Mobile marketing focuses on efforts to connect with customers via their mobile devices. That may be a smartphone, a tablet, or even a smartwatch. For this effort, marketers may use various types of content via responsive websites, apps, and push notifications, starting with the fact that the customer will use their mobile device to connect.

It’s easy to see the differences between online marketing and mobile marketing when you realize it’s the point of connection that’s different. When you take that into consideration, you can better differentiate your campaigns to make the connection stronger.

Online Marketing

For online marketing, a business uses websites, search engine marketing, and search engine optimization to help their audience find them. They often include social media marketing using content such as images, videos, and more to connect with their followers. You may also engage in content marketing by blogging, guest posting, and more. Of course, this also includes email marketing.

Mobile Marketing

With mobile marketing, you can segment your audience down to individual users based on their behavior in various channels such as SMS. This is very cost effective and doesn’t take as much creativity to do successfully as the rest of online marketing. This also means that you’ll be able to experiment a lot while taking fewer risks. It works especially well for those who need geolocation information such as restaurants and local bricks and mortar businesses. However, it can and does work for any type of audience and product.

The Big Differences

While the two methods seem similar on the surface (and in many ways, they are), there are some differences to note and take advantage of. For example, a mobile browser is very different from a browser designed for desktops.

  • One advert at a time – A mobile browser makes the most of small spaces and delivers only one ad at a time, so your ad isn’t directly competed with at that moment.
  • Mobile ads cost less – Right now it’s not as expensive to run mobile ad campaigns as it is to run campaigns on the web meant for desktops. Less competition means you can get a good deal that provides an ROI that you can work with.
  • It’s the future – Mobile is outselling desktop computers. More people are using all forms of mobile technology to find what they want and need. The more products that are developed, from fitness tech to phones to watches, the more using mobile ads is going to become an important part of your marketing efforts.

Even if you don’t run a direct mobile advertisement yet, knowing the importance will help you make your website mobile friendly. Right now, it’s time to start putting the idea of mobile first in all your design as well as your marketing future.

While mobile and online marketing does differ, there are tons of things they have in common too. For example, it’s important to understand who your audience is, the type of technology they use to become informed, and what keeps them up at night. When you know that, for either medium, you’ll craft more effective ads.