Mobility is at the core of everything vital to consumers today — if they can’t get it when they want, where they want, they’re not getting it. Period.
With thousands of tips, tricks, suggestions, best practices and anecdotes about marketing to the mobile generation flooding the internet, it’s pretty easy to get buried — so, we’ve boiled down the mess for you a little bit. Here are five tips we think mobile marketers should really take to heart.
1. Cater to Your Audience (‘s Devices)
Just in case you haven’t heard enough about BYOD yet: mobile campaigns absolutely must be cross-platform compatible. They need to display correctly on iPhones, Androids, tablets and other mobile devices, and accessibility shouldn’t be compromised due to your customer’s device choice. Additionally, campaigns should include focused, device-specific features that utilize the different functionalities of each. Don’t play favorites unless you want to alienate chunks of your market.
2. Don’t Be a Spammer, Don’t Be a Spammer, Don’t Be a Spammer…
Is there anyone out there in the world that loves getting spammed? It’s amazing that the idea of not sending unsolicited messages, notifications, or upwards of five emails a day is lost on so many brands. People hate it, and are especially infuriated if those unwanted ads and updates are popping up through something they carry around all of the time. Cut it out and wait for them to customize their communication experience with you — otherwise, it’s pretty much guaranteed that they’ll unsubscribe altogether. Side note: when you do send out alerts, use them to start conversations with calls to action, so your brand appears more human.
3. Be Like Gandhi
Here at Mindjet, we’re major advocates of being the change you want to see in the workplace. But changes in mobile tactics and analytics have not quite kept pace with the industry. Said Jesse Missad to Mashable, “Measurement is simply not keeping up with consumer realities and the proliferation of technology.” The fix? Improve measurement of all aspects of your customers’ mobile engagement, and be transparent about updates and challenges. Mining data for direction is the best way to predict where the market is headed, and the most definitive way to map where it’s been.
4. Connect the Dots
Integration is your best friend when you’re developing mobile strategy. When your customers come to your app or mobile site, they should be ingratiated in every aspect of your brand — products, social, promotions, features, customer support — and they should be able to easily navigate from blog to Facebook page and back again. Send a customer down the rabbit hole of offerings with no gingerbread trail and lose a sale, just like that.
5. Testing, Testing
According to Unique Influence, “the key to a successful and efficient mobile campaign is to never stop testing, adjusting, and re-adjusting.” Know what you’re getting people into. Marketing campaigns of yore didn’t launch before the bugs had been smoothed out; that’s even more important in mobile strategies, with deployment basically instant and feedback immediate. Testing has to be built in as a constant as well as a prerequisite. Ask questions. Dig into data. Be flexible and be happy that, while mobile may have changed everything, what it didn’t change is the fact that at the end of the day, marketers exist to engage customers and give brands a voice.
Mobile just gave us a much better way to do it.
If you have a little time on your hands, check out these 140 Mobile Marketing Tips from ExactTarget.