The Top 3 Most Innovative Mobile Marketing Examples
By: Tin Vidović
Tags: Mobile Marketing Tips, Mobile App Marketing, Mobile Marketing Strategy, Mobile Apps, Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing examples teach us the difference between success and failure. They also show us where we can improve our marketing strategies and what bumps on the road we should avoid.

There is an old Latin proverb that says, “Repetitio mater studiorum est.” The adage translates to English as “repetition is the mother of all learning (or knowledge)”. Even in mobile marketing, this saying holds true, at least to a degree. To launch a successful campaign, we often repeat the tried and true methods of our marketing predecessors.

However, sometimes it’s not as simple as copying someone else’s homework. It comes a time in a marketer’s life when they have to be innovative. Courageous and daring.

Nearly all other devices are losing their share of the audience to the rapid growth of mobile. This only means new opportunities are on the horizon. And a prudent marketer will leverage and make use of these newfound success chances.

Mobile marketing opens up new chances through a door to a fast-growing audience. It extends a hand of friendship towards the younger audiences. Consequently, this allows you to connect with an open-minded, fresh market. Before we head on to see how the top brands do it, you can check here Udonis’ mobile marketing examples and videos.

Here is how some of the world’s most recognizable brands leveraged the power of mobile marketing.

IKEA Catalog Mobile App

Catalogs are a common sales technique. Businesses use it to categorize and group items together. The first catalogs were printed pieces. But, today you can find them online, in e-commerce shops, almost anywhere you look on the internet.

If you’ve ever gone furniture shopping, you’ll know that catalogs are common in those types of stores. IKEA is a prime example. Nowadays, memes are circulating jokingly calling IKEA a labyrinth. Without the help of their employees or their catalog, you’ll have a hard time navigating their biggest shops.

For this reason, IKEA took their catalog and transformed it into a brand-new experience. As an interactive platform, the IKEA catalog app attracted much attention.

Preview of IKEA AR Catalog App

The Trick Behind the App

IKEA’s mobile app allowed its users to access bonus content by scanning the pages of the catalog. This, in turn, increased the user experience by employing a clever trick.

The clever trick was that IKEA used both the unique properties of mobile devices while at the same time providing customers with an entertaining breath of fresh air in the form of an interactive app.

Not only could you scan the pages to get some extra content, but you could also place various products around your room. These would show you a clearer picture of how the product would fit into your home. Leveraging the power of modern mobile cameras, IKEA made a strategically intelligent move and gained over 6 million installs.

Users spent eight minutes on average with the app. In comparison, they’ve spent up to three minutes browsing just the catalog.

It didn’t feel like marketing. The IKEA catalog app was the number one marketing app by the number of downloads in 2012. Even though they’ve launched the app seven years ago, their lessons still have value for us today.

Domino’s Points for Pies App

Pizza enthusiasts of the United States enjoyed Domino’s new loyalty program which encouraged the purchase of pizza from any brand, yes, even from their competitors like Pizza Hut.

Domino’s new loyalty program was launched on February 2 just in time for the Super Bowl Weekend. The promo program, called Points for Pies, rewarded users by giving away in-app points for every pizza scanned.

Whether it was Chicago deep-dish or New York-style, or pizza from their competitors like Pizza Hut or Papa John’s Pizza, users would get a chance to earn points regardless of where it came from.

The promo lasted between February and April 28, 2019, and it was a near-genius marketing move. To give you some context, Super Bowl Weekend is a hectic time for brands here in the US. Domino’s rival, their prime competitor Pizza Hut, got to be the official pizza sponsor for the NFL.

Being in the spotlight, Pizza Hut was looking to get major attention from the NFL audience. Domino’s had to adapt if they wanted a piece of that pie-zza.

And what did the mad lads do? To direct some focus towards themselves, Dominos’ launched its new loyalty app. In a way, they weaponized pizzas.

Rewarding customers for eating any pizza sounds like the ravings of a marketing madman. However, it did work out for Domino’s in the end. Each scanned pizza would get you some points. After sixty points, users had the chance to win a Domino’s, fresh and free, product.

What did the Domino’s get out of it?

The buzz. Domino’s new app was all the rage during that weekend. The app leveraged cutting-edge AI technology for (pizza) image recognition. Users shared images of their pizza’s and it quickly snowballed into massive user-generated content for Domino’s.

Inspired by the new hackvertising trend, Domino’s directly targeted their biggest competitor in an attempt to raise their brand awareness, garner new customers, and grow a larger loyal fan base.

The innovative trick paid off. Some clever guessing and mathematics proved that Domino’s got to $13 per acquired customer which is rather cheap (understatement). Here you can read more about the math behind Domino’s Points for Pizza.

Behr and IBM — the Potential of AI-powered Chatbots

Quick question. What do you get when you combine Behr Paint with IBM, one of the world’s leading AI-researchers? An award-winning mobile ad, that’s what.

IBM has been one of the world’s leading research forces in the field of artificial intelligence since the 50s. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Behr Paint Company approached them with an offer of collaboration. As a wood care company, Behr supplies American and Canadian customers alike with exterior wood care products and architectural paint.

Behr approached IBM with a specific goal in mind — to give its customers a memorable experience. IBM accepted the offer and together with Behr delivered an informative and interactive product experience for Behr’s customers.

Meet Watson, the AI Assistant

As a result, a unique mobile website emerged from their merged workshop. IBM’s AI bot Watson Assistant was the figurative brain behind their joint mobile marketing campaign. Watson’s primary role was to help customers select their room’s color. To achieve this, Watson asked users questions to provide recommendations based on a deeply personalized experience.

The AI bot asked questions about room’s sentimental implications and reasons for renovating, but Watson also asked users how they felt about their room. With the power of Watson at their back, coupled with a natural language processor, and IBM’s Tone Analyzer, Behr & IBM tailored a custom experience for each website user.

Behr’s partnership with IBM was lucrative and innovative enough to win them an award for their labor. As such, the reward for the Best Mobile Online Ad in 2019 speaks volumes of their success.

AI-powered chatbots open up new marketing possibilities. Mobile users have developed a unique relationship with their mobile devices.

Watson, the superstar of IBM’s and Behr’s mobile marketing campaign.

AI — the Marketing Goldmine

In fact, mobile users are often engaged on their mobile devices. An average US adult spends 3 hours and 43 minutes daily on their phones. As technology progresses, we will see more AI-powered chatbots. As a result, more companies will be able to establish a more intimate connection with their users.

Even now, we track user behavior across our websites and apps with various analytics tools. However, the data that we can extract with them is more often than not impersonal. The data collected with AI chatbots, on the other hand, is often more personal in nature. Marketers will use these conversations to tailor marketing messages, recommendations, and personalized alerts. As long as they don’t gather any personally identifiable info, this turn of events will be a win-win situation for marketers and the audiences alike.

Congratulations are in order to IBM and Behr for winning this year’s best mobile ad.

Conclusion

The common denominator of all the apps above is the magnificent focus on user engagement. They all seek to make their users happier and less frustrated. As a result, the aforementioned campaigns are regarded as successful, both from marketer’s and users’ points of view.

Rather than badgering users with constant interruptions and intrusive ads, these companies built an all-around enjoyable and memorable experience. This has brought them a burst of new users but, more importantly, it built a loyal customer base.

To avoid looking like they are constantly marketing their services to users, these companies focused on building apps that are not only entertaining and easy to use but bring some value to users’ quality of life.

Many companies use touch screens, in-built cameras, and location tracking to set up their mobile marketing campaigns. But, it’s not enough to just adapt your desktop marketing campaigns to mobile devices. You have to innovate and provide value. After all, if users spend their time in your app, they should be incentivized and rewarded for doing so. A happy customer is a loyal customer.

If you want to have a better chance of success with your mobile marketing campaigns, you will have to think outside the box. But, if you want to discuss your mobile campaigns, you can write inside the box below. What are your favorite mobile marketing examples? Tell us and we might feature them in our article, too.

This story was originally published on blog.udonis.co.