Three Big Reasons You Need to Be Found on Mobile Phones

I’m pretty sure most all of us understand that mobile marketing is important.

But do we understand how important it is? Do we understand why it is so important and who it attracts? We need to understand how consumers behave when using different types of mobile devices.

According to Pew Research:

62% of smartphone owners have used their phone in the past year to look up information about a health condition.
57% have used their phone to do online banking.
44% have used their phone to look up real estate listings or other information about a place to live.
43% to look up information about a job.
40% to look up government services or information.
18% to submit a job application.

A great majority of smartphone owners use their phone to follow along with news and events local and global, and to share details of local events. The statistics below give you three reasons why, as a business, you need to be found on mobile.

68% of smartphone owners use their phone at least occasionally to follow along with breaking news events, with 33% saying that they do this “frequently.”
67% use their phone to share pictures, videos, or commentary about events happening in their community (which could be a sale at a store, or even how they were treated at any business), with 35% doing so frequently.
56% use their phone at least occasionally to learn about community events or activities, with 18% doing this “frequently.”

I know when I’ve caught wind of breaking news (usually through social media), I head to Twitter and then maybe to the news channels – all online. Whether I use my mobile phone or my laptop, for me, depends on what is up and running at the time…many times that means I’m looking it up on my mobile phone.

As of Q1 2015 SmartInsights notes that the most popular devices are:

91% pc/Laptop
80% smartphone
47% Tablet

“Chipmaker ARM believes that with its new chips announced last week—a new Cortex-A72 processor and Mali-T880 GPU—we’ll be able to count on our smartphones to do all the tasks we currently need a computer to do. The company is so confident of this, it’s projecting a date when we can go phone-only: 2016. That leaves us roughly 23 months to make it happen. But most of us are already phone-first today, and given the current speed at which the industry is moving, we’ll be rounding that bend very soon.”

And we already know that for those in many developing countries, a smartphone is their only computer and only internet access because they can get them for a relatively cheap amount and still maintain a connection with the world.

These numbers just keep growing!

Here are a few more statistics about those folks who access the internet mostly through their mobile phones.

Mobile Internet Dominance: 52 percent of smartphone users look for local information in the car or on-the-go
Mobile Use in Stores: 90 percent of all users have used their devices while shopping; 54 percent of smartphone users look for deals and 51 percent of users compare prices
Mobile Apps on the Rise: 45 percent of “Mobile Fanatics” use store apps to find information about products and services while shopping in store
Mobile Ads Work: 70 percent of “Mobile Fanatics” who view mobile ads make a purchase; 80 percent complete the transaction within 72 hours of viewing a mobile ad

What is a “Mobile Fanatic” you ask? Mobile Fanatics is a relatively new term used in a growing consumer segment. “Understanding where and how these consumers find information is critical to make sense out of the new path to purchase,” said Neg Norton, President at LSA. “’Mobile Fanatics’ are ‘always shopping’ and considering products no matter their location, allowing them to be reached anytime and anywhere. The challenge becomes delivering relevant and engaging content when they pick up their devices.”

Mobile Fanatics are the new version of the old Television fanatic shoppers – QVC, HSN, The Shopping Channel, etc. Remember the photos of women sitting on the Home Shopping Channel with a room full of boxes? Now that can be done whether the shopper is home, in the car (hopefully not driving) or at the mall easily and quickly!

And of course, the biggest internet advertising platform is well aware of these facts too. Google is focusing more firepower than ever before on meeting the demands of mobile users. The company has confirmed it’s now serving more Google searches on smartphones than desktop computers in 10 countries — including the US and Japan. The message is clear: build for mobile or don’t bother to build at all.

Sources:
http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/mobile-technology-fact-sheet/
http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/
http://www.localsearchassociation.org/main/pressreleases/mobile-use-now-surpasses-pcs-when-searching-for-lo-3080.aspx