What is mobile marketing?
Mobile marketing is a digital marketing strategy that organizations implement to deliver a cohesive marketing message across a user’s mobile channels. Mobile marketing delivers short message service (SMS), social media, and various marketing messages directly to a buyer’s smartphone, tablet, or other mobile devices.
Companies use mobile marketing software to plan, implement, and control a range of marketing campaigns that target mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets, within mobile web browsers and applications.
Types of mobile marketing
Mobile marketing is an extremely popular method because of the different ways marketers can reach customers. Businesses can also mix-and-match formats to fit their specific needs. The most common types of mobile marketing campaigns are:
- SMS marketing: Also referred to as text message marketing, SMS marketing is the most prominent and common way to utilize mobile marketing once obtaining a customer’s phone number. It can be used to share information, promote deals and coupons, generate sales, create buzz, boost website traffic, and build brand awareness directly to customers through text messaging.
- Mobile applications: Brands with mobile apps can use them to focus on promotion, retention, customer engagement, and customer loyalty. Mobile marketing within an app can be push notifications or special coupons and deals through in-app messaging.
- Mobile game marketing: This refers to ads that appear in mobile games that promote products or services. This type is used to advertise new products or deals. In-game mobile ads can appear as banner pop-ups, full-page image ads, or video ads that play between game levels.
- Location-based marketing: These ads appear on mobile devices based on a user’s location, relative to a specific area or business. Some advertisers, such as restaurants and brick-and-mortar storefronts, may only want their mobile ads to appear when users are within a 1-mile radius of their business. This can easily be done with geotargeting, location tags, mobile search, and search engine optimization (SEO).
- QR codes: Quick response (QR) codes work with any smartphone with a camera and built-in barcode reader. They're an easy way to send consumers directly to the content a company puts out, like landing pages, videos, and email subscriber lists. Plus, they’re simple to use and easy to track.
- PPC: Paid search (PPC) is how an organization advertises on search engines. When using PPC marketing, companies pay search engines to bypass organic search results and competitors by running search ads directly correlated to what the customer searches.
- Social media marketing: Organic and paid ads can appear on mobile social feeds to drive traffic. Social network platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram typically offer the largest user bases.
- Search marketing: Basic Google search ads are built for mobile and typically feature extra add-on extensions like click-to-call or directions in a map application.
- Mobile image ads: Image-based advertisements that appear on mobile devices when a customer searches on the image page of a search engine.
Basic elements of mobile marketing
When building a mobile marketing strategy, consider the basic elements before implementing. These elements are:
- Design and usability: The mobile marketing campaign's design or user interface plays a significant role. Brands need to consider colors, images, and style before launching.
- Traffic funnels: Pertaining to the flow a user takes, either in the app or on the mobile site. Companies need to make sure campaigns guide the user through the funnel to check out a product, make a purchase, or go to a specific page.
- Content: Since mobile devices have smaller screens, content creators must consider screen size when writing for mobile. It’s best to keep things as concise as possible.
- Site speed: Having a slow website on mobile can tank a marketing campaign. For a page to rank high on search engines and perform well with customers, improving site speed on mobile is a must.
Benefits of mobile marketing
When done correctly, mobile marketing can lead to many benefits. Some benefits an organization may experience are:
- Larger audiences: Billions of people have mobile devices. Mobile marketing makes it possible to get their brand and advertisements in front of many people. It’s also simple to segment the audience by gender, age, and location.
- Cost-effective campaigns: Mobile marketing is budget-friendly compared to other forms of marketing. Optimizing a website for mobile use or sending text messages is less expensive than most traditional marketing techniques. This is a significant benefit to smaller businesses without a large budget.
- Personalization: Information users receive on their mobile devices feels more personal than on desktops. Businesses that create more personal and intimate marketing campaigns often see great success.
- Location-specific marketing: Mobile marketing makes it possible for companies to target customers who are always on the move. Communication with customers can be sensitive to their location and activities, allowing companies to reach them at the right time.
- More options: With so many different types of mobile marketing available, companies can choose which aligns best with their needs and create a successful strategy.
- Viral potential: Mobile content can easily be shared, giving organizations the potential to go viral. If a customer resonates with the content, they’ll likely share it with friends or family. This gives companies free exposure.
- Easily track results: With mobile marketing, brands can easily track the results of their campaigns, providing better insight into the click-through rate (CTR). This data helps businesses be more relevant, adaptive, and accurate in their marketing efforts.
Best practices for mobile marketing
Specific mobile marketing tactics will vary across businesses and industries. Regardless, there are universal best practices any organization can use as a starting point. Some best practices include:
- Have a mobile-friendly website. Mobile-friendly content should fit on a device screen without side-to-side scrolling or zooming, load fast, and be free of mobile-specific errors. The most important reason for companies to maintain a mobile-friendly site is to create a consistent and engaging user experience (UX) across every device.
- Optimize local listings for voice search. No matter which mobile marketing strategy an organization employs, it needs to be optimized for voice search. Voice search allows customers to easily search the internet using voice commands with programs like Siri or Alexa. Consumers often voice search for local restaurants or businesses in their areas that serve a specific need.
- Automate and track using the right software. Mobile marketing covers many channels. If a business plans to fully invest in a mobile marketing strategy, using the right software is key. Mobile marketing software takes the guesswork out of tracking customer interactions and reporting. Data on mobile marketing campaigns are gathered in one easy-to-access location. Plus, these tools can track a customer's progress throughout the entire customer lifecycle.
Mobile marketing vs. email marketing
Email marketing is when relevant information is communicated through email to a specific group. The only way to run these campaigns is through email software directly to a user's inbox.
Mobile marketing is a more diverse concept that utilizes several channels for success, like SMS, in-game apps, social media, and more.
Mara Calvello
Mara Calvello is a Content and Communications Manager at G2. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Elmhurst College (now Elmhurst University). Mara writes content highlighting G2 newsroom events and customer marketing case studies, while also focusing on social media and communications for G2. She previously wrote content to support our G2 Tea newsletter, as well as categories on artificial intelligence, natural language understanding (NLU), AI code generation, synthetic data, and more. In her spare time, she's out exploring with her rescue dog Zeke or enjoying a good book.
