Identifying what processes are working and what isn’t in this brave new world of digital marketing starts with a solid taxonomy specific to mobile devices.
The pace of change has brought about huge shifts in digital marketing. As customers’ buying habits change and governments and tech leaders respond to the latest consumer privacy concerns, marketers need flexibility in their strategies to pivot from one approach to another. With so much marketing happening on mobile devices, businesses require new strategies that take into account how consumer behavior on mobile differs from their web-based browsing habits. The metadata gathered from mobile campaigns can provide a wealth of information on customers’ shifting habits.
Between 2018 and 2022 mobile commerce sales as a percentage of total sales nearly doubled, to 6.9% and is expected to surpass 10% of all sales within the next three years. And this isn’t just about B2C commerce: B2B mobile spend is expected to reach 51% of digital ad spending by 2023, a 10% increase since 2019.
As customers increasingly turn to their mobile devices for product research, comparison shopping and purchasing, businesses can’t afford to be left out. But how to identify what processes are working and what isn’t in this brave new world of digital marketing? It starts with a solid taxonomy specific to mobile devices.
Why Create a Data Taxonomy? Improving Mobile Attribution
As more of the customer journey takes place on mobile devices, improving mobile attribution will be critical to marketers. To ensure all your data is properly attributed, businesses need to create a clear and concise data taxonomy, to best identify and label data no matter how it’s collected. By creating a clear taxonomy, marketers will best be able to see how their mobile marketing efforts are working and where there are challenges. Your new model can not only show you the differences in consumer buying habits between mobile commerce and web-based commerce but help you tie together mobile efforts with your comprehensive digital campaign execution.
Embrace First-Party Date
When it comes to the mobile experience businesses can’t rely on second-party data for targeting efforts. The mobile experience relies more on an app environment than a browser-based one. This will make mobile less impacted by upcoming cookie deprecations. However, other changes have already happened to mobile identifiers that present challenges to advertising and measurement. (Apple made changes to mobile ad IDs in 2020, while Google has announced its own changes for Android devices.) So, businesses should turn their attention to first-party data and cohort marketing.
More and more businesses are embracing first-party data as part of their data strategies. Creating a mobile marketing taxonomy is a way to identify and structure the right first-party data you require. A robust taxonomy leverages campaign metadata — tags that describe and identify every piece in your ecosystem customers might interact with, from landing pages to content assets. Relying on first-party data is one of the biggest drivers of change for new attribution models. If your old taxonomy didn’t focus on the right data, it’s time to rethink how, why and from where customers are finding your products.
Here are some common examples of mobile marketing campaign metadata. If you leverage a platform like Claravine to manage these — instead of relying on a mobile marketing platform — you can capture an unlimited amount of additional fields specific to your business’ needs.
- Ad
- adset
- Application
- Campaign
- Channel
- Content
- Keywords
- Medium
- Source
How Privacy Helps (Not Hinders) Marketing Efforts
Privacy is at the forefront of everyone’s minds. Customers are asking for more privacy regulations and control over their data, and governments are eager to give that control to them. Privacy concerns are pervasive among global smartphone users — consumers are worried about everything from cyber criminals, to spam and data breaches. This issue isn’t going away; consumers have been concerned about mobile privacy for almost a decade. Businesses need to take these concerns seriously and act accordingly.
But complying with privacy measures shouldn’t mean the end of marketing. It merely means that businesses need to adjust their strategies, from an individual level to a larger audience, campaign and content-based approach. And that strategy is developed and informed through the data collection outlined in your taxonomy requirements. Businesses that demonstrate commitment to customer privacy can expect to be rewarded with more customer loyalty — which in turn leads to greater sales.
Conclusion
These days, omnichannel marketing is expected, and businesses need to be wherever customers are to compete. With data coming in from many different channels, businesses need to have data alignment to ensure the operation can run more efficiently. Taxonomies are essential for aligning data across regions and teams while maintaining customer privacy. With mobile devices facing more challenges as those ecosystems become more privacy-forward, marketers need to think differently about what specific information they need to reach and win customers.These days, omnichannel marketing is expected, and businesses need to be wherever customers are to compete . With data coming in from many different channels, businesses need to have data alignment to ensure the operation can run more efficiently. Taxonomies are essential for aligning data across regions and teams while maintaining customer privacy. With mobile devices facing more challenges as those ecosystems become more privacy-forward, marketers need to think differently about what specific information they need to reach and win customers.
Change doesn’t mean the end of marketing — just marketing as we know it. There will be ways for marketers to survive in a new privacy-first environment, through savvy use of first-party data, application of clear data taxonomies and compliance with the latest privacy laws.
Learn how Claravine can improve your mobile marketing taxonomies in an upcoming webinar on August 31, 2022.