Mobile marketing is a multi-channel online marketing technique that focuses on reaching specific audiences through websites, e-mail, SMS and MMS, social media or mobile applications on their smartphones, feature phones, tablets or any other related device.

Mobile marketing can provide customers with time and location-sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods services, appointment reminders, and ideas. In a more theoretical manner, Spark Sphere and IT defines mobile marketing as “any marketing activity conducted through ubiquitous networks, to which consumers are constantly connected using a personal mobile device”.

Types of Mobile Marketing

SMS Marketing

SMS marketing has both inbound and outbound marketing strategies. Inbound marketing focuses on lead generation, and outbound marketing focuses on sending messages for sales, promotions, contests, donations, television program voting, appointment and event reminders.

There are 5 key components to SMS marketing:

Sender ID

A sender ID is a name or number that identifies who the sender is. For commercial purposes, virtual numbers, short codes, SIM hosting, and custom names are most commonly used and can be leased through bulk SMS providers.

• Shared Virtual Numbers
• Dedicated Virtual Numbers
• Short codes
• SIM hosting
• Custom Sender ID

Message Size

The message size will then determine the number of SMS messages that are sent, which then determines the amount of money spent on marketing a product or service. Not all characters in a message are the same size.

Content Structure

Special elements that can be placed inside a text message include:

• UTF-8 Characters: Send SMS in different languages, special characters, or emojis
• Keywords: Use keywords to trigger an automated response
• Links: Track campaigns easily by using shortened URLs to custom landing pages
• Interactive Elements: Pictures, animations, audio, or video

Texting is simple, however, when it comes to SMS marketing – there are many different content structures that can be implemented. Popular message types include sale alerts, reminders, keywords, and multimedia messaging services (MMS).

• SMS Sales Alerts
• SMS Transaction Alerts
• SMS Reminders
• SMS Keywords

Spam Compliance

Similar to email, SMS has anti-spam laws which differ from country to country. As a general rule, it’s important to obtain the recipient’s permission before sending any text message, especially an SMS marketing type of message. Permission can be obtained in a myriad of ways, including allowing prospects or customers to tick a permission checkbox on a website, filling in a form, or getting a verbal agreement.

In most countries, SMS senders need to identify themselves as their business name inside their initial text message. Identification can be placed in either the sender ID or within the message body copy. Spam prevention laws may also apply to SMS marketing messages, which must include a method to opt out of messages.

One key criterion for provisioning is that the consumer opts in to the service. The mobile operators demand a double opt-in from the consumer and the ability for the consumer to opt-out of the service at any time by sending the word STOP via SMS. These guidelines are established in the CTIA Playbook and the MMA Consumer Best Practices Guidelines which are followed by all mobile marketers in the United States. In Canada, opt-in became mandatory once the Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act came into force in 2014.

Message Delivery

Simply put, SMS infrastructure is made up of special servers that talk to each other, using software called Short Message Service Centre (SMSC) that use a special protocol called Short Message Peer to Peer (SMPP).

Through the SMPP connections, bulk SMS providers (also known as SMS Gateways) like the ones mentioned above can send text messages and process SMS replies and delivery receipts.

When a user sends messages through a bulk SMS provider, it gets delivered to the recipient’s carrier via an ON-NET connection or the International SS7 Network.

• SS7 Network
• ON-NET Routing
• Grey Routing
• Hybrid Routing
• SMS Service Providers.

MMS Marketing

Multimedia Message Service mobile marketing can contain a timed slideshow of images, text, audio and video. This mobile content is delivered via Multimedia Message Service. Nearly all new phones produced with a color screen are capable of sending and receiving standard MMS message. Brands are able to both send (mobile terminated) and receive (mobile originated) rich content through MMS A2P (application-to-person) mobile networks to mobile subscribers. In some networks, brands are also able to sponsor messages that are sent P2P (person-to-person).

A typical MMS message based on the GSM encoding can have up to 1500 characters, whereas one based on Unicode can have up to 500 characters. Messages that are longer than the limit are truncated and not concatenated like an SMS.

Good examples of mobile-originated MMS marketing campaigns are Spark Sphere Digital Marketer ongoing campaigns at Digital Marketer venues, where the brand allows the consumer to send their mobile photos to the LED board in real-time as well as blog their images online.

Push Notifications

Push notifications were first introduced to smartphones by Apple with the Push Notification Service in 2009.^[ For Android devices, Google developed Android Cloud to Messaging or C2DM in 2010. Google replaced this service with Google Cloud Messaging in 2013. Commonly referred to as GCM, Google Cloud Messaging served as C2DM’s successor, making improvements to authentication and delivery, new API endpoints and messaging parameters, and the removal of limitations on API send-rates and message sizes. It is a message that pops up on a mobile device. It is the delivery of information from a software application to a computing device without any request from the client or the user. They look like SMS notifications but they reach only the users who installed the app. The specifications vary for iOS and Android users. SMS and push notifications can be part of a well-developed inbound mobile marketing strategy.

According to mobile marketing company Leanplum, Android sees open rates nearly twice as high as those on iOS. Android sees open rates of 3.48 percent for push notification, versus iOS which has open rates of 1.77 percent.

App-Based Marketing

With the strong growth in the use of smartphones, app usage has also greatly increased. The annual number of mobile app downloads over the last few years has exponentially grown, with hundreds of billions of downloads in 2018, and the number of downloads expecting to climb by 2022. Therefore, mobile marketers have increasingly taken advantage of smartphone apps as a marketing resource. Marketers aim to optimize the visibility of an app in a store, which will maximize the number of downloads. This practice is called App Store Optimization (ASO).

There is a lot of competition in this field as well. However, just like other services, it is not easy anymore to rule the mobile application market. Most companies have acknowledged the potential of Mobile Apps to increase the interaction between a company and its target customers. With the fast progress and growth of the smartphone market, high-quality Mobile app development is essential to obtain a strong position in a mobile app store.

The term app marketing has not yet been defined in a unified scientific definition and is also used in various ways in practice. The term refers on the one hand to those activities that serve to generate app downloads and thus attract new users for a mobile app. In some cases, the term is also used to describe the promotional sending of push notifications and in-app messages.

Here are several models for App marketing.

1. Content embedded mode For the most part at present, the downloading APP from APP store is free, for APP development enterprise, need a way to flow to liquidate, implantable advertising and APP combines content marketing and game characters to seamlessly integrating user experience, so as to improve advertising hits. With these free downloading apps, developers use in-app purchases or subscription to profit.

2. Advertising model advertisement implantation mode is a common marketing mode in most APP applications. Through Banner ads, consumer announcements, or in-screen advertising, users will jump to the specified page and display the advertising content when users click. This model is more intuitive, and can attract users’ attention quickly.

3. User participation mode is mainly applied to website transplantation and brand APP. The company publishes its own brand APP to the APP store for users to download, so that users can intuitively understand the enterprise or product information better. As a practical tool, this APP brings great convenience to users’ life. User reference mode enables users to have a more intimate experience, so that users can understand the product, enhance the brand image of the enterprise, and seize the user’s heart.

4. The shopping website embedded mode is the traditional Internet electric business offering platforms in the mobile APP, which is convenient for users to browse commodity information anytime and anywhere, order to purchase and order tracking. This model has promoted the transformation of traditional e-commerce enterprises from shopping to mobile Internet channels, which is a necessary way to use mobile APP for online and offline interactive development, such as Amazon, eBay and so on. The above several patterns for the more popular marketing methods, as for the details while are not mentioned too much, but the hope can help you to APP marketing have a preliminary understanding, and on the road more walk more far in the marketing.

QR codes

Two-dimensional barcodes that are scanned with a mobile phone camera. They can take a user to the particular advertising webpage a QR code is attached to. QR codes are often used in mobile gamification when they appear as surprises during a mobile app game and directs users to the specific landing page. Such codes are also a bridge between physical medium and online via mobile: businesses print QR codes on promotional posters, brochures, postcards, and other physical advertising materials.

Mobile Websites

Mobile Search Ads

Audience Targetings

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

What is Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is using social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and increase website traffic. This includes publishing great content on your social media profiles, listening to and engaging with your followers, analyzing your results, and running social media ads.

The major social media platforms (at the moment) are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest,Tumbir,Reddit, Quora, YouTube, Threads,Whatsapp and Snapchat

There are also a range of social media management tools that help businesses to get the most out of the social media platforms listed above. For example, Buffer is a platform of social media management tools, which can help you achieve success with your social media marketing. Whether you want to build a brand or grow your business, we want to help you succeed.

A Quick Review Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing first started with publishing. Businesses were sharing their content on social media to generate traffic to their websites and, hopefully, sales. But social media has matured far beyond being just a place to broadcast content.

Nowadays, businesses use social media in a myriad of different ways. For example, a business that is concerned about what people are saying about its brand would monitor social media conversations and response to relevant. A business that wants to understand how it’s performing on social media would analyze its reach, engagement, and sales on social media with an analytics tool. A business that wants to reach a specific set of audience at scale would run highly-targeted social media ads.

The Five Pillar of Social Media Marketing

Strategy.

Think about what you want to post before rushing into publishing. Making content haphazardly and posting without a strategy will keep adding image and content on you page but not generate any traffic. Take a step back and imagine the big picture when you device a social media strategy. Map a mental picture of your goals. What are the main business objectives to achieve?

Business usually have I dedicated goal. For example, some want to increase brand awareness, while some want to make sales. Social media helps you to build communities with loyal customers who trust your brand.

Other platforms serve the same purpose differently than the most well-known social media platforms. Some other attractive channels for ads are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Reddit, Quora, YouTube, Threads, WhatsApp, Snapchat and messaging are becoming increasingly advertisement-oriented.

In the beginning, analyze the most visited platform for your target audience. For example, Pinterest, Tumbir has a wide audience base of women. Therefore, if your business caters to women, it’s best to target Pinterest or tumbir.

In the next step, determine the content type you want to share. Here, you may get help from some best content writing companies for content ideas. Design the social media posts depending on audience preferences. Put your thinking hat on and articulate what your audience wants. Think whether your campaign will include images, videos, or any links. Would you like to educate your audience or entertain them? Find out techniques to create more influential posts for your audience. You can build an influencer marketing persona which will make things easier for you. Design dynamic and scalable marketing campaigns for the everchanging digital landscape.

Planning and Publishing..

Small businesses thrive by merely being present on social media platforms for a longer duration of time. As per statistics, nearly 4 billion people are on social media platforms every day. Just by showing up on social media platforms, you get a high chance of being discovered by your customers.

Publishing a post on social media is no rocket science. Add a text description, image,template or video to get started. The posting is the least of your hassles. The major area where you should focus your attention is at creating wonderful posts that perfectly represent your brand. You must dedicate your time and energy to publishing content timely and spontaneously. Maintaining good timing and frequency is the key to generating a successful campaign.

You do not have to worry incessantly about posting every day. There are ample social media scheduling tools to publish your posts automatically. You can schedule your posts weeks in advance. You can keep a record of the published content too.

Create a social media calendar to ensure a more organized process. Provide all team members with access to the calendar for transparency.

Listening and Engagement..

People talk about brands in open forums. They discuss, comment, praise, express grievances, and even mock openly on social media platforms. Sometimes, they find the logo offensive or the service, dissatisfactory. People share experiences on social media for all events. It is your responsibility as a brand to address such comments in public. This way you will be able to preserve your image and improve customer satisfaction. Let them know you will solve their problems and listen to them. This step will enhance your customer relationship management.

You can keep a check on direct messages, tags and mentions to read what people are talking about your brand. You can manually check your notifications to know if there is a tag or mention, however, it is easy to miss out on these mentions. Using a listening and engagement tool will gather information on all social media mentions and messages. It will effectively monitor the posts that do not have a tag at all.

Analytics and Measurement..

Analyze social media campaign performance to determine if you’re on the right track. Our goal is to continuously increase traffic, sales or engagement – whatever your goal is.

As you move towards publishing or social media engagement, you should keep track of the performance of your marketing campaigns. Is your growth progressive or regressive compared to previous quarterly data? If you’re an e-commerce brand, are you being tagged or mentioned in positive or negative comments? This is the ratio of your brand’s hashtags to current hashtags from the previous month.

The social media analytics and tools record all the basic information regarding this which you can easily access on the applications. However, check social media analytics tools for a better understanding of inclusive data. A wide range of such analytics tools are available today such as Sprout Social, HubSpot, IZEA, BuzzSumo, Google Analytics, and Followerwonk, etc. these tools also enable users to compare their performances across several social media platforms.

Online Advertising..

Social media advertising is a lucrative field once your money grows. Presenting your ads to a broader target audience increases your chances of reaching a wider audience. Social media ads grow your followers very quickly. Social media algorithms are so specific that they can limit the appropriate audience for your brand. You segment audiences based on interests, behaviors, demographics, age, gender, and many other parameters.

There are 4 major types of social media advertising that you can incorporate into your marketing strategy:

Static image Ads..

You can add your product images or make a carousel ad of your services and post it on your social media accounts as ads. The main reason behind using images in advertisements is that people are usually more drawn towards visuals. Adding buttons such as “Shop Now” “Download Now” and “Install” prompts the viewer to take an action. To succeed with a static image ad, you must follow two tricks-

1. Make sure your images are of high quality.
2. Your ads follow suit with the rest of your content.

Video Ads..

Moving objects attract the human eye compared to static ones. Be it an aeroplane, a flying bird, or motion pictures. Videos are by far the best way to advertise your brand. Mostly video ads are small so the users are interested in the length of the video. Apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube give this unique opportunity to create short-form videos so that people can look at and interact spending only a few minutes.

Stories Ads..

Users can add both images and videos to create unique story ads. Several social media platforms allow this feat. These are full-screen ads that run for a different time duration based on the platform. On Facebook, you can run a picture ad for 6 seconds while for a video you can take up to 15 seconds. On Instagram, the advertisements can be as long as 120 seconds for both images and videos. A viewer can swipe up the ad to visit the brand’s website. These ads are available only for 24 hours. This is an excellent way to promote short-term deals and discounts on product lines or services.

Massenger Ads..

Messenger ads are the Facebook ads that are displayed in the Messenger tab of Facebook platforms. This enables a one-on-one conversation with the customers through messages. Customers can ask questions and directly visit websites through these automated messages.

Social media marketing is a smart, pocket-friendly, and sustainable service promotion practice. Devise your strategy based on the strong foundation of the five pillars – Good Strategy, Planning and thoughtful publishing, audience engagement, social media ads, and analyzing the performance of campaigns. Excel in business endeavors and achieve your marketing goals.