Partner Article

How to take advantage of mobile advertising

Digital marketing spend continues to increase. Recent statistics from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) revealed that UK mobile ad spend grew by 148% in 2012 to £526 million, writes Dr KF Lai, CEO, BuzzCity.

This growth curve is not surprising considering the number of mobile subscribers worldwide is expected to pass seven billion early in 2014, meaning that mobiles will soon outnumber people!

Therefore mobile presents all types of businesses with the opportunities to reach a mass-market audience.

However, before you start coming up with a mobile marketing strategy the first step is to not make assumptions and - ask yourself who is our mobile consumer? Our User Survey found that young men remain early adopters and their presence overshadows the increase of women using the internet.

Possibly unsurprisingly the 20-24 age group remains the largest user group. And it is not just the person at the other end of the phone that you need to consider. Awareness of other factors such as what device the user is on, is also useful so that the campaign can be further optimised – for instance in the UK 25% use Apple devices.

Another element to pay attention to is the context of mobile as opposed to print and broadcast.

Users are in a variety of modes when using mobile devices, such as waiting (time-wasting / browsing), commuting (seeking entertainment and diversion), communicating (chatting or interacting with social media), or they are looking for something (maps, reference, phone numbers, contact details, etc). Therefore it is important that you design your ads accordingly.

Compared to other media such as TV, online or print which has more space for creativity, mobile ads need to be condensed with a punchy, concise call to action (‘FREE Games’ or ‘90% discount on Tees, click here’) with a barrage of colours and imagery on a small banner in order to grab attention from mobile users.

It’s also important to consider adapting your campaign for different channels, for example a mobile website has the potential to be developed in to an app where as an app cannot become a mobile website. Similarly don’t replicate your website as remember your users are busy and will need the information to be easily accessible.

Whilst we have seen some great campaigns from the likes of Domino’s and John Lewis, you don’t need to be a big name brand with a big budget to use mobile as part of your marketing strategy. A mobile campaign gives you the capability to control your daily budget just as you would a print or online campaign, which can be as low as $5 per day. You set the price that you’re willing to pay per click. You pay only for the clicks your campaign receives.

The biggest difficulty for many is the lack of education and awareness as to just how beneficial mobile advertising can be. So if you are on the lookout to create your first campaign a great place to start is by reviewing examples on sites such as the Mobile Marketing Association, the IAB as well as our campaign planner tool. With mobile ad revenues across Western Europe expected grow to £4.3bn by 2015, surely it is an opportunity not to be missed!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by BuzzCity .