By Upendra Mishra
I am sure you do most of these on your smart phones these days: read emails, search and browse through websites, read news, research, watch videos and even take videos and pictures. Your current clients and prospects are doing the same.
Unfortunately, many in the real estate industry have not even audited their websites, email and other digital tools to see if they are compatible with mobile devices. You still cannot read many websites on a mobile device, and your nicely-designed email campaign looks crooked on a smartphone.
What should you do? Well, the first thing is to have an expert audit all of your digital marketing tools- from your website to links in your email campaigns and have the problems corrected if there are any. If it is not fixable, it is time to redesign your website and get a new template for email campaigns. Once this is done, the next big step will be to create a mobile digital marketing strategy. According to Saleforce, 68 percent of companies have already integrated mobile marketing into their overall marketing strategy.
Why Should I Do This?
Market data suggests that everything is moving in the direction of smart phones as the technology advances for better and people feel more comfortable. Here are some numbers to keep in mind. We have complied it from various news and research sources.
- Half of the world’s population has mobile devices. In developed countries like the United States almost everyone has a smartphone. According to ComSource, users spend on average 69 percent of their media time on smartphones and 50 percent of the time individuals spend on digital media is on mobile apps. Eighty percent of consumer social media time is spent on a mobile device.
- Sixty-nine percent of consumers worldwide between the ages of 18 and 39 use mobile devices to research products before they buy, according to AUM Core.
- According to ComScore, 78 percent of mobile searches for local business information result in a purchase. That’s higher than from any other kind of device.
- Forrester Research estimates that mobile-influenced offline spending is already over $1 trillion. People do heavy mobile research before indulging in offline purchasing in almost all categories.
- According to Marketing Land, 90 percent of smartphone owners use their phones while making purchasing decisions in a brick and mortar store, and Nectafy says 88 percent of consumers who search for a type of local business on a mobile device call or go to that business within 24 hours.
- By 2019, mobile advertising is expected to represent 72 percent of all U.S. digital ad spending, according to MarketingLand.
Before you kick off your marketing season in fall of this year, it may be a good idea to start thinking about a mobile marketing strategy.
(Mr. Mishra is managing partner of the Waltham, MA-based integrated inbound marketing and PR firm The Mishra Group. He writes about his three passions: marketing, scriptures and gardening.)
