What is Mobile Marketing?

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 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. Some of the challenges 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.

Is Phone Marketing Different?

Well it depends on what type of phone marketing we are talking about. If we are speaking about telemarketing - this is very different. Telemarketing is a type of phone marketing of goods or services through phone calls that are usually unsolicited. It is often used by companies because it may be cheaper than other types of campaigns and you will receive direct feedback on whether or not customers are interested in your product. Oftentimes there are third party companies that will do the telemarketing for your company. However, nowadays with an influx of spam calls telemarketing may not be as successful as it was a handful of years ago.

Mobile marketing is the more common type of phone marketing. We spoke above about the key benefits and challenges with mobile marketing. There are all sorts of different mobile marketing topics - app based marketing, social media and mobile marketing, location based marketing, etc. Phone marketing is a very wide generalization term and could include, telemarketing, mobile marketing, social media marketing, etc. It’s important to know what it is you are directly looking for or wanting to speak about as a marketer.

Let’s Look at Some 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 examples as well. 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!

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 that 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!

Mobile Advertising

While mobile and digital marketing trends have been on the rise so has mobile advertising. Mobile advertising can be any advertising distributed through a mobile channel such as app based, social media based, or anything accessed off of a mobile phone, table, or even voice. Mobile app advertising is a strategy that app developers have been using for mobile ad monetization within their apps to earn money. Developers use this in their free and paid for apps. Some of the mobile advertising trends you’ve seen over the past couple years is short video clips. We first saw these types of ads on Youtube but now you are seeing them across platforms like TikTok and Snapchat. Business of Apps reached out to a few top advertising professionals to figure out what they believe to be mobile advertising trends 2022 and below are a few snippets:

• Mobile advertising is moving from web to in-app ads
• Local and hyper-local advertising will become more abundant
• Consumer privacy is going to play a pivotal role in how ad targeting will evolve

There are mobile advertising advantages and disadvantages to think about when looking into this. Some of the key advantages are the audience volume and having the ability to have highly target ads. Some of the disadvantages you will come across are finding the right balance of ad placements for consumers. If you overload them with ads there becomes a point where it will turn into diminishing returns. You also have to make sure you are staying within compliance of privacy standards. Privacy concerns are on the rise as mobile and digital advertising increases. As consumers we begin to notice how brands follow us across the internet and some people are starting to put their foot down and figure out just what privacy rights they may have. There are many advantages and a handful of disadvantages when it comes to mobile advertising that you will need to take into consideration when creating your next mobile ad campaign.

How to Stay Updated on Mobile Marketing News

Staying up to date on 2020 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 case study pdfs, marketing blogs, online marketing magazines and even mobile marketing ebook pdf that can offer some great advice and insight into top mobile marketing practices and trends. Let’s look at some of the top digital marketing news outlets that can help bring your team today’s mobile marketing trends and even look back at past mobile technology trends 2021 and beyond.

• 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 2022. 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.
• Retail Dive - Retail Dive is specific to retail marketing news. It will help  keep you up to date on what is happening in the retail industry.
• 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!