By James Prideaux
We all know any successful marketing campaign starts with a sound strategy, and a mobile marketing strategy is no exception.
Unfortunately, while mobile continues to grow in its importance as a marketing tactic, many marketers still lack the tools and knowledge to develop a sound and integrated mobile marketing strategy.
The Mobile Marketing Future
The ability to create a sound mobile marketing strategy is the present and the future. The continuous technological advancements, as well as adaptations to the way we as people consume information, means us marketers are always having to alter the way in which we operate.
According to Brett Relander, Google has predicted the volume of mobile searches will far surpass that of desktop by the end of this year.
And, a recent report from the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), shows educated predictions that by the pinnacle of the decade, mobile ad spend could reach a height of $70 billion in the U.S., and nearly $220B worldwide.
So why the big fuss?
Consumers now feel more comfortable using mobile applications as opposed to the desktop version, and that is reflected in their sales habits—nine out of 10 mobile searches lead to action, and five out of 10 lead to a sale.
When asked about the future of digital marketing, Jason Falls, founder of Social Media Explorer, stated:
We’ve past the tipping point for mobiles being a required part of a company’s thinking for marketing, 2015 will be all about businesses figuring out mobile in some form or fashion.
As a marketer you need to know how to develop, measure, and improve a successful mobile marketing strategy.
A Successful Mobile Marketing Strategy
The question now is, how do we as marketers create a great mobile marketing strategy, and more importantly—how can we measure it?
Below are some tips and tools you can implement into your mobile marketing strategy in order to measure how effective it is, and improve based on your findings.
Local analytics is a mobile measurement platform with the aim to empower clients by giving them the ability to create strong and lasting relationships with their users. When measuring any mobile marketing strategy, conversion goals are an important measurement element.
This could be anything from purchasing from an eCommerce site, to reading a blog post on an entertainment-based website.
Conversion goals can teach us a lot, but most importantly, they can teach us who our conversions are being hit by, and what we need to do to bump people in the right direction.
Local analytics has a number of features, but the one I find most useful is Funnel Management.
This feature allows you to identify drop-offs within the conversion path.
By doing so, you have a better understanding of what demographic or type of user isn’t completing your desired action, therefore you can optimize your mobile marketing strategy further to nudge them in the right direction.
For retail businesses, you can dig deeper into seeing who added what into their shopping cart, whether they completed the purchase, or did something else instead. By measuring this element, you can see if there are any flaws within your buying process and whether or not changes need to be implemented in your mobile marketing strategy.
As well as brand recall, brand retention should be a primary objective in any mobile marketing strategy. It is not only important in terms of generating new customers, but is a necessity to keep existing ones happy. Measuring this element, especially on mobile and web devices, doesn’t have to be tricky.
Mix Panel has a bunch of great features, including “Retention.”
For applications and web browsers alike, if a customer finds you helpful, they are likely to return.
Mix Panel offers a feature that allows you to access data regarding both return rates and engagement type. Within the application itself, you can follow a specific URL or destination and set up processes specific to what you want to see.
For instance, Mix Panel allows you to search for people who carried out a certain action—skipped an advertisement or clicked on a contact form—as well as seeing what browser they are using.
From this, you can research what that same user did the second time they visited.
This tool correlates and analyzes any frequencies between a user’s return visits and splits them into colored cohorts.
It then summarizes recurring behavior, showing a correlation in relevant actions.
Applications are one thing not to overlook in a mobile marketing strategy.
Although optimizing your mobile site is a huge part of any mobile marketing strategy—applications, if used correctly, can boost brand awareness and affinity.
The production of applications can be tricky and often need a lot of in depth knowledge regarding demographics, interests and habits, but if it is done correctly, it can have uncapped benefits.
So how can we measure if an application is successful? Through downloads?
Yes, but no.
Downloads are an obvious indicator of an application’s success, but it doesn’t really show in-depth knowledge of whether business was brought in by using the application. After all, somebody could have deleted it straight after download.
To enable a fully optimized application, further measurement than just downloads is needed.
Google App analytics allows you to measure and optimize user acquisition and engagement with mobile applications.
This software enables you to:
- Measure what actions your users are taking;
- Look into group behaviors;
- Visualize navigation paths;
- Analyse in-app payments and revenue; and
- Understand the amount of users and their demographics and characteristics.
This application is readily available for use on both android and iOS, as well as other platforms.
By using this software as a measurement tool, you are able to look deeply into how people are engaging with your application, whether there are changes that need to be made, and if your application angle suits that of your target audience.
The previous tools have being looking into analytic specific data that could suggest certain changes to your mobile marketing strategy. However, a customer’s on-page journey is also a factor that can greatly affect your UX.
By observing the user’s mouse navigation, following their clicking habits and analying where they spend the most time on the page, you can start to build a portfolio of evidence around your customers’ behavior and start to gain an insight into any alterations needed on the site, to improve UX and ultimately optimize CTAs and increase conversion rates.
There are a few tools out there that allow you to do this. Hot Jar is the one I like.
It provides a simple user interface that allows you to view a huge amount of information, including Heat Maps, Feedback and Exit Polls, Online Surveys, Funnel and Form Analysis, Visitor Session Playback and Proactive Chat, as well as allowing you to recruit possible participants for user research on your site.
By having all of this information on hand, you can put together a portfolio of information regarding changing UX preferences and habits, consequently allowing you to change your mobile marketing strategy CTAs and overall website accordingly.
Pingdom is a resource that allows you to monitor and measure the uptime and performance of your website.
Securing a strong performing website 24/7 can be a task in itself and an important part of any mobile marketing strategy.
Pingdom has features that monitor the infrastructure of your website minute-by-minute, meaning the second it goes down, you will be notified.
Not only this, but Pingdom provides you with recommendations and reports, showing where your website may have gone wrong and it allows you to view real-time performance data from visitors, such as their UX, how fast their page loaded, and how they interacted with the page. You can also see how your website performs in a specific country or web browser.
A/B testing is a must if you want to make use of the information you have gained from your analytics.
Implementing new recommendations—such as changes to CTA buttons or the placement of certain content, needs to be under constant review.
Like with heat mapping, A/B testing takes the guesswork out of website optimization. It allows you to present the user with various versions of your website, letting them determine the best one.
Optimizely is a well-known tool for this.
The application allows you to visually optimize your website, while choosing the specific conversion goals you want to track.
Once you have discovered exactly what it is you want to track and have decided on your creative solutions to improve the site, Optimizely will let you personally run tests on your own terms.
With advanced targeting, allocation and scheduling, you can schedule your tests of your mobile marketing strategy for when you want them to run, allocating each variation to a specific visitor group.
Mobile Marketing Strategy Requires Measurement
Measurement is a must in any mobile marketing strategy, without it you are sure to fail.
If there is one thing you can take away, it is that no mobile marketing strategy is ever consistent in the long-term.
There will never come a time where you can build a website that runs smoothly and works consistently for the following five years without change.
Measurement is a must, and these tools can help you to do just that.