4 Mobile Marketing News Items You Should Know

What’s the latest in Mobile Marketing? We’re here to highlight the interesting items every app developer should be aware of this week. Here are the 4 most interesting pieces of mobile marketing news stories you should know.

1. Pokémon Go provides marketing opportunities IRL.

The success of Pokémon Go is still the biggest story around, and businesses and brands have been salivating at the chance to capitalize on the hit game. The big brands with the deepest pockets are already lining up to get sponsored locations in the game (of course the first would be McDonald’s), and now sponsored items are coming as well. The old adage for marketing is to be where the people are, and right now everyone’s living in the VR Pokémon world. What’s next? Virtual billboards and bidding on time-constrained lures? Probably!
But if the idea of big corporations using a children’s game to sell products upsets you, here’s a more palatable story: The Muncie Animal Shelter in Indiana is offering people the chance to walk their real-life rescue dogs as they hunt for imaginary creatures. See? There are wonderful ways to market your business with Pokémon Go. Check out a few others.

2. In-app messaging may be the key to mobile marketing.

According to a recent study by Experian Marketing Solutions (via Business Intelligence), “in-app messaging will be the top initiative for mobile apps in 2016.” 44% of marketers put in-app messaging as their main focus over SMS or even push notification.
The report goes on to show that since only 45% of smartphone users opt in to push notifications, in-app messaging is more effective since you can’t opt out of them. Makes sense to us, and since app developers can control and customize in-app messages as desired, we’re big fans of this method of mobile marketing. The report also claimed that “in-app messages increased app launches by 27%,” which is a significant statistic when you consider most apps go unopened after the first 30 days.

3. Emoji marketing is a thing, but it probably doesn’t work.

From branded emoji on Twitter and Facebook, to full emoji keyboards that are branded, to brands simply using emojis in their communications, many are hailing the “rise of emoji marketing.” And sure enough, because marketers will try anything once, we are seeing a huge increase in emoji marketing campaigns:

But there doesn’t seem to be any hard numbers showing that these emoji-based campaigns are working for more than just a tiny segment of already popular brands. Sure, we know that certain brands have dropped $1 million on special emojis to accompany hashtags on Twitter, but a million dollars is a drop in the bucket to brands such as Coca-Cola or Disney. It’s a rounding error, and it’s not as impressive as it seems. We’re more in the camp of Digiday who called emoji branding a “useless artifact,” and Forbes that called it “a fly in the mobile marketing ointment.“

4. Mobile advertising is still a puzzle waiting to be figured out.

Here’s a sobering chart from ClickZ Intelligence Report on The State of Mobile Advertising in 2016:

Only 13% of those surveyed said their company takes a mobile-first approach, and the “intermediate” group claimed their efforts were ad hoc. Is that even intermediate?
It just goes to show you that even though the iPhone came out in 2007, mobile marketing is still in it’s infancy. Part of the difficulty of cracking this nut is that the tech changes so quickly, by the time companies have a handle on in-app advertising, something new like augmented reality comes out and sends them scrambling again. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it because the audience is there.
And ultimately, there’s no question that mobile apps are an amazing marketing tool for your business in and of themselves. Just having a good app puts you ahead of your competition in mobile marketing.
What mobile marketing tactics works best for you? Comment below!