Things to Avoid as a Mobile-First Marketer

To the modern, mobile-first marketer, the consumer’s phone is more than just another channel – it’s the nucleus the entire brand/audience relationship revolves around.

Consider the classical approach to consumer journey. What’s wrong with this story:

It essentially ignores the basic reality of how people consume media. In the real world, “John” has his phone by his side every second of the day, and he actively uses it every step of the way. He uses it to look up recipes while he grocery shops, he uses it to check Facebook while he watches Dancing With the Stars, and so on. Every individual piece of branded media that consumers engage with can be interconnected by the common thread of mobile interaction, meaning your mobile strategy is the crux of any integrated marketing operation.

Mobile-first marketers avoid the mistake of undermining mobile strategy in their marketing operation. To fully take charge of the consumer’s entire journey from awareness, to activation, to advocacy, mobile-first marketers follow four key principles:

• Deliver humor, information, or interactivity – not just “awareness.” Structure campaigns around delivering content that’s of immediate use to the consumer, not just your brand. The more value your content has, the more seamlessly it can be integrated into different touch points along the purchasing funnel (and the more likely it will be shared on social media).
• Avoid creative assets with baked-in text that won’t scale well on different screen sizes, and never use device-specific tools like Adobe Flash that will only load for desktop users. Make sure that any marketing content you produce renders beautifully and responsively on any device.
• Use UTM strings to create custom URLs with unique parameters to identify all sources of traffic hitting your landing page. After all, cross-channel publishing isn’t particularly useful without an effective means of tracking attribution.
• Include pathways for the consumer to extend the brand relationship beyond their first interaction. A way to opt-in to an SMS or email database or a prominent call-out for social share can help you nurture a single conversion into a loyal brand advocate.

If you’d like a free, comprehensive resource for mobile marketing strategy, download our massive 60-page ebook, The 2015 Marketer’s Guide to Mobile Engagement. This guide features high-level strategy and real-world tactics for integrating measurable mobile engagement into every marketing campaign.

DOWNLOAD GUIDE