Why Mobile Matters

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Greg 7 Comments

Mobile marketing is your next best friend. The Mobile Web is growing exponentially and marketers are beginning to reap some of the early benefits of reaching customers where they’re at—on their mobile phones! It’s becoming a no-brainer to at least test mobile marketing as part of your next campaign. Blistering mobile adoption rates are reinforcing what we’ve known for some time now: mobile is real, and it’s here to stay. By 2013 Gartner confidently predicts that mobile phones will overtake PCs as the planet’s most common Web access device. And given that we’re already generating a mind-numbing amount of online content, you can extrapolate and see that much of what we create and consume is and will continue to be via our mobile devices.

Mobile Adoption Rates

Courtesy of the Cisco Visual Networking Index, here are some mobile data statistics that may leave you slack-jawed:

Last year’s mobile data traffic was three times the size of the ENTIRE global Internet in 2000. Global mobile data traffic in 2010 (237 petabytes per month) was more than three times greater than the total global Internet traffic in 2000 (75 petabytes per month).

Global mobile data traffic grew 2.6-fold in 2010, nearly tripling for the third year in a row. The 2010 mobile data traffic growth rate was higher than anticipated. Last year’s forecast projected that the growth rate would be 149 percent. This year’s estimate is that global mobile data traffic grew 159 percent in 2010.

Smartphones represent only 13 percent of total global handsets in use today, but they represent more than 78 percent of total global handset traffic. In 2010, the typical smartphone generated 24 times more mobile data traffic (79 MB per month) than the typical basic-feature cell phone (which generated only 3.3 MB per month of mobile data traffic).

There are 48 million people in the world who have mobile phones… even though they do not have electricity at home! The mobile network has now officially extended beyond the boundaries of the power grid. In short, we will starve before we part ways with our mobile phones! They’re an appendage, of sorts. And we use them not only to talk, but to text, surf the web, watch videos, scan QR codes, play games, and the list goes on.

Do you sleep with your cell phone? Two-thirds of us do!

This all spells out opportunity for the mobile marketer. We certainly know where to reach our customer. Now we just have to offer something of value that will entice our customer to interact with us where they’re at—on their mobile device.

93% of Americans are already using mobile phones. That’s pretty much everybody.

Mobile marketing, not just re-purposed PC marketing

Your mobile marketing strategy will benefit from a mobile-only perspective. For example, a purposeful and relevant approach to mobile marketing will show your customer that you are trying to connect with them on their mobile device. And they’ll respond favorably to that, as opposed to simply re-using existing PC-based marketing.

Prepare for the future, but focus on the easy-to-understand value you can provide in the short run:

Park the .mobi URL for your company website. Eventually you’re going to need a mobile website. This is cheap insurance to ensure you’ve got your domain. You can also create a sub domain for your URL, such as “m.”
Test mobile marketing with a simple campaign tactic. Use A/B testing to sort out what your demographic responds to.
Ask your customers what they’d like to have available to them via their mobile device.
Keep it simple.

Consider how consumers are using the mobile web. Where does it make sense for your company to be marketing to prospects and customers? (Click on the graphic below for a larger version):

Source: www.knotice.com

Mobile Connectors

Connectors are mobile marketing tactics that get customers to take action and go where you want them. The connector is not the destination. Rather, the connector is the conduit to the destination, or experience the mobile customer has once they interact with the connector. One of the connectors listed above is SMS text. I think SMS text represents an excellent way for marketers to “dip their toe in the water.” Short codes are a prudent way to test a mobile marketing. Text messaging is a tactic that can be:

Easily measured
Economical
Used as a direct response tool
Generate positive ROI almost immediately

Smartphones are now in the lead

A recent study from comScore found that the number of smartphone users accessing mobile content through browsers and applications now surpasses that of non-smartphone users. Smartphones are different from traditional mobile phones because their mobile operating system, combined with screen size, allows for a far richer mobile web experience. Specialized mobile software (applications, or mobile apps as they’re commonly referred to as) are popular on smartphones. But it’s my personal opinion that mobile apps will evolve the same way as software has on the PC. I think most apps will eventually move into the mobile cloud and be accessed via mobile browsers, not stand-alone mobile apps.

Search is the most popular category accessed through browsers, reaching 54 percent of the smartphone audience. 43 percent of smartphone subscribers accessed social networking sites via browser, followed by news (40 percent), weather (36 percent) and sports information (32 percent). (Source: comScore study)

My advice for small and mid-sized businesses is to avoid the temptation to build a mobile app for use on a smartphone. There are plenty of ways to spend your initial “mobile marketing energy” before building an app. The caveat would be if you’ve got a laser-focused audience, you’re certain they’ll use the app, and it will drive additional revenue.

Conclusion

If you haven’t already, wake up and smell the mobile coffee. There’s a fundamental shift happening in the way we’re interacting with the web. It’s increasingly happening on the mobile web. Our phones are with us everywhere, and they’re always on. Use your next marketing campaign as a way to test mobile marketing. Brainstorm on some ways to include mobile marketing in the mix and start discovering new ways to reach your customer!

Email Campaigns On Mobile Devices

7 comments

Pro Blogger News says:

March 15, 2011 at 8:37 pm

Why Mobile Matters…

[...]In 2010, the typical smartphone generated 24 times more mobile data trafic (79 MB per month) than the typical[...]…

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Why Article Marketing Might Not Work says:

March 17, 2011 at 7:11 pm

[...] mobile! The online mobile marketing is booming. That’s good enough reason to create content that is going to be easily digested via a mobile [...]

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Email Campaign Open Rates says:

March 30, 2011 at 5:00 pm

[...] of my clients are reading their emails with a mobile device. That’s no surprise since mobile usage is skyrocketing. Here’s another snapshot of my own email subscribers. You can see the breakdown. More than [...]

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Smartphone And Tablet Trends says:

April 5, 2011 at 8:50 am

[...] from comScore is fanning the flames of what we already know is hot: mobile. This data supports the mobile marketing momentum that is under way throughout the world, even in the Unites States, which has been kind of late to [...]

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QR Codes For Offline Marketing says:

April 6, 2011 at 9:50 am

[...] graphical codes that can be read by a smartphone’s camera. As mobile marketing continues to gain momentum, and smartphones rapidly become the mobile device of choice, I think we’re going to start [...]

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Teenage Mobile Usage says:

May 4, 2011 at 7:53 am

[...] Teenagers are renown for setting trends. Today’s teenagers are still setting trends, and one of them is how they’re using mobile. [...]

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How to Reach CEOs Via Email says:

May 27, 2011 at 9:27 am

[...] will probably be read on a mobile device – An ever-increasing percentage of email is being read on mobile devices. And you can almost be assured that executives are going [...]

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