Ten game elements that can spice up your mobile marketing strategy

 

Humans have an innate need to play. Marketers’ jobs have always been to tap into human psychology to figure out how to get a product or brand to appeal to us. When they do this through that desire for play, it’s called gamification. Technically, any time elements of games are applied to non-game settings, it’s gamification and it happens to work exceptionally well with mobile marketing. Simply choose from among the following ten game elements below and decide on a medium (a mobile app or website, QR codes, or SMS messages) and create your gamification campaign.

Loss aversion

It’s easy to see how loss aversion would be hardwired into our brains. In primitive times, losing a race to a predator or losing a meal to a competitor could be the difference between life and death. While the average human no longer has to worry about life and death every single day, we still hate losing and brands can use that hatred of losing to great effect in a mobile strategy. Many loyalty programs do this already by setting expiration dates for accumulated points. Spend them or lose them.

Progress

On the other side of the coin from loss aversion, humans like to feel they are progressing, moving up in status, or improving their situation in some way. Progress or status bars in video games tell us when we’re about to collect enough coins to gain an extra life or how many more experience points until a level up. Brands can tap into this by portraying visual representations of progress to consumers.

Narrative

There’s something satisfying about hearing a story progress to its conclusion. Storytelling, and especially serials where a story is told in tiny parts and released in installments can be a powerful incentive for consumers to pay close attention to a brand. After all, who doesn’t want to know what happens next?

Curiosity

Curiosity might be one of the most powerful motivators we experience. Curiosity can get us into trouble when it leads us to do something risky out of a desire to see what happens. But curiosity can also be a positive. Many companies use this gamification element to clear out old stock in the form of mystery boxes which customers can purchase. They might be thrilled to receive an item they would never have purchased in the first place simply because it was a mystery until they opened it.

Time pressure

A ticking clock is another powerful motivator. If you’ve ever played a video game level with a time limit, you know how stressful (but also fun) it can be to race a clock. Flash sales and doorbuster sales are races against time to get a really good deal on a product.

Scarcity

A funny thing about humans is that we desire things that are rare, even if they possess no inherent value. Take diamonds, they’re just carbon that was pressurized and formed just so into diamonds. You can’t eat them or craft tools from them. But people will trade vast sums of wealth, even millions of dollars for them. In gamification, you can include something rare so that collectors just have to have it.

Strategy

Games that are heavy on thinking and require thinking a few moves ahead about the various pros and cons of different decisions are said to be strategic. Gamification that stimulates the mind through strategy can be a powerful marketing tool.

Rewards

Rewards can be random, they can be time dependant (think BOGO offers on your birthday or happy hour at a restaurant) or they can be fixed to accomplishment (save up this many points and get a free meal). It’s no secret that people like winning things. This gamification element is a no-brainer and it’s where you incorporate incentive.

Competition

Humans can be fiercely competitive, even when the reward itself is just a worthless trophy. It’s the feeling of winning over someone else that does the motivating. Brands can incorporate gamification that pits customers against each other to create incentive without having to give away physical prizes.

Quest

The ultimate goal in games is to finish them to completion, to reach the end, defeat the final boss, save the princess. The notion of a quest or finishing point in gamification can motivate a customer to stick with a game for a long time until it is finished.

Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com

Source: gamified  .uk/user-types/gamification-mechanics-elements/

Customer feedback is crucial and SMS is the best way to get it

 

One of the hallmarks of any good business is the ability to keep customers satisfied so that they keep coming back and recommend that business to their friends. A key to achieving that kind of customer satisfaction is finding out what they think about the business in the first place and to hear what they think needs to be improved. The ability to gather and act on customer feedback is crucial for any company that wants to stay in business.

 

Two reasons you need to collect customer feedback

The first and most obvious reason behind collecting customer feedback is that you get invaluable information about what you are doing well at and what you can be doing better. If you take this feedback seriously and try to do better to meet the needs of customers, you’re going to be continuously improving the level of customer service you give to your customers.

A second reason is that the mere act of asking customers for feedback tells them that your business cares about their customers and keeping them satisfied. It shows them that you’re the type of business that really makes an effort to provide the best possible service.

 

The best way to get customer feedback

There are many ways to go about gathering feedback but most are largely ineffective. You could have an employee approach people as they leave with a clipboard and a quick survey to ask about their experience. But when people have accomplished what they came there to do, they are probably in a hurry to get to their next stop or return home and will try to avoid the person with the clipboard as much as possible.

You could try to call your guests on their phones but so many people screen their calls these days so you’ll waste a lot of time listening to dial tones. When you do occasionally reach someone, they’ll most likely be annoyed at the intrusion and give a negatively biased response if they agree to participate at all.

The vast majority of emailed surveys get sent straight to the junk mail folder by the email service’s spam filter and if it does make it to the inbox, there’s still an 80% chance it gets deleted without being opened.

The best way is one that’s unintrusive and convenient for customers. SMS (or text messaging) is the answer. Customers can respond to survey questions at their convenience without pressure to do so at a certain time. Since the nature of SMS already implies conciseness, customers are more likely to respond to a survey sent via text because they already have an expectation that it will very short and easy. More than 90% of customers say they’d participate in a customer satisfaction survey if it’s sent to them via text.

 

Tips for getting the best response

Even if you’re already using SMS to conduct your survey, there are a few tricks you can use to get an even better response. The first is to use a 1-10 (or 1-5) scale for responses as much as possible. Survey questions that require participants to type out a longer response are much less likely to be responded to at all but if the participant only has to type a one digit number in response, they most likely will. Another tip is to keep the total number of questions to an absolute minimum. Five questions is probably the absolute maximum and you’ll probably see better results with just three or four questions. The final question can be an option catch-all question: “is there anything else you’d like us to know about your recent visit/purchase?” Finally, you can throw in an incentive for people who complete your survey and make sure to include the incentive in the invitation.

 

A word of warning

Text messaging consumers is regulated by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) put out by the FCC dictates that you cannot send even one text to a consumer without first receiving their express permission to do so. If you want to text out a survey to customers you’ll need to already have their permission or else come up with a strategy for gaining permission to text customers.

 

Customer service and chatbots

One final note: many businesses are beginning to use chatbots to communicate with customers via alternative text-based channels like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. Programming your chatbot to initiate a customer satisfaction survey soon after a customer-chatbot interaction is a great way to get feedback about your chatbot and gather valuable information that you can use to improve your chatbot for future customer interactions.

Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com

Source: business2community .  com/customer-experience/sms-surveys-way-get-customer-feedback-01928971#zMHfxEVHdHtLpxBi.97

 

How to maximize ROI with your Facebook marketing strategy

 

Earlier this year, the 2 billionth Facebook account was created. Nearly one-third of all people on the planet have a Facebook account. If you’re just venturing into social media marketing, Facebook is a great platform to start with since it has a very general audience ranging from pre-teens up to the elderly; it’s popular among both men and women, conservatives and liberals, and any other demographic you might be trying to reach. Another great thing about Facebook is that it’s free to set up a Facebook page for your business and get your feet wet with social media marketing. But a zero dollar investment will only get you so far and you’ll eventually want to start paying to sponsor posts or create Facebook ads so your reach extends beyond just those who sought out your page and chose to follow it. The following tips will help you to maximize the return on your investment into Facebook marketing.

Decide on clear, measurable goals

What do you hope to get out of your social media marketing efforts. Do you already have an established loyal customer base and now you need to build on that base. Perhaps you’re already doing fine on unique visitors but you’d like to see more return customers. Whatever it is you’re after, you need to identify specific key performance indicators that you can track to measure success. Without clear, measurable goals, you won’t be able to gauge the effectiveness of your Facebook marketing efforts and you won’t be able to determine how to allocate future funds for Facebook marketing.

Define your target market

The wider the net you cast through paid Facebook advertising, the more it’s going to cost you. On the one hand, you want to cast wide enough that you get results, but you don’t want to waste marketing dollars reaching people who aren’t likely to become customers either. If you’re an online business, you don’t have to worry about limiting the geographic reach of your advertising. Instead you’ll want to target specific demographics that make up your ideal customer. If you’re a local business, limiting your advertising to within a set number of miles of your physical address is just the obvious first step. You’ll want to further narrow in on specific demographics within that region as well.

Choose high quality images

Images you include in your posts or advertisements should be of a high quality–not low resolution and pixelated, stretched, or unoriginal. Instead of just choosing from boring stock photos that do nothing to differentiate your brand from the rest, consider taking your own photographs or purchasing higher quality images.

Create video content

Facebook has been trying to prioritize video content on their platform for a while now so you will have a better chance of being seen if you periodically post video content to Facebook. Your videos need not be shot with the highest quality video/audio equipment. Simple how-to videos, livestream product reveals, and photo slideshows set to music can be effective forms of video content that you can shoot with your smartphone. Remember that the quality of the content is more important than the production value.

Test ad performance

Whether you use Facebook’s built-in tools or third-party software, you need to keep a close eye on certain performance indicators. By experimenting with releasing ads at different times of day targeting different demographics and regions, you can begin to recognize patterns and trends that will be helpful to getting better ROI through your Facebook marketing efforts.

Use existing mobile channels to build social media presence

Social media is increasingly consumed on mobile devices. Your best bet for expanding your reach with Facebook marketing is to use existing mobile channels such as a mobile friendly website or SMS campaign to get existing customers to follow your page. The more “likes,” shares, and comments you can get on your page and posts, the less you have to rely on paid advertising to be successful on Facebook and the better ROI you’re going to get.

Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com

Source: smallbiztrends.   com/2017/09/facebook-marketing-strategy.html

Which criteria to use when selecting mobile marketing tools and channels

In the smartphone era, a strong mobile marketing campaign is crucial to the success of every business no matter how big or small. But putting together that mobile strategy is easier said than done. There are dozens of channels and hundreds and hundreds of tools for tracking metrics and automating the advertising. You can’t afford the time or money to try them all so how do you pick which ones? Here are a few criteria that can help you decide.

Mobile marketing tools and channels should…

• Be easy to use. Unless you have the resources to hire a full-time social media person, you should make ease of use a priority in selecting both mobile channels and mobile marketing tools. If the learning curve is too steep you’ll probably waste too much time trying to figure out how to use it and not enough time actually implementing and benefiting from it.
• Be effective. This one’s pretty straightforward. A channel or tool should do for your business what it’s supposed to do. If you try out a new channel or tool and give it a fair chance, but it doesn’t help you achieve your mobile marketing aims, then there’s probably no sense in investing in it further.
• Be Up-to-date. Some tools or channels may have been helpful at one time, but aren’t anymore. The world of mobile technology is advancing at an incredible rate so if tools and channels aren’t being regularly updated to keep them relevant, they aren’t going to be the best option for your business.
• Offer value to your business. This is another one that might seem obvious but many businesses are using tools and channels simply because other businesses are using it and they just think they should as well. So ask yourself, is a given tool or channel offering you any tangible results? If it’s not doing anything of value for your brand, you need to consider why you’re investing time and money into it at all.
• Have good customer service. This one applies to tools and not channels but you’ll find that many mobile marketing tools come with 24/7 support and others do not. It’s safe to assume that you’re going to run into problems or questions with any given tool so it’s important that you can get immediate assistance when these problems or questions arise so you can use the tool to its full potential.

SMS is a must

With so many tools and channels, very few are a must for all industries. What works for one business won’t necessarily work for another. But there is at least one notable exception: SMS. Short Message Service (or text messaging) needs to be a part of every mobile marketing campaign and it meets all five criteria above:

• Ease of use. If you select the right bulk SMS service, SMS marketing is very easy since the service will automate the opt-ins and opt-outs. You only have to craft the message and set the time for it to be sent and the service takes care of everything else.
• Effectiveness. The open rate for text messages is about 98% (90% within three minutes of the text being received). Click-through and redemption rates for special offers are about ten times higher than they are for email.
• Up-to-date. Though the SMS protocol hasn’t changed hardly at all over the years, regulations on text messaging have and the majority of bulk SMS services have continuously adapted to be compliant with these regulations.
• Value. The low cost per text, combined with the effectiveness of the channel means SMS is one of the most valuable mobile channels you can have in your arsenal.
• Customer service. Select a service with a great reputation for round-the-clock support and SMS might be the best thing that ever happened to your brand.

Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter. com

Source: business2community.com/social-media/criteria-matter-choosing-social-media-marketing-tools-01911735#FDvH162UppEUeslu.97