We’ve Seen Increased Demand for Social, SEO And Digital Marketing

Mobile devices make local marketing one of the most important trends in the coming years. People are using their mobile devices to make split-second decisions while they are out in the community. If a group of friends is out and about in town and decide that they are hungry, for example, they will do a quick search to see what restaurants are nearby, and how well other diners liked those restaurants. A strong emphasis on local, geographically specific marketing is crucial here.

Yet that is not the only change. Social media is growing in importance, and as such must be considered as part of an overall mobile marketing campaign. By combining these two focuses, marketers will take their message directly to their potential customers, giving them the information they need when and where they need it.

Social Media Statistics

When considering the importance of social media to an overall mobile marketing campaign, consider these statistics:

30 percent of the average consumer’s time online via mobile devices is on social media
Social media use in the US increased by 37 percent from 2011 to 2012
Time spent online using social mobile apps increased by 76 percent from 2011 to 2012
Facebook has 74.3 unique visitors via its mobile apps

Impressed? You should be. These numbers clearly show the importance of social media in a mobile marketing campaign.

Merging Social Media and Mobile Marketing

In the past, social media marketing and mobile marketing were treated almost like two separate entities. People set up their social media pages, and then they set up a separate mobile website. This is changing, as more and more marketers are realizing the connection between the two.

The key question when merging social media and mobile marketing campaigns is defining your goal. When a consumer comes in contact with your social media post via his mobile device, what is your goal? While your first reaction might be to say that the goal is to have the customer make a purchase, this may not be accurate.

Sometimes, the goal may be to develop a relationship. It may be to highlight your knowledge on a topic. It may even be to capture an email address for a marketing campaign. With social media, you can establish your expertise in the field, grow trust among the members of your target audience and increase your brand awareness as you push towards greater profits.

Adding Local to Create SoMoLo Marketing

In addition to the increased demand for a social media prescience, people today are increasingly relying on local search to find what they need. Consumers are using local search terms, and your site needs to be optimized for this.

Keep Profiles Current and Optimized

One of the best ways to make the most out of this trend towards local marketing is to keep profiles and listings on popular geographically specific directories current. Yelp, Google Place Pages and other similar directories are the types of sites consumers use when looking for information about a business. Savvy marketers will make the most of this and ensure that their company’s information is listed accurately, easily accessible and rated well. This will ensure that people who are using local Boulder SEO companies will be able to find the company.

Consider again a group of friends who wants to go out to eat. They decide they want Chinese food, and they use a mobile device to search for nearby Chinese restaurants. They are taken to the Yelp page that lists a variety of restaurants, all with reviews and ratings. They may choose the highest rated one, or they may choose the closest one. Yet if the restaurant they choose doesn’t have a website link, address or phone number, they may choose to go elsewhere. The restaurants that have maximized their Yelp directory listing are going to look the most appealing to this group of friends.

Create SoMoLo Marketing Campaigns

This increased reliance on social media and local search has given place to a new term: SoMoLo marketing. This acronym refers to social, mobile and local.

SoMoLo marketing represents the intersection of three formerly distinct types of marketing. Today’s consumers get social (so) where they are (lo) and use their mobile devices (mo) to find the information they need to do so. Finding a marketing technique that maximizes this is crucial. By creating a mobile marketing campaign that is locally specific and socially accessible, you will reach your target demographic.

Introduction

Have you been wondering if mobile marketing is worth your efforts? Consider this quote:

“In the last 12 months, customers around the world ordered more than $1 billion worth of products from Amazon using a mobile device.”

This was said by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, and it shows just how powerful mobile marketing has become. If your company is not making the most out of it, you are missing out on that potential income.

Why is mobile marketing so important? Think about the way people use their mobile devices. A mobile phone, smart or not, is constantly with the individual. If they receive a text, they likely stop what they are doing to check it. If they have a few moments of downtime, they likely use the phone to go online and check their email or their favorite social media site.

By getting your message to that mobile device, you are keeping your brand, quite literally, in your customer’s back pocket. This is why mobile marketing is becoming one of the driving forces in the marketing world. When done correctly, mobile marketing reaches a consumer in a highly intimate way, reaching them on their most personal device.

Mobile media is here to stay, and it is growing at a tremendous rate. Is your business making the most out of this? If you are not following the latest mobile marketing trends, you may be left in the dust. Here’s what you need to know about the latest trends and changes in the mobile marketing world.

Chapter 1 – The Need for Mobile Marketing

The statistics surrounding mobile marketing are quite staggering, and they point to a clear need for more emphasis on mobile marketing efforts going forward. Those who have found success marketing online are going to need to adjust if they are going to continue to succeed.

Understanding Mobile Marketing Statistics

There are currently around 4 billion people with mobile phones across the world. Of those, 1.08 billion are smartphones. This means that 27 percent of cell phone users have a phone that can connect to the Internet. On top of that, 3.05 billion of these phones are SMS enabled. These are huge numbers.

But the statistics indicate even more than just a huge global market. Consider this: people spend 2.7 hours a day socializing on their mobile devices. This is twice the amount of time that people will spend eating over the course of a day. A full 91 percent of mobile use is to socialize, compared to 79 percent for desktops. People are spending a lot of tiem on their mobile devices, which means that this is a powerful tool to the marketer who knows how to use it right.

Time Spent Online Is Increasing

What is interesting about the statistics relating to mobile use is that people are spending more and more time on their devices. From July 2011 to July 2012, a Nielsen study into mobile growth showed that the time spent on mobile devices and apps grew by a whopping 120 percent. From 2011 to 2012, web traffic from mobile devices grew by 84 percent.

Will Mobile Take Over Computers?

The makers of Microsoft Tag, Microsoft’s attempt at making a mobile device, indicate that they expect mobile devices to overtake computers by 2014. While this remains to be seen, in 2013 use seems fairly even, with computers just a little bit more popular as some people are taking longer to make the switch. Thus, this estimate is probably not all that far-fetched.

Now when it comes to shopping and consumer behavior, the statistics are even more promising. People are using their mobile devices to shop, even if they don’t make the purchase online. A full 24 percent of Americans who own a tablet use it to shop at least two times a month, with 20 percent reporting using it once a week, and a full 12 percent shopping daily on their mobile device.

Mobile Is Necessary to Reach a Global Audience

Some U.S. based marketers are less interested in mobile optimization because computer-based sales are still strong. In the U.S. in 2012, only 7.96 percent of web traffic was mobile traffic. Yet, in Africa the number is almost double at 14.85 percent, and it’s even higher in Asia at 17.84 percent. These may seem like small percents, but it represents an increase of 192.5 percent over the 2010 numbers.

So what does this mean? It means that marketers who are interested in reaching a global audience need to embrace mobile optimization. The world is going mobile, perhaps faster than the U.S., and smart marketers will make the most of this by taking their websites nad products to the mobile market.

The Bottom Line About Statistics

It’s easy to get caught up in numbers and to allow them to put you into a statistics-induced haze, so what’s the bottom line? All of these numbers indicate that mobile devices are growing in popularity, and consumers are using them to make buying decisions. As a result, effective marketing is going to embrace the mobile device, so marketers need to stand up and take notice.

ERAMBULANCE

Is Mobile Marketing Worth The Effort?