Are you thinking about creating mobile marketing strategy for your business or clients?
When I work with my clients to create a mobile marketing strategy, I often get asked if they should build a mobile app or a site to reach their mobile audience. My answer is always, “it depends”.
It depends on:
- Which smartphone or tablet application is your target demographic using? Do they use many different platforms?
- How is your target audience going to look for the information that you are going to provide via a mobile site or app? Does your audience currently look for your information via Google mobile search? (FYI- you can measure this). Or maybe they just are going to look for your information via the app store?
- How many other companies are providing the same information via mobile sites or apps? What does your competition look like?
- If the market looks flooded, then what are you offering that is different and would encourage your audience to pick you over other apps/sites?
- Do you have a promotion plan in place? Do you know the challenges behind website and/or mobile app marketing?
Let’s talk through how you can answer the above questions and start building your mobile marketing strategy:
1. Which platform is your target audience using?
There are few places to discover this.
- Recent research shows that for more than half of all mobile users the number one function that they use via their Web browser is search, according to the latest local search-usage study from comScore.
- Pew Internet and American Life runs a variety of studies of mobile use based on the topic and whether that usage is via search or via mobile app. Finally, any existing research you have on your customers is more useful that any of the above sources.
2. How are they looking for your information?
The free Google Keyword Tool is a great source of information, and by selecting advanced options and then “smartphones” you can get data for mobile searches in Google. Bing now has a similar tool.
3. What is the competition like for the type of app you want to create?
By quickly searching both app stores you can see how many like minded apps there are and can see how many downloads, likes, reviews, etc. In addition, Quantcast just rolled out new functionality that will let you review:
- information on app traffic
- how that traffic breaks down by device
- how it breaks down by app version, and
- return usage
4. If the market is flooded, how are you different?
This really should be one of the first question you ask yourself whenever you’re thinking about launching a new product. Considering that mobile apps rank in the app store based on daily use, downloads, star ratings, reviews, etc. So you should think through these questions:
- How are you going to counteract that with your app product?
- Why should they download your app over the competitors?
- How are is your app different or new?
5. What promotion plan do you have in place?
If you are lucky enough to build your website so that it’s responsive, then all of your desktop SEO efforts will enhance your mobile efforts as well.
If you’ve launched a mobile only set of landing pages or a mobile only website (that stands independently from your desktop site) then you’ll need to double your SEO and social efforts for your mobile website.
But what if you need to market a mobile app?
Here are few stats from the 2010 Nielsen Company Mobile Apps Playbook that address the challenges of mobile app marketing
- Only 5% of users keep the app after the first month
- There are over 350K apps in the iPhone app store (over 30,000 apps in Android’s app store)
- Each app store results screen only shows about 4.5 listings and a total of 25 before you have to go to the next page (iPhone
- Both Android and Apple have tweaked how it ranks apps in the mobile app search. One factor is downloads, and most insiders think it is also daily and monthly users of the app.
- Without building an independent landing page to promote the app, you will only receive on search listing for your app
There’s no doubt that all businesses should be developing strategies to be found by their target audience (who at this point is most likely looking for you on a mobile device) and many businesses should be thinking about how they can build a stronger brand affiliation with their audience by engaging them on their mobile devices.
Focus on being found via mobile search first
I would suggest that all businesses focus on at least being found when you customers search for you via mobile by creating a set of mobile landing pages. That will allow you to gather mobile usage data from your audience and then think about how you might expand your mobile marketing strategy beyond a mobile friendly website.
If you have the budget to take a multi-prong approach to setting up a mobile presence for your business, then check out this mobile strategy infographic that has a great flow chart for you to figure out which combination of mobile platforms (mobile only site, native app or mobile responsive website) would be best for you.
At a bare minimum you are going to need a mobile landing page to be found in mobile search based on the latest statements and guides from Google, so if you’re not thinking of building mobile assets, you should.