- The Rise of Mobile Video Content
- Personalization and Customization
- The Growth of Mobile E-commerce
- Voice Search Optimization
- Augmented Reality (AR) Experiences
Q: What are the latest trends in mobile marketing?
A. The latest trends in mobile marketing include the rise of mobile video content, increased personalization and customization, the growth of mobile e-commerce, voice search optimization, augmented reality experiences, and a focus on transparency and trust.
About 90% of Americans own a smartphone, according to Pew Research. Related research also found that about 95% of American adults use the internet.
That means that most Americans can access global information right in their pocket, which also means that your business is accessible to the majority of Americans.
But, only if you let them.
And you can through mobile marketing!
Small businesses are leveraging mobile marketing to effortlessly push their businesses into the palms of their target audience. For these small businesses, mobile marketing means that with the right data and strategy, they can reach out to their target audience wherever they are, at any time of the day.
It was nearly impossible to do this at such a scale 13 years ago when only 35% of Americans owned a smartphone.
Today, you can.
And other businesses—probably the majority of the 33 million small businesses domiciled in the U.S.—can, too, with mobile marketing revenue expected to reach $25.5 billion by the end of 2024.
With the widespread adoption of mobile marketing comes loads of mobile marketing trends that businesses adopt to capture the millions of consumers who now rely on their mobile devices for shopping, browsing, and communication.
Knowing what’s hot in the mobile marketing space could be all you need to drive tremendous engagement and boost your sales.
In this article, we’ll explore six latest mobile marketing strategies trending across various industries, including mobile video content, personalization, mobile e-commerce, augmented reality, and the increased demand for trust and transparency.
Let’s get to it.
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The Rise of Mobile Video Content
In 2000, the first ever mobile marketing was shared via SMS.
SMS then became the go-to form of mobile ads for a long time until the widespread introduction of 4G networks came into the picture and handed the reins over to mobile video advertising.
While it has been around for a long while, mobile video content seems to be creating an even bigger gap between it and other mobile ad formats.
In fact, it is considered the best-performing content marketing format with up to 45% engagement rating, according to Forbes’ content marketing statistics 2024. Video content was also the mainstay of mobile marketing in 2023, with about 91% of businesses saying that they incorporated video into their marketing approaches.
Interestingly, short-form videos (also known as shorts) pull much of the weight here; about 90% of marketers are leaning towards using short-form videos to boost and sustain their video marketing efforts.
Why?
Apparently, in a world that seems unknowingly drawn into the attention wars of big techs, shorts are what capture audiences’ attention most effectively.
Shorts are valued by both audiences and marketers for being concise and engaging, qualities that are very much appreciated, as we can see from the sudden advent and rise of TikTok, YouTube shorts, Facebook reels, and Instagram reels.
These platforms are inarguably the great facilitators of mobile video content marketing. And with the right strategies, your mobile video content can make waves on any of these platforms.
Implementing Mobile Video Marketing
Implementing mobile video marketing starts with first knowing your audience.
What type of content would appeal to them? Which of these platforms do they use the most?
Then comes the second part: telling your story.
Remember, your audience is looking for something concise and engaging. The message has to be right, but also short.
Then, it’s time to get the cameras and other equipment ready. Consider the following:
- Shoot your content in vertical video formats: This means in portrait mode. Most of your audience will be viewing your content with their smartphones upright.
- Stream live: Many people consider live streaming to be more authentic, personal, and engaging. It is also interactive, allowing you to have real-time conversations during live product demonstrations, unboxings, promos, or casual updates. You can always record and upload your live streams on your channels, letting your audience see and appreciate an unfiltered version of your business at any time.
Continuously repurpose and distribute your videos across platforms to keep conversations alive. Also, promote user-generated content by encouraging your audience to create and share video reviews of your products across their network.
Personalization and Customization
There is a high chance that if you review some of your recent ads, you’ll find that a bunch of them are oddly specific, seemingly selling only things under your radar of interest.
You have probably had discussions where you narrated how and when you needed to buy something, say a garden hose, you suddenly started seeing ads for garden hoses everywhere.
Who’s at Google creating garden hose ads just for you?
Well, you are.
Personalization and customization are currently some of the biggest trends in mobile advertising, where businesses and marketers use various tools to transform customer data into personalized ads that speak specifically to the customer.
Essentially, when you use an e-commerce website or any form of business website, the business’s marketing software extracts your data, including your:
- Preferences
- Browsing pattern (focusing on pages you spend time on and products you check out often)
- Purchase history
- Demographic information (including sex, age, location, etc.)
All of these and many more are crunched by advanced data analytics tools and processed by AI-driven marketing software to show you personalized marketing messages, product recommendations, and offers. Sometimes these messages are pushed to you in real time. At other times, they might “spontaneously” (to you anyway) pop into your inbox right around the time you usually check your email.
This sort of mobile marketing works because, with this level of hyper-personalization, the consumer isn’t being force-fed irrelevant ads. Yours is an ad that they are really interested in. This ultimately enhances the consumer’s experience and increases engagement.
Mobile Marketing Personalization Tools
Generally, mobile marketing requires the use of specialized, AI-driven mobile marketing tools that can push customized ads in various formats across different channels on smartphones and other digital devices, including tablets.
Mobile marketing personalization tools include:
- Mobile email marketing software: MailModo, MailChimp, customer.io, Movable Ink
- CRM systems: AppsFlyer, Pipedrive, CleverTap, Klevu, Adobe Target, Insider, Branch
The Growth of Mobile E-commerce
Mobile e-commerce, often referred to as m-commerce, is rising rapidly at what seems to be an unstoppable rate.
According to EMARKETER, about 44.6% of all U.S. retail e-commerce sales are expected to come from mobile e-commerce, and sales are expected to reach $558.29 billion by the end of 2024.
The growth is all thanks to increased mobile shopping trends, led by the increasing use of mobile devices for shopping.
For most U.S. adults, mobile shopping is a convenient necessity. Mobile e-commerce platforms, mobile payment solutions, fast shipping, and free shipping, once only fantasized about, are now the realities of most American consumers.
And they are happy to whip out their phone at any time and leverage these privileges to order whatever they want, from anywhere in the world.
This reality is just as good for business owners. With a mobile-friendly website, business owners and marketers are also leveraging these features to market their products directly to their target audience, regardless of state and national boundaries.
Consumers want mobile shopping, and businesses are happy to deliver. The natural willfulness at both ends makes mobile shopping one of the top game-changing digital marketing trends of the past few years.
Safe to say, mobile shopping is possible because of an unspoken trust between consumers and businesses spurred by secure mobile payment solutions.
Mobile Payment Solutions for M-commerce
The adoption of certain mobile payment solutions made it easier for consumers and businesses to safely initiate and complete seamless transactions, instantly eliminating numerous hassles that would have otherwise been the case.
The top mobile payment solutions include the following:
- Apple Pay: Launched by Apple in 2014, Apple Pay allows all users of Apple products to make mobile payments for goods and services directly with debit and credits stored in their devices.
- Google Wallet or Google Pay: Google’s mobile payment service for making in-app, online, and in-person contactless payments via their mobile devices. Available on Android phones, tablets, and watches.
These two mobile payment platforms serve the bulk of smartphone users, who can be easily categorized into iOS (Apple) and Android users.
Other payment solutions include Samsung Pay and various mobile banking apps that facilitate mobile shopping experiences.
Voice Search Optimization
Voice assistants are on the rise, and there is no stopping them. People have gone from asking voice assistants like Siri and Alexa to play music or set reminders to using them for more serious voice search queries. In this context, people use voice search to find services near them or get more information about a product.
In fact, “near me” searches are the second most popular use of voice searches, right behind weather queries.
It’s not unusual for people to quickly refer to their voice assistant with queries such as “Where is the best restaurant near me?” and “Where is the best legal firm near me?”
The increasing adoption of voice searches is driving small businesses to direct more attention toward optimizing their voice SEO.
As of 2023, there were over 125.2 million voice search users, all expected to generate about $40 billion in sales by the end of 2024. With those numbers in view, it’s no surprise that voice search optimization is one the biggest trends in mobile advertising.
You can do any number of things with those numbers, but you should start where it matters the most: voice SEO.
Voice SEO for Small Businesses
Given that voice search optimization is one of the latest mobile marketing trends, it’s wise for business owners to adopt it.
Thankfully, voice SEO is, in a sense, an easy thing to do if you put your mind to it.
An important point to note is that voice searches are fundamentally local-based. That is, voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant often return suggestions that are location-specific, focusing on businesses near the user.
Hence, you must optimize your local SEO for voice searches.
With Siri, research found that there are
These considerations are also similar for other voice assistants.
Additionally, when creating your website and online business profiles, you must use conversational keywords in relevant pages, optimizing your online channels for more search engine accessibility and visibility.
Also, consider using conversational keywords to craft relevant FAQs for your website. For instance, a good FAQ for an attorney could be, “Where can I find the best lawyer in Kalamazoo?”
Optimizing your business for voice SEO is very important, particularly if you are in the legal or service industries.
As one of the top trends in mobile advertising and location-based marketing, voice search is bound to keep growing. And as that happens, only voice-search-optimized businesses will benefit from it.
In fact, if your business is not optimized for mobile SEO, search algorithms won’t bat an eye before recommending a business 5 miles over, even if yours is only 0.3 miles away.
Augmented Reality (AR) Experiences
Experiential and interactive marketing are gradually becoming the norm, and AR is inching towards the forefront, as big corporations are toppling over each other to take the lead with AR-based ads.
2023 gave us a very long list of global enterprises incorporating AR in their advertising, including Coca-Cola, Toyota, Snapchat, Revolut, Circle K, and Warner Bros.
Makes you wonder: what about AR makes it one of the top mobile marketing trends of 2024?
For one, businesses are using AR to create interactive marketing experiences that turn consumers into active participants in marketing campaigns, thereby boosting consumer engagement and conversions.
It provides an avenue for businesses to properly educate consumers about their products while keeping them entertained and subtly persuading them to make a purchase.
Let’s look at two examples:
- As part of Warner Bros. “Dune: Part Two” campaign, the company teamed up with Snapchat and used an AR lens and custom cameo sticker to allow Snapchat users to ride a sandworm in the mobile video marketing ads for the movie.
- In 2023, Toyota ran ads that focused on AR vehicle visualization and test drives for the 2023 Toyota Crown. Users could visualize the vehicle in their driveway, garage, or any part of their immediate surroundings and take a 360 degree walk around it.
For the users, the campaigns stopped being a mere ad, but also an opportunity for consumers to interact with the brands’ products and get a feel of them.
The more interesting thing about AR is that it’s not restrictive. Just about any business in any industry can use AR to streamline and enhance their mobile marketing strategies.
In retail, customers can interact with products in virtual environments overlayed on real environments to make sense of how the product could fit in their real environments, as we’ve seen with IKEA AR shopping experiences. Various institutions have also used AR to create immersive learning experiences.
With the release of more AR capabilities, AR shopping is likely to become more commonplace. Smaller businesses will be able to use AR to gamify their marketing campaigns, creating more immersive experiences for consumers across the board.
Transparency and Trust: The Role of a Virtual Office
One common factor you would notice across all the mobile marketing trends discussed so far is the application of technology.
And that makes sense. After all, we are talking about “mobile” marketing trends, which are, in essence, digital marketing trends.
But despite all the advancements in technology, the demand for accountability and trust in tech-driven systems has never dropped. In fact, it’s only getting higher.
Hence, these latest trends in mobile advertising also come with a string of concerns, along the lines of accountability, trust, and security.
Hence, while doing everything to provide great mobile experiences for customers, it’s paramount for small businesses to maintain an air of transparency and trust across all other operations.
This is where virtual offices come into the picture, helping small businesses boost their:
- Professional image: With a virtual office, you can get a professional business address in a prestigious business location, which you can use for business registration and other official documentation. This boosts your business’s credibility as a professionally established entity, creating an environment of trust that your customers can key into.
- Privacy and security: In the era of remote work, many businesses are opting to operate from home. But for most of the consumers who are at the other end of your marketing materials, there’s hardly a cent of trust to give to a business that operates with a home address—definitely none for one that lacks an address and phone number entirely.
With a virtual office address and a dedicated virtual business phone number, you can protect your privacy by keeping your home address confidential while still presenting a trustworthy front to your customers.
Alliance Virtual Offices’ virtual offices give you a solid foundation of credibility and trust, equally giving your customers one less reason to worry when interacting with your mobile marketing campaigns.
Most interestingly, it costs as low as $45 per month to get yourself a prestigious office address, use it to sort your business documentation, and then incorporate it in all your marketing materials to capture the trust of your target audience.
Key Takeaways: Stay Ahead with Mobile Marketing Trends
Digital marketing trends will always evolve. We’ve gone from SMS marketing being all the rage to mobile video marketing being at the center of most mobile marketing strategies.
As a small business owner or marketer, it is your responsibility to keep up with these trends as they occur, ensuring that you keep your customers constantly engaged by maximizing all they have to offer.
Further Reading:
Technologies Powering Virtual Office Spaces
Empowering Independence: A Guide for the Modern Independent Business Owner
Maximizing Customer Value: A Guide to Customer Retention Analysis
Green Marketing Definition: What It Is and How It Works
As it stands today, mobile video content, personalization, mobile e-commerce, voice search, and augmented reality experiences are gathering all the buzz. Take your time to review each of the latest mobile marketing trends and see how you can incorporate them into your mobile marketing strategies.
Most importantly, don’t neglect the importance of building trust in the digital age. Your customers are counting on you!
Check that off your list easily with Alliance Virtual Offices services.
