Mobile Marketing to Increase Spending Among 12 Vertical Markets

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According to a recent report from Millenial Media, spending on mobile marketing among 12 major vertical markets has risen steadily over the past few years. Actually, the money hasn’t necessarily risen as much as it has been pouring in to mobile marketing efforts. These verticals range from government services, retailers, and restaurants.

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In Millennial Media’s Smart Report, they took a look at how today’s marketers are steadily transferring their money into mobile marketing while also categorizing the top goals of marketers when they use mobile marketing strategies. “We saw 12 different verticals grow their spend in mobile by more than 100 percent year-over-year,” said Marcus Startzel, General Manager of North America at Millennial Media. “With four verticals growing spend by more than 450 percent.”

Looking at the report, the top industry to increase their spending on mobile marketing was government services. Year-over-year, government services increased their mobile marketing spending by a monstrous 860 percent! Spending from employment marketers exploded over 523 percent, travel marketers raised their spending up to 495 percent, while personal and home services and fitness and wellness health campaigns rounded out the top 5 on on the list.

Along with the top 5, the telecommunications, retail, restaurant, real estate, energy and power, entertainment, automotive, and consumer-packaged-goods businesses raised their mobile marketing budgets over 100 percent. To be more particular, retail and restaurant companies were the top verticals in the report in 2012 and accounted for over 16 percent of all total brand marketing efforts. At the same time, spending on these efforts were raised over 106 percent year-over-year. The number 2 vertical was entertainment with 12 percent of all spending going towards their mobile marketing budget.

The reasons these 12 verticals are upping their mobile marketing budgets are numerous. An example would be video. Video was incorporated into 64 percent of all mobile marketing campaigns used for either product launches or releases. On top of this, 46 percent of campaigns centered on entertainment focused on social media, 40 percent of consumer-packaged-goods businesses used social media, and 21 percent of all campaigns in the report used either a store locator or map feature. Not enough? 37 percent of campaigns implemented an app download, 29 percent of marketers took advantage of site search as a post-click action, and gaming, music, entertainment, social media, and communication apps were the top 4 categories in 2012. These apps maintained their popularity year-over-year.

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19 percent of advertisers leveraged mobile marketing to promote mobile subscriptions and 16 percent of advertisers combined ecommerce with their mobile marketing campaigns.

The marketers were grouped into 3 separate groups when it came to marketing. They were IT decision makers, gadget geeks, and in-market auto buyers. The top goals of the advertisers using mobile consisted of keeping a presence within their respective industries, building brand awareness, and driving site traffic. “Advertisers are using our mobile audience solutions to reach specific groups of consumers,” concluded Startzel. “And whether they are targeting IT decision makers, moms, or in-market auto intenders, mobile is a channel that can work for basically any vertical.”

So as you can see, mobile marketers are starting to not only notice the benefits and advantages of mobile marketing for their businesses, but they are also beginning to learn how to properly leverage it to their advantage. Make sure you are one of these businesses! If you are not you are only asking to fall behind and lose out to the competition that IS using mobile marketing to their advantage.

Will Google Glass Replace the Smart Phone?

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How would you feel wearing a device over your eyes that looks like glasses? Subtract the lenses and add a small device over your right eye. This is Google Glass. Experts predict that Google Glass can ultimately be a game-changer along the lines of phones. One that could change the landscape all across the advertising, entertainment, gaming, commerce, and media worlds.

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Google has recently released a video that details the headwear’s digitally-enhanced technological advancements. Many consumers think that Google Glass could make a run for the top spot against the iPhone, Android, and other mobile devices. Researchers state “in this tech-loving world, it may become numerous consumers go-to mechanism for many things they certainly do on smart phones.”

Google Glass is all about bringing together two technology favorites, the smart phone and tablet to a pair of glasses. These glasses happen to be sight and voice controlled as well. The Google X team strategy was to bring the sci-fi technology to life. The display over the right eye can provide you information about the world around you, the small camera can snap photos and also shoot video all while being voiced controlled.

With Google Glass it can give you up-to-date weather reports just by looking out a window, show you a text and allow you to reply with voice activation, it may inform you of underground transportation being halted and give you step by step instructions to your destination. What Google Glass is not though is a phone. It is an expansion of our everyday phones like a Bluetooth headset for our eyes.

Ian Schafer CEO of Deep Focus stated, “it’ll be an opportunity to get information that users currently would find on their phone. They can actually pull it out of thin air.” When you think of your smart phone and the accustomed information you get from it is instant satisfaction from an information standpoint.

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From a marketing standpoint Schafer stated, “it could make augmented reality worth more advertising spend.” Greg Stuart CEO of the Mobile Marketing Association stated, “Google Glass could evolve advertising in unforeseen ways.” Similar to using your iOS or Android tablet as a window we get a sense of what advertising for Google Glass will look like. The small gold coins that imitate what we see on Super Mario Bros grants real world rewards.

Google Glass can also prove to be very vital and valuable production from a creative standpoint. Filmmakers and videographers can utilize this device to create theatrical footage.

So the million dollar question, will Google Glass replace the phone? To keep it short and sweet the answer is no. At least not right now, since the phone still has to depend on integration with an Android or iPhone to function properly.

Mobile Marketing Subscriptions Pass 6 BILLION

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Startling news has risen from the results of a mobile advertising report recently conducted by the CMO Council. Apparently, only 16% of marketers have instituted a mobile marketing strategy despite the fact that over 6 BILLION mobile subscriptions have been reported. That means that 86% of all marketing companies are failing to take advantage of over 6 billion subscriptions made by consumers. To us, this is absolutely mindblowing. Considering the power and gravity of mobile marketing, it is hard for us to fathom this fact. But that’s okay, we’re here to help you see the light!

It seems the biggest factor contributing to the low percentage of companies implementing mobile marketing has to do with the fact that they don’t feel like it is working. This could be true, but this is probably a result of a poorly planned and executed mobile strategy, lack of mobile marketing knowledge, or lack of analytics to properly measure your results. Regardless what the problem is, here at Anchor we guarantee we have the solution. We have had companies come in and tell us that they are not happy with their mobile marketing efforts, and we have been able to fix it and give them the results that they want. This has happened time and time again and we have utmost confidence in our methods. Why? Because we know what works!

Another interesting statistic derived from the study is that 77% of marketers report that there is a lack of case studies that demonstrate mobile marketing’s best practices. We have, in fact, a post on this very blog that gives you mobile marketing’s best practices. You can see that article here. We also have several other articles regarding mobile marketing that will help you. Diving into a mobile marketing campaign without knowing the facts or having extensive knowledge in the matter is a sure recipe for failure, and that is obviously what a majority of these companies have done. We know this because if mobile marketing is implemented correctly,it will become your most powerful marketing tool!

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Interestingly enough, the CMO report supports this by stating that a majority of the companies who were unhappy with their mobile marketing campaigns indicated a “lack of understanding” on mobile. This was true among both brands and agencies. So the facts are there. It is clear that not only are a majority of companies unaware of the power of mobile marketing, but even when they do become aware of it, they do not understand it fully enough to successfully implement a mobile marketing campaign into their marketing strategy.

Just the fact that there are only 16% of all companies taking advantage of over 6 billion subscribers should tell you that there is a HUGE UNTAPPED market out there for you and your company. People travel around with cell phones and smartphones all the time, and it has gotten to the point where it has become an addiction. We actually have an entire blog dedicated to smartphone addiction here. Think to yourself, how often do you see people whip out their phones? All the time? Well, statistically speaking, 91% of all adults in the U.S. have a smartphone, 73% say they want to receive offers on their phones, 90% of all texts are read within 3 minutes, 97% of smartphone owners have their smartphones within arms reach at all times of the day, oh, and did we mention over 6 billion subscriptions have been reported?

We could continue, but what else is there to say? It is OBVIOUS that you should be thinking about launching a mobile marketing campaign, and soon! Before you know it, companies are going to figure out the mobile marketing game and will most assuredly pass you by if you don’t jump on the train now! Let us help you and your company take the bull by the horns and launch a successful mobile markting campaign today!