Return on Investment or simply ROI is the calculation of the profit earned on
investment. The formula to calculate ROI is as follows:

ROI = (Return − Investment)/Investment


To understand the ROI from Mobile Marketing, let’s assume:

1. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV = Avg. Revenue per customer × Avg. No. of visits
Say, $100 per customer × 10 visits = $1,000

2. Calculate allowable Cost of Customer Acquisition (COCA) as:

COCA = CLV × (% allocated to new customer)
Say, $1000 × 10% = $100

Now, reallocate your mobile marketing budget by dividing them into ‘Branding’
and ‘Direct Response’. For example, allocate 20% of your budget to direct
response:

Say, direct response budget = $200,000
20% of $200,000 = $40,000
Hence, mobile marketing budget is $40,000.

Now, calculate the number of estimated customers from new mobile marketing
campaign.

CLV= $1,000
Budget= $200,000
COCA= $100
Customers acquisition = budget ÷ COCA
Hence, $200,000 ÷ 100 = 2,000
13.MOBILE MARKETING – ROI
32
Therefore, new customers = 2,000
Direct response (of new customers) = 2,000
Mobile marketing new customers = 400

Conclusion — On 20% investment, you will gain 20% new customers.

Mobile devices help users to navigate the world. Customers use mobile devices for
all aspects of their needs.They act on the information they see. So advertisers
need to extend online advertising and should strive to be seen on mobiles.
Mobile Users –Statistics

As per the survey carried out by Google in partnership with Ipsos OTX MediaCT
on 5000+ users, 89% use smartphones throughout the day.

Out of this:

 89% stay connected
 82% research and read news
 75% navigate
 65% entertain
 45% manage and plan
 70% uses mobile devices to make purchase
 82% notice ads on mobile devices of which around 42% go ahead and click
on ads

Advertisers should use location-based services to be easily accessible. Owning a
responsive website is a must now.

Ways to Know Your Mobile Audience

You can use the following methods to understand more about your mobile
audience:

 Measure user recordings: Here every gesture of user is captured. This
makes it easy to trap users’ behavior.

 Heat maps give you a breakdown of users’ action. You can see where they
tap more and the need to change your UI.

 Real-time In-App analytics give you an insight into the user’s psyche
and all the actions they do on their screens.

Buying and selling products and services through mobile devices are the new
trend. A housewife can purchase her kitchen appliances from the comfort of her
living room, a busy person can order lunch from office, one can use mobile
platforms to sell goods and services – all with a few clicks.

What is M-Commerce?

Mobile commerce or simply M-Commerce means engaging users in a buy or sell
process via a mobile device. For instance, when someone buys an Android app or
an iPhone app, that person is engaged in m-commerce. There are a number of
content assets that can be bought and sold via a mobile device such as games,
applications, ringtones, subscriptions etc.


How does M-Commerce Work?

Let’s look at some of the points that you need to remember as a business, while
engaging in m-commerce:

Decide Where to Sell

Before you sell your products or services via m-commerce, you need to decide
what type of outlets or stores suit your business best. Let us suppose you have
created ringtones – you can sell them either at specific third-party outlets or to
independent aggregators who charge you a commission for the service.

You can also sell your ringtones on mobile stores or app stores such as Android
marketplace or App store (Apple). These stores are frequently visited by many
buyers and hence ideal for making sales easily and efficiently. Finally, you can
also sell via your own mobile store by creating a mobile website specifically for
sales or as by setting-up an m-commerce page on your main website.

Set up Mobile Billing

Once you have decided where to sell, the next step is to set up your merchant
account. For instance, you can use third-party services such as PayPal. This is
ideal for small businesses or also large companies. A third-party application makes
it really easy for you as well as your customers to make the payments, but then
they do charge commission on the transaction.

You can also set-up your own billing and payment gateway, but make sure that
you make it really easy for users. Mobile users do not use keyboards or a mouse
so make sure that the design of your m-commerce site is intuitive, with easy
navigation tools and the right display sizes. Basically, make your m-commerce
site optimized for Smartphone users.


Benefits of M-Commerce

The major benefit of engaging in m-commerce is the sheer size of potential sales.
The probability of your potential customers owning a Smartphone is very high, so
you can safely assume that you will get much more positive response from mobile
devices than your website. M-commerce is recommended for every business
irrespective of its type, scale, and size.

People normally take notice of an email or a promotional message when they
receive it on their cellphone. Therefore mobile email marketing is a great way to
promote your business, as you can receive immediate response from your
potential customers.

What is Mobile Email Marketing?

Mobile emails are one of the best ways to get more subscribers and potential sales
leads, as most of the users have a functional email. The emails can be delivered
to many users in one click, while being customized and personalized for every
user.

The rate of delivery is also very high, but some might fail owing to erroneous email
addresses or spam. However, a mobile email marketing campaign is sure to work
because a large number of users can be reached at once, while the emails
themselves can be highly personalized and target a particular audience.

How does Mobile Email Marketing Work?

Mobile email marketing serves as a great tool for reaching out to a large number
of users at one go. However, following are the certain technical and non-technical
aspects that you need to double check:

Optimize for Devices and Browsers

The emails that you send whether it may be a newsletter or a confirmation email
must have some elements, which are optimized for multiple devices. For instance,
if you have added a link in your email, but it is very difficult for users to click on
without a touch-screen enable phone. Then it is not worth of your interest.

Likewise, some users have browsers like Google Chrome pre-installed in the
phones, while some don’t. Again, if the email you’re sending out is not optimized
for other browsers than Chrome then it may not work for some users. When you
create emails keep in mind that you are aiming for mass delivery, where the emails
should be accessible across all kinds of devices and browsers.
Choose an E-mail Marketing Provider

A highly recommended policy is to choose an email marketing provider that can
help you to create, design, and deliver emails to your subscribers. There are a
number of choices, of which the popular ones are Mailchimp and Sendgrid. These
providers can help you to optimize your emails for mobile devices by customizing
the design and content. You will also get powerful reports on subscriber
information, email deliverability and more.

Designing the Email

To ensure that users view your emails on mobile phones or even their laptops or
desktops, you need to follow certain design principles. By design principles, we
mean certain convention such as the fact that your company’s logo must appear
on the top-left hand corner or main headline of your email must fit all screen sizes.
Additionally, for any call to action that you add to your emails makes sure they
are clear and visible. Another tip would be to keep the navigation links bold so
that viewers can easily see them.

Benefits of Mobile Email Marketing

Mobile emails are superb for capturing genuine sales leads or more subscribers.
You can use these emails to do a number of things such as capturing users’ phone
numbers, sending out coupon codes, driving traffic to your website, and a lot
more.

Benefits of Mobile Social Media Marketing

Social media platforms play a vital role in today’s day and age. Chatting, tweeting,
commenting, and liking other’s comments have become a routine exercise. Taking
advantage of this, many businesses promoting their products and services using
social media as a channel.

What is Mobile Social Media Marketing?

Mobile social media marketing is a technique of marketing via social media on
mobile devices. It is researched that nearly 71% users access social media on
mobile devices. Mobile devices are over taking desktops/laptops as they come
handy to users; thus, making them a great channel for advertising and so are the
social media get influenced by them. Advertisers find mobile devices more
convincing ground than web and consider it as the perfect medium for marketing.


How does Mobile Social Media Marketing Work?

Create a great mobile social media policy by using the following points:

 Amaze your customers with a catchy heading, image, or a punchline.

 Share visual media like pictures and videos via social platforms.

 Engage social media users through your mobile app.


Social media is shining on every mobile device, regardless of their size and
inherent technology. You can use the following aspects of social networking for
reaching out to a larger customer base:

 Convenience – People find mobile social networks handy over the
desktops. It has now become a trend to tweet or update status via
smartphones.

 Intimacy – It offers customers a feel of personal touch. People find
smartphones as personal assets.

 Wider Reach – Presence of mobile devices are much wider and remote
than any other device of similar kind. Thus, providing you higher extent of
exposure.

 Quick Response – Customers’ response is much faster.

 Well defined Strategy – Mobile marketing can be very well strategies via
social media and targeted customers can be reached through demographic
data. This may give you an idea of audience behavior.

 Real-time Action – You get real-time actions. This gives you an
opportunity to focus high on certain factors and improve other aspects.

The reach of mobile advertisement is growing much faster than any other mode
of advertisement. Sending promotional text messages about different products
and services is the simplest and the quickest way to reach a larger section of your
customer base.

What is Mobile Advertisement Ecosystem?

Mobile advertisement is a technique to promote your product and services through
mobile devices. You may call it as the communication made active to customers
who use mobile devices. It includes simple text messaging to intelligent interactive
ad messages.

Mobile advertising techniques include an advertiser who can advertise on mobile
devices via a mobile ad network and mobile ad system machinists working on it.


How does Mobile Advertisement Work?

To extract the best out of a mobile advertisement, you need to use clear
formatting, compelling ad banners, and keep the customers’ perspective in mind.
Always try to make your customers’ experience simple, immediate, and
actionable. Personalize your message.
To make your mobile advertisement efficient, make sure the following points are
taken care of:

 Make interactive ads. Encourage audience for sign-ups and grab offers.

 Geo-target your mobile ad campaigns to make them more relevant and to
convert every hit on your ad.

 Make it social. Add or refresh social sharing to make it viral, thus increasing
conversion rate.

 Choose the right channels. Focus on trending channels and media that may
give you higher yield.

 Keep performing micro-experiments to identify what are the critical factors

affecting audience’s behavior?

Benefits of Mobile Advertisement

In the present world, mobile phones are easily accessible by every class and age group
of people; therefore, a mobile advertisement offers following advantages:

 Reach – Mobile phone is reaching people by 15% more than internet.

Mobile marketing is drawing more clicks than internet marketing.
Advertisers have high expectations with mobile advertising.

 Accessibility - Mobile comes handy to users. Mobile advertising follows
people everywhere.

Mobile applications are in rage today and will be for a long time to come. The
reason is simple – a mobile application is more personal than a website. Customers
download an application if they like what it offers or if they have a need for it.
That’s one of the reasons why a mobile application often brings in more revenue
to a business than a website.


What is a Mobile App?

A mobile app is a computerized program developed especially to run on mobile
devices including mobile phones, tablets, smartphones, etc. However inviting as
it may sound, you should take a step backwards and carefully analyze — does
your business need a mobile application? For instance, if you have an online

website primarily delivering content to your customers, then you might want to
go for a mobile website rather than an application. However, for certain businesses
such as a game which requires the use of a camera or an e-commerce site that
uses geo-location data might get benefited tremendously with a mobile app.

How does a Mobile App Work?

A mobile application can create wonders for your business, if you always keep the
customers in focus. For instance, if your customers are primarily business
professional who use a Blackberry phone, then a gaming application might not
appeal to them. The bottom-line is that you have to carefully examine your
customers’ uses/interests before designing a mobile application.
Once you’ve decided to develop a mobile application strategy, you need to take
care of the following two important points:

1. Design Your App for Multiple Devices and Platforms

Two of the most popular mobile operation software are ‘the Apple OS’ and ‘Android
OS’. However, Microsoft OS is also notable. . So, while designing your application,
make sure that it runs on all these three top operating software. Once, you have
done this, you need to pay attention to other design details such as the screen
sizes of different mobile devices, the usability of the interface and so on.

2. Different Ways to Market Your Mobile Application

There are a number of ways to market your mobile application. The first one that
comes to mind is of course the Apple App Store. There is also Android Marketplace.
These stores are some of the best places to showcase your mobile apps. You can
also market them on direct download sites such as download.com, getjar.com etc.

Benefitsof Mobile App

The most powerful aspect of a mobile application is the idea of personalization.
From being a mere website, you become a personal tool that helps your customers
to do a number of activities ranging from online purchasing to playing a game.
The whole process of sales is turned on its head and your company develops an
intimate relationship with the customers who will keep paying you with in-app
purchases, and also popularizing the name of your brand via word-of-mouth.

The increasing popularity of mobile phones has added another dimension to how
companies market their products and services. Hence, many of the companies are
developing mobile websites for their businesses. It facilitates users to browse,
surf, and access the respective websites anytime & anywhere on their mobile
devices.

What is Mobile Website?

The term mobile website is increasingly gaining acceptance as the number of
mobile users is growing exponentially. Technologies such as HTML5 allow
developers to create mobile responsive websites. It offers a clutter-free
navigation features. The pages that get downloaded faster on mobile devices are
intuitively designed.

For your business, you can design intuitive websites that offer users a one-on-one
experience, while making it easy for them to find the information they need in a
few clicks. These mobile websites can be separate from your primary website and
be hosted under a different domain name. You can even design micro-mobile
websites separately for each product or service you offer.

How does Mobile Website Work?

While creating a mobile website, your primary focus must be on allowing users to
complete a task or find information in the quickest and easiest possible manner.


Unlike a traditional website, where you may have multiple products, features, and
a ton of information, a mobile website focuses on facilitating users to complete a
task easily, which can be placing an order to purchase, finding directions, checking
out the weather and alike.

Before creating a mobile website, here are some points that one needs to keep in
mind:

Developing Your Domain Strategy

The domain name becomes important, if you are not developing a mobile
responsive website using HTML5 and instead you want to create separate mobile
websites. While creating separate websites, you can choose to use a relevant subdomain
name. For instance, if your primary website’s domain is mywebsite.com
then you can name the mobile website as mobile.mywebsite.com or
m.mywebsite.com. Remember, your website’s name should not be too long for
users to type.

Designing Your Mobile Website

When designing mobile websites, the main concern should be on helping users to
find relevant pages, easily. To begin with, the header of your website should have
clear branding and a succinct page title. The important content and call to action
should be high up on the page so that it is seen in the first fold. Other important
design elements are a clearly visible search function, easy-to-click slide-down
menus, and navigation links.


Creating Mobile-friendly Content

Mobile friendly content is the whole gamut of content types such as webpage text,
images, videos, blog posts, call to action, H1, H2, etc. However, there are basically
four types of content that you can create:

1. Static Content such as the information on you Contact us page, it never
changes, but make sure that the text is readable on different devices.

2. Dynamic Content which can be automatically pulled from content
authoring tools such as contextual-help tips. It also need to be responsive.

3. Downloadable Content such as PDF, audio, and video file that users can
download on their mobile devices.

4. Streaming Content such as audio and video file that users can listen and
view on their mobile devices.

So, you need to ensure that all these four type of contents are view able on all
mobile devices.

Benefitsof Mobile Website

Mobile websites are no longer exceptions, but rather the trend today. By making
your website mobile responsive, you can push its ranking higher in Google
searches. The benefits of micro-mobile websites also shine when your business
offers multiple products and services. You can use separate mobile websites to
market a particular product or service and get a ton of genuine leads and new
subscribers in order to drive your business to new heights.

SMS Campaign is a popular technique of present day business world practiced by
most of the companies. To promote products and services, it is the simplest,
fastest, and the most economical technique.

What is SMS Campaign?

The SMS is simply text-message consisting of 160-alphanumeric characters that
you send out to your customers. It is one of the oldest forms of direct message
marketing. It is the one form of commutation which is enabled on almost all kinds
of phones. SMS can be sent not only on mobile phones, but also on digital display
devices, social networking sites such as Twitter etc.

SMS Campaign is a popular technique of present day business world practiced by
most of the companies. To promote products and services, it is the simplest,
fastest, and the most economical technique.

What is SMS Campaign?

The SMS is simply text-message consisting of 160-alphanumeric characters that
you send out to your customers. It is one of the oldest forms of direct message
marketing. It is the one form of commutation which is enabled on almost all kinds
of phones. SMS can be sent not only on mobile phones, but also on digital display
devices, social networking sites such as Twitter etc.

audience, and defined your value offering and goals you get a context on which
to work out your SMS campaign.

Following are the 5 basic requirements that you need to fulfill to get started with
your SMS campaign:

A Text Messaging Platform

This is given as you need something, whether it be your website, your mobile
application, IVR program and so on, where all the text-interactions between you
and you subscribers can be recorded.


Creating a User Flow Diagram

A user flow diagram is a tool created either in Microsoft Word or Microsoft
PowerPoint. It documents the entire interactions of a user with your marketing
program. For instance, if a subscriber replied to a call to action in your message,
all these can be documented and you can show it through a user-flow diagram.
Carrier Approval Certification

In every country, the messages that a business sends out to customers must be
pre-approved by an agency. You need to submit a number of information about
your business such as your contact, common short code owner, campaign, and

billing details to your carrier. Once you have done this, you can start your
campaign.

Common Short Codes

All commercial mobile campaigns need to be sent via Common Short Codes
(CSC). A CSC is five or six digit phone numbers, which routs a text message..
An Opt-in Marketing Program

To send a message to the potential subscribers, you need to create an opt-in
marketing program. An opt-in marketing program is a permission you take from
a subscriber to send him/her messages. To do this, you can place a call-to –action;
in your advertisements in the media, collect the opt-in on your website, collect via
an email campaign etc. Once you get the permission from potential subscribers,
you can send them the text-messages.

Benefitsof SMS Campaign

Text-messaging is a very popular technique of campaign across the world. You
can see it virtually used by every company, irrespective of type, size, and scale of
its business; from Pizza Hut to Walmart everyone is practicing the SMS campaign.
The benefits are quite obvious, more subscribers
is directly related to increase in

volume of the business.

For smooth running of your mobile marketing campaign, you need to define well accepted
policies and then strategie your campaign based on the defined policies.

What is Mobile Marketing Policy?

Mobile Marketing policy is – maintaining the consumer privacy s
tandards, which
is necessary for the smooth running of a marketing campaign. It is done by
guarding mobile users from undesirable communications on their mobile phones.
First thing to make sure is negating ‘Spamming.’ Mobile content should be as
original and unique as desktop content and your mobile marketing campaign
should always be on board. To ensure the rewards, use right policy and channels
for marketing.

While defining mobile marketing strategies, you need to focus and plan a number
of points; important of them are:

 Set a predefined goal. You need to plan what you want to achieve. Make
your goals measureable, realistic, timely, and quantifiable.

 Research the market trends. Market understanding is what every marketing
person anticipates for. Ensure you draw near the right.

 Decide medium you will be using. Plot where you would like to shine. Say
social media platforms, mobile websites, etc.

 Identify your target audience.

 Phrase your message. Write down, how will you make your audience hear
it?
 Prepare invitees list, whom you want to share your content.

 Track and analyze how well are you going.

 Optimize/identify the areas where you lack.

People use their mobile phones to not only remain in contact, but also for reading
the review of the products, knowing about the new products in the market, and of
course online purchasing. In such a condition, developing a masterly designed
mobile marketing strategy is significant for your business.

What is Mobile Marketing Strategy?

Before you begin developing a mobile marketing strategy, you should figure out
how it will fit with your other marketing plans. It will help you to find out what is
important to your business. Is product branding a current goal? Or is customer
acquisition and lead generation a priority task? Maybe it’s none of these and more
about social media engagement and viral marketing. Whatever it is, you have to
synergize your marketing strategy with the current priorities of your company.


That being said, let’s look at how you can go about developing a mobile marketing
strategy.

Research for Information

Market research related to your business is the first step. Here are some tips on
what kinds of research you should be doing:

 Research how mobile marketing is done in your industry, you can join online
forums or partner with someone;

 Gather data relevant to your product or service such as case studies,
research analysis reports, whitepapers, etc.; and

 Do a comparative analysis by surfing their websites, press releases, online
campaign, etc.

Identify Your TargetAudience

Identifying your target audience and their choices will help you to take better
decisions and develop successful marketing campaign. Following are the three
important steps that you need to follow while identifying your target audience:

1. Make a detailed list of potential customers and give them actual names and
identities;

2. Conduct online surveys, emails of customers etc. to understand what
questions they have;

3. Create customer personas by visualizing specific attributes such as their
age, profession, task they perform etc.

Define the Value of Your Offerings

One of the most significant steps before designing a mobile campaign is to have
the answers ready for the following questions:

 How is your product/service beneficial to your customers?

 What are the additional benefits you are offering in comparison to your

competitors?

 How is it going to fulfill their needs?

 How will it fit their budget?

Understanding the value or unique selling proposition (USP) of your product or
service helps you to engage your customers better right from the time you first
communicate with them to the time they become repeat customers. Once you
define the value offering in your marketing strategy, the task of making new
customers and maintaining the existing ones become much easier.

Outline Your Goals & Objectives

What you want to achieve with your marketing efforts is one of the most important
questions. It determines the budget you allocate towards marketing and the
channels you choose to market your product and services. You have to define it
clearly what you want to accomplish. Is it more sales? Or is it more brand
awareness? The outlining of your goals and objectives is the cornerstone of your
marketing strategy.

Mobile technology has grown leaps and bounds over the last few decades. The

journey from the clunky wireless phone to sleek smartphone has been peppered

by a number of amazing innovations and discoveries.

With the 3G mobiles available today, users can do a lot more with their

smartphones than just sending a voicemail or SMS. They can browse the web,

check the weather, read a book, prepare a to-do-list, carry their favorite music

around, find their way around a new city with GPRS, and do much more.

Mobile Marketing Technology & Reach

In such a scenario, every business person willing to practice the mobile marketing

technique has to be aware about the following top 5 ways in which mobile

technologies have changed the way users interact with mobile devices:

Anywhere anytime access

Unlike laptops and desktops, tablet and mobile devices are easy to carry

around. Users can access the internet in their mobile devices at anytime and

anywhere and it has decreased use of the laptops. 

Mobile Apps are easier than websites

Companies that have an online customer base for instance e-commerce portals

have noticed that the sales and subscriptions they get from their apps are

higher in comparison to that of their websites. This means, online purchasing

from the mobile phones are easier.

Advertisements should be personalized

Most of the users feel that the mobile are more personal device than say a

laptop or a desktop. Therefore, they expect that the content they receive on

their mobile phones must be personalized as well.

Social media is a prime channel

Whether your customers are business professionals, students, home-makers,

teenagers etc., commonly, they spend more than 3 hours a week on social

media channels, such as Twitter, Facebook etc. Surprisingly, most of these

customers access these channels on their smartphones.

Mobiles are turning into mini-computers

Slowly but surely technicians and developers are packing the mobile phones

with computer-like features. With bigger screens, faster performance,

optimum storage capacity, longer battery life, and a ton of productivity booster

applications. The evolution of phones from a simple calling device to multitasking-pocket-size

computers has revolutionized the world. 

Mobile Marketing is a next generation trend of marketing products and services.
Today, the strategy of mobile marketing is being practiced by most of the traders
and businessmen across the globe through which they communicate or engage
with their potential audiences/customers in an interactive and relevant manner.
The companies create short, but interactive messages (to promote their business)
specifically to deliver on mobile devices.
In this tutorial, we will explore the importance and structure of a mobile marketing
strategy; ways to create different types of mobile marketing campaigns; and
finally understand how to calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) of a campaign.
Further, we will also cover other aspects such as mobile technology, webresources,
and the behavior of mobile users.


Why Mobile Marketing?


Mobiles have gained unprecedented importance in our lives, today. People around
the world choose mobile devices as their preferred medium to connect with other
people, gather information or even do business. As a result, many businesses are
actively devising new mobile marketing strategies to reach out to their audience.
In the present world, mobile marketing is a common technique that almost every
company, irrespective of the business it is into, is pursuing some kind of mobile
marketing campaign. Whether it’s an E-commerce giant such as Amazon or a
manufacturing juggernaut such as General Motors, everyone is following a “mobile
first” approach, when it comes to creating a marketing strategy for their
businesses.

Businesses are also aware that the use and influence of mobile phones today have
gone up since the days of the simple text & voice messages. People order meals
from a restaurant, buy & read a book/magazine/news, and find a childhood friend
all with a single tap on their smartphones. Keeping this fact in mind, this tutorial
describes various kinds of mobile marketing campaign, adopted by the
companies, important of them are:

 SMS Campaign Mobile Website Campaign Mobile Apps Campaign Mobile Advertising Campaign Mobile Social Media Marketing Campaign Mobile Email-Marketing Campaign M-Commerce Campaign