There are over 3.8 billion unique mobile phone users in the world, and in places like China, 98% of internet users browse the web via their mobile devices. Any successful marketing strategy will have to take this reality into account in order to be successful in this connected business environment.

In this post, we’ll look at the 5 essentials you need to take your mobile marketing from good – to Mind-Blowing.

Get The Best Mobile Marketing

Getting the best out of your mobile marketing strategy will depend on smart planning, and making certain key moves that can be the difference between the mobile marketing winners, and the also-rans.

It goes without saying that before you jump into strategy essentials, you have to have set your goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Each brand and campaign will be different: for some it’s all about performance, downloads and retention, while for others factors like brand awareness or views might be important. It’s critical at this point to figure out what’s most important to you, because everything else flows from this.

We would encourage you to be as specific as possible, so that you are able to measure success on an ongoing basis, and make the necessary adjustments when things appear to be going off course.

At Moburst, we’ve built our company on successful mobile marketing, and want to share our tried and tested tips with you. Below are the 5 Mobile Marketing Essentials that you can implement in order to reach your goals.

The 5 Mobile Marketing Essentials

1. Know Your Audience

The best mobile marketing strategies and campaigns start with an excellent grasp of your target audience. We recommend spending more time on this step than on any other, because what you find here will have an outsize impact on everything else that you do.

You’ll want to hit on the typical profile of your target audience: who are they, their geo location, where they hang out online. Age brackets, gender, interests, how they socialize…all of these things come together to create the audience that you’re marketing towards.

The reasoning behind this is clear. The Pew Research Center shows how “78% of 18- to 24-year-olds are Snapchat users, but that share falls to 54% among those ages 25 to 29”. So marketing an app for active senior citizens on Snapchat probably won’t be your go-to strategy.

Social Media Usage By Age – Pew Research Center

This also becomes important when your users are spread across multiple geographic regions. Localization and geo-targeting with different messages can be a massive boost for your campaign.

2. Choose Your Channels

This leads us to choosing the right channels for your message. Depending on your audience and how you’ve segmented your users and potential users, multiple platforms will often be appropriate.

You can reach your users across more traditional platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat, or look at leveraging some fresher sites like Pinterest.

Whichever platforms you choose, it’s critical to keep the message appropriate for the platform. Snapchat campaigns will be edgier and more unstructured, while Instagram campaigns without beautiful imagery will be wasted.

With the goal of appealing to your audience at exactly the right time and place, tools like location-based targeting become valuable. There are many data- and prediction-based tools out there that can help optimize your campaign based on this “perfect time, perfect place” approach.

Within each platform, there are different types of ad types, and it’s worth doing the research to select the ad type that best serves your marketing goals and KPIs.

Another important distinction to make when it comes to channels, is of course iPhone versus Android. Some key differences between the platforms, especially when it comes to their respective App Stores, include:

All of these differences have to be taken into account when it comes to choosing channels, optimizing for different devices and geos, and of course, choosing the right creatives for your campaign. Which brings us to…

3. Use Clever Creatives

We’ve seen it over and over again: great creatives are the difference between a forgettable campaign, and a memorable, successful one.

With just fractions of a second available to catch a user’s interest before they scroll or swipe away, a great creative needs to be both arresting and relevant to that specific user.

We also recommend using all the space allotted to you by thinking outside the box. A great example is screenshots: while in the past, many brands used one unique screenshot per space in the App Stores, today innovative brands are using all of the spaces together, to create one holistic story.

Every creative is important: from marketing and social media posts, to app icons and app store creatives. It also goes without saying that when you can use video, you should. Just remember to put your most important message as close to the beginning of the video as you can, because most users are unlikely to watch until the end.

You’ll also want to consider the type of creatives that will best suit your app, and most effectively achieve your goals. For example, some mobile campaigns will focus on features and functions of the app, and highlight dashboards, usability or elements that are unique to that app. Others will focus on how that app can change your life. We’ve all seen those, with more aspirational imagery, people laughing and playing in the ocean, and so on.

There’s also a middle ground, which combines these two approaches. Instead of taking a “spray and pray” approach, you should make sure you’re consistent, and test often. And that’s why:

4. Consistency is Critical

Nothing turns users off more than seeing one style of messaging on an ad, only to see something completely different when they click through and arrive at the app’s App Store page.

Consistency across the user’s entire experience should be your goal from the outset – from acquisition, and all the way through the App Store, onboarding, and even in-app experience.

We’ve seen this specifically when it comes to special promotional events. Around the holidays for example, some apps change their app icons to have a “Christmas feel”. This is great, but when this isn’t followed up in the rest of the experience, tends to fall a bit flat. Other apps however go so far as to build special holiday-inspired levels or characters which wows users and gives a huge boost to retention and engagement.

This is also where our previous comment about spending time planning and crafting your campaign comes into play. Consistency is something that has to be built into your campaign from the beginning, and will draw on such things as:

• the look and feel of your app
• brand voice
• campaign type
• and of course any news or new features

Looking at any of the top brands both online and off, you’ll notice a consistency about their campaigns across multiple media. This includes color of course, but also more intangible elements such as look and feel. As your brand becomes more and more successful, this consistency becomes a space that you own and a differentiating factor for your brand – something your audience will come to rely upon and trust.

5. Test Early, Test Often

Testing your mobile marketing early and often has a number of distinct advantages:

• Most importantly, you get a focus on what channels and messaging are working best – saving money and time
• Make incremental changes and assess how these affect metrics
• Test different creative approaches
• Test localization for each geo to ensure optimization across your audience

We have a number of important caveats and rules when it comes to testing:

1. Test effectively: gather data including user feedback, changes you’ve made in the past and their impact, and so on
2. Test an informed assumption, such as “A screenshot showing our app’s dashboard is likely to convert better than one showing aspirational images”
3. A good test should be run for at least 7 days
4. Testing should be done in consistent environments

During testing, do not play with the creatives or try and optimize for lower-cost installs during the test. This will in result in compromised data and often in incorrect conclusions.

One device, a world of possibilities

Successful Mobile Marketing

The world of mobile is has become an integral part of our everyday lives. It’s through our mobile device that we shop, entertain ourselves and communicate with one another.

To conclude, remember to take these 5 mobile marketing essentials, and apply them with your own brand voice and your own specific differentiators.

Successful mobile marketing is about doing the basics right, and constantly revisiting your assumptions and progress so far, in order to constantly optimize and improve.

Good luck with your mobile marketing campaign – we’re sure you’re going to be successful!