You’ve Determined Your Mobile Marketing Maturity; Now What?

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You’ve Determined Your Mobile Marketing Maturity; Now What?

Nov

By Kerri Smith | Director of Mobility

Forrester recently released a report with three main criteria for evaluating your organization’s level of maturity when it comes to mobile marketing: organization/resources, planning & execution and measurement. Once you rate your organization among these three categories your score indicates whether you are still a novice, a market leader or somewhere in between. Now it’s up to you to craft a strategic roadmap to improve your rating and we’ve got a few recommendations that can help get you there faster.

Organization of resources can be tricky and will definitely vary within each company dependent on your needs. However, the most important rule we can stress is that the priority must be communicated from the top down and frequently. There are so many channels and new opportunities to explore within the evolution of mobile, social and local strategies that it can be hard to dedicate time. Your organization needs to hear that mobile is a priority and be held accountable for growth in order to see any notable advancement.

Progressing your organization’s planning and execution is as easy as asking questions; all the time, with every partner. We see many brands looking to the “mobile giants” like Google and Millennial Media to provide the lay of the land and blindly following their lead regardless of their individual needs and the needs of their consumers. This can lead to misinformed strategy and a poor user experience. Instead of implementing Responsive Web Design because of the SEO benefits, ask yourself what the user is expecting. What experience would be best for them and promote their loyalty with your brand? Better yet, which experience would induce more conversions? If a display partner promises you they can “retarget” your customers, ask them how. Don’t be afraid to ask granular questions like: How are they able to identify users across sessions, but remain privacy compliant? What data exactly can be reported? If users must allow their location data to be accessed, how is the display partner able to guarantee accuracy from this targeting? It can be overwhelming at first, but the more questions you ask the more knowledgeable you’ll become and be able to craft a more strategic approach to engage with your consumers in this space.

Measurement is difficult as there are still many limitations in mobile, mostly due to privacy and not necessarily the technology. The most important piece here is to consider the impact of your mobile campaigns beyond their success alone, but rather across all of your marketing efforts. Mobile doesn’t really fit in the traditional conversion funnel; it runs alongside it, involved at every stage. Mature mobile marketers will understand the interplay of devices and evaluate success accordingly. iProspect looks at this challenge as a call to redefine direct response. There are many responses in mobile that indicate a very serious level of intent, though may not provide insight all the way through to the conversion. For instance, downloading an application in which a consumer can get more information and potentially even purchase product. Another example is when smartphone users get directions to your physical location to interact with your product before they purchase. These responses should be evaluated for the role they play in contributing to your bottom line and mobile success cannot be evaluated as a standalone effort.

The biggest thing you can do today to become a more mature mobile marketer is to question. Question the how’s, the where’s, the why’s to craft a strategy that allows you to engage with your consumers in the most meaningful and memorable ways and keep an open mind as to what those engagements mean to them and your bottom line.

Posted in Featured, Mobile