Mobile Marketing: Facts & Figures

From mobile commerce and text messaging campaigns to location-based services and augmented reality, mobile marketing is, without a doubt, essential to an integrated communications campaign. Tech-savvy consumers have adopted mobile communication and use it as a preferred method of communicating. As more and more people use mobiles on a daily basis, businesses have to adapt to mobile commerce with various platforms, strategies and marketing ideas. The insightful infographic below by Microsoft Tag displays the breadth of the mobile market today.

The Underwater Iceberg of Location-Based Mobile Services

Last time I have mentioned about the concept of location and geo-fence as one of the expected trends in mobile marketing this year. It becomes hotter with more competitors, including established services, emerging businesses and big online companies. All of them are joining the geo-location battle.

Currently there are two most popular location-based mobile apps, Foursquare and Gowalla, working as both a social network and a game, built on GPS function and user-generated contents. Basically, they two all allow users to share their location with friends. So, when you walk into a bar or restaurant or mall, you probably "check-in" on your cell phone, and your friends will see where you are. You get rewarded for frequent check-in activities. That’s quite simple!

Just in case you really still have no idea about what they are, or for further information, here are the summaries of FourSquare and Gowalla on CrunchBase

What are their differences?



Here is a brief comparison done by Mashable:

What do users get? 

• Connecting with friends, knowing where they were and getting tips from other people for each location

• The fun of earning badges and various perks from the places where they check in.

• Accessibily to your check-in history, giving you a snapshot of “What, Where, When, Who”

Let’s talk business!

The clever part here is that you get points for checking-in. But the really cleverer part is more about business. These geo-social networks are certainly capturing marketers’ attention. Through smartphones that signal someone’s location, stores and brands like Starbucks, Tasti-D-Lite, Macy’s and Pepsi are getting live information about when and where people are shopping. Some companies are turning Foursquare or Gowalla into a virtual loyalty-card program, while others are creating their own location applications, customers discounts or other rewards for shopping.

So basically, Foursquare and Gowalla are rolling out free analytics programs that will give participating businesses detailed information on who is checking-in to their locations, and give them the ability to communicate with the visitors. That’s what set these services apart.

The risky side

While some may find interested in sharing their location, the concept of automatic geo-location a little hard to accept, especially in terms of privacy concerns, Are people ready to share their personal locative information? Probaly. Or not really.

A recent poll on some reasons more people aren’t using check-in services revealed privacy and security concerns as a number-one reason.

The future

• Giants get into the game with motivation of the true value which comes from targeted advertising based on locality. The only question for these businesses to answer now is whether or not location-based rewards are the killer feature or if location can stand alone.

1. Facebook has been actively testing multiple location products and considering various implementations of some form of location feature.


2. Twitter has announced their official plans for location. “Twitter Places”, the product enables users to “tag Tweets with specific places Additionally, the product integrates with Foursquare and Gowalla. However, Twitter isn’t implementing a badges service right now. 

• Database of consumer behaviors and lifestyle can be built from location-based services. For instance, insurance companies can start tracking this data to have a more accurate way of determining risk and rates.

• Companies and retailers will have more creative approaches, incentives and campaigns to encourage consumers using these check-in services.

The Latest Hits in Mobile Marketing

The mobile market is exploding. Cell phone penetration has been surpassing cable TVs and home PCs in many countries. Mobile marketing expenditures are expected to exceed $2 billion in 2010. Thirty-eight percent of youth already claim that mobile is more important to them than their wallet! Click-through rates on mobile ads are even higher than online. Mobile advertising is beginning to show a track record of results, both on click-through and in leading to purchase.

So marketers surely see the potential of mobile marketing. But what are the latest hits and take-aways for them to get on the current market? Here come four highlighted trends to think of

1. Smartphone market's growth

Smartphone ownership increased to 17% of mobile users in 2009, according to Comscore. Smartphone penetration is estimated to reach 50% of the market by the middle of 2011

• Smartphones change mobile users behaviours, leading to more entertaining usage (music, games) and mobile web activities (internet, email). As a result, mobile web will reach more people and mobile sites will be significantly invested in the upcoming years. 


• Smartphone owners continue to be predominantly male, most likely between the ages of 25 and 34


• Mobile platforms for smartphones are enhanced with social media apps, such as Twitter and Facebook, which just announced a 54% increase in mobile use in the past six months. 

2. Change in SMS campaign tactics

There is a lot of potential with SMS campaigns and a number of companies have shown real success with them. 

• Previous SMS campaigns shown that the key to success is to integrate the SMS campaign into the rest of the marketing campaign; highlight the shortcode across other forms of advertising. SMS is highly measurable, so the results should be tracked and campaigns should be modified over time


• SMS campaigns are now built not simply based on one-way messaging but consumer-created content and active participation. 


• CRM databases tend to be linked into mobile marketing. Retailers can apply this into their SMS campaigns.


• Mobile coupons through SMS become popular

3. Increasing mobile apps

Mobile apps differ from standard WAP banner ads, location-based text ads and mobile video by engaging consumers and immersing them into a branded environment in which users will be more receptive to brand messages in a far more interactive and viral platform. Mobile app downloads across all handsets are estimated to climb from over 7 billion downloads in 2009 to almost 50 billion in 2012. Advertising contributed almost 12% of the overall apps revenue in 2009 and is expected to more than double to over 28%. Games are most downloaded apps, coming next Entertainment and Social Networking

• Supply will exceed demand in mobile apps. Discovery of apps is now an issue with the massive increasing number of apps. Launching a new app becomes a challenge and requires more innovations and investment. Apps markets are evolving differently worldwide, indicating a need for creating different apps business models instead of a "one size fits all" approach.


• The battle of the app stores becomes more intense. In 2009 the number of app stores leapt from 8 to 38 and is expected to further increase in 2010. It signifies a battle for survival of the fittest among app stores worldwide, with app revenue and growth opportunities growing significantly.


• Apple still dominates the app market. Though Blackberry has a huge number of handsets,  low awareness of the app store and complicated app installation are a pain for them. 


• Most of the current mobile marketing campaigns request a mobile app development.

4. Geographic and behavioral targeting

Targeting people based on location and using behaviours is the biggest opportunity for marketers in mobile. Location and behaviour data will begin to be mined as a rich new source of insights that marketers can harness to improve the effectiveness of their efforts. By knowing the location of the phone, SMS campaigns can be directly targeted. 

• Foursquare, a geo-social network, allowing people to share location with friend, is capturing marketer’s attention. 


• Geo-fence, a virtual field around any location that is used to trigger a mobile marketing message to a user when they enter or exit the area, is forecasted to become part of marketers' vocabulary.


• Retailers and businesses are offering coupons, promotions and sales for consumers checking in through location-triggered application on their mobile phones.


• The evolution of search is also moving to mobile platforms with more emphasis on the local and social, as well as behavioral targeting. Mobile search will continue to grow in 2010 and beyond. More localization and businesses will be expected to relate to mobile search. 

All in all, three key drivers of mobile marketing in 2010 and perhaps in upcoming years have been predicted as Location, Relevancy and Immediacy. Advertisers will be increasingly drawn to mobile's unique opportunity to reach and engage consumers with immediate and location-specific content at the most relevant content to different consumer groups. And privacy is another critical issue for advertisers to consider in order to protect personal identification information.