Mobile marketing - how does it work?

Have you ever get this feeling when you are already at the climax of the drama and you are just about the know whether the main guy and girl is going to get together when suddenly, a 10 seconds ad pop out and you just curse at it? That ad my friend is mobile marketing.

So why? Why must mobile marketing exist to ruin our perfect day, watching our favourite drama or ruin our game just when we are about to win it? This is because TV used to be the best platform for marketers to reach their target audience but however with each passing year, the amount of people watching television per year is slowly declining. This can be seen from the statistics done by Nielsen, which shows that among the 18 to 34 years old in America in quarter 3 of 2018, there has been a 17.2% decrease in TV viewership as compared to the previous year. Instead, more of the people, especially aged 18 to 34 years are spending 1 hour more per day using apps and the web on smartphones.

Also, with 5.112 billion unique mobile phone users globally and about 4.6 million users in Singapore, more marketers are finding the need to understand how mobile marketing works and how it can benefit them in reaching their target audience more effectively.

Mobile marketing does not only appear in the form in ads in between the videos we are watching or in the middle of the game we are playing but also in many other different forms which we will discuss some of it below.

1. Social Media Ads

Social media ads, well this I am sure is very familiar to many of us and they appear in the form of sponsor ads along our timeline.

This applies to social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

2. In-game Advertising

Secondly, as mentioned above, ads do not just apply to the ads that appear while we are playing a game but also through in game purchases. This mostly applies to games that are free to download but in order to move on to the next level or to unlock new stories or features, it would require the player to spend some real money to buy some of its features.

An example in the game Cluedo that I play on my phone requires me to purchase other characters if not I am just stuck with the same few characters and one map which is so boring!

3. Shopping Apps

Lastly, with about 1.8 billion people worldwide purchase products online and about 3.12 million eCommerce users in Singapore, it is a race for eCommerce company to get their part of the market share. In a recent survey conducted in Singapore, showed that 6 out of 10 Singaporeans prefer to use their smartphones to shop as compared to using the desktops or tablets. This information helps online eCommerce store to understand the importance of creating a workable and easy to use shopping app for their consumers.

However, with so many shopping apps around, how does the different eCommerce companies try to stand out and attract consumers to use their app and buy from them instead of the others? This is where mobile marketing comes in and it is done through the use of sales promotions and discounts.

For example, the eCommerce website called Lazada. When we first open up the app there will be banners at the top of the app informing us of the discounts and sales promotions that they currently have. Other than that, they also have coupons or promotion codes that users can use to waive off some of their total purchase costs.

Therefore, mobile marketing is becoming more and more important in the society nowadays and is becoming one of the more important skills that marketers should know. If done well, not only does it help the company to generate income but also helps the company to understand consumers’ shopping behaviours and their purchases can be analysed and the insights that come out of it will help marketers in better tailoring benefits more suited to their consumers.