query search engines. This will make it easier to perform a search on the go seamlessly.
For marketers, preparing your content to be discovered by virtual assistants will be the next challenge you have to handle in your upcoming b2b lead generation strategies.
Virtual assistants are trained to learn natural speech. This will affect your keyword strategy, by forcing you to adapt to how a person would ask the virtual assistant a question, versus how they would type it.
In addition, optimizing images with titles and description will increase their likelihood of being found by virtual assistants.
9. Use LinkedIn Mobile Features to Target Your B2B Customers
Majority of b2b customers go to LinkedIn to find information about brands, and 57 per cent of them do so through mobile.
Use sponsored Inmail to ensure your message is received by business audiences that matter to you. This way, you can target individuals with personalized lead nurturing messages.
Additionally, ensure you create a page that loads faster and includes lead-capture forms that are short and to the point.
Conclusion
As you can see, generating qualified leads through mobile is not that difficult. In fact, a lot of what you have to deal with is around design and usability issues.
While dealing with a smaller screen has its advantages, it can also lead to frustration if users are inundated with too much information at one go or if they have to scroll endlessly to find what they are looking for.
They may even miss your call-to-action buttons altogether. If you don’t optimize your content to fit into a mobile phone page, your website or social media platform will not be user-friendly.
Small details such as showing the right keypad when filling in different form fields can make a big difference in your conversion rates.
Lastly, after implementing these mobile marketing techniques, use analytics to monitor their performance and iterate as needed.
Abbey Houston is a PR at Unbound B2B. She is a blogger, online marketer and loves to share with you the best stuff in sales and marketing.