How to Get the Most From Mobile Content Marketing
The Glorious Company Team
Your prospects and customers are using mobile more so than desktop. According to the latest research from Statcounter, 50.48% of traffic comes from mobile while 46.51% of traffic comes from desktop. Any successful marketing strategy today will prioritize marketing on mobile devices. To get the most from mobile content marketing, appeal to your target audience by creating content tailored to readability on smaller mobile devices, build relationships with your audience, apply mobile SEO, and distribute your content on social platforms and email. Then, monitor your mobile content’s performance and adjust accordingly.
Promoting your brand on mobile screens can add a substantial amount to your business’ bottom line, if you have a sound content strategy in place. Let’s take a look at what this looks like and how you can implement this in your company.
Understand Mobile Content Marketing
Numerous factors influence marketing on mobile devices. This has to do with the fact that you’re selling to your customers on smaller screen sizes, which involves user behaviors that are different from people engaging with your content on desktop.
Keep these considerations in mind when creating a content strategy for your mobile campaigns.
Factor 1: Length and Formatting of Written and Visual Mobile Content
According to a study by Microsoft, the attention span of a mobile user is only 8 seconds. This means mobile marketers have only about 8 seconds to capture the attention of their lead, engage with them, and nurture them down the sales funnel. This is a challenging task.
That’s why mobile content has to be succinct, whether on a mobile website or a dedicated mobile app:
Use shorter sentence and paragraphs in content
Use clear headings and subheadings
Incorporate an active and conversational tone of voice
Add vivid visuals that grab attention
Factor 2: Design of Websites and Apps
Websites and apps must be designed around responsive web design to properly accommodate mobile content marketing. This means that the layout and content must adapt to different screen sizes and orientations to ensure a seamless user experience across various devices. Responsive web design involves using flexible grids and layouts, as well as media queries, to adjust the design based on the device being used.
Research published in Education and Information Technologies, the official journal of the International Federation for Information Processing, concluded that there was a positive correlation between responsive design and usability.
When designing for mobile content, it's important to prioritize essential information and functionality, as mobile screens have limited space compared to desktops. Elements such as navigation menus, forms, and buttons may need to be restructured to fit on smaller screens without compromising usability.
The performance of websites and apps on mobile devices should be optimized to ensure fast loading times and smooth interactions. This involves minimizing file sizes, leveraging browser caching, and utilizing responsive images and videos.
Factor 3: Using Imagery and Video
Just as on desktop, mobile content benefits from the use of images, including infographics, and video. Visuals are vital to breaking up written content, which takes on added importance on smaller mobile screens, where it’s more tedious to consume information in the first place. This creates a superior reading experience and thus user experience for your target audience.
As for using video, ensure video is compressed as much as possible so it doesn’t tax the mobile website. Page load times need to be fast on mobile, where the attention span of users is only 8 seconds (see above stat).
Factor 4: Apply Mobile SEO
Mobile SEO is crucial for websites. They need to be optimized for mobile screens to ensure that they rank well in mobile search results and provide a positive user experience. Furthermore, according to Semrush, Google uses mobile-first indexing for each website on the internet. The more your mobile site is well-optimized for search, the higher it’ll rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs)—and the more your customers can easily find you through organic search.
Mobile SEO entails optimizing a website's content, design, and structure to ensure that it’s easily accessible and usable on mobile devices. This includes having a responsive design that adapts to different screen sizes, optimizing loading times, and ensuring that content is easily readable and navigable on smaller screens. Additionally, mobile SEO involves optimizing for local search, as many mobile searches are location-based.
Mobile SEO differs from regular SEO in that it focuses on the specific challenges and opportunities presented by mobile devices. This includes factors such as page speed, user experience, and the importance of local search. Website owners cannot afford to ignore the specific needs of mobile users.
How to Plan and Execute a Solid Mobile Content Marketing Strategy
Here’s your step-by-step walkthrough of how to design a strong mobile content marketing plan, along with how to put it into action.
Step 1: Research and Understand Your Target Audience
Your target audience is the people whom you sell your products or services to. You need to understand what makes them tick, what prompts them to buy, and, above all else, what their pain points are in their buyer’s journey. You can determine this through feedback from your existing customers, via surveys and focus groups, as well as the interactions of site visitors on your website.
Once you know who buys from you, you can begin to create and distribute content for and to them, so you can build long-term relationships with them.
Step 2: Ideate Content
Now that you know who your target audience is and the restrictions of mobile devices, it's time to brainstorm content that resonates with them. Think about their interests, pain points, and the type of content they engage with the most on mobile.
For example, if your target audience is young tech professionals, you might want to create content that addresses how to succeed at enterprise content marketing. Since they are likely to consume content on-the-go, consider creating short and impactful videos, infographics, or quick blog posts that can be easily consumed on mobile devices.
Now, you can go ahead and draft your material.
Step 3: Write Content That Builds Relationships With Your Customers
Write the kind of content that your target audience will engage with, the kind they will share on social media, bookmark, and send to their contacts via email. It should be content that answers their questions and addresses their pain points, featuring soft sells around your brand’s products or services as the solution.
To wit, a recent McKinsey & Company study revealed that 71% of customers expect personalization in their interactions with brands.
You want the content you write to be content that they will refer back to, which nurtures them down your sales funnel. This is mobile content marketing done right.
Step 4: Apply Mobile SEO
Mobile SEO puts a focus on optimizing content and website discoverability specifically for mobile websites. The usual SEO mainstays apply, such as optimizing for keywords, identifying user intent, and ensuring proper meta descriptions, but considerations about the smaller screen real estate apply, too.
Mobile content marketing means that your site visitors have smaller spaces in which to consume your content. Your site visitors aren’t going to tolerate any friction in their content user experience. That’s why your mobile content has to be:
Written in shorter sentences and paragraphs
Shorter in length than typical blog posts
Replete with headings and subheadings so readers can quickly identify the important sections
Broken up with images and videos (provided they’re compressed and load quickly)
Easily accessible via the swipe of a thumb
Written in a font that’s easy to read on small devices
Relatively free of popup ads that disrupt UX
Full of easy-to-see CTAs
Better put a priority on mobile SEO for your mobile content marketing campaigns. Research and Market’s 2022 Global SEO Market Report predicts a rise in mobile searches, which in turn offers a tremendous amount of market growth potential.
Step 5: Add Data and Statistics to Add Authority to Your Mobile Content
Mobile content is only as good as the sources you use to back up your assertions and explanations. If you want to become a thought leader in your niche, then you’ll have to include data and statistics in your blog posts, infographics, ebooks, and any other content marketing materials you’re authoring and distributing.
Anyone can claim anything online. When you have data to validate what you write—whether from your own research or a third-party’s—then you instantly separate yourself from your competitors and most of the brands online who don’t bother with this.
Another bonus of data and statistics in your content is that they’re memorable and enhance sharing opportunities among your readers.
Step 6: Add Images and Video for Engagement
Your readers and site visitors have a short attention span of about 8 seconds on mobile. Your response has to be to keep their attention. How?
Intersperse your mobile content marketing with rich, vivid imagery in the form of pictures, video, and even infographics to hook them in and keep them interested. Studies show that images increase engagement across various platforms.
For instance, experience-optimization platform VMO looked at several studies of using human photos on websites and concluded that using these images increased engagement rates. Similarly, research that studied image content with social media engagement, published in the Journal of Marketing Research, determined that high-quality images constantly produce higher engagement.
Step 7: Write for Readability and Legibility on Smaller Screens
According to global research leader Omdia, the average smartphone screen size is about 6.3 inches. Translation: This is not very big. Therefore, your content has to be easy to see. The best way to make it easy for your target audience to read and understand your content is to focus on the right readability and legibility for mobile screen sizes.
To achieve that, be selective in the typeface you use. According to Learn UI Design, body fonts ought to be 16px on mobile, with 13px or 14px being ideal for secondary copy like captions.
Step 8: Distribute Your Mobile Content on Social Media and Email
Ensuring that people find your mobile content is crucial for its success. By distributing your content through social media and email, you can effectively reach a wider audience and drive engagement.
Social media platforms have billions of active users, providing a vast potential audience for your mobile content. Sharing your content on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and X or Twitter can help you reach new and existing followers, increasing visibility and engagement. Additionally, social media allows for easy sharing and interaction, enabling your content to be quickly and easily distributed to a wider audience.
Email is another effective distribution channel for mobile content. With email, you can directly reach out to your subscribers and target audience with personalized and tailored content. By utilizing email marketing, you can connect with your audience, drive traffic to your mobile content, and encourage engagement and action.
Step 9: Focus on Local Search and Voice Search
The majority of local searches are conducted via mobile devices. According to data from Review Trackers, some 57% of local searches are performed with either a mobile phone or tablet. As a result, for mobile content marketing to be effective, you have to also concentrate on attracting local searches.
You can accomplish this by writing content, such as blog posts and infographics, about local attractions, restaurants, and places in your specific region of the country (ie, Miami or Dallas). These will show up in local searches for those places. Make sure to use location-specific keywords in your content.
Voice search is also increasingly important for mobile content. Based on data from Think With Google, 27% of users across the world are using voice search on their mobile phones. To tailor your mobile content marketing to voice search, use longer keyword phrases and natural language phrasing in your content, which more closely mimic the way people ask questions and look for information when they speak. This is in contrast to shorter keyword phrases that you may use for desktop content.
Step 10: Monitor Your Performance
To ensure the success of your mobile content, it’s crucial to regularly monitor its performance. Keep track of key metrics such as engagement, conversion rates, and overall user satisfaction. By analyzing these results, you can identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments to optimize your content.
Regular monitoring allows you to stay informed about how your mobile content is resonating with your audience. It also helps you understand which strategies are effective and which ones need to be revised. For instance, if you notice a decrease in user engagement, you can experiment with different types of content or calls-to-action to see what resonates best with your audience.
These actions you take to improve your mobile content’s performance fall into the category known as conversion rate optimization or CRO.
By making regular adjustments and optimizations based on performance data, you can ensure that your mobile content continues to meet the needs and expectations of your audience. This ongoing process of monitoring and optimizing will help to maximize the impact of your mobile content and drive better results over time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Still curious about the finer points of mobile content marketing? Here are some of the FAQs our audience has when it comes to creating and publishing content for mobile devices.
Q: What Is Mobile Content Marketing?
A: Mobile content marketing is the process of crafting content specifically designed for mobile devices in the goal of building long-term relationships with your target audience. Your target audience is made up of your leads, customers, and clients who have pain points that your products or services can solve.
Q: What Is an Example of Mobile Content?
A: An example of mobile content is any type of material that your business creates for mobile screens. For example, this can include a blog post that’s shorter than normal (1500 words or less), geared to the shorter attention spans of readers. Another example is a short video, properly compressed, that’s embedded on your blog post or that you post on a social media platform.
Q: What Is an Example of Mobile Marketing?
A: An example of mobile marketing is an easy-to-read infographic that you post on your blog, which you then repurpose on your social media channels. Visuals—like infographics but also including images and videos—are quick to consume on mobile screens because they are straight to the point and easy to understand. This makes them ideal for mobile marketing.
Benefit From Mobile Content in Your Marketing Campaigns
There’s little friction when it comes to creating mobile content while the benefits are numerous. That’s your motivation for designing a strong mobile content marketing plan right there. The barrier to entry is low as you reach out to the majority of your customers who are now accessing your content on their smartphones. With a well-thought-out content strategy, your brand can attract and build profitable relationships with your target audience thanks to the informational material you share with them.
If you’re looking for a content marketing agency to partner with for your mobile content marketing strategy, then reach out to us today. Contact The Glorious Company today for a no-obligation consultation and estimate.
Any questions? Keep the conversation going by leaving a comment below.
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