Checking out Mobile Marketing- Is It Really Worth a Try?

Katherine Bennett - September 16, 2011

Has your business ever thought about doing mobile marketing or creating special ads to target tablet users? Is it even worth trying? If you were able to test it and see how it worked, your business would probably consider initiating mobile and tablet targeting. But how do you test the waters without diving in? It’s quite simple. Take a deeper look at analytics.

What most companies don’t realize is that they are doing mobile marketing without even knowing it. Many of the default settings on search engines opt advertisers into mobile marketing. In the eyes of the search engine, this means that they can show your ads to any phone with a full internet browser. Plus your organic listings can also be pulling in mobile users. Even if your company doesn’t have a mobile website, users can still get to your page from their smart phone, although it won’t make for a good user experience. If a user is not going to a website that’s designed for a mobile device, then the website can appear distorted. Keep this in mind when you decide to take a look at your mobile stats in Google Analytics.

Let’s look at the new version of Google Analytics and go step by step to view the mobile data.

Step 1. Go to the menu bar on the left and click on the Visitors section. Click on the category of Mobile. Step 2. Select the Devices option from the drop down menu.

This will show a breakdown of the mobile devices. The standard sorting options are

available to be viewed. Sort by Visits, Average Time On Site, Page Views etc. If you want to get more granular, change your viewing heading to Mobile Device Branding or Service Provider or Operating System, etc.

By taking a look at how Mobile performs, a company can get a general idea of how well it’s working for them. If your mobile stats seem decent, think about how much better they could be if you had ads that were targeted to mobile users, along with a mobile website. Get the picture?

Mobile marketing can be a great asset and if it’s working for your company when you’re not even trying, imagine what can happen if your company actually puts some effort into it.