Mobile Marketing - The New Trend in Digital Era

Businesses need to start adapting their marketing efforts to keep up with the advances in technology. The world is changing. The days of massive TV and billboard ad campaigns are over. Mobile device adoption rates are increasing at an incredible rate, surpassing 80% in 2016 alone. Even more importantly, average smartphones conversion rates are up 64% compared to the average desktop conversion rates for e-commerce alone.

Consumers love the convenience their smartphone provides. Mobile marketing utilizes
this to make a connection with the consumer

What is mobile marketing?

Mobile marketing is multi-channel online marketing technique focused at reaching a specific audience on their smart phone, tablets, or any other related devices through websites, E mail, SMS and MMS, social media or mobile applications. Mobile marketing can provide customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services and ideas. 

Mobile marketing is the art of marketing your business to appeal to mobile device users. It can also be defined as "any marketing activity conducted through a ubiquitous network to which consumers are constantly connected using a personal mobile device".

Why do we need mobile marketing?

Mobile devices are becoming the main screen in people’s lives -:

TV used to be the best way to connect with consumers because that is how they spent most of their time. That is rapidly changing. There is no better way to connect with your customers than being present where they spend their time. And the smartphone has made this easy. By reaching out to your customers on social media, email, and sms, you are going to them. This makes it very convenient and easy for your customers to respond to your marketing. Creating a much higher conversion rate. Whereas marketing through TV and billboards requires much more work on the consumer’s part before they ever respond to your marketing. And as more consumers get used to the convenience of mobile marketing, they will respond even less to traditional advertising.

Mobile Marketing brings consumers from online to offline (O2O) :-

Most retail stores focus their marketing efforts on bringing consumers into their store. And this can be a difficult task when consumers are hanging out online. But with mobile marketing, you are able to connect with them online, and entice them to connect with you offline. By using social media, email, sms, and beacons you can send offers to consumers that bring them directly into your store. This is powerful in the eyes of the business. Being able to have instant access to your consumers and then being able to bring them into your store should be every business owner’s dream.

Using iBeacon technology, you can send push notifications straight to your customers.
Updating them about any events or sales that you have going on.

Mobile Marketing is the easiest, cheapest, and fastest marketing available :-

The amazing thing about mobile marketing is that it really is the simplest type of marketing. Any business can create mobile coupons using Pass Designer or a digital loyalty card with Loopy Loyalty. Then they simply push them out to their customers through social media, email, sms, and beacons. This is far cheaper than any TV ad campaign would cost and it is even cheaper than running a paper coupon or loyalty card. Another reasons why mobile marketing is better than traditional is the analytics. When using mobile marketing, you know exactly how customers are responding to your campaigns. This is something a TV ad campaign can’t come close to matching.

Mobile marketing allows for you to stop wasting valuable resources
such as time and money. It even allows for your marketing to become paperless as more
consumers are asking for digital coupons and loyalty cards.

Types of mobile marketing strategies :-

App-based marketing:

This is mobile advertising involving mobile apps. While 80% of mobile time is spent engaged with apps, you don’t have to create an app yourself to get in on the action. Services like Google AdMob help advertisers create mobile ads that appear within third-party mobile apps. Facebook also allows advertisers to create ads that are integrated into Facebook’s mobile app. Facebook’s mobile Promoted Post ads integrate so seamlessly with Facebook’s news feed that users often don’t realize they’re looking at ads.

In-game mobile marketing:

In-game mobile marketing refers to mobile ads that appear within mobile games, like in the example below. In-game ads can appear as banner pop-ups, full-page image ads or even video ads that appear between loading screens.

QR codes:

QR codes are scanned by users, who are then taken to a specific webpage that the QR code is attached to. QR codes are often aligned with mobile games and have an element of mystery to them, since users who scan them don’t always know exactly which rabbit hole they’re jumping down.

Location-based marketing:

Location-based mobile ads are ads that appear on mobile devices based upon a user’s location relative to a specific area or business. For example, some advertisers may only want their mobile ads to appear when users are within a 1-mile radius of their business.

Mobile search Ads:

These are basic Google search ads built for mobile, often featuring extra add-on extensions like click-to-call or maps.

Mobile image Ads:

Image-based ads designed to appear on mobile devices.

Short Message Service (SMS):

SMS marketing involves capturing a user’s phone number and sending them text offers. This is considered somewhat passé. 

Proximity Systems:

Mobile marketing via proximity systems, or proximity marketing, relies on GSM 03.41 which defines the Short Message Service - Cell Broadcast. SMS-CB allows messages (such as advertising or public information) to be broadcast to all mobile users in a specified geographical area.

Putting it all together :-

A mobile marketing strategy is not a stand-alone, but it is a large chunk of any long term or short term marketing campaign – and its importance is only growing up. From email, to PPC, to SEO, to content to social media marketing, there is a mobile marketing channel to reach every part of your audience where they are most comfortable. 

Key Takeaways :-

Mobile marketing is one of those things that every business owner must try. The barrier to entry is low. The cost to entry is low. And it is simple enough that any business owner could do it. The advantage that mobile marketing has over all other forms is that it can bring customers directly from online to offline and right into your store. Businesses that master the art of connecting with their customers through mobile marketing are the ones that will thrive in the coming years.

References:

• https://www.marketo.com/mobile-marketing/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_marketing/
• http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/08/19/what-is-mobile-marketing/