From a study carried out into 260 marketing professionals throughout Europe, 32% claimed to have invested budget into creating branded mobile apps.
However, an article published by NMA claim that research conducted by Forrester Research suggests that only 26% of these had optimized their website for use on mobile devices whilst only 24% had conducted paid mobile search advertising.
Whilst Apps are a great tool for branding and can bring some unique technological and entertainment benefits to a brands marketing strategy - they should not be the only mobile marketing channel up for consideration.
Mobile search is proven to produce much a much higher CTR and ultimate conversion rate as opposed to traditional computer based searching. This is purely due to the circumstances in which the user is searching, on the go, people want instant information which usually converts to a conversion at the end destination.
With millions of smartphone users in the UK alone, websites are being accessed in the palm of potential customers hands, if your website is not optimised to be compatible on a mobile browser, you risk losing out on perfectly viable custom.
The moral of the story is to not just go with the hype – analyse what else a media platform brings to the table logically and do not ignore other media channels simply because they do not present the most ‘up to date glam’ – you risk alienating perfectly viable audiences.
