A Beginner's Guide to Mobile Marketing

Karen Mishra, Molly Garris

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781606498415
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Advertising
• Index: Business

This book is for marketers (from newbies to CMO level) who want to learn why and how to use mobile marketing to engage and convert consumers. A Beginner's Guide to Mobile Marketing will teach you about the exploding opportunities that mobile marketing offers and why it is so important to embrace it in your integrated marketing strategy. Cell phones are no longer just for calling people. Based on the latest trends in consumer behavior on mobiles, the authors introduce ways that marketers can use smartphone popularity to reach people with tactics like mobile apps, mobile web, social media, mobile advertising and more. Exercises are included to ensure that the reader understands the material as well as how to apply it in the real world.

CHAPTER 1

Past, Present, and Future Opportunities for Mobile Marketing

For years, the running joke for mobile marketing practitioners was that every year a company or an influencer would name that year as the Year of Mobile. The year 2005 was the Year of Mobile, although in retrospect, it was the year American mobile penetration went through the roof. The year 2006 was the Year of Mobile, or more like the year that mobile data was more commonly consumed by the casual mobile phone user. Although there are certainly key milestones, it is undeniable that the last decade or so has seen immense change and development in the mobile space every single year, often even monthly.

The four key reasons for the growth and adoption of mobile include the following: (1) smarter devices, (2) smarter software, (3) faster connections, and (4) approachable pricing models. When these components align, we will see even more growth. This means that mobile marketers must be prepared with mobile strategies for those customers. See Figure 1.1 for growth in smartphone adoption.

Phone Envy

According to the Mobile Marketing Association, 48 percent of Americans never turn off their phones, and 64 percent sleep with their mobile device at their bedside.¹ Sound familiar? Could this have all started when we saw Paris Hilton and her custom jeweled SIDEKICK on the red carpet. Or President Obama exchanging e-mails on his Blackberry?

Over the years, cell phones may have changed form factors, keyboards, colors, antennas, but we always remember our first phone. One of the most important advancements though was the introduction of touchscreen inputs. Technically, the Nokia Prada was the first touchscreen phone but the launch of the iPhone, in 2007, is what truly turned heads. Not only was the screen larger in size and sharper in resolution, its responsiveness to capacitive touch was simply a showstopper. This game-changing advancement now has today’s toddlers swiping television screens and tapping on laptops. Phone envy of computer hardware manufacturers has even lead to touchscreen PCs.

Figure 1.1 Rise of U.S. smartphone subscribers: October 2011–April 2014 (all dates reflect three-month average ending that month)

Source: Retrieved from marketingcharts.com²

We are growing accustomed to using our phones for many uses, including using them as phones, alarms, gaming systems, and even movie screens. The next evolution will allow us to use our phones to interact with the rest of the world. Some phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S4, can already sniff pressure, temperature, and humidity from our environment. Their latest phone, the Galaxy S5, also packs in a heart rate monitor. Although smartphone technology is reaching its limits, the next advances will come in how our phones interact with the world and other devices around us.³ That could mean using our smartphone to control our television, unlock our front door, or disarm our security system. And although most of these features are already in place, we will see more automation occurring because many of these activities can be triggered based on behavioral data. Speaking of data, big data has gotten even bigger thanks to mobile. Data are constantly transmitting from our (hand-held and wearable) devices, collecting insights about what we are doing, where we are at and who we are with, among other data points. This presents huge opportunities for marketers to organize these outputs into usable services.

OS Wars and App Stores

While Blackberry, Samsung, and Motorola were releasing more fashionably designed handsets, other companies focused on building operating systems (OS), which would soon power phones in unheard of ways. Most feature phones, the ones that allowed you to talk, text, and sometimes browse, were leveraging the Symbian operating system, which did not offer much customization. Consumers were reliant on the apps that came preloaded on their phone, often at the carrier’s discretion.

However, when iOS, Apple’s operating system was first released, this was revolutionary in the sense that the software could be opened to the development community to customize it and release what we now know as apps. Developers could download the iOS software development kit (SDK) and build apps that would reside on the phone, providing the ability to use features and functions of the phone to make a smooth, streamlined user experience. For example, the DoodleJump app leverages the phone’s accelerometer, allowing a player to tilt the phone from left to right in order to navigate—no buttons or touching required.

Figure 1.2 Top smartphone platforms

Source: Retrieved from comScore⁴

With the iOS release, consumers were no longer just caught up with the latest handset but they also wanted the latest apps. Apple’s iOS was the first to offer downloadable apps but by no means is it the market leader today. Overall, U.S. smartphone penetration is just under 70 percent, according to comScore. Of that, 52.5 percent use Google Android’s operating system, 41.4 percent use Apple’s iOS, with Blackberry, Microsoft, and Symbian sharing the small remainder.⁵

Apple’s iOS came out front early, and crafted to work exclusively with Apple hardware—iPhones, iPods, and later, iPads. Additionally, iOS was launched by only one mobile carrier in the United States, Cingular, which is now AT&T. This collaboration earned Cingular exclusive rights to market the phone, earning them lots of new subscribers. The high price tag was not easy for consumers. Not only was the iPhone expensive but also this was many people’s first monthly data plan to budget for. Apple fans, gadget lovers, and higher income households found themselves in an exclusive circle.

Google’s Android operating system, on the other hand, was released across many handset manufacturers and multiple carriers, opening up smartphone ownership for a larger population that may not want to switch carriers or adopt costly Apple devices. It did not happen overnight but once developers saw a value in publishing apps to both the iTunes and Android Marketplace, Blackberry and feature phone owners began to get their Angry Birds on with new touchscreen devices.

Today, iOS users and iPhone sales continue to grow steadily, while Blackberry users and sales have experienced the most decline after they failed to innovate beyond being a corporate e-mail device. More financially accessible Android holds the majority stake and is known to be more of an open platform, allowing any developer to release an app on Android Marketplace, without the approval process required from Apple. Many developers and gamers prefer the control and openness that the Android platform has offered and continue to show affinity to devices using the OS.

2G or Wi-Fi?

Early Internet connections from mobile phones simply crawled. Carriers raced to build the infrastructure required to stream video and download document on these small, trending screens. 2G was upgraded to 3G, and later to 4G. Or is it? Consumers have such demand for 4G that many networks are marketing their LTE technology (which is not quite 4G speed) to their impatient audiences as 4G.

Call it what you want but phone addicts want the quickest connection possible and are willing to pay for it. According to Kirk Parsons, senior director of wireless services at J.D. Power, there is a financial impact in providing a high-performing network, as spending increases by an average of $17 per customer among those who have switched from a previous carrier to obtain a better network coverage, compared with those who switch for other reasons.⁶

Trained by connecting laptops to Wi-Fi, smartphone owners quickly realized that the fastest data connection (and cheapest!) is using a phone’s Wi-Fi capability. Strong enough to power a laptop, connecting to a Wi-Fi network is just like plugging a high-speed Internet connection into your phone. And for those who do not have an unlimited data plan, the ease of browsing, sharing, and playing without the fear of cost, is a huge enabler.

Unlimited Everything

Speaking of unlimited data plans, carriers continue to carry the economic burden of building out mobile data infrastructure. To fund these ever-expanding networks, customers have experienced various business models to balance innovation at the lowest possible costs.

In the United States, most smartphone owners are postpay subscribers, paying a monthly bill based on a predetermined amount of data bytes. Another pricing option is buying data upfront, or prepaid. This is attractive to people with low credit scores, such as students, and help prevent costly overages. To accommodate families, shared data plans have been introduced, allowing a group o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Halftitle
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Abstract
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Past, Present, and Future Opportunities for Mobile Marketing
• Chapter 2 Calling and Messaging
• Chapter 3 Search and Web
• Chapter 4 Mobile Applications (Apps)
• Chapter 5 Social Media Networks
• Chapter 6 Mobile Advertising
• Chapter 7 Accessing Content
• Chapter 8 Mobile Marketing Strategy and Resources
• Key Terms
• Advance Quotes
• Notes
• References
• Key References
• Index
• Adpage
• Backcover