What is mobile marketing?

Mobile marketing is any promotional activity that takes place on smartphones and other handheld devices such as tablets. Mobile marketing aims to reach an audience of mobile device users through methods such as push notifications, marketing emails, and advertisements.

Mobile marketing and mobile advertising are similar but differ in their scope and approach. Mobile marketing is a broader term that encompasses various strategies and techniques to engage with and market to mobile device users.

It involves not only advertising but also other elements such as app store optimization (ASO), push notifications, in-app messaging, personalization, and user retention tactics. Mobile marketing focuses on building relationships with users, delivering personalized experiences, and maximizing user engagement.

On the other hand, mobile advertising specifically refers to the practice of displaying ads on mobile devices to promote products, services, or brands (in this context, mobile apps). It primarily focuses on improving brand awareness and/or driving conversions through targeted advertising campaigns, programmatic media buying, bidding processes, and optimizing key performance indicators (KPIs) like cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-action (CPA).

While mobile advertising is a component of mobile marketing, mobile marketing encompasses a broader range of strategies beyond just advertising to foster comprehensive mobile user experiences and long-term user relationships.

With millions of apps available in app stores, mobile marketing is a necessity to attract and retain app users. Mobile marketing campaigns help mobile apps showcase their unique features and benefits, communicate with users in real-time, and provide personalized experiences that enhance user satisfaction.

There are many benefits of mobile marketing, including

1. Increased visibility and awareness: Mobile marketing enables you to increase the visibility of your mobile app among your target audience. Through various marketing channels, such as ASO, mobile ads, social media promotion, and influencer partnerships, you can drive more app downloads and attract users to discover and install your app.
2. User acquisition and retention: A good mobile marketing strategy can help you acquire new app users and retain existing ones. By leveraging targeted advertising campaigns, referral programs, and personalized messaging, you can attract new users while engaging and retaining your current user base and minimizing churn.
3. Engagement and conversion: By sending timely and relevant messages, app updates, promotions, and personalized recommendations, mobile marketing encourages users to interact with the app more frequently and for longer durations. This increased engagement fosters a deeper connection between users and the app, leading to higher user retention and loyalty. Additionally, mobile marketing tactics like optimized user experiences, streamlined checkout processes, and mobile payment solutions contribute to smoother and more convenient app usage, resulting in improved conversion rates.

By leveraging the power of mobile marketing, mobile apps can maximize their reach, increase app downloads, drive user engagement, and ultimately achieve long-term success in the highly competitive app market.

Mobile marketing strategies vary across a wide range of platforms, from social media to mobile-optimized websites and mobile apps, all offering unique marketing and advertising options, such as:

In-app marketing: Ads, sponsored content, or in-app messages which leverage the captive audience and engaged user base within an app.

Social media marketing: Organic social media marketing involves regularly creating and sharing valuable and relevant content such as posts, images, videos, and stories, to connect with followers and build a community. Organic social media marketing focuses on fostering genuine relationships, encouraging user-generated content (UGC), and leveraging the power of word-of-mouth marketing.

Paid social media marketing refers to the placement of ads on social media platforms to promote a brand, reach a targeted audience, and achieve specific marketing goals. It involves customizable ad formats, call-to-action buttons, and analytics for performance tracking.

Location-based marketing: Communications (notifications or ads) that appear on mobile devices based on a user’s location relative to a specific area. There are several types of location-based marketing, including proximity marketing, which utilizes technologies like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or near-field communication (NFC) to detect and engage with users who are in close proximity to a physical location, and geofencing, which sets virtual boundaries or perimeters around specific locations using GPS or cellular data.

Search engine marketing: Organic search marketing focuses on optimizing a website's content, structure, and relevance to improve its visibility and rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs) organically.

Paid search marketing, also known as pay-per-click or PPC marketing, involves advertisers bidding on specific keywords to display their ads prominently in search engine results for those words.

SMS marketing: Texting a user’s phone number with specific offers or notifications of upcoming deals. SMS marketing can also be location-based. WhatsApp marketing functions in the same manner but relies on the use of WhatsApp’s application rather than SMS.

Display ads: Graphical advertisements that appear on websites or apps. They typically consist of images, text, and sometimes interactive elements when using rich media formats.

QR code marketing: Quick response (QR) codes are scannable barcodes that can be scanned by a smartphone to bring users to websites, landing pages, product pages, or digital content, allowing businesses to engage with their audience and track engagement metrics. See how QR codes are being used on connected TV!

Push notification marketing: Real-time messages sent directly to users' devices, even when they are not actively using the app.

Email marketing: Messages to a group of subscribed users via email designed to update and engage subscribers, nurture leads, boost brand loyalty, and drive business growth.

To market an app, a mobile marketer will follow these steps:

1. Complete mobile market research to gather valuable insights and data about mobile consumer behavior, target audience preferences, and competitor activity.
2. Examine current mobile marketing trends such as augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI), and user-generated content.
3. Develop a mobile marketing strategy inclusive of several types of mobile marketing to achieve outlined objectives.
4. Test and run mobile campaigns using chosen mobile marketing techniques and reliable attribution for robust analytics.

From accurate analytics to best-in-class mobile attribution, Adjust helps track performance, enabling you to identify what works in your mobile marketing strategy, and what can be improved.

Adjust’s comprehensive suite of analytics tools make it easy to accurately measure your mobile marketing via extremely powerful features including our Audience Builder, Pulse for smart alerts, iOS Solutions, and more. Set up a demo today, or learn more about Adjust’s full suite of products built for mobile marketers.