MD08: How to Implement a Mobile Marketing Strategy With Greg Hickman

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Google recently announced that how mobile friendly a website is will become an important ranking factor .

I open this show notes with this statement to make a big emphasis on how important it will be for you to have a mobile friendly website. If you already have a website and want to check if Google considers it to be mobile friendly, you can use this tool that I mentioned on this episode.

A mobile responsive website is just one factor inside your overall mobile marketing strategy, we also discuss the importance of text messaging (SMS), mobile apps and other things that you should consider when deciding what approach to take with your mobile promotions efforts.

We have Greg Hickman today on the show to talk all about mobile. Get a cup of coffee, pen and paper and get ready to soak in all of this information because you will want to take action on this.

In this Episode You Will Learn The Following About Mobile Marketing:

1. First Step to Take When Crafting Your Strategy

2. What to Consider When Making Your Website Mobile Responsive

3. Geo-Location Marketing

4. Apps And Push Notifications

5. SMS/Text Messaging Strategies For Building Your List

Resources Mentioned on This Episode:

Ramith Sethi’s Negotiate It App

MobileMarketingEgine.com (Greg’s Company Site)

MobileMixed

ConvertFromAnywhere

How can mobile benefit your business? how would you structure your site to engage more mobile visitors? these are only a few of the questions that you should ask yourself when crafting your strategy. Really think about this, mobile searches grow year after year. Moneydiver receives almost half of it’s visits from mobile devices.

Transcript

What is up Amigos? Welcome to another episode of the Moneydiver podcast. I am your host as always, Borja Obeso and today we’re all about Mobile Marketing.

Now recently, Google announced that mobile responsiveness is going to be a ranking factor which means that if you do not have a mobile website – a site that is responsive and mobile friendly, you could be losing search traffic from a month from now. Today we are on March 24^th and Google announced this a couple of weeks ago that mobile friendliness is going to be a ranking factor.

Now there is a Google tool that you can use to check if your website is mobile friendly. Now the reason that I’m saying this is because very conveniently, I decided to have today’s episode be all about mobile marketing like I just said. For that we have on-board, Greg Hickman, from MobileMixed.com.

The reasons you would want to have a mobile website is not just because of Google, of course, but it’s also because all of the studies about mobile visitors and mobile searches show that mobile visitors – people who come to your site using a mobile device are closest to the sale. This means that people are usually on the run, perhaps they’re looking for a restaurant, perhaps they’re looking on the mobile device to buy something on the spot right there right now.

If you’re using the Cerebro Framework by smartduu.com, you could display a completely different version of your website. I’m not talking about rearranging the design or having a mobile-friendly design, no, I’m talking about completely different content to your mobile visitors and completely different content to your desktop visitor.

For example, if you have a blog like I do you can display a different call to action. What I do is for mobile visitors I could display, “Hey I see you’re on a mobile device, you might want to download these top five applications that will help you with your business,” and of course only people using mobile device will see that offer and that call to action.

Because people using a desktop might not care about five applications because they might not even have a smartphone which I would find pretty strange of course nowadays but it could be the case. Or perhaps depending on your business you might have a number of reasons why you would prefer to display a different content to your mobile visitors than that that you display to your other type of visitors.

If you’re a restaurant, perhaps you have an application that you might want to display on the front page or if you’re a shop you might have some coupons or some mobile I don’t know related offers whatever it might be it could become very helpful, helpful for you. I’m talking about smartduu’s Cerebro.

We are running another contest this week and if you want to participate to win a lifetime premium membership head on over to mobilemixed.com/mobile-rocks. That is Greg’s website and he’s been kind enough to host the contest going on for us right there. Head on over there and you’ll be able to read the content guidelines on how to participate.

Now let’s jump right into the interview with Greg because I really want you to write down all the different things that you can do with a mobile marketing strategy and this is not just having a mobile responsive website, this is more than that.

This is including text messaging in your marketing strategies or including mobile applications perhaps you might want to create a mobile application – it all depends. You are going to want to hear to what Greg says about all of these. Let’s jump right in.

Borja:  Hello everyone. I got Greg Hickman with me today. What’s up Greg? Thanks for coming to show I really appreciate that man.

Greg Hickman:          Thanks for having me I appreciate it.

Borja:  No problem. Greg, basically can you give us an overview of your business, what you do and the impact that results that mobile marketing has had in your business?

Greg:   Essentially my company is a mobile marketing agency and training company. We offer done for you mobile marketing services for retail businesses and then we offer online education for people that are trying to build their own mobile marketing business and specifically leverage text message marketing to build their email list so very much around educating people on the benefits of mobile.

I mean just the experience alone in that areas because my business is focused on mobile, obviously, that’s helped me grow my business. It’s a service that I can offer to other people that are looking to sort of capitalize on the opportunity that is available to them by marketing to their customers on their mobile phones and being kind of in a mobile-friendly position.

Borja:  What’s the impact that mobile has had in your business? What are the results that you’ve seen before mobile?

Greg:   It depends on the business that we look at. In my business I mean just a lot of like half of my traffic comes from a mobile device.

Borja:  It’s a lot.

Greg:   Having a mobile-friendly website that allows people to not only engage, to interact, subscribe to newsletters that I offer as well as pay for products is really, really important.

But for my client’s business it’s even more important because a lot of my clients have brick and mortar locations. A lot of people that are looking for local businesses are looking from their phone so helping them be more findable, so to speak, is like a lot of impact for them because they’ve seen increased appointments – if they’re like a service space business we work with like some massage franchises.

So they’re seeing increased appointments because people are booking from their phone when they need to communicate an offer and drive foot traffic – they can send out text messages to their loyalty database and drive people into the store.

They’ve watched their average order value increase and they’re able to drive customers to their store say the customer would only come two times a year because of the program – now they’re coming four to six times a year, so that’s all new revenue that’s being generated. We’ve seen anywhere from 25K in new sales per year for a one person’s salon to double that so kind of ranges.

Borja:  Okay, for a business owner that would want to implement a mobile marketing strategy what is the very first step that you would advise?

Greg:   At this point I would say make sure your website is mobile-friendly. I would have said this last year too but now more than ever it’s really important because Google just made an announcement that as of April 21^st of 2015, if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website they’re actually going to lower you in their search rankings other than will automatically essentially demote you in their search results.

If your competitor has a mobile-friendly cyber now and you don’t, when people search for you from mobile the odds are you’ve been lower than your competitor are extremely high especially after August or April 21^st. Basically it’s going to be a penalty from Google’s view, if not or because it’s going to give your customers a better experience too because you don’t want Google to be penalizing you.

Borja:  Definitely that’s very, very interesting especially for those mobile website providers and WordPress, responsive WordPress theme providers and whatnot that’s going to be really good.

Greg:   For sure.

Borja:  I could speak out of experience. You decide you want to have a mobile website, a responsive website. What do you do next? What are the things that you should consider when organizing your website or planning for mobile responsiveness, so to speak?

Greg:   I think it’s going to be very based on what you want your visitors to do when you get there. But essentially if you’re using a responsive theme or whatnot, you want your customers to be able to navigate your site and get to the things that you’d want them to get to.

The best way to do that is making sure that your navigational elements are thumb-friendly, which are essentially at least 44 pixels by 44 pixels – that’s like an Apple design standard. That just basically says, “Understand that your customers are using different tools now to navigate the site.”

It’s on a mouse pointer that’s like super intricate, it’s a thumb or a pointer finger which hence coming all of different shapes and sizes so make sure that the buttons are nice and big and tappable.

Then on top of that of like a content perspective like if you have a blog or articles where people are reading and engaging with your content, you want to make sure that it’s scannable. So leveraging headline, sub-headlines, lists, bullets, numbers will really makes your content more scannable or “snackable” as some will say because you’re now able to kind of scroll through the site and kind of get the gist of what that content is about because you’ve leverage the subheads and bullets and pull out key information and it’s much easier to consume.

Really it’s understand who is navigating the site, what that looks like from a phone and making sure that the content’s readable, the navigation is designed in a way that I can find my way around if I’m first coming to your site through a blog post and I really like it I might want to know more about you.

If there’s no way for me to access the “About” page because your site’s not mobile-friendly or I have to pinch and zoom to find your navigation the odds of me leaving your site are going to be extremely high and Google has shown us that.

It’s like 50% of mobile users will abandon a site if it’s not mobile friendly the first time around. It’s pretty high odds that you might never see that person again so you want to make sure it’s a good experience.

Borja:  That’s true. You said you have to understand your customer and who’s visiting – not your customer but your visitor like who he is. Would you recommend seeing where they’re coming from or how do you recognize who your visitor is and what you should do about that?

Greg:   Well one like a journey analytics, I also do with what type of business you are. The type of business – if you’re like a local, people coming to your site from a phone are going to have different goals in mind than let’s say someone coming to a blog from the phone, right?

A blog is a much more discovery-based kind of type of business versus a restaurant like if someone’s searching for a restaurant the odds are they’re really looking for only one of a few things: the hours, the location, get directions and the ability to make a reservation maybe that’s through calling or through some sort of online booking system and that’s pretty much it.

If I do a Google search on my phone for a pizza the odds are that I’m hungry and the odds are that I’m going to get pizza, right? It’s not like I’m Googling pizza and then the odds of me going and getting Vietnamese food like the intent is way different when you’re searching locally. It’s more action-oriented and Google has some really interesting statistics.

Let’s say that 80% of mobile local searches end up in an action within one hour. That means if someone searches for something locally within one hour they’re typically buying something, making an appointment calling you or visiting your physical location – that’s intent.

Like when I visit a blog from my phone usually trying to consume piece of information or I’m already on their newsletter and I was clicking through an email to read like a blog post where it’s more like I’m just going to kind of browse and discover versus, “I’m clicking on this because I’m going to take action within the next few minutes.”

Borja:  Right. Now that you have a responsive website – you know who your customer is, you know what you should be displaying to your customer based on what they want to see – what would you do about their location? Would you take that into consideration like their geolocation or something?

Greg:   It depends like from a mobile web perspective throwing out that notification says, “Can we use your location on a mobile web experience?” Typically just distracts people from trying to do what they’re trying to do.

In an app environment I think that makes more sense and maybe like in “Get a sign-up for push notifications,” that are triggered to location that might be something that would be valuable. But on a mobile website like if you have a physical location maybe directing people to that physical location then that would be the main thing.

Borja:  Okay, what about apps? Would you include that in your whole mobile marketing strategy? Would you consider creating an app?

Greg:   It depends on your business. If you’re considering apps think about apps as something for your loyalist.

If like you’re a restaurant or something like that or a local business, the odds are the people downloading your app is probably going to be pretty low and it’s probably not going to generate the type of return that you’d like to have by having an app. For local businesses unless you’re like multiple locations and certain size customer-based, I don’t really think it’s worth the investment to have an app.

Now if you’re a personal brand or like a celebrity of some sort like that might be something where you could do a cool experience. But at the end of the day 90% of apps are downloaded, used once and never used again.

Your app needs to provide utility or entertainment or some reason for me as a user to want to keep that app on my phone. A lot of businesses aren’t capable of doing that, one – because of their resources; two – because of their type of business.

But the mobile web can do a lot and more people are going to find you, find your mobile website then they will find your app that I think again if you’re a local business you probably nine times out of ten don’t need an app and you should focus on mobile web.

But if you’re a personal brand it depends on how you use the app, if it just repurposing your mobile website then it’s pointless. If you can create some sort of more engaging experience for your most loyal customers then it’s something that I would definitely recommend doing.

Borja:  Maybe a sort of tool that will help.

Greg:   I can give you a great example actually and kind of online marketing space is like a person named Ramit Sethi. Are you familiar with him?

Borja:  I am.

Greg:   He’s kind of a known for some really high-end expensive products – $2,000 training programs and things like that. He always talks about these like proven scripts that you can use to lower your credit card bill or lower your cable bill or whatever and he created an app called “Negotiate It.”

The free version gives you his top four scripts or something like that to lower your credit card bill and do a couple of things. The paid version which I think is like $495 is like a hundred different scripts like your cable bill, your credit card statement, like all of these different things that you could call and you can follow a word-for-word script that will help you lower some sort of rate, right?

Now if you think about why he might be doing that, one – he doesn’t really offer very low cost product outside of this $495 app as like $4.95.

If people follow these scripts even for $4 or on the free version and they worked – which they do, they’re going to be able to save money. If they can save money, they’re going to feel like his stuff works and then they’re going to say to themselves, “Well if this script can save me 20% a month like I can’t imagine what value I’m going to get if I spend $2,000 with him.”

It sort of like a lead magnet in some way, shape or form and it’s also helping his customers get proven results so that they’re even more willing to spend money.

Now that app is very focused on a few different things. I mean it’s not like you can read his blog post on that app or anything like that – it’s very much a utility. Those are the types of apps that I think end up becoming successful when it’s like solving a specific problem.

Borja:  Right and what a person like about apps is the ability to send push notifications. I don’t know I have the feeling that there’s nothing faster I mean I have the phone in my pocket and it vibrates I pick it up and before I even enter my code link, my security pin I see a push notification. That’s even faster than email I would say. What are your thoughts about push notifications?

Greg:   I think they can be abused.

Borja:  They can be abused.

Greg:   Coming back to the point I made of how many apps are actually downloaded and deleted, I think a lot of people think that by having push notifications they would just rely on push notifications to keep their app users engaged but that’s not really the case. If anything if you’re using push notification just to keep them engaged, more likely than not you’re pissing them off.

Push notifications have to be again offering value especially for how much they’re going to interrupt the person versus hopefully this me sending on this message will make sure that they’re still using the app, right? Which I think is too many people do and you needed to be cautious with how you use push notifications because they could ruin the experience.

Borja:  People also have they have the option to shut that off. Whenever you download an app you have the option to either allow permission to send push notifications or not but still a lot of people just click through and they didn’t really realize that you just allow you to send a push notifications so that’s why it can be easily abused for sure.

What about text messaging and SMS? What do you think about that?

Greg:   I love that. I’m a huge fan of SMS. It’s really, really powerful when used correctly and especially for kind of physical businesses have like a physical location.

It’s one of the most effective things they can be doing from a marketing perspective in building that list and using that list to drive foot traffic, indoor web traffic and kind of leverage the time sensitivity.

Borja:  You mean a list of mobile numbers?

Greg:   Yup, people that opted in to receive text messages.

Borja:  Okay and how do you go about that?

Greg:   There’s a handful of different SMS marketing tools. My company, Mobile Marketing Engine, actually focuses on doing this for companies and you have to have certain programs in place to acquire the numbers and certain types of programs work better than others to acquire numbers. Technologically I mean like the strategy behind the program and the messaging and call to action and all of that stuff.

You need to build a mobile database by promoting this new mobile program and then leverage that database to help you reach your business goals. Everyone’s business is going to have different goals but it’s great for driving and increase frequency, driving last minute kind of purchases – regular purchases, keeping customers up-to-date on certain events and new products and new services things like that.

With text messaging the power is in the fact that over 90% of text messages are read within three minutes. There’s really nothing that’s more immediate than that and they have like a 98% open rate. Against your email which is maybe 20 to 25% depending on what industry you’re in, maybe a little bit higher.

It offers this a whole different type of way of communicating with your customer that is the most kind of immediate as possible so leverage that in a smart way and you could definitely see a lot of results.

Borja:  How do you start creating list of these sort?

Greg:   You need to promote the program so you have a call to action.

Borja:  Like in your website?

Greg:   On your website, on the signage if you have a physical store, on your podcast if you have a podcast, in your email campaigns, on your social media.

Essentially you would have some sort of call to action where you’re saying, “Text to join to one, two, three, four, five,” and that call to action should be everywhere and you’re promoting it everywhere across all of the marketing channels you have to build a list of numbers.

Borja:  For example if I were to do that here right now in my podcast I could use mobile marketing engine, right? Ask for people to sign up like, “Alright text to 1800- BORJAROCKS,” and they’d be automatically added to the list, right?

Greg:   Into your mobile list?

Borja:  I mean you could have them replied back with their email address and capture email. There’s lot of things to do – you can have text to win campaigns they kind of create excitement.

Greg:   I have a program called “Convert From Anywhere” that teaches people specifically podcasters how to build their email list using text messaging.

Borja:  Sorry I don’t want people to miss on that, how’s that called?

Greg:   It’s called “Convert From Anywhere.”

Borja:  What’s the URL?

Greg:   convertfromanywhere.com. It’s a training program that will show you how you can build your email list from your podcast or from stage of your speaker using text messaging.

Borja:  That’s interesting. Do you offer like opt-in prize or sort of gifts or something like that?

Greg:   You can. Again, incentive will help increase or kind of spike the sign-up rate. If someone’s going to let you text them on their phone you usually want to give something a value.

Borja:  Coupon or something.

Greg:   Yeah coupon code, you can give away something. There are companies that like for example Ace Hardware, you text in to join their program and they give you $20 off your next purchase.

I would gather that most of the time they are losing money on that maybe a little bit. But they know that over the course of a year, each mobile subscribers worth like an additional $400 in sales. If they cost them $20 to get them in to make 400 like they’ll repeat that over and over and over again.

They want to make sure that it’s a no-brainer to be opted in to this mobile list and by offering like really kind of high-value offers will get those people on so that always works.

Borja:  Okay. With every marketing strategy of course the audience come first, the visitors come first, your client comes first right? That’s what leads me to million dollar question, as a business owner of Mobile Marketing Engine who is your avatar and what do you do to serve this avatar, this person?

Greg:   Who is Mobile Marketing Engine’s avatar?

Borja:  Or your main business.

Greg:   Mobile Marketing Engine is my main business. Our avatar is an independent retailer that has a small marketing team anywhere from two to maybe five people and they do at least $2,000,000 a year in revenue. They’re obviously they’re currently not using mobile which is why they’re working with us.

They have a mobile-friendly website already. Right now we really focus on the messaging side of thing so it works best when they have a mobile-friendly site. That’s pretty specific right?

Borja:  The reason I do this is so people understand that everyone that comes on my show and speaks about a specific online marketing strategy has an avatar and they know who they’re targeting because they tried to repeat over and over how important like what your audience is, the person behind, the computer or behind whatever.

Where can people go to find out more about you? You also have a podcast, right?

Greg:   I’m kind of in the middle of merging two brands. The best place to find me is mobilemarketingengine.com. I have a podcast called “Mobile Mixed” that’s M-I-X-E-D it’s in iTunes. We have about 150 episodes. That’s about to get rebranded so if you want the latest and greatest just sign up for the newsletter at mobilemarketingengine.com and you’ll hear about all that stuff.

Borja:  Sweet man. I think people now has a general understanding of what they have to do when implementing their mobile marketing strategy and they can find out more about you at these places. Thanks a lot man.

Greg:   Thank you I appreciate it.

Borja:  It’s all valued. I hope to talk to you again in the future.

Greg:   Let me know man, happy to do it.

Borja:  Sure, thanks man.

Borja:  Okay guys, I hope you enjoy that interview with Greg as much as I did.

Again let me know what you thought about in the interview. I would really like to hear from you but head on over to rebelgrowth.com/Episode8 to read all the show notes. Feel free to subscribe in iTunes.

Thank you for the comments and reviews that all of you have been leaving. We have been climbing up the rankings tonight so thanks to all of you guys.

Don’t sleep on Mobile Marketing. Like I said, Google is considering mobile friendliness as a ranking factor. Go out, implement, report and keep on diving.

What did you think about this episode? be a lad and share. It would mean the world to us.