How much does mobile marketing and mobile strategy factor into your integrated marketing plan? If you’re not already thinking about mobile, now is the time. By 2016, nearly three in five consumers will have a smartphone. And recent research from Forrester indicates that personal computers at home and in the office will soon be displaced by the tablet.
The critical thing to understand about mobile is that it’s much, much more than creating a mobile version of your site or developing an app—although those are two important components of a mobile presence.
Wondering where to start planning and defining your mobile strategy?
5 Questions to Shape Your Mobile Marketing Strategy
Has mobile traffic to your website changed?
It’s no secret that we’re analytics nuts – and if you’re not reading your analytics weekly, start. Look at how your mobile traffic is changing – we’ll bet it’s increasing on a regular basis. If our predictions are true, what are you doing to serve up content to those folks accessing your site from mobile devices? If the answer is “nothing” …. well, you know where I’m going with that.
Where are your mobile visitors coming from?
Again, this is where your analytics will come in handy. Google Analytics, for example, will allow you to segment your mobile traffic to see where it’s coming from. Are they coming to your site from Google or from another source? And what page are they landing on that’s drawing them in? Identifying visitor traffic patterns and tracking conversions can help ensure the overall effectiveness of your site.
What are your mobile visitors looking for?
Your analytics show you what your visitors are thinking – if only you’ll let them. Pay attention to what keywords draw them to your site and how that compares to search habits of desktop users. Be sure to develop your content strategies accordingly. Give mobile users information that’s critical to them on a mobile site. That will, most definitely, lead to not only more sales, but also happier customers.
App or mobile website?
Do you really need an app? Probably not. Many times people think they need an app when in reality they need a mobile website. Mobile websites work just like apps and are almost always less expensive to develop. We think mobile websites are so important that when we develop sites for clients, we almost always develop a mobile website concurrently. Apps are ubiquitous, but don’t talk yourself, or let anyone else talk you into an app without first making sure that’s the best possible solution.
How are you going to market your app?
Decide on an app after all? Terrific. What is it about your app that makes it irresistible? The average iOS user has some 60 apps on their device (many have more) yet 26 percent of those apps are downloaded once and never used again. If you decide on an app, you’d best decide how you’re going to market the app once it’s developed, and you’d better be asking some hard questions about what it is about your app that makes it something people want – and need – to come back to day after day. If you don’t ask these questions at the beginning of the app development process, you might be sad once you’ve spent a whole bunch of money and no one is downloading, or more importantly, using, your app. It happens. All the time.
Planning a mobile strategy isn’t all that different from creating an overall digital strategy, or hashing out your approach to social media. And a mobile strategy doesn’t mean creating a mini version of your corporate website and/or developing an app and calling it good.
Taking the time to understand your mobile audience and their needs, and how you can serve those needs in the most effective, efficient manner possible – well, it just leads to good things.
Have you created a mobile strategy for your brand or business? If so, would you recommend any other questions to ask before getting started?
Image by Robert Scoble via Creative Commons
Shelly Kramer is a Principal Analyst and Founding Partner at Futurum Research. A serial entrepreneur with a technology centric focus, she has worked alongside some of the world’s largest brands to embrace disruption and spur innovation, understand and address the realities of the connected customer, and help navigate the process of digital transformation. She brings 20 years’ experience as a brand strategist to her work at Futurum, and has deep experience helping global companies with marketing challenges, GTM strategies, messaging develoment, and driving strategy and digital transformation for B2B brands across multiple verticals. Shelly’s coverage areas include Collaboration/CX/SaaS, platforms, ESG, and Cybersecurity, as well as topics and trends related to the Future of Work, the transformation of the workplace and how people and technology are driving that transformation. A transplanted New Yorker, she has learned to love life in the Midwest, and has firsthand experience that some of the most innovative minds and most successful companies in the world also happen to live in “flyover country.”