How Mobile Impacts the Marketing of SME Retailers

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If you don’t consider mobile customers when developing your campaign plans, you will disappoint them and risk alienating a huge segment of your target market.

This guide will give you, as a marketer for an SME, an overview to mobile marketing, some of its key elements, and why you shouldn’t underestimate the impact that it can have on your marketing.

Your customers are already mobile, and so your marketing needs to be mobile as well.

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So just what is mobile marketing and should you use it?Mobile marketing is marketing on or with a mobile device, such as a smartphone. Mobile marketing can provide customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services and ideas. Even though we talk about marketing, mobile has a key role in the entire lifecycle of the customer from marketing to commerce and relationship management.

Mobile is usually related to other channels, and at best, supports and connects them. This is encapsulated in the term ‘Mobile-enabled marketing’, which is sometimes used instead of Mobile marketing to emphasize mobile as part of multichannel marketing.

There are two simple questions you should ask yourself when considering any new marketing channel, namely:

• Are your customers using it?

• Does it provide unique value that other channels/media cannot deliver?

If you answered yes to either of these, can you afford to overlook mobile?

Mobile possesses some unique qualities and potential value that simply aren’t present in other channels:

• Ubiquitous connectivity – you can reach your customers anytime, anywhere.

• Truly personalised media – great for targeted marketing and loyalty programmes.

• Instant two-way communication – you can interact with your customers through online apps and sites, texting, emailing or calling, giving you a range of options on how best to serve them.

• Location and context aware – Using these can hugely increase the relevance of your marketing. Knowing where your customers are and what they are looking at can help you in targeting your services and marketing messages in an appealing way without being intrusive. It’s important to be conscious about your customer’s privacy however – justify everything with a great customer experience.

These days there is a strong demand for high quality, relevant online services and campaigns delivered effectively on mobile. In many ways customers are ahead of marketers in their adoption of mobile technologies, reaching maturity in just the past few years. Mobile is no long considered a separate channel, and should form part of your multi-channel marketing strategy, geared at holding your customer’s path to purchase together.

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Your customers are already mobileSmartphones have become newspapers and entertainment centres, as well as personal shopping channels and customer services points. For many people their smartphone is the primary source of information, checking it more than a hundred of times a day.

Mobile was recently rated by B2C businesses as the single most exciting opportunity for organizations in 2014 (Source: Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing:2014DigitalTrends,eConsultancywithAdobe). Many companies predict that mobile trafficwillexceedthatofdesktopcomputersthisyear. The report goes on to say that, “For many organizations, mobile continues to be the glue which holds together the customer experience, a great opportunity to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds, most obviously in the world of retail”.

Mobile impacts customer behaviour at many levels, creating new services as well as business models. The statistics can be overwhelming at times:

• 25-40%ofwebsitetrafficforatypicalretailer or consumer business comes from smartphones and tablets.

• 80-90% of smartphone owners use mobile internet daily. Source: Google

• More than 50% of marketing emails are opened with a smartphone.

• 3 out of 4 shoppers with smartphones report a preference for using their mobile devices while in store rather than asking a sales associate for help. Source: Internet Marketer.

• Mobile coupons are redeemed 10x more than paper coupons.

• 80% of mobile search triggered store visits happen within 5 hours of the initial search. Source: Google and Nilssen

• 50% of people use smartphones while watching TV. Source: Google

You can learn more about the mobile usage in your market by visiting: www.ourmobileplanet.com

Mobile has become the ultimate shopping companion Hesham Al-Jehani, Comscore

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No longer are the sales and marketing people the gatekeepers of all product knowledge. They can however, provide extra value that the customer can still only get from them. Marketing has become multi-channel, and so have your customers. Have you? Here are a few key ways you can adapt to the modern way of shopping.

1. Customers expect a mobile friendly website. As a bare minimum you should adapt your site to be fully optimised for mobile as well as desktop.

2. Depending on your business priorities, you can utilise mobile in your marketing communications, supporting buying as well as in managing customer relationships.

3. Reach your customers at all stages of their path-to-purchase and connect them to physical media e.g. store, print or product.

4. Mobile is not a separate marketing activity but complements other channels. Very seldom do retailers run campaigns for mobile only. Howevertakinga‘mobilefirst’approachallows you to focus on mobile, while still accounting for the other ways your customers will be engaging with you.

Mobile lets customers shop as they wantMobile marketing has overseen, and in many ways directed, a shift in power when it comes to retail shopping. More than ever, customers are educated, and have ubiquitous access to all the information they could ever need to make a purchasing decision. For retail marketers, the ability to influence customer decision making through traditional means is fast becoming outdated.

Takinga‘mobilefirst’approachallows you to focus on mobile, while still accounting for the other ways your customers will be engaging with you.

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Figure 1 below shows some examples of different mobile services that can be used in multi-channel marketing that align with the way your customers shop.

When making plans for mobile marketing, you should always start with your customers and their shopping behaviour. Demographic segmentation e.g. age, gender, education is not the best indicator for how your customers buy your products.

Figure 2 below illustrates one segmentation model that is based on shopping behaviour rather than demographics. This model is applicable in many

consumer businesses. Depending on whether your key customer segment is Planners, Impulse Shoppers or Fast Precision Shoppers, your choice of mobile marketing can vary a lot.

Do you provide rich product information and offers to Planners, special deals and competitions for Impulse Shoppers, or 1-click check-out to Fast Precision Shoppers?

Figure 2 - How shoppers want to buy your products.

Figure 1 - Mobile contributes in many ways to

your marketing.

Shopper group

Planners

Impulse shoppers

Fast precision shoppers

Behavior

• Routines important.

• Develops tools and schedules for planning and managing shopping.

• Daily deals, caalogues and ads play an important role.

• Shops with all senses and expects to find new experiences.

• Wants to try new products and gets excited about them.

• Changes the mind easily and adds products to the shopping cart that are not necessarily needed “right now”

• Decisions are done on the spot based on the options at hand.

• Will satisfy with the situation and solves the need based on the offering available

Shopping drivers

• Will utilise loyalty offers and special deals.

• Familiarises with the products and offers in advance

• Finds and chooses the best alternative

• Saves money and will get what he/she wants.

• Enjoys shopping and shares it with friends.

• Recommends and seeks for recommendations.

• Looks for inspirations and new experiences.

• Enjoys new findings.

• Shopping should be easy.

• Good local deal helps in decision making.

• Navigates throughout the store to solve a need right now.

• Saves time, hates looking around and browsing.

Offers and mobilecoupons

Mobile shopping Social media in mobile

Mobile assistance in retail stores

Customer feedback and mobile surveys

Mobile tools for sales clerks

Loyalty program in mobile

Catalogues in mobile

Mobile campaign sites

Marketing Commerce Relationship

Mobile-optimised website

Website

It’s also worthwhile noting that shopping behaviour is category dependent, and all of us have each of these shopper styles inside of us. You may be a ‘Planner’ at the grocery store, ‘Impulse Shopper’ when buying clothes and a ‘Fast Precision Shopper’ at the hardware store.

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Another way to improve the mobile shopping experience is using the customer’s context. Well organised targeting can be the Holy Grail for marketers – it can transform marketing communications from advertising to personalised customer service in the eyes of the customer.

The most common ways to target your marketing arethroughcustomerprofilesorpreviousshoppinghistory; both can be solid indicators of the areas of interest but also complex, expensive to organise and sometimes misleading.

Often it is more practical to use your customer’s context i.e. location, time and date, product lifecycle, step on the path-to-purchase or even weather. Businesses can and do use customer context in a variety of ways:

1. Retailers can use GPS to help their customers to findthecloseststore.

2. Restaurants can show breakfast offers in the morning, a lunch menu in the afternoon and dinner specials in the evening on their mobile-optimised website.

3. Services businesses can invite customers to their annual check-up (car service, medical or dentist check-up etc.) by SMS.

4. Some airlines offer simple SMS check-in and mobile boarding passes for their loyalty program members.

5. Travel or fashion businesses can target their customers based on the weather: where to go and what to wear depending on what the weather is like.

Having a deep understanding of your customer’s shopping behaviour, applying context in targeting and using mobile to complement the other channels with its unique qualities can make your marketing work for you better than ever!

Figure 3 - A customer’s context is shaped through a combination of factors.

Areas of customer intertest

Step in the path- to-purchase

Other context e.g. weather

Location

Customer’s calendar

Product lifecycle

Customer’s context

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What does mobile shopping mean for you?Mobile shopping, or e-commerce, is now a staple of modern life, but what effect will more recent advances in mobile technology have on modern SME retailers? There are generally three important things to understand about changing customer behaviour, and how you should align yourself with it:

1. Customers want to buy your products and services using smartphones

Mobile payment is still cumbersome, and many retailers try and overcome this by offering pick-up and pay options for mobile orders, or by having payment details saved in a customer account. Typically, people purchase small or replenishment products, e.g. contact lenses or printer ink, with smartphones.

The need or desire is usually instant and fleeting, and the purchase requires little browsing or comparison. As customers often tend to buy a single product at a time, from a familiar retailer, it’s important to simplify the check-out process as much as possible. Maybe the shopping basket isn’t required for regular customers, and they should be able to get from selection to purchase in as few clicks as possible.

2.Customers often trust online sources more than your sales team

If you have traditional brick and mortar stores, make sure your customers can easily access your product offering on mobile even when within the store. Providing more information in a readily accessible mobile format can make it far easier to get

customers to a decision point than simply throwing a sales rep at them.

3. You can enrich the customer experience by providing your salespeople with mobile tools

This is typical, and important, in businesses where salespeople have an important role to play in the buying process and where the customer needs rich product information in order to make a decision. Good examples are real estate agencies, car dealerships and high end fashion businesses.

Mobile shopping can also mean totally new business models to you. By linking your customer with smartphone to other media or physical world you can turn almost anything into a point-of-sales. Could these be your new points-of-sale in a mobile world?

?

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Figure 4. Are these your new points-of-sale?

YOUR ADVERT HERE

Outdoor advert

Bus stop Print Catalogue

Display window

YOUR ADVERT

HERE

YOUR ADVERT

HERE

BUS STOP

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A common way for retailers to build these relationships is through loyalty programmes. As the only truly personal media, mobile is excellently suited for targeted marketing and opening up dialogue with repeat customers.

Mobilecanalsomakeitsignificantlyeasiertocollect opt-ins and engage with currently loyalty program members at different stages of their path to purchase. Joining a loyalty program is often a spontaneous decision prompted by online or print ads, or at the point of sale in store. In these situations, it’s almost always quicker and easier for a customer to provide their details with their smartphone.

Many retailers have now made the expensive leap to creating a mobile app or system for customers to manage their loyalty account. Whilst this may be viableformany,therearefarmoreefficientandcosteffective ways to engage with your customers on mobile, and help foster strong relationships.

Ultimately the aim should be to provide a better shopping experience for your customers. Besides money, customers invest also time and nerves in purchasing your products. According to a study 80% of in-store shopping time is wasted (Source: “Inside the mind of the shopper”, Herb Sørensen). While this refers to physical retailing, online retailers can also makesignificantimprovementsinthecustomer

shopping experience. Could you design your loyalty program on mobile on the following foundation:

• Provide your repeat customers targeted services in addition to bonus points

• Help you customers save time and nerves when buying from you e.g. by offering product and availability information

• Identify and serve your loyal customers before the cashier or check-out

• Change your marketing monologue into a dialogue, and make your customer feel appreciated

The latest slick app is seldom the most cost effective way to make this happen, especially for SME retailers. Your customers will reward you with repeat purchases if you provide them with a great shopping experience. You can achieve this with relevant and targeted marketing communication through a mobile-optimised web site and engaging mobile campaigns.

Mobile can help build stronger relationshipsHistorically, relationships between retailers and customers have been regimented and traditional. The transaction based relationship with minimal touch points has always been the norm – however mobile has changed all this.

Nothing gets marketers closer to consumers than mobile Greg Stuartin, MMA

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1. Start by creating a mobile plan. Think about how much budget you can realistically assigntomobile,andwhereyoufeelitcanfitwellwith your overall strategy. Do you need to reboot your website, take stock of all your online campaigns, or work with the team on determining new campaigns and avenues you might use mobile in?

Also, make sure you have the resource within your business to execute. A well thought out plan is great, but if you simply don’t have the right people with the right skills and tools to help deliver, it will all be for nought.

2. Understand the mobile behaviour of your customers. There are lot of ways you can accomplish this, but reachingouttoexistingcustomersandfindingouthow they actually engage with your company can be a great way to begin.

Once you understand their buying habits and their

interaction expectations with you, you can begin to plan the scope of your mobile marketing.

3. Remember to not only plan the mobile optimisation of any future content and outreach.Start by thinking around your current marketing assets as well. Any systems you have for outreaching to your customer base should be re-considered.

Is your website mobile-optimised? Do your email marketing tools support smartphones? Are your campaign templates optimised for mobile? Remember that once you begin optimising some aspects of your marketing, customers will begin to expect that level of detail and quality in all that you produce.

Getting startedSo you’ve thought it through, and decided that including mobile as part of your overall marketing mix is definitely for you. There’s just one question though...where do you start? Luckily, we’ve mapped out a few first steps to help get you on your way:

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This contextual awareness offers marketers never before seen opportunities to target and engage their customers in a relevant way. Understanding consumer behaviour to such a degree has also never been so possible.

Online marketing is truly cross-device, due in large part to the rapid growth of smartphones and tablets – there is now no one dominant device. Whilst touch screen devices still offer marketers challenges in delivering an excellent customer experience, at the same time there are enormous unexplored opportunities that we’ll likely see exploited in the coming years.

In online implementation, responsive web design (the approach that provides an optimal viewing experience for smartphones, tablets and PCs) has become commonplace now, and companies without a site that’s well optimised for mobile can be very quickly cast aside in favour of a far more engaging and well worked user experience.

It’s clear that mobile is transforming multichannel marketing. Mobile brings more relevance to marketing communication, an improved customer experience and opportunities for new types of services. Tomorrow’s marketers will no longer see mobiles as a separate channel, but rather as the one and only channel to reach consumers.

Luckily in many cases, taking advantage of mobile does not have to be expensive or time consuming. Mobile should be right at the centre of all the marketing for every SME retailer – it’s already at the centre of your customer’s life.

ConclusionSmartphones are the most personal and context aware media that has ever existed. It’s almost impossible now to imagine life without this detailed level of integrated connectivity.

Our mobile strategy is simple, we follow the consumer Procter&Gamble

All quotes are from MMA Forum, Mobile Marketing Association, London 2013

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About RapidCampaign

RapidCampaign is an online marketing tool that helps you attract more customers by creating your own engaging online campaigns in minutes.

RapidCampaign is developed by NearMe Services Ltd, a mobile marketing company based in Finland. Our core team has poured its passion and over 40 years of experience in digital and mobile marketing into creatingaperfectmobile-firstcampaigntooltoSMEmarketers.

RapidCampaign is a must-have piece in every SME retailer’s marketing toolkit that complements your website, email and search engine marketing tools. It gives you the freedom to create online and Facebook campaigns without programming skills or expensive agencies.

Ifyou’rereadytoboostyoursales,findoutmoreandsignupforafreetrialatwww.rapidcampaign.com .