The conversation between clients and businesses has changed dramatically in the last decades and there’s no sign we’re heading for a slowdown.
Products or services (aggressively) pushed in front on clients are a thing of the past, Dark Ages actually. In order to be successful today, businesses need to be able to generate enough interest for a particular product or service, to have the clients be the initiators of the demand process. This means going where your audiences are, understanding the patterns of their behavior and providing them with relevant information in ways that are up-to-date and suited to their needs. As easily apparent, social media is instrumental in moving towards all these objectives.
‘On-The-Go’ Is Turning from Trend to Norm
But let’s put things into context. Data recently released by Buffer shows just what the proportion of mobile users in the social media environment is:
- Facebook: 94% of its monthly active users
- Instagram: this being a mobile-first app, it’s safe to assume that most of its users use the app on mobile
- Twitter: 82% of its monthly active users
- LinkedIn: 60% of its unique visitors access LinkedIn via a mobile device
- Pinterest: 80% of its traffic comes from mobile devices
- Snapchat: this is a mobile app only (no web application exists yet), so all its users are mobile
For people-centric, extremely competitive industries such as real estate, acknowledging and capitalizing on this kind of data is not only a smart marketing strategy, but also a way to keep both hands on the wheel when planning for the business. It’s no wonder ‘mobile-first’ lead generation strategies are steadily gaining momentum with real estate agents. Apart from the immediate benefits they can produce—attracting new clients, promoting listings and open houses, even recruiting new workforce—they also pitch in with branding and identity recognition efforts, the secret juices of reputation management. And, make no mistake: in real estate, building and maintaining a good reputation is critical.
Execution, Execution, Execution
So how would you go about setting up a lead generation campaign that is mobile-focused and efficient? Here’s a checklist that will serve as a coherent base line—always make sure that:
- all images, videos or animations are suited for mobile use (including tablet display)
- call-to-action buttons (i.e. ‘call now’ or ‘see homes’ or ‘start video tour’, etc.) are large, easily visible and system adapted (i.e. tapping text phone numbers works on iPhones, it doesn’t always work on Android; use of buttons is recommended)
- landing pages are responsive (dedicated software like Hootsuite or Unbounce are but a few of the options available to you)
- you use ‘mobile-first’ design for your email list (note that mobile email opens have grown exponentially in the last three years)
- Facebook ad headlines don’t get cut off on mobile
- you use Google ad extensions (i.e. call, message, etc.) relevant to the mobile format
- the paragraphs in your blog posts are no more than three lines tall
- you have a functional Live Chat option available on your website
So far this year, mobile internet traffic gulped up some 51.2% of the total global online, so can you really afford not to have a mobile advertising strategy?
