Facebook and its big step in mobile marketing

By Abhinash Jena on July 17, 2015

The year 2012 was a mobile year when advertisements through mobiles crossed a mark of $6,525 million worldwide. Moreover, the increasing use of smartphones is enabling users to stay connected via mobile internet all the time (Cengiz Yilmaz, Varnali, & Toker, 2011).

Today consumers are not hooked to television screens especially when they see an advertisement they either flicker the channel or shift their attention to a tablet or mobile device. This shift in the paradigm has caused changes in habits of media consumption and thus advertisers are required to consider mobile phones playing a significant role. Consumers with smartphones find themselves using mobiles to educate themselves on different products and thus, mobile marketing can be a great way to engage the audience with a brand (Stuart & Palmieri, 2012).

Reaching a customer on a mobile phone

Mobile is a channel of communication which has delivered great results. Mobile marketing has been observed to create a positive impact on the Return on Investments over marketing for several companies and thus, it has become an inseparable part of the marketing mix today. Mobile devices are no longer just a medium to contact someone but their significance in the life of consumers has become more prominent with mobile applications offering facilities such as alarms, watches, news, games, songs, videos and many more (Stuart & Palmieri, 2012).

Mobile marketing can take many shapes and a brand can reach consumers via this channel in different ways such as mobile applications, image ads, search ads, QR codes, local ads and the traditional SMS route.

Facebook and its advertisers

“Mobile is not just a fundamental change in marketing – it’s a fundamental change in the way we do business,” says Carolyn Everson, the VP, of Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook. Facebook’s recent acquisition of Whatsapp for $19 billion was a significant move in the direction of mobile marketing in addition to the already running and widely used Facebook mobile application on smartphones. Whatsapp, which started only in 2009 was claiming over 500 million active users per month by mid of 2014 and these users were observed to share over 10 billion messages, 700 million images, and 100 million videos every day (Chowdhry, 2014).

Facebook was nowhere in the mobile space till 2012 but by 2013 itself, it had taken more than 16% of the mobile display ad marketing. Strategies that are being followed by Facebook on this front were the addition of video advertisements in a mobile newsfeed, modification of mobile page layout, improvement in mobile user experience, adding of the search feature, rebuilding of mobile apps, etc. (Tode, 2013; Sterling, 2013).

This turnaround of the company could be attributed to the ‘mobile first’ Marketing strategy adopted by Facebook in 2012. Facebook was a late adopter of mobile marketing in the world where most consumers were already using smartphones but the move paid off well and since the adoption of the new strategy, Facebook has grown its revenue in such a way that by 2013, 41% of the Ad revenue of Facebook was coming from mobiles (Brandon Bailey, 2013).

The ‘Mobile first’ strategy of Facebook has significantly changed the way Facebook is seen on mobile. While earlier the advertisements were shown below the posts, the placement has shifted to the news feed section with an advertisement appearing on screen after a few posts. This move, however, was not welcomed initially as the ad posts were too frequent which reduced the satisfaction of customers. To this, Facebook responded with a decrease in the frequency of ads to one newsfeed ad after every 20 posts(Brandon Bailey, 2013).

To strengthen its mobile presence, Facebook has also purchased several promising standalone apps other than the much-talked-about Whatsapp. These include Instagram, one-two punch messenger and the paper app(Knibbs, 2014).

Future of business on the go

It is not just Facebook but more giant organizations like Google, Pandora, and Amazon that are now focussing on mobile marketing because of the business advantages coming from a significant level of consumer engagement with brands through mobile.

Experts have forecasted a huge increase in mobile marketing expenses and consumer engagement with brands through mobile. It is predicted that the revenue from mobile advertisements will grow to $24.5 billion by 2016 (Foong, 2014). Some observations strengthening these beliefs can be the user engagement statistics like:

  • 40% of buyers use QR code scanning before purchase.
  • 57% of the users do not recommend brands if their mobile website is not good.
  • SMS coupons are forwarded by users more than 8 times as the coupons are received via email.
  • USA alone is expected to earn a whopping $400 billion from Mobile marketing by 2015.

There is no doubt that mobile marketing is going to see a huge surge with more and more companies adopting the platform for their product promotions as well as more consumers engaging with brands over this media. 

References

I work as an editor and writer for Project Guru. I have a keen interest in new and upcoming learning and teaching methods. I have worked on numerous scholarly projects in the fields of management, marketing and humanities in the last 10 years. Currently, I am working in the footsteps of the National Education Policy of India to help and support fellow professors to emphasise interdisciplinary research and curriculum design.

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