Establishing a Solid Mobile Strategy

Mobile is no longer an option but a necessity for marketers, brands, companies and developers. Over the last 5 years, we notice a mobile revolution, a shift more powerful that most would expect, that is shaping customers-and-users perception, behavior and interactions’ patterns.

In order to capitalize effectively on the mobile channels or services, you need to understand and build upon three pillars:

1) Customer Acquisition Cost (CPA)

Customer Acquisition Cost: the cost associated in convincing a customer to buy a product/service (or for example download an app).

                                                                      VS

Customer Lifecycle Value: the prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer (or for example the prediction of all the in-app actions’ history)

How do we take advantage of low CPAs?

It seems like the social media mega player, Facebook, in the early days, offered an example of a platform, where the acquisition costs were low enough for the community to grow in numbers and consequently enhance its business orientation as a channel.

A known best-case practice of capitalizing on low CPAs is Zynga partnering with Facebook. Customer acquisition is key component in gaming industry’s business models, and the same applied to Zynga. They understood from the beginning that the players had huge lifecycle value, to be capitalized after acquisition. So growing on scale, acquiring users with low prices and small effort, building loyal players’ communities and offering a gaming ecosystem in a growing platform such as Facebook, created the huge successes of FarmVille and other games.

What does that have to do with Mobile?

Mobile is a channel that can be capitalized the same way as Zynga capitalized on Facebook. An online social games provider that capitalized the most the rising then, yet strong social network.

Early movers and adopters have the advantage to capitalize on audiences and users with really low acquisition costs. Scaling is easier, even with a limited budget. Distribution of resources is diversified greatly between marketing efforts, research and development, and optimizing the service or/and product. That results in more sophisticated user experiences, quality of content, expanded reach, and focus on retargeting. And of course, increasing CLV, and increasing revenue. Simple.

Learn more about CLV vs CPA and making money on Mobile here.

2) Engagement

Acquiring customers, with optimum CPAs, is the first pillar. What follows next is retaining and engaging these customers in your platform or app.

We at Warply have leveraged numerous campaigns and mobile marketing efforts through our big data analytics and platform features. The conclusions made by working with our partners exhibit that persuading users and engaging them gets harder and more costly over the time.

How are mobile users acting?

With the attention span of users growing rapidly, they are presented with a huge variety of choices and distractions. In order to engage them effectively, companies need to focus on quality of content, ease of use and User Experience (UX), as well as maintaining a mobile-first approach.

The last doesn’t imply a smartphones’ orientation, but multiple devices employment. Whether it is a smartphone, a tablet, a phablet, or another device (see present Wearables’ buzz), marketers and executives should take the lead in offering customized experiences and adjusting to their customers’ preferences. User engagement in multiple screens will be the next bet.

3) Monetization

CPA and Engagement mean nothing in the end of the day, unless you include efficient monetization into your Mobile Strategy.

Hope and effort get you nowhere if you cannot monetize sustainably. We have witnessed many examples of apps – gone- broke, by “juicing out” their users and monetizing all-at-once or not-at-all. You may think this is basic, but sustainability is a key pillar when establishing a solid Mobile Strategy.

How do we monetize?

It’s a crowded playing field in the gaming and apps industry. Pay-to-download apps don’t seem to cut it anymore, and freemium model is popular with most developers and services.

Context

The factor that can leverage monetization of apps and services is context. Context is king. Reaching your customer in the right time, in the right place, with the right message is crucial to satisfy their need and turn a purchasing intent into a buying action.

Push notifications are a truly simple and effective way to deliver the above-mentioned message. The sender is aware and in total control of the action, by realizing a communication precisely targeted, time-related and measurable.

One-click actions

A tool, complementary to push notifications, is employing one-click actions. This could translate into making calls, activating coupons, sending direct messages (SMS), scanning QR codes, opening a map with various point-of-sales (don’t forget location based targeting and context mentioned above), and many more actions. All of them need to be aligned with the app’s objectives and purpose and at the same time transform a message into an experience.

Predictive targeting

Taking a step further, technology and innovative features, similar or identical to the ones Warply provides, offer the possibility to predict users’ behavior and act upon it. Harvesting behavioral data and capitalizing on effective tags systems create full user profiles. That way companies and brands can track behavior in their own apps, and capitalize on analytics to discover flaws in their app’s flow, as well as categorize users and provide relevant content, that leads to increasing engagements

Delivering value where your customers are and establishing a solid Mobile strategy is the only way to survive in the highly competitive level among almost all verticals. We are glad to offer our insights and we proudly lead the market through innovation and commitment.