Mobile marketing is more important for today’s businesses than ever before. According to a recent survey, consumers spend 70% of their total digital media time on smartphones. For advertisers, of course, such figures haven’t gone unnoticed, as mobile ads accounted for more than two-thirds of the recent annual digital ad spend.
But while there are major opportunities for growth in the mobile marketing space, challenges also arise. How can you be sure you’re reaching the right consumers where they spend most of their time in a way that’s seamless and relevant? To answer that question, marketers must be able to measure user engagement with robust and accurate analytics. In using such data strategically, it’s crucial to coordinate consistent messaging across all channels. Read on to uncover specific solutions to these complex mobile marketing challenges.
Mobile Apps
Mobile traffic centers on apps. According to a recent survey, consumers spend 88% of their mobile time on apps, with the remaining time spent on mobile sites. This means that in order to reach your target audience, marketers must successfully penetrate this area through a proprietary or third-party mobile app.
It can be tempting to focus simply on outbidding competitors on mobile platforms. Yet some note that with a limited ad budget it can be difficult to gain a foothold in a saturated mobile market. Others suggest that higher-spend apps advertise greater rewards to marketers but often underdeliver on such promises.
Instead, customer rewards platforms that offer rewards in exchange for engagement not only capture the dominant form of mobile traffic, but also encourage brand loyalty by deepening relationships with customers. With such rewards apps, marketing spend goes further by both gaining new customers and strengthening engagement with existing ones.
Analytics and Metrics
Mobile marketers need to capture accurate analytics to determine the success of their campaigns. But many worry about issues regarding the transparency and integrity of mobile data analytics. Lately, this sentiment has only magnified since recent studies found that fraudulent user data has increased by 15% in the past two years.
A comprehensive mobile analytics platform provides accurate data, interprets it, and acts on it. But in addition to descriptive analytics that determine when, where, and to whom products are being sold, mobile marketers need to find a way to gather real-time information on consumer buying behaviors. Shopping apps offer a benefit that other sources of data collection don’t: the ability to travel with the consumer throughout the buyer’s journey from awareness to purchase. Through Shopkick or similar apps, brands can discover trouble spots that might be impairing the consumer’s path to purchase.
Omnichannel Coordination
How can mobile marketers coordinate consistent messaging across different channels? It’s widely known that users transition between multiple devices throughout the day. But even when confined to mobile, users have a variety of ways to access information. A successful omnichannel strategy must work seamlessly to integrate the different mobile communication paths.
In-app messages are one of the most common ways to communicate with mobile users. These can include ads with images and a call-to-action which can strengthen user engagement with your brand. In addition to ads, mobile users can also receive push notifications. These messages, which a user must opt into, offer a sense of urgency that can lead multitasking users back to an app. Text messages have a similar urgent quality — for many today — even more immediate than a phone call — which contrasts to some extent with the medium of email.
Strategic Mobile Marketing
Marketers know that gaining and retaining customers is an ongoing challenge with any strategy, and mobile is no exception. Yet, by leveraging a strategic approach to apps, analytics, and omnichannel communication, marketers are rising to the challenge with smart solutions.
Shopkick is an established mobile rewards shopping app that helps brands and retailers keep their stores, brands, and products top of mind throughout the entire shopper journey, driving incremental engagement and sales. We have a proven track record of helping mobile marketing spend go further by collecting real-time, actionable first-party data for our partners. Our mobile programs are pay-for-performance against our opt-in audience, eliminating fraud concerns and wasted spend. To learn more about how Shopkick can help optimize your mobile marketing strategies, contact our team.
