Emerging Mobile Marketing Trends for This Year and Beyond

June 4, 2019 - 12 minutes read

We live in a mobile world, and remaining on top of the latest trends is essential.

“The adoption rate of mobile is twice that of the internet, three times that of social media, and 10 times faster than PCs.” – Emma Crowe, senior marketing expert

Not long ago, we established the importance of adopting a mobile mindset as a part of your eCommerce marketing strategy. Rapidly evolving digital technologies coupled with a continual rise in tablet or smartphone consumption mean that there have never been more opportunities to expand your audience through the medium of mobile.

If you’re an eCommerce business looking to get ahead of your competitors and stand out in your niche, here are five brand new mobile trends that you should know about.

By understanding these emerging trends in more detail, you’ll be able to refine your marketing strategies for success, boosting brand awareness as well as your profits in the process.

Let’s get going.

Mobile-first

At present, 70% of all web traffic occurs on mobile devices. Moreover, 51% of consumers confirm that they use mobile devices to find new brands and products.

It’s clear that there’s a global thirst for the freedom and flexibility that mobile devices provide. This is by no means a fresh concept (as mobile has now surpassed desktop on a global scale), and adopting a mobile-first mindset will form the foundations of your future success.

As Google begins to index content for mobile – as opposed to desktop and mobile – it’s vital that you create strategic content that is specially optimized and designed for the mobile experience.

By broadening your efforts and creating specific campaigns for mobile consumptions, you stand to boost your search engine rankings while increasing brand engagement.

To understand this concept on a deeper level, here’s a video that explains Google’s new mobile-first algorithm:

Micro-moments

The average millennial checks their smartphone around 150 times a day. That’s mind-blowing. And with such limitless access to rich, dynamic mobile content, today’s digital natives demand more than ever from brands in terms of portable consumer experiences.

As today’s consumers glance at their phones for fleeting periods, looking for a quick fix of information or entertainment, building engagement requires investing ample time in creating what is now known as micro-moments.

Here are the four key considerations you must make to deliver actionable messaging in a micro-moment:

‘I-want-to-know’ moments: These experiences are defined by an inherent thirst for information as opposed to an intent to make a purchase.
‘I-want-to-go’ moments: Here, consumers are searching for specific businesses or products near their current locale.
‘I-want-to-do’ moments: In these micro-interactions, users need assistance with completing tasks or solving fresh challenges.
‘I-want-to-buy’ moments: During these engagements, consumers are ready to commit to a purchase and require help in doing so.

By sitting down with your team collaboratively and using your buyer personas to plan clear, concise, and actionable content aimed at these specific areas of the mobile-based sales funnel, you’ll be able to capture the attention of your audience during these micro-moments, boosting your bottom line in the process.

Personalization

Once again, personalization, while in its infancy, isn’t a brand new concept – but its rapid evolution makes it a fresh and notable mobile trend.

Ninety-one percent of today’s consumers like a brand to remember them and their preferences. If you want to win on today’s mobile-first battlefield, it’s vital that you utilize your consumer data to engage your customers on a deeply personal level.

While mobile-based big data is generally rich and accurate, and consumers are happy to share their personal data with brands, it seems that the biggest roadblock to leveraging the power of personalization is delivery.

Many consumers are repelled by poorly presented or curated personalized content, and others feel pigeonholed by brands’ product suggestions or predictions.

With mobile, engagement goes both ways, and by focusing on creating a genuine dialogue with your customers, you stand to increase engagement exponentially.

Here are four key areas of personalization you should research and implement as part of your mobile strategy.

Demographic personalization based on elements such as age, sex, location, occupation, and salary.
Behavioral personalization based on the past mobile-based activities of your users.
Personality-based personalization focused on autonomous, artificially intelligent insights and human traits, tastes, and preferences.
Environmental personalization focused on the weather, conditions, or climate surrounding the consumer based on their location.

Visual search

With the rise of devices such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, voice search is quickly becoming a pivotal part of the everyday consumer experience. But have you ever considered a little something called “visual search?”

As the old saying goes, “A picture speaks a thousand words.” Based on this notion, visual search taps into the human connection to image- and video-based content.

Brand new smart visual search functionality has recently been rolled out onto branded apps and websites, while enhanced visual search platforms – including Pinterest, Bing, and Google – are currently developing advanced visual search technology for their mobile apps. And this trend is changing the mobile marketing landscape as we know it.

Watch this clip to see how visual search works in a practical context:

This AI-powered search technology means that mobile consumers can perform intuitive searches for information, services, or products using the image itself as the search query.

Take Google Lens, for instance – marrying the power of computer vision with Google’s sophisticated algorithms to help users source products based on their personal requirements. By leveraging Google’s Lens technology, Pinterest alone has seen a significant boost in visual search queries, which now average a colossal 600 million queries every month.

Today’s digital natives are visual creatures that are happy to experiment with new features online. Here are some approaches that will help cement your success when riding the crest of the ever-growing visual search wave:

Boost the search-based visibility of your images by optimizing them with alt tags and relevant keywords, among other tried and tested techniques.
Invest in advertising on visual search-ready platforms like Pinterest.
If you have the time, talent, and resources, develop a personal branded mobile app that offers seamless visual search functionality.

Virtual reality (VR) & Augmented Reality (AR)

In recent years, Immersive technologies such as VR and AR have developed at an incredible rate. Today, these innovations are a bonafide part of the mobile experience.

Coupled with today’s hunger for visuals, the desire to become immersed in mobile content means that more brands are turning to VR or AR to capture the imagination of their audience, and ultimately – drive more conversions.

Augmented Reality bridges the gap between the physical world and the digital realm through smartphones and tablets. Virtual Reality, in a mobile context, involves using tools such as headsets to place users into an entirely virtual environment. In both instances, customers are transported to the heart of their experience, which brings them closer to brands and what they have to offer.

This year and beyond, AR- and VR-based innovations will become more widespread, which means that if you want to compete on tomorrow’s battlefield, offering your consumers immersive experiences will become an essential part of your brand’s growth.

To entice new customers to your brand, you should offer an application or experience that is creative and easy to navigate – like Marriott Hotel’s recent AR offering:

The brand’s new Portal to Paradise app allows users to transport themselves into potential holiday destinations by using the app via their smartphone, gaining 360-degree views of different hotels or resorts as well as access to key stats, information, and features.

Speaking to Travel Pulse about the initiative, Diana Plazas, Vice President of Brand, Marketing & Digital – Caribbean and Latin America, Marriott International, explained:

“With the Portal to Paradise app, we want consumers to be able to explore places that either they might not have previously considered or ones they’ve always been interested in seeing, and in a first, users only need their iPhone, and no secondary technology or device, to ‘visit’ eight of our beautiful resorts in some of the Caribbean and Mexico’s most sought-after locations.”

There’s no doubt about it: We are living in a mobile world. To compete in today’s cutthroat eCommerce landscape, embracing the power of mobile technology is crucial. Take stock of these brand new mobile trends, remain abreast of the lastest portable developments, and you’ll enjoy success for many years to come.

For more eCommerce insights, explore our guide to using data to enhance your business’s eCommerce strategy.

Source for feature image.