This smartphone marketing strategy brings digital capabilities into the real world.
The Lord & Taylor’s smartphone app now gives consumers the ability to use their devices to scan print ad photos to be able to learn about them and purchase them over mobile commerce, without ever having to visit its website.
The goal of this smartphone shopping strategy is to engage customers and boost sales.
The retailer is aiming to boost the engagement that they achieve with their customers, while they encourage a larger number of sales over mobile commerce through the use of the standard, traditional form of print advertising that has nearly always been used. The parent company of Lord & Taylor’s, the Hudson’s Bay Co. (HBC), had implemented its mobile app back at the start of this year. Now it gives consumers the opportunity to scan the pictures that they see in print, using their smartphones, so that they can purchase those products right away.
This mobile commerce strategy stops shoppers from having to go to the retailer’s website to look up the item.
The point is to provide a more seamless experience and reduce the number of steps that are required in order to make a purchase. Instead of requiring a consumer to remember what they saw in a print ad and take the additional steps to actually look it up and buy it from the website, later on, they can make the purchase right away with their smartphones, eliminating that extra step.
According to Ryan Craver, the HBC senior vice president of corporate strategy, this m-commerce move is “about making everything in the store shoppable off someone’s mobile phone.” He went on to add that being able to engage customers who already find a product in an ad to be interesting is among the most vital goals in the current marketplace.
Being able to make purchases over a mobile commerce platform gives customers the ability to instantly follow through with the inclination that they feel when they are interested in a product that they see in an ad that has been printed in an ad circular, a newspaper, or even in a magazine. Craver pointed out that if consumers need to wait before they act, retailers risk losing a sale.
The MMA has now released the outcomes of its first ever research focusing on this subject.
The Mobile Marketing Association has now shared the results of its Mobile Video Benchmark Study, which is the first research of its nature that had been commissioned by the organization.
The MMA commissioned the study in order to be able to provide solid insight about the use of video.
The study was commissioned by both the MMA and its Mobile Video Committee. Its purpose was to examine the performance of video in mobile marketing so that insight could be provided to publishers, agencies, advertisers, and third party video servers, among others who could stand to benefit from the expanding popularity of the technique. This appears to be exactly what this benchmark study has managed to accomplish.
The mobile marketing insights are considered to be first of their kind, particularly considering their source.
According to the MMA’s CEO, Greg Stuart, “This collaboration of MMA members to produce a ‘first of its kind’ Mobile Video Benchmarking Study validates that mobile video is beyond the tipping point. We are seeing new behaviors and attitudes develop as mobile becomes validated as the real first screen.”
He also added that it is becoming ever more evident that video over smartphones is becoming a “very powerful too” to be used by promoters, advertisers, and marketers, as they seek to access the “biggest transformation” that has ever been experienced within the marketing industry.
There were four primary topics of insight that were the focus of the study. These included:
• Mobile video engagement
• Mobile video ad length
• Mobile video at midnight
• Ad frequency engagement
Within each category, several statistics, observations, and predictions were made to help to better understand mobile marketing using video and to predict the direction that it could take. The MMA has also stated that it intends to continue in the creation and production of this study, over time, as they continue to pursue a better understanding of the way in which these early metrics will perform into the coming months and years. It also intends to keep the doors open to the evaluation of new metrics that will expand on the insight into the benefits and nature of mobile video.
