How To Plan and Execute Your Mobile Strategy

According to data released from analytics firm Flurry, Americans spend an average of 5 hours a day on their mobile devices. This is a 20% increase from 2015. which shows that mobile devices are quickly consuming more of our daily hours each year.

With increased mobile users, there has been a significant incline towards mobile apps usage. More people want constant connection and quick gratification. But how will marketers give people the apps that they want, and quickly?

How to Use a Mobile Strategy

Before initiating your mobile strategy, you need to understand what it is. A mobile strategy is a plan used to achieve your mobile solution. Through the alignment of business goals and user needs, a mobile strategy is a process used with mobile technology to create apps.

Following a structured mobile strategy, an app needs to include particular elements to be able to provide users with their needs. With the world shifting towards more mobile devices, companies need to understand how to launch a well-made app.

“Mobile is becoming not only the new digital hub, but also the bridge to the physical world. That’s why mobile will affect more than just your digital operations — it will transform your entire business.” - Thomas Husson, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research

How to Create a Mobile Strategy

When starting the process of creating a mobile strategy, researching and gathering information is crucial. Getting important information during your strategy process leads to a mobile solution that aligns with both your business goals and end-user needs.

Apply the following steps to help your company plan and create your mobile strategy:

1. Understand Your Company’s Overall Strategy

Focus on understanding your company as a whole to determine the overall strategy. Begin by defining and understanding where your company wants to be, their market conditions, and their current business standing. Establishing a list of weaknesses, strengths, threats, and opportunities will help construct the groundwork for your mobile strategy.

2. Assess Your Product’s Business Needs

Help developers from your company create a product that better aligns with your business by knowing and analyzing the needs of your product.

Product business needs will include:

• Offline requirements of your product
• Choosing your OS platform
• Defining device types your product will support
• Potential migration capabilities
• Scalability
• Product integration

3. Identify why your product is being created

Will the creation of your mobile product benefit your company’s business needs? Figuring out why your company is creating a product will help steer your mobile strategy in the right direction.

The following are some questions you will need to answer during the creation of your product:

• Is social media leveraging advertisements in-apps?
• Are conversions and leads created for the business?
• Is it user focused?
• Are the company’s goals achieved?
• Is the product fast and flexible?
• What is the product’s intention?
• Will customer demands be attained?

4. Know Your Target User

Distinguishing and focusing on a defined and general target user is optimal when determining how to customize your product. It is ideal to create a separate target group from your mobile products and your non-mobile products.

Certain characteristics that your target user can be segmented into are:

• Gender
• Class
• Age
• Business

5. Determine a Budget

Determining a budget depends on a company’s willingness to spend in certain areas of a project. A study from ThinkMobiles.com suggests that the cost of creating and developing a mobile app can range from $100,000 to $500,000, depending on the product. If clear constraints are defined within the mobile strategy prior to production, your project will more likely stay within budget. This budget allows for a clear view of where spending can happen and where saving can be done.

6. Design your mobile marketing strategy

Now that all of your information has been gathered, mobile strategy design can begin! Decide on a plan of action to drive and encourage target users to engage with your product and boost visibility.

A few different types of engagements you can take advantage of are:

• Mobile internet marketing
• Press releases
• Specific offers
• Social media advertising
• SMS marketing

Implement your Mobile Strategy

Once the planning phase of your mobile strategy is completed, implementation is ready to happen. Remember, tailor to your target users, keep to your budget, and understand your business needs. Keeping to your plan of action helps to keep your product to launch smoothly.