When is the year of mobile marketing going to be with us? asks Andrew Thomson, Head of Natural Search at 360innovate. Well Andrew, considering you are the head of online marketing I was hoping you would have the answer!
Mobile marketing is, as the name suggests, marketing on or with a mobile device. Research by Orange mobile phone company has revealed that 81% of mobile users access mobile media once a week and 70% are attracted by interactive marketing formats. Of the participants taking part; 81% admitted to using mobile media more than once a week with 46% using it daily and it was revealed that the average of mobile media users was 36, further to this a high proportion (55%) of people browsing the mobile internet do so with no specific agenda (Orange).
Currently the most popular forms of mobile marketing are click-through advertisements and voucher redemption codes (Mobile Marketing Association), however, many companies are now launching transactional mobile sites so consumers can purchase whilst on the move. UK online retailers have been fairly slow to jump on the m-commerce bandwagon, those still resisting the allure of the mobile take note of the success Japanese retailers are having- up to 25% of a retailers sales can come from m-commerce (Internet Retailing).
One device that is being touted as ‘having brought m-commerce to life’ is the IPhone, who currently have over 50,000 applications many of which are retailing application (Economist). With so many different features the IPhone has revolutionised the way mobile marketing works providing customers with a completely unique shopping experience. The main one that sticks in our head is Amazon Remembers, download the application, see something you like, take a quick picture of it, send it to Amazon and Amazon with then send you an email identifying what the item was and a link to where you can buy it on Amazon. Applications such as this are brilliant because they are fun, informative and involve interaction with t
he customer; by utilising m-commerce, and integrating it into offline marketing, in such novel ways retailers can not only attract new customers but keep them returning.
The main drawback of accessing websites on mobile devices is usability; adaptation from web to mobile often results in poor user experience due to the wide diversity of mobile devices and carriers. Perhaps this maybe why IPhone has garnered so much attention from consumers and retailers alike; there is no need to bother with seperate mobile websites retailers can develop shopping applications that customers can access instantly and which is guaranteed to work. However, there is hope for all us non-IPhone people some companies are going to the effort of creating websites that can be accessed by other mobile devices, for example www.laterooms.com, who have established a website where customers can make bookings on their mobile.
One high street giant that is hoping to reap the benefits of m-commerce is Marks and Spencers who are launching their own ‘Back to School’ mobile marketing campaign. It will involve the launch of a mobile internet shopping site and promotional vouchers which can be redeemed via the mobile site.
In conclusion, UK retailers are still lagging behind their US and Japanese counterparts with regards to creating mobile enabled shopping carts, but we are slowly starting to integrate mobile into our marketing mix, over the past year we have seen several high profile companies featuring SMS in advertising and utilising it as a form of direct mailing. But until we start seeing more interactive mobile websites and exciting applications for phones of all models this year of online marketing may have to wait….
Tags: m-marketing, mobile marketing
