We devote a lot of words and time to social media, direct mail and email marketing, but it is important to sometimes take a step back and look at broader trends in the advertising arena. One of the most important transformations that has taken place in the past few years is the increasing necessity for mobile marketing efforts, as consumers increasingly turn to their smartphones, tablets and portable computers to interact with brands and acquire advertising content.
Now, this is not to say that marketing strategies, specifically those for social media and email, need to be completely changed to properly target mobile devices rather than traditional computers, but rather that awareness is critical. Should trends continue on their current trajectories, the vast majority of consumers will be using their mobile devices for shopping and brand research purposes by the end of this decade.
This means that a growing portion of the average company’s target market will demand mobile advertising content and campaigns, and marketers should be taking steps today to embrace this transformation. Before diving into some of the key components of mobile marketing strategies and campaigns, let’s take a look at the facts involved in the push for more prolific use of smartphones as commercial devices around the globe.
Mobile Marketing Basics
Marketing Land recently listed a batch of statistics it aggregated from various research to illustrate just how quickly mobile advertising is growing and evolving in the United States and abroad. First and foremost, the source pointed out that mobility has actually been a boon for Internet penetration, especially in emerging markets and underserved regions, as smartphones and the broadband they use have widely expanded the total population of individuals who can access the Web.
According to the news provider, almost 2 billion people of the 7 billion on Earth today have smartphones, which is not far from one-third of the total population, and this rate is expected to rise enormously in the next five years. Considering how quickly businesses today – even smaller startups – are beginning to operate on the global scale, the sheer volume of mobile users abroad should indicate that steps need to be taken to accurately target these individuals.
Marketing Land went on to affirm that mobile video is the hottest segment of this market today, as Cisco released a study that found 55 percent of all data usage through these devices fell into this category. For marketers, this means that laying a groundwork for mobile video advertising is crucial, as so many other reports have indicated that the average consumer is more engaged with advanced media than simple content.
The source noted that roughly 65 percent of humans are “visual learners,” which further illustrates the importance of leveraging video as soon as possible in marketing campaigns.
Set up for success
Businesses should always concentrate their efforts on building marketing strategies that can transcend the barriers of different mediums, channels and platforms. Put more simply, advertising content delivered through various avenues should be consistent, working in concert to a common set of objectives and yielding a firm image of the brand regardless of which types of devices the audience is using to digest the information.
In the case of mobile, building out email and social media marketing strategies to include provisions that will be specifically targeted at smartphones, tablets and portable computers will be an important move. Competition and the challenge of differentiating the brand from others in the market will only become more intense in the coming years, and mobile might act as the most fruitful asset in an advertiser’s tool shed as a result.
