Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

While most marketers understand what a mobile app is, and also likely have heard or gone through the exercise of creating a responsive website, far fewer have sat down to map out what a mobile-first customer journey looks like.

Of course, it has become table stakes to ensure that one’s company either has a mobile application (I don’t recommend this approach for most brands) or has updated its website to be responsive. This latter technique requires elements like simple navigation, easily clickable links — by either a finger or a mouse — optimized text readability, and images that either scale or are dynamically replaced by larger or smaller images and icons.

But more important in mapping out this journey is to take a step back and think through how, where and with what one’s customers interact with their favorite brands. This journey will differ by user, but behavior will tend to cluster around factors like.....

Over the next five years, the mobile marketing boom will generate a stunning $400 billion return, according to a report by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMB). The generous $139 billion return enjoyed by the mobile marketing ecosystem is set to increase at an annual rate of approximately 52%.

With the number of global smartphone users hitting two billion this year (and six billion by or before 2020), the MMB study not only demonstrates that mobile marketing is a promising economic stimulus and job creator, but also sends a powerful message to companies, small businesses, and entrepreneurs in the online world: It’s time to develop a solid mobile SEO strategy to capture the profits of tomorrow.

While mobile SEO shares many similarities with the existing SEO strategies for desktop browsers, here are some specific tips that will give you an upper hand in the mobile SEO competition:...