Five months into 2014 and so much has changed. It seems like 2014 has begun a tipping year for brands and agencies to finally seriously start thinking about mobile in their marketing strategy. It’s a totally new media channel that requires simplification, engagement, and quick response. Companies like Facebook and Yahoo, once completely thought of as a desktop brands, are now calling themselves and positioning as mobile first brands.
Here are the 4 biggest mobile marketing trends for 2014:
1) Big Data Grows Up: I think we’re all a bit sick of the term ‘big data’, but it’s been coined that way for a reason over the past few years. Mobile opens up a world of data that no other channel can provide, with access to a user’s on-the-go lifestyle, consumption habits, social, transactions and is the fabric to connecting to the world around us – it truly tells marketers who their consumer is.
2) Mobile Ads stand on its own two legs: Mobile in general has been the little child of desktop in terms of creativity since its inception. This heavily started to change and take shape in 2013, with social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter leading the way. The data normally speaks for itself, and although standard baby banners show some results – new ad units are trumping the results in terms of quality consumers being acquired or engaging with brands. The rage is all about native units in 2014, which allows brands to simply embed their message into a publisher’s site / app and match the look and feel of the publisher, without being intrusive.
3) Value of Sponsorships: Some of the smartest brands out there are going beyond just the simple idea of running banner ads and looking at sponsoring apps with large reach / frequency (don’t hear that enough in mobile, eh?). A perfect example of this is taking over and immersing your brand in a sports app. Just think about the amount of time this demographic opens the app just in one day. They’re opening the app because they literally see it as a piece of their life, and by placing your brand messaging in a non-intrusive way – you are now forming a new rich connection that is much more valuable than a standard desktop sponsorship. This is due to the intimacy and brand affiliation with the apps you’re sponsoring.
4) Quality over Quantity: With over 1 million apps in the iOS App Store and in Google play, the shift from pure number of downloads to quality is changing every day. On iOS, the number of downloads directly effects your ranking. With the number of apps rapidly increasing, the costs to get to a specific rank is beginning to not benefit advertisers like it did in the past. In 2014, the shift to driving quality engaged users, and maintaining them will continue to grow. Brands should stop looking at a simple ‘cost per install’ or ‘cost per download’ and go beyond to measure in-app events from user registrations, purchases, social sharing and more. As mentioned above, with a trend towards mobile and social increasing, so should your strategy on how to achieve that.
2014 is an exciting year for the mobile landscape. Things are really starting to take shape for both marketers to continue to increase the ROI in mobile, and for consumers to finally get the experiences they’ve been asking for. If you’re not getting this education / testing from your agencies or partners, it’s time to make sure you get ahead of the curve before it’s too late. Finally, trust Windy City Strategies to put you ahead in the game.