Mobile Marketing Campaigns – Give it a Try!
There is only one thing people everywhere have been doing – staring into their smart phones. This is exactly what you see, whether you are in an office, a restaurant, a shopping mall, a bus, a train or even a movie theatre.
Mobile marketing is the only way companies can reach their potential customers in order to promote their products and services. They will have to come up with strong mobile marketing campaigns that can provide them with lasting returns.
To come up with a mobile marketing campaign, you need to first figure out a way to engage with your potential customers through their smart phones. The best way to do this would be to create a mobile app. Nowadays, almost every business is coming up with its own mobile app. There are mobile wallet apps, grocery apps, banking apps and many more.
Mobile apps enable you to maintain connection with your customers seamlessly. You can interact with them whenever you want and send messages instantly and directly in a cost-effective way. There is no need for print newsletters or SMS messages. Once you have a mobile app for your business it becomes very easy to launch a mobile marketing campaign.
Here is an insight into some of the most successful mobile marketing campaigns from which you can learn a lesson or two:
IKEA decided to convert its catalogue into an interactive platform by creating a mobile app. The special features of this app made it possible for users to place IKEA products virtually into their spaces. Not only was this feature useful, it also offered a lot of fun for IKEA customers, making it seem more like a game. With 6.2 million downloads, the IKEA mobile campaign was a huge hit, with sales soaring up beyond expectations.
Recently Starbucks came with its mobile order and pay campaign that enabled its customers to place their orders and pay for them before visiting their favorite Starbucks Outlet. With about 7 million downloads, the app successfully reduced the waiting time at Starbucks restaurant, enabling more and more customers to enjoy the services in a hassle-free way.
Dominos came up with a pizza creation game kind of app that enabled users to virtually create wonderful pizzas of their choice. What’s more, they could then order the exact pizzas that they had created through the app. Not only did this campaign inspire more and more people to order pizza through the Dominos app, it also increased the sales by a Whopping 63%.
Inspired by the hit series, the Walking dead, where the show survivors manage to escape the undead with the help of the auto maker’s Tucson, Hyundai came up with its own app. The users had to choose from thousands of apocalyptic auto parts and make their own Hyundai car to slay the zombies. The critically engaging and highly shareable app increased the traffic to the website by 150%, in a period of three months from its launch.
The controversial “demonetization” plan launched by the Indian Government in November 2016 also gave rise to many such mobile app campaigns. One such campaign was “Lotza” introduced by the Federal Bank.
The main aim of Lotza was to enable cashless transactions at the point of sale or between friends. However, there was the challenge of educating the users about the value of the app. So the digital marketing team at Federal Bank decided to launch mobile marketing campaigns through this app. The first such campaign was the in-app cash back offer which aimed at driving the users up to the point of sale and then educating them about a certain new feature of the app.
The Nivea Sun Kids range app is another amazing example. With this app, Nivea went one step ahead and showed its customers how much it cares. First it came up with print ads in magazines that came with a removable “protect strip.” A parent had to place this strip, which resembled a wrist band, across her child’s arm, whenever she took him to the beach. The mobile app downloaded on the parent’s mobile would communicate with this band and alert the parent if the child happened to stray away.
The campaign was a major success because the customers felt cared for. Nivea attended to their pressing need by ensuring the safety of their kids.
There is one thing that is common among all these mobile marketing campaigns – all of them engage their users and make sure they feel happy about using the app. It creates no annoyance like an intrusive ad which interrupts their day. These apps aim at providing a useful service to their customers. In fact the efforts don’t even seem promotional in any way. This is the thing you need to keep in mind while coming up with a creative mobile app marketing campaign for your brand.
With the number of apps skyrocketing by the day, it is not easy for app marketers to make their mark or even survive in the market. While there might be some miraculous overnight successes now and then, having in place an effective app marketing plan becomes a must for every brand. Here are a few things you need to keep in mind while preparing your app marketing plan:
- Never create an app without doing extensive market research
- Always have in place, a feedback loop by recruiting beta testers
- Have a perfect marketing strategy in place, before your app goes live
- Plan your app release date much in advance and send out teaser campaigns to increase curiosity.
- Always make it a point to measure the success of your app on a regular basis, after it has been launched.
- Have proper descriptions for your updates whenever you release them
- Pay a lot of attention to customer support
Mobile app marketing is one field where the possibilities are unlimited. Do not just stick to boring banner ads only because they look good; Make maximum use of the unique properties of mobile such as the in-built camera, the touch screen and the location tracking feature to make your campaign unique and technologically innovative. Get as creative as possible, break away from conventions and come up with something that no one has ever thought about.
