The mobile web is ubiquitous; six out of every seven people in the world use a mobile phone – that’s six billion people (Wang, 2013). More people are active on Facebook through mobile devices than desktop (Tam, 2013); comScore research shows that Americans spent 225.4 billion minutes on the Facebook mobile app and mobile site during the second quarter of 2013, and 18.4 billion minutes on Twitter’s mobile app and site (Vranica, 2013).

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) defines mobile marketing as “a set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network” (Mobile Marketing Association, 2013).

Mobile devices are important to consider in any marketing strategy, and this chapter looks at the ways in which we can use mobile as part of an engagement strategy. Mobile engagement extends far beyond just the mobile phone, or just SMS marketing. It’s a mindset rather than a specific tactic. It’s all about context – reaching people at exactly the right time, place, and mood to facilitate their needs, provide a convenient touchpoint and encourage them to convert.

At the foundation, people use mobile devices to communicate – by voice, text, or web access. Belonging addresses the need to be social and to form communities, using tools such as mobile social networks. Further up, mobile devices allow a great degree of on-the-go convenience, such as online shopping, research, mobile banking, career listings, coupons, and more – these more advanced capabilities are not available on very basic mobile devices. Education and information gathering also fit in here. Finally, mobile phones can entertain through games, apps, and rich media.

Understanding where your target market falls on this scale will allow you to communicate more effectively with them, using the correct mobile channels and approaches.

In this chapter, you will learn:

• Why mobile is the most important communication channel available to marketers today
• A variety of mobile messaging channels and applications, from simple SMS messaging to advanced mobile commerce
• The role that mobile can play in a holistic marketing strategy, taking advantage of its unique features
• How to track and measure mobile activity

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In early 2013, Google was the world’s largest search engine with almost 19.5 billion searches in January alone representing a 67% market share in the US (comScore, 2013). Interestingly, the second largest search engine was in fact YouTube, the popular video-sharing website. This indicates that people are turning to YouTube with precise, intent-driven behavior: they’re not just browsing randomly or waiting for a link to land in their inbox. YouTube boasts over 1 billion unique users per month (YouTube, 2013).

Online, we turn to search engines to help us answer questions and find content. That content can be anything, from images to text, and of course, video. Text content can be read by search engines, but content such as images and video cannot be read nearly as well. With more and more people using searches to find video content, understanding how to create videos online and optimize videos for searching is an important part of any digital strategy.

According to YouTube, there are more than four billion hours of video viewed each month on its website, while every minute, 100 hours of video are uploaded (YouTube, 2013). Videos can come from anyone, and from anywhere. Small home videos can experience massive global reach, as was the case with the popular Charlie Bit My Finger video which has accumulated 558 million views as of September 2013.

Musicians often use social video platforms to share their music videos and, of course, brands use video-sharing platforms to communicate messages via video. People are increasingly interacting with brands via video by creating opinion videos, parodies, and responses. More importantly, they have the power to market themselves, their ideas, who they are, and what they do. For example, Laura Vitale has created a series of engaging cooking videos right at home – her informative and valuable videos (created on a budget) have garnered over 69 million views and 500 000 subscriptions.

Video content helps you connect with your audience, creating an experience and encouraging engagement.

In this chapter, you will learn:

• Why video marketing is such a powerful, versatile and effective marketing channel online
• How successful online videos are produced, step by step
• Paid, earned, and owned methods of promoting your online video