At this point, no one can deny the game-changing effect of mobile on marketing efforts. With ever-increasing adoption of smartphones and tablets across all demographics, we’ve seen a sea change in the ways, and the frequency, with which consumers view and engage with brands. Today’s digital customer experience now encompasses interaction across devices at various points along the path to purchase, with consumers frequently starting their journey on one channel and completing it on another.
To effectively reach modern mobile-focused customers, marketers must adapt to these changing preferences -- or face missed opportunities and even diminished brand loyalty from customers who feel under-served.While new technologies like iBeacon provide marketers with the ability to reach target customers in highly effective, customized formats, determining and deploying an effective mobile strategy is not an overnight process. Although brands everywhere understand the tremendous influence of mobile, a myriad of tools and tactics available can be overwhelming, and new solutions and fads seem to pop up overnight. To succeed in this fast-paced environment, marketers must be prepared to quickly adopt new techniques and change how they engage with consumers in real-time.
But this is easier said than done. Marketers who want to achieve true mobile marketing agility -- the ability to incorporate new information and deploy customized campaigns via consumers’ preferred devices on the fly -- face significant challenges:
1. Marketers at large companies have to work within existing processes, competing with other departments for IT resources, which inhibits their ability to roll out new solutions in a timely fashion
2. Alternatively, independent marketers and those at smaller companies don’t have access to IT resources at all, making it extremely difficult for them to go beyond the functionality provided by one, general-use platform
3. While simple solutions designed for one specific mobile process can be affordable, tools that permit advanced self-publishing and can create cross-channel marketing efficiencies tend to be expensive
These challenges are daunting, but not insurmountable. Many brands have seen tremendous success after putting in the effort to optimize their mobile strategy. Real-time mobile marketing agility has become possible for brands that are able to deeply understand their target audiences and leverage technology effectively across their various channels.
The keys to achieving mobile marketing agility lie in:
1. developing a simple yet adaptable platform from which to push messages across channels
2. integrating CRM technologies to ensure that promotions are highly personalized and
3. ensuring that all experiences are optimized for context, user goals and device constraints.
Many marketers are considering responsive approaches to optimizing content across multiple devices. While responsive design is sometimes viewed as a silver bullet to the creation and achievement of a compelling mobile experience, the approach presents serious performance challenges and is less adaptable to reflect user context across channels. Mobile experiences built with adaptive technology deliver fast sites and optimized context, and with the right tools, marketers are able to execute real-time mobile promotions across multiple channels without the need for developer resources.
At a time when many customers have access to the latest device and information at their fingertips, marketing must be both personal and relevant to be effective. Marketers need to be agile and have access to tools that make it easy to create, publish and manage multiple promotions across the full spectrum of digital brand touchpoints. Anything less means missed opportunities, disengaged customers and a free pass to marketing obsolescence.
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