3 Mobile Marketing Lessons From Group Buying Deals

Group buying deals are buzzing. In January this year, Spreets sold to Yahoo for $40 million and consumers, marketers and businesspeople alike realised group buying websites were only just getting started.

Look at Groupon, for example. Their current campaign (from 10^th– 25^th May 2011) offers customers a $10 voucher towards their first deal when they buy using the Groupon app. So what does this teach us about mobile marketing?

Mobile Marketing Lesson 1: Uses for apps are growing (and growing)

Access to the Internet by desktop will be overtaken by mobile access within the next few years (if not sooner). Apps can utilise this trend to become Web-connected ‘programs’ for the ‘micro-computers’ that mobile phones have become. This can monetise mobile marketing in entirely new ways.

Apps are undoubtedly popular. There are over 350,000 apps in the iPhone store alone right now. Unfortunately, apps can also be the most expensive and labour-intensive form of mobile marketing; so they are often just a speculation for SMEs. What are some practical mobile marketing lessons for everyone?

It’s getting pretty heated in the competition between group buying websites. Sooner or later the market will reach saturation, and the websites which remain strong will be those ahead of the competition. Oh, hold on. Does that sound like every market?

When a new business technique emerges (like apps being used for mobile marketing), there is only a short window of opportunity to use it before everyone else. ‘Better’ is often just ‘first’. If Groupon’s mobile marketing app is more popular than, say, an app for Spreets or LivingSocial, they will have successfully secured their market share. As an emergent technology itself, mobile marketing works well to expand possibilities and give businesses a head start.

Mobile Marketing Lesson 3: Mobilise your offer

A $10 voucher won’t cook you dinner. But this mobile marketing promotion is going to cost Groupon a bit of capital. Why is it worth it? Because people are more attracted to mobile marketing coupons than those on paper.

Print coupon redemption rates usually sit at around 2%. Fair enough, because you can’t really target their distribution. But what if the real problem was this: carrying a grey scrap of paper in your wallet everywhere just isn’t exciting. In contrast, mobile marketing coupons for the 2010 Brisbane Boat show in Australia were redeemed at a rate of 72%! (To view that case study and many others in full, visit our database of mobile marketing case studies). It’s not hard to guess why mobile marketing coupons work well: targeted distribution, accessible at all times, and no paper scraps.

Overall, Groupon’s mobile marketing campaign will make an impact because it is accessible, timely, and it caters to consumer wants. What will this do to the group buying deals market? I wonder if Scoopon and LivingSocial will foray into mobile marketing soon as well.

This article was written by Emma Rose Smith of TXT2GET, a leading mobile marketingcompany. TXT2GET supply affordable SMS keywords to advertising that typicallyincrease ad response by 2-3x. SMS keywords also bring measurability & accountability to advertising, because you can see the exact time and date that responses come in.