How do you use Mobile Devices in your Marketing?
As a marketeer, you may well be used hearing the importance of ensuring your website is mobile-friendly, and you'll no doubt have ensured your website is responsive... but does marketing for mobile devices go beyond this?
This blog seeks to explore the wealth of opportunity that mobile devices give marketeers. Mobile devices are unique in the way they are used by individuals, and the majority offer highly sophisticated built-in technology. If your primary goal is to ensure your product reaches your consumer, how can you use the opportunity of mobile devices to help you further target your marketing, and make the most of mobile?
What makes mobile devices unique?
There are a number of reasons (aside from the obvious one of sizing!) why mobile is so different to other forms of technology which people use; they have a single user, who uses their device as their primary use to communication, social media interaction and purchasing/online research.
- They have a personal single user
Mobile devices have a personal single user. In basic terms, this means that they’re not shared. It also means that contacting the mobile device will guarantee to put you in contact with the targeted person, as it's their device.
- Primary means of communication
Someones mobile device is usually their primary means of communication. With the ability to text message, phone and video chat being built into most modern mobile devices, it's easy to see why. There are also other communication apps that can be downloaded onto the mobile devices that make communication even easier and even free over Wi-Fi, for example, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. This makes getting into contact with potential customers a lot easier for marketers.
- Emotional attachment by user
People often form an emotional attachment to their mobile device because they are so involved with the content available to them with the use of it (apps, news and games) People also use their mobile device as their primary tool for communicating with their friends, making their mobile device very precious to them. This makes marketing towards strong emotions will often be very successful when targeted towards mobile devices.
- All pervasive
Almost everyone has a mobile device and they seem to have an effect over everything people do in life. Mobile devices give people a platform to communicate on, plan journeys with maps, browse the internet, buy things online, buy things in shops as a virtual credit card and much more. Because of this, marketers know now have many different opportunities for their mobile marketing strategies
- Personal space
Mobile devices can represent our personal space, where most things in the world are shared between people, a mobile device lets its user alone view it whenever they want. This means that more personalised marketing will likely perform better when targeted to mobile devices.
- Close integration of social media
Almost every mobile device has the ability to download and install social media apps. Having social media in your pocket at all time makes more people use them for a longer time. In fact, Nearly 80% of social media time is now spent on mobile devices - Marketing Land. There are opportunities for marketing within the social media apps.
- Retail and communication
Retail communication is where retailers can inform their customers about their products and services through programs and schemes that they come up with. They’re mostly used for increasing their customer base. Some popular ways retail and communication is used on mobile devices are offering customers discounts and vouchers by text and promotional text messages and phone calls.
- Mobile
As the name suggests, mobile devices are mobile, meaning that you can take them with you. This is a very useful feature because it means all of the features and apps are available to people at any time no matter where they are. It's unique because things that would usually exclusive to a stationary device like a desktop computer can be done on the move. It also gives marketers may opportunities for location based marketing.
Marketing opportunities from Technology developments to mobile devices
Mobile devices are unique in the way that it gives so many people access to cool technological developments that can be used to help marketing to be more engaging and more positively received.
- GPS Processors
The GPS processors in modern mobile devices open up many great opportunities for mobile marketing. GPS processors use the location of the user and their device to provide weather, maps and social media and other relevant apps with data. GPS processors can be used to present users with adverts, promotion and other content that relates to their location. For example, a local restaurant targeting customers within a certain distance of them or businesses advertising to users within a certain distance of their competitors.
- Near field communications
Near field communications or NFC is really cool technology that lets mobile devices, that use it, to be able to secure communication between the device itself and another device that is sending a transmission just by simply tapping the device on any RFID (radio frequency identification) embedded surface. NFC really opens a whole new world of marketing where RFID could be embedded into a magazine advert or promotional item that will send your mobile device more information or even let you purchase the product.
- Camera
Almost all mobile devices have a camera built into it. A lot of apps use the camera on the mobile device to make them more engaging but this also makes it easy to metres towards the user with. Snapchat, a popular social network that uses the camera as the primary form of communication between users, is the perfect place for marketers to make the best use of the cameras on mobile devices. An example of it working is for the X-Men: Apocalypse movie marketing campaign where they created a photo filter for the app and it was viewed over 298 million times. https://storage.googleapis.com/snapchat-web/success-stories/pdf/pdf_xmen_en.pdf
- QR Codes
QR Codes (Quick Response Codes) are a scannable machine readable code that mobile devices can read using their camera to take an image of it. There are many unique and creative ways these codes can be used for marketing. Probably the most popular use of QR Codes is a redirect that brings the user to a download page for an app or a checkpoint for a product after the code is scanned.
- Augmented reality
Augmented reality is another really cool bit of technology that places a computer generated image on the users view of the real world that provides the user with a view made up of both computer generated and real life parts. an example of augmented reality being used in marketing is a popular mobile game Pokemon GO where businesses would pay the developers, Niantic Labs to create a sponsored PokeStop that spawns Pokemon that can be caught in augmented reality in their specific location, which in turn, attracts players.
- Maps
Maps are used on mobile devices to provide the user with information about the location they’re currently in as well as planning routes for travelling and seeing what shops are close to them. Marketing on maps can place businesses as high as possible in their local area, attracting new customers to their shop. Using Google My Business, businesses can be shown on Google Maps in local areas so that potential customers will see them.
- Apps
Technological advancements have made apps very accessible for almost everyone with a mobile device, this provides a great platform for many different mobile marketing opportunities. Some examples of mobile marketing with apps are displaying an add on a popular app or even creating an app specifically for the purpose of advertising.
- Network Speeds
With the advancements in network speeds, many users of mobile devices will be able to use apps, websites and other
Limitations of mobile technologies for mobile marketing
Everything has its flaws, and mobile marketing is no different. Here are some limitations we've found when marketing towards mobile devices.
- Hardware
Different mobile devices have different hardware technologies, meaning that apps will run differently on different devices. Especially for older devices that usually have less powerful technologies in their hardware some mobile marketing techniques won’t work or will become a hindrance to the user.
- Software
Different mobile devices use different software so that it is more usable for the users. An example of this would be IOS for Apple mobile devices and Android for Android devices. With a variety of software for different mobile devices, mobile marketing techniques will be required to be optimised to work well on everyone, making the job more difficult, time-consuming and costly.
- Connection
A lot of mobile marketing requires mobile devices to be connected to something, be it the internet through Wi-Fi or mobile data, Phone service networks, Location services etc. sometimes, a mobile device won’t be connected to any of these, making the marketing attempts redundant.
How KhooSeller can help with your mobile marketing
We've looked at what makes mobile devices unique, some of the great marketing opportunities available from the technology in modern mobile devices and also some of the limitations you might encounter when marketing towards mobile. If you're interested in doing some mobile marketing of your own, here are some ways that KhooSeller can help!
- Responsive websites
All KhooSeller websites are made responsive. This means that all websites that are designed and made here at KhooSeller will work well and look great, not just on desktop, but on all different screen sizes for mobile devices. This is important, not just for usability side for your customers, but because Google's search ranking now uses mobile first indexing, meaning that responsive websites will rank higher in their search results. Find out more about mobile first indexing here.
- Mobile friendly email campaigns
Email campaigns designed and built by KhooSeller are made mobile friendly, so you can relax knowing that your customers will have the best experience receiving your content no matter how they chose to do so. We test out email campaigns using many different devices and screen sizes to make sure that the email looks great. This is really important for your brand image because if a customer opens an email from you on their mobile device and it's not properly optimised or broken, they can lose trust in your business and will be less likely to read any of your content or buy from you in the future.
- We're Google Partners Specialists
We're Google Partners Specialists, meaning that we're qualified to use Google services to help you to grow your business. For mobile marketing specifically, we can help you with Targeted ads, setting your business up on Google Maps, optimising your Adwords campaigns for mobile and more! Get in touch now to learn more about our Google qualifications.
- Social Media
As mentioned before in this blog post, Nearly 80% of social media time is now spent on mobile devices. If you're serious about capturing your mobile audience, you'll need to start investing in social media. There are many ways to do this, from Facebook Ads to Twitter Promotional Posts, but paying for ads isn't going to guarantee you success. You need to know how to run a successful social media strategy. We have written some helpful guides that you can follow to get started on these platforms;
For businesses who are just too busy to put so much time aside to learn each platform and keep them updated with daily content, we also offer managed social media accounts. Managed accounts are where an KhooSeller expert marketeer will be given access to your social media account and will build you an engaged audience through active posts and engagement with trending topics and relevant content for your business.
- Tailored Support
At KhooSeller, the support that we offer our customers is tailored to each and every individual business. We take time to learn about your business and what makes it unique so we can give you the best possible answers to any questions you might have and so that we can support you in a way that will always leave a positive impact. This type of support can be a very useful tool for businesses who want to start targeting mobile devices with their marketing.
Conclusion
To conclude, no matter what your feelings are on mobile devices or your own personal use, it is essential that you are considering how you make the most of mobile within your marketing plans.