Mobile on the Move

Mobile is the future of advertising, and mobile search is on the rise.  Today nearly two-thirds of Americans own a smartphone, and 19 percent of Americans rely to some degree on a smartphone for accessing online services and information and for staying connected to the world around them. More and more search marketers are diversifying their ad spend to reach a larger audience and they are seeing that mobile users have different needs and expectations than people sitting in front of their desktop.

Mobile campaigns need to be treated as a separate experience, with their own unique goals. So why do we still give our customers desktop solutions when they are on the go?  Forms, live chat and website navigation aren’t ideal for mobile users looking for fast answers. Voice conversation is the best way to get questions answered quickly, and considering that 70 percent of people have called businesses directly from search results it is clear that customers want personal assistance. A study by NewVoiceMedia confirms that 75 percent of consumers say making a phone call is the quickest way to resolve an issue.

People now spend more time online via their mobile devices than on desktop or laptop computers, according to comScore. Industry data also shows mobile search is expected to overtake desktop search by 2015. In light of this trend, search marketers can’t afford to neglect their growing mobile audience by sticking to the old desktop formula. Mobile devices bridge the digital and offline worlds. Unlike desktops, mobile phones are with us at all times, giving us the freedom to be in the real world and online all at once. Before the mobile shift, you could assume people searching the Internet were at home or work. At the very least, you knew they were stationary. Now they could be anywhere, doing anything—and that changes how they search the Internet.

A report by Invoca entitled Paid Search for the Mobile Era describes the profile of a mobile consumer as:

• Action-oriented
• 73 percent of mobile searches result in additional actions such as a phone call, store visit, or purchase, according to Google.
• More likely to check store inventories, look for directions, or make phone calls
• Can be at home, at work, or on the go
• More location-oriented than their desktop counterparts
• Have complex multichannel paths to purchase
• Convert offline more than they do online
• 89 percent of local mobile search conversions occur offline, according to comScore.

Bullets

• Research from the U.S. Travel Association says 40 percent of American workers are not using all of their vacation days. 40 percent are afraid of the work they’ll face when they return; 35 percent say they’re afraid no one else can do their jobs; 32 percent are worried that taking a vacation puts extra pressure on their colleagues to do their jobs; and 25 percent are afraid of losing their jobs when they take a vacation. getsidekick.com

• A survey of marketing professionals found that 78 percent had mistakenly forwarded a “sensitive” message to the wrong person. bbc.com

• Research in a recent BIA/Kelsey report suggests that the social ad market may reach $11 billion by 2017, up from $4.7 billion in 2012. salesforcemarketingcloud.com

• The mobile trend has unsurprisingly included social network usage and advertising. According to BIA/Kelsey, both Twitter and Facebook have passed the 50 percent mobile usage mark, and about 30 percent of Facebook’s ad revenue comes from mobile. salesforcemarketingcloud.com

• Across all video ads, the CTR rate on Facebook is up 57 percent over last quarter and as a result, 31 percent of Facebook budgets have shifted to video due to higher performance. scribd.com