CMO asks — Mobile Now?
The train has left the station and your audience is on it
I hear a lot of peers, agencies and marketing platform providers talk about mobile and the general consensus is either we are in “wait and see” mode or we are “making our website mobile friendly” (responsive design = latest hyped term, I could go on about it — but let’s just say there are 2 very different levels of implementation of responsive design going on, more on that in another post in the near future).
Econsultancy released a bucket load of facts yesterday on mobile ecommerce — my personal highlight:
This is just adults — look at kids - yes that’s a smartphone stuck to their hand all day, and for some all night.
So why are marketing teams spending such a large % of their budgets on computer usage (your customer has to be sitting down) — $Millions on media spend on Google Web Search, PPC, Display, Video, Native etc … and $Millions on “web”site development? = you can only reach 61% of your audience and it is flat growth and less time spent on that device.
Why are many marketing teams in “wait & see” mode to spend significant budgets on mobile (your customer has it with them all day)? and mobile friendly websites do not count. 91% of your customers are on mobile with 35% on tablets and mobile usage figures, of all types, are in hyper growth mode.
When I hear “that’s not our audience yet”. I ask “did you check your Google Analytics?” “Yes but not really those tabs” — well check those tabs and they are called “Technology” and “Mobile”.
Real world example in real time (buzzword check) — I am working with the Digital CMO of a client in a major consumer market ($53BN market) with a fanatical and emotionally driven audience and here is a snapshot of the last 30 days traffic for their consumer website:
- 70% of all PV (page views) are from consumers on mobile devices
- 65% of mobile PV are from smartphones (iPhone & Android)
- 35% of mobile PV are from tablets (mostly iPad)
- 88% of website visitors came from social media (big marketing push last 2 months on social)
- 85% of social media referred website visitors were from Facebook
- 65% of the Facebook traffic was from mobile Facebook
Take into account we primed the social media marketing engine over that period and such a large amount of social media now happens on mobile, the figures were a jump from mobile at 50% in November to 70% in January. So whatever way you look at it the brand and it’s market, it is a mobile first audience and if you are engaging millennials or generation Z this is their digital habit over the last 30 days.
Mobile is only going one way and that is full steam ahead. So time to jump on that mobile train because if you don’t those 10%/15% of innovative (buzzword check) brands who embraced a mobile first approach to marketing (see Coca Cola mobile first and scale) or some start-up is going to own your audience and the train may not stop for you.
Rewind late 90's — Think Books = Borders? no Amazon!