7 Mobile Marketing Strategies For Boosting Blog Sales In 2015

These days, it seems like everyone and their brother has a smartphone of some sort. Mobile browsing has been on the rise for a while now, triggering big updates like “Mobileggedon” from Google.

39.17% of my traffic is now coming from mobile devices, and it is very similar for sites everywhere. If you have a blog or any website, you simply cannot ignore mobile marketing for one more second.

Here are 7 mobile marketing strategies for boosting your blog in 2015:

1. Make sure your website is responsive

First of all, if your blog or website isn't mobile responsive, good luck doing any kind of successful mobile marketing. It just won't work.

When Google passed its big mobile update, it was to ensure that smartphone users were being given search results for sites that are mobile-friendly and responsive.

If your blog isn't responsive for mobile devices, you better fix that right away. This all starts with your theme. Most premium, high-quality themes tend to be mobile responsive.

If you check your theme purchase page, it will usually tell you whether or not your theme is responsive or mobile-friendly.

This just means that your website will adjust when it is being viewed on smaller devices to where you content is still easy to view.

Look up your website on a smartphone and see if the content is easy to view. Make sure your blog posts are easy to read, videos have adjusted to a smaller size, navigation bar is optimized, etc.

If this is not the case, you can use this post to create a responsive design yourself.

2. Speed = Good Marketing

It is a cold, hard world we live in. Patience isn't anyone's strong suite anymore. People these days tend to click the dreaded “back button” and leave your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

So, one of the best mobile marketing strategies you can use is to get the most out of the traffic you get. In other words, make your site blazing fast so people won't leave before seeing your content.

Need to test your website to make sure it is fast enough? Here are 6 free tools for testing website performance.

If your website seems to load slower than 3 seconds after testing it multiple times, you can use this post to increase your blog speed.

Remember, your website may be somewhat fast for normal computers, but it is a lot different on mobile devices.

Mobile devices don't always have wifi and depend on 3G or 4G signals that aren't as fast as regular internet at home.

So, make sure your website is as fast as possible to help mobile users out and keep the traffic you get.

3. Make popups work on mobile devices

Popup forms can be some of the best ways to get leads from your blog. But, if they aren't showing on mobile devices, you could be losing 30-40% of potential leads already.

Make sure you use a good popup service for this very reason. I recommend Ninja popups or Optinmonster for collecting leads through popups and making them work for smartphones.

Popups, although annoying to some people, account for a big chunk of leads from any website I've ever seen use them, including mine. Don't ignore this trend.

If you use a popup plugin or service that doesn't work on mobile devices, get rid of them and get one that does. You'll thank me later.

4. Generate leads from within blog posts

I actually learned this technique from Digital Marketer, a very successful marketing company. Collect leads from little boxes within your blog posts.

As you've probably noticed, if you are familiar with Self Made Success, I use two “order boxes” within every blog post.

An order box basically is a text ad that promotes a lead magnet, with a link to a squeeze page where viewers can become leads. You can also do this as a clickable picture.

Here's an example of one from Digital Marketer:

As you can see this an image example of an order box that is just supposed to get clicks and generate leads from blog post readers.

The great thing about using these for marketing is that they get good results for computer, tablet and mobile users.

So, if you place one of these in the middle of your blog post and one at the end, there's a good chance that you will get some leads from readers of the blog post, no matter what device they are on.

These “order boxes” as Optimizepress likes to call them, are a lot more effective than just using optin boxes or ads in your website's widget area, because 30-40% of your traffic won't see the widget area because of them being on a mobile device.

Using boxes like these that redirect to a squeeze page are one of the best ways to can capitalize on mobile marketing.

5. Using a hello/notification bar

Some people call it a “hello bar”, while others call it a “notification bar”. Depending who you are, you may know it by  different name, but either way, using these as part of your marketing strategy is extremely effective.

These bars sit on top of your website or blog and scroll down the page as the user reads through the content. They also work on mobile devices, which of course is what we want.

These bars may do just about anything you want, whether it is getting leads, Facebook page likes, clicks to a certain sales page, etc.

I highly recommend you use them in your marketing because of their effectiveness for any device your visitors may be on. To use these on your site, I recommend using something like Hello Bar.

6. Relocating Ads

If your website makes money off of ad clicks or impressions, it's time you relocate them to get them in front of mobile users.

Most websites that use ads tend to have them in the widget area, but with the rise of mobile traffic, they are giving up a big chunk of potential revenue.

Luckily, as one of the biggest internet advertising services in the world, Google has created a chart that tells you exactly where you will get the most ad clicks.

And, to our benefit, the top locations for ad clicks happen to be mobile-friendly. Here is where the most ad clicks come from on a website based on the different ad locations:

The darker the orange, the more clicks your ads will probably get. For the best results, put your ads right before your first paragraph or right after your blog post's introduction.

This will get you a ton of clicks from both mobile and desktop devices.

7. Mobile-optimized social media buttons

How are you supposed to get more social media shares if your mobile viewers can't even see them? If you really want your blog posts to go viral, it's time you update your social media sharing buttons.

As you have probably noticed, there are TONS of social media sharing plugins all over the place for WordPress.

But, you really don't have the many choices because you need some that won't slow your website down and that show up for mobile viewers.

I personally recommend you either have social media share buttons at the top and bottom of your content or some that are responsive and scroll on a mobile device with the page.

Sumome has some social media share buttons that come in the typical, vertical scrolling bar on the side of your blog posts, but when you view the post on a smartphone, it becomes a horizontal social share bar that scrolls with the page at the bottom.

This allows for easy sharing, but Sumome can slow you site down a little. If you site is extremely SEO friendly and has great speed, you can afford to use their sharing plugin.

If you would rather have a little more speed and use an alternative, I've had good luck using Async Social Sharing and Floating Social Bar.

They're both fast-loading and get you more social media shares on all devices.

Conclusion

As a blogger, business owner, etc., you have to adapt to where your traffic comes from. If you ignore mobile marketing, not only will you be hit by Google, but you could lose as much as half of your potential revenue.

With the new mobile marketing trends starting in 2015, it's time you make sure your site is responsive, fast and stop relying on widgets to get your leads.

Widgets are becoming less and less effective and are basically useless for mobile marketing. Take advantage of the 7 strategies I gave you and you could see a boost in blog traffic, leads and sales by as much as 40%.

What are your favorite mobile marketing strategies in 2015?