To many people, the term mobile marketing is often thought of as simply some form of advertisement sent to a mobile phone from a company or advertising service. At one point, this definition might have been correct, but mobile marketing has moved far beyond the simple act of delivering an advertisement to a mobile phone. In fact, the term mobile marketing can now be considered something of an umbrella term to cover all the aspects of delivering or receiving information with their target audience through a mobile device. The Mobile Marketing Association has recently updated their definition of mobile marketing to show this change.
Their definition states: “Mobile Marketing is a set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network.” Increasingly, mobile marketers are shifting from pushing content to the consumer to a new model which is more interactive and engages with the consumer in an interesting or meaningful way.
There are many advertising methods which fall under the category of mobile marketing:
* Mobile Web Marketing
* Location Based Services
* SMS (short message service)
* MMS (multimedia message service)
* In-Game Marketing
What Other Types Of Advertisements And Mobile Marketing Definitions Do You Need To Know To Succeed?
Mobile web marketing consists of serving advertisements on websites specifically designed for mobile devices. This is a very common form of mobile advertisements and has been steadily growing. Many people access the internet through their smartphones and these phones do not usually have a full-scale browser to view the webpages. In order to accommodate this, the owners of the websites create customized versions of their webpages which are specifically suited to being viewed in the browsers of mobile phones. Since these pages are not the same as the regular webpages, new advertisements are provided for them. Advertising on these mobile web pages ensures that the ads are viewed by those using mobile devices. Usually, if clicked, these ads will take the viewer to the mobile optimised page of the advertiser. Companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are among the largest companies selling advertising space on their mobile content pages, specifically on their search pages.
A location-based service is one that allows an advertiser to send advertisements or other information to a mobile device based on its physical location. Location based services are offered by cell phone networks which are able to track the general location of a mobile phone user through the process of triangulation. If the mobile phone user has their GPS system turned on, that will also serve to identify their location in a much more specific way. Once the network is able to find out where the user is, the advertiser can send out an ad-based on that location. For example, if someone is walking down a street with a Starbucks on the corner, the location-based service can recognize that the person is near a Starbucks and send them an advertisement for the store. A more passive version of this is to locate a physical base station in a specific location. When someone comes into the vicinity that has authorized the network to send them messages, the base station can send location specific information or advertisements to their mobile device.
SMS marketing are advertisements served through text messages. This is a very common form of mobile marketing and one that can work in both directions. Advertisers can send messages to a network of mobile users all at once, while mobile users can send text messages back to the advertiser’s short code. The short code is the 5 or 6 digit number than many advertisers use in their SMS communications. One common example is after the earthquake struck Haiti, people were encouraged to text a message to 90999. That five digit number is the short code for the American Red Cross. The short code numbers are valid for all mobile carriers in a specific nation. They tend to be expensive so generally they are used by larger businesses.
MMS marketing is similar to SMS marketing but allows for more than simple text messages. Users can send pictures, video, or audio as well as texts to the company running the campaign. In some instances this can be used in real-time, such as Motorola joining with the House of Blues to provide real-time photos of concerts on a screen next to the stage.
In-game marketing are increasingly common with the rise in popularity of online games. One of the more common uses for in-game marketing are to provide relevant advertisements to a target population. For example, car companies often place in-game advertisements as banners in car racing games to advertise their brand or a specific car. This looks like it is part of the game, but the placement has been paid for. Another form for marketing is sponsorships of events or statistics. For example, Old Spice sponsors a statistic in the football game Madden 11 called Swagger. This coincided with the release of their new deodorant, also called Swagger.
As shown by the Mobile Marketing Association’s definition, mobile marketing covers a wide spectrum of activities. When mobile technology shifts and grows, the definition of mobile marketing has to grow along with it.
