As everyone in the world and their mother is getting a smartphone, the benefits of mobile marketing tactics are making themselves known. For many businesses, it is becoming an outright necessity. Yet mobile marketing is still a relatively new field compared to the rest of the marketing world, even internet marketing. The same old tactics might not work on mobile, and one must adapt to the new times.
We’re confident you have already done so to some degree, but often new tactics must be adapted. You might be in a business that has to think about mobile marketing differently. Perhaps you inherited a few campaigns from your predecessor and need to evaluate whether they are worth it. Whatever the case, you can make things better and you can optimize for the best results. You need to if you want your business to succeed. When is the right time? In some ways it is always the right time to consider your tactics, but here are 10 stronger signs you need to change or rethink your mobile marketing tactics more immediately:
Perhaps above all else, social media is king in online marketing and the best ROI you could come by. If done right, your campaigns will practically share themselves and you will be able to leverage this popularity into even more recognition (and sales, eventually).
Yet succeeding on social media isn’t easy. Succeeding on social media, mobile platforms and networks is even harder, with more things to keep in mind and a faster pace to keep up with. Nonetheless, your mobile marketing plans likely rely on getting good social media numbers, and not hitting those numbers is a sign that you need to change things up.
The exact numbers you should be getting are dependent on where you started and what niche your business is in. Yet you should be experiencing growth and you should be getting some form of results. If your goals are realistic, you should be meeting them or on your way to meeting them.
Some things you may want to do are:
Smartphones, mobile marketing, and social media platforms are all constantly changing. It appears a new platform takes the world by storm every six months or so. You don’t need to have a massive campaign on every one of them. That would be a lot, and you can’t guarantee success everywhere. Additionally, spreading your efforts too thin might be counterproductive, and it might not make sense depending on your business. People do not generally follow brands on newer platforms without good reasons.
As a marketing professional, you should at least be aware of the major options that are available with social media and even browsers and search engines. Are there any major changes to the algorithms you are your team should be aware of that would change SEO strategies? Are there signs that your competition is changing course because of such changes? You might notice your own metrics going down since due to a change in the algorithm, in which case your mobile marketing efforts may need a rework.
For example, just take a look at some of the major changes that have occurred over the past ten years in terms of social media. If companies did not adapt to these in terms of mobile marketing or use new features, where would they be right now? Think about the popularity of Instagram stories and similar features. What about the possibilities of live streaming, despite its more limited uses for marketing purposes. Don’t discard potential tools just because they are new.
In fact, if your current mobile marketing strategy isn’t taking into account the potential for new ideas and tools, it needs a rework. Remember that tools are often rolled out on mobile devices first, so your mobile strategy needs to be extra adaptive.
It’s a big warning sign if you couldn’t say with at least some vague accuracy how well your campaigns are doing. Statistics are key to marketing, and it is just as true for mobile marketing. Often they are the only thing you can rely on, with how fast-paced mobile marketing can be. What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow, and you may be stumped as to why. And the views of a select group cannot hope to be fully representative of your entire intended audience unless you can afford the data from or set up a very large focus group (and that money could be spent on other things).
You don’t need to use every bit of data that you collect. Sometimes information might only be helpful down the line when you are looking for context. Yet you should also be looking for links in the data. Unless you hire marketing consultants, it will be up to you and the tools to connect the dots. How well that is done depends on the information you have.
This could be a sign that you are either overextending yourself and your team, being unable to track what you are doing. While it might seem like an easy thing to dump as unnecessary early on, you’ll be walking into the forest of mobile marketing without a torch. Eventually, you will get lost and feel like you have to start from scratch. In a worst-case scenario, you might think that your mobile marketing tactics are working when in fact its actually driving potential customers away.
This one should be obvious, and if something hasn’t changed after some time and you are not seeing any returns then either nobody has a better idea or there is some level of neglect at the management level. Mobile marketing can easily get expensive despite how small it seems. Everything should be perfected, and the cost of advertising and employing personal is more than you might think at first. Creating the campaigns is one thing, managing them is another.
But we’re sure you already know all of this. Keeping track of such things is all part of the job. Yet how long does your patience last when a campaign doesn’t seem to be working? Especially a mobile marketing campaign, which might feel like it's over before it begins? You need to have a point where you say no more.
Note that sometimes sales might not be the end goal of a campaign. Perhaps you want to improve public perception of your company, or get people aware of it in the event they need your services when the time comes (no one needs an electrician until they need them). What counts as a return on your investment should be determined by you. Yet there should be a return.
What good is a marketing campaign if everyone sees the ad but no one clicks on it? Furthermore, what good is an ad campaign if you have people click through to your site or product and then bounce off in a few seconds? In fact, that might be worse than nothing if you’re paying per clickthrough.
If you have these problems, the issue is probably not related to impressions, or the impression problem is an unrelated one.
Technical issues are the first step, and a long load time will outright kill a website or app even if it works. People aren’t willing to wait more than a few seconds, no matter how good what you have to offer is.
If people are bouncing off of your page or site, the problem might be the content you’re leading to or the website you’re leading to. Is it optimized for mobile? Is it easily readable and interesting to someone who only has a mobile screen to work with? Does your organization have a mobile site they could use? You need to start asking yourself these questions, and you need to see if you are able to make positive changes.
Note that in some cases you might not be concerned about a relatively quick bounce rate. Sometimes people might just be interested in the hours your business is open, in which case hopefully the site did its job. Perhaps your site is still in some form of development, and there isn’t much for people to see (yet). Nonetheless, with mobile marketing, you should have a reason for these metrics.
The budget and plans of a year ago aren’t so relevant when you have a 20 percent difference in your budget, whether higher or lower. Stretching your budget thinly across multiple efforts might just make all of your plans ineffective. And there are probably more efficient uses of money than pumping it into already existing campaigns unless you know they could use more support.
Additionally, even if your budget has been the same for some time, that doesn’t mean the costs of everything else around you have been staying the same. Costs for certain services and contractors might have gone up. The cost of hosting services might have gone up. Even standard office supplies might be more expensive on average due to inflation, and it is not as though other members of your team will want the same salary for the rest of their life.
You might not be in control of your budget, and you might not even be in control of what your budget can get you. However, planning with what you have and making adjustments to your mobile marketing efforts, as a result, is a necessary part of what you do.
You might be looking to expand your efforts because you are hoping to get customer or potential client’s eyes on something new. This makes perfect sense. A new product requires a new strategy, and likely a concentrated effort. Even an established brand needs to let the public know that a product exists. People might not spread the word on social media as you’d like. You need to take matters partially into your own hands, but note that the usual methods might not work with new products.
If your organization is launching something new that reaches new segments of the overall market and solves different needs, then it will only make sense that you look to try and find as many mobile viewers as possible. The usual mobile marketing methods might not be enough.
If your business is engaged in something new, then you need to consider how it is going to be received with your current strategies. Is it vastly different from the products your company has been using thus far? Is there something special that you should be making aware to potential clients or customers?
You know what will work best eventually, or at least you will after some additional work and research. Finally, try to get a bit ahead of the game when preparing for launches, so that your mobile marketing efforts are at once cutting edge and never rushed. New products deserve new or reconsidered tactics.
Leads are the lifeblood of many businesses, and yet some marketing campaigns don’t focus on them enough, instead, they hope for natural traffic, impressions, and like metrics. And those things are important. But if your mobile marketing tactics are not bringing in the thing that they are meant to, you need to refocus on getting those leads and converting them into sales (which might be more the job of the sales department, depending on the structure of your organization). In any case, it is worthwhile to check your leads and see whether your mobile marketing efforts are doing anything to drive growth.
Do you have much or enough follow-up to potential leads? What is the purchase experience like for people who click on your mobile ads? Where does it lead them, and where might people leave the funnel? Do you have a plan for people who expressed interest but need to wait for a while to make a purchase or engage in your organization’s services? Find out where you are losing leads with mobile marketing and address it promptly. It will be the best investment you can make.
Leads can be about finding the right target audience in the first place, or they can be about following up on the people who are most likely to work with you. In either case, it requires a dedicated, intelligent effort.
A stagnant strategy is not a winning strategy if that has not already been made clear from the previous signs. In a perfect world for your business, the same marketing methods would work regularly, and there might be a few solid campaigns and features you can use as tentpoles in your overall plan, but changes need to be regularly made.
This is especially the case with mobile marketing, and you will need to consider whether you are going to want to change your strategy dramatically or make slight adjustments. The exact methodology and final changes are up to you.
We understand that changing or rewriting a strategy can be difficult and could take months of work, which is why you should get on it ahead of time. Would people buy last year’s model for the same price as the new one? The same logic can apply to your mobile tactics.
The times change, and so do the average tastes of your target audience. You can only do so much with mobile marketing and you might not be setting the next trend unless you are extremely lucky, but you can always consider what people like and lean into that. Additionally, you can find topics and trends that are out of favor and avoid those. It’s basic, but it bears repeating once in a while. Yet when was the last time you checked if your mobile marketing efforts were in line with the preferences of your target audience and existing customer base. After all, it will be the existing customers
However, it can be tough to get an exact read on the preferences of your entire target audience. It’s probably quite large and diverse, and there’s no way to please everyone. Yet by focusing on the main things that your business excels at that you know you can succeed in reaching people about, you can maintain a foundation to work from. On top of this, listen to what people are interested in and what people say about your mobile content.
If you are getting signs that your mobile marketing materials are further off-base compared to what you are working with, then it is time to perform market research. Yet once you perform this research, you also need to remember to implement it promptly, and not when the next campaign or efforts begin. Changing things up now may be a hassle, but it might be your only chance in the world of mobile marketing.
While we can provide you and your business with guidelines and points of reference, the person that knows your business best is you. A local restaurant does not care about global attention unless it’s also a tourist destination. Business to business marketing efforts can be vastly different than what you would use to attract the average consumer.
Also, before anything else, make sure that you are getting the right data in the first place, and collecting as much data as possible. There are programs and applications to help you track data. If you are using Google advertising or working on social media, they should also be providing you with most of the data you need. Keeping track of your own campaigns is vital, as is finding the right metrics to track them by.
And finally, remember that you and your team are human and can only do so much. Yes, all of the above points, possibilities, and metrics that we talked about above are important. Working on everything at once might be impossible depending on the size of your team and the resources at your disposal. Your goal should be to zero in on what needs the most work and what would provide the best returns for your organization. Do things one thing at a time, and expand your efforts once you feel that your currents programs and endeavors have stabilized. You know things best here, and you should listen to the people around you and pay attention to what is and isn’t working.
Not all the above signs might be completely relevant to you and your campaigns, but we hope we have given you some food for thought as to your tactics. Alongside focusing on your current efforts, you need to be focusing on what you need to do next, and perhaps even the next step after that.
Otherwise, you will not keep up with the competition, and you will not be succeeding as much as you could. We hope that this information has been helpful to you and encourage you to act as soon as possible. It will take time and effort to make changes, but it will be worth it in the long run and it will keep your business successful for years to come.
