Nowadays everyone has technology within their reach and the closest to them is a smartphone.
In 2022, you will notice that almost everyone around you has at least a smartphone. This is an avenue of opportunities that marketers must take! With technology within reach, the platform of mobile marketing has endless horizons for campaigns and initiatives to take place. But before we get there, what is Mobile Marketing?
Mobile Marketing Explained…
Mobile marketing is any advertising activity that promotes products and services via mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones. It tailors marketing efforts depending on an individual’s location by utilizing characteristics of contemporary mobile technology, such as location services.
For instance, Mobile marketing by Starbucks can be in a form of an application that members are encouraged to install on their phones and Starbucks will opportune this to reach out to their members to spend more for any incentives.
This is one of the ways that businesses can remain within reach of their members and how they want their businesses to be streamlined for their consumers.
With that in mind, what can marketers do with Mobile Marketing or rather what are the possibilities with it?
Tools of Mobile Marketing
So what are the various tools you can use in mobile marketing? There are simply too many but I will share three major key tools that are popular amongst businesses and consumers.
Firstly, there’s location-based marketing. It is basically the geolocation of your mobile and the nearest businesses can reach out to your if you happen to look for the same item.
For instance, I would like to find the nearest cafe that serves Soy Latte then the nearest Cafe that serves such an item will reach out in ads in searches or even in ads that appear during mobile usage.
Secondly, Mobile apps. Earlier in the article, we mention Starbucks’ mobile application as an example of mobile marketing. Many businesses have also their versions of an app which is inevitable in this day and age.
An existing business entity would venture into making their very own mobile application. Let’s look at our general android application store.
Businesses success can be hidden in Mobile Apps, where the key difference is their reach out to new users or even their existing consumers. For example, mobile apps allow businesses to have a better brand relationship with their consumers.
Lastly, mobile payments. This allows businesses to encourage users to make payments through the platform to have better cashback value or even better deals of vouchers.
Marketers can take advantage of this form of convenient technology to allow more consumers to use digitalized payment platforms. With mobile marketing integrated, they can promote exclusive sales in this way to garner more attention to the business.
Now equipped with this knowledge of mobile marketing, you are ready to venture into the wide world of marketing! I hope it helps. Do let me know your thoughts below!
References
Kenton, W., 2022. What Is Mobile Marketing?. [online] Investopedia. Available at: <https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mobile-marketing.asp> [Accessed 17 February 2022].
Koval, R., 2022. ≡ 5 Successful Companies that use Mobile Apps for business. [online] Perfectial.com. Available at: <https://perfectial.com/blog/businesses-that-made-success-with-mobile-apps/> [Accessed 17 February 2022].
Lardinois, F., 2022. TechCrunch is part of the Yahoo family of brands. [online] Techcrunch.com. Available at: <https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/18/google-pay-gets-a-major-redesign/> [Accessed 17 February 2022].
MarketingProfs. 2022. How to Use Geolocation Marketing to Stand Out. [online] Available at: <https://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2019/41757/how-to-use-geolocation-marketing-to-stand-out> [Accessed 17 February 2022].
What the Froth. 2022. IS THE STARBUCKS APP WORTH IT? 5 REASONS TO USE IT AND GET FREE COFFEE!. [online] Available at: <https://whatthefroth.com/starbucks-app/> [Accessed 17 February 2022].
Daryl Goh LF03 
Hey Daryl, I enjoyed reading your blog posts and thank you for the examples provided. Keep up the good work!!
Just some question for you, do you think that businesses are able to earn just by creating mobile marketing? If yes, how well do you think their brand awareness would rank? As i feel that businesses need to have both mobile and desktop marketing as it have different exposures and this will bring up their brand awareness too 🙂
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Hi PeiFang,
Thank you for the comment. For the first question, I think it really depends on the industry and whether what form of sales can they calculate in this sense. But however, if a business is a sales-based business where they can calculate their return of investment, they would be able to see how the mobile marketing campaign actually benefits as a campaign.
It depends on how good the marketing branding is already is. The brand awareness ranking would increase and depend on how consistent the marketing is and how much content they are churning out. With consistency and proper content, the brand ranking would increase.
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Hi Daryl! It was a good read on mobile marketing! Good use of examples too so we could all grasp the idea of how the different tools work. I agree as technology and smartphones are now within reach, this opens up a lot of opportunities for businesses to hop onto. You’ve mentioned that it is ideal for businesses to create their own mobile app to be able to build a better relationship with their customers. Then for businesses who currently do not have a mobile app or not intending to create one, what would be your suggestions for them to combat this issue of not having a mobile app, but still be able to build a good customer relationship?
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Hi Mavis,
Thank you for the comment!
A company without mobile marketing would have to rely on the old methods to maintain good customer relationships such as monthly newsletter marketing or even sending out letters to the customers for vouchers etc. They can also maintain good relationships by having a good salesperson to provide a service that consumers will remember.
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Hi Daryl! This post was a great read, I must say! I admire the fact that you added in images for reference so that readers can better understand your point. I do agree that mobile marketing is a strategy marketers need to make as more people are using mobile devices now. I am now certain of which mobile marketing tool to focus on if I were to start my own business.
With that said, I think it would be better if you could dig deeper on how businesses can adopt these tools. Maybe you can add in a step by step process on how businesses can take advantage of the geo-location tool. This would give readers more guidance on mobile marketing. Nonetheless, it was a great read! Keep up the great work 😊
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Hello Elissa,
Thank you for the comment! Definitely, it will help the users to understand the content a whole lot better. The geo-location tool is another whole topic on its own and really technical which I think most readers would be a bit of a challenge to understand the content. Still, definitely, something to look into.
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hello Daryl, a nice blog post with a detailed explanation of how Mobile marketing is essential and integral in this current generation. I also like how you give several examples like Starbucks effectively. On the other hand, I would like to ask whether traditional marketing is still vital today? And does Starbucks relies more on traditional or mobile marketing?
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Hello Caleb,
Thanks for the comment and yes traditional marketing is still a vital component today. For certain companies, they still will cater to their own demographic of consumers and some industries tend to have older demographics such as the readers market.
For your second question, I think that Starbucks is catering to a wide demographic of age groups so they will rely on all forms of marketing but with the rise of technology with the next generation, they have opportune that to reach out.
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Hello Daryl! Amazing blog about mobile marketing I felt that you have explain the subject very well. The graphics used are also very refreshing and correlates to the topic being discuss. However, I have seen several other post about starbucks too, can you give me another examples or case study of mobile marketing?
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Hello Sabrina,
A brief idea of a case study is where We can look at H&M or Uniqlo for being the flagship of clothing brands that has an application that allows their consumers to stay connected and build a relationship as a B2C.
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Hello Daryl! Great blog post on mobile marketing. Thanks for including all the examples to let the readers understand the idea better! And yes, smart phones and technology comes hand in hand and they are so convenient right now! Well, as mentioned by you, businesses should make use of creating a mobile application to build their relationship and understanding with the consumers. How do you think engineering services can make use of that service? Due to nature of their services being “built-to-order”, what kind of features would you add into the mobile application for the company to understand the consumers?
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Hello JingWen,
Thank you for the comment.
Engineering services that provide and sells a service to their audience can look into it.
Nowadays, web page servers and mobile apps can utilise the same platforms to keep their information and content in the same place.
Service companies such as engineering services usually provide consultation for their products so in this case, mobile apps can also provide information to the end-users and as well as booking an appointment.
However, the company needs to understand if it’s necessary for them to do so as mobile application is expensive and time-consuming while ensuring that the ROI is enough to justify.
Websites makers is enough for consultation firms to have and there’s usually no need to invest in mobile applications. I hope this helps!
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Hi Daryl! Overall, it was a great post about mobile marketing with great pictures as examples as well. However, besides Starbucks the common one that we all know, I think we can use other brands like IUIGA or Uniqlo as an example. As for the part for geolocation, maybe you could search for “Soy Latte near me”. I think this way, it can show where is the nearest you can get from or find from as when I was reading and looking at the example, I was rather confused. You also talked about businesses with a mobile app providing a better relationship with the consumers, but what about other brands that do not have a mobile app themselves? How can they build a better relationship with their consumers?
Look forward to seeing your next blog post! 🙂
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Hello abclsj,
Thank you for the feedback!
As I have shared in other comments that has similar questions.
One example would be a company with services.
“Engineering services that provide and sells a service to their audience can look into it.
Nowadays, web page servers and mobile apps can utilise the same platforms to keep their information and content in the same place.
Service companies such as engineering services usually provide consultation for their products so in this case, mobile apps can also provide information to the end-users and as well as booking an appointment.
However, the company needs to understand if it’s necessary for them to do so as mobile application is expensive and time-consuming while ensuring that the ROI is enough to justify.
Websites makers are enough for consulting firms to have and there’s usually no need to invest in mobile applications.”
So brands need to justify with stakeholders if a mobile app is essential to the growth and the brand goals.
For now, essentially, social media and websites of the brand is good enough to build company relations.
Hope this clears up.
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Hi Daryl, great post on mobile marketing with the use of images and the example on Starbucks. I agree that with the rise of consumers using technology such as mobile devices, marketers can take this chance to leverage on it. I also personally uses mobile payment a lot as it’s really convenient since I am always holding on to my phone. However, there are still a minority of people that doesn’t want to use mobile payment as they are afraid of a lack in security etc. Apart from that, can you share with me more on how mobile apps allow businesses to have a better brand relationship with their consumers?
Overall, I enjoyed reading your post and I look forward to your next! 🙂
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Hello nxning,
Thanks for the comment.
Well, promotion and sales notifications would be a great example to reach out to consumers. In my opinion, we can look at Uniqlo or Ikea as great examples of consumer relationships. Both apps have catalogues where they can look for and they do hand out promos and vouchers from time to time.
As a consumer, I always look forward to shopping online or even physical stores with or without vouchers! There’s always something to look forward to as consumers of these brands.
Hope this helps!
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Hey Daryl , have a great time reading your post and understanding your take on mobile marketing. I think it would be great if you were to mention the pros and Cons of mobile marketing and is mobile marketing for every forms of business. To my understanding, mobile marketing can be quite costly especially in terms making and creating an app for your consumers.
Would love to see your take on that ! Have a great one
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Hello Kai,
there are many forms of businesses, the blog wouldn’t be enough for me to fit all in to answer your query here.
Yes, app development can cost up to a quarter a million in my previous projects.
Hope this helps.
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