Due to the aggressive growth of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets in the last 5 or so years, mobile marketing has become an increasingly profitable and lucrative medium. The best part about this is that mobile marketing shows absolutely no signs of slowing down. Mobile use will only increase significantly in the coming years and has, according to a lot of experts across several industries, become a dependency for a lot of people. What better medium to market to your audience than through a channel that they are actuallydependent on? Of course, integrating mobile marketing into your company’s overall marketing strategy requires thought and a certain amount of knowledge of the industry. So, to help you get started on the integration process, we’ll give you the 5 best practices for mobile marketing that you should be aware of.

Optimize the User Experience

One of the most important, if not THE most important aspect of mobile marketing, is the user experience, or UX. The mobile experience you provide your audience should be able to cater to users with a variety of different interests, skill levels, and habits. To do this, you want to provide something that is simple and easily understood, yet you don’t want to cross the line to where your experience is seen as archaic or outdated. Mobile marketing is entirely dependent on building relationships with your subscribers, so you need to make sure you are meeting and exceeding their expectations. Creating an experience that your end users can engage with anywhere and at anytime is critical to the success of a mobile marketing strategy.

Take Advantage of Features Unique to Mobile

Mobile devices offer unique features that are not available in other web-based marketing. Mobile is unqiue unto itself in that it offers locality, ease of access, and user-specificity. You cannot get these features on any other device, so take advantage of them and leverage them in your favor! Simple things like using larger font sizes, smaller photos, and arranging your text into single columns benefit end users more than you realize, so don’t underestimate their importance.

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

You can go ahead and get super creative and imaginative with your mobile design, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into success. Proven successful mobile marketing campaigns are usually simple and concise. Your end users have extremely short attention spans, so if your mobile campaign isn’t grabbing their attention from the start, you are already fighting an uphill battle. Get the important information out there and make your point quickly before your users get tired of scrolling and leave.

Know Your End Users

The internet has done wonders as far as connecting people from all over the world, but according to industry giants, most mobile searches are coming from local sources. Google reports that 40% of all mobile searches are local while Microsoft reports a 53% local search rate. This shows that mobile users are using their devices to fnd out where things are around them in real-time. So when you’re developing your mobile strategy, keep in mind that a majority of your users are searching locally while on the go. You’ll want to know who’s using which devices, how often are they using them, and where are they searching from. You’ll also want to know their interests along with their habits. Once you’ve compiled all this information, you should know your end users well enough to develop a mobile campaign that targets them.

Always Be There, And Be There in Real-Time

Simply put, live in the moment. Mobile devices operate in real-time, so you should too. The most crucial parts of any mobile marketing campaign is to keep it timely, develop, strengthen, and maintain relationships, drive increased relevant traffic to your site, and ensure that all mobile efforts are being implemented in the most efficient way possible. If you’re not there, or available when end users are looking for you, or they can’t find you, then you have completely defeated the purpose of your entire mobile marketing campaign. Don’t be one of these companies. Be there when your users need you and it will pay off big in the end for you and your company.