Because of the success of mobile platforms over recent years, it won’t be long before they become the default, replacing desktop wholesale. For advertisers, there’s evidence that mobile advertising is far more effective than desktop, with click-through rates on Facebook alone being up to twelve times that of standard desktop PC.
Consumers love mobile, and they love using them to consume; there’s something incredibly immediate about the mobile experience that changes the psychology for the average smartphone user, pushing them to click “buy” more times than they would ordinarily.
We could use this article to give out some tips on how to do great mobile advertising, but it’s often a lot more helpful to see how some of the world’s most innovative companies have already mastered the art.
Check out how the following brands are nailing it in the mobile space.
SlimFast
SlimFast is a company that sells low-calorie milkshakes to people desperate to lose weight. The company knows that it needs to keep pushing the brand to ensure a new intake of customers every year and to keep volumes high.
Instead of just pushing banner ads, the company has decided to “gamify” its advertisements, making its banners into interactive features customers can play around with.
What’s so interesting about gamified ads is that they appear to be around 50 percent more effective at getting people to click through to landing and product pages than standard banners alone. SlimFast found that when it used regular targeted ads, its click-through rate was around 10.4 percent, but when it changed to gamified ads, it went up to an impressive 16.2 percent.
What’s even more interesting about SlimFast’s adverts is that they weren’t even that good. The banner simply asks users to shake their device to scroll through flavors and nutrition information. It’s not the most engaging of games, but it improved the company’s brand exposure enormously. And the shaking is a clever simulation of the customer experience of using the product.
Lancome
Lancome is a French brand that sells cosmetics, mainly to women. The company decided to work with app developers to seek out the most popular apps among women who used its product and then inserts its ads into them. The idea was to engage women across “multiple touch points,” infiltrating some of the most popular apps on its customers’ phones.
How popular the move was among customers remains to be seen, but Lancome did more than just paste banner ads into a bunch of everyday apps. Instead, adverts appeared on the screen, and customers could click through to see videos explaining how the company’s products could benefit them.
Virgin Media
Virgin media knows that sports fans have hectic calendars: there seems to be something new available practically every week. Because of this, the company decided to create mobile advertising that helped customers organize their schedules while at the same time encouraging them to start a subscription.
Virgin began by creating relationships with a bunch of popular websites, like the Guardian newspaper. It then displayed users with mobile ads encouraging them to click through. Once they clicked through, they were presented with a full-page advertisement telling them about Virgin media’s packages. But what was interesting about the advert was that it allowed people to automatically sync their calendars with Virgin’s sports schedule, allowing them to see what was on and when automatically. Very clever.
The advertising push worked, and estimates suggest that the company managed to add more than 100,000 new premium subscribers on the back of the campaign.
The History Channel
The History Channel is one of many cable TV channels trying to make a name for itself. But rather than rely on traditional advertising, the people behind the station recognized that they needed to do something different in the era of the smartphone.
The History Channel began a relationship with Foursquare, an app that helps people find various locations in their immediate vicinity. People use Foursquare, for instance, when they go to a new place and want to find somewhere to eat or the rail station.
The History Channel, however, noticed that many people on the app tried to use it to find local historical sites of interest and so began using the platform to send users tips and information about places of historical significance nearby.
The campaign wasn’t so much a push to convert people but rather to raise awareness of the History Channel brand.
Intel
Intel Corporation used to be one of the biggest names in tech. The company spearheaded the X86 processing platform that runs most of the desktops in the world. Ironically, even though mobile disrupted the firm, Intel is quite adept at using mobile advertising.
A couple of years ago, Intel was facing some pretty stiff competition from Canadian rival, AMD. Instead of backing down and allowing AMD to take all the glory, Intel went on an educational campaign, teaching customers about why it believed that its products were better than the competition.
The company began using PPC on mobile advertising using Bing. It also paid to have bespoke advertisements appear on CNN and CBS’s mobile sites. It turned out that each dollar spent advertising on Bing returned 40 percent more revenue than on Google.
Chipotle
Chipotle, the US-based Mexican fast-food chain, wanted to promote its eco-credentials. Rather than writing some dull blog on the company’s website, the chain decided that a much better strategy would be to create a game – so that’s precisely what the firm did. Chipotle Scarecrow was a free app that allowed people to interact with a scarecrow and then learn about where the firm sourced its ingredients.
Part of the success of the campaign had to do with the production values. More than six million people downloaded the app. But that was only part of the story. Chipotle managed to turn something dry and bland into something that millions of people found interesting. It was an unrivaled success in the history of mobile advertising and helped build the Chipotle brand.