Mobile Opinion South Africa

Advice for a 24-hour pocket mobile plan

Imagine you had only 24 hours to put together a passable mobile marketing plan. What mobile tactics would you prioritise over a day because they are such non-negotiables?
Advice for a 24-hour pocket mobile plan
© Alejandro Escamilla on Unsplash.com.

There is, in fact, a lot one could do in a normal working day that stretched into the evening because of less than optimal mobile planning. Pay attention to this core mobile marketing advice first and then, in 2019, take some time to really draft something awesome:

Tweak existing marketing platforms

The first thing one would need to do is to quickly skim through what company marketing platforms currently exist that can be rapidly tweaked towards mobile. So, take a read through your company website and cut the copy down so that there are never more than 100 words on each page and pages are ideally limited to about four.

Seriously. You should and need to say it on mobile in under 400 words. If you can't, you've lost the majority of Africans who are navigating the web on some exceptionally tiny screens. In the same wordy email to your designer, tell them to chop out all pictures except one cool and small one on the landing page. That should be enough for even the most creative of creatives to accomplish in one day!

Try also impress upon your web people the importance of thinking local. Mobile devices with their ability to know locations have been a real boon for local businesses. More and more people are using their handheld devices to ask questions like “Where is the closest ATM” and “What time does Clicks close?”.

Keep this in mind and make sure to include location-specific content. Plan for errors because typing on smaller screens can be challenging. Be sure to include commonly-misspelt words relating to your business in your campaigns and know which relevant keywords are prone to typos.

Prepare to have assets mobile-ready

Come up with a few mobile text tag ads to tag onto the end of Please Call Me (PCM) messages. If you've only got a day for your pocket mobile marketing plan, you definitely need to have a Please Call Me campaign feature as part of your 24-hour mobile plan. Here you can reach tens of millions of mobile consumers in one fell swoop. The text needs to be exceptionally brief and contain a clear call to action. PCM campaigns are ridiculously affordable, measurable and super effective to boot.

Finally, use your 24 hours to get in touch with a proper, specialist mobile marketing outfit so that, next time, you don't have to waste the potential that is mobile marketing with a hastily put together plan-on-the-go! Mobile's too awesome to rush and the benefits for your brand of engaging with a specialist are too numerous to mention. As part of your plan, you can name-drop your 2019 future mobile marketing partner, impressing all and sundry with your exhaustive sector research.

By way of underscoring the importance of a mobile-first web presence, the absolute final word today belongs to Unilever:

Brands have to be prepared to meet customers where they are, they should prepare to have assets mobile-ready, including optimising websites for small screens with contents repurposed for any screen, pre-aligning creative and media teams to build relevant assets, and understanding viewability.
That’s very sensible advice you don’t need a day to digest!

About Mike Laws

Michael is the CEO of Imaginatrix.mobi. He has over 23 years' experience in the ICT industry, has worked in multiple mobile network operators across Africa. These include Econet Wireless and Vodacom South Africa where he was instrumental in establishing the mobile advertising division. Michael was responsible for commercialising the successful Please Call Me service, as well as the tagged-on advertising messaging propositions.
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