Avoid These Mobile Marketing Mistakes At All Costs
It’s been said that if you build it, they will come. But that simply isn’t true, and never was. That’s why companies of all sizes hire sales people, and pay large commissions for sales. You can’t just wait until people discover and start flocking to your good idea all on their own. You have to go out and get them. Of course, what we are talking about is marketing. It can never be left to chance. And it has to evolve and change with the times. There was a time when hanging a sign on a shingle in a busy location was enough. Then, people discovered computers and the internet.
Next, it was a matter of having a good website and gaming the search engines. But everyone moved on to smartphones and mobile experiences. With each new paradigm, marketers face new challenges. And to date, there have been none greater than mobile. Get mobile right, and you can build an empire. Get it wrong, and you probably won’t last. There are a few particularly egregious mobile errors that you need to avoid. Even if you don’t do anything especially right, make sure you don’t do the following things wrong:
Doing It Yourself Without Proper Expertise
To avoid the mistake of biting off more than you can chew, you might want to try marketing software. Some of the big names in marketing automation are Marketo, Eloqua, and Hubspot. All packages have their strengths and weaknesses. It’s a matter of doing a comparative analysis to find out which is best for you.
If you don’t have the expertise but decide to do it yourself to save money, you could be making a costly mistake. When it comes to marketing, there are more things that can go wrong than right. For example, you might decide to manage your own SEO marketing efforts. But if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, you can easily find your entire site delisted by Google because you ran afoul of their back linking rules.
That clever pop-over covering most of the screen that demands user interaction might also land your website on the tenth search page instead of the first. Mobile marketing is a lot more than paying for ads and having a nice website. If you don’t have the expertise, hire it out to someone who does.
Mistaking Spam For Marketing
There is not a bright, bold line separating email marketing and spam. Like obscenity, it’s hard to define, but you know it when you see it. In general, all unsolicited email from a business can be considered spam by the recipient. Just check your own inbox to see what I mean. By now, you’ve heard of mobile responsive websites. What you may not be familiar with is mobile responsive email. What you need to know is that everything designed to be read on the internet has to be designed with a smartphone in mind. With email, you have to pay special attention to the subject line. If it reads like a sales pitch, the email will never be opened. If it looks like a webpage that cannot be fully read in mobile email, it’s just spam. Don’t bother sending it.
Disregarding Mobile Limitations
Not all smartphones are on an unlimited plan. Most people have to deal with data caps and bandwidth limitations. Viewing websites heavy with large photos, videos, flash content, trackers, and the like actually costs the viewer money. They will not thank you for that. It’s also true that not all smartphones are iPhones, or the latest Android phone. The average Android phone sells for around $250, and many sell for much less. They are not always the most powerful devices. Loading your marketing laden site or email might actually slow down their phone to a noticeable degree.
On a desktop connected to home WiFi, these are not huge concerns. But on mobile, marketing must be done with a much lighter touch. People have much less patience with email spam when on the go, and they have more access to content blockers on mobile phones. Push too hard on mobile, and you’ll find yourself blocked.
Marketing is not a DIY kind of job, and mobile marketing is even less so. If you don’t happen to be an expert, hire one. Never spam your customers, even by accident. If you are not sure of the difference, don’t do email marketing on your own. And never treat mobile like a small desktop. When your marketing costs your clients money, time and productivity, you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of an ad blocker. But if you avoid these mobile marketing mistakes at all costs, your digital presence will be just fine.
