It’s mobile-mania! There’s no getting around this marketing trend. It is here and growing fast. In this post, I’ve compiled 10 tips for nonprofits and cause marketers to consider when building a mobile marketing strategy and also listed some additional resources. To put things in context, here are a few statistics from the Mobile Marketing Infographic by Microsoft Tag which shows the magnitude of the opportunity.
- Market: 4 billion mobile phones in use; 1.08 billion are smartphones; 3.05 billion are SMS enabled.
- Growth: By 2014, mobile internet should take over desktop internet usage.
- Usage: Americans spend 2.7 hours per day socializing on their mobile device (over twice the amount of time they spend eating, and over 1.3 of the time they spend sleeping each day).
- Social: Women aged 35-54 are the most active group in mobile socialization.
For most non-profits “mobile” is new territory. Today, I want to share some tips that I picked up at this week’s #MobileChat Twitter Chat, a fantastic free resource hosted by @Redeapp every Wednesday from 9-10pm EST. The guest speaker was Mark J. Carter ( @mjcarter ), founder of marketing and branding agency ONE8o, on the topic of Mobile in the Nonprofit space. The tips below were my take-aways based on tweets by Mark and the #MobileChat community of awesome tweeps.
10 TIPS FOR BUILDING A CAUSE-RELATED MOBILE STRATEGY:
- “Mobile” encompasses making your website mobile-friendly as well as utilizing apps and texting to engage with people on their mobile devices.
- Focus on email and social media first, then leverage both of them to extend the conversation to mobile. Or, do both at once with apps.
- Donations tend to be a result of conversations. Adapt to the fact that many conversations are now taking place on mobile devices.
- Best practice is to communicate and engage via mobile first, then ask for donations second. (This is NOT typically how nonprofits have been approaching the opportunity.)
- Mobile is an opportunity to advertise nonprofit events.
- People tend not to want to text during events.
- MMS converts faster than SMS because of the visual impact.
- Be ready to capitalize on an outpouring of sentiment for your cause. $40M in donations for Haiti collected via individual $10 donations.
- The combination of a trusted technology platform and a trusted nonprofit organization are the way to overcome a “donation by phone” trust-hurdle.
- With proper strategy and execution, common nonprofit and corporate cause marketing goals of raising awareness and funds can be met via mobile strategies.
ADDITIONAL MOBILE MARKETING RESOURCES AND EXAMPLES:
- Case studies about nonprofits & mobile
- Statistics about Baby Boomers and mobile
- Rock the Vote campaign
- QR Code T-shirts
Want to see the actual tweets (likely via your smart phone!) from this tweet chat? Click here to review the Storify recap of this week’s #MobileChat provided by the host Redeapp.
After making it this far, I hope you feel a little smarter about leveraging smart phones for your cause.
See ya on your phone!
Trisha
