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What Small Businesses Should Know About Mobile Marketing and Consumer Media Consumption

Jan 25, 2017 | 3:46 PM

How long has it been since you last checked your phone? When did you last look at social media, an app or your email on your phone?

My guess is you are either reading this from your phone, answered “just a few minutes ago”, or within the hour. If you did, you are not alone; consumers spend nearly 6 hours a day on digital media, with 3 of those hours spent on their smartphones.

Is your business and brand where your customers are looking?

Having a mobile marketing strategy is about your audience, it is about staying current with consumer habits, how we now live our lives and have all information at our fingertips through our mobile device.

It’s about:

time served

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big return

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environmental impacts

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– Virtually all 18-34 year old millenials (97%) are mobile users and 35-54 demographic 92% use mobile phones.

– How, depending on the study group and age group, people check their phones 30-150+ times per day (Kleiner Perkings Caulfield and Byers)

– That users spend nearly 3 hours a day on their mobiles phones

– And 89% of media time on mobile is on mobile apps.

As a small business owner these consumer behaviors can have a big impact on you, here’s why:

– 95% of smartphone users have looked for local information

– 88% of these users take action within a day, indicating these are immediate information needs

– 77% have contacted a business, with 61% calling, 50% looked up the business on a map, and 65% visiting the local business

How Are Businesses Responding To This Shift to Mobile?

It is estimated only between 20-30% of businesses have a mobile marketing strategy in place, meaning there is a missed opportunity for local businesses to capture this audience.

Depending on which study you look at, research shows that mobile advertisement is growing 34% annually between 2015 and 2018, according to Zenith.

eMarketer estimates mobile ad spend in Canada grew 55% from 2015-2016 to over $3 billion – and is expected to grow at a double digit rate until 2020.

Despite a growth in time spent on media, some advertisers are missing out on the mobile audience as the mobile ad spend lags behind media consumption via mobile devices.

This means, that although people are spending more time on their phones businesses are not yet putting in the effort to advertise and connect with them through their mobile devices.

What This Mean For Your Business

This equates to an opportunity for your business to connect with consumers through their mobile phones to capture their attention and turn them into a repeat customer.

In a more connected world competition for consumer attention is stiff. The best way to think about “mobile marketing” is to remember that your business (likely) hasn’t changed much as you are still selling the same product (or similar) as few years ago.

What has changed is HOW you can now connect and communicate with consumers to sell your products.

The HOW is why the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group wanted to bring GetintheLoop, a mobile marketing platform that integrates mobile, social, email, and radio to Vancouver Island. The JPBG recognized a missed opportunity for businesses to convert audiences who spend time on their phones into a customer, and wants to close the gap between time spent on mobile devices and where the businesses in their community are spending their advertising dollars.

It is easy to get stuck doing nothing because of the paralysis due to too many options to consider and this is how the JPBG and GetintheLoop can easily help improve your digital and mobile effort.

If you don’t consider how consumers are interacting with your business from their mobile phones you may never get a chance to convert them into a (repeat) customer again. The business that does consider HOW consumers now get information and take steps to implement a mobile and digital strategy will capture this audience and increase the successes of turning them into a paying, repeat, customer.

Click here or call to learn how easy, affordable and effective GetintheLoop can be for you.