Mobile shopping gets bigger and bigger every year. According to Custora, Black Friday in 2015 saw the largest increase in mobile shopping yet, with a third of all of America’s shopping happening exclusively via mobile platforms.
For any company looking to grab mobile shoppers, it can seem like an impossible task. Social media has waded into the arena and it’s providing a number of ways in which to appeal to mobile marketers. In this guide, you are going to learn about some of the ways social media is embracing the mobile revolution.
More Business Microsites
Facebook decided to make it easier for small businesses to spend their marketing budgets by introducing Canvas. This is an app that instead of taking customers to the company’s site, they are taken to a microsite within Canvas itself, which guarantees optimization.
This makes it much easier for businesses because it means they no longer have to worry about whether their site is working on mobile devices or not, at least not when it comes to Facebook.
New Ways to Target Users
The call to action is always the important part of generating a sale. Canvas has led the way by making it easier to come with calls to action that really works. Users can now choose a number of directions, such as ‘Send a Message’ and ‘Learn More’ by selecting a single option.
They also allow businesses to gather data on users, which they can use to make more informed decisions.
More importantly, the ability to use different calls to action has enabled companies to be more specific about what they want users to do. This is something that has also been seen with Twitter ads.
Making Payments via the App
Every company knows that the more steps they add to the buying process the less likely it is that their target will make the purchase. Social media has recognized this and they have acted. Facebook’s Messenger app, for example, has recently offered peer-to-peer payments.
A customer can now send a payment directly to another user from their phone without navigating to another website and without going through a complex buying process.
This is something that social media will likely introduce more and more, even if it simply means integrating with an existing platform like PayPal.
Encouraging Engagement
Before, marketing was about putting an ad in front of a user and if they bought they bought if they didn’t you moved on. Now you have to create relationships with your target audience in order to get that purchase through. This means you may come into contact with a user multiple times prior to actually making a purchase.
Twitter has realized this, which is why they have rolled out a series of mobile ads to encourage engagement instead of a direct sale. Brands can now offer polls and Tweetable ads to facilitate engagement.
Visual Search
An image can say far more in a shorter period of time than a written ad. Platforms like Pinterest are now providing mobile users with the opportunity to perform visual searches instead. With Pinterest, customers can select an item within an image and then search for visually similar items.
This means you can have potentially receive traffic from your industry in general, rather than a direct search for you.
For example, if you sell blenders, you may find that a user comes across a competitor. They select a blender in an ad and then search for visually similar images. That could bring up one of your images, which they can then use to make a purchase.
The Growth of Video Marketing
What the mobile revolution is primarily responsible for is the growth of video marketing. Video marketing has grown up so fast because mobile users want to take in content on the go. They may only have minutes at a time to consume content. Video is the fastest way to disseminate content.
Video marketing is the crowning glory of any marketing campaign, and it’s all thanks to Social Media. Instagram, Vine, and Facebook have all made it easier than ever before to shoot a video and upload it. Facebook made headlines in 2015 when it introduced video ads. For mobile shopping, it’s among the cheapest ways to reach your target audience.
Last Word
Social media has altered the way people shop. And social media platforms are making it easier to target this audience. Think about how you are going to meet the needs of your customers today with mobile shopping.
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