What Is Mobile Marketing and How to Use This Valuable Strategy

Mobile marketing is one of the most exciting and innovative ways to reach your target audience. As the world becomes increasingly digitized, businesses are starting to realize the importance of reaching consumers where they are: on their mobile devices.

According to Statista, there will be approximately 6.5 billion smartphone subscriptions worldwide in 2022. It’s expected to reach 7.6 billion by 2027. A great catch is how adults spend an average of 5 to 6 hours daily on their phones.

With this consideration, marketing uses the power of mobile devices to deliver content, track customer behavior, and generate leads.

You’re missing out on an excellent opportunity if you’re not using mobile marketing to reach your target audience. But don’t worry; we got you covered.

In this post, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about mobile marketing and highlight several tips to help your brand reach your audience better.

We’ll look at the following:

What is mobile marketing? 

Mobile marketing is the process of advertising and interacting with customers on their cellphones, smartphones, tablets, iPads, and other mobile devices. 

It’s a subset of digital marketing and can take many forms, such as text messaging, MMS, emails, apps, and responsive websites.

Mobile marketing aims to reach customers where they spend most of their time. To be successful, businesses should create mobile marketing campaigns that are relevant and useful to their customers and offer a seamless experience across all devices.

With convenient access to everything with just a click of a button or touch of a screen, it’s more than essential for your business to be online.

Mobile marketing aims at how your company can convey reliability and credibility to users, from having a responsive website design to ranking your content on Google.

Everything must be considered so that people will click on your ad and browse without significant problems such as stubborn pop-ups or broken pages. Further, they should be able to purchase what you’re offering without issues. This way, they will remember your brand whenever they need something similar.

Mobile marketing vs. traditional marketing vs. desktop marketing

Traditional marketing is pretty straightforward. You have your TV commercials, print ads, billboards, and radio spots.

These forms of advertising are good if you’re targeting a unique audience, especially older adults who can’t keep up with mobile technology.

However, it’s not best for target marketing. It can also be expensive compared to desktop and mobile marketing due to the labor required to reach a larger audience.

Desktop marketing is somewhere in between traditional and mobile marketing, except that desktops have to be in a permanent position, such as on an office desk.

On the other hand, mobile phones offer a more portable option, making them more reliable, especially for marketers who are constantly on the move. Furthermore, desktop advertising can lead to fewer click-throughs since it’s not location-based like mobile advertising.

Unlike traditional and desktop advertising, mobile advertising reaches your target audience anywhere because people can access mobile devices wherever they are — at home, school, work, and even while commuting.

Supporting statistics show that 60.66% of internet traffic comes from mobile phones, 37% from desktop devices, and 2.26% from tablets.

So, in this case, choosing mobile marketing seems like the best strategy if you want to reach one of the leading online consumer demographics — the millennials. This group is more likely to purchase online than any other generation.

However, regardless of your strategy, content quality is essential. Content that gives the target audience the same experience on all devices is best in realizing any return on investment (ROI).

Advantages and disadvantages of mobile marketing

Mobile advertising is a popular way to reach your audience, but it also has drawbacks.

Advantages

Below are some mobile marketing advantages:

1. Effective

Mobile content marketing effectively enables you to reach your target audience since most people spend a lot of time on their mobile devices. You can reach them anywhere at any time.

2. Versatile

You can reach your customers on their mobile devices in several ways, from text messages and emails to push notifications and mobile apps.

3. More cost-friendly than traditional marketing

The beauty of mobile marketing is that it is incredibly cost-effective compared to traditional marketing.

As a result, you can reach a large audience for a relatively small investment, unlike when using TV commercials or billboards.

5. Easy to personalize

You can target your ads to a potential audience based on their location, age, gender, interests, and more. This way, you ensure your advertisement reaches the right people and is relevant to them.

For example, those from 18 to 34 years old are considered receptive to mobile ads, and targeting this demographic will increase click-throughs and potential sales.

5. Timely in nature

Unlike traditional and desktop advertising, mobile advertising can be used to instantly deliver an ad to a user when they are nearby.

Not only does this timeliness save you time and money, but it also increases user engagement and lowers bounce rates.

6. Great with social media platforms

Most people use mobile phones for their social media escapades. Since it’s optimized for mobile use, launching your mobile marketing campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and more is more effortless.

Disadvantages 

Despite having many benefits, mobile marketing also has its challenging side. The downsides of this strategy include the following:

1. Hard to keep up

The mobile marketing landscape is growing and changing at a rapid pace. What worked in 2020 may not work in 2022, and what works in 2022 may be ineffective in the future. This can make it hard to keep up with the latest trends.

2. High competition

Because mobile marketing is so popular, there is a lot of competition, making it difficult to stand out from the crowd and clutter online.

Furthermore, using the same mobile marketing strategy can become monotonous, irritating your target audience.

3. Limited user experience

User experience is often limited on mobile devices, making it tricky to deliver an excellent experience to your audience.

This means they may not be able to fully appreciate your product or service if they are viewing it on a small screen. That’s why it’s crucial to use a format that will offer the most features, even in a limited space.

4. It’s not a walk in the park

A mobile content strategy has to be relevant, engaging, and specific enough to be practical and valuable to your target audience. You need to dedicate time toward conducting promising research and developing top-notch ads based on reputation and evidence.

Furthermore, you might also need tools like Ahrefs, Hubspot, Yoast, and Slack to create well-optimized content.

5. Can be intrusive

Mobile marketing can be intrusive if it’s not done correctly. That’s why you should be careful while choosing a mobile marketing plan, so it doesn’t sound invasive to your target niche.

However, research shows that consumers won’t perceive tailored content as intrusive, contrary to the case when it doesn’t address their interests.

How to implement an effective mobile marketing strategy?

Now that you know the importance of considering the mobile context when promoting your business, let’s look at what you should do to implement this strategy effectively.

For your strategy to work, you want to consider these things: reach, personalization, timing, and engagement.

Keeping these points in mind while implementing your mobile marketing strategy will optimize your content for your target audience.

Below are some tips for successful implementation:

Have a responsive website

Users have a significant variety of options to browse on the internet nowadays. They can access the web on a desktop computer, laptop, tablet, cellphone, and even on their TVs. A responsive website must adapt to each of these options.

It’s still prevalent for websites to be designed only for traditional desktop computers. Such websites do not work well for mobile phone users. Research shows that 72% of consumers prefer mobile-friendly websites.

To avoid this issue, your website must meet the mobile users’ demand. This doesn’t mean necessarily creating several versions with different addresses.

Today’s websites can recognize and adapt to the device users are using to access the site. This is what we call responsiveness.

It’s important to consider each detail of your website’s design and its version. Ensure the website can easily load and is as mobile-friendly as possible.

Use SMS/MMS Marketing

This type of mobile marketing allows you to send text or multimedia messages (with images, videos, and more). However, you probably think using SMS/MMS is outdated compared to technological innovations and instant messaging apps.

But the good old text messaging strategy is still useful and can be a good tool for your company’s marketing efforts.

Considering its advantages, SMS/MMS is still a relatively cheap resource. With it, you can advertise new products, offer a channel for customer relationships, and get feedback from your audience.

This helps bring your company closer to your target audience and strengthen their engagement with your brand, all effortlessly and objectively. In addition to being cheap, it’s an easy-to-use tool.

Because of all this accessibility, you need to take certain precautions and know how to do SMS/MMS marketing. It will help if you take these precautions to avoid inconveniencing people. For example, no one wants to be woken at 3:20 a.m. with a promotional SMS message.

On top of this, you’ll need to keep your messages brief and to the point. Your target audience is more likely to read and respond to a short message.

Another precaution is SPAMMING. It doesn’t appeal to anyone, and no doubt, that includes you and should be avoided at all costs. Further, avoid sending unnecessary content without permission or to an excessive number of people.

To do so, you should create a good customer database. Logically, this information has to be provided by them, and you should have an objective strategy before sending the messages.

Create QR codes

The QR code is an excellent media convergence tool. For example, smartphones have cameras that can scan QR codes and allow users to access certain content, such as passwords and special offers.

As a result, QR codes can help enhance customer experience, engagement, and retention.

Develop relevant apps

Your app establishes your presence in the digital world and offers even more convenience for your users. Another benefit of an app is building customer loyalty and an easy way to engage with them and build community.

A mobile app can help make sales, provide information, take customer surveys, or run fun games. Whatever you need, the right mobile app can do it.

Create targeted campaigns

Targeted advertising is one of the most efficient when we think about conversion rates. They make customers feel as if you’re talking to them directly.

You’ll need to have a well-consolidated customer database to have a good results campaign. From it, you can define the best strategy in a personalized manner.

You can customize it to fit each user’s age, gender, location, and search preferences. In addition, you can easily find all the metrics to target a campaign on social media or your website’s platform.

Share files via Bluetooth

Even in the case of a local business with a physical store and a given customer turnover, you can benefit a lot from mobile marketing. All you need to do is create digital files and share them with your consumers via Bluetooth.

You can share your shopping list, product suggestions, and promotion ads with your customers, who will carry a marketing piece with your brand on their smartphones.

This sharing technology is considered outdated but is still present on most modern smartphones.

Therefore, it can still be a good tool for your business, especially in building customer loyalty. However, this resource is more suitable for physical stores.

 Augmented reality mobile experiences

If you’re looking for a strategy to take your mobile marketing to the next level, you should consider augmented reality (AR).

AR is a technology that instantiates digital information in the real world, and it’s quickly becoming more commonplace in mobile apps.

You can use AR in your app, from simple navigation aids to fully interactive experiences. For instance, you can add AR to your app to allow a customer to see how furniture can fit in their living room.

Augmented reality can help improve the user experience through engagement and interaction with your brand.

Use in-game ads

In-game ads are a form of advertising that appears in mobile games. When users play the game, they will see your ad and be able to click on it to learn more about your company or product.

This mobile marketing strategy is excellent for targeting the young demographic, who often play mobile games.

Invest in mobile search ads

Mobile search ads appear when someone uses a search engine to look for something on their mobile device. When your advertisement pops up in the search results, users can click on it.

Mobile search ads are a great way to reach your target audience when they’re actively searching for products or services like yours.

Explore gamification

In the world of mobile marketing, gamification is a technique that involves applying game-like strategies to online and offline marketing.

The goal of gamifying mobile marketing is to engage users in their daily lives by encouraging them to take action and make choices that support the brand’s values. In addition, it helps motivate people and improve performance.

Gamification has also become a tool to grab young people’s attention to learn something. The professionals who seek to educate through digital platforms find the strategy great for attracting an audience and catching students’ attention.

By creating a game with the material you wish to teach users, you not only get their attention but also create positive engagement. Furthermore, you will pique their interest and break the taboo that studying is boring.

Don’t leave mobiles out!

With all these tips, you most certainly understand the importance of investing in mobile marketing for your business. The advantages don’t end here.

You can explore your virtual strategy further, mainly if you invest in producing educational content. To learn more about the subject, check out our post about mobile learning and learn how to use this strategy to stand out even more in the market.