Has Mobile Marketing Revolutionized the Mobile Customer Experience?

In an instant, mobile users read customer reviews, research products, and compare prices; the mobile customer experience is key for today’s informed customer base.

In the 20th century, marketing was markedly different from the industry it is today. Companies would display ads on television, billboards and in print where potential customers were likely to see them. That would prompt consumers to go to whatever store was selling the item to check it out.

Once you have a potential customer in front of the physical item, it’s much easier to sell it. Now, however, people don’t have to go to a store to evaluate a product; they can do it from their living rooms on their smartphones and tablets.

Mobile users can look up in-depth reviews from experts, find competing products, read customer reviews and compare prices within just a few minutes of seeing an advertisement. The first, primary decision-making moment is no longer at the store when customers are in front of the product, but at home, when they’re being influenced by sources from around the Internet. This means that your company’s website and your mobile customer experience creating marketing channels are more influential among consumers than ever before.

Unfortunately, most marketers haven’t started leveraging mobile to its full potential through mobile-first design, messaging, apps, personalization and search. If you can shift the standard way of marketing to accommodate more mobile-friendly tactics, you can harness the surge in mobile use. Yet you need to do it now, before you get so far behind that it becomes a major struggle to catch up. Contact mobile app developers to get you started.

How Mobile Customer Experience Affects User Experiences

The growth of mobile computing has irrevocably altered the way users experience and engage in research and shopping. When customers leave a store without making a purchase, over a third of the time it’s due to them using their mobile devices to find better deals elsewhere. This bodes ill for stores and companies that adhere to older marketing models, but it also offers a solution: Get mobile.

Engage with customers and offer them something they can’t find elsewhere. You can either let mobile destroy your ability to compete or develop a mobile customer experience to stay competitive. It’s your choice. You can begin by implementing some of these new marketing strategies:

• Make it easier for consumers to identify and evaluate their choices in products.
• See who wants to know more about your company. Give them insight into your culture. Impress them.
• Give them great support. Use mobile-specific tools improve mobile customer experience feedback channels, letting customers reach out to you in multiple ways. Be sure to respond quickly, professionally and positively.
• Make their lives easier. Put the customer, not your profits, first. Support your customers or you’ll lose them.

Marketing is Failing to Prioritize the Mobile Customer Experience

Most brands aren’t doing these things. There’s a lot of talk about how mobile is stirring a revolution in engagement and marketing, but only 18 percent of retailers actually make an effort in social and mobile marketing. Why? Companies collect more data than ever about customers, their habits and large trends, so it should be easy to figure out how to engage consumers in the mobile space. The problem is that so few companies know how to use the data they have. It’s just sitting there, unused — and therefore useless.

Obviously, that has to change. It’s time to get away from the Mad Men method of marketing, where a few big shots develop marketing strategies based on intuition, and start using data to unlock key insights into what’s actually happening. It’s too late to prepare for the coming of mobile; it’s already here. You can, however, start incorporating it into your marketing efforts now, while there are still relatively few companies doing so.

Synchronizing Mobile and Digital Marketing

It’s not enough to just be mobile, you need to also develop mobile engagement, or engage with mobile customers. So what are some ways you can start effectively incorporating mobile? Here’s a list of basic methods with links to resources that will help you understand them better:

• Design your site for mobile first.
• Use mobile messaging to communicate with consumers.
• Create mobile apps and use your customer data to personalize each person’s experience.
• Target mobile search to reach more consumers while they’re in the middle of making decisions.

It’s Time to Change How You Create Your Customer Experience

The 21st century is all about untethering decision-making from physical locations and static computers. Most adults in the United States are smartphone owners, so it’s more important than ever to take advantage of new mobile capabilities and mobile-specific technology to reach those people. The percentage of smartphone owners will continue growing, so the sooner you get help with digital marketing and incorporate mobile strategies into your marketing mix, the easier it will be to connect with consumers in the future.

It will take a concerted effort, but the mobile customer experience you create will reach more and more of your customers as more customers turn to smart devices for product and service research, information, and support.