Increasingly, shoppers are shopping online, and even if they do not actually buy online, they are window shopping online, and then buying in the physical shop, – the point here is that the shopping journey often includes mobile.
They are price checking, looking for special offers or discount coupons and checking reviews and other sources of customer sentiment online before buying, whether online or offline. Consequently, cross-channel marketing should reflect this growing trend of Mobile first for cross-channel marketing.
What is Cross Channel Marketing?
Cross-channel marketing is, just how it sounds, using multiple channels to reach your customers with the goal of being omnipresent, which is why cross-channel marketing is also known as multi-channel marketing. The primary purpose is to make life easier for customers, enabling them to reach your brand in more places, with the added benefit of providing greater exposure, – a bigger bang for your buck if you will, or to make a bigger splash.
Whatever words you use, the point it that multichannel provides greater visibility with each additional channel having a reinforcing effect on the others used.
Its importance is highlighted by the statistic that 90% of multiple device owners switch between screens to complete tasks, this includes online shopping (Google Research), therefore brands need to be available on different devices and channels to enable customers to complete the purchase.
Why Mobile First?
In 2016, mobile browser search overtook desktop browser search for the number of queries and this was for the first time ever. People are utilizing previously wasted time to search on-the-go, during traveling between home and work on trains and buses, in times of waiting in queues, or just when they are bored during lunch breaks at work, or even when they should be working. This kind of search is quick, no in-depth reading here, but rather a mental book note to return later from a home desktop computer. Mobile is increasingly the first touch point for potential customers and you know what they say, first impressions last. To get visitors to return to your site on a different device your product case really must be convincing and not just mobile friendly but put mobile first.
How to Make Mobile First
On one hand, we are told that Google treats heavy, long-winded deep-linked content preferentially, with the ideal content-length being around 1900 words. On the other hand, we find that this is at odds with the idea of Mobile first since visitors just don’t read articles that long on their smartphones. In addition, Google has rolled out several Google search algorithm updates to bring mobile-friendly content to the top of the search results for when mobiles are used for searching. Clearly, both viewing options need to be catered for, so how can we do this?
One way is to make traditional content easy to navigate by including jump link shortcuts to paragraphs within the content. It is also vital to get to the point of the article with bullet points and structured content. In addition, communicate through imagery rather than words where possible. Ultimately you have under a minute (typical bounce rate of a user on a mobile phone) to convince 51% (on average) of all your visitors to give you their details. Your website needs to detect the use of smartphones and display the right content according to the display size. Even if your website does detect the difference, changing the website layout for mobile view accordingly, moving all the content into a long formatted single column stream, it is unlikely to be read and certainly won’t convert. This is where onsite retargeting and conversion rate optimization can help.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Today every offline channel should be used to produce content for mobile online access. From industry events to real life seasonal store sales, everything your business is doing should be communicated via mobile first online.
This means A/B testing multiple versions of the message you want to convey, testing the content of the message, the placement, and timing or triggering of it for both desktop AND the mobile view. This not so hard as you might think thanks to new features of OptiMonk, which include the ability to autogenerate a mobile message from a desktop message. Onsite retargeting messages are ideal for mobile first communication because messages are short and to the point typically with a short description, a magnet link and a call to action button, – perfect to communicate what you are offering quickly and then converting them.
However, there is one problem with trying to convert visitors into customers using mobile devices and this is the ease of which data can be entered on a touchscreen phone.
The Power of Facebook Messenger
The typical onsite retargeting conversion message encountered by a visitor on a smartphone is triggered by a time delay, allowing the visitor to read enough of the long content to peak their interest this triggers a popup message with a highly relevant offer for additional premium content in exchange for an email address and first name. For a visitor wanting to subscribe, entering this data is easier said than done using a touch screen phone, – tedious at best, however, there is an alternative that enables visitors to subscribe without having to type anything, – if they are a Facebook Messenger user that is.
Facebook Messenger provides the option to website owners to enable visitors to “subscribe with messenger”. The more advanced onsite retargeting platforms like OptiMonk provide the ability to add this option to any message with a simple drag and drop element in their message editor.
Conclusion
Onsite retargeting provides the solution to many of the challenges posed by integrating a Mobile-first strategy for cross-channel marketing. As an example, OptiMonk Onsite Retargeting Platform provides:
- An automatic Mobile view of Desktop Message, – perfectly formatted for Mobile viewing. It is only necessary to create one message for all platforms.
- The ability to target mobile by time delay or exit intent with a different kind of triggering for desktop view if preferred.
- The ability to AB test all messages.
- The ability to add subscribe with Facebook Messenger to any message (zero typing).
While not the only Onsite retargeting platform OptiMonk is the most powerful, because it is the most advanced, doing away with the need for templates entirely while providing simple drag and drop elements such as social media buttons and subscribe with FB messenger for easy message creation via OptiMonk’s Advanced editor.
(Note: OptiMonk is a powerful onsite messaging solution that helps you convert up to 15% of abandoning visitors to sales and leads. Give it a try – click here to create a free account now.)
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