With the amount of time people are spending on mobile devices these days, you may be missing out on some great marketing opportunities if you haven’t yet developed a mobile content marketing strategy. But it’s really not rocket science, and by following a few basic principles you can get started on creating a mobile program.

Mobile – what’s it really all about?

Getting on the mobile bandwagon is all about making it easy for your customers to do business with you while they are going about their daily business. People want to be able to get information quickly in a format that is easy to read and interact with on a smaller screen, and to make purchases that are fast and easy to process.

According to Search Engine Watch the most important factor is the ‘user experience’ – as it impacts how a website engages with visitors and also its capacity to convert a visitor into a customer. If it all becomes too unwieldy or slow to check information or make purchases, users are more likely to go elsewhere.

In fact 83% of users are intent on making purchases within a day of searching on their mobiles, and 55% within an hour (refer to point 4 in this Google blog). They also want to deal predominantly with local businesses when purchasing online by mobile. But unless the user experience is good for them, sellers won’t be as likely to tap into that market.

Do I need a separate mobile site?

According to Google if SEO is a factor (as it will be with most commercial businesses), it’s better to have one website and adapt it for use on mobile devices, than to develop a separate site for mobile use. This is because a separate site would mean having two SEO strategies, and two lots of crawling / indexing by search engines.

It’s also more consistent for users if there is only one site. Take the example of a user on a train who has decided to make a purchase after searching on their smartphone and then finish the transaction later at home when at their desktop. He or she would be pretty frustrated if taken to a different site from the one viewed earlier.

Mobile strategy principles

As with any type of marketing, the place to start is in knowing what your audience wants. You need to work from a ‘user-centric’ point of view by understanding the intent and wants / needs of your visitors and customers. Tips for developing your strategy include:

• Streamline your website so that pages load more quickly. This is important – after all we are dealing with modern short attention spans and busy schedules here! Google’s smartphone guidelines state that ideally pages should load in one second, while at present they are typically taking more than seven.

• Forget fancy designs and focus on functionality. Avoid large images that are slow to load and videos that play automatically. Also get rid of screen clutter, and make it easy for users to click on the information they want.

• Make it easy for visitors to buy. If users have to go through too many screens or complete too many text fields, they may lose patience and give up.

• High-quality content is as important as it ever was. However you may need to consider breaking up your content into smaller chunks to make it easier to read. Consider hiring a professional content writer to help you out with this.

• Allow for an increase in the use of voice commands, and incorporate it into your overall strategy.

Lastly, your mobile strategy should not be seen as separate from other aspects of your content marketing. It’s better to see it as a facet of your overall marketing program, while adapting for its particular audience and context.