10 Common Pitfalls of Mobile Marketing

By Jake Bauer and Paul Eschen
mobile-marketingThere are currently over 1.8 Billion mobile users globally and with mobile marketing being the most intrusive of all of the platforms (I mean who doesn’t their phone with them at all times), it is very important to utilize mobile marketing as part of your marketing portfolio to better reach the target market. To be successful in the mobile marketing realm, it is important to avoid the common mobile marketing pitfalls listed here.

  1. Mobile Marketing is more than Just Mobile – Failing to put together a comprehensive content marketing strategy can be detrimental to the success of any mobile strategy. You cannot just set up a mobile app and think that people will download it. You have to look at social media, calls-to-actions on your landing pages, where you’re sending people with a QR code, what the follow-up processes and campaigns look like, and many other important factors that influence your overall campaign.
  2. Clear Understanding of Your Objectives, Strategies and Tactics – None of these steps to the process can exist without the other. If you’re incredible at planning but horrible at executing, what do you have left? And vice versa – if all you are good at is executing tactics without being able to step back and say “Why are we doing this and what are we trying to achieve?” then you’re never going to be successful. Make sure to create a clear cut marketing brief for any mobile marketing campaign that clearly outlines your Objectives, Strategies and Tactics.
  3. Putting All of Your Eggs into One Basket – Some mobile marketing campaigns fail because people expect one form of promotion to be enough to get widespread notoriety and adoption. More than ever in today’s digital landscape, we need to consider the full spectrum of the marketing mix to ensure that we’re reaching as large and significant a part of our target audience as possible.
  4. Knowing Your Audience – Does Near Field Communications make sense if you’re in a B2B business? Should you focus on NFC if you’re a retail outlet and want to send offers to people? Make sure that you’re properly targeting your target market with the types of communications and through the medium that makes the most sense for them.
  5. Enticing Customers Only to Let Them Down –Did you do a great job of promoting your mobile app only to deliver a horrible user experience once people downloaded it? Does your QR code create the perfect amount of intrigue only to take users to a promotional video with no call to action at the end? Getting people to your landing page is only half of the battle. Make sure that you’re providing them an actionable CTA at the end of every piece of intriguing marketing content. A teaser video with a call-to-action that simply takes a visitor to your homepage doesn’t inspire any action and also doesn’t provide you any measurable insights once people do click.
  6. Failing to Optimize Website for Mobile – How many times have you been searching the web on your phone and you go to a site that is almost impossible to read on your phone? The answer is most likely “a lot”. This is horrible! Nobody coming to your site wants to pinch and pull their way around your site and, guess what? Most people won’t. According to Ian Mills, Co-Founder and CEO of Magic Dust, “Research shows that 57 percent of mobile users will abandon your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. 30 percent will abandon a purchase transaction if the shopping cart isn’t optimized for mobile devices.” So not only is it frustrating to customers, but it will also lose your company sales. Sites like Dudamobile have made it extremely easy for businesses to optimize their site so take the time to visit a site like this or one of its’ competitors. It will pay off in the long run.
  7. Not Engaging with Your Customers – the customers in today’s market don’t want to just have ads shoved at them all the time. Customers now want to engage with businesses in a meaningful way. Businesses can engage with customers on many different platforms and devices from social media to emails. You can engage customers in many ways, from asking open ended questions to posting videos or creating contests asking customers to write or post about your brand or product. If you become good at engaging with customers and allow them to engage, those brand loyalists will take your marketing to another level and the payoff and benefits will be endless.
  8. Leaving Out Your Call to Action – One of the biggest sins you can commit in mobile marketing is forgetting a call-to-action. Your ad needs to include a CTA like “Call this number” or “Come visit us at our new location at…”. The main goal of any ad is to drive sales. If you forget a call to action, you’re missing out on that driver. You can spend a lot of time and money on great content and a plan to distribute, but if you don’t include a solid and clear call-to-action, that time and money will be wasted.
  9. Forgetting to Test and Check – Sure, everyone makes mistakes. But it’s still very important to check and double check the content before it is distributed. A small typo in an address, phone number, web address or failing to test something you are asking your customer to do, could be the difference between a sale and losing a potential customer. On top of that, it could make you or your company look incompetent.
  10. Creating an App Just for the Sake of Creating an App – before creating an app, it is most beneficial to think about what consumers will use the app for. App creation, distribution and discoverability are very costly and failing to think through an app can be a big waste. Not every company needs an app to be successful in mobile marketing. If the customer can get the information easily from your mobile website or an functions of the app won’t help you or the customer, save yourself some time and money and avoid creating it as it will mostly like not be downloaded or will end up deleted shortly after download which doesn’t benefit your or the consumer.

About the Authors

ff0c5f8bd741fa503bcb2a1ab9636f6bJake Bauer

Jake Bauer has been working at Vatterott Educational Centers for over 5 years as a Senior Academic Analyst where he oversees the curriculum development and new program implementation for all 20 campuses. He received my Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from UMSL in 2009. He is currently enrolled in the MBA program at UMSL and expect to graduate with an emphasis in Marketing by December 2016.

paul-headshotPaul Eschen

As the Marketing Director for the Maritz Travel Company, Paul acts as strategic lead in the development and deployment of the Meeting & Incentive Division’s marketing strategy as it relates to sales level messaging, web and digital marketing, promotional sponsorship, and client lead generation and nurture-based efforts. He graduated from the University of Missouri in 2009 with a Bachelor of Journalism in Strategic Communications and is currently enrolled in the MBA program at UMSL.