I stumbled upon an article called “7 Mobile Marketing Trends to Watch in 2020” by MDG, a digital ad agency that does it all. (BTW, if any of my classmates are reading this, they have some interesting job openings https://www.mdgadvertising.com/careers/). You can read the article here (https://www.mdgadvertising.com/marketing-insights/7-mobile-marketing-trends-to-watch-in-2020/). It was written pre-covid on January 29, 2020. I wanted to evaluate a couple of these trends to see if covid affected the predicted success of these trends for 2020.
Let’s take a look at their full list of trends for 2020:
- The rapid growth of m-commerce
- The ever-shifting nature of social media content
- The tremendous growth of mobile gaming
- The much-improved quality of in-app advertising
- The incredible effectiveness of location-targeted mobile ads
- The continued rise of mobile audio marketing
- The powerful benefits of programmatic mobile ad buys
I evaluated the first two as they more closely relate to the course and my interest for this post.
The rapid growth of m-commerce
While MDG admits that commerce transactions have been made on mobile devices for a while now, that’s nothing new. However, they predict that there would be rapid growth as mobile-driven sales could reach $284 billion this year. Covid had such an impact on everyone’s live this year in that businesses and users needed to adjust to new ways of doing business to stay safe. Using mobile devices and commerce options was a great way to keep people properly socially distanced.
In a more recent article, “Retail’s New Normal? Mobile Shopping Expected To Hit $314 Billion This Year” written on September 22, 2020 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/shelleykohan/2020/09/22/purchasing-on-mobile-devices-will-drive-holiday-sales-and-hit-314-billion-this-year/), sales are now estimated to reach $314 billion. That’s an additional $30 billion in sales that could be attributed to covid. As the article mentions, the pandemic was a catalyst for older users to turn to mobile shopping for safety.
Here is a graphic I created using data from statista.com showing e-commerce sales from 2016 to projected end of 2020.
The ever-shifting nature of social media content
MDG highlights that mobile has helped social media platforms to grow over the years. They note how social media continues to grow and that mobile-first formats such as short-form videos and stories will contribute to social media’s growth. With people being more socially distant or confined to their home, it’s only natural that social media usage would change during a pandemic. In the article, “COVID-19 is changing how, why and how much we’re using social media” (https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2020/09/16/covid-19-is-changing-how-why-and-how-much-were-using-social-media/), social media shopping is on the rise due to covid. This relates to the first prediction of m-commerce and is a huge opportunity for businesses to utilize social media for more business.
We can see that covid had a tremendous effect on two of the predicted marketing trends for 2020. Thank you to mobile technology, users have the luxury of purchasing essential items during the pandemic, directly from their device, whether directly or through social media channels. Businesses that were able to ramp up their online/mobile presence benefit from keeping their business going while protecting employees and consumers from spreading covid.
While I did not cover all the trends in this post, do you have any personal experiences with any of the trends mentioned above during this this year?
Leave a Reply