Facebook launch shines a light on the many failures in mobile marketing
This week saw Facebook launch an ad format that let brands re-engage with smartphone users that have already installed their apps on mobile devices, and this exposes many flawed ideas around how to communicate with audiences on mobile.
Facebook’s new ad format lets brands issue a call-to-action to users that have already downloaded their app – and may have stopped using it – from within Facebook’s mobile app itself.
With multiple formats, the launch means brands can direct Facebook’s mobile users to specific content and features within their apps. This ultimately grants them a second chance to re-engage with smartphone users that may have once expressed a fleeting interest in their brand but then lost interest.
I hesitate to fawn too much over this launch but I believe it highlights widespread failures within the mobile marketing milieu, namely the assumption that you can: ‘build it, and they will come.’
Since the launch of Apple’s App Store over five years ago, I have almost daily been pitched ‘news stories’ of the latest and greatest app releases to the point where only the spectacular now warrant publication.
However, over the years I have written many stories about such launches and in that time the predominant feeling I get is that few think past the initial launch strategy.
Anecdotally, I get told of just how much money is invested in such launches (the amount is often staggering). But doesn’t this make the lack of forethought much more tragic?
The reason I voice this opinion so strongly is that statistics demonstrate that most consumers just don’t engage with apps for very long after the initial install, bar the likes of Facebook and Twitter, etc. Think of it, can you name one branded smartphone app that you use on a regular basis?
To demonstrate this, research form mobile app analytics firm Flurry shows engagement rates with mobile apps average at 24 per cent just three months after they are initially downloaded. This drops further to just 4 per cent after a year.
Facebook’s new ad format offers marketers the chance to rekindle such lapsed relationships with mobile users, but a well thought out mobile marketing strategy would prevent the need to do so.