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In our last few posts here at GoMobile Solutions blog we have been discussing various mobile marketing opportunities and strategies.  We have seen how technological advances in mobile phones are allowing users to be aware of what nearby businesses are offering.

Putting  the marketing puzzle together Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Surveys conducted by such organizations as Ji Wire have shown that more than half of mobile users want to receive location specified advertising with 40% wanting location based coupons.  So, how does a business determine if what they are doing in mobile marketing is worth the investment?

In this post we will look at some metrics that every business should consider in order to maximize their return on the investment.

Cover the basics
First, we need to cover some foundational issues that need to be in place before measuring the effectiveness of a mobile marketing program.  Otherwise, the data collected might not truly reflect what is really happening.

The best and most effective way to begin is to have a mobile app that your customer can download and use on command. Mobile apps can bring smartphones to life and make the buying decision that much easier.

Mobile visitors to your site are looking for basic information such as directions or the phone number to call with questions.  A well designed mobile app would have these basic  elements included and can provide even more options that will increase the users experience.

Not all users are created equally                                                                                      The next item to consider is who are the users we want to attract.  This is the first step in determining the return on your investment.

The traditional way to determining the success or failure of a mobile marketing program has been by measuring the amount of users who install the app.  This was once a worthy measure when the mobile app concept was new.

However, market research has shown that there are three kinds of people who install an app and they all don’t represent the same value for the business.  Let’s take a quick look at the three types of users who download apps:

1. The user who installs apps but never uses them.
2. The user who uses an app, but never ends up purchasing anything from the merchant.
3. The user who did install the app, uses it fairly often and does spend money with the merchant.

Obviously, in order to get a return on the marketing investment it would be vital to attract and develop as many users who resemble the third type mentioned above.  By focusing on this responsive type of user, a business is able to lower the cost of acquisition for each customer and at the same time increase the user experience .

Having  a keen awareness of who these users are will also have an impact on the cost and management of other online advertising  campaigns such as PPC (pay-per-click) and CPC  (cost-per-click).

What to Measure
One marketing agency recently developed a metric to help its client’s more effectively measure their return on investment and called it profit per install.  This measurement goes beyond just counting how many times a visitor has downloaded and installed an app on their mobile device.

The idea here is to combine a few key measurements to get a more complete view of the value being provided by a mobile marketing program.  The measurement can be broken down into three key areas.  Let’s take a quick look at what they are.

How well did the install perform?  
As any business will acknowledge, there is rarely a second chance to get a potential customer to come back and install an app, if on the first visit the install failed.  Tracking this metric allows a business to fix any problems quickly, and not waste money on advertising that sends traffic to a non-working app.

Where did the customer come from?
Many businesses have more than one source delivering traffic to their site.  Knowing where the user came from will allows the business to adjust their marketing budget accordingly. Similarly, a business can evaluate what type of user is coming from any particular source.  So, a business can adjust their traffic if they are getting too many of the type one and type two users.

What is the long-term value of the app?
A business can determine a long-term value and an overall return on investment by tracking the purchases of the users over time.  In other words, this metric would continually adjust as more users installed the app and make purchases.

Then, over a quarter, semi-annual, or annual time frame, a business could determine what the app has contributed towards the overall revenue.

As we have seen with some effort any business can develop a similar metric in order to be able to measure the return on investment made in mobile marketing.  By regularly reviewing this metric a business can begin to tailor fit their offers and advertising efforts to increase the kind of customers they are truly seeking and improve the bottom line.