Let me ask you a question…
As a business owner, do you want to build a business while adding value to your customers?
If you answered yes, you need to consider, not only the different ways people choose to learn but the best ways to reach your largest possible audience.
Well, you may have noticed, your audience is very connected to their mobile phone as we’ve discussed in the first 3 parts of this series.
More and more we consume our favorite blogs, podcasts and news sources from our mobile device…it’s become the easiest or most convenient way for us to consume content.
If you’d like to set your business up for success, you’ll want to understand the best way to connect with your audience on their mobile phone.
Before we get to the 3 foundational elements of your mobile success I want you to understand that mobility is a mindset.
As you grow your business and create content, whether that’s editorial, video or audio…the simple consideration of those reading from a mobile device will dramatically improve how you create content and how they respond to it.
For some reason, this idea of mobile marketing scares a lot of people…
- “It sounds expensive”
- “I don’t really understand mobile”
- “Isn’t it just one more thing I need to think about?”
I’ll tell you…I’ve heard it all and I’m not sure why mobile is any different than the other things you have to consider as you grow your purposed based business BUT there are some key foundations you should have in place before anything else.
Actually, there are 3…
Here are your first 3 mobile to-do items to set the foundation:
Create a mobile-friendly website.
As you might know your website is your home base. Everything you do should be driving your audience back to your site. Whether it’s your podcast, YouTube videos, Pinterest…you name it…your website is your home.
With most of your audience connecting with you from their mobile device, whether it’s via email, search, YouTube, Facebook or any other social network, you won’t survive long if they can’t do so easily from their phone.
If your situation permits, I highly suggest you leverage a responsive wordperss theme. This means that your site will respond to whichever device it’s on to give the viewer the most optimized experience.
Since most of us are on a budget I recommend you leverage a responsive wordpress theme that already exists. This means you’ll give your audience the best possible experience in the least amount of time.
If you just finished your site and it’s not mobile-friendly you have a few options.
- Use a free mobile wordpress plugin such as WP Touch to mobilize your blog. Note: This really only makes your blog mobile friendly BUT it’s free and a start so if you have to go this route.
- Create a separate mobile site focused on how your audience might connect from a mobile phone. There are services such as Duda Mobile or Bluetrain Mobile that can help you build a separate mobile site.
- Find a developer that can make your current site responsive. There are plenty of services out there that can do this for a reasonable price.
You can also try bartering one of your own services or products with a designer.
As you go out promoting your business, connecting with new and potential customers all over the internet, you’ll find more and more people are connecting with you on their mobile phone.
Having a mobile friendly site is the core of your mobile success so if you only do one thing…start there.
Your goal here is to allow your audience to access and navigate through all of your amazing content from a mobile device.
Send mobile-friendly email
With about 51% of emails being opened from a phone you can’t take email lightly.
You already know this because odds are…you’re just like me and delete a ton of emails from your phone, first thing in the morning…most likely before you’ve ever got out of bed.
As online business builders it’s often a goal to grow our email list.
Well, if you have an email list of 10,000 people and at least 4,000 of them are opening your email from their phone do you think you think your odds of conversion go up or down?
If you haven’t done anything to make your email mobile-friendly, I bet it’s going down.
Why not focus on enabling those 4,000 to open your email and engage before worrying about another 10,000.
With the number of email opens from mobile rising, the size of your list will be less and less important.
The number of subscribers reading on mobile will be more valuable number.
I recently shared a podcast discussing 9 tips for making your email mobile-friendly, which you can listen to here.
If you’d like to learn those tips visit http://www.mobilemixed.com/51.
You’re most likely using Aweber, Mailchimp, Constant Contact or Campaign Monitor and many of these tools offer some sort of mobile optimized solution so explore your options there.
My podcast shares a few tricks that work no matter what email service provider you have.
With “the money being in the list”, you should focus your efforts on mobilizing your email as best you can to capitalize on the audience you already have.
Send traffic to mobile-optimized landing pages
At some point in your purpose based business you’d like to make money right?
If so, a key component to your success is going to be landing pages.
These are pages that aim to make your reader take action.
That action could be signing up for an email list or buying a product.
Either way you need to do your best to convince the reader to take the action you want…
Well, if they are coming from their phone, you have less of their attention and less time. Mobile could be a reason to stay away from long form sales pages but that’s something you’ll have to experiment, as some sales pages are far better than others.
The key thing to remember is that your email, your social engagement, your videos and even your podcast often drive your audience to landing pages in order to create a conversion.
With a mobile-minded audience like we are today it’s more likely they’ll be accessing your landing page from a mobile device. Your analytic will tell a clearer story but I think you see where I’m going.
Much of our business relies on landing pages to get a reader to buy a product or service we offer. Knowing that the reader is most likely using one eye and one thumb to scroll through your offering, you’ll want to deliver that call-to-action as early and clearly as possible.
Most of us have plans to grow our business. Converting these mobile moments of truth is integral for us to do so.
Image with thanks to http://ibytedigital.com/mobile-marketing-getting-started/
Latest posts by Greg Hickman (see all)
- 8 Surefire Tips To Help You Plan Your Mobile Strategy - March 19, 2014
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- How To Create A Mobile Strategy that works - March 6, 2014