Let’s face it: mobile marketing is no longer the next big thing in our industry. It’s already here, and the mobile market is maturing and adapting faster than anyone had anticipated. Mobile users not only expect rapid development of technology, they embrace it.
This mindset shift has changed user expectations & behaviors around mobile devices, leaving many digital marketers playing catch-up. Surely your organization is moving quickly to optimize your mobile strategy; but beware! The following Mobile Marketing Pitfalls may trip you up along the way:
- Not Understanding Your Competition
End users interact with your brand differently on mobile devices than they do on desktops. The difference is context. Within the context of mobile, you are not only competing with your standard competitors for position in Google rankings, you are competing for the user’s timeshare. That means you are competing with Facebook, Twitter, incoming text messages, and the user’s external environment. Focus your mobile strategy around user engagement to win user’s timeshare. Data enhancement can be a crucial aspect of your engagement strategy to better understand the location and preferences of mobile users. - Creating “Digital Marketing Silos”
Companies have identified the need for a mobile strategy and often responded by creating an internal Mobile Marketing Group – which has a mobile-centric strategy. This can cause a divergence between user experiences for mobile and desktop. It’s critical to have a coordinated strategy across all digital channels; ensuring end users have a consistent and familiar experience wherever they interact with your brand. - Creating “m.” Sites
Some organizations have a mobile version on their site that usually looks like this: m.www.example.com. This is usually a limited, stripped down version of their desktop site. The problem with these sites is they are fixed width – and only optimized for a handful of devices. As new devices are introduced to the market you need to continuously optimize, which takes a tremendous amount of resource and is not scalable. By creating a responsive design website, you can dynamically redisplay content to adhere to each individual’s device type and size. This creates the ultimate 1:1 mobile experience. - Native App Development
If you make the strategic decision to develop a native app for Windows, Andriod or IOS you need to focus your strategy around one thing, and one thing only: usability. This nine letter word is the difference between being #1 in the app store and not making it into the app store at all. Spending millions of development dollars for fancy bells and whistles won’t wow users. You need an app development strategy that has the end user in mind and allows them to complete the tasks that drew them to download your app in the first place.
After reading about these four pitfalls, it should be clear that traditional digital marketing techniques can’t simply be re-applied to your mobile strategy. But by understanding the mobile space, marketers have an opportunity to interact with prospects through a new and powerful channel.