Recasting your Mobile vision for 2017 – multichannel, not mobile only

The chances are you’ve just wrapped up year end appraisals for your team, selected your digital dream team and briefed them on your delivering the vision in 2017.
Maybe you’ve just been appraised, bagged that bonus, and nailed that promotion. Maybe you were over-looked, and your mind turns to finding a new job in the new year.
Whatever your personal scenario, there’s a load of responsibility on marketers to navigate their businesses through another year of massive change and infinite choices. And there’s pressure to keep a steady hand on our career paths and stay ahead of the pack. There’s so much to gain by knowing the shortcuts to digital marketing success, and so much to lose being outflanked by more savvy competitors.
Shift behaviour, don’t turn heads
One of my business mentors told me recently that a crucial skill which separates the fast track marketeers from the rest is to focus on what creates a long term shift in consumer behaviour, and to avoid being seduced by the latest innovations which get you the headlines and short lived limelight.
This brings to mind the difference between the bonfire which generates real heat and draws in the crowds, versus the fireworks which attract the crowds afar, but never last that long.
Back to the your digital plans for 2017. Where will you focus your efforts? For most of us the real focus is increasing sales rather than turning heads to our latest tech innovations. In its annual trends survey, Smart Insights asked members:
“Select one marketing activity that you think will give your business the biggest incremental uplift in leads and sales in 2017 (or your clients if you work for an agency or as a consultant)”.
Here are the results, based on over 2,000 responses from marketers worldwide.

So what’s the deal with mobile? For the first time in 3 years mobile has dropped from the top 3. I’d argue that mobile is more important that ever, though not as a stand alone channel. Check your Google Analytics and you will most likely spot a sharp increase in the proportion of mobile traffic.
Mobile is where you’ll find the greatest opportunities to differentiate
The Mobile user experience is where you stand to differentiate most from the competition when it comes to your content strategy (#1), personalisation through data strategy (#2), marketing automation (#3), conversion rate optimization (#6), understanding Google’s mobile index to improve your SEO (#8), leveraging mobile AdWords extensions for the best PPC results (#10). And all the other bars on the chart above.
I want to call out a vital point here on conversion rate optimization. We’re seeing overwhelming proof that page load time has an immediate impact on site conversion. Increasing page load by 1 second boosts conversion by 27%.
This raises critical questions how to design mobile friendly sites. Responsive Web Design works … to a point … but leading mobile brands are looking at adaptive web design to make sure all the key check out components are optimised for mobile within a responsive web framework.
Single platform or multi-platform customer journeys?
It’s time to revisit the long standing question “what is mobile?” and why does it deserve particular attention.
Please click to know more about customer journey.