Category: Telecom

There are an estimated 7.33 billion mobile users in the world, according to Statista. A lot of these are smartphones, especially in the UK. 

Since people always have their phones or tablets with them, they can read, browse, watch videos, and listen to music on the move.

The way content is consumed has changed. As a result, the way businesses communicate with their customers has also changed.

Telemedia Online discusses how changing mobile technology is affecting the future of marketing.

Harnessing the Power of Mobile Marketing

Because mobile phones are so ubiquitous and mobile search is growing, marketing for mobile has become an integral part of any marketing strategy, states the article. 

Since mobile marketing has the potential to reach directly into the pockets/hands/eyes of the consumer, it makes sense to make the most of it.

Here are some strategies that are commonly used in mobile marketing.

Mobile Apps

Mobile apps are a great way of personalising the customer’s experience when interacting with a business. This platform can be used to provide them with tailored content, rewards and offers specific to app users, and a smoother user journey.

Regardless of the size of the business, an app can be a powerful tool in its marketing arsenal, simply because it’s a larger product type, not a specific category.

For example, a large lifestyle store could offer an e-commerce app whilst a small restaurant could offer an app on which customers could order food or make reservations. Both are apps, even if they fulfil different functions.

Mobile Videos

When Facebook was at its height of popularity, it became obvious that video content did much better than text-only. Now, with mobile browsing, videos are even more popular. Consider the meteoric rise of TikTok, which is nothing but user-generated videos.

Even B2B marketing videos, which might be significantly different from TikTok videos are handy for delivering powerful messages. In fact, businesses like Bold Content specifically offer video production services for B2B marketing.

Videos can make products come to life, customer testimonials can pack more of a punch, and even if purely for entertainment, video content for mobiles can deliver better marketing results.

Plus, video technology is changing rapidly with artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud-based filmmaking. Creating videos for a business’s marketing is now easier—and more cost-effective—than ever.

It is also a way of keeping a company’s marketing recession-ready.

Using Mobile in the Digital Marketing Strategy

If a company wants to use mobile marketing in its strategy, there are a few steps it could take.

Start With a Mobile-First Strategy

It is quite difficult to take an existing (non-mobile) strategy and tweak it into an effective mobile strategy. 

For example, a website built for a desktop screen technically can be converted into a responsive, mobile-friendly one, but it might never be as user-friendly as one that was specifically designed for a smaller screen.

That is why, for a business’s mobile marketing strategy to be successful, it needs to be built from the ground up.

Personalising the Customer Experience

The biggest benefit that a mobile strategy offers is the fact that it can be customised for each customer. Unlike a desktop computer, people don’t tend to share phones, which means the information associated with each device will correspond to one individual.

This can be a powerful tool for presenting highly relevant marketing messages to customers.

In order to make the most of one’s mobile marketing strategy, one must consider content personalisation as part of the overall plan.

Invest in Mobile Apps

As discussed above, mobile apps are a great way of delivering customised offers and content. 

This customer-centric solution can be very useful for increasing customer loyalty and engagement.

That, in turn, helps drive sales.

Use Videos

A high-quality marketing video—whether describing a product, a customer’s review, or simply an entertaining social media short—can help a business get more customer engagement. These can then be used to convert.

Incorporate Mobile Payment

Whether a business has customers visiting a brick-and-mortar store, an app on their mobile, or the company website, making transactions easier can help conversion. Easy mobile payment is one such way of simplifying the buying process.

It can be in the form of an online store or a physical store that accepts mobile payment forms, like Apple Pay or Google Pay.

No matter how one uses plans their marketing strategy, it is obvious that making it mobile-friendly is essential. It’s no longer a “good to have”—people expect it. 

Not having a mobile marketing strategy means a business loses out on a huge opportunity.

Penetration testing, or pen testing, is part of any business’s cybersecurity arsenal. It helps organisations identify ways in which threat actors could exploit the weaknesses in their IT infrastructure.

Once identified, these vulnerabilities can be patched or mitigation plans put in place.

However, with artificial intelligence (AI) being used by cybercriminals to create malware, one might wonder if the reverse could be true as well.

That is, could AI help bolster cybersecurity?

The thing is, pen testing requires a human. But, we’ve seen how ChatGPT interacts with people. Could the chatbot also make decisions like a person to “attack” a system to find out how secure it is?

What Is Pen Testing and How Is it Different From Vulnerability Scanning?

A strong cybersecurity stance requires active as well as passive measures. Passive security is taken care of by firewalls and antivirus software. 

Active security, on the other hand, requires the business to constantly assess its systems for weaknesses. Any that are found can then be fixed.

Two of the active measures for cybersecurity are pen testing and vulnerability scanning.

Pen testing is undertaken by a skilled ethical hacker. The person—actively and creatively—tests the organisation’s network, application, and endpoints. If they find any exploitable vulnerabilities, they carry out attacks to see how successful they are.

In short, they simulate what an actual hacker would do if they were trying to attack the business.

Vulnerability scans, on the other hand, are automated. They simply help the business identify potential issues. These scans don’t offer any insights into how the weaknesses could be exploited.

It will, however, rank the identified vulnerabilities in terms of priority. However, because it cannot determine how a hacker would use the weakness, it is up to humans to decide whether a vulnerability needs remediation and mitigation.

So, Can AI Be Used for Penetration Testing?

The thing is, AI can be a handy tool in the quest for cybersecurity. It uses big data and machine learning (ML) to understand regular traffic patterns. 

Then, armed with this information, it can identify “abnormal” behaviour.

The best part is, AI can process vast quantities of incoming information in a matter of seconds. It would take a human several hours—even days—to go through such quantities of data.

That makes AI perfect for adaptive cybersecurity, where it can block users based on their behaviour.

What AI Can Do for Cybersecurity

It can also be very effective at vulnerability scanning, where it can spot and flag problems in code, systems, and networks.

It may also offer cybersecurity support. For example, it could be used for source code analysis. AI could scan the code and identify potential flaws that could be exploited.

It may also be used for brute force attack testing by, say, generating potential passwords and entering them.

It might also be possible to teach AI how to exploit a list of weaknesses and use them in a simulated cyber attack. Businesses could also use AI for quicker detection and response if they are attacked.

What it might not be able to do is creatively identify vulnerabilities that it hasn’t been “taught”. Since penetration testing does require some creativity, AI might not be as effective at pen testing as a person…yet.

For now, we need to rely on penetration testing services of reliable providers like DigitalXRAID.

Having a strong cybersecurity posture is essential for any business. Without it, threat actors could have a field day with even the tiniest vulnerability. By being proactive, one can reduce the attack surface as well as the amount of damage threat actors could do.