Hey everyone!

As I alluded to in last week’s blog, I will be discussing a further aspect of mobile marketing: mobile advertisements.  In today’s modern society, users are constantly connected to their phones and utilizing it to text, talk, e-mail, or surf the internet.  However, while surfing the internet, users are being exposed to mobile advertisements.  While many might view this as a negative component of internet browsing, as most are not fans of intrusive advertising, the Millennial Generation does not at all view this as an invasion.  In fact, ¾ of the Millennial Generation are open to receiving mobile advertisements.

http://youtu.be/YAGUggClee0

The 2012 “Light You Up” mobile campaign by Adidas, summarized here, was created to promote their launch of a new brand of Adidas soccer cleats.  Adidas, recognizing that the market they need to target was the Millennial Generation, as well as pinpointing that Millennia’s are receptive to mobile advertisements, created a static banner ad which would appear for every consumer who was near the launch party.  If a user clicked on the banner ad, they would immediately be taken to a promotional webpage describing the event, location, and time.  This mobile campaign turned out to be a tremendous success, engaging thousands of consumers to not only click on the advertisement to learn about the event, but also show up for the event.

The 2012 Adidas “Light You Up” mobile campaign is just an example of one of many successful mobile advertisement campaigns; Olympus’ “Capture Your Stories,” Yamaha’s FZ-16 Mobile Ads, and UNICEF’s Breastfeeding Awareness Mobile Ads are just a few of the success stories pertaining to mobile advertising.

Unfortunately, consumers hear only of how successful or great a mobile campaign was without being provided with any statistical data, which is what actually tells the story of how successful the campaign in question was. Adidas, however, conducted a case study in February 2013 regarding the power of mobile advertising, and published the colossal economic success they achieved.

To summarize, Adidas achieved: a 20% conversion rate from their mobile store locator to in-store visits, a 680% incremental increase in their ROI, and set the stage for further mobile advertising campaigns and investments.  These are enormous results which shows the impact mobile advertising actually has in our contemporary society.  I believe that all businesses and corporations should take advantage of the Millennial Generation’s reception to mobile advertisements, and perhaps begin their mobile marketing through either Google Mobile Ads or Microsoft Mobile Ad Network.

In our contemporary society, the Millennial Generation, collectively known as Generation Y, is the generation who are vastly connected with technology. Growing up in an environment surrounded by rapidly advancing technology, they are fully able to grasp all concepts that technology has to offer.  Specifically, they have become connected and inseparable with their smartphones.  Nearly all of the Millennial Generation carry a smartphone which is within arm’s reach at all times.  Just take a walk around your campus or check out the street and you’ll see practically everyone looking down at their phone and either texting, talking, e-mailing or listening to their music via their smartphone.

Yes, that guy does indeed walk into a bear while texting.

This, however, is very advantageous to marketers.  Mobile marketing is rapidly gaining importance in today’s society, and is a topic which I want to briefly touch on.  The Millennial Generation is constantly connected to their phone, researching the best products and services available, and sharing with their friends stories about good and bad experiences they’ve encountered with a certain business.  There is, however, one point I want to touch on.

Mobile Consumers Talk…A LOT.

               A marketing review of the Millennial Generation reported that they have an impact                on $500 billion of the annual spending in America.  Exactly what does this                            mean?  Well….it means that they have a great magnitude of persuasion on the                    market with regards to how and where money gets spent.  Millennia’s use mobile                review apps and websites, such as Urbanspoon, Yelp, and Facebook more than                anyone else – two out of every three are constantly connected so that they can                    share their experiences after utilizing certain products and services.  As well,                      Millennia’s are 3.5 times more likely to be persuaded by social reviews from their                peers.

The above data just reiterates that word of mouth marketing is something that should never be underestimated by a mobile marketer.  The power of word of mouth is a very strong asset that can be utilized in a business’ favour.  People are constantly sharing their opinions about businesses throughout the internet, be it good or bad.  However, people are more likely to post a less than favourable opinion about a business rather than favourable one and, therefore, businesses should always be aiming to provide top-notch service.

All in all, this is just one small piece of information that is useful to businesses interested in expanding their mobile marketing division.  In other words, take advantage of the massive influence that the Millennial Generation has on the market, and cater to what the Millennia’s are looking for!

Stay tuned for my next blog which will explore other certain features that mobile marketers can take advantage of.  For now, I’ll leave you with Adidas’ “Light You Up” mobile advertisement campaign which is one example that I will be talking about next week!
http://youtu.be/YAGUggClee0

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Dropbox are all Multi-Billion Dollar brands which share a very important commonality:  all were start-up companies which were built from the ground up without the use of ‘traditional’ marketing techniques such as public relation firms, press releases, or radio and billboard advertisements.  Passing on the ‘traditional’, these companies hired marketers who were coined as “growth hackers.”

I instantly became interested in how a “growth hacker” functions after discovering what they have accomplished, so I decided to dig a little further and find out what they’re all about.  Interestingly, growth hackers are vastly different from what a ‘normal’ marketer offers, so I decided that this blog is going to give you a little taste of what growth hacking is about.

First things first, a growth hacker is basically a marketer who is solely in charge of marketing for a start-up company.  Although growth hackers and marketers are both involved in the overall plan of advertising a brand, a growth hacker utilizes a unique set of tools to tackle the challenges of promoting a start-up brand to the public.  Certain challenges that growth hackers have to overcome are:

i.              Extreme uncertainty among start-up companies.  You have no idea of who your consumers are, the value of your product, and which markets are best suited for your product.

ii.             Slow growth.  Start-ups need to have an enormous amount of growth to be successful.  Growth hackers have to figure out how to increase growth by tenfold in order for the start-up to be successful.

iii.            Brand Equity.  Consumers have no idea about your brand, and thus you must educate them in a positive manner in order for them to trust you.

For a growth hacker to surmount such daunting tasks, they must first form a mindset of doing anything and everything which will maximize user engagement and sharing.  Generating positive social media and word of mouth gets consumers interested in your product.  In attempting to promote positive social media, growth hackers utilize certain tactics and tools:  viral and paid acquisitions, sales teams, content and email marketing, search engine optimization, and analytics.  Analytics are an important tool in the arsenal of growth hackers because data is what should drive all marketing and product-development decisions of start-up companies, not hunches or instincts.

Loads of information is available on growth hackers and I could keep going on forever.  If start-up companies spark your interest and you want to learn more about the specifics of marketing a start-up company, I would suggest looking into buying and reading “Growth Hacker Marketing:  A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising” by Ryan Holiday.  It’s offered as an eBook on four different platforms: B&N, iBooks, Kobo, and Amazon.