As the CEO and co-founder of CornerBlue, a mobile marketing company in Santa Monica, I often discuss running a startup with other entrepreneurs. With mobile’s recent exponential growth, new companies focused on utilizing mobile to more effectively target consumers are emerging daily. Unfortunately, many startups don’t get off the ground because they make fundamental mistakes with their business.
Ignoring the News
Mobile marketing is so new that you need to stay current on new developments every single day. Checking all the major mobile and tech news outlets should be part of your daily routine. After a few weeks of reading the news, you’ll start to understand who the key industry experts are, which companies are leading the industry, and what new trends are emerging. Your business will benefit from its leaders taking advice from experts in the field and applying creative solutions to industry issues brought to light by the media.
Ignoring Your Clients
Competition is sharply increasing and with so many new companies entering the mobile marketing space daily, advertisers don’t know which ones to trust and which ones to stay away from. Once you do sign customers, how well you treat them from day one will determine the success of your business .Professional social networking sites like LinkedIn have facilitated the spread of news (and dissatisfaction) very quickly, so any mistakes you make will quickly reach your potential clients. Many times, I’ve had clients thank us for our dedicated service and tell us that it’s the main reason they chose to work with CornerBlue.
Ignoring Change
Over 1 million consumers are becoming smartphone users every day. This means your target demographic is constantly changing and evolving. It’s important to follow your campaigns closely and make optimizations often, sometimes multiple times per day. For example, as different devices become more popular, you need to redesign landing pages and re-optimize your ads to maintain a high-performing campaign. Not paying close attention to change can also result in your company’s tech team falling behind the latest updates and trends, likely causing your business to slow down and become less innovative.
Being Afraid to Fail
When it comes to mobile, don’t overthink every decision. Go with your instincts and trust that in a new industry, everyone makes mistakes. In a startup, most days it’s just about doing as much as you can the best you can. The real secret is to try more than your competitors and always strive for more challenges. New ideas and innovations are more valuable in an emerging industry than being conservative. From the age of 15 I’ve wanted to start a company, but an experienced businessman once told me that not trying is already failing. This simple advice is a helpful way to face your fear of failing.
Being Lazy
Unlike many of the other marketing verticals, mobile doesn’t have a mature ecosystem of supporting companies to make your job easier. Setting up new campaigns, especially ones that are highly targeted, can be extremely time-consuming with the underdeveloped tools provided by most mobile ad networks. We often spend hours creating dozens of variations for each ad in order to provide enough information to properly optimize each campaign. While mobile is a very lucrative industry now, it still requires full dedication and follow-through. While you’re the leader, you need to spend a large chunk of your time doing grunt work where you learn what jobs need to be done and who’s the best to do them.
Although the mobile marketing industry is an emerging and ever-changing field, its core values are still the same as any other successful business. Keeping up with industry news, easily adapting to changes, dedication to customer service and hard work are the backbone to any startup that wants to succeed.
