4 Simple Strategies for Becoming an Even Better Mobile Marketer

From game-changing announcements from Apple & Google to the exciting-yet-punishing pace of change and innovation, staying ahead of the curve in mobile marketing today isn’t easy. So what can you do to make sure you and your team keep your edge day in and day out?

As a strategist helping top brands win with mobile every day, I’ve found that it’s easy for teams to get caught up in the cycle of releases, features and functions and, as a result, lose track of some of the fun and fundamental ways to keep improving on a mobile marketing strategy.  

So here are four simple yet often overlooked back-to-basics tactics I use to help keep myself and the clients I work with in it to win it. I guarantee that doing even one of these four things will help you keep up with the pace of change, keep new ideas coming in and keep your strategy — and your results — on track.  

1) Be Curious: Ask How People Are Using Connected Devices 

If you want to learn more about how people are using connected devices  (from phones to smart home assistants like Google Home and Alexa) in the wild, be curious. Your co-workers, neighbors — even the stranger sitting next to you on the plane — probably have one or more smartphones, tablets and in-home assistants, and they’re likely to be willing to share answers to friendly questions like:

• What mobile apps do you really like and why?

• Were you surprised by something you were able to do on your phone or some other connected device this week?

• What’s the last push notification you got — was it helpful or annoying?

Striking up conversations like these has not only exposed me to cool new apps and ideas, but also offered remarkably revealing and valuable insights about why people repeatedly engage with some apps over others — and they may spark the next big idea for your brand.

2) Try Living Mobile-Only For a Week

Fifty-one percent of internet users world use only mobile devices to access the Internet — and that number is increasing year-over-year.

Challenge yourself to only use your smartphone for both personal and professional tasks and see how it shapes your experience with brands and websites you visit.

As you go through the week, ask yourself some questions like:

• Was I able to do what I needed to do on mobile web, or did I need to download an app?  

• How frictionless was it to do what I needed to do?

• Did the mobile messaging I received (push notifications, in-app messages, SMS or other) valuable to me? What was missing, or what could have been better?

• Were there missed opportunities to use the unique capabilities of the phone — like sensors or mobile wallet — to make things easier — like offering Touch ID for passwords, an integration or voice search?

Take your learnings and apply them to the digital experience for your brand: where could you reduce friction or be more helpful? Where are users getting stuck? Then talk to your team and see how and where improvements to customer experience fit on your roadmap.

Related Content: 5 Things the Best Mobile Notifications Have in Common

3) Create a Mobile Value Proposition — and Put It In Writing

It’s easy to say you put customers first, but have you thought about what this really means for customer experiences on mobile and other connected devices?

Having a mobile value proposition for your brand in writing is one of the most overlooked yet most critical steps a brand can take to help get everyone across multiple teams get on the same page — as well as create a decision framework that helps you decide what you will (and won’t) do.

To create the mobile value proposition, ask questions like:  

• What do people expect from us when they interact with us on mobile?

• Why would someone download our app?

• Once someone downloads our app, are we taking advantage of the unique capabilities of smartphones (sensors, contextual messaging, etc.) to really engage them, making an experience easier, faster, better, or more delightful?

Then, fill in the blanks to this sentence to create a simple mobile value proposition: My brand’s mobile [app, website, messaging] helps users [detail the unique value, utility or relevance you offer].

4) Use Your Data to Pinpoint Incremental Improvement Opportunities

Wherever you are within your data analytics program — from very sophisticated to just getting started — there are incremental improvements you can make in how you use the data to take action.

Here are three ideas for setting an improvement goal, and the data you could use to create and test a hypothesis — and move the needle.  

#1 I want to increase direct and influenced app opens from push notifications.

Use your data to see:

• Are there patterns in the types of push notifications that result in direct or influenced opens (lifecycle, location-based, coupons/discounts/offers? etc.)

• Are our A/B/n tests of copy in our push notifications helping us find the voice or tone that  resonates best?

• Do personalized push notifications drive more app opens than broadcast or generic notifications?

#2 I want to reduce customer churn/improve customer retention on mobile.

Use your data to see:

• Which users are the most likely to churn — and which are the least likely? (Our Predictive Churn solution uses machine learning to help you quickly spot your most valuable and least valuable cohorts and see patterns.)

• How have our win-back campaigns performed?

• How do push notifications impact our customer retention rates? (We’ve got benchmarks for you to measure against in this data study.)

#3 I want to use what I know about customers from their mobile behavior across all my marketing campaigns.

Use your data to see:

• What do we know about our customers from their mobile actions that we can use in other channels? (User-level customer intelligence makes this possible — see how our customer intelligence solutions Insight & Connect help marketers access and put this kind of data to work.)

• What are our most valuable customers doing on mobile?

Even if you take action on just one of these ideas, you’ll be well on your way to becoming an even more effective marketer than you are today. Tell me how this went for you! Leave a comment here or over on Twitter or LinkedIn.