Quite recently, we wrote about current and future mobile marketing trends. While it is vital and important for marketers to stay abreast of trends, they do present a host of challenges as well. Some of the most significant ones, according to our experts, are:
Relevant content
Olha Velhus, Chief Marketing Director at GMS, considers content to be the toughest mobile marketing trends challenges. Creating content that is useful and interesting for every individual is a monumental task. It requires a very high level of personalisation. Targeted content mandates that companies need to know each customer’s profile very deeply to cater to their needs and not put them off by sending them irrelevant content. If you’re a tired mother of two, who’s just put the kids to bed and has finally managed to put her feet up, the last thing you want is to receive a message offering you reduced price entry at the most happening nightclub. That very same message, when received by a student at a loose end after a tough day of studies, is welcomed with open arms. Knowing your customer is key!
Data management
For a marketer, customer data is the fuel that drives the car. For businesses, it is the lifeblood. Lack of proper understanding of customers renders marketing more of a guesswork exercise than anything else. In this age of digitalisation, marketers and their campaigns are becoming more and more data-driven.
Obtaining the data. Organising it. Then storing it. And finally using it to achieve marketing goals and targets, getting maximum benefit out of it. All this constitutes data management.
As digital marketing progresses at a rapid pace, it makes it possible to follow and track customers every step of the way. This results in the receiving of enormous volumes of data, like nothing preceding it, particularly in the case of huge retailers. How easy it would be to get lost in this mountain of data! But instead of getting flummoxed by it, marketers need to structure it, analyse it and interpret it in the proper way to maximise benefits.
Which is why putting in place efficient and accurate data management and maintaining it is absolutely crucial for businesses.
Lack of knowledge
Knowledge is power. In the world of digital marketing, new trends are emerging at regular intervals and keeping up with them entails a steep learning curve for marketers, who are naturally eager not to miss the bus and want to make the most of every emerging trend as quickly as possible. But each new tool and new technology, like AI for example, that becomes available to marketers requires understanding, investigation, judging. Only after that can it be put to use to gain maximum benefit from it. Additionally, new, trendy tools are often used in combination with traditional tools and this mix makes the whole marketing exercise rather complex. It is an exercise of trial and error, needing patience and understanding.
Estimating ROI
Estimating ROI is universally acknowledged to be one of the biggest concerns of marketers. In the last 3 years, proving ROI has consistently featured as one of the top 3 mobile marketing trends challenges.
Estimating ROI for marketers also require certain skills in analytics, finance and accounting, which might not necessarily be their strong suit. So the task becomes more of a challenge.
Once upon a time, before multi-channel marketing came along, calculating ROI was not quite the daunting task it now is. It was more about simple math: billboards, newspaper ads and banners had a fixed cost, the results were measurable.
In today’s world of multi-channel digital marketing, ROI has become difficult to measure but not impossible. We recommend you to use multi-channel platforms that allow you to send your message via different communication channels and that provide you with full analytics and statistics.
Whatever shape or form mobile marketing trends challenges take, the one surety is that they need to be overcome, and overcoming them is what imparts confidence and strength.