Does your mobile advertising strategy need a boost? Before you rethink your entire mobile marketing game plan, you may want to first consider changing just one part of your strategy: targeting the right customers.

If your mobile ads aren’t a hit with consumers, you are likely making some common mobile audience targeting errors.

And trust me: you are not alone in this.

Even though new and emerging mobile advertising technologies are making it easier for brands to reach the right customers and fans 24/7, if not used properly, you could very well be stranded in the outfield, while your competition slides across home plate.

Of course, we want you to beat your competitors at the mobile ad targeting game, so we’ve decided to offer the following tips to ensure that your brand is optimally positioned to hit a home run on mobile – and not left swinging blindly into thin air.

Let’s play ball.

Top 3 Mobile Ad Targeting Strategies

1.) Be Aware of Your Mobile Advertising Budget

One of the best ways to attract the right customers with mobile ads is to first understand your mobile advertising budget inside and out.

You’d think that this would be a no-brainer.  But surprisingly, many marketers have to stumble for answers when asked what their mobile advertising budget looks like. And if you don’t know this number, you, my friend, are likely causing your mobile ad conversions to suffer.

So, why is mobile ad budget management so crucial?

Knowing this number will allow you to choose the media publishers that are right for your ads. Some inventory sources (publishers) are more affordable. Others might have higher performing click through rates (CTRs) but cost more.

Are you looking for higher CTRs? Or better brand awareness?

Doing this research can help you determine which sources best fit within your budget, but also align with your campaign KPIs (key performance indicators).

That’s what we call a sweet spot.

Plus, once you know the budget and how to utilize it effectively, you can show the big guys at the top just how well your mobile ad targeting strategy is working.

Cutting costs while hitting your KPIs is a sure way to get noticed.

To be clear: Before your business falls behind the competition, knowing how to plan your mobile ad budget will help you target the best publishers that will then target the best customers.

2.) Take Your Ads Out of Context

Okay, so when your significant other takes your “hilarious” texts out of context it can be particularly frustrating. Even more frustrating? Not taking things out of context when it comes to your mobile ad targeting strategy.

Yes, looking outside of contextually relevant advertising avenues is a good thing when it comes to targeting the right consumers.

While running mobile ads across contextually relevant sites can still play an important role in your mobile advertising strategy, when it comes to mobile ad targeting, the possibilities of reaching even more relevant customers can be fairly endless by targeting people who are spending online mobile hours elsewhere.

Case in point: Let’s say you’re trying to target customers who may want to purchase MLB baseball t-shirts. Sure, you could buy ad space on MLB-affiliated news sites, MLB team mobile apps and more.

But that will likely cost a significant amount of money.

Instead, consider targeting the audience rather than the content. Even the most rabid of baseball fans spend a significant amount of time outside the obvious baseball-affiliated apps and websites. Now you can follow them wherever they go by keying in on advanced consumer profiles driven by data.

Target people, not apps.

This circles back to knowing your mobile ad budget. These apps and sites have a limited number of impressions available, so depending on your budget, you may need more customer reach than is available from certain MLB-related publishers. So, targeting baseball fans who are playing mobile games, using social networking apps, or dating apps could be missed if you continue to stay contextually relevant.

So, how do I find more relevant customers?

The Mobile Majority offers a mobile ad platform that can categorize and group sets of inventory into Channels that are then used to target these other relevant consumers. While we will still want to target MLB fans who are utilizing certain sports apps and reading MLB blogs, our platform can help you find these other relevant users: whether baseball fans are playing mobile games, spending most of their time on social networking apps, and more.

3.) Don’t Be a Mobile Ad Hoarder

To expand on the thought of extending your mobile ad reach to other relevant customers, you should also absolutely think about running mobile ads on various publishing sources to get the most bang for your ad targeting buck.

Let’s say you have $50,000 for your campaign and you’re keeping your ads running on just one publishing source. And maybe that source has performed really well in the past.

Hard to believe, but this is a dangerous mobile ad targeting strategy.

Think of inventory sources like the stock market. Just because a source has performed well in the past, that doesn’t guarantee it will keep performing. Furthermore, by only buying from one source, you’re likely missing out on opportunities to track other publishers’ performances.

The smarter ad targeting strategy is to diversify your sources, just like a professional investor. This will allow you to see what happens with your ad ROI across more than just one source which can help you allocate your funds to better performing sources later.

Our Demand Side Platform (DSP) can actually automate this ad buying process for you across multiple publisher sites; and our in-house AdOps team will optimize your placements during your campaign for the best possible performance.

Simply put: Don’t be one of those scary hoarder people and put all your cats… er.. ad dollars into one basket. Isolating your mobile ad budget to just one media source could cause your campaign to flop.

Choosing to implement these mobile ad targeting strategies are sure to keep you out of “voluntary” early retirement, and have your fans cheering you on to a long, prosperous career.