The number of smartphone users globally stands at 3.8 Billion. In other words, 48.37% of the world’s population owns a smartphone. Further research by eMarketer claims that US mobile ad spending is predicted to increase by 22% to over USD 117 billion. Clearly, not capitalizing on this huge market seems like a lost opportunity.
To that end, if you are looking for inspiration to kickstart a highly effective mobile marketing campaign, keep reading. In this blog, we will look at the top-7 mobile advertising campaigns that are worth every penny (and effort) invested. Let’s get to it right away.
The Strategy: Starbucks launched a new feature, “Mobile Order & Pay“, on its app way back in 2015 to allow users to order ahead through the app instead of waiting at the store–a smart move in today’s times, owing to the global pandemic that calls for social distancing. Once the customer has placed their order, they can go to the store for pickup.
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The Results:
The Learning: Brands should look at building user-friendly mobile apps to significantly reduce the friction during their customer’s buying cycle. Additionally, they should stick to the following best practices for enhanced app retention:
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As you can imagine, this humanizes the brand in front of the customer’s eyes and helps establish a stronger bond.
The Strategy: Unilever wanted to reach the “media dark” state — Bihar in India — which happened to be a key market for the brand. The brand zeroed in on using smartphones to connect with customers. Why? Because interestingly, 65% of the population had mobile phones when this campaign ran (the numbers must definitely be higher now). Here’s what the brand pulled off:
All users had to do was give a missed call on a dedicated number and enjoy free content for 15 minutes while being advertised to Unilever’s products:
The Results:
The Learning: Mobile marketing campaign, when done right, can positively impact your bottom line and boost brand awareness. As long as your campaign solves your customer base’s key pain-point(s) in addition to advertising the product/service, you can expect skyrocketing growth in mobile-friendly pockets, nearly everywhere on the globe. |
The Strategy: The dating app, Tinder, partnered with Manchester City’s men’s and women’s leagues to allow app users and football fans from around the world to engage in exciting activities, such as getting exclusive access to games, enjoying AR experiences, and getting exclusive access to stadium events.
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Despite being a dating app, Tinder offered multiple opportunities for advertising and creating awareness for the sports club, including running campaigns on social media, driving digital content, and promoting events. It also doubled up as an effective platform to introduce new players to fans around the globe.
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The Results:
The Learning: When it comes to the benefit of mobile marketing campaigns, it helps to partner with other brands that share similar inclusive values. By leveraging the combined power of both brands, marketers can attract new customers, retain the existing ones, and deliver a highly personalized and unique mobile experience that benefits both the brands as well as the audience — a win-win-win for all. |
The Strategy: Sephora (Malaysia) wanted to stand out in a highly competitive and saturated market. It created a unique “Lung Pao” promotional campaign on the eve of the Lunar New Year. Here’s how the brand successfully gamified its in-app messaging:
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The Results:
The Learning: Brands can gamify their mobile campaigns and boost conversions effortlessly. Additionally, the primary goal of these campaigns should be to deliver a seamless and fun customer experience, while providing real value to the customers. |
The Strategy: Spotify effectively uses mobile campaigns to upsell to customers by positioning it as a “moment of discovery” for freemium users:
The end-goal of this type of mobile marketing campaign can be to:
The Results:
The Learning: Mobile marketing campaigns can help brands cross-sell and upsell effectively if, and only if, they are targeting the right users at the right time. This is why engaging in user data analytics becomes a central point of focus for brands looking to boost their conversion rates via upsell/cross-sell means. |
The Strategy: Shopify uses in-app push notifications to encourage users to provide feedback while using the app. Brands can roll out NPS surveys or ask for more in-depth feedback, as Shopify demonstrates below:
Pro tip: Incentivizing the feedback process is a best practice if you want more users to participate in the survey.
The Learning: Capturing your customer’s voice/option while they are actively engaged with your product is a great way to let the customers know that you truly value their support. This is where in-app push notifications truly shine. |
The Strategy: To help capture the customer’s attention, streaming giant Netflix created a realistic advertising creative that played on ‘fear’– a universal emotion that people would experience after watching nearly every episode of the popular techno-paranoia drama, Black Mirror. The brand showcased the following creative–a mobile screen which resembled a broken piece of glass as though the viewer was living in the show:
The Results:
The Learning: Owing to their digital nature, mobile marketing campaigns can be created with more flexibility and greater creative license to truly reel the viewer in and boost engagement. As long as the creative is fresh and fun, you’re good to go. |
In conclusion, there is no standard template that can be applied to make your mobile marketing strategy effective. The idea is to collect user data, take into account their preferences, and roll out campaigns that offer true value to the customers. Additionally, brands should focus on delivering a coherent and consistent mobile marketing experience that’s characterized by hyper-personalization, accurate timing, and wild originality. Thoughts?
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