In a country that often seems more divided than ever, there’s one thing we can all agree on: mobile technology is awesome. Mobile technology such as smartphones, tablets and apps have grown and been adopted by the American public at speeds that make the rise of television, the personal computer, and the internet seem like a race of snails. But the explosive growth of mobile technology has caught some business owners off guard, and there are many who still don’t realize the power of mobile for growing a business. This article has nine statistics from the past month alone that show the value of apps, smartphones, and tablets for mobile marketing.
To establish the importance of apps for mobile marketing, consider this: According to the comScore report apps account for 52 percent of the total time spent with digital media in the US.
A lot of app activity comes from Facebook and games like Candy Crush, but it’s less than you may think. The comScore study found that social media apps account for 25 percent of time spent on apps and games account for 16 percent. This means that 59 percent of the time, app users aren’t playing games or using social media.
People spend more than 38 hours per month on their phones, according to Nielsen’s Q1 2014 Cross-Platform Report, and that amount of time is increasing. The report found that the average American spent 7 hours 4 minutes more using smartphone browsers and apps in the first quarter of 2014 than in the same period in 2013.
Even businesses that don’t have an app can take advantage of them through internet marketing. Despite the popularity of app, Nielsen reported that mobile comprises only about 4 percent of total ad spending. This is a huge disconnect that business owners and marketers can take advantage of.
Running an app can be challenging because users will expect a constant flow of new content and updates. According to the comScore study, 57 percent of US smartphone users access apps on their devices every day. However, 42 percent of all app time spent on smartphones occurs on the individual’s single most used app. That means the best apps continuously provide value to the users.
It’s important that businesses have at least one mobile optimized channel for consumers. It can be a website or an app. In a study released earlier this month, the L2 Think Tank reported that 77 percent of US department store brands maintain mobile apps and 79 percent maintain mobile-optimized websites.
Mobile marketing is vital for businesses now, not the distant future. According to a study by Nielsen of global consumers who plan to make online purchases in the next 6 months, 44 percent plant to shop via smartphones and 31 percent with tablets.
Tablet marketing is another area where small business owners can gain ground against their larger competitors. The L2 study cited above found that only 13% of US department store brands maintain tablet-optimized websites.
Tablets are becoming increasingly important for internet marketing as prime target demographics spend more of their internet time on these kinds of devices. A study from Sullivan, Higdon & Sink found that 35 percent of US millennials and 13 percent of boomers use their tablets to surf the internet for more than five hours per week. The percentage of the demographics who are heavy tablet users will only increase as tablets become cheaper and more prevalent.
These stats should be enough to show business owners that there are a lot of ways to use mobile marketing to reach a target demographic. For companies that have the time and resources for maintaining an app, it is a great way to reach customers. But for businesses that want the benefit without creating an app of their own, mobile PPC ads on popular apps (which can be done through ad networks like Google and Facebook), is another way to do it. The other stats show that mobile devices will become huge engines of ecommerce in the future. So it’s best for business owners to get ahead of the next big wave.
Read this article on our site for ways business owners can make a website more tablet friendly.