As a marketer, you don’t need me to tell you how important mobile is for your marketing strategy.

Even back in 2016, users spent over 3 hours per day on their mobile devices. In the latter half of 2018, I’m willing to bet it’s even more.

It’s crazy to think about how prolific these mobile experiences are in our lives. We use our phones in lieu of our desktop computers. We use them while we’re waiting in lines. We use them as all-in-one communication, education, and entertainment tools on a level unprecedented in human history.

Clearly, there’s something magnetic about these gadgets. Whether we’re at work or at home, we can’t seem to pull our eyes away.  Of course, this presents opportunities to brands that want to capitalize on this trend and provide more meaningful experiences to their customers on mobile devices.

Today, I’d like to review of a few of these trends and how companies are using modern mobile marketing to support their customers’ digital experiences. Read on!

1. Mobile Isn’t Replacing Physical Experiences

Before I dive into mobile strategies proper, I’d like to highlight one interesting bit of data taken from a research report on consumer retail: Despite the growing prevalence of mobile use, 70 percent of Millennial consumers still prefer shopping in brick-and-mortar stores.

This might seem counterintuitive, given the decline of physical retail locations and the rise of digital juggernauts like Amazon that provide effortless online shopping experiences.

But despite the changing times, there’s something about the physical shopping experience that we consumers just seem to love.

Heck, even Amazon is acknowledging this trend with its new line of Amazon Go stores. These brick-and-mortar stores feature cashier-less shopping experiences directly integrated with the company’s app—a seemingly perfect fusion of the physical and digital that modern consumers have come to expect.

And while some pundits claim that the Amazon Go retail model has its problems, it’s clear that digital experiences won’t completely overshadow the physical retail environment any time soon.

More than anything else, this trend is your takeaway: Companies need to find innovative new ways to bridge their physical and digital assets to support changing consumer preferences.

2. Branded Apps Are the Future of Customer Engagement

How many brand apps do you have on your phone right now? If you’re like most consumers, your phone is probably full of them.

I know I have more than a few: Pandora, Netflix, WhatsApp, Discord, and even HBO Now, which I haven’t used in years.

Each of these apps was built to cater to customers seeking a seamless mobile experience. It wasn’t that long ago that platforms like Netflix or Discord were available only on desktop; today, the idea of not having them on mobile is kind of crazy from a marketing perspective.

This is the second trend I’d like to discuss: Brand-specific apps are moving from luxury to necessary marketing tools.

It’s something that plays into our natural usage of mobile—nearly half of the total time Americans spend online is spent on our apps.

And with that in mind, it’s clear how a brand-specific app can benefit a company’s digital marketing:

• Enabling new engagement strategies, including push notifications that encourage interaction with the app even when we aren’t using our devices;
• Offering new channels for providing customer loyalty rewards, coupons, or promotions to active users;
• Creating a sense of “ownership” for the user that builds brand loyalty. We love our apps, and if a company has earned our trust to the point where we’re giving it real estate on our mobile phone screens, we’re much less likely to drop off and switch to a competitor.

If you need further convincing, check this out: Google recently updated its algorithm to allow mobile apps to be crawled and indexed like any other website.

This means that content within the app itself can get cached by Google’s web crawlers and will appear in organic search. That’s a big move, considering that organic search and mobile app content used to exist in disjointed silos.

As time goes on, brands will get better at configuring their apps to appear in search results and will likely start seeing accelerated download rates as a result. In turn, they’ll have more customer data to further improve their mobile app engagement strategies. The benefits are there—businesses just need to grab them.

3. The Definition of “Mobile” Is Expanding

The phrase “mobile device” used to mean online browsing tools that weren’t our desktop computers: A laptop, smart phone, or tablet. These days, we have to approach the term “mobile” with a more liberal definition.

Just think about the numerous internet-enabled devices we have that don’t fit into the above categories:

• In-home assistants like Google Home or Alexa;
• Wearables like the Apple Watch;
• Gadgets you never knew you needed, such as smart coffee cups.

Yes, for marketers, internet-of-things (IoT) devices are the new black. The amount of data these devices bring in each day is mind-boggling, and many of the use cases are still being explored. (What exactly can a company do with the coffee temperature data delivered by your internet-enabled coffee cup?)

On the other hand, others are already making waves in the marketing landscape:

• Accumulating both broad and in-depth usage data on how consumers use and interact with products;
• Voice-search assistants providing insight into each customer’s browsing habits as they pertain to each stage of the buyer’s journey;
• Wearable IoT watches providing advanced testing of real-time interactions and engagement with notifications.

You get the idea. Over half of the world’s top global marketers expect IoT devices to revolutionize the marketing landscape by early as 2020, and companies need to be prepared for how these advancements will disrupt their marketing strategies. It’s an industry-wide push towards data-driven marketing that has never been possible at this scale.

And since we consumers can’t seem to get enough of these always-on devices, it makes sense that their role as marketing tools will increase substantially over the coming years.

Mobile Marketing Moves Fast

Mobile has always been a disruptive force in digital marketing, but the advent of new technologies is increasing the pace.

Keep an eye on these trends over the next few years. I won’t pretend like I know exactly what the future of mobile marketing holds, but one thing is clear: Companies that want to provide meaningful mobile experiences need to work harder than ever before to keep up with the changing times.