Why should my business be concerned about Smart phones and mobile device users?
Do you realize that there are currently over 53 million smart phone users in the US? And mobile traffic is increasing at an alarming rate! As a matter of fact, in August of 2010 Opera reported that mobile traffic increased 10% from just the previous month of July, the fastest on record. Morgan Stanley published estimates that by 2012, Smart phone sales will out pace desktop and laptop sales combined. Think about this one for just a moment, as of this writing in February 2011, the Apple I-pad hasn’t even celebrated its f1st birthday yet. WOW!!!
OK, that great, but what does this have to do with my business?
This has everything to do with your business, Ask yourself, how does your business attract new customers today? How did your business attract new customers just a few short years ago? The Yellow Pages, direct mail, TV commercials, print ads, newspapers, email blasts, radio spots? How effective are any of these mediums today? Are you still using any of these? Lets take a closer look at each one.
- The Yellow Pages- Really!! Where’s yours? Do you use it? NO!! So why do you somehow think your customers are using them?
- Direct Mail- Have you ever gotten better than a 1% – 2% response rate? I didn’t think so.
- TV- Ever here of a DVR? Do you still watch commercials? Are your customers watching them? Nope!
- Print Ads- Oh so expensive.
- Newspapers- Readership has been on a steady decline since the 1970’s
- Email Blasts- Spam filters catch most of them, thank goodness. And for the ones that do get through, no one opens them anyway.
- Radio Spots- Need I say Pandora, I-Pods, Satellite Radio, etc
Now, I’m not saying that these advertising mediums are totally useless, but they are significantly loosing their effectiveness. (Some more so, than others!)
So now, back to the Smartphone, but first let look recent data provided by Ebay. In 2009 Ebay total sales from mobile devices totaled $600 million. In June of 2010 Ebay was estimating that sales in 2010 would hit $1.5 Billion, a substantial increase. In Fact, Ebay sales in 2010 from Mobile Devices topped $2 Billion, that’s a 300% increase in 12 months. Do you know how much revenue did your industry generate in mobile traffic sales last year? If not, you should! Wanna bet it will be much much more from now on.
So the question is, Why Should my business be concerned about Smart phones and mobile devices? Because if you aren’t embracing the power of marketing to mobile devices, rest assured your competition most definitely is! Unfortunately, for many businesses they wont realize until its either too late or simply wasted tens of thousands of dollars on outdated marketing efforts and lost countless customers.
Here are some more interesting statistics I thought you would like to see. Google has reported that 30% of all searches are now considered local searches. That means while searching online, people are typing in the either a city, state or zip within their search 30% of the time.
- There are over 2.6 Billion local searches per month
- 82% of local searches results in an offline action
- 50% of offline brick and mortar searches are proceeded by an online search
- Local searches from mobile devices is the fastest growing segment
- Google is investing heavily in the fusion of local searches with mobile devices
It’s been stated that smart phones and mobile devices in the very near future will replace
- Home phones- this is happening now
- Yellow pages- people are now using their mobile devices to locate local business and services
- Wallets- If you haven’t seen it yet, its happening. In many parts of the world people are paying for goods and services with apps on their phone instead of credit cards.
- Newspapers- many people now get their news from their mobile devices (and the Daily Show of course)
- TV commercials- You got free network TV because of commercials, Have you noticed all of those cool free apps for your phone? Notice any ads on them? Wa-la, these are the commercials of the future.
- Home Computers- For many, they have already replaced their home computers with their smart phones
If your business is not currently implementing, or at least researching the prospects of marketing your business by using technologies such as
- SMS text messaging
- QR codes
- Mobile device advertising
- Mobile pay per click campaigns
- Enabling mobile landing pages for your website
- Mobile applications
- Local/Mobile optimization services
- Mobile Coupons
- Local and Mobile “Reviews” campaigns
You need to start researching and implementing these marketing techniques now before your competition does, and beats you to the punch by capturing your customers before you even have a chance too.
Regards,
The YOKEL LOCAL INTERNET MARKETING Team
