Eight Fundamental Aspects of Mobile Marketing

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All of us have heard of the traditional marketing mix, but there isn’t much information on the mobile world. In today’s post, The Website Marketing Group will provide a nice summary of eight fundamental aspects that build up the mobile marketing landscape. The list begins with:

1. Apps

In the past if someone said the word ‘App’, you might think there’s two letters, ‘L’ and ‘E’ missing from it. In fact, it is short for ‘Applications’. Thus, an app is a small piece of software that performs a certain action. Whether that’s a social network, a calculator, the news, a game or a map, these apps have an intended purpose, and are either pre-installed on your smartphone or can be downloaded from an app provider / store.

2. Mobile Advertising

One thing that mobile apps bring to us is the ability for ads to be displayed on the mobile devices. Just like ads that have appeared on your computer, nowadays gaining extra revenue from mobile ads has become primary target. The great thing about mobile ads is the company can ‘own’ that small screen. Whereas on a website there might be a few ads popping up, on a mobile ad most likely only one can appear.

Here are four forms of mobile ads:

  • Mobile banners and displays: graphical images or text that could include rich media
  • Mobile PPC: ad appears when you search for something in the paid listings
  • Contextual mobile ads: similar to PPC, but more on websites/apps rather than search listings
  • Idle screen advertising: ads shown while the user is waiting for a page or app to download

3. M-Commerce

After the word E-commerce was coined from buying online, the term has been applied to the mobile world as well. M-Commerce is the act of purchasing a product or service through your phone. So that could be anything from purchasing apparels to train tickets. As long as it’s purchased via a phone device, it can be called M-Commerce.

M-Commerce itself has revolutionised buying online as you can pretty much buy anything from anywhere. M-Commerce sales are rising rapidly and will more than likely explode over the next few years. Although the security aspect of buying via your phone is still a worry for some.

4. QR Codes

Known formally as Quick Response Codes or informally as QR Codes, these little things have become a quickly growing aspect of the mobile landscape. Basically, a QR code is a “barcode” that can appear on paper, a product or a billboard, and can be read using a smartphone or a dedicated QR reading device and contains a URL within it. So once you have captured the QR code the link could take you to anything from a website to a message or to a special offer.

5. Mobile Coupons

A mobile coupon is an electronic ticket or message sent to someone’s mobile phone usually via a SMS or MMS text for the person to redeem an offer or gain a discount on a product or service. This is a great way to drive either footfall to your store or traffic to your website. Mobile coupons are usually well targeted as they either know you would be interested in the offer, or you are in the local area and could take advantage of it.

6. Location Based Mobile Marketing

There are two types of this kind of marketing. The first is interrelated with the previous point about mobile coupons and being in the right location to redeem them. Targeted advertising using GPS is a fantastic way to reach a vast audience and is growing fast. The second part combines two aspects: apps or websites with location (known as geo-location). The most obvious example of this type is Foursquare, where the app allows you to post an update of where you are. Recently, Facebook’s ‘Check in’ and other social networks location finders have integrated mobile and location together to enable you to tell the world where you are.

7. Mobile Payments

Here is the situation: your friend wants to buy something online but has run out of money or someone owes you money. Instead of waiting ages for the cheque to clear you can now make that payment quickly through your mobile. That’s because by downloading an app money can be transferred into your account instantly through the power of your mobile device.

8. Mobile Websites

Finally, the most important aspect in mobile marketing  is mobile optimised websites. Yes, it is a website that accommodate mobile devices. If you typed this into a search engine on your mobile then this would be the interface you’d see. The site is more compressed with design, usability and navigation features that enable the site to be viewed from a small screen on a mobile.