The goal of advertising historically has been to get your product in front of the eyes of as many people as possible. This sort of spray and pray approach has run rampant on television and radio channels across the nation for years. Sometimes, this form of marketing works (See P&G and Nike), but often smaller businesses can just be throwing their money at ineffective advertising that does not have the desired effect on their target audience. An effective way to target your desired demographic is to "get them where they live", so to speak. This infographic created by the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Online Masters in Management Information Systems does an excellent job of illustrating the importance of mobile marketing.
Analyzing the Trends
91% of all US adults have a mobile phone. Of those, 61% have a smart phone. For marketers, this means direct access. The average smartphone user in the United States uses their phone for nearly an hour a day. With the amount of advertisement opportunities available on free mobile applications and mobile-targeted pay-per-click, it is easier than ever before to get your product in front of potential buyers. And, with the rapid growth of the mobile market, the potential audience is growing every day.
The amount of mobile application downloads continues to rise year after year. With a projected 268 billion downloads in 2017, there is a tremendous amount of money to be made in mobile development, and a staggering number of vehicles to leverage in your mobile marketing. Luckily for marketers, mobile ads are not only increasing in quantity, but in quality as well. You can target users at the micro level, based on their location, preferences, age, and any number of other demographic and psychographic characteristics.
Leveraging Mobile for Effective Marketing
Many businesses are shifting toward mobile marketing in a big way. Many distinguished companies have found that the ROI on mobile marketing is much higher than their traditional marketing efforts. Methods range from sponsored Facebook posts, to MMS marketing, interactive click-to-call ads and more. The one consistent thing in these campaigns was they worked, and worked well.
Getting Started in Mobile Marketing
In order to understand the mind of a mobile user, you need to become a mobile user. What sorts of applications are useful to you, what are the features that are appealing, which ones are annoying and decrease the user experience? Check out your own website. Is it mobile friendly? As a user, how likely would you be to make a purchase on your mobile website? Fill out an information request? Understanding the user experience is essential to using this medium as an effective advertising channel. From there, you can optimize your mobile website to appear in local search results. Businesses that rank locally on mobile searches are much more likely to receive business from mobile customers. In general, these types of searchers have a higher intent to buy and can be a tremendously valuable segment for your business.
After your website is mobile friendly and you know what users are looking for, you can run a mobile ad campaign. Usually this is done through big players like Facebook and Google. These mobile juggernauts provide all sorts of options to help you hone in on your ideal customer. In order to utilize this sort of targeted marketing, it is important to know your audience. Who are they? What do they do? How much money do they make? What types of media do they engage with? What are their spending habits? Finding out this sort of information can have tremendous applications for marketing. The better you know your market, the better you are able to tailor your advertisements to their needs and wants.
If implementing this type of mobile campaign seems like a daunting task, just start at the beginning. Get to know your customers. You may be providing them with what you think they want, but often you are overlooking a potential profit by not asking the right questions of your customers. Engage in mobile. How does your new insights into your customers change the way you engage with them? How might your customers use mobile to engage with you? All of these questions should set you on the right track toward moving into mobile marketing. The beauty of this medium is, if it doesn't work, try something else. It's all very quantifiable and scalable. Don't be afraid to dive in and test the waters.
