Whether you appreciate the portable revolution or not, the fact is that mobile advertising is here to stay - meaning that creating an effective and actionable strategy is more crucial than ever. According to search engine giants Google, the global penetration of smartphones reached about 25% in 2014, and the number of people browsing on their phones has continued growing ever since.

However, in spite of the fact that smartphone usage has grown, a lot of organizations and companies still struggle when it comes to applying a viable strategy for mobile advertising to their marketing campaign. Around 84% of companies who attempt to market with mobile see a significant boost in their overall sales, yet a significant number of them are still making mistakes that make their efforts either useless - or annoying. If you're struggling to see the positives of your mobile marketing campaign, the cause could come from one of the following five reasons.

1. You're Over-Complicating Things

A lot of companies today seem to think that having a mobile app is the best way to encourage more traffic and happier customers. Banks have apps that allow you to check your current balance and make transfers within an instant, whereas take-away shops have tracker apps that let you watch the progress of your order all the way up to the moment it's delivered. However, before you get excited thinking about the kind of apps you might be able to offer your customers, remember that making and maintaining a useful app is difficult - and asking your customers to download something that takes up a huge chunk of their data is usually a lot bigger than requesting they quickly visit your website. Most of the time, it's a good idea to skip the app idea unless you have a large budget to play around with. A truly great app is likely to be expensive, and unless your idea is both unique and entertaining, you'll typically find that people use them once or a couple times and then un-install them.

2. You're Using Pointless QR Codes

QR codes - those square bar-code things that appear on everything from cereal boxes to magazine advertisements are new and exciting pieces of technology - but that doesn't mean you should plaster them everywhere without good reason. Although QR codes can help to improve the experiences consumers have with your brand by making it easier to find out information about your products or delivering them directly to a place where they can access discounts and voucher codes, most of the time, they get ignored. Creating your own set of QR codes is a lot of hassle that often doesn't return a great deal of benefit to you. If you are going to use them, you should make sure each code comes with a unique and exciting call to action, such as: "Scan this code for exclusive deals", and so on.

3. You Haven't Used Showrooming

According to the website "Internet Retailer", about 58% of all shoppers use their phones to compare prices while in your shop to see whether they can get better deals elsewhere. If your customers discover that they can find your product online for less money, then you're likely to lose out on yet another crucial sale. However, if your mobile advertising strategy includes special coupons and check-in discounts for customers that they can access from their smartphones, you can ensure that you're always delivering the best possible deal. What's more, you can even encourage your customers to use social media to tell other people about their savings - therefore improving your reach.

4. You're Trying to Squeeze All Existing Content onto A Smaller Screen

One significant mistake that a lot of companies make when attempting to use mobile advertising, is thinking that responsive design simply means making sure all of your content fits on a smaller screen. If you want to make your mobile marketing strategy a success, then you need to make sure that your customers can access your website easily from their smartphones, and feel as comfortable using it on a tiny screen as they would using it on a huge desktop monitor. This means making the font easy to read, getting rid of unnecessary content, and ensuring that click-able parts of your webpage are optimized for a fiddly smartphone screen.

5. You Forgot to Announce That You Were Mobile-Ready

Plenty of businesses are great at driving new traffic to their desktop website through various media outlets and advertising strategies, however they seem to stop short when it comes to encouraging people to visit their mobile site. When you first go mobile, you should make the launch a significant thing for your customers, and ensure that people feel as though they are getting some sort of benefit from bothering to check your website from their smartphone. People aren't going to turn up unless you advertise properly, so make sure that you remind your existing customer base that they have plenty of options for staying up to date with your brand and products.