As people in (or searching for) digital marketing jobs, we’re all familiar with the value of mobile marketing – ignoring mobile as a platform is quite simply not a strategic option any longer. While we may all be aware of this reality, there are a number of pitfalls that should be avoided when diving into the world of mobile marketing.

Treat all your consumers as one

Mobile devices are generally personal. Failing to remember this, and more importantly to apply it to your marketing activities, is a simple way to ensure that potential consumers ignore your messages. Loyal customers can easily be pushed away by generic messages which are interpreted as spam. There are some great tools available for producing communications tailored to suit individual needs based on factors such as behaviours and location.

Slow loading

Mobile sites are handy because they fit into our fast-paced lives. However, this makes slow websites particularly off putting. We’ve all been there – a website is simply taking too long to load on our phones, so we give up and head over to a competitor’s site. Switch to a faster hosting service, and consider using a content delivery network to improve download time. Do whatever you can to avoid losing customers to lengthy page load time.

Abuse consumers’ trust

The value of trust features heavily in both academic and practitioner research on consumer behaviour, and this only becomes more important when consumers are expected to share information about themselves. Collecting user data and using it to provide consumers with a more personal experience is great – failing to treat this data in the way consumers expect is a violation of their privacy. There’s a fine line between providing an exciting, bespoke customer experience, and coming on too strong.

Ignore the important numbers

As those of us who have worked in marketing roles know, metrics are a pretty big deal. However, watching the numbers won’t help unless you’re paying attention to the right ones, and acting accordingly. If you offer an app, for example, remember that the number of downloads does not necessarily reflect the number of actual users – user engagement and retention figures are therefore of far more interest.