What Is Mobile Marketing?

A lot of people wonder ‘what is mobile marketing’ exactly? It’s important to first understand digital and mobile marketing meaning and types. Digital marketing is an umbrella term that incorporates any marketing that happens on any digital channel to reach your customer. You can think of it as websites, social media, SEO, email, SMS, and many other types of marketing but it is not specific to a device. Whereas the meaning of mobile marketing is that it is part of digital marketing but is focused on consumers who use their mobile devices or tablets to access the information. This can be through a mobile device, wearables, voice, tablets, etc. There are many types of mobile marketing such as SEO, SMS campaigns, app based marketing, location based marketing, push notifications, QR codes, and many many more. Now that we are clear on the meaning of mobile and digital marketing let’s dive a little deeper into the features of mobile marketing and mobile marketing pros and cons.

If you are reading this you probably already know the importance of mobile marketing but let’s look into some staggering key statistics on why mobile marketing has become so integral to your marketing efforts. In just four years from 2016 to 2020, Statista reports the number of smartphone users increased by a billion users, from 2.5 billion to 3.5 billion users! The question is no longer what are the benefits of mobile marketing but how to take advantage of the mobile marketing growth and be sure to incorporate it into your marketing strategy from the beginning. With mobile marketing statistics as staggering as the fact that over 40 percent of mobile transactions happen on mobile - it is crucial to figure out how your brand will leverage the mobile marketing channels to your full advantage. There are many advantages of mobile marketing such as easy access due to phones constantly being by our sides, instant transactions occur (no more needing to drive to the store), local targeting and personalization - and that’s just naming a few. The digital age has created a scope of mobile marketing that can reach people at any time and in most places. You don’t want to miss out on the benefits of mobile marketing in 2022. Some of the challenges or opportunities of mobile marketing though can be consumer privacy issues, no standardization for screen sizes, and could even cost users money if they do not have an unlimited plan for cellular use. The benefits definitely explain the reason behind the rise in mobile marketing and tend to outweigh some of the cons. Just make sure to be aware of potential barriers you may come across when starting your mobile strategy.

Types of Mobile Marketing

Now that you know how mobile marketing and digital marketing differ, let’s now look at the different types of mobile marketing and how to use them within your mobile marketing channels. Below is the list of all different types of mobile marketing:

• SMS/MMS Marketing
• App-Based Marketing
• Mobile Search Ads
• Mobile Image Ads
• In-Game Mobile Marketing
• Location Based Marketing
• Search Marketing - SEO and SEM
• QR Codes
• Social Media Marketing - on mobile devices

And honestly, there are probably some more we have not listed out. As you can see mobile marketing is huge and there are many mobile marketing technologies that can help you adapt and evolve your mobile marketing efforts. We are going to dive into just a handful of these different types of mobile marketing in the next couple of paragraphs.

Social Media Marketing

We discussed at a high level some of the different types of marketing including social media and mobile marketing. Now let’s dive into social media marketing specifically. There are many different types of mobile marketing when it comes to the social media environment. Some of the top platforms (at the moment) are Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat. But not every brand will focus on all social platforms. Some platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are great avenues to reach a B2B audience whereas YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest are great avenues for B2C brands. These channels often have an intermixed audience but it’s important when thinking about the different types of mobile marketing your team wants to test out to focus on what mobile marketing channels may make the most sense.

You can focus on building your brand voice by creating a content calendar and strategy to keep your audience engaged, your brand may be looking for the next influencer marketer for your team, or you may be ready to run paid social media ads on some of the top platforms for your company. There are many different types of ways to meet your customers on social media.

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Social Marketing

Social media marketing is well known for influencer marketing when it comes to consumer goods but many companies are starting to use the platform and influencer marketers for social marketing. Social marketing is different from traditional marketing because it isn’t necessarily focused primarily on a financial aspect but is more focused on getting an audience’s attention to make a change in behaviors and/or raise awareness of a certain topic. During early 2020 with the global pandemic of COVID19, many companies paused their normal advertising to pursue social marketing and help their consumer understand how to stay safe during this time. Some brands may have gone from selling and advertising their products on Instagram to showing how to tie-dye DIY at home while under quarantine. Social marketing is more of a way to bring awareness and a change of behavior to an audience for a greater good.

Location-based Marketing

Location-based marketing is when a company uses a customer’s current or past location data to display relevant content or ads for the customer. This type of marketing is also known as geolocation marketing, proximity marketing, and a few other names. With location-based marketing you need to really understand the mobile marketing etiquette so that you do not overstep your place as a marketer. You don’t want to come off as though you are ‘stalking’ someone’s whereabouts but more so showing that you know what is important to the customer and how to better meet their needs. (Surprise! It’s not about you and your company. It’s about meeting your consumers needs.)

There are several ways you can start to use location based marketing - IP addresses marketing, geofencing marketing, GPS marketing, beacon marketing, and several other ways.

Mobile App Marketing

App based marketing or mobile app marketing is a lifecycle process that will take your customer from discovering your app to becoming a loyal and engaged app user. This could be an entire page in and of itself (oh wait there is here!) so we will discuss at high level mobile app marketing examples and ways to think about app development marketing. You first need to know what you will be building. Are you building a native mobile app, progressive web app (PWA), or web app? Then you need to understand how you will build it. Are you going to hire an internal team of developers or use a low code or no code app building platform? The what you build and how you build it will determine a lot of the cost associated with your app development. Make sure when focusing on an app you aren’t just recreating your website into an app. Find a tension point for your customers and use your app to better that customer experience! Lumavate has helped many enterprise organizations build digital experiences to better their organizations in a multitude of ways.

Once you’ve decided how you are going to build your mobile app it is then important to understand how you will promote and launch your app into the market. There are plenty of mobile marketing app agencies that can help you strategize from the beginning on how to make your app successful so consumers will find value in your app and will notice it. Mobile app marketing is an ever evolving area (shocker). It’s crucial to stay up to date on how iOS and Android are evolving and changing their platforms to keep your marketing practices up with the latest updates. However, if you decide to build your next app as a PWA you actually can completely dismiss the use of the Apple App Store or Google Play App Store because your PWA will be accessed through QR Codes, URL, or text. You no longer have to worry about app store optimization (ASO) and now can just focus on marketing your app outside of the app store.

Mobile Marketing Examples

Let’s now look at a few mobile marketing examples of some brands and their mobile marketing efforts.

• Domino’s Pizza Tracker - The Domino’s Pizza Tracker has become an icon and used in many industries and other companies’ mobile marketing efforts. This mobile marketing example shows a great case study of how there was a customer friction point (not knowing when your pizza was going to arrive) to how the brand responded in their marketing efforts to find a solution to that issue. It is now used across healthcare, restaurants, logistics, and other industries to help end users or customers stay in touch with the delivery process.
• Burger Kings Burn That Ad - Burger King is known for now shying away from advertisements that poke at their competitors. This rival ad campaign allowed consumers to open up Burger Kings app and use it to burn competitors ads and receive a free whopper.
• Pinterest PWA - Pinterest was having a difficult time having users sign-up, login, or download the native app. So they decided to do a complete makeover and rebuild their mobile web experience through a progressive web app (PWA). The PWA increased metrics across the board! Medium noted that “time spent is up by 40 percent compared to the old mobile web experience, user-generated ad revenue is up 44 percent and core engagements are up 60 percent:”

You can also listen to our Mobile Matters episode with Patrick Flanagan to hear some great mobile marketing ideas and mobile marketing examples 2019. There are many mobile marketing ideas that range from apps to SMS campaigns, to just having a mobile website. It can be overwhelming with all the mobile marketing technology out there but pull in the reigns and understand what makes sense for your brand voice first and figure out where to capture your target audience. Then trial and error until you find what works best for your brand!

How to Stay Updated on Mobile Marketing News

Staying up to date on 2022 mobile trends is going to be important to how you run the marketing department. In a Mobile Matters Episode with Rochelle Hartigan, Rochelle discusses how important it is to test and try new concepts and innovative ideas in the marketing space but also understand when it is time to pivot away from failure. (By the way, failures are okay when testing new strategies or concepts. Just do it quickly!) There are mobile marketing articles, mobile marketing websites, and mobile marketing blogs that can offer some great advice and insight into top mobile marketing practices and trends. Let’s look at some of the top mobile marketing news outlets that can help bring your team today’s mobile marketing trends today.

• Medium - Medium is a blend of mobile marketing blogs, mobile marketing articles, etc., similar to an online magazine. You can be a reader of Medium or a publisher!
• Mobile Marketer - Mobile Marketer is a great place to stay up to date on top mobile marketing news and mobile marketing articles 2020. From successful and not so successful campaigns to innovative marketing approaches. Great weekly or daily email subscription to sign up for.
• Marketing Dive - Marketing Dive is also a great email subscription to be on daily or weekly. They share a lot of trends and top stories as well in the marketing space. Is not specific to mobile.
• Mobile Marketing Watch - Mobile Marketing Watch covers all areas of the mobile marketing ecosystem.
• Marketing Tech - Marketing Tech is just a great all around helpful resource for anything marketing. They are focused on keeping you updated on marketing technology and strategies.

Mobile marketing can seem extensive (because it is) and a lot of work (which it also is) but you will see the impact on your brand once you try even a few new practices. The great thing about mobile marketing is it won't stay the same and you can always change it up. There are always tests that can be run to try to understand a new trend or practice better! Don’t shy away from mobile marketing because it is pivotal to your company’s success!

Mobile Marketing Strategies

As you can tell there are many different types of mobile marketing strategies and it honestly will depend a lot on your brand voice and whether you are a B2B, B2C, or B2B2C company. It’s important to know what your goals of mobile marketing are and how your marketing strategies for smartphones or tablets will intertwine with your goals.

Let’s first look at some of the best practices of marketing strategies for smartphones. First, you need to think about cross-channel advertising. You will be marketing to users on all different types of devices and across different platforms so you need to keep in mind using a mobile responsive design. (Do not make your users scroll horizontally on their mobile device!) You’ll also want to make sure you create mobile-specific designs for your campaigns focusing on the fact you will only get 1-2 seconds to engage with your audience and there cannot be too small of detail. Next, when looking at paid search or pay-per-click (PPC) marketing focus make sure to at least run mobile campaigns and then on top of that when choosing keywords to pay for looking into broader matches. Are you going after misspellings and use match cases? There are countless best practices or tips for cell phone marketing strategy but the most important thing to remember is to test, test often, and never stop testing. Things change so often it’s important to stay on top of the new algorithms, technologies, and ways to market on mobile. When you incorporate some of the best practices for mobile marketing you will see the effects of mobile marketing  on all different stages of your consumers’ purchasing decisions.

Once you understand the best practices of mobile marketing and how it can affect your consumers’ buying decisions we can now move onto developing effective mobile marketing programs. It’s important when developing effective mobile marketing programs you build it with a mobile-first mentality. You can’t just make your website adaptable to different devices, the campaign and program NEEDS to be built for mobile. Below are a few high level tips on how to build an effective mobile marketing strategy.

• Identify your goals for the program. Are you looking to increase traffic to your website? Is the CTA to purchase something? What customer tension point are you fixing with your mobile efforts? It’s crucial to identify the effects of mobile marketing you want to see with your mobile marketing strategy.
• Figure out who your target audience is. You may know your target audience as a brand but is that the same audience on mobile? It’s important to know who is interested in hearing about your brand via mobile!
• Determine what approach makes most sense for your goal. Are you going to be building an app to fix the tension point? Do you need to run a target ad campaign to get people into your store? Are you sending out an SMS message to update consumers on a deal or a contest? Make sure you understand what channel makes the most sense to reach your goals of mobile marketing.

Hopefully you have now gained some better insight into how to do mobile marketing and it seems a little less daunting. Lumavate has created a helpful mobile marketing pdf to download to help answer some of the big questions surrounding how to evolve your mobile marketing strategy based on current trends and your mobile marketing goals.  Mobile marketing technology has been on the rise and many companies are looking at ways to improve their tech stack while keeping it efficient. You will continue to hear about new MarTech companies that can help build out your mobile campaign development. It’s important to stay up to date on the new trends, technologies and software to know what your company may need to test out!