Mobile Social Media Marketing

How to Take Advantage of This Growing Convergence

According to IDC, roughly half of the US population owned smartphones at the end of 2012. This population is expected to expand to 222.4 million smartphone users, or about two-thirds of the US population by 2017. Of the huge amount of the population currently using smartphones, 80% of respondents reported reaching for their phones within 15 minutes of waking. And about four out of five respondents have their phones on hand all day, except for about two hours.

Another research report from eMarketer states that, “more than 50% of all the people on Twitter and Facebook are accessing these social platforms using their mobile devices.”

Mobile + social = Brand Awareness, Customer Engagement

Mobile and social media are proving to be a great combination for the marketers. Mobile devices have empowered the users to access social media sites whenever and wherever they want. This has come forward as a great opportunity for the marketers to pull in new users by sharing their valuable information on the social media platforms. Brands that are heavily dependent on social media marketing can take advantage of this convergence by creating a mobile-specific marketing strategy.

Before proceeding further on how to take advantage of this growing convergence, let’s gather some market stats on the number of smartphone users and Top social networks.

Fig.1

According to ComScore’s key insights from the 2013 Mobile Future in Focus, “The U.S. smartphone market has surpassed 50 percent market penetration. The number of smartphone subscribers has increased 29 percent from a year ago and 99 percent from two years ago (fig.1).”

In 2013 smartphones are projected to become the most common device used to access the social media platforms. Figure 2 shows more and more people are using their smartphone devices for their daily dose of news and information. Whether they are waiting for their turn in the doctor’s clinic or are commuting to their work place, they are constantly using their smartphones to access social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin.

Fig.2

According to Nielsen’s new report, “Mobile devices and mobile apps are the driving force behind the growth of social media in the US.” Nearly a third of the time spent on social media sites is via mobile devices, Nielson researchers concluded. Nearly forty percent of the users spend their time on socializing via their smartphone devices. Facebook and Twitter are the most popular sites among the users and the number of people using the social networking sites is increasing every year. [Reference fig. 3]

Fig.3

The growth of smartphones has increased exponentially. And people are using these mobile devices largely for social media. The number of mobile phone users is increasing every year (fig. 4). Marketers can take advantage of this growing trend of using social media on the mobile devices.

Fig.4

How to take advantage of this growing convergence

Every marketer looks for maximum customer engagement and brand awareness among a huge number of publics. And for this you must chalk out a clear plan on how social media can help you in driving the audience growth.

Communicating with mobile social media users is not difficult. Here are few tips that you can work on while structuring your mobile marketing strategy:

1. Facebook, A perfect social media platform to target people from various age-group, gender or location: A study conducted by IDC on US respondents between 18 and 44 shows that Facebook is the most [Fig.5] preferred activity on a smartphone after sending or receiving emails. 70% of respondents use Facebook on their phone, and 61% use it every day. User engagement on FB is highest over the weekend, starting on Friday and peaking on Sunday. Also, the social media channel dominates other social networking sites i.e. Twitter and LinkedIn.

Fig.5

It shows that Facebook has the huge potential for your marketing strategies. You can target a specific group of audience based on your business requirements and other factors. For instance, if you are offering summer apparels or accessories for girls aged n 20-40, you can locate your audience, their age-group and keep them posted about your business details. Facebook gives you the options to interact with your audience on one-to-one basis. You can send personal messages, chat with them and even get to know about their liking or disliking on certain products.

2. Smartphones gave birth to Location-based marketing: According to Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, 42 Million users claimed Facebook Offers in the 4th Quarter of 2012. Connecting with users by creating product/services pages is a great idea. People check their Facebook profiles several times in a day. Post offers, updates, achievements and more about your business. You have a high possibility of catching eyeballs on a lucrative offer.

You can also ask your customers to post check-ins on their internet connected mobile devices and offer them a thrilling deal or discount on your services. Check-ins are a great way of creating brand awareness. And you never know your coffee shop could also get some new customers on the same day as your customers’ friends can also visit your shop if they are nearby or the craving of having coffee grab them after checking their friends’ check-ins.

Post eye grabbing pictures of your products on social networking sites and start a contest by asking your followers to write about their favorite products from your brand. Recently, L’Oreal posted on Facebook, their celebrities pictures from Cannes Film Festival who used their products while making their appearance on the red carpet. On the same pictures they also displayed the detailed description of products used by these celebrities. The leading cosmetic brand also offered a set of their cosmetic products to their followers who shared their content on their profiles.

Local businesses can now include barcodes in their offers. Users love it as they just have to hold up their email voucher or mobile with barcode for a simple scan.

3. Ad Networks and Social Media Marketing:  According to Business Insider Intelligence estimates, mobile display advertising is on track to hit $3.2 billion in 2013.

Ad networks offer branding and direct response advertising across premium inventory on mobile publishers, operator portals and in applications including iPhone, Android and Blackberry. You can easily reach your target audiences with the help of these mobile ad networks.

4. Visual Social Media – A new way to share and discover stories: Instagram, Pinterest are becoming popular platforms where brands are promoting their products. Both the social media platforms are popular among users who access these platforms from their smartphones and reshare, retweet or pin the pictures that they like. According to a report from Simply Measured, “Luxury and apparel brands have found the most success on Instagram. Six of the top ten Interbrand 100 companies on Instagram are in these verticals.”

A new survey by Digitas and Curalate revealed that approximately 70% of brand engagement on Pinterest is generated by users.

Capitalize on visual social media popularity by sharing your content laced with the product information with millions of users, and let them actively engage with your products and services.

For more information on app development and marketing strategy send in your email to marketing@ymedialabs.com