7 Common Mistakes Mobile Marketers Make – And How To Avoid Them

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The quickest way to ruin a business is to produce good advertising but provide poor service. Likewise, you can sabotage your mobile marketing campaign if you reach people in an ineffective way.

The following are seven common mistakes mobile marketers make, and ones you must avoid when launching a mobile marketing campaign.

1) The Shotgun Approach

A simple text message is a noticeable interruption, but over saturation will result in alienation of potential customers. A text every other day is enough to keep you in front-of-mind awareness with your subscribers or customers. The all-too-common multiple daily broadcasts will undoubtedly come across like spam and may cause your potential customer to tune your ads out, delete them, or possibly block future notifications–especially text messages because they cost certain users money each time they open one. Approach your customer with semi-regular, high-quality broadcasts rather than shooting your mailing list’s inboxes full of your ads. It could ruin your advertising reputation if you don’t.

2) Ignoring Device Characteristics & Capabilities

Mobile devices are basically pocket-portable phones, audio players, video cameras, and audio recorders. Your text message marketing campaign can and should incorporate these capabilities to best capture the attention of your mailing list. Engage them even further by encouraging them to send pictures, video, and audio, as part of the response your message solicits. However, keep in mind a web page will look different on an iPhone vs. an Android, and both will look different than they do on a desktop or laptop screen. Good mobile design takes these differences into consideration. Make sure your campaign works properly on a mobile device screen and not like a shrunken version of a desktop.

3) No Calls for Action

An effective mobile campaigns generates immediate response from the recipient. From keywords related to discounts, to QR codes, to polls and contests, SMS and text, mobile advertising enjoys some of the highest response rates in the business. with a 94% open rate. Therefore it stands to reason that your call to action will get an immediate response. However, those responses only come if you ask for them — with specific instructions in each and every contact. Make sure to be clear and specific as to what the customer must do.

4) Too Complicated

One disadvantage of mobile devices–or advantage, depending on how you look at it–is their functionality in comparison to desktops and laptops. Messages that require navigating complex websites, filling in a lot of extensive forms, or downloading items, are difficult and annoying on a mobile device. Therefore you will need to keep the limitations of mobile devices in mind when designing your campaign. Entering information into web forms via mobile device is a pain in butt. Although you might need to ask for info from time to time, avoid doing so as much as possible. If possible, allow an easy mobile log-in that accesses personal information your customer entered earlier on his desktop or laptop. This leads to our next mistake mobile marketers make,

5) Neglecting to Test

The worst way to find out about a serious problem is when your customers tell you about it. Mobile messages and platforms often look very different on a mobile device than on the computer where you designed them. Always test your message on several different mobile platforms and OSes before going live. Not just for appearance, but make sure it’s easy for users to interact with your campaign in the ways you want them to.

Form a “test group” of loyal customers you can send rough drafts of your newest message. This group will help you customize and tweak your work. Helping you with your campaign can also simultaneously increase their loyalty and interest in your brand.

6) Using The Same Campaign on Every Advertising Platform

Don’t just broadcast the same message across all your platforms (print, radio, web and mobile). Even though this can save on some design costs, it fails to take advantage of the unique characteristics of each marketing method. On the one hand it’s good to keep a common theme across different initiatives, you need to make sure to tailor each to its appropriate markets and characteristics.

7) You Leave No Easy Way To Opt-Out

Forgetting to provide a link or instructions for recipients to opt out of your list if they wish to stop receiving mobile messages from you. It might seem counter-productive to give your readers a simple way to unsubscribe from your campaign. But not doing so may cause you unnecessary aggravation. Marketers are required by law to include an opt-out method. So make sure you provide an easy and obvious opt-out method.

An effective mobile advertising campaign depends on more than just the message you send. The results you achieve are based on doing a number of things correctly from the beginning, such as avoiding these mistakes.

For further reading, the following 7 Biggest Mobile Marketing Mistakes You Can Make Jim Edwards writes about in his post at Business Insider take these ideas further and includes some more that are not so obvious.