Ad Age recently reported that companies like AT&T not only cannot seem to crack mobile advertising, they don’t want to. And this is fantastic news for small businesses.
According to the article, AT&T Mobility is a TV first advertiser. They’ve made the conscious business decision to use TV as their bread and butter marketing.
Advertisers have to be flexible for mobile to work
Mobile advertising demands the advertisers be flexible, fragmented and fast. Where TV is a set it and forget it predictable advertising method for big brands like AT&T, mobile demands a much more labor-intensive approach.
First off, I will spare you the irony of a mobile company looking at mobile advertising as a negative. What is interesting here is that big brands are drastically under spending and under utilizing mobile as an advertising medium.
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Mobile is the future of advertising. (And the future is now).
Especially interesting is that mobile should soon pass TV as the number one screen of choice for the masses. The rule of thumb is to put your advertising dollars where the eyeballs are. More and more, the eyeballs are on mobile.
But there is so much more to mobile. Users are connected to their devices in a much deeper and more personal way than to any other medium. People practically sleep with their devices. It is always with them and accessible.
A mobile app is the best solution
One of the best ways to advertise on a mobile device is through a mobile app. Where an ad that pops up at you is interruption marketing no matter how targeted, users who own your app want to hear from you.
As mobile apps become the place where users spend the majority of their time, brands are faced with a bigger challenge. It is very expensive for them to build quality mobile apps.
According to an expert cited in The AdAge article, it can require as much as a $500,000 investment to build an effective mobile app. This is out of reach of big brands let alone the small business owner.
This is big news for small businesses
So why is this great news for the small business? Because where these big brands have all of these limitations, the little guy can be much more flexible.
The secret to providing a great mobile app is to provide a solution to a problem for your customers. If you can do that, they will be plugged right into your marketing the way Neo was plugged into the Matrix.
There is no more instantaneous way to market to your consumer than through a mobile application. When you send an email to your clients, you’re doing something right if you get a 20% open rate. If half the people even see the email in their inbox, you’re practically walking on water.
The best way to get in front of your customers
With a mobile app, 100% of the people will see your ad. Their phone will notify them and they will immediately see it. It is called a push notification.
Imagine being able to tap your customer on the shoulder and show them your advertisement the minute you publish it. That’s what a push notification does. But the best part is that they want these messages sent to them from you. So they are more likely to consume the advertising message than with typical interruption marketing methods. When done right, mobile marketing is a home run.
But here’s the magical part. A mobile app for a small business doesn’t require a 500K investment. For a small business like a beauty salon, day spa, restaurant and more, they can be built very affordably.
The big brands are not flexible enough to be able to capitalize on this. You as a small business have a distinct advantage here. You can have a mobile app that provides a beautiful experience for your customers and reap the benefits. And for the small business that doesn’t need to worry about hacking into expensive order and CRM systems, these apps are super affordable.
Read more at http://www.business2community.com/mobile-apps/mobile-app-competitive-advantage-small-business-0901087#TFF0Yq7oXhbSTVJE.99
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