How your mobile phone is revolutionizing the marketing industry

You might not think it, but the marketing industry has been around for centuries. As long as there has been either another brand or store selling the same product as another, there has always been competition to attract customers.

In the beginning, companies simply either wrote their latest deals on a blackboard and placed it on the sidewalk to let people know about their offers as they walked on past. Then businesses moved on to either painting or printing bigger and more colorful advertisements in their windows or on the side of their buildings. Then when newspapers and cinema came along, people started making adverts to either print alongside articles or to show before films. As new inventions came along, like the television and even computers, there were even more places to advertise. No invention has had such a huge impact on the world of marketing as the mobile phone.

Here’s a look at why this small device has had such a huge impact on an industry that continues to grow.

Buying online

It’s hard to imagine, but back merely a couple of decades ago, there was no such thing as internet shopping. If you wanted to buy something, the only choice was to physically travel to a store that sold it, pick it up off the shelf, and take it to a cashier. If you couldn’t find anywhere that sold it near you, you were forced to request a catalog in the mail for somewhere that did stock it. Even then, by the time you’d received the catalog and posted your cheque and order form back to the retailer, it would have taken weeks, if not months, to receive that parcel to your door.

Fast forward a few years, and the way people shop has swung in the complete opposite direction. There are millions of people around the world that make the vast majority of their purchases online. Instead of visiting their local store, they’re accessing their preferred search engine on their mobile phones or other devices. This change has happened for many reasons. They include getting more choice online and, more often than not, finding lower prices as well. A few years ago, people would have found it more convenient to purchase something in the store unless it was an obscure product they struggled to find. These days, some people will even pull out their mobile phone while they’re stood in front of the product they want in a store, just to check whether an online retailer is offering a better deal.

That means the market has gotten more competitive, as there are hundreds if not thousands of different retailers that are eager to sell you their product. As this article suggests, around 90 percent of shoppers start product searches without a particular brand in mind. As people buying online are no longer restricted by geographical distances, brands can no longer rely on the fact they’ve bought with them previously to win a customer’s loyalty. That means the role of a marketing assistant is now not only a lot more difficult, but it’s a lot more vital to any business. They have to fight for every single sale they make.

Advertising online

As more products are bought online, it makes sense that marketing departments are focusing more of their efforts online as well. Traditionally when you think of an advert, you would probably think of either a graphic printed in a magazine or a newspaper, a little 30-second video during the commercial break of your favorite TV show, or that little speech between songs on the radio. Nowadays, the word advertisement can mean so much more. It can mean a banner that appears at the top of a news or entertainment website. It could mean a paid-for advertisement that appears on social media that looks the same as a post that one of your friends would make. The word could even describe the process of a company paying or giving free products to a celebrity influencer in return for them posting pictures and videos on their social media about the product.

Marketing departments need to be across all of these platforms at all times. It can often be a challenge for big brands to decide exactly where to focus their efforts and their budgets on advertising when there are so many options. One platform, like Facebook, could be the most popular app with a target audience one week and then the next a newer craze, for example, TikTok could overtake the platform in popularity. Not only do marketing teams need to be across all of these platforms, but they also need to constantly learn the skills to produce different content on all of these different platforms.

Sending the latest deals direct to their phone

As mentioned earlier in this article, as most people visit a search engine to look for goods, it’s very difficult for companies to build brand loyalty with their customers. The main way to combat this problem is to change where they’re searching for products. Many companies are trying to stop people from using search engines and instead persuading them to search for products using an app specially designed for that particular brand. The main advantage of this is that the brand can control exactly what appears when they search for a particular term, i.e., if they search for jumpers, they will only find jumpers sold by that particular retailer. This removes any temptation or even the possibility of the customer buying another product from a competitor.

Whilst the advantages are obvious for the brands, the advantages for the customer are less obvious. Not only does it reduce the amount of choice they get and reduce the chance of them finding the product at the lowest price, but every app for a brand like this also takes up valuable storage space on their phone. This why an increasing number of brands are spending a lot of money developing these apps to make them a better experience for the user. Some offer content exclusive to the app, like articles, videos, or even podcasts. Some allow users to set up their own accounts to bookmark their favorite products and even collect loyalty points to unlock better deals. Some apps even offer a discount on products if they buy them from the app instead of from their own website.

While it might seem weird for a brand to offer products for a lower price on a different platform, it shows just how eager brands are to get people to download these apps onto their phone to increase brand loyalty.

Phones are getting an increasing amount of our attention

Not only are our mobile phones inventing new ways methods for marketing to advertise their products to people, but they’re also making some traditional methods of advertising almost obsolete. As more and more people are getting their news either via news websites or social media, fewer people are reading newspapers and magazines, and therefore fewer people see the paid advertisements inside these publications. As more and more people are streaming music or podcasts online to pass the time, fewer people are tuning into traditional radio stations, meaning fewer people are listening to the adverts in the commercial breaks of those radio stations. The success of brands like Netflix and Amazon Prime also means fewer people are watching shows on traditional TV networks, meaning fewer people are watching these stations’ commercial breaks. Although most of the major streaming networks use subscription fees to fund their shows and movies, some of these programs have even started using product placements to raise even more money.

Mobile phones are even affecting one of the most traditional advertisements of them all – the billboard. Before the invention of the mobile phone, if you were walking through a city or sat down waiting for a bus, you would have probably spotted a number of different advertisements. Whether it’s on a billboard by the side of the road, on the side of a bus, or even on the bus shelter you’re waiting at; you’re never too far away from an advertisement. The only problem is that instead of looking up at these advertisements, many people are too busy looking at their phones to notice them. Some companies have even reverted to building digital billboards to broadcast moving images to try and catch the eye of whoever is walking by. If you’re still in doubt of the impact mobile phones have had on things like billboards, simply look at the orientation of this new technology.

In the olden days, billboards were most commonly landscape. These new digital billboards are mainly portrait. While many people may suggest that this is so they don’t take up too much space in the station, mall, or another public place, you can’t help but notice that they’re almost replicating the exact shape and style of a smartphone screen.