When smartphones slowly crawled their way into our lives some years back, they were seen as another way to go online when away from our desktops. We were used to accessing emails, social feeds, and work all while sitting down, and suddenly, we could respond to a coworker or upload a photo while waiting for our morning coffee. It became a casual part of our day, although we still spent significantly more time—and money—on desktop.
Adults are now more likely than ever to go online using a smartphone as part of an expected and consistent experience when engaging with brands. 52% of customers will be less likely to engage if brands lack consistency.
What does this mean for mobile marketers?
Around half of all smartphone users now spend five or more hours on their smartphones every day—a third of their waking hours! If you look at that statistic again and translate it into minutes, we’re essentially reaching for our smartphones every three minutes, for a one-minute session. As The Guardian’s Tom Grinsted said, “the shift to mobile is driven by habit; people are often at home surrounded by devices—desktops, laptops, smart-TVs—that are all objectively better for content consumption than mobiles. But people reach for their phones because they’re habitualized to them.”
Companies and departments must manage mobile search, mobile PPC, apps, push notifications and SMS marketing as part of one holistic effort within the same department, as they all contribute towards a bigger picture of the user journey. Most importantly, companies with strong omnichannel presence and engagement retain 89% of their customers on average compared to 33% for those lacking a fluid customer experience across their platforms.
Mobile is an opportunity you can’t miss out on—here are the three skills that will make you a priceless mobile marketer.
Skill 1: Tailor creatives to user intent
By now it’s clear customers use mobile whenever it suits, whether they’re cooking a meal, DIYing their home, commuting, running after their kids in the park, or getting a haircut. Knowing which scenarios your customers use their mobile devices for is the key to serving the right content at the right time. The skill that will set you apart here is the deep understanding of the platforms, social channels, search terms, etc. that drive a certain behavior. For example, capacity of someone who can read your ad, watch the accompanying video, and sign up for an offer will be entirely different for a student walking to class compared to a 30-something parent browsing their phone on the sofa after the kids fell asleep. The bottom line: make sure to tailor copy, video and images based on behaviors and context for each channel you use for enhanced customer engagement.
Skill 2: Cross-channel monitoring and optimizing
Whether you’re driving app downloads, mobile purchases, or in-store traffic with your mobile marketing, the only way to hit your KPIs is to measure your progress. This isn’t new to marketers, but with the number of touchpoints your customers can find you through increasing, the data is becoming more difficult to mine.
Below are some tools that will help you monitor your customer data:
- Advertising channels for mobile acquisition and retention – Facebook Ads manager, Instagram advertising, Pinterest ads, and AdWords mobile ads, come with unique advantages and reporting capabilities. A thorough understanding of these features can help produce substantial results by tracking customers’ actions following any interactions with your ads and running A/B tests to tweak content for best performance.
- Google Analytics for mobile traffic – Unpacking data like behavior flow, goals, and conversion rates will help you build upon user intent and set KPIs and goals that make sense for your audience.
- Mobile app analytics – Tools like Mixpanel, Appboy, and Localytics empower marketers to understand in-depth cohort behaviors in your app, their journey, friction points, attention spans, and much more. In turn, you’ll be able to adjust everything from screen flow to push and in-app messaging based on their actions.
- Mobile messaging– 67% of people who have already messaged businesses plan on increasing their communications with companies within the next two years. The use of Messenger, Slack, and other messaging apps by businesses will likely only increase and leverage the practicality and personal touch of 1:1 conversations with customers. If you’re not on board yet, now is the time.
Skill 3: Translating data into insights for other teams
As a mobile marketer, no one understands your mobile user’s behavior better than you. Session length, return visits, number of pages or screens viewed, and even subsequent actions like support inquiries and abandoned carts tell a very specific story.
You already know the value of this for acquiring and retaining those users from your department’s perspective, but there are several teams you can impact with your customer data:
- Product planning – Knowing where your user stumble in their journey and where they thrive can make a substantial difference for the overall company roadmap, such as features or products.
- Customer support – If you can give your support team insights based on previous behaviors, you will make them more efficient and prepared to handle customers’ pain points.
Ultimately, your talent as a mobile marketer lies in the power to take huge sets of data and break them down into practical insights for each of the teams—including your own. Once you do that, you can fuel and optimize not only your workflow, but also the company’s big picture and ultimately impact its bottom line.