Mobile technology is advancing astoundingly fast and consumers have started depending on mobiles rather than meeting the advancements with skepticism. This consumer reaction may be met with enthusiasm by mobile companies, but it has put marketers in a very difficult position.
Mobile marketing offers so many potential ways of building a brand image and telling its story, but can the marketers keep up? Consumers are becoming more and more aware of the difference between generic marketing gimmicks and true, intent branding.
As more people amount to mobile users than desktop users, marketers not only have to struggle to provide better mobile experiences associated with their brands but also work out what is to come in the world of mobile marketing in the next decade or so. Branding Agency UAE has a few suggestions in this regard. Let’s take a look.
1. App-Based Interaction
The growing popularity of mobile apps is quite rational. It’s understandable that consumers prefer app-based interaction over web or phone/SMS interactions because apps are wholly focused on the brand in question and tell its complete story.
Mobile apps have already begun seeing a rise. This trend is highly likely to become a requirement for brands and businesses. Mobile apps meet consumer needs with a consistent functionality as compared to mobile websites which may face connection or responsiveness issues.
However, marketers will take a different approach towards mobile apps in the coming years. Instead of just creating a promotional platform for the brand, they will combine the most engaging aspects of a brand with functionality and aesthetics while designing apps.
2. Engagement Centered Marketing
As already evident, user engagement is key. Smartphone users are exposed to an ocean of promotional and informational content by thousands of brands every day. Most of this content gets ignored altogether, some of it gets noticed, and very little of it is actually retained and remembered by the users.
The excess of content has reduced consumers’ attention span. As a counter, marketers nowadays have resorted to the technique of interrupting consumer attention and capturing it in the first five seconds.
However, this trend will have to change in the coming decade. Rather than interrupting and exciting consumers with bells and whistles, marketers will work on content centered at engagement and trust. Focus will shift on retaining customers and their interests rather than mindlessly getting clicks and views.
3. Interactive Videos
Videos per se are considered interactive marketing nowadays. The coming decade will see an increase in consumer interactivity in promotional videos, too. A glimpse of such videos was seen in Nissan’s ad for the 2014 Rogue. Users could tap on various ‘hotspots’ in the ad and know more about the new car as the video played. 360-degree video that is designed specifically for mobile marketing has also played a pioneering role for interactive videos.
In the coming decade, marketers will be exploring and experimenting with the various possibilities of interactive videos and working on providing consumers fully immersive brand experiences. Videos that go to the extents of personal story telling are definitely in line for mobile marketing.
4. Location Specific Advertisement
Solely, mobile marketing gave rise to location specific advertising. But with the wave of advancements in smartphones, GPS systems, and location based social media apps, location specific advertisement will touch new epitomes in the coming decade.
Someone strolling along a pavement with a Starbucks in hand will be instantly sent an advertisement for a donut shop nearby. Even better, they would be sent a coupon to a special deal as an encouragement to go have the donut.
By checking into locations with social media apps, users are not only giving off information about where they are but also about where they go more often. Using this information, marketers can reach an altogether new level of targeting and retargeting of mobile users.
5. Waerables and the Internet of Things
The coming decade will see a steep rise in the trend of syncing wearables with mobile devices. These wearables will then in turn carry out various tasks for people, such as monitoring heart rate during a jog. Advertisements and alerts to one such consumer about, say, a waiver on health insurance schemes are what the next decade has in store for mobile and wearables marketing. This is only a basic example of the turn mobile marketing is about to take with ideologies like the Internet of Things lurking about us.
By hook or by crook, marketers will find a way around whatever mobile marketing throws at them in the next decade. But if you let lose the principles of quality content, user engagement, and audience retention, there’s little hope for you and your brand. The future is bright for digital marketers and web design company as long as they don’t forget they are eventually dealing with humans, not tech.
