4 Ways Mobile Rich Media Can Boost Brand Loyalty

Matevz Klanjsek, co-founder and chief product officer at Celtra, discusses how mobile rich media can drive meaningful engagement, increase sales, and boost loyalty with iMediaConnection.

Matevz Klanjsek, co-founder and chief product officer at Celtra, discusses how mobile rich media can drive meaningful engagement, increase sales, and boost loyalty with iMediaConnection.

You want to sell your product, so you buy a lot of media, you run TV ads, billboards, print ads; you endlessly repeat your message and your brand promise, and people buy it. Sounds like the 20th century? It is, but it works. It’s been tested a million times, it’s reliable, and it’s quite effective. On the flip side, it alienates your consumers, it detaches them from the brand, and it’s becoming less and less effective. Before they buy, consumers increasingly want to interact with the brand, co-create it, play with it, get intimate with it, and touch it — physically touch it. With rich media mobile advertising, they can.

A lot has been said and done about the engagement in advertising, but rich media mobile advertising is taking it to the next level. Intimacy and real emotional involvement are the keys to quality engagement that can really help you achieve your marketing goals, build a stronger brand, drive sales, and increase loyalty. Browsing through products or shops with your fingers, finding the right store just around the corner, getting a coupon and keeping it on your phone so you never lose it, experiencing a virtual test drive, and booking a real one right away can all help you achieve these goals.

Static banners that click through to a landing page or service can be effective, but consumers have become hooked on the rich capabilities of their most favorite devices. Rich mobile advertisements allow brands to fully leverage these capabilities through location sensitivity to deliver more relevant messages. Tangibility makes the experience more fun, interesting, and memorable. Integration with various social media services can enable users to share a brand message and become true brand ambassadors.

The reasons to jump on the mobile advertising bandwagon are endless. The difficult part is figuring out how to best go about it. It’s easy to go a mile wide and an inch deep with regard to mobile marketing — there’s a million and one mobile ad functions you can deploy. The real mobile marketing ROI comes when you learn to go a mile deep in a few smart, targeted ways. How can you drive meaningful engagement, increase sales, and boost loyalty with mobile advertising? Here’s four effective ways mobile rich media can help.

Grab the user’s attention

As with any other successful and effective ad, it all starts with captivating the user’s attention. A meaningful call to action is essential, and you’ll want to test different options to find the best performing message. Great copy can drive up to 20 percent higher click-through-rates. By incorporating rich features like video content and image galleries directly into creative ad units, brands give users more options for response.

Attractive and high-quality photos work well for product presentations. There’s a trade-off between the loading time and the quality of the images, so be selective — but know that better images typically produce better results. Starting your ad with a video draws users in. The most effective videos are compact and serve as a teaser to prompt the user to continue the engagement rather than watching and leaving the ad. Keep in mind that TV commercials aren’t recommended as users have already seen them. In the right context such as a music-related publisher, audio can be very relevant and effective.

Present your products through engagement

Beautiful product shots can be presented in a variety of ways to make the product part of a rich and fun experience, keep the audience engaged for longer, and, most importantly, get them to make a purchase. Integrating games into your ads gets users emotionally involved and allows you to present all of the products you are promoting. Users get addicted to the game and often want to play it again.

Completion rates for games are consistently high — 80-90 percent — and after playing, users are more than twice as likely to find a nearby store or start shopping. Integrating your products as elements within the game and pausing each time the product appears for an explanation is highly effective; users are three times more likely to see all the products than they are when viewing a standard product gallery. Gamification is another great way to get users through the ad experience, especially when you want to collect data or get them to subscribe.

Integrate social media

Integrating social media elements into your mobile ads has a positive novelty factor effect and makes your brand cool, fresh, and up-to-date. It also extends your reach and helps with acquisition. If your brand has a Facebook page or Twitter profile, don’t forget to include buttons to take your users there. It’s an easy first step toward bringing social media into your ads, and it’s also quite effective — typically 3-10 percent of users will tap on each.

Newer social media services like Instagram and Pinterest excite users and increase their willingness to engage. We’ve seen 15 percent of users want to follow a brand on Instagram. To be truly social, it’s important to get your users to do more than just follow or like you — get them to share your product on Facebook or post it to Twitter. Even better, encourage them to be creative. For example, you could have users create a poster for your brand within the ad. They will love doing it, and we’ve seen more than 20 percent post it to Facebook.

Make your ads location aware

However global, all business is local business. To drive purchases, leverage the user’s location to direct them to the nearest store and offer products that are relevant for where they live or work. A store locator is a simple and effective way to get users to start shopping. When communicated clearly, more than 10 percent of users will search for the local store within the ad. For ticket sales, location awareness can be even more effective — up to 15 percent of users will look for tickets for their local theater, music show, or sports event.