Mobile Marketing: Do You Really Need It?

Mobile marketing was a concept that hit the market around 1996 when the internet was available on mobile phones. Since then mobile marketing has seen upward growth. 

It started with SMS marketing. SMS had a 98% open rate and proved to be an effective mode of communication for short and direct messaging.

A study suggests that mobile accounts for approximately half of the web traffic worldwide. In the second quarter of 2022, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 58.99 per cent of global website traffic, consistently hovering around the 50 per cent mark since the beginning of 2017 before permanently surpassing it in 2020.

This means that today’s generation is highly dependent on mobile devices for all their digital needs, be it, shopping, seeking information, playing virtual games, using social media, or even work. 

This gives digital marketers ample opportunity to tap a wide demographic in a cost-effective and efficient way.

Even top search engines like Google are focusing on mobile-first indexing is enabled by default for all new websites.

What is mobile marketing?

It is a medium of digital marketing. The ads appear on mobile phones, tablets or other mobile devices. The messaging is customized to match the needs of the customer and optimized according to the platform. 

 Here are few mobile marketing strategies – 

  • Social media marketing – A widely used platform is social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. are widely used to drive traffic, boost awareness, branding activities, and run organic & paid ads. Social media marketing efforts are ideal due to the sheer size of the viewership, reach and targeting audience based on demography or geography.
  • Geo-location tags – Mobile devices have the added advantage of geo-location tagging of their photos, videos, websites, text messages, and QR scans. This helps local companies, stores with multiple outlets, and marketers to understand the preferred locations of their audience. The targeting can improve to become more precise, improve the local SEO efforts, help in email marketing, and improve the effectiveness of the PPC ads.
  • User-experience – As a large chunk of the population seeks answers online, especially a mobile device, creating apps or websites that are mobile-compatible or mobile-friendly enhances the user experience. 
  • Chatbots – Customers are getting comfortable with interactions with a chatbot. These chatbots can be programmed to answer the FAQs, thus saving the time of the salesperson in answering mundane questions and focusing more on personalized messaging. Chatbots also prove to be an effective first step in nurturing a lead before handing it over to the sales executive.  A Gartner customer service and support (CSS) survey in 2022 revealed that 54% of respondents use some form of a chatbot, VCA or other conversational AI platform for customer-facing applications.
  • App-based marketing – Creating a mobile app is a sure way of communicating the latest updates, availability of products, customer retention and engagement. Persuading your customers to download your app can build you a strong marketing funnel. 
  • QR scans & codes – Viewing a website, social media profile, special offer or even the menu card of a restaurant has become easy due to QR codes. They have become a preferred payment method as they can be easily linked to a digital wallet making monetary transactions easy. 
  • Voice or photo search – Voice or visual search is a product of AI that is aiding the customers greatly to search for anything they like without having to type or remember the product name. This is also beneficial for specially-abled people. Creating a website, or product or boosting your SEO game for mobiles will help you gain a lead in this race.
  • In-game ads – Advertisements that appear as a pop-up or a banner or a footer in a mobile game are called in-game mobile marketing.
  • SMS and voice call – SMS ads have been in the running for a long time and still have a decent success rate. Similarly, pre-recorded voice calls have a wide reach.

In today’s world, accessibility and instant information have made marketers to constantly be on their toes. Hence mobile marketing has become a crucial part of the digital marketing strategy and must be taken seriously for the company’s sustainability.

According to a report, the number of digitally-influenced shoppers has grown from 260 million to  280 million and online shoppers have grown to 230 million from 210 million in 2021.

BCG expects these numbers to increase by 2.5 times over the next decade, accompanied by nearly six fold growth in online retail spending.

Since the world is changing rapidly due to digitization, it is important to stay relevant and update yourself. MIT School of Distance Education (MITSDE) is one such institute that understands the current skills gap in the market and strives hard to reduce it. 

For this purpose, MITSDE brings to you PG Certification in Digital Marketing (PGCM Digital Marketing). This course covers the latest concepts, gives hands-on training on the latest tools, and teaches you to create a virtual brand, analyse market trends, and design campaigns.