And you thought you picked your own adventure…
I remember growing up and playing those games where you picked your own adventure. Today I realised mobile marketing is a convergence of that concept at its absolute best. With over 50% of website traffic coming from mobiles, businesses are using a multitude of mobile marketing types to guide my adventure towards them. Whether it’s a QR code on a billboard or a gaming app with an ad to a website, a business is leaving me hints on the adventure towards their preferred ending, which is me as their customer.
Convergence of technology
Over the past 5 years my mobile device has become the leading data centre for all my smart devices. Whether it is my emails, health app, grocery shopping, GPS, camera, lights, or speakers around my house. It is managing everything. With this level of convergence, it means I spend A LOT of micro-moments, as Google puts it, on my phone. I’m not the only one though, Australian’s spend around 6hrs a day on their devices, and taking advantage of those micro-moments is how a business manages to guide me to them.
Types of mobile marketing tools
The type of marketing tools each of them use to leave me hints, is really interesting. When I’m in the apps connected to devices, I often find mobile ads or connections to other apps. When I’m on retail apps for my groceries I will find mobile coupons and connections to other websites with recipes etc. When I’m on mobile websites I’ll find connections to location-based marketing such as ‘….a Roll’d store close-by’. Which is finally matched with easy mobile payment systems so I can order online quickly before I get there. It’s not just domestic products or services though. Some professional services business do this well too. They manage it with their mobile ads and the inbuilt abilities of their mobile websites. My personal favourite was Spiire, when I clicked on their office location it opened google maps and showed me how to get to their office.
Taking advantage of the micro-moments
The winning formula is to take advantage of the micro-moment. Google says – Be there, be useful, and be quick, and that is certainly true for me. I will jump on my phone to research a company, if that company has a contact us button and it connects directly to my phone app, they have me. If I have to search through their office locations, then find a contact us and its an email that doesn’t even connect to my email app…. well, sorry you’re out. Which means you could have missed out on working on a big project because the other business was easy for me to reach.
As you can see, mobile marketing is more than a responsive mobile website. Let me know the… choose your own mobile marketing adventure you last went on!
14 thoughts on “And you thought you picked your own adventure…”
Hey Belinda!! I loved this blog for someone who isn’t very knowledgable within the digital marketing world I felt you taught me alot through this blog as it was informative and well written especially linking it to choose your own adventures which I though was super clever! I love the layout of your website also its really beautiful as its my first time coming across it. I think the way you linked your sources was really fun as well 🙂 I really enjoyed it!
Hey Natasha,
Thank you so much for your kind words. I’m glad you liked the blog and found it informative. It was good fun for me to write.
Your feedback makes me think I need to keep them fun as well as informative.
I hope you come back and explore the future topics!
Love this choose-your-own adventure concept, even though it is a total illusion like you’ve said. I’d say the best uses of mobile marketing are when that final destination of arriving at a company really do feel like the natural result of a path you chose, i.e. the office map software convergence. Great read!
Hi Harvey,
Thanks for reading my blog and taking the time to comment. I’m glad you enjoyed the choose-your-own-adventure concept. It was fun as I tested the different brands and how they achieved it. You’re right, the best use of mobile marketing is the individual owning how they got there. I’ll have to look at that for my business strategy.
I hope you come back and explore the future topics!
Hey Belinda,
I really enjoyed reading your blog. I loved how you included your real life applicable scenarios such as grocery shopping and how the overall tone of the blog was very relatable. The photos were a really nice touch too and they helped illustrate the factual information that you wrote. Overall really good read and super digestible as well.
Good job!
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment on my blog. I’m glad you found it relatable and easy to digest. Your feedback has given me more confidence to concentrate on a personal connection to the topic so others can relate to it a little more.
I hope you come back and explore the future topics!
Thanks again.
Hey Belinda, as always what a charming read!! Just thought i would ask your thoughts about the marketing tools businesses use, do you think this boarders on an invasion of privacy? I know it’s convenient for everyone but do you think it’s a positive thing for businesses to utilise this?
Hey Amelia,
Thanks for reading my blog and your kind words. You pose an interesting question, one I expect most digital marketers grapple with on a regular basis. I think our laws, are slowly catching up to ensure protection https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/the-privacy-act/. Your comment helped me explore further into what do we do if the laws aren’t there to regulate and I came across Lessig’s Four Modalities of Regulation. Something I’ll need to investigate further.
Thanks for the thought provoking question.
I love the analogy you’ve used to introduce the topic! Choose your adventure – but with a catch, we’ve mapped out your customer journey for you.. to entice you towards our end product haha. Very well written content.
If there’s one thing I’d suggest to improve on for the layout (and I’m nit-picking at this point), it would be to break up your chunks of text into smaller paragraphs. The reason for this being that more and more users are viewing blogs from their mobile devices, and long paragraphs will seem even longer on these smaller screens.
Viewers tend to skim as well. You’ve got a few good lines in there – you could put those in a coloured block of quote text to break up the content as well.
Hope this helps, and looking forward to reading more from you! x
Hi Pheobe,
Thanks for taking the time to read my blog and provide the feedback. I will look into the coloured block of text, that’s a great idea!
Hey Belinda, I love how you introduced the blog with a catchy headline and kept the information engaging and easy to digest! I agree with your view on taking advantage of micro-moments to leverage getting a wider reach on prospective customers. I know I have given up on a business if they’re too hard to get information on! One thing I was unsure about was who the target audience was for the message you are conveying and whether it was to a consumer or a business? As the title and first few paragraphs were speaking to a consumer but the last paragraph on micro-moments seemed like it was directed at a business.
Look forward to your next blog 🙂
Hey Nicole, thanks for dropping by and reading my blog. I appreciate your insights and comments. You have given me something to think about in terms of the target audience.
Hi Belinda,
I really appreciated the emotional journey I went on while reading. The catchy but ominous title brought me in, then I was greeted with an informative, personal and optimistic introduction which convinced me to read the whole thing. It is hard to fault this post.
Hey Jack,
Thanks for visiting and taking the time to read and comment on my blog. I love that you have shared the journey of my post in your feedback, it made me smile. One thing you have made me think about, is how I show more of that personal trait of optimism. I am going to try and weave that into my future posts a little more.
Thanks again for visiting!