“Location, Location, Location.”
That is one of the core competitiveness of mobile marketing.
According to the Millennial Media’s top executive at the Mobile Marketing Summit: Holiday Focus 2012 conference held in New York recently, mobile devices offer a way to track the consumers’ location better than ever before, and that had generated a significant improvement in engagement with a lot less cost for certain marketers. Examples included the auto and luxury marketing, in which mobile devices’ tracking ability of people’s physical visiting to the car lots or physical appearance in certain high-end locations make it more effective to send product information to the right kind target customers. The chance of purchase among those who are physically at those locations certainly is higher than those who randomly passed by a commercial stand or simply clicked on some online ads.
Mobile marketing has made it easier and more effective to reach and convert the target audience perhaps like no other medium had before. Although at this moment, it is hard to see how deep and wide mobile marketing can go into all business categories, especially in B2B, it is obvious that mobile marketing has been reshaping the contemporary marketing practice, and its influence will carry on in the coming years and possibly change the way people get information from the marketers. As the world shrinks into a smaller world and people are more mobile than ever, mobile marketing seems to be an ideal choice to target its audience with the lowest cost no matter if the target was in London or Barcelona, Beijing or Sydney. As long as there is mobile signal coverage and permission for marketing practices around the target’s location, the target will be reached, and a chance of conversion is planted.
I believe eventually the mobile device owners will be offered the choice to opt-in or opt-out of receiving certain pushed in marketing information which may reduce the numbers of exposure, but still, the good thing about mobile device is that it is tractable; those who opt-in will probably have a higher level of engagement and conversion because they are interested in these information. What can be better than reaching people that actually want to buy your stuff and tell them about what you could offer and where to get them! Being pessimistic a bit, I see the chances of people opting-out of push-in marketing information and thus result in less audience reachable by the marketers who might convert after their exposure to that information, but that is when the strategies and techniques of marketing are required. If a marketer is well-equipped and approaches the customer with a good strategy, be it electronic coupons, free samples, referral incentives, or any other form of creative communication, I believe there is still a lot of potential to be discovered in mobile marketing. |
The era of mobile marketing is coming, and its pace might be faster than any other form we have ever experienced. Be prepared marketers and future marketing professionals, be armed to the teeth with mobile ideas!
Reference: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/13774.html
http://www.naylornetwork.com/naf-nwl/articles/index-v2.asp?aid=169285&issueID=25409
http://www.zenmamawannabe.com/2011/01/location-location-location/