Mobile Marketing Trends of 2014

If you’re trying to increase your market presence, you might sometimes feel discouraged about what’s happening to advertising. Maybe you’re trying direct mail and email blasts, but nothing seems to be working. But just know this: things aren’t going to change back to a mainly print-based advertising environment. To get the most out of your marketing, you’re going to need to go mobile. You can go utilize mobile marketing services, but you’re going to need to get ahead of the curve if you’re going to want your marketing dollars to do the most good for you. Below are a few things to pay attention to in the upcoming year that will help stretch your investment further.

Increased personalization and customization

One of the biggest things to look forward to this year is an increase in message personalization. A lot of mobile marketing will offer a service that includes software that gives you this option. Essentially, what the software does is to figure out what a user has been looking for, and gives them advertising based on that. For example, if someone has searched for a specific author or book series, the software will find other items in the same vein as the search, and begin incorporating them into the message. Or, if someone is looking up a recipe for lasagna, the software might provide special marketing or coupons for ingredients. All this will focus your marketing efforts and bring you a better investment, because you’re advertising to the people who would want your products or services anyway.

Location-based marketing

Location-based marketing is also called “geo-targeting” because you’re focusing your efforts on people within a certain geographic location. If you run a small brick-and-mortar store in the center of a city, you’re probably not going to want to spend a lot of money marketing to people who live 100 miles away. Rather, you want to market yourself to people nearby, who are likely to visit. You can also develop an app or invest in a QR code and a website for people you’re targeting so you can easily get in contact with them.

Narrowcasting

Although this is tied up in the previous two aspects, narrow casting simply means casting a smaller net toward the people who are more likely to be interested. The conventional wisdom in the marketing world is akin to a “shotgun” or “spray and pray” approach. You put your content in as many high-visibility places, and hope the right person or persons happens upon it. It’s been a common paradigm for so long mainly because it works, but now that marketing is making it to peoples’ pockets, it’s not as effective anymore. Now, you can use services—like a combination of the previous two trends—to find out what kind of people are most likely to be interested in what you offer and market directly to them. You’re putting out a smaller presence, but the placement of that presence is going to be much more effective.

Gamification

This can be tricky. Essentially, the gamification of mobile ads means that you’re trying to tap into peoples’ innate desire to compete and collect things. For example, the Audible audiobook app lets listeners collect badges for various activities they do within the app, and this makes people likely to spend more time using the app, more likely to continue subscribing to the service, and more likely to see the ads third-party vendors pay to put onto the app.
Although you can develop a lot of these strategies yourself, it’s best to seek out help from a mobile marketing service in Orlando if you want these tactics to be the most effective. If you’ve fallen behind the curve with your mobile marketing in the past, there’s no time like the present to get back on track.