Common Mobile Marketing Mistakes and How to Fix Them

With just a few simple adjustments, any mobile marketer can avoid the pitfalls that negatively affect a mobile marketing strategy. Letting go of common mobile marketing assumptions is the first step to achieving noticeable and lasting growth strategies.

If we take a step back and take a look at how much mobile has risen in popularity across the world, we can see that the opportunity to reach more people is more abundant than ever. In the past two years alone, mobile use has skyrocketed. Consequently, many companies are running toward opportunities that allow them to reach these users where they are - so, where are they exactly?

The app marketplace is the frontier of service, product, and feature delivery. Users around the world rely on apps to connect them with the businesses, people, and places they need. Remaining visible in the eyes of users is crucial for every mobile marketer. Yet, many of them are misled about best practices that allow them to reach the users they want on the app store marketplace and beyond.

As an increasing number of companies are joining the app marketplace, there are fundamental steps in their mobile marketing and App Store Optimization (ASO) strategy that need to be addressed. Whether it be a sole reliance on paid marketing, web data, or forgoing A/B testing, as mobile marketers, we must be cognizant of what may be making us fall behind in conversion and visibility potential.

Mobile Competition and Users Are Growing in Size

The COVID-19 pandemic boosted the growing trend in mobile use, but as smartphones and mobile technology become easier to access and afford, there is a global demand for mobile services, apps, and product liaisons more than ever before.

According to Statista, there are nearly 6.5 billion unique mobile phone users around the world. Three-quarters of the world can now access the wider mobile marketplace. This surpasses any other mode of personal technology available today - even computers. As mobile marketers, we know this presents us with unique opportunities to create tailored and unique marketing experiences for a plethora of different people. But how can we effectively target them with messages that matter to them? 

While this question can stump even the most seasoned mobile marketer, foundational mobile marketing tactics can surely direct us in the right direction. Many of the things we previously thought to be true of mobile marketing best practices might not lead us to the most lucrative opportunities we are seeing unfold right in front of us. 

There are misconceptions and mistakes mobile marketers continue to make that impede them from putting their best foot forward in a more competitive and expanding mobile marketing environment. To address these issues, we'll discuss some of the most common mobile marketing mistakes and how to fix them. 

Mistake #1: Relying on Paid Campaigns for Success

It's fun to pop and drop, but not so much in mobile growth. Paid campaigns give apps and mobile marketing campaigns a great boost in visibility and conversion, but they're often short-lived. In the right conditions, paid campaigns can be self-sustaining, but getting it to that point requires a more deliberate look and understanding of what platforms bring in the most traffic, and whether the organic growth that supplements its growth is doing its part. 

The Solution

A table is only as good as the legs that support it. This parallel applies to the role of organic growth in paid campaign success. You can eat off of a slab of wood, but will it provide you with its full utility of it? Organic search helps bridge this gap through keyword rank growth, better targeting, and increasing visibility without the need for paid marketing right off the bat.

This is a very user-friendly approach to increasing visibility - it accounts for the timeliness and targeting discrepancies of paid campaigns which often miss the mark in getting the right message to the user, at the right time. 

The way consumers and users digest mobile marketing messages, and marketing messages, in general, can make it difficult to capture them. Users scroll past marketing messages even if they capture their attention. They may think they'll remember to look the company or app up later, but will they? Reversely, will they remember who you are after the initial contact has been made? Once your campaign runs out, will the user be able to recall or find you? Organic mobile marketing growth is the foundation of all paid marketing campaigns.

Mistake #2: Using Web Data for Mobile

Why couldn't the mobile marketer advertise their baking app? They had a leaky funnel. When the time comes to market your app or business, mobile users can sometimes fall through the cracks of the marketing funnel. However, the funnel may not be the problem, to begin with. The data used to make the decisions to guide the user through it might be.

So, is it wise for a mobile marketer to rely on web data to back their mobile marketing strategy?  Let's answer this question with another question - Would you use a fork to eat soup? Odds are, you wouldn't There is only a 20% overlap in web and mobile data. The way users search for information and apps on mobile varies dramatically. Web searches for a typical user, comparatively, resemble dictionary length-like queries. However, mobile users typically search using 2-3 words maximum. To arm your mobile marketing strategy with more reflective data, you have to match the user's search habits.

The Solution

This mistake is common yet completely avoidable. It's just a matter of making a simple switch, but it involves a more thorough intention and research. Since mobile users search for apps and services in quick, bite-sized words, mobile marketers must capture user intent more concisely. For the web, users often resort to typing out exactly what they need, and the web query then populates thousands of direct and supplementary results. For mobile, marketers must effectively capture user intent rather than the action the query demands. To do this effectively, mobile markets must capture the features that users may be searching for from all angles - not just the most direct and obvious ones. Different features attract different targets, and the brief phrases they use to initiate a search look very different from one user to the next. So, developers and marketers must effectively capture intent above all else.

Mistake #3: Forgoing A/B Testing

A/B testing is an invaluable tool to test the effectiveness of your mobile marketing strategy. Whether for apps or for external marketing campaigns, making sure your marketing visuals and copy are effective at pulling in conversion growth is paramount. Forgoing A/B testing is more common in mobile marketing than on other platforms. Assumptions of web and mobile similarity are partially to blame, but a lack of understanding of what A/B testing can do is also a pitfall. 

For app marketers specifically, A/B testing allows developers to test which elements of their app page perform the best. Without knowing which elements bring in the most valuable and receptive sources of traffic, marketers miss out on key opportunities to engage with their users more effectively.

The Solution

If you haven't done so already, incorporate A/B testing as one of the most crucial steps in your mobile marketing strategy. If you have already, keep in mind best practices like limited treatment changes, timing, establishing testing schedules, and target selection processes. Continuous iteration is the key to remaining competitive in the mobile marketing space. Iterative practices and seasonal updates convey relevancy to users, and A/B testing allows developers to do that by making conscious adjustments to their marketing presentation. This also sets up all future paid marketing campaigns for success. Testing which treatments of your app page or marketing campaign pull the most conversion rates should be standard in all mobile marketing plans. 

TL;DR

Mobile marketing brings us opportunities to connect with users in a way that has previously been unimaginable. To get it right, marketers need to constantly reassess their marketing strategy to ensure they don't entrap themselves in habits that may not be serving their long-term success. Making the switch from web to mobile data, building organic momentum, and adopting A/B testing are all critical success factors in long-term success. 

About the Author

Gummicube Co-Founder & CEO, Dave Bell

Gummicube is a global leader in App Store Optimization with more than 11 years of experience optimizing and marketing apps. We offer the leading enterprise ASO technology and agency services, providing support to clients around the world. Our company is trusted by thousands of enterprise brands and leading startups including Microsoft, LinkedIn, Bethesda, SWEAT, GrubHub, McAfee and many others.