How to Build a Stronger Brand Image in a Mobile Marketing Environment

In the realm of online marketing, building a robust digital footprint is crucial to a brand’s long term success. One of the key performance indicators of this process is the development of a strong brand image for your business. A strong brand image strengthens your online presence, reinforces your business reputation, projects your brand values and helps you stand out from your competition.

Most importantly, brand image shapes the perception consumers have about your brand. An impressive brand image resonates with the audience and distinguishes your brand from the competition. Ultimately, it yields higher ROI and fosters steady growth for your business.

However, the effort you put into building a strong brand image online is directly interlinked with technology. The rising number of mobile users and abundance of smartphone brands in the market has led to a surge in mobile internet consumption. According to Statista, mobile internet penetration rate has reached 63.4% in 2019 and is expected to increase further. our mobile marketing presence is now a key determinant in how your brand is perceived among online users.

Here are four ways to effectively build a stronger brand image through mobile marketing:

1. Responsive Design
2. Using Social Media to Your Advantage
3. Patience with Organic Marketing
4. Mobile Friendly Content

Responsive Design

Currently, 65% of the world’s population owns a mobile device. Responsive web design was introduced in 2010,  but with rising demand and stable updates, mobile web was dominating desktop usage by 2016.

Responsive design is a method that allows a website to fit smaller screens for different handheld mobile devices. When a mobile user accesses a brand’s website through a smartphone or tablet, the responsive website automatically reformats according to the screen’s dimensions, giving a comfortable browsing experience for the user. In the past few years, responsive web design has transformed the way online brands build their identity on the web. Today, any digital marketing model is incomplete without a responsive web design strategy.

Here’s why:

•         Websites that are mobile optimized rank higher on Google, making a better impression on users when they search for the brand online.
•         Responsive web design gives the brand a better shot at displaying its key visual components, such as feature images, logos, typography and colors. These components stimulate the emotional response of the user.
•         When it comes to global online traffic for internet shopping, mobile devices are leading the race with a market share of 49.07%. A brand that overlooks responsive design will lose fully half of its potential to build a strong brand identity.
•         Responsive web design engenders a smooth user experience, which translates into a positive perception of the brand. Many online users prefer mobile navigation over desktop navigation.

Using Social Media to Your Advantage

A large part of mobile marketing is about getting your brand recognized and trusted by your mobile audience. To achieve this, marketers use different platforms and post compelling content to relay their brand story and engage their audience. Social media has streamlined all these activities in one fluid, engaging channel.

Social media networks offer an excellent platform to post attractive content, engage with customers, and generate leads. You can post compelling captions, product images, videos, infographics, and stories to convey your brand message. Social media alone manages 3.2 billion visual shares daily.

Although its effectiveness in building a strong brand identity is irrefutable, many SMEs often overlook the importance of social media when building their brand strategy. Here are just a few reasons why you should include social media in your mobile marketing strategy:

•         Social media on mobile has enabled brands to supplement their brand identity with innovative features such as polls, contests, reviews and other forms of brand engagement strategies.
•         With recently introduced features, brands can also add stories to keep their audience posted on their daily operations and activities.
•         Unlike email engagement, where the brand and customer exchange responses within days or even weeks, social media works in real time and helps the brand directly communicate with prospects.
•         Mobile social media is also more effective in spreading brand awareness since users remain active for longer than on desktop devices. This can contribute to higher click-through rates.
•       91% of social media users access their SM handles via mobile while 80% of time spent on social sites are via mobile devices.

Patience with Organic Marketing

Jack Ma, co-founder of e-commerce giant AliBaba, once said,  “The very important thing you should have is patience.” In mobile marketing, as with everything, patience is key.

Any successful digital marketer knows that the long term benefits of building a strong brand image cannot be compensated with short term incentives. Therefore, organic practices in mobile marketing are the cornerstones of long-lasting brand image.

Brands with mobile-friendly websites experience a much smoother process for SEO campaigns and website maintenance. With responsive web design, you only have to look after one website, making it quicker and far less expensive compared to a stand-alone application for mobile devices.

Secondly, a business’s brand image cannot be measured by its enterprise value. Many brands manage to generate organic engagement that others fail to achieve even with paid marketing strategies. These brands use carefully vetted strategies to communicate their brand values in a consistent manner. This includes on-page blogging, guest posting, forums, social media marketing, and more.

Steadily building your brand identity through proper content sharing, customer engagement, and adding useful features on mobile transactions will give you a better shot at getting recognized and remembered.

Mobile Friendly Content

This is where things get a little tricky. To secure a good brand image in a mobile environment, you must let the brand speak for itself – quite literally. This is undoubtedly one of the biggest challenges brands face when building a brand image among mobile users. Brands must develop content that is not only attractive to the consumer, but is easily searchable on mobile devices. This means they must:

•         Develop mobile-centric content that is relevant to one, or more than one, popular search query.
•         Add instructional content that explains important parts or stages of your content.
•         Focus on giving short answers to questions and distribute them evenly in the content.

Surprisingly, a huge percentage of mobile users have now shifted to voice search to look for businesses and content. Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IPAs) such as Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant are the leading voice search applications. With their growing influence, IPAs have entered many aspects of our lives. From smartphone applications and search browsers, to home appliances and self-driving cars, many everyday activities involve some form of interaction with an IPA. For online retailers, voice search can help engender a positive image of the brand among consumers by giving them a more personal, consistent and human-like relation when searching for content. Moreover, mainstream adoption of voice search is reducing the distance between the brand and the consumer, via a more personal sense of interaction.

•         According to comScore.com, 2020 will be a benchmark year as 50% of all searches will be voice searches.
•         There is a 3x more chance that mobile voice-related searches will be local-based than text-related searches.
•       One in every five adults are using mobile voice-search once a month.
•       25% of web users between the ages of 16-24 use their mobile devices for voice search.

Final Words

Brand image is the accumulation of perceptions and beliefs about your brand among the consumer public, and holds a significant weight in determining your online success. It is a complete process of distinguishing your brand from competitors and communicating your value proposition to the market.

With proper integration, a strong brand image can be further cultivated in the mobile environment. By using the methods above, you can reach out to your mobile consumers more effectively, create cohesive mobile advertising strategies, and design appealing mobile-based campaigns that yield long-lasting positive impressions of your brand and business.