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Chapter 6: Tactics for Targeting & Tracking Mobile Marketing
Marketing isn’t marketing if it can’t be measured - otherwise, it’s just advertising. To be qualified as marketing, results have to be targeted, tracked and measured. Of course, this is all much easier said than done. Fortunately, with a little research and planning, you can give yourself a much higher opportunity for success.
Targeting Tactics
Before you can worry about measuring the results of a mobile marketing campaign, you need to figure out who you are marketing TO! While many people claim that sales is simply a “ numbers game” , that isn’t always true. Let’s use the typical website as an example.
If you currently have a website with a conversion rate of 5%, that means that for every 100 visitors who access your site, 5 of them will buy. If your sale price is $25.00, that means that every 100 customers translates into $125.00 in sales.
Knowing this, how would you go about increasing your revenues?
Most people opt to increase the amount of traffic to their sites. They figure if they can get 50,000 new visitors, that will translate into $62,500. Sounds great, right?
Unfortunately, when indiscriminate means are used to increase traffic - just for the sake of traffic - is that your conversion rate can actually go DOWN! So, instead of a 5% conversion rate, it might fall to 2.5%, or less.
There has to be a better way, right?
There is. One of the other ways is to improve your conversion rate. While we don’t have the time to explain exactly the best way to accomplish this one, the fact remains that if you increase your conversion rate to 10%, those same 100 visitors now equal 10 sales and $250.00 - regardless of whether you increase your traffic.
But targeting is even better. If you already know that your conversion rate is acceptable and your traffic is sure and steady, you can then focus your attention on attracting the RIGHT kind of traffic. Doing this means that you gain a clear understanding of the audience you’re attempting to reach and the best ways and places to reach them.
You can do this by getting to know your customers. Who are they? How old are they? Where do they spend their time? What else do they purchase, aside from your product? What other apps are they using? What games do they play? Are they active on social networks?
As soon as you know who they are, you can find new and effective ways to reach them, draw them in and convert them into paying customers or loyal followers. But targeting is only half of the battle. The war isn’t over until you figure out how to track your results and use the information you discover to make your campaign even better.
Tracking Your Results
Once you’ve entered the mobile marketing playing field, data will start coming out of the wood works. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by it, and many respond by attempting to ignore it. This is the absolute WORST thing that you can do. Knowledge is power, and all of the power you’ll ever need can be found in the interactive data that is exchanged between mobile users and mobile marketers.
Fortunately, what Google has done for web analytics, other companies have done for the world of mobile analytics (and don’t worry, Google’s in on the action, too!)
The Mobile Landing Page
If you are just entering into a web-based mobile experience, talk to your webmaster about the options when it comes to setting up analytics to track your mobile landing page. Depending on the coding and programming you use, you can harvest the details to distinguish about what type of response you are getting and what platform those visitors used to get there. While the information you’ll glean may not be as in-depth or rich as what you’ll get in some of the more advanced mobile marketing platforms, it is still very useful and gives you the data you need to tweak and fine-tune the success of your campaign.
Take some time to do your homework and discover what other options you have in the analytics department. This is particularly important if you are a DIY fanatic and ARE your own webmaster.
SMS Coding Solutions
Text messaging isn’t going anywhere, but if you aren’t careful, you can lose sight of success because measuring and capturing the data you need to determine conversion rates and other critical components. Examples of SMS coding include those television and radio commercials that have a special offer and all you have to do is text “ BER23” to a telephone number. Armed with a clear understanding of how much money it cost to secure the advertising space and man the phones or Internet for taking orders, you can measure the cost per lead or cost per sale based on the number of people who follow through with the texting.
You also gain access to a new subscriber list that you already KNOW responds well to text messaging campaigns and initiatives. Follow this up with specially coded coupons that offer special freebies, discounts or other offer components and monitor your response rates accordingly.
Opt-In Options
When it comes to keeping your legal bases covered, permission marketing is about the only way to go. No one wants to be spammed - and certainly not on their cell phones. Just like email subscribers don’t appreciate it, people who very well could be paying per text won’t either.
The best part about offering the option to “ opt-in” is that you create the sign-up form, meaning you can request and gain access to a LOT more demographic information. It’s best to only REQUIRE the most basic and critical of information, but if you offer other questions about age, sex, address, income, etc. a surprising number of people will gladly provide you with the information you’re looking for.
