Liane Dietrich, UK MD of affiliate network, LinkShare discusses the growth in mobile and explains how marketers should best capitalise on the mobile shopping boom.
Mobile is the latest buzzword hitting the marketing scene. Barely a day goes past without a new story popping up about the accelerated growth of the mobile platform, from smartphones to tablets, as both an indispensible sales and marketing platform.
Whatever industry you work in you can’t escape the mobile revolution and for marketers the move to invest in mobile is no longer a channel to monitor and address at a later date, it’s an essential element to any digital marketing campaign. As such, marketers have an increasing appetite to know how to best capitalise in mobile, specifically the mobile shopping boom.
The trade association for online advertising, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), recently reported that mobile ad spend increased by an overwhelming 116 per cent in 2010. Moreover, digital marketing experts, the BIO Agency found that one in five smartphone owners now use apps on their handsets to shop for goods and services.
Clearly times are changing and brands in every sector need to act fast. Indeed, with industry players launching dedicated mobile payment strategies and an increasing number of advertisers launching fully optimised mobile sites, 2011 is well on the way to being even more profitable than last year. The market for tablet devices is also set to explode with Gartner predicting that tablet sales will hit 208 million in 2014.
The trend towards mobile was echoed by industry research that we carried out at the Technology for Marketing & Advertising tradeshow, which sought to understand how and where marketers are investing this year. We found that mobile and apps are a major focus for just under half (45%) of marketers that we spoke to. In a further sign of the ongoing strength of online advertising, a third are planning to continue investments in affiliate marketing (33%), followed closely by investments in ads on personal social networks (31%) and online video advertising (30%).
The research paints a very positive and exciting picture for the marketing industry in 2011. It is on the cusp of entering a new phase of growth with mobile marketing and investment in apps set to lead the way. But how do you make money from this trend? The first step marketers must make is to ensure their mobile sites are fully optimised to drive sales.
Brands and advertisers are both set to benefit from investing in affiliate marketing. One advantage is being able to partner with a wide range of affiliates and experiment with varying tactics to discover those which yield the most positive results.
This process also offers both parties a valuable insight into the most up to date consumer behaviour, allowing mobile marketing programmes to be adapted and fully optimised quickly. A retail brand cannot succeed in today’s mobile orientated economy without having an engaging and intuitive mobile optimised site for browsing and purchasing.
The popularity of smartphones is changing the way consumers shop and therefore how businesses make money. For marketers that need to build an optimised website there are important considerations to remember:
• Mobile screens are small, so keep it simple – you need to understand what critical information your customers want to read on their mobile phone
• Consumer psychology is different on mobile devices – it is vital to make sure the layout of your mobile site adheres to the three click rule – it can’t take more than three clicks to get from homepage to checkout
The second step is for marketers to make the most of the resources open to them in the affiliate marketing space. To help, we have identified three major themes that can create new and innovative opportunities marketers developing mobile strategies for their campaigns:
• Mobile linking: there is now a wide range of m-commerce tracking technologies available to help advertisers and publishers reach and accurately measure the buying behaviour of mobile consumers. As marketers invest in digital marketing campaigns, mobile linking will help them take advantage of the new consumer content consumption habits.
• Dynamic rich media: the future is feature rich and consumers of every shape and size are more likely to respond to messages and advertising that is eye-catching and engaging. As a result, we’ll start to see increasing use of HTML5, Flash and Javascript technologies as well as dedicated widgets to encourage a higher level of interaction with the end-consumer.
• RSS: RSS feeds will start to be more widely used to share information about particular products and services with target customers. Not only does this help to drive higher conversion rates, it also helps make marketing more targeted and relevant which will in turn drive increased traffic to a site and improve sales.
Mobile is now well on its way to becoming a firmly established as a retail channel and advertisers need to sit up and take notice of the revenue opportunities available to them.
Implemented effectively, affiliate marketing can be a highly rewarding mobile marketing tool, not only does it provide an excellent opportunity for brands to implement measurable and impactful campaigns, but it allows advertisers to maximise the ROI of every pound spent. Those without a fully optimised mobile site will stand to lose out on sales in the short term and are also likely to suffer the long-term impact as loyal customers turn to their more savvy counterparts to make purchases when on the move.
By Liane Dietrich
UK MD
LinkShare
www.LinkShare.com
