Mobile phones are a revolutionary communication medium for individuals and businesses and opens an interactive channel to pursue everyone. Today, here are ninety one percent of the US population have a mobile phone, of them one in four subscribers accessing the mobile web regularly. Customers are researching their next vehicle, test drives and requesting brochures, finding nearest dealers and automotive service providers or centers receiving timely service alerts like oil changes through mobile phones. 22 percent of all mobile internet users in US bought a car from the past six months. 38 percent of active US mobile phone internet users are willing to buy automobile from nearest locations.
Methods of mobile advertising: There are different methods in mobile advertising, each one has its unique way to reach effectively to the mobile user. Now we will see those methods.
- Mobile web: Before making a decision to buy, customers or consumers are using mobile websites of auto companies and dealerships websites to research for the vehicles of new or old models, those are like scheduling a test drive, price comparison etc. Automobile manufacturers and dealers should consider marketing through mobile and using both rich mobile media and standard ads to deliver relevant and targeted interactive messages, which can help the consumers purchase decision.
- Mobile search for local: Using of mobile devices for local search frequency is increasing by the consumers. As per a recent survey more than 40% of smartphone users in the US, using mobile search at least once in a day.
- Mobile applications: There are many mobile application or app stores having hundreds of thousands of apps generating billions of apps downloads. The consumers of United States are expected to download 1.6 billion applications in 2010, it is increasing to six billion applications in 2014.
- Text messaging: SMS is an effective method for auto dealerships, because of there are more than five billion text messages are exchanging per day by consumers.
- Voice: The mobile phone is the primary phone for many consumers. According to the centers for disease control, nearly 35 percent of United States customers no longer use the landline phone and shut off it as their primary phone.
Benefits of mobile advertising: The following are some of the major benefits of mobile advertising.
- Better targeting capabilities: The auto related mobile campaigns by the dealerships can be more relevant and targeted to the consumers, so the response can be increase. Automotive companies and dealerships can target based on a combination of different parameters including time of the day, household income, gender, age, wireless carrier, handset, consumer’s online behavior, or location.
- Location based services: Auto dealerships can take the advantage of mobile medium to deliver geo targeted push notifications or alerts on the offerings. Consumers would be interest in tracking the services of the dealerships and companies on the go, so it is very important for auto dealerships services.
- Content drives traffic: According to the Millennial Media survey, nearly twenty one percent of customers who keep up automobile info read the automobile content daily. The original content and the clearly defined keywords can help to increase the search engine ranking. To attract the visitors, the content is tailored and should be frequently updated.
- Mobile optimized websites: Mobile optimized websites are helps to load quickly in the mobile phones. According to JD Powers automobile site survey 2012, 31% of the shoppers are actively looking to busy a vehicle by researching through their smartphones.
Based on local factors and the local consumer behavior, benefits will vary. Having a mobile presence of a website is very helpful. There are so many companies offering the website conversion in to the mobile view with a minimal expenses.
