Mobile-friendly marketing should be a key element of your business strategy. Now, more than ever. Not only has it become standard practise as part of a good user experience but it may soon be making a bigger impact on your SEO and search ranking. Here are 5 reasons why you should be focusing on mobile-friendly marketing:
1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) & Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Optimising for mobile can have a significant impact on where you
rank on search engines. This is the case for both organic results as well as paid ads performance. Google has indicated that next year it will be making some changes. These changes could have a
significant impact on your marketing strategy.
SEO
Google does currently emphasise the importance of
page speed. When selecting which sites will appear on an organic search result it’s certainly taken into consideration. However, there are strong suggestions that as of spring next year (2021) page speed is going to have an even bigger effect. According to marketing expert
Neil Patel, Google will be putting a bigger emphasis on
page speed and LCP (page performance) as they have identified that these are major factors behind website bounce rates.
This means that if your site is slow to load, it could be penalised.
SEM
When you advertise with Google a number of factors affect
how likely your advert is to be shown. One of the key pillars is
website quality. The quality of your website could be the difference between your ad being shown over your competitors. When we refer to a ‘quality’ website this includes how well the site has been optimised for mobiles, especially when the user is searching from a mobile device.
You could optimise your website for a mobile device by
designing a website specifically for mobile. Features such as shorter menu’s, removing awkward pop-ups or high-res large images that take an age to load all impact your site mobile-friendliness.
So, if optimising your site for mobile or you don’t already have a separate version for mobile, the time to act is now.
2. User experience (UX)
The most obvious reason you need to optimise and focus on mobile-friendly marketing is to make sure you
give the user a good experience.
Would you complete a purchase after clicking on a really smooth and professional targeted advert only to find you have to complete your purchase on a clunky and difficult to use the site? Probably not.
Designing a website specifically with a mobile-friendly UX is the only way you can ensure you give your customers the optimum experience.
Simple elements such as swapping long dropdown menus for more simple sidebars and removing any pop-ups can have a huge impact on usability.
3. Branding and brand positioning
You may be tempted to keep your large, high-quality images and minimise your desktop website design for mobile users. After all, it means that your website remains consistent in terms of design and remains on brand. In actual fact, this neglect can
result in your brand being misrepresented. Clunky websites that take a while to load and are difficult to navigate don’t really ooze luxury, do they?
If your customer has a
bad user experience, this could really be detrimental to your brand perception. Trying to convey an essence of luxury or professionalism, can easily be lost by not having a site that represents this. Take the time to come up with a separate website design that represents your brand in a mobile-friendly way.
4. Beat the competition
Digital marketing is now a given for most businesses and some markets are appearing saturated. Never has it been easier to start a business and start reaching new audiences by using digital marketing such as social media advertising. Mobile-friendly marketing is absolutely key to marketing on social media. Most social media users are active on a mobile device. In fact,
98% of users on Facebook are using mobile.
Have you designed your ad to have the desired effect to
stop your audience from scrolling past? This should be in mind when creating a good advertising design. If you want to beat the competition, you need to have the edge.
5. Improve your conversion rate
Digital marketing is a broad term and could include anything from display advertising to using social media, driving downloads from a website page or
email marketing. But from the moment someone discovers you online through to them making that conversion, they go on a journey. If that journey is completely on mobile, then the journey needs to be optimised for mobile all the way along.
New users may be likely to click an ad if they have been intrigued by your branding and your fun personality on social media. Once they reach your website, the
level of usability needs to be maintained
. Otherwise, this could be a trigger warning for them to bounce.
If you’ve been working on an ad campaign that seems to be getting a lot of clicks and not a lot of conversions, it’s worth taking a
look at what kind of device your audience was using. Look for reasons why they may have veered off the journey. Could it be your lack of mobile-friendly marketing?
Written by Jen Blair
