Mobile Marketing - Research Paper Example

Mobile Marketing Executive Summary Digital marketing has emerged as the most important tool used by the marketers for promoting their products. With the technological advancement, there has been a combination of technology and every aspect of business operations of which even marketing was not left behind. The fusion of technology and marketing has helped in spreading increased awareness about business products all over the country. In global context also the internet helped link the suppliers and customers but the link got even stronger with the introduction of mobile marketing. Presently every individual in the world carries a mobile phone and so this mobile marketing got even more popular and effective. Mobile marketing led to brand awareness among the people and the integration of digital marketing with mobile marketing proved as an effective tool of marketing in the 21st century. The purpose of the assignment is to discuss about the apps in mobile phones which are increasingly used by marketers for communicating with their customers and providing information about the choices of the consumers. It is predicted that the mobile apps will become the landing page with a single purpose and a particular offering. The trend of mobile marketing in the last 5 years shows that it is increasingly becoming popular among individuals and every business operating in the economy has a goal which depends on the 5S namely sell, serve, sizzle, speak and save. Introduction The paper aims at deciphering the future of digital marketing along with the advantages and disadvantages. It gives emphasis on mobile marketing as it gained prominence over the past few years. Digital marketing has already made a huge progress in the present situation and in the years to come, this will proceed and benefit everyone in the world. This needs to be adopted by every marketer for enhancing the communication with its potential customers (Barwise and Farley, 2005). Digital marketing and its trend in next 5 years Digital marketing refers to the process of marketing where information about products is delivered to the target customers with the help of technologies. Taking the help of this brand awareness increases among people and all this leads to increase in sales thereby generating profit in the long run. It enables the audience to access information about any company they want through digital media and this is possible at any place and any time (Bauer, et. al., 2005). This medium is used not only by the customers but also by the companies in order to know about the preferences of customers. The knowledge about the choices of customers is not enough; there is a greater need for communicating with them. This is done through social media sites, mails and mobile phones. The companies by taking the help of these mediums know about the experiences of the customers, record them and through this the expectations about the products of them are known. The strategies adopted by rival companies can also be extracted through digital media and this can be incorporated in their own companies for improving (Brondoni, 2008). Digital marketing has gone through a greater change in the last decade. It is predicted that there will be some changes in the same and the first one refers to increase in content marketing. As a matter of fact, marketers are predicted to forget the traditional tactics of digital marketing and form interesting content (Mulhern, 2009). The high quality content is expected to enhance the method of digital marketing. It is also expected that the marketing analytics will emerge in the future periods. According to Ryan (2014), marketing data will emerge as an important aspect in marketing and acquiring it will become fast paced and simpler. In addition to it is expected that videos will be used more in marketing because through videos it is easier to show the functioning of a product which is not possible to display through images or messages. Personalized content has the advantage of increasing the sales volume and decrease the operational costs. The high quality content is believed to reduce marketing noise in the near future (De Marez, et. al., 2007). Visual storytelling is again expected to rise in the coming years. Through this the marketers communicate the philosophy of their brands. This is believed to enable companies to stand out with impressing stories amidst the existing surge of noise. In terms of online advertisement, it is believed that internet advertising will increase by nearly 12% and mobile advertisements to 50% in the coming years (Luo and Shenkar, 2006). Mobile marketing Mobile marketing is a kind of marketing that is operated through smart phones. The customers by applying this kind of marketing have access to location sensitive information and all this leads to promotion of their goods offered. Mobile marketing is of various types like SMS and MMS marketing (Montgomery and Chester, 2009). The other forms of mobile marketing are push notifications and application based marketing. These will be discussed in detail in the later sections. The markets use mobile marketing to communicate with its customers because it is the closest to a customer. In the present situation, almost everybody owns a mobile phone. The factor of proximity is the key reason for mobile marketing being undertaken by firms nowadays. It is observed that out of five smartphone searches, almost four results in purchase actions and this is profitable for companies adopting it as a means to offer their goods and services taking the assistance of online sites. The greater number of smartphone users the greater will be the market audience of the companies incorporating mobile marketing for reaching its customers (Lillis and Curry, 2010. The smart phones are nowadays well equipped with the innovative techniques that allow it to be a mini PC as well as a phone. These mobile technologies have podcasts that deliver radio programmes to the phones. These apps on mobile have run on computer programmes and initially it was used productivity and for accessing information like stock market and information about the weather but with the increases in demand, other items were included with the help of developer tools. At present, different application software packages are available and these are used by the businesses for delivering media along with certain benefits that are way better than official websites (Barwise and Farley, 2005). An example of an app used in America is the app named Yelp. This mobile app is used for extracting information about the reviews of different companies along with the advantage of booking online some services. It offers the service of food delivery also and shows the health inspection scores of various companies. Initially it was introduced for providing email services but with the failure of the app, it was re-launched for providing reviews online. It is also a social networking site where the schools as well as food joints can publish information about their businesses and in turn het reviews which it can use further for improving. The information about special deals is published by the businesses for its customers. The advertisements given on this site by the companies easily reach the customers and by paying high prices these advertisements can appear on the top of the page. However, only companies with a three star rating can advertise their products in this site (Luo and Shenkar, 2006). Trend in mobile marketing With the progress of time, it is predicted that mobile apps will become the landing page which means a website designed carefully for a single purpose and for a particular offering. The companies are expected to launch niche apps in mobile phones that have a specific purpose. Event apps are used by businesses nowadays for communicating with the customers about events organized by them. There is also the probability of companies investing in their own apps for creating brand awareness. It is also assessed that the enterprises will device a mobile app for the purpose of customer service and the customers will be more context aware. Marketing automation was used previously but the new trend is using the same thing via mobile. Through this the enterprises will construct their profiles on the basis of what customers view them on websites (Mulhern, 2009). This will be used for personalizing mails by the companies. All these will occur in the next 5 years and most of it has already started. The goal of the businesses in mobile marketing is linked to the 5S, the first one of which refers to selling through which customers will be acquired and retained. The second will be to serve the customers and satisfy them with the products. The third one refers to sizzle by which the duration of the customers to their sites will be assessed and thereby analyze whether the customers are interested in their products. The fourth one refers to speak through which the total number of customers who are engaged will be observed. The last one refers to save through which the efficiency profits will be judged (Ryan, 2014). SWOT analysis of mobile marketing Strengths: The customers purchase more of mobiles instead of landlines for attaining knowledge about the business deals. This mobile marketing is a loyal tool and there is the facility for customers for comparing the products online during the purchase period (Mohr, Sengupta, and Slater, 2009). Weaknesses: the wireless carriers are taking time for innovation and there are many service providers who are not much successful in their marketing goal (Luo and Shenkar, 2006). Opportunities: The content is subsidized through advertising in mobiles and there is major opportunity for targeting the advertisements (Constantinides and Fountain, 2008). Threats: This kind of marketing is complicated because it leads to delay in various marketing campaigns (De Marez, et. al., 2007). Digital marketing in mobile marketing The following figure 1 shows the amount of money spent on mobile advertisements in contrast to digital advertisements for the time period 2013- 2017. However, the predicted amount has also been shown for the years 2016 and 2017. Figure 1: Amount spent on mobile advertisements (Source: Saravanakumar and Sugantha, 2012) The most successful digital marketers involve in communicating with its customers through social methods as well as local means. In this category, mobile forces are used by digital marketers for building a strong relationship with its customers. The mobile marketing is constructed on the foundation of analytics which helps in providing data needed to aim the offers and engagement choices suitably. With the invention of smart phones, there was the introduction of applications that can be downloaded by the users and shop through them. Sometimes special discounts are offered by companies to the application users and this attracts the people to download more of the applications launched by the companies (Hoffman and Fodor, 2010). There is a special way of combining mobile marketing with digital marketing. In mobile marketing analytics, data is transferred to the sellers and from it they come to know about the behaviour patterns of their customers, the time when the customers operate the phone and the interests of them. These data have several names called explicit data, contextual ones and implicit data. This leads to a way towards earning increased revenue and in turn further leading to rise in value of the business (Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). People all around the world browse through eCommerce websites through their mobile phones and the purchase action is taken in their desktops. However, with the innovation in technology, people choose the product from their mobiles and order that product then and there through mobiles only. Individuals do not wait for their desk tops in order to order a product because the smart phones are technologically so advanced that everything can be done from mobiles (Weber, 2009). One kind of mobile marketing is the use of applications in smart phones. An example to depict this can be the case of Lynx, a deodorant company that introduced two applications providing guidelines for young boys to impress girls. The application was highly successful among the people and it was downloaded more than 400,000 times (Wertime and Fenwick, 2011). According to Varnali and Toker (2010), the most important among all the different types of mobile marketing that is connected to digital marketing is marketing through applications. The first one refers to the large processing power offered by the devices like mobile and the second refers to the low cost of apps compared to the costs of old software (Chester, 2007). Most of the apps are free of cost, however there are some apps that have prices that are not much high and can be afforded by everyone. The app developers earn from developing such apps not through the prices of them but through the sales volume through purchasing of the apps by the people. There is the use of check-ins from which the users benefit and there is large number of companies taking owning their locations along with the provision of discounts to individuals checking in. Through check-in unique purchases are made by the people (Shankar and Balasubramanian, 2009). The different types of mobile marketing are discussed in details in the following section. SMS marketing: It was a popular means adopted by the marketers that involved businesses collecting the phone numbers of people and sending them promotional messages. This trend started in the year 2000 and spread in countries of Europe and Asia (Weber, 2009). MMS marketing: In this kind of marketing, a slideshow consisting of text, audio and video is sent to the customers and through them the companies inform about the discounts offered by them along with the information of latest trends or innovations in their products (Swaminathan and Moorman, 2009). An example citing this can be the MMS marketing campaigns of Motorola in which it allows the customers to send the pictures of their mobiles to LED board (Keller and Richey, 2006). Application based marketing: the smart phone users are targeted by the mobile marketers for marketing their products. The focus of the marketers is to raise the visibility of applications in a shop that assists in eliciting more downloads (Saravanakumar and Sugantha, 2012). QR (Quick Response) codes: An individual can visit a web page easily by scanning an image with their mobile camera and the URL present there has a tracking property (Scharl, Dickinger and Murphy, 2005). High tech mobile marketing An example of a high tech mobile marketing is QR codes. It is nothing but a bar code for encoding information. These bar codes are two dimensional and resemble a simple barcode (Shankar and Balasubramanian, 2009). However, it has the potential to store more information and there is a possibility of structuring it in order to launch a website on a smart phone. The businesses are presently applying it for redemption. An example of this can be cited where companies ask the users to scan the code in order to avail an offer free of cost. The main motive of these QR codes is to assist the customers to specific link (Taken Smith, 2012). There are several retail markets that are going high tech in mobile marketing. Tesco PLC for example launched an application through which products in its stores can be located (Miller, 2012). Another app allows the customers to purchase products of a retail shop by scanning the bar codes given on the products. The name of the mobile app that has a GPS technology allowing the customers to find their direction in the store is Harris Teeter (J. Lee, J. Lee and Feick, 2006). Conclusion The research paper have deciphered the fact that there is a rising trend of mobile marketing among marketers and that it is predicted to rise in the future. Mobile marketing along with digital marketing has earned increased revenues for all the brands. It is observed that like the positive attributes of brands spreading quickly among the customers, negative aspects will no longer remain hidden because of the power of social media sites. The paper successfully highlights the digital marketing trends in the next five years and gives a better understanding about mobile marketing. Reference list Barwise, P. and Farley, J. U., 2005. The state of interactive marketing in seven countries: interactive marketing comes of age. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 19(3), pp.67-80. Bauer, H. H., Barnes, S. 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