The future is mobile. The future is here.
- Research shows that here are 7.5 billion mobile connections in the world.
- Study says that there are 1.8 million smartphones are sold everyday (Yes, every single day!)
- Global web index says 80% of internet users own a smartphone.
This means your customers are consuming most of the content and information about your business, products and services on their mobile devices. Is your business ready for ‘The Mobile Era’ that has already arrived?
Making Your Entire Business Mobile Responsive:
Mobile marketing is not a stand-alone department or a project anymore. I always recommend to our clients that they work on an ‘integrated’ marketing plan that has mobile strategy permeating every aspect of their campaigns and activities. Mobile integration is so effective, that even top newspapers are read increasingly on mobile phones these days.
The following recent mobile usage trends and statistics will show you why your entire business, not just your website needs to be mobile-responsive.
Top 5 Mobile Marketing Trends:
Trend 1: Mobile Share Of Web Traffic Is Increasing Globally
One third of all web pages are now served to mobile phones; mobile’s share of global web traffic increased by 39% from 2014 to 2015.
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Global number of mobile-only internet users increased from 188 million in 2013 to 788 million in 2015.
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As of 2015, in the world’s second most populous country India, internet users viewed 72% of all web pages on their mobile phones.
(source)
Trend 2: Most Users Read Emails On Their Mobile Devices
Google announced in May 2015 that 75% of its of the Gmails users accessed their emails on their mobile phones. Note that Gmail is one of the largest email service providers with 900 million active users.
Litmus analysed many other email service providers & OS environments and found that that 53% of all emails are opened on mobile devices.
Trend 3: Social Media Usage On Mobile Is Increasing
There were 2 billion active social media accounts in Jan 2015, of which 1.6 billion were active on the mobile devices.
(source)
Facebook says it has 844 million people using its network on mobile phones on a daily basis. And 73% of Facebook’s revenue comes from mobile advertising.
Trend 4: Mobile Readiness Will Impact Your Search Rankings
Two official Google announcements in 2015 clearly proclaimed to the world that we are in ‘The Mobile Era’.
- Google officially announced in its blog that more search takes place on mobile devices than on desktop in 10 countries including USA and Japan.
- While rolling out the popular ‘mobile-friendly’ update in April 2015, Google officially announced that it is boosting the ranking of mobile-friendly pages on mobile search results. This means that websites that are not mobile optimized will show up less on search results.
Trend 5: Mobile Traffic is projected to increase in the future
And this is just the beginning. By 2019, Global mobile data traffic is expected to touch 24.3 Exabytes per month, (1 Exabyte is 1 Million TB) growing at a compounded annual rate of 57%. In 2014, there was 2.5 Exabytes of traffic per month.
(source)
What can you do?
Seven Action Steps:
Here are 7 action steps you can take so that your business can leverage the current mobile marketing growth opportunity:
- Mobile Responsive Website: Talk to your agency or the website team and ensure that your web pages render well on all mobile devices, and that your mobile users have a good experience on their mobile devices. Here is a tool from Google that tests if your website is mobile-friendly or not.
- Mobile Friendly Email: Check if your email marketing templates are mobile friendly. Today, most email software providers like Mailchimp or Aweber help you design mobile friendly emails using their templates.
- Mobile Social Media: While most social media channels take care of the mobile-user-experience themselves, it is good for you to check if your social media campaigns need any mobile-friendly elements or copy changes to suit mobile users. Social channels also offer mobile advertising options that could help in your campaigns.
- Mobile Apps: If your business has a very specific functionality that demands an app, it might be a good idea to invest in one. For example: If you own a restaurant, you can invest in creating an app that could help you give coupons to your regular customers or enable people to book a table using your app, and other such features.
- Mobile Commerce: If you are a business that sells products or services online, please check if you have mobile-friendly shopping cart, payment gateway and check-out processes enabled in your website. According to Forrester’s estimates, by 2018, mobile commerce (excluding travel/food services) will exceed 53% of US online sales.
- Mobile Shareability: Check if mobile users can easily share your content using their mobile devices. For example: If you are reading this on a mobile device (which you mostly are) you will see a ‘whatsapp’ and ‘sms’ logo beneath our blog post. That makes it easier for you to share this blog post with your network (Go ahead and try it! 🙂 )
- Mobile Analytics: Measure your mobile-driven traffic on your website, apps and social media channels. These measurement reports might give you insights on mobile user experience and help you plan mobile-specific marketing campaigns.
All the best for a great future in ‘The Mobile Era’!
Cheers!
