Wedding Mobile Marketing: Two Ways to Get Started

90% of brides are now planning their weddings in some regard online, which includes on mobile devices.  These mobile devices can be anything from a smartphone to an iPad to a basic flip phone.  When businesses communicate with customers on their mobile devices, this is known as mobile marketing and can be done via applications, search, phone calls, mobile advertising, text messaging, mobile websites and email.

And get this:

• 70% of all mobile searches result in action within 1 hour. (Source: Mobile Marketer)

• Mobile coupons get 10 times the redemption rate of traditional coupons. (Source: Borrell Associates)

• Mobile web users will surpass PC/laptop web users in 2014. And currently, a quarter of web users in the US only use mobile web.

• It takes 90 minutes for the average person to respond to an email. It takes 90 seconds for the average person to respond to a text message. (Source: CTIA.org)

• And finally, 91% of all U.S. citizens have their mobile device within reach 24/7. (Source: Morgan Stanley)

If the facts above do not inspire you to ensure your wedding marketing has or is becoming more "mobile oriented", I don't know what will.  Before we share two ways to get started in your wedding mobile marketing endeavors- or two ways to verify that you are already on track -  let's take a quick look at the synergistic relationship between social media and mobile marketing.  The number one reason these two are synergistic is because people who are active on social media are more likely to already be engaging in or practicing mobile media and applications on their phone.  If you put a link to your site in a Twitter or Facebook update and someone reads it from their phone and decides to click through, voila : you are mobile marketing.  If , however, your link  does not work well and crashes the phone because it is simply too big to handle, then mobile marketing has been handled poorly. If all links provided are able to be clicked through seamlessly, then you are doing it well.

Two of the biggest ways to get started in wedding mobile marketing include: 

1.  Building a Mobile-Friendly Website
2.  Launching a Text Message Campaign

Building a Mobile - Friendly Website
We cover more detail of what makes a mobile-friendly Website in our consultation packages . But one of the biggest things you can do to start off if you have a Word-Press site is to have a mobile-compatible site using a Word-Press plug in as suggested on this site. 

Launching a Text Message Campaign
Why SMS text?  Because besides the calling feature, people use text messaging (SMS) more than any other function on their phone.  Text messaging can be a great way to engage with your customers. Because it is becoming harder to stand out on social media, texting allows a direct and personal way to establish a connection with potential customers. The single most important thing to know about texting campaigns is that you do not just start a texting campaign to people whose numbers you happened to have.  Instead, you allow people to follow you via SMS Text on blogs, social media or by inserting an online widget (a sign up box that is like an email subscription box) allowing people to "opt in".  "Opting in" via text looks something like this:  "Text INSERTKEYWORDHERE to 54321".  If the consumer texts to opt in, she is giving her permission to be texted back.

What to text?  We cover that in our consultation packages. But here's a little tip:  it involves a compelling offer.  If they've given you permission to contact them, they want something of value from you - something that they could not get otherwise.  So make it worth their while.  

For more information about taking the above ideas and integrating them into your wedding business plan, contact us.  For social media, marketing and training for the wedding and special event professional and venue, please visit Engaging Inspiration.