This article originally appeared on SmallBusinessPR.com in November 2015.
Have you resisted diving into mobile marketing because it seems like a passing fad, one that is too “new†for a small business – or too difficult to execute? These eye-opening mobile marketing facts may challenge everything you think you know about mobile marketing.
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1. The world has gone mobile. Pew Internet Group reports that more Americans now own a smartphone than do not. What’s more, eMarketer predicts that by 2018, half of the world population will own a mobile device. Further, we’re just 12% away from the day we officially live in a world made up of more than two billion smartphone users. China tops the list as the country with the most smartphone users (500 million), followed by the United States (200 million users), India, Japan and Russia.
2. We invest weeks of our lives into mobile devices. MobileStatistics.com reports that we now spend more time staring at our mobile devices than our television sets; all that mobile use amounts to more than three weeks of our lives each year. Most of that mobile screen time is spent browsing the Web, gaming and staying connected to the outside world – largely through text and email.
3. Email and mobile go hand-in-hand. Experian reported that more than half of all emails were opened on a mobile device in the last quarter of 2014 – and most of that activity took place during users’ non-working hours. Of the 900 million people who use Gmail, 75% of them check email on a mobile device, according to numbers shared at the May 2015 Google/TechCrunch developer conference. The popularity of the mobile inbox presents an opportunity for small-business owners to connect with consumers via email, on the very devices they’ve come to rely upon. In fact, Eleventy Group cites a survey in which nearly 70% of respondents said they prefer to hear from a business through email, compared to 17% who chose direct mail.
4. Video is prime mobile entertainment. According to technology company Cisco, half of all mobile use involved mobile video in 2012. By 2014, that number pushed to 55%. The increasing popularity of video as a marketing tactic and the steadily increasing mobile viewership, presents a prime opportunity for small-business marketers to leverage the cost-efficient medium to share brand stories and form deeper connections with their customers through a multimedia platform.
5. Social media owes much of its popularity to mobile. Social media has become a norm of communication in today’s digital world, thanks in large part to mobile devices and social media mobile apps. Nielsen data indicates that Android and Apple users over age 18 spend 65% more time engaging with mobile apps than they did two years ago, amounting to more than 30 hours a month spent using mobile apps. Further, comScore’s 2014 Mobile Metrix report reveals that nearly a quarter of all that app time is spent on social media. Facebook’s app still holds the top spot, with nearly a 70% reach. The next most popular social media app, YouTube, has a 50% reach.
6. There is less competition in the channel than you think. If you’ve shied away from mobile marketing on the assumption that your small-business message won’t cut through the mobile media clutter created by larger brands, you may be missing an opportunity to get noticed by your mobile audience. In fact, 40% of marketers polled by ChiefMarketer.com said they never include mobile marketing in their strategy; just 10% use mobile marketing consistently enough to consider it a weekly tactic. For small businesses, mobile marketing is a low-cost channel that is largely untapped, and can be used to connect with customers at the very moment they’re looking for a product or service you provide.