Mobile Marketing – You’re Doing It Wrong

Mobile penetration is growing at an exponential rate throughout the whole world.

The same can be said about smartphones. Every month, a new report comes out stating the rise in mobile Internet users. And most marketers are looking at the data and trying to figure out how to reach their prospects in this new, emerging giant of a medium.

And, in 9 out of 10 cases, doing it wrong.

When it comes to mobile marketing, marketers are trying to fit their old, classic viewpoints into the new. They are taking what they know best about other channels and implementing those tactics.

Like banner advertisements – either in the form of mobile web banners or in-app advertising. The problem is, not only is screen size going against this whole strategy, mobile devices (specifically handphones) are utilitarian in nature. That means we are accustomed to doing one task at a time with our mobile phone.

An ad, advertising an app, within that app.

Any form of banner advertisement is basically an interruption. Many times, your prospects are clicking on your banner ads by mistake. From the CTR point of view, you’re going to receive lots of traffic – but no conversion. And from the prospect’s point of view, you are just irritating the heck out of them.

Next in the line of mobile marketing blunders will be branded apps. If you are not providing great utility within your app, there is no incentive for your customers or prospects to download it. Period!

So how are you going to tackle this whole new world that is mobile marketing?

We need to focus on content – mobile-friendly content. And the question is not whether it should be long-form or short-form, visual or textual. The key point is to make your content easily consumable from mobile devices.

There is no shortcut for it. No easy way to get there. Starting from your website, to your PDF downloads, product demo videos, and case studies, all your marketing content needs to be mobile-friendly.