Mobile and web based marketing is now one of the largest advertising areas in the world, and if you’re not part of it, you’re going to have a bad time in promoting your business. Don’t believe us? Businesses that have a mobile app can see up to 26% more business come their way, even if they are not a major chain or well known brand, and Google, well, do you think they became one of the biggest tech companies in the world by having a colourful logo?
But the world of mobile and web marketing is a tricky and labyrinthian place, full of potholes and paths that seem like good ideas but are in fact not. So how to go about it? Well, first we’re going to take a short look at what NOT to do.
First off it’s important to realise that the techniques of old that relied on brand led advertising have lost much of their power.
This graph from Forrester (click the image to expand) shows pretty clearly the way consumers are moving in the advertising world. Brand led, push style advertising is almost universally distrusted, and especially by European customers.
Instead there has been a fairly dramatic shift into the zone of “self regulated” advertising, where consumers no longer just engage with whichever company has the coolest ads. Consumers these days have multiple, internet connected devices and are picking and choosing which advertising they wish to listen to and which they don’t.
So how do you target consumers?
Well it’s no longer a game of telling them to come to you, but to instead put the word out that you and your brand are the best out there and then let them come to you. Content marketing is the new king of the hill in terms of active advertising. So getting good reviews or even mentions on popular, trusted websites like TechCrunch, Mashable, Forbes etc is going to be much more effective than having obnoxious pop-up ads online or pushing your brand through your app.
The most effective way to market via mobile or web though, is to do something that will get people talking about and engaged in your brand.
A good example would be Lynx (UK) or Axe (Everywhere else) Uruguay and their mobile campaign to promote their newest fragrance. They placed pictures in magazines of beautiful models but with all the “assets” blocked out in by white boxes. If customers wanted to complete the picture they would have to text “Axe” to a certain number listed on the printed ad and then they would be sent the completed picture to their phones.
Aside from being a clever way to get customers to engage directly with the brand, the marketers at Axe clearly understood that such a campaign would be talked about amongst friends and would spread awareness of the new fragrance organically as people became curious about completing the adverts’ pictures.
The best kind of marketing is where the user chooses to become involved in it, and if you’re setting out on the path of mobile advertising, and especially through your own app, you need to think carefully about what strategy you’re going to use.
You also need to think about how your app is being supported once its out in the world. If it needs to access databases of any kind, where are they going to be stored, how are you going to manage them?
