How Mobile Marketing is Allowing Franchisees to Reach More Customers

A mobile-optimized website and special offers can promote a brand and motivate customers to further engage

SPONSOREDUpdated 2:14PM • 05/27/16

Go anywhere and you’re bound to see people glued to their phones. Whether they are sending out a tweet complaining about the weather or confirming they will be at tomorrow’s 9:00 a.m. meeting, people use their phones for everything. A report from comScore, the cross-platform measurement company, found that mobile use is dominating U.S. digital consumption. In March 2015, the number of mobile-only adult users (11.3 percent) age 18 and up exceeded the number of desktop-only internet users (10.6 percent). The report showed this was significant because people are using their phones everywhere, not just while out of the house.

“This mobile-only milestone is meaningful because it signifies how smartphones and tablets (particularly the former) are becoming – or rather, have already become – our primary access point to the internet,” said comScore Senior Marketing Insights Analyst Adam Lella. “For the longest time, the desktop computer was that vehicle connecting us all online, but the convenience of being able to communicate on-the-go, 24/7, and with the entire world’s information in our pocket gave the smartphone certain technological advantages over the fixed web.”

comScore said advancement in 4G data speed, small, but powerful processor chips and lighter phones are fueling this trend. Franchise brands are taking notice of this mobile preference and employing more mobile marketing techniques to drive customer acquisition, increase sales and build awareness for franchise development. But in order to do so, there are a couple key levers that all brands need to consider pulling when it comes to mobile marketing.

Optimize Your Website

Our quick, get it done yesterday attitude will not stand for a mobile site that takes forever to load and is not easy to navigate. Creating a seamless mobile website is imperative for franchise brands and especially for restaurants, as a poorly designed site can result in a lost sale. Scott Iversen, vice president of marketing for Toppers Pizza*, said a properly designed site with easy navigation and quick load times can help immensely. Toppers Pizza recently relaunched their website in August 2015 and it has been a great success. The user-friendly interface and sleeker design has resulted in a 40 percent jump in system-wide orders being placed online.

“Consumers want things right away and they are not going to wait long on a mobile site to place an order. They will move on to something else quickly, so it’s important for us to constantly optimize our sites’ pages to make it a seamless ordering process,” Iversen said. “Functionality is the key to having a mobile site work. In the pizza business, we want our customers to find pictures of our products and descriptions about our menu quickly so they can place their orders as efficiently as possible. And a responsive design that formats to a phone’s size will only help your cause.”

Present Special Offers

A slick looking and optimized website is part of the recipe for mobile marketing success, but in order to stay ahead of the game, it needs to make a brand stand out. Providing customers with special mobile online deals is a way for brands to entice customers to keep coming back. Toppers for instance, used only mobile and digital to build an entire teaser campaign around their recent 3-Cheese GarlixStix limited time offer introduction. It was so effective, that the 3-Cheese GarlixStix became the number two selling TopperStix overnight and the brand decided to make it a permanent part of its menu. Iversen said providing special offers like this via mobile can drive great lasting power for brands as it engages customers on the device they use most often and encourages repeat business.

“Your goal with mobile marketing is to make things easy and enticing for customers. An optimized site is great, but offering deals and specials can keep the customers interested so they will come back,” Iversen said. “This way you’re encouraging people to go on their smartphones more, thus promoting your brand.”

From developing an optimized site to sweetening a deal, brands are turning to mobile more than ever to engage customers and drive repeat business while continually building brand awareness.

*This brand is a paid partner of 1851 Franchise. For more information on paid partnerships please click here.

How Mobile Marketing is Allowing Franchisees to Reach More Customers

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