Presently, the US is the second largest mobile advertising market in the world, behind Japan. In 2010, the US mobile advertising market will be worth $797.6 million, rising to $5.04 billion in 2015.

Aligned with this increase in mobile advertising spend, will be an increase in US mobile users engaging with advertisements on their mobile. Consumer research for mobile^SQUARED by Lightspeed Research reveals that 53% of US mobile users claimed not to have seen  advertising on their mobile. That figure will inevitably increase. Primarily because 49 million mobile users already claim to have actively engaged with an advertisement on their mobile, and if just one-third of that 53% start to engage with mobile advertising, that would contribute an additional 50 million mobile users.

“Mobile is a conversation that all DDB clients want to have now,” says Jeff Swystun, Chief Communications Officer, DDB Worldwide. ”And we are happy to share our experience that when mobile is used effectively it makes all media work harder. We believe that mobile can be an integral component of a larger campaign as long as it works to connect people with people, not just people with brands.”

Following years of promise, the US mobile advertising marketplace has sprung into life, and will become the second billion dollar market ‑ after Japan – during 2011. Yet the true potential of mobile, and the market realisation of advertising on the medium, remains some distance away.

By the end of 2010, mobile advertising will represent 1% of total ad spend in the US. And although mobile is growing faster than online, that is only to be expected given digital was an entirely nascent medium 10 years ago, and has laid down the foundations for mobile to flourish. And flourish the United States of mobile Advertising will.

Companies need to develop an opt-in database and then figure out how to use it properly. If used properly the database can be an excellent way to effectively communicate with customers on an intimate one-on-one level never seen before. Customers will definitely trade their information with a company they use regularly if they feel like they are getting something valuable in return. Also, by effectively providing a way for the customer to opt-out anytime they want makes them feel as if they are in control. We get a very high retention of customers that participate in the mobile marketing programs we run for our clients at CMP Mobile . Approximately 96% of customers stay the course and don’t opt out. As time marches on, more and more companies will realize the benefit of this type of marketing and will definitely jump on-board.

With the increased mobile commerce activity the industry has seen in 2010, it is no longer a question of whether you need a mobile presence, but rather how you can deliver the best mobile experience and integrate it seamlessly into your sales process.

A successful mobile strategy requires more than just enabling mobile transactions. I see the strategy as a two part process. First, build your mobile foundation by optimizing your mobile site for all mobile browsers, making sure that your site is accessible and provides a great experience via any Web-enabled mobile phone. You want to make sure your site will be found easily via a mobile Web search, and that it will provide the best possible mobile experience when a consumer lands on it.

Secondly once your mobile browser-optimized foundation is in place, your next step is to understand where you can enhance your mobile success by developing targeted, value-added, device-based applications for the iPhone, iPad, Android or BlackBerry. The goal of these applications should be to provide business benefits that you cannot achieve via the mobile browser. Because there are thousands of people searching for apps everyday why not provide your customers the ability to place an app on their phone so they can easily access your mobile presence. Having your customers entering your mobile site on their mobile browsers can be time consuming and cumbersome and the app makes all that go away.

Whatever your mobile strategy is, keep in mind that consumer’s are utilizing their mobile devices in new ways everyday and this medium is destined to become the connector of all other current channels such as your website, physical store, catalogs and social media. What an exciting time to be part of this new way to connect with customers. One thing is clear and that is if you provide a satisfying/relevant experience you with ultimately enjoy a profitable, long term relationship with your customers.

Accenture surveyed 1,000 consumers in 10 countries and found that many prefer using their mobile device to interacting with a store employee for simple tasks. According to the survey, 73% favor using their smartphone to handle simple tasks compared to 15% who favour interaction with an employee. Similarly, 71% prefer using their smartphone to identify a store with a desired item in stock, while 17% would prefer to get that information by speaking to an employee.

The survey showed that 69% of smartphone users are aware of smartphone applications from large retailers and 48% have downloaded at least one application. Ninety percent of consumers who have downloaded an application from a large retailer found it “very useful” or “useful”, while 56% believe smartphones will make the shopping experience more enjoyable.

While many brands are moving from test campaigns to mobile messaging as a way to reach customers with relevant communications, marketers are often challenged by the complex rules of engagement and various options available through mobile.  What are the trends and best practices for ensuring that mobile is an effective marketing tool?

LOCATION-BASED:  Location-based marketing is one of the greatest values of mobile.  With Foursquare at more than four million users and growing rapidly, it’s obvious that consumers are onboard with letting others know where they are.  Facebook’s offers at check-in bring considerably more opportunity, with more than 150 million mobile users with the check-in feature pre-installed in their mobile applications.

Companies need to pay attention.  They may already be getting check-ins at their   locations and should be thinking about whether this presents an opportunity.  On other levels, location-based marketing gives marketers the ability to send offers to people as they are walking into a store (if they are opted in).  That said, we as marketers have to be mindful of how the rules of marketing apply and need to question the timing of such offers.

MOBILE SITES:  With smartphone usage estimated at 28% market penetration in the U.S. – with 41% smartphone penetration in recent sales – every company needs a mobile site.  But marketers should be thinking about what the end users need on their phones rather than just “mobile enabling” existing web sites.  The important features, such as locators tied to mapping software, or other tools that help consumers get information quickly are key elements to consider for a mobile site.  A marketer can always include a link to the full web site for people with phones that are capable of seeing the whole site and who may need more information.  Mobile sites require a strategy – and probably user research as well – to make the most of them.

MOBILE APPS: Mobile applications are great ways to engage customers and provide content using the built-in technology of the phone.  But some companies forget that they need to market their applications.  The application stores are full and sometimes it’s difficult for consumers to find what they want.  App marketers need to ensure their intended customer can find their applications.  It may make sense to use an SMS strategy to do that, to let customers know how to search for the application when they are in consideration mode.

SMS:  Short message service (SMS) is becoming more main stream for multiple generations of users.  But SMS is more than delivering a coupon or a store event alert.  Using SMS is about creating meaningful marketing campaigns that use this method of communicating because of its timeliness and relevance.  Marketers should consider how customers could text questions to them or get alerts that help them with their busy lives.  The possibilities are endless but the two most important considerations are these: 1) be sure you have permission to send text messages, and 2) have a mobile strategy in place that provides relevant content that is meaningful to the recipient.

Mobile marketing is no longer an emerging trend – it is one that is already here.  As the mobile industry moves quickly and new technologies continue to evolve, regulations and guidelines are likely to evolve as well.  A word to the wise: it is vital to stay on top of this industry by getting involved.  Mobile marketers should join the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), the DMA Mobile Marketing Council and attend events that are dedicated to furthering the industry.

Above all, remember that at the end of the day, the consumer will decide whether to participate and remain in mobile programs.  Sophisticated marketers will keep best practices in mind to get the most out of their marketing investments.

In the 1990s, when the Internet began its reconstruction of the traditional commercial landscape, marketers reacted at first with fear and distrust.

But as the Web demonstrated its significance or, perhaps, its inevitability, marketers quickly realized that they had to do something and they began figure out how to use the internet to propagate in-store retail sales, something they really understood.

Incidentally, it took more than a decade for marketers to truly grasp the game-changing effect of pure online commerce  and ten years or more lost because of a stubborn refusal to accept the natural evolution of technology-enabled buyer behavior.

Unbelievably it is happening all over again with the mobile web and mobile marketing however, its not the web that has changed but the device by which we explore it…….introducing the mobile smart phone.

Today, it does not matter how powerful your brand may be because users are now in full control of their engagement experiences and if you are not providing the ability for consumers to have a great experience on both their desktop computer and their mobile phone, you are going to lose the battle. Because the desktop experience and the mobile phone experience are completely different, businesses must provide a mobile formatted experience for customers opting to use their phones.

Our goal today is not getting customers where we want them, it is delivering a brand experience optimized to where they already are.

Finding the optimal user interface for a mobile device may mean completely removing certain aspects of your full-version Web site. Phones have less screen real estate but remember that your mobile site and your desktop are complementary in nature.

Think of your mobile site not as a conduit, but as a destination. Customers are going to be there, and it is your job to make the experience as useful and pleasurable as possible.

EBay’s decision to acquire Where, Groupon’s deal for Whrrl and Visa’s launch of a mobile deals business – as well as the Walmart news – all point to the growing recognition by big brands that mobile is a force to be reckoned with.

“These deals show that a company like eBay or Groupon is looking forward and saying, ‘How can we be a player in the emerging mobile commerce and mobile marketing ecosystem,’” said Neil Strother, Kirkland, WA-based practice director at ABI Research. “They’re not sitting back and letting others be the leaders.”

Driving consumers into stores
In the eBay, Groupon and Walmart deals, in particular, the companies acquire mobile marketing technology rather than develop it in-house.

But what all of the deals have in common is that big brands are placing bets on mobile in terms of driving in-store visits and to directly spur sales.

“There is an acknowledgement that we’re rapidly shifting from a place where smartphones make up  a small population of phones, particularly in North America, to a large population of mobile phones – which makes a lot of these GPS/local or just high-quality interactions via mobile much more attractive,” said Nikki Baird, managing partner at Retail Systems Research, Miami.

“I’ve always thought of eBay as sort of the secondary market alternative to purchasing new from a retailer,” she said. “So, Where, in combination with PayPal, seems on the surface to be enabling more competition for eBay’s own sellers, not less.

“But I can also see the potential for money to be made on the affiliate side in paying to participate in the search through offers or other mechanisms.”

Ms. Baird said that Groupon and a check-in capability makes a lot of sense. It would make an even better way to virally share great deals, plus adding more on the social side of redemption.

More retailers and credit card companies and probably others that have not even been considered yet will be offering deals of the day soon.

The Walmart deal for Kosmix could bolster the retailer’s international multichannel retail strategy.

“The acquisition is part of our commitment to mobile and social commerce and our efforts to integrate the shopping experience between traditional stores – brick and mortar – and ecommerce,” said Lorenzo Lopez, spokesman for Walmart, Bentonville, AZ.

Kosmix, based in Mountain View, CA, has developed a social media technology platform that filters and organizes social media content with the goal of connecting people to real-time information that matters to them.

The founders and the Kosmix team will operate as part of the recently formed @WalmartLabs group, which is focused on creating technologies and businesses around social media and mobile commerce.

The survey claims that retailers are flocking to mobile marketing, with 91% either having a mobile strategy in place or in the process of developing one, compared to 74% last year. While mobile marketing did not feature prominently in retailers’ online marketing budgets last year, 16% of retailers plan to increase their mobile marketing spend over 2011.

I am extremely confident that these numbers will continue to rise as businesses see that having a mobile presence is an absolute necessity. I like to compare these trends with those back in the mid 90′s when business owners were contemplating an investment in a website. Back then many businesses did not see the need and thought that customers would never purchase from them online but as everyone knows today, that way of thinking was quickly squashed. If you are business today without a web presence you are definitely missing customers and this will become the same issue for businesses without a mobile presence.

]]> http://www.cmpmobile.com/2011/12/08/retail-mobile-presence-growing-rapidly/feed/ 0 http://www.cmpmobile.com/2011/12/08/more-than-33m-americans-shop-using-their-mobile-phone/ http://www.cmpmobile.com/2011/12/08/more-than-33m-americans-shop-using-their-mobile-phone/#comments Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:37:03 +0000 admin http://beta.cmpmobile.com/?p=615 Marketers attempting to understand consumer habits that influence mobile marketing can get a revealing glimpse into the mindset of the mobile consumer through the newly released 2011 Mobile Consumer Report from Experian Simmons.

According to exclusive research from Experian Simmons, a part of Experian Marketing Services, 29 percent of cell phone owners today believe their phone will be the primary device for their entertainment needs in the future.

The report provides marketers with vivid insights that they need to prepare for the mobile revolution, including how consumers use their phones to manage social connections, consume media, get information, plan shopping trips, interact with mobile advertising and more.

Other findings from the report include:

• More than nine out of 10 adults, seven out of 10 teens and one out of five kids own a mobile phone
• Fifty-six percent of smartphone owners access the Internet from their phone; 27 percent watch video
• Thirty percent of iPhone owners want to make purchases in stores using their phone
• Twenty percent of social networkers access their account from their phone
• Sixteen percent of mobile owners downloaded a mobile app last month

This report also includes an illuminating profile of five distinct mobile consumer segments developed by Experian Simmons, including a look at each segment’s receptivity to traditional and mobile advertising.

Are you ready for MOBILE?

MOBILE USAGE

• 303 million Americans reported that they own a mobile device (CTIA)
• 96% of the U.S. Population owns a wireless device (CTIA)
• 26.6% of U.S. households are mobile-only, meaning that they do not own a landline phone (CTIA)
• 63.2 million Americans own a smartphone (comScore)
• 50% of consumers ages 25-34 have smartphones (comScore)
• 35% of smartphone users access the mobile Internet from their device (comScore)
• Two-year growth (2008 – 2010) of more than 2,000 percent in mobile-ready web sites. (DotMobi)

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

• 82% of consumers have used their mobile phones in a store (Insight Express)
• 55% percent in a doctor’s office or hospital (Insight Express)
• 17% during a movie at the theater (Insight Express)
• 14% while flying on a plane (Insight Express)
• 7% percent during church service (Insight Express)
• 17% of mobile users have shown a clerk in a store a picture of a product on their mobile phone
• 45% of users check their mobile devices first thing in the morning (Insight Express)
• 1/3 mobile searches have local intent (The Kelsey Group)
• 1/3 of all mobile users already actively engage with Web content on their mobile phones (comScore)
• 53% of smartphone users routinely engage in mobile Web browsing activities
• E-mail represents 41.6% of mobile Internet time for users in the United States (Nielsen)
• 86% of mobile internet users are using their device while watching TV
• Average US mobile user spends 2.7 hours socializing per day on a mobile device

MOBILE ECOMMERCE

• 8% of total eCommerce sales will come from mobile by 2014 (ABI Research)
• Mobile coupon users in North America increased more than tenfold in 2010. Triple-digit increases are expected in both 2011 and 2012. (Yankee Group)
• $2.37 billion of mobile coupon transactions will take place in North America in 2013, up from $5 million in 2010. (Yankee Group)

APPS

• Apple hosts more than 350,000 mobile apps in the Apple App Store
• Apple offers more than 65,000 iPad apps
• Currently more than 150,000 apps in the Android Market
• There were 10.9 billion worldwide app downloads in 2010 (International Data Corp)

ADVERTISING

• U.S. mobile advertising spend was estimated at $743.1 million in 2010 (eMarketer)
• Display mobile advertising spend will reach $334.5 million in total ad spend by the end of 2011, up from $202.5 million in 2010 (eMarketer)
• Spending for ads delivered via mobile apps in the U.S. will explode from $305 million in 2010 to $685 million in 2011 and more than $8 billion by 2015 (Borrell Associates)
• Google currently dominates mobile search advertising, with an ad revenue market share of 91.4 percent.
• 21% of Google’s largest advertisers have a mobile-optimized Web presence. (Google)
• 47% of mobile application users say they click or tap on mobile ads by mistake more than they do on purpose. (Harris Interactive Survey)
• Mobile search advertising spend will reach $295.1 million in 2011 (eMarketer)
• Mobile video advertising spend will reach $50.8 million in 2011, up from $28.3 million in 2010 (eMarketer)
• Mobile made up 3% of total online advertising budgets in 2010. This number will grow to 5% in 2011. (IDC)
• Mobile advertising is four-to-five times more effective than online advertising (InsightExpress)
• iPhone users are more likely to respond to a mobile Web ad than owners of other smartphones. (Luth Research on behalf of the Mobile Marketing Association)
• For smartphone users, seeing a mobile ad triggers a response with 43% of consumers seeing an ad (Luth Research on behalf of the Mobile Marketing Association)

QR CODES

• 65% of consumers have seen a QR code (MGH)
• 49% Of those respondents who had previously seen a QR code have used one (MGH)
• 72% of smartphone users would be likely to recall an ad featuring a QR code. (MGH)
• 35% of U.S. shoppers were interested in using QR codes as shopping tools (In-Store Marketing Institute conducted by Catapult and Ipsos OTX)
• Among those who were identified as being interested in QR Codes, 87% responded with an interest in using QR codes to gain coupons, deals or discounts. (MGH)
• 60% of those interested in using QR codes would use them to make a purchase. (MGH)

SMS / TEXT MESSAGING

• SMS will make up 24% of total U.S. ad spend in 2014, down from 44 percent in 2010 (eMarketer)
• Consumers worldwide will send more than 7 trillion SMS messages in 2011. (ABI Research)
• 36% respond to ads within text alerts, while only 11 percent responded to display ads on mobile Web sites.
• The US sends 187.7 billion text messages every month. (CTIA)

VIDEO

• Mobile video has higher viewer retention than online video, with 94 percent in the first 10 seconds compared to only 81 percent on the PC Internet. (Rhythm NewMedia)
• The number of U.S. mobile users who watch videos on their devices has increased more than 40 percent year-over-year in both the third and fourth quarters of 2010, ending the year at a grand total of almost 25 million people, according to a mobile video report from Nielsen
• These consumers watched an average of four hours and 20 minutes of mobile video per month in both the third and fourth quarter of 2010, which equals a 33 percent and 20 percent year-over-year bump in each quarter (Nielsen.)

TABLETS

• 10.3 million tablet users in 2010 and that number is expected to reach 82.1 million by 2015 (Yahoo Research)
• Tablet sales will grow to 36% of U.S. PC sales, outselling notebooks/mini-PCs, which are expected to be 32% of overall PC sales (Yahoo Research)
• iPad users are open to advertising, especially if coupled with an interesting video (49 percent) or interactive features (46 percent) (Yahoo Research)

SOCIAL MEDIA

• 80 Million Twitter mobile users
• 200 million Facebook users use the service on their mobile phone (Facebook Blog)
• 200 million YouTube views per day (YouTube Blog)
• Women aged 35 – 54 are the most active group in accessing social networks with mobile (Nielsen)
• 30% of smartphone owners have accessed social networks via browser (comScore)
• Nearly 1 in 5 Smartphone Owners Access Check-In Services Via their Mobile Device (comScore)