Trends In Mobile Marketing For The Next Decade

It is easy to get caught up in thinking about trends in mobile marketing over the next year or two.  With shifting strategies and user patterns, making accurate predictions of even the near future is more of a guessing game than a practical exercise.  However, there is value in trying to predict where the technology will end up and how people and companies will be using it in an e-marketing context.  Getting ahead of the competition, even if just a little, provides companies with a stronger position in the future.  Taking a risk based on predictions and trends is a troubling proposition, but the benefits and potential payoffs are often too large to dismiss.  Predicting the next trend in mobile industry news will offer an advantage to those who are able to seize the opportunities now and set themselves up on the leading edge of those trends.  Here are a few mobile marketing trends for the next decade that will almost certainly come to pass.

One of the biggest trends in mobile marketing over the next decade has already started.  Mobile advertising

has been around for sometime now and location based marketing is on the rise.  But with the wave of smart phones and location-based social media applications, the ability to deliver ads specifically targeted to a mobile phone based on their location will only improve.  The GPS systems in smart phones will allow marketers to know where a user is in relation to the ads that they have to serve.  Someone walking down a street with a Starbucks nearby could be sent ad advertisement for a caramel latte.  Even better, they could be sent a coupon for the drink as an enticement to go buy the latte.  Users connecting with social media applications such as FourSquare are also on the rise.  By checking in at specific locations, users are providing valuable information to where they are, but also where they have been and go often.  By utilizing this information, mobile ads can be targeted to people who have checked in at everything from the local ice cream shop to a Wal-Mart store.  Integrated location specific advertising services are in their nascent stages now but in the next decade they are set to explode in a big way.

In the next decade, mobile devices will not just be a method of communicating and gathering information, they will be the way many people pay for goods and services.  Right now there is a small market for people to pay with their mobile device.  However, in the next decade that will change dramatically.  Mobile devices will become the way many people pay for purchases.  Instead of carrying around a wallet with many credit cards and debit cards and cash, all the payment information can be contained in the mobile device and transmitted to the merchant for payment.  This will revolutionize the way purchases are made and will solidify the mobile device as the single most important item to carry.  While banks will always have their own mobile apps to check balances and accounts, either they or a third party will have to create and expand the current mobile payment system to be more secure and ubiquitous enough for this type of payment option to take root.  It will happen eventually, it’s just a matter of time and investment to get the system in place.

Trends In Mobile Marketing Will Continue To Grow

Political campaigns have already started to use mobile marketing.  The campaign of then Senator Obama capitalized on the near universal cell phone usage of younger Americans to create mobile applications and text message systems to communicate with potential voters and supporters.  This trend in capitalizing on mobile marketing by politicians will only continue as people increase their use of smart phones and their devices become a primary method of communication and information gathering.  Grassroot organizing will no longer be done in meetings and offices, but will be done through the social web.  This includes mobile devices as a means of political advertisement.  Providing a platform for political communications and advertisements will be an increasing trend for mobile marketing in the next decade.

The biggest emerging market for mobile marketing is Asia.  A company that sets its sights on penetrating the market there will be able to reap great rewards in the coming decade.  Cell phone ownership has sky-rocketed and with over one billion people in China alone, the opportunity for mobile marketing is enormous.  One recent campaign for Unilever’s Axe yielded 680 million incoming calls.  Being able to harness the sheer numbers of mobile users in the Asian market will be a key to who the major players are in the mobile marketing world in the next decade.  Getting a foothold in the market now will provide the ability to ride the rising tide of the Asian market that will inevitably arise in the next decade.

Predicting the future can obviously a very difficult thing to do.  History is littered with predictions of the future that never came to pass.  However, the trends that are listed here have already started.  Though many of them are small now, there is a great deal of room for them to expand in the coming decade.  There is no reason these trends will not continue to develop and attract a greater user base.  These mobile marketing trends will continue to offer opportunities in the coming decade.

What Trends In Mobile Marketing Do You See Coming Over The Next Year?