When It Comes To Mobile Marketing, The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

The buzz continues to be about how mobile marketing is where every marketing strategy needs to be in order to truly impact and engage the target audience. Numerous surveys point to the increased use of smartphones, which then correlates to a preference in using these platforms over a desktop or laptop computer to access everything from social media and email to websites for research and shopping. While it sounds very promising, many CMOs are still wondering what the real story is and what they should do in terms of investing in mobiles.

Spending More

The findings say that CMOs plan to spend even more on mobile marketing in the near future. According to the recent survey, the estimated spend on mobile marketing is set to increase 118% over the next three years across B2C and B2B marketing strategies. That must mean that mobile marketing is doing its job well because it wouldn’t make sense for an organization to increase its budget in an area that wasn’t working

Key Metrics Show Mobile Marketing Performance Improvement

The same survey found that CMOs believed their mobile marketing campaigns delivered improvements in performance from February 2016 to August 2016. Across all metrics that were measured, including customer acquisition, engagement, and retention as well as brand messaging, sales, and profits, there were slight gains. Here it would seem that the CMOs had quantitative evidence that what they were doing was working and gaining them results from their mobile marketing efforts.

The Number You Have Dialed Is Not In Service

Yet, it appears that, despite spending more because of indications that mobile marketing metrics show increase performance levels, another part of the survey found a real disconnect in the responses: “Half of all companies attribute no or minimal performance gains to mobile” and 40% say “not at all.”
planning out their next steps strategically.

Part of the reason is that many CMOs are simply increasing what they spend on mobile marketing because everything they read and all that they see others doing is putting everything they have into mobile. In fear of being left behind, many marketers are simply throwing money at mobile marketing initiatives in hopes of not being left behind. However, that doesn’t mean they know what they are doing or are truly measuring the results of any of their efforts. This may be why they are still admitting that they don’t believe much has been gained in overall performance from mobile marketing tactics.

To answer the above question as to whether technology plays a role, it appears that CMOs are struggling with how to properly measure or track results related to a lack of functionality in the current technology or platforms they are choosing to use to collect their metrics. An e-Marketer surveyconfirmed that this continues to be the major issue with mobile marketing efforts, emphasizing the idea that CMOs may need to re-evaluate the tools they are using before they increase their mobile marketing budgets.

The issue was an inability to measure user engagement, return on investment from mobile marketing spend, user tracking, and results across screens. Only a very small number have employed cross-channel tracking or visitor stitching. The result has been a very limited understanding of mobile customers, what they want, what they are looking for, or how their behavior impacts when and where certain mobile campaigns are implemented. Most of these marketers blamed the current tools or platforms they were using, which also indicates that they don’t have a good understanding of what is available in terms of solutions and which ones would work for them.

Guidelines And Tools To Make Better Decisions On Mobile Marketing

A CMO has to first make sure they know all the metrics to track that are important for mobile marketing. These include acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue. Other data points include following customers across devices and determining how location, time of day, and time of year play into their use of mobile and how it impacts how they react to certain mobile marketing campaigns. Knowing this can help provide various industries with better guidelines for how their target audience uses their smartphones.

From there, it’s having a better idea of the types of mobile application analytics that are available for use. For example, Google Mobile App Analytics is a free tool that helps with numerous metrics, including conversion tracking as well as acquisitions, users, engagement and outcomes. Additional tools include Apsalar, which provide marketers with an understanding of their ROI on mobile marketing campaigns. Other potential mobile marketing analytics tools include Upsight, Countly, Localytics and Mixpanel. What works for one CMO may not work for another so it’s good to test these various analytics tools out to see what might provide the best results for the metrics required.

Before throwing money at any aspect of mobile marketing, spend time researching and understanding what you want to accomplish on this platform and how you can best track what you do. This will save you money and time in the long run while vastly improving your return on investment.

Courtesy: Forbes