As statistics and reports clearly show, mobile is becoming one of the most significant marketing arenas, with consumers increasingly spending and browsing through e-commerce stores via portable devices. M-commerce, as it’s called, accounted for $7.3 billion of the total $56.1 billion spent online for the first quarter of 2014 in the US, according to comScore’s latest report. What’s even more significant about these $7 billion is the fact that they show a growth of 23% in m-commerce spending from a year ago.
With this kind of momentum, portables will soon be outpacing other devices. And there’s plenty that e-commerce retailers, including private label supplement businesses, can do to reach out to their target audience through the use of mobile. If you haven’t spent much thought on how to market your supplement store through this channel, here are some practical tips that we can offer you.
Responsive Design and Usability
If you want to hit two birds with one stone, the first thing to do is take care of the responsive design and usability of your website. Responsive design is the optimization of your website so that it can be viewed on portable devices. Usability concerns the navigation, accessibility of information and anything that makes it easier for users to find their way. Both of these are great from an SEO perspective, and will also increase sessions, i.e. the length of time visitors spend on your website.
An additional consideration about usability you should have is that connection speed is an issue for portable devices. So make sure you optimize the mobile version of your site to increase its performance and avoid long loading times. It has been estimated that 1 in 4 users will leave your website if it doesn’t load in about 4 seconds.
Mobile Advertising
Invest in mobile advertising. Analyst company Gartner predicts that by 2017 global mobile ad spending will reach $42 billion. Here are a few ways you can advertise on mobile devices:
1. App-Based Ads
Developing your own app is one possibility and while it may be costly, the benefits are numerous. Since a great deal of time on mobile is spent on using apps, having your own unique app means receiving greater brand exposure. A branded app is much more than just for advertising, it’s for engaging consumers in new ways – with offers for supplements, providing relevant information or, for example, a reminder to take one’s supplements.
And if you’d like to advertise your unique private label supplement brand app, you can post ads on third-party apps. Google AdMob, for example, is one way to do that. Through it you can have your ad appear in other apps. The Facebook app also allows for mobile ads, so if you’re already advertising on Facebook, you could easily extend your ads to their mobile version, as well.
2. QR Codes and Location-Based Ads
Scannable quick-response (QR) codes are a nice, easy and cheap way to advertise and provide consumers with more information about your products. Use them to send your clients to a specific landing page or hook them up with special deals. QR codes bridge physical and digital advertising by engaging users on two distinct levels. Their integrative function makes them especially effective..
Location-based ads appear on mobile devices when they are in the vicinity of your business. This is a nice way to ‘catch’ customers, since the relative proximity of your business will be an incentive for them to visit you personally.
3. Mobile Search Ads
Much like regular search ads, mobile search ads are also displayed when users search for something related to your business, like a particular supplement, for example. Research shows that the most visited websites through mobile are search engines. And, according to Google, local searches lead about 50% of mobile users to visit stores.
In other words, placing a mobile search ad, especially a location-based and customized one, significantly raises your chances of increasing visits to your store. Search ads for mobile have other nice features such as add-on extensions. These can include maps, click-to-call and click-to-download buttons, and mobile site links.
Other Mobile Enhancements
Responsive and optimized website design, and effective mobile ads aren’t everything. You can invest in more mobile enhancements, such as in-store navigation, mobile coupons and mobile payment to make your site truly spectacular.
In-store navigation is a great mobile asset, since a lot of consumers actually browse and research products on their devices while they’re physically in your store. Offering an app with in-store navigation will seamlessly blend their mobile and regular shopping experience. As this 2013 study by Google shows, mobile queries are strongly contextual, and shopping queries are at least 2x more likely to occur while the consumer is in the store. So, if you have a variety of mobile services, and among them in-store navigation, the likelihood of customers deciding to purchase increases.
Mobile coupons combined with mobile search ads have a similar effect. A growing percentage of users explicitly use mobile to look for or redeem coupons. According to eMarketer, “more than 70% of US adult digital coupon users will redeem a coupon or code on a mobile device for online or offline shopping in 2014.” If you combine these with a location-based ad for your supplement store, chances of attracting potential customers once again rise.
Finally, mobile payment is yet another way to predispose your customers to shop with you. Waiting line exhaustion is the dread of many shoppers and offering mobile as the point of sale (POS), will certainly win you the endorsement of customers, especially if you tend to get long lines. Similarly, there are ‘tap-and-collect’ services which are being developed, allowing users to pay before they come to the store so they can quickly collect their purchases.
Bottom Line
As you will also find out from Google’s study quoted above, mobile’s significance comes from the fact that a great deal of conversions occur on mobile devices. They occur faster than on other devices or through other means. Addressing your audience through mobile is a very direct way to create engagement that yields almost instantaneous results, if done properly.
A final point to mention is that, quite naturally, the most significant part of the mobile shopping audience is made up of younger generation clients. Most notably — millennials. Make sure to include them when planning your marketing campaigns.
Private Label Supplement‘s marketing advice and services are tailored to your specific needs as a supplement retailer. If you’d like to excel in a particular niche or market, raise the quality of your products or grow your brand’s exposure, we can help. Give us a call at 855-209-0225 ext. 2 or email us at sales@privatelabelsupplement.com so we can talk about the details.
All my best,
Stefani Thionnet
Stay focused and never give up!
