Mobile marketing is a relatively new form of marketing but it also uses similar features like the other more established forms of marketing. You have to follow similar rules and you must apply effective strategies if you want this technique to work for you.
- How do You Start a Mobile Shop Business?
- How to do Mobile Marketing
- Examples of Mobile Marketing
- How do You Market Your Brand to a Mobile Marketing Environment?
- What Are Important Guidelines for Mobile Marketing?
- What are The Steps That Marketer Needs to Take in Order to Execute a Mobile Marketing Strategy?
- How Can Mobile Marketing Help Your Business?
- Marketing Strategies for Smartphones
- Mobile Marketing Techniques
- Mobile Marketing Strategy Example
- Marketing Strategy For Mobile Phone Industry
- What Are The Types of Mobile Marketing?
- What Are The Disadvantages of Mobile Marketing?
How do You Start a Mobile Shop Business?
Although a good performing Mobile Shop makes an average net profit of 20% on its daily sales, 80% of those who get into this business close their Mobile shop in less than 2 years due to losses and cash-flow problems.
Additionally, Mobile shops have cut-throat competition for the reason that there are minimal barriers to entry. But at the same time, when looked at the given past, and recent past trends, the future for this Mobile shop business looks very rewarding and profitable if done right.
1. Make a list of Mobile accessories that are commonly sold in your surroundings. Mobile phones are not your only option. Consider offering related products and accessories, such as headsets, cables, chargers and memory cards.
These will bring in additional income and provide customers with everything they need in one place.
2. Markdown those mobile accessories you can manage to buy & sell if you set up such a Mobile shop business.
And be careful about your customer segment, get an idea from your what you observe, find out which price range is selling more in your store. This is a very useful mobile shop business idea, because, sales vary greatly on the economic condition of your area or customer.
3. All your customers are not technical expertise, but as a mobile handset seller, you have to have good knowledge about all the brand and handset. People love to buy from an expert who can elaborate on all the feature pros cons when the customer is comparing with two or three sets.
4. Locate the area with lesser competition for your Mobile Phone Shop & reasonable demand for Mobile Phone & Mobile Accessories.
5. You need to aware of the latest trends and ruling prices of the industry.
A space of about 10 x 15 square feet or about 150 square feet is required for setting up a mobile store. The store must be suitably equipped with display cases, lighting, cameras, and air-conditioning (if needed).
Read Also: How Word of Mouth Marketing Can Increase Business Revenue
It is necessary for a long counter of 8 x 3.5 feet on the left side with glasses that are in front and top portion and on the back wall of the counter that makes two to three good view cupboards with glass and all should be completely decorated as well as with lightings
6. Some customers deal with credits and some pay instantly by cash. It’s important to offer customers a variety of ways to pay you as some customers are comfortable with credit terms in order to do business with you.
7. Mobile stores mostly expect local clients. Therefore, advertising for Mobile Phone Business can be done one of several ways, including billboards, Yellow Page ads, flyers, and email marketing to an existing customer list.
8. Because the Mobile Phone business is quite capital heavy– you may have to invest mostly in fast-moving products to be on the safer side.
Invest in varieties of headphones, Screenguards, Earphones, Mobile phone sets, power banks, Mobile covers, Bluetooth and much more.
9. Allow customers to pay you using PayTM, GPay, Cash, Credit Card, etc. When they go low in cash, allow them to pay later. When customers are satisfied, they return back, they may start recommending your Mobile Phone business to their connections too. This is very likely to happen.
10. Provide after-sales support too. After selling a product if any problem arises it’s not your responsibility to guide your customer. Try to fix the problem.
Even you can get tiny requests like installing apps, set it. This will give you a chance to make a good customer relationship.
How to do Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing is any advertising activity that promotes products and services via mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones. It makes use of features of modern mobile technology, including location services, to tailor marketing campaigns based on an individual’s location.
Mobile marketing is a way in which technology can be used to create personalized promotion of goods or services to a user who is constantly connected to a network. Here is how to do it.
Set Up a Mobile Website
People use their smartphones for almost everything these days and so it’s important that your website is formatted correctly for viewing on a smartphone.
If you have an existing website, many companies offer automated systems that convert your existing website for viewing on a mobile platform. WordPress and GoDaddy are two great examples of companies that do this.
Other companies also create a completely new version of your website just for viewing on a mobile device, commonly known as plug-and-play platforms.
Another alternative if you are comfortable with writing computer code is adding a line of code on your website that is able to determine the screen size of the device being used and adjusts the site accordingly.
Set Up Your Business on Location-Based Platforms
Setting up your business on the various location-based platforms, such as Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places is a good way to make your business available to a wider range of people and to start running mobile ad campaigns.
Foursquare has been a pioneer in this respect, where companies can run various promotions, such as offering discounts for meeting a certain number of visits or “check-ins” on the app.
Dive Deeper
To get a real feel and understanding of mobile ad marketing you need to fully immerse yourself in the experience.
Start using location-based platforms wherever you go, check-in, use the various apps available for paying in restaurants or grocers, check out ads, perform various voice searches, all to get a feel of how people might use their mobile devices for consumer transactions. This can help you to design your mobile ad campaigns more efficiently.
Start a Mobile Ad Campaign
Once your website is set up for mobile device viewing and you’ve understood how the mobile ad marketing world works, it’s time to set one up for your business.
Mobile ad campaigns are a crucial element for businesses to get viewership. If you have a skateboard shop in the neighborhood and someone searches “best skateboard shops near me” you want to make sure that your business pops up in their search.
There are a variety of ways that mobile ad marketing campaigns can be paid for. These include flat fees for running an ad for a certain period of time, or on a cost-per-click basis, a cost-per-thousand basis, or a cost-per-acquisition basis.
Facebook, Google, Apple, Instagram, and other social platforms all offer the ability to start your own mobile marketing campaign.
Utilize QR Codes
QR codes, which are square bar codes containing information, can be placed in a variety of locations, and once scanned by a phone’s camera, direct a user to a website that can show a business’s website, promotions, or other important information. They’re a simple and easy way to make your business known
Examples of Mobile Marketing
Samsung
For the release of its Galaxy S6 phone, Samsung worked with Indian tech company InMobi to develop interactive ads.
These ads created a personalized real-time battery identification mobile ad unit that displayed the product and service to a user with a demo on their phone when their battery levels were low.
The mobile ad highlighted the new phone’s “super fast charging capability” right when their battery was low, enticing them to upgrade to the new phone.
Pond’s
Pond’s is another company that partnered with InMobi. Pond’s created an ad for one of their acne products that was interactive in that when a person looked at their phone, the camera would capture their features and highlight acne-prone areas. The ad didn’t require any software to be downloaded or for the user to visit any other site.
Ruffles
Ruffles witnessed declining sales in Brazil and decided to target teenagers with interactive ads. It created a mobile reality game called AmiGo. The user saw what the game showed them while their friends saw what the user’s camera showed them.
Friends would see Ruffle chips surrounding the user and they could send voice commands to their friend on where they can grab the chips. The more chips collected the more points the user would receive. Ruffles ranked the highest-scoring users on its social media accounts.
Nissan
Nissan created the “Evil Snowmen” ad for its Rogue SUV. The ad was a video where its Rogue SUV fought a gang of snowmen. The ad also contained hotspots on the screen that users could touch to learn more about the SUV’s features. Other hotspots also provided weather and snow safety advice.
How do You Market Your Brand to a Mobile Marketing Environment?
A large part of mobile marketing is about getting your brand recognized and trusted by your mobile audience.
To achieve this, marketers use different platforms and post compelling content to relay their brand story and engage their audience. Social media has streamlined all these activities in one fluid, engaging channel.
Social media networks offer an excellent platform to post attractive content, engage with customers, and generate leads. You can post compelling captions, product images, videos, infographics, and stories to convey your brand message. Social media alone manages 3.2 billion visual shares daily.
Although its effectiveness in building a strong brand identity is irrefutable, many SMEs often overlook the importance of social media when building their brand strategy.
What Are Important Guidelines for Mobile Marketing?
Here are a few tips that will help you to tap into mobile business for profit.
The best time to start
There is no better time to take advantage of this opportunity than now. Smartphones are becoming more acceptable by the day so you can be sure that there will always be room for you to make money from this new venture.
It cannot get too crowded like other conventional ways of making money online. It is also commonly preferred because it does not require a great deal of technical work unlike other methods. It also has less upfront costs and more proceeds.
A huge market
It is important to learn how to tap into mobile marketing business for profit. The number of potential clients that can be reached is very high. Adopting this method for advertising will benefit your business in no small ways. Competition is also reduced since there are fewer people into mobile marketing services.
Use SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not only valuable for websites but it can be used for mobile applications as well. Use Google for your mobile SEO. A lot of searches that are done through mobile devices are done through Google
Offer coupons
Use Multimedia Messaging Service to offer coupons to all your clients. When you send out the coupons, be sure to add promotional codes. Promotional codes are good for linking with mobile sites, which makes tracking very easy to achieve. Utilizing coupons is an effective means of getting new customers and rewarding committed ones.
Bring out an entirely different mobile application
By doing this, your prospects are encouraged to check your app more often in order to get specials and promo. Besides seeing an increase in sales figures, it helps to reinforce brand awareness. Hire a professional to create this application for you because in the long run apps differ in price and scope to a very large extent.
Advertise on your website
Advertising on your site helps to pull visitors who may end up being customers to your mobile sites or Smartphone applications. Customers who wish to patronize your services now know where to find your business even when they are not using their computers.
Create landing pages
Do not limit yourself to only one landing page. It is necessary to test to be sure of what will work. Create at least two versions of your landing pages so that you can monitor which of them will get the highest number of conversions. Go along with the more successful one.
Be brief
Keep your website copy brief and straight to the point. It is not proper to have long-winded product descriptions with several landing pages that will be unhelpful to the user. Mobile marketing is more successful when campaigns are short and concise.
What are The Steps That Marketer Needs to Take in Order to Execute a Mobile Marketing Strategy?
1. Objectives: Identifying goals and objectives for the mobile channel.
It goes without saying that mobile goals and objectives should be related to the overall business objectives of the company. To help with the process, think about how a mobile channel can help you meet your business objectives.
Many brands could have avoided developing mobile apps for download that were abandoned shortly thereafter by asking these questions:
- What do you want your mobile app to accomplish?
- Would you like to drive traffic to a store?
- Would you like customers to have any channel for support?
- At customer need can you meet that helps to achieve your business objective?
Tiffany & Co’s ”Find your Engagement Ring” mobile app is a perfect example of execution based on extensive, well-formulated research on the target audience and clearly defined business objectives.
It clearly targets men who have a problem identifying the ring size for women they would like to propose to. It still showcases the product, but it solves the major hurdle in the purchasing process.
2. People: Defining the profile of the target audience.
Existing customers, new customers, what do you know about your target? Social media
can be the hero and provide a wealth of knowledge about your different segments, especially smartphone users. The more marketers know about social media and mobile usage, the clearer it becomes that mobile and social experiences are interconnected and inseparable.
According to OnSite Consulting’s 2011 report, 56 percent of connected smartphone users follow a brand on social media.
By listening to the conversation on social networks and identifying what is being said about your brand and product, you can also identify specific problems and pain points to address with your mobile app and inform the direction of your strategy.
It is also helpful to look at the “Customer Hourglass,” Altimeter’ social model of purchase. The funnel looks at the entire customer experience pre- and post-sale.
Incorporating the customer hourglass and understanding how to engage with your target consumer at each step will provide you with invaluable insight into their specific needs, which then could be satisfied by a mobile app.
3. Strategy: Determining the right approach for meeting said objectives.
Once you have identified your target audience and set your objectives for the mobile channel, choosing the right mobile development strategy becomes easier.
It is important to keep in mind that your strategy is more than an appropriate technology, but it is also about reaching the right people with the right features required to meet the objectives you’ve set. Effective mobile solutions require unique and specific planning, tactics, integration and implementation.
Use scenarios to establish interaction models. Scenarios must be realistic and in-context. If a feature doesn’t work within a realistic user scenario, cut it. Mobile users demand two main things when it comes to mobile experiences: content and convenience.
At this stage, you should have a close to complete idea of your mobile application, functionality, features, usage scenarios, support system and operating systems.
4. Technology: Choosing the development technology that fits the strategy.
There are many development options available, and the development space is undergoing changes. This stage will be handled primarily by your technical team or a vendor, but it is important to establish right amount of cross-functional rapport to understand the process.
In the perfect scenario you should have a team consisting of marketing, user experience, strategy and it members available through the entire process When choosing the development option, try to stay up to date with trends and general developments of the mobile space.
In conclusion, remember that customers are increasingly looking for a full experience. To stand out in a sea of choices, your app must not only to draw attention initially, but withstand the test of time by delivering the promised value quickly and providing an incentive for continued engagement.
How Can Mobile Marketing Help Your Business?
There are numerous benefits and advantages for small businesses that adopt such technology as part of their marketing endeavors. According to Strategic Marketing Concepts, small business owners and marketers favor high-impact, cost-effective methods of increasing revenue.
While high-impact may be easy to obtain, the cost-effective part might be slightly more difficult. This is where mobile marketing comes in as an incredibly handy tool for small business owners.
For one, the affordability of the medium – beyond the initial investment of time and resources to develop the technology – is unparalleled compared to other marketing formats.
There is no need to pay for postage, printing or air time, with only the nominal per text message fee typically required. Additionally, the price of development and delivery decreases substantially as the volume increases.
Another huge advantage of mobile marketing is immediacy, according to the news source. Messages can be delivered to recipients within seconds, and if two-way engagement is not only allowed but encouraged, customers can quickly respond should they choose to do so.
This naturally leads to the next advantage of interactivity. The goal of every marketing campaign should always be to promote engagement and interaction. The natural format of mobile marketing lends itself to this two-way interaction.
Finally, the response rates of mobile marketing have been proven over the years as being incredibly high. Much of this is due to the immediacy mentioned above – instead of tossing a postcard or customer survey aside for a later time, many users already have their cellphones in their pockets and can quickly respond.
Additionally, the technology embedded within allows for quantifiable campaign results lets marketers track downloads, page visits, and customer opt-ins, the news source reports.
Being able to track every detail of a marketing campaign would allow the small business to develop campaigns that provide better bang for their buck in the future.
Marketing Strategies for Smartphones
1. Find Out What Your Customers Want
Don’t fall into the trap of believing that your opinion about your customers matters because it doesn’t at all. Find out what your customers want from you and how you can better deliver it to them, and then, get out of the way.
Sharpen your mobile presence around what your customers have told you they want — not what you assumed or what you want them to want from you. You can destroy a perfectly good business with brilliant but worthless opinions about your customers.
2. Optimize for iOS
Focus on optimizing mobile sales for iOS. Although 80 percent of smartphone users have Android phones, recent research shows that iOS users do more mobile shopping and, on average, spend more dollars on each transaction than Android users do.
In the long term this may change, but for now, devote a little more attention to shoppers with iPhones.
3. Display a Coupon Code for First-Time Mobile Visitors
Temporary price breaks are the single best way to drive conversions online. Include a coupon code for first-time mobile visitors to move the needle.
4. Include a Price Comparison
Your customers are going to compare prices anyway, so have a price comparison on your mobile app. As long as your products are competitively priced, you’ll enjoy more purchases.
5. Create Strong Calls to Action
Make sure your mobile website has strong calls to action on every page. Mobile websites can easily take advantage of this strategy by using prominent, clickable buttons.
Special buttons should stand out by being a different color or a slightly larger size than the other navigation options. They will get even more attention if they are visible without having to scroll to find them.
6. Automate the Checkout Process
An obvious solution is having a mobile-friendly or responsive design website for mobile users. You should also work on automating as much of the checkout process as possible. If you can keep the user logged in indefinitely, then do so. Save credit card and account information as much as possible, and consider PCI DSS compliance.
If all the information is saved and all the customer has to do is enter the card security code, then you will end up with a better user experience and more purchases from a mobile device.
Mobile Marketing Techniques
Here are five keys for successful mobile marketing strategies.
1. Develop your database
One popular strategy for mobile marketing campaigns is messaging. Your business can send messages directly to consumers to offer them coupons, discounts and other valuable information or rewards.
If the recipient is already a fan of your company, such offers will likely be well received. They can not only lead directly to more sales, but also have a positive impact on your customer relationships.
However, you need to be careful. If you send these messages to the wrong people, they may have a negative reaction. After all, these messages are more intrusive than the average marketing outreach effort, and so they carry more of a risk of causing a backlash.
To strike the right balance here, it is critical to develop and manage your customer database, as PromotionWorld contributor Reu Rai recently asserted.
While it may be tempting to simply add every customer’s phone number to your mobile marketing database and sending messages indiscriminately, this is not the best course of action, the writer explained.
Instead, Rai recommended getting explicit customer consent before including any given individual in such a campaign. This way, you’ll reach fewer people, but those who do receive your messages will be far more likely to have a positive reaction.
2. Make messages count
In addition to taking care when choosing who receives these mobile messages, you also need to pay close attention to the messages themselves, Rai explained.
In a lot of marketing strategies, frequency is paramount. You need to publish a great deal of social media content, for example, if you want these campaigns to prove successful. However, when it comes to direct mobile marketing, you need to exercise a little more restraint.
Rai emphasized the need to make sure that every message is worthwhile for your customers. Don’t send messages just for the sake of maintaining content, as this can do serious damage to your company’s reputation and customer relationships.
This is true even if you are very careful to only include those customers who are most likely to appreciate your mobile outreach efforts. Quality should trump quantity when it comes to mobile messaging campaigns.
3. SEO matters
SEO is critical for any company’s marketing efforts. Consumers increasingly turn to Google and other search engines when looking for a particular product or service, and the higher your company’s search rankings, the more prospects you’ll attract.
SEO and mobile marketing aren’t often spoken of in the same sentence, but they are innately linked, as Rai pointed out. Now that people rely so heavily on their mobile phones, they’ll often conduct Google searches while on the go.
Rai argued that as a result, you need to take steps to make sure your mobile websites appear high enough in search rankings to increase your company’s visibility.
To this end, SEO best practices are essential. Most of the rules that regularly apply to SEO efforts are also relevant for mobile-specific websites.
Focus on keywords, developing new content regularly, using links organically and so on. Unite your standard website’s SEO strategies with mobile and you’ll see a significant boost to both.
4. Keep the devices in mind
In many ways, smartphones are essentially just miniature computers. There aren’t really all that many things a laptop can do that a smartphone can’t.
Consequently, business leaders can and should feel free to incorporate video, audio and images into both their mobile and desktop-focused marketing campaigns.
But with that being said, it’s still critical that you keep in mind the unique aspects of mobile devices which demand a different approach. Probably the single most important fact in this regard is the smaller screen size.
With only a few inches of space, a smartphone screen will display your business’s content very differently than a PC will. If your website is overly crowded, cluttered and demands too much bandwidth, mobile viewers will have an unpleasant experience, and they’ll navigate away quickly.
That’s why responsive design needs to play a key role in your mobile marketing campaigns. With this technology, you can ensure that your website will be clear and attractive to all viewers, even those using smartphones.
To make sure that your responsive design efforts are working, though, you need to test constantly. Never assume that a new page design or embedded video will work fine in a mobile format. See for yourself.
If possible, try accessing these elements through a range of different smartphone brands and models, just to be sure that there are no unforeseen hiccups. The more thorough your testing, the less likely you’ll run into problems down the road.
5. Make it personal
A final key strategy for increasing the impact of your mobile marketing efforts is to emphasize the personal angle, as e27 contributor Dan Ferguson recently highlighted.
Ferguson pointed out that while many business leaders understand the importance of personalized marketing efforts, relatively few put this into practice when it comes to mobile campaigns.
He noted that a recent Econsultancy study found that 43 percent of organizations offer a personalized experience to desktop users, but only 13 percent deliver the same level of personalization to mobile users. A lot of companies are missing out on the opportunity to maximize the impact of their mobile outreach.
Ferguson asserted that there are a number of ways that you can make the mobile experience personal for your intended audience. For example, you can tailor offerings based on the user’s actual location, offering information or offers that apply only to that specific area.
The more personalized your mobile marketing campaign, the greater its potential impact.
Mobile Marketing Strategy Example
To start building your strategy, you can learn from great experts, keeping in mind the five examples of mobile marketing. It shows that the success of mobile marketing depends not only on new technologies but on focusing on generating commitment and strengthening an emotional relationship.
The IKEA App Catalog
Sometimes it has happened to you that before buying a garment in an online store, you would have liked to know how it would look so that it can happen with the furniture in your house.
A doubt that the IKEA furniture brand solved: the user must first download the application, then scan a catalogue code to project the view of the furniture where the user wants to see it.
Also, it allows you to virtually locate certain products in your room by using the mobile camera and overlaying the product. This creative approach garnered 6.2 million installs, making it the most downloaded brand app. Users spent an average of eight minutes on the app compared to three minutes on the catalogue alone.
The project Ad by Nivea Sun
Nívea has launched a marketing campaign intending to educate the customer about the importance of the excellent use of the product, and it also encourages the download of the application.
They developed a bracelet for the little ones that frequent the beach, thus allowing parents to observe the level of solar radiation from the application “The project Ad by Nivea Sun”.https://youtu.be/BgXrTGIiFV8
Absolut Unique Access
The best content is not made by the brand, but by the people. A lesson that is also applied by our recognized brand «Absolut». I was part of an exclusive party for the VIP area; they gave away two tickets that they left for people to bring out their creative and fun sidehttps://youtu.be/2_gkn3j8QUw
Starbucks Mobile Payments
Who’d say! This campaign already has around nine years. But at the time, in 2011, it was a revolution. Through a mobile app, the user could locate their nearest Starbucks, place their order and pay with their mobile phones for their daily dose of caffeine—the result: 7 million downloads and a 22% increase in profits.
And this Starbucks is doing quite frankly well. For some reason, it is considered one of the queen companies of mobile marketing. For years now, it has had the “mobile-first” in its mind, offering users continuous news—recipes, geolocation actions, free music downloads, or gift vouchers, among others.
So, whether you like their coffee or not, no one denies that they work hard to innovate and offer the best to their customers. We will not lose sight of them!
The Lenz – Gorillaz App
Another interesting idea to use a mobile application is the example of the Gorillaz gang. While promoting their new album, they decided to use the capabilities of mobile technology, augmented reality, and geolocation.
The band that returned after seven years did it in a big way. The app makes available more than 500 virtual locations of “Gorillaz House “. In these “houses” fans could listen to songs from the new album “Humanz “.
Besides, using augmented reality, your application superimposes elements of the virtual band’s music videos in the user’s environment. The user accesses them using the mobile camera.
The Gorillaz app connects two worlds: the virtual world, the band, and the real world, to fans. Each user can view unique materials provided by the group, learn about unknown stories, or experience a concert.
The album promotion campaign received the Golden Lion at the Cannes festival making it one of the best mobile advertising campaigns.
Marketing Strategy For Mobile Phone Industry
Research
Your first order of business in developing your cell phone marketing strategy is to do some research. It doesn’t need to be elaborate; one option is to ask your customers to “opt in” to email updates and notices from you, and then send them an email asking basic questions about their cell phone use.
For example, do they have web access? Do they use their phones to compare prices when shopping? Are they heavy text messaging users? Do they access social media sites and their email? What other “apps” do they use, if any? Compile their responses in a table or spreadsheet and use to develop your strategy.
Text Messaging and Email
Even basic cell phones have text messaging capability, so it’s an easy and inexpensive way to start. Make sure your customers have “opted in,” or agreed to receive promotional text messages or emails. Include links to your website or directions to your business, but make sure your emails and website are mobile-friendly, without too much data.
Send special offers and quick-response, or QR, codes that can be scanned for discounts, and time it for when you need business to pick up. For example, if your store is typically slow between 2 and 4 p.m. on Wednesdays, design a promotion that will increase traffic during that time.
Special Applications
Take advantage of location-based applications such as Foursquare to engage your mobile-savvy customers, offer them rewards and increase your business profile. By “checking in” when they patronize your business, they can be eligible for rewards, and your business gets increased visibility to other users and on social media.
Encourage your customers to review your business products and services on online sites and social media; be sure you stay on top of these reviews and postings so you can address any concerns.
Payments
Cell phone mobile technology also allows your customers to pay from their cell phones, or for you to accept payment on yours. For example, your customers can pay you from Paypal either in the store, or pay remotely to take advantage of a time-sensitive offer.
If you extend payment acceptance capability to your phone, with Paypal Here or Square, it extends your business reach. For example, you can set up temporary booths at fairs, markets and other special events with limited equipment, leaving your brick-and-mortar location open and operating simultaneously.
What Are The Types of Mobile Marketing?
Since mobile marketing refers to the different type of marketing that only happens when a mobile phone technology is part of the strategy to connect with the audience. There are a lot of people that defines mobile marketing as SMS campaigns alone.
Yes, SMS campaign is the oldest type of mobile marketing, but recently, it is not the only way for marketers to communicate using mobile phones. Here are some of the few types of mobile marketing strategies:
SMS marketing. It is the strategy where marketers send short text messages to their potential customers. Besides being the oldest form of mobile marketing, SMS marketing is the first of its kind too. Since mobile phones came out, the early 90s and the only option that people can do with it is to send and receive text. For the same reason, SMS marketing became the only option during the early time of mobile marketing.
Years passed, and now technology is continuously developing, and mobile phone can do much more than sending texts. But, SMS marketing remains as the famous type of mobile because of these reasons.
First, short messages still are the most popular mode of communication and also the majority of the mobile user immediately read all the messages that they receive. Second, SMS marketing is popular both in large and small business because it is extremely expensive compared to other strategies.
MMS marketing. Instead of sending short text messages, some companies opt to use MMS marketing. This strategy aims to create a better impression with the use of videos, sounds, and images. In simpler terms, MMS marketing aims to create an impact that TV ads do.
Comparing MMS marketing and SMS marketing, MMS is more expensive. Also, some mobile phone isn’t capable of receiving MMS messages. Nowadays, there are still tons of mobile phone models that can only receive SMSes.
Bluetooth mobile marketing. This strategy refers to mobile marketing that utilizes the use of Bluetooth technology. Bluetooth allows a marketer to deliver free MMS or free SMS messages to potential buyers that are within their location.
For this reason, Bluetooth marketing is widely popular in places that are locally oriented with business, even if this strategy has its downsides as well. Among the downsides are, the users need to be within the particular perimeter of a Bluetooth enabled computer and users still need to accept the message for them to view it.
Mobile Internet marketing. Mobile Internet marketing is commonly known as mobile marketing. It is a strategy that involves the use of phones and the world wide web (www). It is the classic web pop-out ad. However, mobile internet marketing may include optimization of a website for it to be mobile and search engine friendly. Right now, most people use their phones to connect to the Internet. Also, it makes mobile internet marketing the fastest growing mobile marketing strategy.
Application Marketing. After the introduction of Android’s Play Store and iPhone’s App Store, companies are now jumping on the trend of developing their apps. Developing apps is a company’s way to connect with their customers. Some apps are free of charge and users can download it. However, some apps cost some bucks. Nowadays, there are various apps available in App Store and Play Store.
Mobile Games. Alongside with mobile apps, companies also starts to create different types of mobile games that mobile users can directly download on their phones. The downloaded mobile games have different marketing messages that will entice users to visit the company’s website or the game developer.
Barcodes/QR (quick-response barcodes). These are codes that can allow mobile users to obtain any information easily by just using their mobile phones.
What Are The Disadvantages of Mobile Marketing?
As marketers engage customers on their mobile devices, it is important that they focus on the five advantages that mobile marketing has over traditional Web marketing.
When mobile marketers focus on these five advantages, they can provide the most value to their customers and engage at the deepest levels.
Omnipresence
Most mobile phone users are within an arm’s reach of their devices over 90 percent of waking hours, including times when other media are not available. With mobile phone penetration near 90 percent for U.S. adults, conversations are possible all the time with everyone.
The concept of mobile literally means not in one place. Mobile devices become part of a person, not part of one of their locations. This is a powerful concept, for two opposing reasons:
Customers can almost always be reached
Customers can almost always be interrupted
Since mobile marketing can be an interruptive channel, increased marketing efforts in this channel may be disconcerting to many consumers who vividly remember the days of unregulated outbound telemarketing nationwide.
Thus, it is very important to let mobile consumers determine how and when to hold conversations.
Reduced targeting errors and improved data management
In comparison to other personalized messaging channels, having a unique ID phone number will dramatically improve CRM integrity for marketers who have historically relied on inexact transaction linking techniques such as:
Using cookies that are periodically deleted by 20 percent to 50 percent of all PC users
Using flash cookies (LSS) which are sometimes deleted and often considered a privacy invasion
Using IP addresses which are often dynamically allocated by internal routers or Internet service providers
Using postal addresses which require standardization, change-of-address management and special matching logic to achieve even 98 percent matching accuracy rates
Mobile phone numbers are the core delivery addresses used by wireless carriers for all information transmission thru them.
By having this ID available during marketing conversations, the ability to reference prior interaction history can improve personalization and meet customer’s conversation expectations.
It is important to acknowledge that the growing use of WiFi with mobile devices will decrease the data linkage value of mobile phone numbers. In spite of this, the overall customer data integrity and quality of customer relationships will improve due to having phone numbers in many mobile interactions.
Improved time relevance
The always-on and always-aware nature of mobile devices provides more timely communications than any other channel.
In addition, the use of mobile SMS/MMS and mobile micro-blogging tools enable informality, message brevity and spontaneity to support conversations that seldom existed in prior Web marketing. The average response time for SMS messages is dramatically less than that of email or postal mail.
This improved time relevancy is likely to enhance the quality of marketing conversations, though the marketing benefits may be reduced if consumers determine that message filters should be used to separate their personal and corporate conversations.
Location awareness
Knowing someone’s geographic location can be critical to engaging in a relevant conversation with them.
Location provides both proximity data and contextual information, and both of these must be considered when using location-based services (LBS) to converse with customers.
For example, when Joe is sitting in a downtown basketball arena, there are many restaurants and retail stores nearby that want to engage with Joe.
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Yet, the context of attending a basketball game may mean that Joe will not want marketing interruptions while the game is being played.
Combining both proximity and environmental context will be hard for many marketers to address, but consumers will grow to expect them together.
Location-awareness can be via broadcast services such as Bluetooth, or embedded within other transactions such as QRS codes.
Either way, it is important to remember that mobile is a permission-based medium, with customers proactively choosing (or not) to engage with functions such as LBS at any specific time.
Increased intimacy with the device and via the device
Sharing of mobile devices is not unheard of but is less common than sharing personal computers. Mobile devices are often part of the intimate identity of their owners, who may personalize or accessorize their devices.
Mobile devices also allow people to seek private locations for personal communications. As a result, many consumers prefer to hold their most intimate conversations via mobile phones instead of landline phones.
Whether these conversations cover medical, financial, amorous or other sensitive concerns, a mobile device can become a primary channel for dealing with emotional issues.
All conversations on this intimacy platform require a further degree of trust. Wherever intimacy is involved, it is important that conversations are based upon trust and respect.
Thus, mobile marketing conversations require a higher level of sensitivity and less intrusiveness than found in other marketing channels. As Robert Stephens of Geek Squad puts it, There is a big difference between spooky and creepy.
Consumers expect marketers to dazzle them with personalized oh-wow moments, yet offer no forgiveness if a marketer becomes too intimate.
Final Words
Considering the number of smartphone users is growing every day, mobile marketing is here to stay. It allows you to reach consumers directly wherever they are and get better results than with traditional campaigns.
Considering the amazing benefits of mobile marketing, it would be foolish not to put more effort into it.
