As an entrepreneur working to enhance your business, it’s safe to assume that you always have an eye out for new marketing strategies. Whether it’s driving past a billboard advertisement, or opening a marketed email, we are surrounded by different types of marketing all the time. Digital marketing from the internet is fed to us daily via our social media feeds, website advertisements, and more. Looking to break into this type of marketing but don’t know where to start?
Mobile marketing is a form of digital marketing concentrated solely on mobile internet users via smartphones and tablets. While the two are related there is a difference between digital marketing and mobile marketing. Getting into mobile marketing means utilizing and perfecting strategies that are more geared toward a mobile-user demographic. If your business is an app, or you’re simply looking to branch out your audience, then mobile marketing is worth looking into.
Let’s evaluate some of the advantages and disadvantages in order to see if mobile marketing is the right marketing strategy for you. You can check out our other article on the types of mobile marketing to understand, here.
Advantages of Mobile Marketing
Mobile personalization is a huge advantage when it comes to mobile marketing because as you already know, personalized messages have a greater chance of making the consumer take action. With the expansions of permitted data usage, the same way that Facebook or Instagram may send you advertisements of products you were just shopping for online, you can also tailor advertisements for your content to your demographic’s interest. Even push notifications are a huge benefit in this aspect of mobile marketing, as it allows you to further personalize your consumer’s phone.
Location-Based Targeting
Location-based targeting, depending on your product, is also an advantage to consider. According to Nectafy, 88% of consumers who search for a type of local business on a mobile device call or go to that business within 24 hours.
Think about it. Quick-service restaurants, food delivery apps, and rideshare apps are all examples of businesses that leverage location. With their mobile campaigns and dependency on location, it’s a great business model to utilize a marketing strategy that targets both mobility and location.
Cost Effective
One of the most prominent and important benefits of mobile marketing for smaller entrepreneurs is its cost-effectiveness. Print and TV marketing, for example, has significantly higher purchase and production costs. Mobile marketing is reasonably priced and more efficient; every dollar you spend is tailored to the mobile audience you’re trying to reach. There’s also more variety in mobile marketing, as you have the option to pick and choose from an array of communication channels, so you can more easily manage your budget.
High Engagement Rate
Mobile marketing has a high engagement rate as customers are more likely to open and respond to messages on their mobile devices. According to one report, SMS text messages have a 98% open rate. It allows businesses to create interactive campaigns, such as mobile games, polls, and surveys, to engage their audience and gather valuable feedback.
Improving customer engagement is one of the most important mobile marketing goals you should set. The good news is that mobile marketing campaigns tend to offer higher engagement than other types of marketing. As the demand for this type of marketing increases, there is a possibility that engagement rates will drop. But for now, this type of marketing offers the highest engagement possibilities for marketers and businesses.
Instant Accessibility
Mobile marketing provides instant access to customers. With the use of push notifications, businesses can reach their customers in real-time and send them personalized messages based on their interests and location.
This is very different from traditional marketing. Traditional marketing campaigns can take weeks or even months to produce results. The slow turnaround time makes it difficult to know if adjustments should be made to the campaign. With mobile marketing, you can expect your target audience to respond much quicker because they have instant access to you, your app, or your website.
Shareability and Virality
Another benefit to mobile marketing is how quickly you can expand your reach without adding additional costs to your campaign. This is because content created for mobile marketing usually has high shareability and virality.
Shareability refers to the ease with which content can be shared across social media and other online platforms. The more shareable the content, the more likely it is to be seen and engaged with by a wider audience. Virality, on the other hand, refers to the speed and scale at which content spreads across the internet. Viral content can reach millions of people in a short amount of time. Often through the power of social media sharing.
Shareable and viral content are highly sought after by content creators and marketers, as they can drive significant traffic, engagement, and brand awareness for their online presence. For a mobile marketing campaign, this could mean a big return on investment in a short amount of time.
Disadvantages of Mobile Marketing
Speed of Marketing Leaves Little Room for Error
Despite all these great attributes of mobile marketing, however, there are some drawbacks to consider. For starters, mobile advertising is very fast in nature. If you push out content that was poorly mismanaged, either flooding with errors or perhaps making a subjectively negative remark, then it can doom your business. First impressions matter. And with mobile marketing, there is even less room for error.
Remember the Ulta Beauty, Kate Spade fiasco? Ulta Beauty spent months dealing with news coverage and crisis management, continuously apologizing for the email only for some to deem those apologies equally as insensitive as the initial comment. In short, don’t make the same mistake. Reread the content you want to send to your consumers and make sure it cannot be received negatively.
Technical Restraints
There’s also a lack of standardization among mobile phones that would create formatting issues when sending out a campaign. With different types of phones: meaning different screen sizes, various browsers, and operating systems, one campaign will turn out differently depending on the smartphone. Your text and formatting might be too small for an android but be cropped out of the screen on a google pixel.
Ad Fatigue
Have you ever skipped over a YouTube ad roll that you’ve seen over and over? Most likely you have and probably don’t even know what the ad was about. One of the reasons why we do this is because of ad fatigue.
Ad fatigue is a phenomenon that occurs when consumers become tired of seeing the same advertisement repeatedly. As a result, they may start to tune out or ignore the ad. This can lead to a decline in engagement and conversion rates over time.
Ad fatigue can be caused by a variety of factors. One of those factors is the frequency and duration of the ad campaign. A YouTube user will become tired of the same ad more quickly if the same ad appears before each video they view. Another factor is the relevance and quality of the ad content. Bad content will most likely annoy users more quickly than something entertaining or insightful.
Mobile ad fatigue can significantly impact a marketing campaign. It reduces the effectiveness of the ad and can lead to wasted ad spend. To combat ad fatigue, marketers must continually refresh and optimize their mobile ad content. They must learn to adjust their targeting and segmentation strategies and monitor engagement metrics to identify signs of fatigue and take action to prevent it.
Data Limitations for SMS Notifications for Some Users
Not everyone has an unlimited data plan, so standard data and texting charges may apply to the consumer receiving your notifications. This, of course, increases their likeliness to opt out of receiving your messages to avoid the rates. This definitely impacts the number of people you can reach. And could dramatically size down your demographic. Beyond the consumers who choose not to receive your messages or ad content, there are now also those who disallow notifications due to charges; considerably limiting your audience.
Competition
The popularity of mobile marketing has led to an increase in competition. Every business and organization is vying for the attention of mobile users. This makes it challenging for businesses to stand out from the crowd. It requires businesses to create unique and engaging campaigns that can capture the attention of their target audience.
Legal Regulations
Mobile marketing is subject to legal regulations. For example, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Businesses need to comply with these regulations to avoid legal penalties and maintain customer trust. Although most websites and mobile platforms offer tools to help you comply, it is important to be sure that you are not in violation of any local or national government regulations.
Conclusion
While mobile marketing can be a very cost-effective marketing strategy for those who believe a mobile format will bring in more consumers and more revenue, there are definitely disadvantages to consider. As we’ve seen, sometimes this marketing model isn’t worth the operation.
With increased penalties for making mistakes and reliance on consumers giving you access to their data, many might find this marketing strategy to be more risk than reward. Would a mobile marketing strategy even be successful for your business model? This is also something you have to ask yourself, as you’ve read through the advantages and disadvantages of mobile marketing.
Would the benefits appeal to your business model and trump the risks? Or would the mobile format not draw the number of additional consumers you need to make the venture worthwhile? Hopefully pondering some of these questions and thinking about the disadvantages versus advantages of mobile marketing regarding your personal goals, helps determine whether this marketing strategy is one to put to trial.