Future-Proofing Mobile Marketing

With mobile technology advancing at a disruptive pace, there’s no saying where mobile user expectations will go next. So how do large marketing enterprises protect and leverage their huge investments? 

MarketingProfs’ August 2017 summary1 of The State of Engagement, a recent Marketo research report2, is telling. The Marketo study was compiled from the responses of close to 1,200 marketers and 1,000-plus consumers surveyed in the US, the UK, France, and Germany. The report covered almost equal numbers of B2C and B2B consumers – 511 and 489, respectively. 

Among other findings were two that are pertinent to this post:  

Customer Expectations

The survey reported that most marketers believed they were great at customer engagement, but their consumers disagreed. The consumers said they weren’t getting the personalized, relevant and caring cross-channel customer experience they’d expected. Customer expectations hadn’t been met.

The Power of Mobile

Although globally mobile was ranked number five among the channels that consumers used to engage with brands, marketers rated it as number two in automation capabilities with the greatest impact on ability to engage.  

Mobile Engagement Held Great Promise 

Mobile engagement is about marketers creating meaningful interactions continuously over time with their customers, based on who the customers are and what they want to know or do or buy, so that customers can move quickly toward their goal or outcome, wherever they are3.

In the mobile space, achieving successful engagement with customers means tracking a moving target from two perspectives – the mobile user, and the marketer.

Advances in Mobile Handsets 

Already in 2018, writes TechCoffees.com researcher-blogger Milos Babic4, handsets are expected to sport advanced features – virtual reality, artificial intelligence (AI), edge-to-edge display, and fast battery charging, all at affordable prices. IndizTech’s Darren Wall reports that LG is aggressively preparing to manufacture phones with 3-D capability5. TechRadar’s James Rogerson6 and others are waiting for a projector-enabled phone from the Nokia stables to hit the market soon. The mobile landscape is expected to be 5G-ready before long7. All these shifts were hitherto thought of as belonging to a distant future. 

Emerging Mobile User Trends 

Forbes Technology Council contributor and mobile marketing pro Ofer Garnett predicts two key mobile user trends for 2018 and beyond that should protect marketers from slipping as they engage effectively with customers8: 

Video Marketing 

Online video, in all its avatars – augmented and virtual reality, 360°, live, gamified, and rewarded videos – which can invite your customers to learn in entertaining ways how your product or service could be useful to them. 

Information Marketing 

Informational content that links your brand to public and social causes that your customers are emotionally invested in – the environment, health and well-being, food and diet, education, finance, human rights and others. 

Sophistication in Mobile Marketing Tech 

Not only handsets, but the marketing technology, too, which marketers are using to keep users successfully engaged have reached unprecedented levels of sophistication. 

To stay future-proofed while keeping customers truly engaged with brands, Joe Stanhope, Mary Pilecki and others of Forrester Research9, advise mobile marketers to harness the power of big data, AI, machine learning, bots and predictive analytics. They observe that the marketing paradigm of the future is an intensely tech-driven, extensively automated, well-orchestrated endeavor. It paves the way for: 

• Gathering deep insights on the customer 

• Accurately predicting customer behavior 

• Dynamically delivering finely tuned ads and content to precisely segmented audiences 

1.Gaining Insight 

To gain insight, marketers need to use content intelligence – a set of AI/machine-learning technologies that detects how consumers are engaging with content and makes data-based recommendations from it. It allows content to be tracked on various parameters such as subject matter, mood and tone, sentiment, interest and emotional appeal, lifestyle, and habits. Thus, content intelligence systems take unstructured content as input and deliver actionable insights to the marketer. 

2.Predicting Buyer Behavior 

Intelligent content helps marketers identify the nuances of their customers’ reactions. Mapping those to the stages in which customers are on their buying journeys and identifying the touchpoints they are using enables marketers to optimize customers’ interactions with their brand and product and predict customer behavior. This requires predictive analytics. 

3.Creating Memorable Experiences 

Creative advertising technologies can then kick in and deliver personalized digital ads displaying customized headlines, images and messages. Creative management platforms make the delivery fast and agile. The technology allows ad contextualization and is based on the interplay between target segment, channel, and ad design, optimized continuously for effectiveness. 

References: 

1. https://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2017/32661/the-engagement-gap-how-b2b-and-b2c-firms-are-missing-the-mark

2. https://www.marketo.com/analyst-and-other-reports/the-state-of-engagement/

3. Adapted from The 5 Principles of Engagement Marketing, p. 2, at: https://www.marketo.com/ebooks/elements-of-engagement-marketing/

4. https://www.techcoffees.com/5-mobile-phones-features-2018/

5. https://indiztech.co/2017/12/18/3d-mobile-phones-the-future-of-mobile-phone-technology/

6. http://www.techradar.com/news/nokia-9-release-date-news-and-rumors

7. https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2014/aug/26/5g-network-launch-mobile-consumers-connectivity-download

8. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/12/08/heres-whats-on-the-horizon-for-mobile-in-2018/2/#713b9a8d39ec

9. https://www.forrester.com/report/The+Top+Emerging+Technologies+For+B2C+Marketers/-/E-RES137571