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Wesley Moeckel Marketing Management Unit 6 Mobile Marketing This is the year of mobile marketing. While still in its infancy, it is an essential marketing piece of most company’s future marketing plans. With mobile advertising, branded mobile apps and mobile marketing apps, businesses will be expected to have a mobile presence in the future. According to comScore, 65. 8 million people in the U. S. now own smart phones. This number will only continue to grow as their popularity and acceptance is rapidly rising. The smart phone is becoming as mainstream and widely accepted as the PC.
Companies can no longer afford to ignore this new technology and its great appeal as an additional marketing resource. We have become a hyper-connected society, bound to our mobile devices and constantly craving fast, up to the minute data. A recent Washington Post article highlights just how rapidly the smart phone market is growing. “Morgan Stanley Internet analyst said she expects smart phone sales will surpass PC and laptop sales in 2012, with more than 450 million units sold. By 2013, smart phone sales will approach 650 million unit sales, Mary Meeker said during a presentation Tuesday at the Web 2. Summit in San Francisco. In her “State of the Internet” report, Meeker spoke about growth in the smart phone market and its link to social networking sites, as well as about Internet video and advertising. Watch out for mobile growth in China, she said. Its population of smart phone users is relatively nascent, with 14. 5 million 3G users, or two percent of the population. That compares with 37 million in the United States. But that population grew by 941 percent in the third quarter compared with one year ago. The growth rate for mobile devices is 2. 5 times that of PC’s. So with all this mobile smart phone growth comes new opportunity for cost efficient marketing. According to massmailsoftware. com, “The Mobile Marketing Association predicts the global growth of mobile advertising market ??? from $13 billion in 2010 to $14 billion in 2011… ” This is an industry that is really just beginning and the marketing/advertising will grow as the industry does. Mobile Marketing as a whole has been around for a while, but it has only recently started to flourish.
SMS, MMS and the usual banner ads have been a mainstay for years but they are now antiquated methods and are largely irrelevant in today’s fast paced lifestyle. These old methods are simply out touch with today’s consumer. They lack the biggest trend going right now, the social component. Consumers are starting to expect a two way communication from brands. Ten to twenty years ago having a website for your business was great, five years ago having a mobile website meant you were ahead of the curve, now it’s just a good start. Brands need to be thinking the current and future of mobile and social mobile marketing.
Promotional based marketing uses a location based service that allows the user to “check in” at various locations. Checking in allows us to broadcast our current location to our friends and family on social media sites. Brick and mortar businesses can now identify and reward loyal customers who “check in” at their location. Just on the surface these seems to be beneficial in a few ways. Advertising for their business to all their social friends and family and encouraging repeat customers with rewards are two evident reasons why a business would want to use this cost effective marketing initiative.
To delve a little deeper let’s look at one such marketing platform that is growing more popular by the day, “Foursquare. ” Foursquare, founded in 2007, is a geo-location social media mobile platform that “makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore. ” The Foursquare experience starts with a consumer’s smart phone and an app or application. Foursquare describes itself as a “cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide, and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things. ” Foursquare uses your phones GPS to determine your location, and then it finds the establishments that are close to you.
These locations can be anything, your home, Wal-Mart, the local grocery store, gas station, public spaces, pretty much anything. If your location is not in the Foursquare database, you have the option of adding it. You are awarded points for your crowd sourcing efforts and are well on your way to unlocking badges and then becoming a Mayor, which is the person who checks in the most at a particular location. Location Mayors, can be then awarded extra discounts off products. Foursquare makes it exciting for a consumer to shop and allows a brand to become interactive.
Foursquare is just one of many social mobile marketing platforms or apps out today. These new forms of mobile targeted advertising are proving to be a very cost effective, efficient way to market a business. They do a great job of encouraging customers to return to your business and share their experience with others when they do. These social mobile marketing platforms are an asset to almost any businesses marketing mix. Mobile Marketing today has already shown the staying power and effectiveness that will only further the growth of the industry.
With more and more people today making themselves more mobile, the mobile industry should only continue to grow. With the economy in a current downturn many business have cut marketing budgets. As the economy and a firms business starts to improve many companies will look to more economical alternatives to their former marketing programs. Whether a company is trying to save money on their marketing budget or just trying to stay on top of the current marketing trends and appeal to a wider audience, mobile marketing is the right choice.
Mobile Marketing is not just confined to cell phones. It is also on your mobile PC, your iPad, IPod’s and many other mobile devices. Apple, the IPad, IPhone and IPod’s with their “apps” have been a huge boon to the mobile marketing industry. Their continued growth will only further the growth of mobile advertising. The trend in the marketing industry has gone mobile and any company that ignores this fresh marketing vehicle will be quickly left behind its competitors. References 1. Comscore. com 2. Washingtonpost. com 3. Foursquare