How to Improve ROI on Mobile

Marketing to mobile users should no longer be a specialist subject. In October of last year, internet usage by mobile and tablet devices surpassed that of desktops for the first time. With 51.3 per cent of the world preferring to use their smartphones to a desktop PC, it is vital that marketers take this into consideration.

But marketer's aren't paying attention

It seems like the industry is still catching up to this development. Nearly half (47 per cent) of marketers describe mobile as either "a nice-to-have or only a subset of their digital approach" despite its prominence online. As a result, two-thirds of marketing professionals don't know how to measure their ROI on mobile.

How to succeed on mobile

It turns out the answer to achieving greater ROI is fairly simple: treat mobile projects like you would treat any other marketing campaign. This means starting off with clear, measurable goals and KPIs and tailoring your project to fulfil these based on an in-depth understanding of the audience you're targeting.

This might seem obvious, but recent research from IBM found that 60 per cent of organizations do not look for strategic alignment when prioritizing mobile initiatives, while almost 40 per cent of the executives the company surveyed admit that their approach to mobile is ad-hoc.

Be realistic with your campaigns

Another thing that IBM found is that when attempting to target multiple goals, most mobile initiatives fail to achieve them. This could be a result of being too overly enthusiastic about expanding into this area, expecting it to be wildly successful on the first try rather than setting more realistic expectations.

On the subject of realism, it's also not a good idea to expect a mobile project to succeed if it is not given the appropriate support and investment. Jeff Hasen, chief marketing officer with Mobile Business Insights, recalls a sign he saw as a child that said "“Good food is not cheap. Cheap food is not good.” He says that marketers "can and should apply the same line of thinking to mobile".

If you can set realistic and sensible goals, measure their results and provide your mobile campaigns with the appropriate budget, you should be able to see a good ROI. The key is to recognize mobile for what it is: not a cure-all or an afterthought, but the norm in a digital world that is increasingly moving away from desktops.