Are you viewing the rise of mobile marketing as a boon to your business? Executives view the rising popularity of mobile platforms along with Mobile marketing (already 10%+ of online sales) with a mix of optimism, excitement and obvious nervousness.
So which camp are you in?
Mobile marketing offers significant advantages and challenges over more traditional methods of customer engagement.
They are… Advantages/Challenges
- Your mobile marketing message can reach difficult-to-find customers, no matter where they are. However these consumers are your most loyal and best customers so you must treat them with stellar customer service.
- You can find your consumer in close proximity to your store. But so can your competitor.
- Your Mobile message is instantly on. If you’re not on, your consumer can easily go elsewhere.
- Your Mobile message will connect with customers when it’s convenient for them. Are you Mobile available 24X7?
- Provides marketers with unprecedented opportunities for engagement, conversions, long-term retention and Mobile monetization. Competition for these consumers is already heating up and they have already proven to be price sensitive and less brand loyal.
So while these challenges may make you hesitant to jump into Mobile marketing, the market facts speak to just the opposite. Take a look…
- HubSpot says…in the next two years, one billion people will have accessed the Internet using a Mobile device. Hopefully as you read this you are thinking WOW; I thought Facebook is a big marketing opportunity but the trend looks like Mobile marketing will dwarf Facebook.
- HubSpot also indicates that in the U.S., 25% of laptop users have abandoned them for exclusive use of Mobile devices. Just think about the implications for your ecommerce business if 25% of your consumers are already on your website but using their mobile phone! Have you tested your website on a mobile Smartphone and Tablet platform? What does your Mobile checkout experience look like?
Can you afford to dismiss 25% of your market?
- Morgan Stanley predicts 50% of all e-commerce will be done on a Smartphone/Tablet device by 2014 (just two years away).
- A report in IDC Retail Insights states that nearly 30% of the more than $447 billion spent by consumers during the 2010 holiday season can be directly attributed to Smartphone and Mobile device sales.
Black Friday 2011 Mobile Results
John Squire, IBM Chief Strategy Officer, reports that “10.3% of online sales are coming from Mobile shoppers. And about 17% of all shoppers are using mobile devices.”
Additional IBM findings for Black Friday 2011, at 7 pm ET, are:
- Black Friday 2011 online sales continue to hold at a 20% increase for this same time period over Black Friday 2010.
- Black Friday 2011 online sales eclipsed Thanksgiving sales at 2:20pm PST
- The number of consumers using a Mobile device to visit a retailer’s site is holding firm at 17.04%.
- The number of consumers using their Mobile device to make a purchase is holding steady at 9.51%.
- iPhone continues to lead all mobile device traffic at 6.58% (38.6% of all mobile shoppers), followed by Android at 5.20% (30.5%) and iPad at 4.71% (27.6%).
Has your Marketing Team figured out how your business will Mobile enable every website visit, every email and keyword search campaign, every Facebook, Twitter experience, and every point of customer contact? How will you make these Mobile experiences available at any time to customers everywhere they are? With statistics as glaring as the above, how is your business moving to Mobile marketing in 2012? What is your Mobile Marketing Plan for Q1-2012?
Getting Your Business Ready For Mobile
- Identify your mobile users. Through your current analytic program determine which mobile devices are being used to access your site. Knowing the specific Mobile devices on your site will help you understand how to build your Mobile marketing campaigns. A key point… don’t use your gut; use your analytics. Just because Droids may be the rage… it may well be the iPhone platform that is driving your Mobile traffic. Trust your analytics.
- Set appropriate Mobile marketing goals. Before you know you have a mobile business, one which is driving revenue, why spend tens of thousands of dollars on Apps or large-scale website enablement? Before Mobile or Social came online wouldn’t you have done a marketing test before spending big dollars on a marketing initiative? So why throw caution to the wind in Mobile?
- Treat your customer with respect. If you’re just getting started with Mobile marketing treat Mobile like you did when you began capturing your email-marketing database. For example, if you’re looking to begin a Mobile program, a good starting point would be to build an opt-in database of mobile numbers, which you own. We recommend that you don’t use 3rd party Sharing Apps to build your opt-in database where you have no idea where the data is going or with whom the data is being shared.
ShoppeSimple Answers To Your Mobile Marketing Challenge
Without requiring any resources from your IT team, ShoppeSimple can help your business bridge the gap to mobile by providing the following:
- A robust set of ShoppeSimple Mobile analytics to help you develop a cost effective mobile strategy and identify which Mobile platforms to pursue and when.
- The ability for you to build an opt-in database of mobile phone numbers that you can market to immediately because you own this data under pure permission with your consumer.
- Mobile enabled landing pages (branded micro-sites) built on-the-fly for you for all Smartphone devices and Tablet platforms.
- Our patent-pending ShoppeFetch engine that enables you to easily create and distribute relevant and personalized product offers daily to your consumers on their Mobile phones which they can also share on Facebook and Twitter. And as always, the consumer is driven back to your website for conversion.
- The ability for you to take advantage of all the unique “wherever you are” benefits of Mobile marketing like leveraging your stores through barcode marketing and driving additional business through QR codes on your catalog.
You won’t believe how easy it is to accomplish all of the above! And once again, we do it all without requiring any assistance from your internal IT.
If you’re looking for an easy to implement, cost effective way to introduce Mobile marketing into your business in 2012, I’d welcome your call at 612-349-2740 or email me at jeff@shoppesimplenetwork.com.
Best,
Jeffery
Founder/CEO