Cultivating Loyalty in a Multi-Screen Era

Quick question for you…

How many times a day do you think your audience checks their phone?

At Social Media Week last year, Michelle Klein, Head of Marketing for North America at Facebook shared that:

• The average adult checks their phone 30 times a day
• The average millennial checks their phone more than 150 times a day

Considering it’s been over a year since she presented these figures, it’s fair to assume the numbers have only increased.

Why is that, do you think?

She claims it’s “sensory experience of communication that helps us to connect with others, without having to look away.” For marketers, that means infinite ways and opportunities to connect with audiences.

But, how can brands cut through the clutter to connect with consumers and cultivate loyalty as they hop from one mobile experience to the next?

In truth, it all boils down to considering a few things…

The Device

While mobile usage continues to increase at a rapid rate, that doesn’t mean your desktop traffic is DOA.

Instead, what it does mean is that your audience is consuming content in different places and on different devices depending on the time of day. Being cognizant of your audience’s specific browsing habits will allow you to better tailor content to their needs in that moment.

For example, the chart above might graph the experience of a working professional. Someone who checks their phone first thing in the morning, operates on a desktop during the day, and then picks up activity after dinner and later into the evening while decompressing before bed.

You’ll want to identify who they are, their device activity, and how/when you plan to reach them.

My suggestion?

Multivariate campaign testing. Test separate devices along with different times of day to ensure you are investing the right media spend on the right device and at the right time.

The Content + Creative

While all of the above is super important, let’s not forget how important your content offering is. Because without the right creative, you might make contact with your target audience but not land any punches.

Not to say you want to assault your consumers. Instead, it is about making the right impact.

If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a snippet of some best practices for choosing your discovery campaign creative.

Click here for the full list.

And that’s just scratching the surface, because once the user clicks through, you need to match increasingly high user expectations with content that delivers on what it promised in the headline.

And, of course, don’t forget how important it is for your creativity to look good on the device your users are accessing the content on.

If you aren’t optimized for mobile, consider only targeting campaigns to desktop users alone because audiences are looking for top-shelf experiences across devices and if you can’t provide it, they may leave and never come back.

In order to cultivate loyalty and return visits, this is what packaging the content experience for audiences should look like:

Content that can traverse the multi-screen journey will not only meet user expectation but also create a positive and fulfilling experience on their path to loyalty.

The Technology

Not all the tools you use to reach your target audience are created equal. And after stressing how mobile is now the name of the game, it’s really important to be supported by the right technology for delivering your content.

Why?

Because if the experience isn’t seamless on the part of the consumer, you’re sacrificing their trust. And in such a competitive content marketplace, that’s not a risk you should take.

What do I mean by seamless?

Messaging that feels native to the user’s environment and not disruptive to their consumption patterns. Facebook’s NewsFeed does this really well, as does Twitter’s. And yet, they don’t scale as well, seeing as even a campaign optimized for website clicks will still generate likes, shares, and comments—all of which you’ll pay for—as opposed to valuable readers on your site, engaging with more of your brand.

Instead, if we know that audiences trust premium publisher sites, why not bake your brand message into their loyal reader base?

With consumers migrating to mobile at rapid rates, publishers are continuing to turn to tech leaders in the space, such as Outbrain, to help them monetize through high-quality discovery experiences.

That means marketers now have access to optimized and responsive in-stream recommendations, sponsored articles, interstitials, and popups.

That’s a great opportunity to not only rub shoulders with the most credible in the industry but also reap the benefits of the latest trends in mobile—all of which contributes to creating an overall healthy relationship with your readers.

At the end of which, comes loyalty.