Mobile devices are now responsible for 70 percent of US digital media time.
The mobile-first future that many pundits have touted is firmly in place, and your marketing needs to adapt to this reality. Since the scope for mobile marketing is extensive, you need to craft a precise strategy instead of striking blindly.
Here are six critical mistakes with mobile marketing you need to avoid like the plague if you are to get results.
What Is Mobile Marketing?
Mobile marketing is a digital marketing strategy that serves your messaging to an audience through their mobile devices. Mobile marketing can be multi-channel and, when done right, delivers personalized messaging.
Some marketing strategies you can leverage to get your message out there include:
- App-based marketing
- QR codes
- Location-based marketing
- Mobile image ads
- In-game mobile marketing
- SMS
- Mobile search ads
When deploying mobile marketing, you look to serve ads that are designed to thrive on mobile devices. You’re not just talking about cell phones or tablets. Your targeting will include SMS, email, apps, and social media.
Mistakes With Mobile Marketing You Should Avoid
Over 51 percent of consumers are using their mobile devices to find new products and brands. As expected, many businesses are flocking to sink substantial marketing dollars in mobile. However, to stand out from this pack, you need to avoid making the same mistakes as your competitors.
Let’s look at a few errors you need to sidestep not to impede your mobile marketing.
1. Intrusive Ads
For many brands, mobile marketing is an arms race that can only be won by being the loudest entity in the room. These brands don’t see that when you serve an ad that adds friction to the user experience, you lose a potential lead.
On the contrary, deploying contextually-relevant marketing that adds as little friction as reasonably possible garners better results.
When a user gets into the habit of blocking your ads, they associate that negative connotation with your brand. It then becomes near impossible to rebound from that.
2. Not Categorizing Users
Mobile marketing isn’t a one size fits all approach. Many marketers tend to gravitate towards capitalizing on user interest in an app or platform.
The problem is once you target an audience based on their shared interest for a channel, you have little to go on in engaging users.
You need to segment your target audience as it gives you better insight into what useful ways you can interact with the audience.
For example, imagine you are marketing to get medicare supplement leads to grow your pipeline. The messaging you send out to those starting their buying journey is not the same as a lead that’s ready to close.
Take time to understand your target audience in terms of their behavior and the channels they use. From this, you’ll glean insights that speak to each group’s pain points effectively.
3. Failure to Prioritize Remarketing
Not every prospect you market to will end up buying from you. For these prospects, writing them off doesn’t benefit your firm.
Once you have figured out the issue that made them fail to crack open their wallet, you need to court customers with the improved offer.
Reminding users on mobile devices about your brand can help trigger them to come back to your sales cycle.
Additionally, you may need to remarket to increase the number of touchpoints these potential clients need to begin building trust in you.
As you apportion your budget, don’t only focus on discovering and courting new clients. Settle on a percentage of your budget and marketing strategy that will go toward drawing leads who don’t convert back into the fold.
4. Lack of Mobile-Friendly Payment Options
Imagine taking the time to craft a highly personalized message that wins a target customer over. As they get on your site or app to make the purchase, they find they can’t find a way to pay you through their mobile device.
The odds are incredibly high that such a lead will abandon your product. That’s not the only cost, though.
Since there was unnecessary friction when making the sale, even when you remarket to such a prospect, it will be an uphill battle to draw them back to close the deal.
Don’t make the mistake of redirecting prospects who buy into your messaging to another site to complete the purchase. Work to integrate mobile-friendly payments that can enable you to bring your campaign efforts to fruition with a successful sale.
5. Various Channels for Different Steps
An exceptional mobile marketing campaign is one that offers a seamless experience. With that in view, you need to determine how you approach the channels your customers flock to.
How you use various channels to leverage varied customer care moments should stay in the back end.
One crucial mistake you should avoid is not picking up the feedback on contact moments across your different channels. When you keep these insights up to date, you will be able to respond to the audience effectively and effectively meet their needs.
Develop a system that can give you visibility into your different channels on one platform. In addition, create and update customer profiles so that with every interaction, users will feel a personal touch.
6. Not Making Your Marketing Conversational
Conversational marketing is a one-on-one approach brands use to deliver a more human-centric mobile marketing experience.
Regardless of the channels you use to reach your audience, you need an element of real-time engagement.
Pay close attention to the feedback you receive from customers, as that is what you build on to drive a conversational dynamic that helps the target audience feel your message is relevant.
Another issue to watch out for when you’re going conversational is switching of customer interactions. You should be able to start interacting with a customer and take it all the way to a sale within one conversation.
Sharpen Your Mobile Marketing to Drive Sales
Mobile-driven online traffic is firmly in the first place, and your brand needs to reach your audience through their preferred mobile channels effectively. To differentiate yourself and stand out from the noise, you need to do things differently. Study the mistakes with mobile marketing your competitors are making and use what you learn to add value to your campaigns and come out ahead.
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