Back in 2010, sales attributed to mobile activity accounted for just 0.4 percent of e-commerce retails sales in the UK, but in just 3 years that figure has literally exploded, with mobile commerce now accounting for 20 percent of e-commerce purchases. This translates into a 5,000 percent increase (based on research by IMRG and Capgemini). “In 2020 when we look back on the last ten years, we will undoubtedly see it as the ‘mobile decade’. In the first three years alone we have seen sales via mobile devices increase from nearly zero, to over 20% of all e-retail sales. However, we are only scratching the surface and over the next few years we will see the technology reveal its full potential,” says Chris Webster, VP, Head of Retail Consulting and Technology at Capgemini.
E-commerce sales in the UK attributed to mobile surged past 20 percent in the first quarter of this year and are bound to keep right on growing with the prevalence of mobile devices, mobile applications, mobile web sites and the general shift of the populace to a mobile oriented society. Additionally we see that mobile traffic that goes to retail sites as a percent of total traffic has now reached 30 percent in the first quarter of 2013, up from 24 percent in the forth quarter of 2012. IMRG and Capgemini suggested that these rises in the first quarter are the result of a large increase in tablet ownership following Christmas.
Not surprisingly luxury advertisers have embraced mobile and are flocking to mobile applications, mobile web sites and mobile advertising. According to a recent study conducted by Martini Media and iMedia UK where they surveyed UK marketing professionals about how they are allocating their marketing budgets for the demographic containing wealthy consumers mobile is rapidly becoming the medium of choice right now.
In fact, mobile advertising has grown an amazing 148% year-over-year in Great Britain recently and and UK marketing professionals have been moving steadily towards a mobile-first strategy. This is even more so the case in the luxury market as we see that luxury marketers are now investing heavily in mobile along with big increases in video and rich media formats. Mobile applications and mobile optimized web sites are a perfect fit for sophisticated consumers with high end smartphones.
At this point almost half of all marketing budgets (48 percent) are slated be spent on digital media in 2013, with a huge majority (95 percent) of respondents claiming they increased their digital marketing budgets in 2013 by an average of 22% over the past year. Not surprisingly we see standard display marketing tactics have fallen out of favor and spend there will decrease. Brands that identify as targeting high-income consumers plan on spending more than 2X as much on video and nearly twice as much on rich media and mobile compared to with mass-market brands. Which makes perfect sense as luxury brands can really benefit from these mediums being used to showcase their products.
When it comes to choosing the medium for digital campaigns, the ability to single out a target audience was ranked as the key factor for the choice. Digital’s ability to target clearly offers advantages that luxury brands are willing to pay for to reach the right audience.
Right now roughly 57 percent of the US population has a smartphone and this number is estimated to grow about 68 percent by 2017 (IDC Research Report 2013). If you look at a recent study by Cisco, they estimate the mobile internet will grow 66 percent each year over the same time frame. It’s pretty obvious to see why everyone is talking about mobile and mobile applications. Mobile offers tremendous opportunities when it comes to marketing because consumers are increasingly using their phones to research products and services.
A company with a solid mobile presence will see a huge difference in their sales. Therefore, we here are some key items that you should look at when approaching your mobile app or web site.
Focus on User’s Behavior
Consumers with smartphones are a group who are not only eager to buy, but also use their smartphone to search for information relative to the products they are looking to buy. This intent offers a huge opportunity for marketers. This intent can easily be capitalized on.
Treat Mobile as a Unique Marketing Medium
While many folks think of mobile similar to the web, the mobile experience on smartphones and tablets is much different. Mobile has completely different requirements and mobile users have completely different needs. Key to the mobile experience is the phrase “less is more”. Additionally with the small device sizes, you need bigger fields and data spread out across more pages. Remember that users don’t like to scroll down a really long page on a smartphone; they will lose interest and look somewhere else.
Geo-targeting
Geo-targeting offers fantastic opportunities to pinpoint marketing opportunities and to deliver carefully targeted content based on the exact location of the user. Geo-targeting allows you to reach the right consumers, at the right time, at the right place. To make it even better, since it’s happening on a smartphone, you can offer customers incentive to visit while users are out shopping, examples include coupons. Additionally ads can also be matched to what consumers are browsing for on their smartphone, this dramatically increases effectiveness.
Click to Call
Smartphones offer a new opportunity to connect on the go. Mobile advertising is powerful, but it’s better to take it one step further. A recent study by iAquire shows that about 70% of mobile searches lead to action within an hour. Therefore the best thing to do is to allow consumers the chance to buy right then. You can enable your ads so that consumers can directly call you by clicking on your ad.
Mobile is here and it is here in a big way. Just slapping up a quick mobile web site is not enough to capitalize on available opportunities. Mobile gives you the chance to encourage a response and persuade action right then and there. This gives you a tremendous chance in increasing sales conversions. By focusing on the behavior of mobile users and carefully designing tools to stimulate responses, mobile conversions can be significantly increased. Mobile marketing offers a massive opportunity to marketers who understand that mobile is not just another technology.