Use Websites and Digital Assets to Reach Your Audience Where They Live — on Mobile!

Anywhere you go, you’re likely to find at least half the people you encounter using mobile devices at any given time. In the gym, on the bus — even surreptitiously in classes and meetings — people are engaging with digital content via mobile. In fact, it’s true that people spend an average of three hours per day on their mobile devices. That’s why it’s important to meet your customers where they live — on mobile.

The problem is, mobile isn’t always the easiest platform to do right. Many brands find that, while they may have additional platforms to maintain, they don’t have additional resources. It’s also likely that information technology (IT) departments don’t have the bandwidth to tackle a comprehensive mobile strategy — and, let’s face it, external developers can be pricey. All of these are legitimate hurdles to getting started with a successful mobile strategy.

The steps below can make your job easier by helping your brand address mobile in a more efficient, streamlined way.

1. Organize Your Assets for Mobile.
Not all of the assets that work well on your website are going to work well for your mobile strategy. For whatever reason, they simply may not scale well. It could be because the actual scale of the assets doesn’t work well on a mobile device, or it could be that there’s simply too much content for a user to consume via mobile.

To combat this challenge, you need to begin by organizing your assets for mobile. You can do this through metadata, collections, keywords and tags, and more. Finding an organizational system that allows your brand to easily locate mobile-appropriate assets is key to the success of your mobile strategy.

2. Plan for Continuous Mobile Publishing.
Once you have a system in place to organize your content, you need a strategy to begin publishing that content to your mobile platform. This can be tough, as there are so many different mobile devices for which you need to optimize. There are still first-generation iPads in circulation — but there are also various versions of the iPhone, iPad minis, and an entire army of Android devices to consider now too.

Not to fret. There are a few key tactics that can help you continually optimize and publish content to mobile devices. Some of these tactics seem intuitive — like using templates to speed up the publishing process, rather than always recreating the wheel, or automating the publishing process so there’s less room for human error. We also advocate using tools that allow you to see what the on-device preview actually looks like. The tools you’re using should allow you to understand what your customers are seeing and optimize their experiences. This is crucial to making your customers’ experiences on mobile enjoyable.

3. Measure Success to Drive App Engagement.
Once you have a mobile platform, an organizational system, and regularly published content, you may wonder, “Now what? How do I motivate people to engage?” This is a common question we hear from brands.

First, it’s important to note that the frequency with which you publish content is important here. With customers spending multiple hours per day on mobile, publishing once a month or even once a week is simply not enough to bring them back regularly. Your content should also give users something to do. Gamification is a huge part of any mobile strategy — but, even if you don’t have a fully structured gamification strategy, providing your customers with something to do will make them much more likely to return.

Of course, using data and analytics can help you measure which calls to action are actually resonating with your users. If you have a mobile strategy but aren’t analyzing the data that comes out of it, you can’t truly understand your customers’ behaviors nor what will likely bring them back. Continually using your mobile analytics to optimize your customer experiences is an iterative process that successful brands consistently implement.

Mobile is a game changer for many brands. Since customers spend so much time on their mobile devices, it’s not a platform that you can afford to ignore just because it can be tricky to implement correctly — nor can your brand afford to just throw something up and claim to have a mobile strategy! To make your mobile strategy both effective and easily implemented, you need to organize your assets, optimize your mobile-publishing strategy, and measure success to further drive mobile app engagement. If you can get these things down, you’ll be in a great position to be competitive in the mobile marketplace.