What Is Mobile Marketing and How it Affects Us

Advertising is essential for most businesses today; whether it be a main source of income or sheerly to attract more consumers. There a several ways to advertise nowadays, through magazines and newspapers, via the internet, and on billboards. One of the newer forms of advertising is through mobile phones, but exactly what is mobile marketing?

Often people disregard or fail to recognize mobile advertising on its own because they associate it so closely with internet marketing, whilst it may be very similar (after all you are able to access the internet via most smart phones today) it is important to acknowledge that at this current time mobile phones reach a far greater audience.

Mobile marketing is the advertising of any product, service or cause that reaches you on a mobile device like a cell phone, Blackberry, tablet or laptop notebook.  The question of what is mobile marketing is an invention of the late 1990s relative to advertising and comes in various forms.  There are statics ads, skyscraper ads, banner ads, flash ads, video ads and audio ads accompanied by pictures.  Any of these ads are the same ads that you might see on your personal desktop PC, but with some allowances for mobile devices.  Technology has also created mobile marketing by converting traditional marketing to mobile marketing simply by viewing the advertisement on a mobile device.

Society in general is on the go and very mobile.  Advertisers recognized that society is changing and they recognized the need to change how to market their products, services and causes as well to deliver their message.  At a minimum, almost everyone has a cell phone with texting capability, even if it is prepaid as opposed to a long term contract.  If you will observe the public in general, especially in metropolitan areas, people are always on their mobile devices.  Childrens’ favorite way of communication is not by voice but by text.  Some of the ads that come to these type phones are text ads, especially if the phone has no connectivity to Internet data or picture capability.  More advertisers are sending out random text messages to cell phones in order to spread their message.  But text messages are easy to delete and isn’t the most effective form method of mobile marketing.

After the advent of cell phones, soon came the next generation of mobile devices, led by the Blackberry.  The gift of the Blackberry has enabled us to check our email on the run and to some degree, see illustrations and some of them were even sophisticated enough to view video.   Being able to see and read email on the go opened up a whole new world to mobile businesses in how they go about marketing their business.  Many businesses, even to this day, will attempt to get you to give them your email address for the sole purpose of trying to sell you.  They developed a  very targeted email campaigns for the delivery of their messages.  In a email, you are not limited by time like in a video campaign or space like an ad of any sort.  You can list benefits, advantages and attributes of your product, service or cause.  The key is getting your message read and keeping the reader’s attention through the conclusion of the email.

What is Mobile Marketing? Creativity at It’s Best

What is mobile marketing?  One of the answers to that question is marketing through email.  What comprises an effective email campaign and why do advertisers like them so much?  First, an effective email campaign is one where the mobile marketer’s ad is read.  Just because you successfully deliver your message through email does not mean that it will be read.  Ensuring that your message will be read depends on what you place in the subject line.  If your email subject line reads like SPAM, more than likely your email will be deleted, which defeats the purpose of your email campaign.  On a mobile marketing device when people are on the go, the subject line must be more creative in order to have a chance at being opened because people’s attention spans when they are on the go tend to be a little less that when on a desktop computer.

Mobile marketers like email advertising so much because it is not labor intensive and it is perhaps one of the most inexpensive, efficient forms of mobile advertising in existence.  Email mobile marketing is not labor intensive because they are usually sent to a targeted audience and emails can be sent at various intervals so that if the customer does not buy on the first email, they might buy on the fourth.  Email advertising is inexpensive, free to email and the only real costs associated with email marketing are the labor needed to design the email and the labor needed to organize the potential recipients.  In traditional marketing, as with real mailers, you would have the cost of the actual physical mailer, the postage cost and then there would be no guarantee that the recipient would read the message.

What is Mobile Marketing?  Ads That Convert

There are lots of different types of mobile ads, the most obvious being a mobile banner. A mobile banner at the top of the page is known quite simply as a Mobile Web Banner whilst one at the bottom of the page is known as a Mobile Web Poster. Nevertheless, there are other methods such as SMS advertising, in other words receiving a text message which promotes a certain company, product, service or any other similar feature. This simple method is highly effective if done right and is estimated to rake in a mass percentage of mobile marketing revenue across the world. In addition to this examples of alternative forms are MMS or picture messaging, audio marketing, and advertising appearing during games and videos.

So what is mobile marketing doing that other types of advertisements are not… Quite frankly what makes publicizing through a phone device unique is that it engages with the audience on a stronger level then other methods. Furthermore, what a lot of individuals prefer about mobile promotion is that you can opt in or out of text message advertising as you wish.

Nevertheless, if you are still not convinced about the vast reach and impact of mobile marketing today then perhaps a few recent facts will prove its worth. There are currently four million mobile phones being used in the world, of which over 75% can receive text messages (no wonder they are such a mass source of advertising revenue). Over one billion smart phones are in use worldwide, meaning all your fancy internet adverts and applications are being widely viewed and extensively acknowledged. In fact the impact of mobile phones is so expansive that researchers predict that by 2014 internet usage will be higher on phones than on actual computers. Finally, 91% of individuals use mobile internet to socialize via sites such as Twitter and Facebook, these mobile businesses & social networking sites can also be used as advertising avenues.

The masses of people that can be reached with today’s advanced cell technology via a simple SMS message is quite frankly mind blowing. This coupled with advertising banners, MMS messaging, and social networking adverts, has the capability of reaching so many people it is frankly hard to imagine. Thus it may be difficult to comprehend that mobile marketing is as effective as it seems, but the facts clearly speak for themselves, it is the way forward for publicizing your  business, products, or services today.

Another answer to what is mobile marketing is effective advertising that meets the needs of the customers.  That advertising can take many forms.  If the advertising entices the recipient to purchase the product, service or join the cause, then it is an effective ad.  Mobile marketers have borrowed a page from the television industry and have started to develop 15, 30 and 60 second video campaigns designed to capture your attention.  Then they sell them to companies with a heavy Internet presence like CNN, FOX News and Sports Illustrated, who basically forces you to watch those ads first whenever you click on one of their stories to read, thereby ensuring that they are definitely seen and the message effectively delivered.

Whereas video marketing campaigns can be viewed on some Blackberries, with the recent advent of the computerized tablet, these videos stand out and can be seen better than on a Blackberry device, similarly as on a laptop.  The tablet has also been successful at creating mobile marketers out of previously traditional marketers, exclusively by mobile technology.  On many laptops and tablets, you now have to ability to watch television programming that you would have had to sacrifice for being on the move only a few years earlier.  What that means is that a business could be generating a commercial to appeal to anyone watching a particular show, and you might be watching that show from the road.  Technology has thus converted a traditional marketer to a mobile marketer.

What is mobile marketing?  Mobile marketing is how we will see the majority of any advertising going forward.  With the advent of the DVR where people fast forward through commercials, mobile marketing is a great alternative for markets to get their message across to the public.