Mobile is moving – and it’s time to get personal
Dean Wilson, UK CEO and VP International at Active International, asks how brands can make the most of the huge rise in smartphone usage – but warns that it will be catastrophic if the consumer has a bad time.
According to Wired, the undisputed future trends guru in technology, mobile represents the “start of the commercial opportunity of a lifetime.”
In the US, Google are on course to generate $8 billion each year in mobile revenue, triple their 2011 achievement and 17% of their total revenue.
Despite only 6 months traction in the mobile market, Facebook are already monetising their mobile traffic to a level of $600m annually.
We are more mobile and more connected than ever before, and with the introduction of 4G – albeit on a limited city scale initially – the future will deliver an even richer multi-channel experience.
Early adopters of GPS and NFC are already on the move to a mobile future controlled by voice, gesture and motion allowing advertisers more scope than perhaps they ever dreamed possible.
The creation of Weve – a UK consortium which includes EE, O2 and Vodafone – is testament to the importance of focusing and standardising mobile, established to accelerate the development of mobile marketing and wallet services.
We use mobile devices to kill time, save time and, when we have time, as entertainment.
Rapidly changing the way we work, communicate and purchase, our mobiles are, to coin 02’s term, a “digital swiss army knife”. There is even a known mobile affliction – nomophobia – a fear of being without our mobiles.
The average mobile user looks at their phone a staggering 150 times a day – with the primary focus not on making calls but engaging in social media, browsing and buying. With UK smartphone penetration at 58%, 14 million people access the internet via mobiles every day spending on average 25 minutes a day browsing.
Over 10% of all media consumption comes through mobile devices, yet mobile advertising accounts for just 1% of total ad revenues and 7% of digital spends.
Global Android activation is currently outpacing the number of babies born.
By 2012 UK mobile ad spend is forecast to be £511m and by 2014 £962m – a far cry from the £25m in 2008.
A media proposition that is both intimate and personal, it is mobile’s ability to deliver contextualisation and individual engagement that is the key to its ascendancy.
To gleefully swipe a phrase from personalisation expert Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon: “people don’t want gadgets, they want services.” The future of successful mobile campaigns lies fairly significantly in its ability to pre-empt what we want and how we want it.
The biggest challenge to mobile success lies is the size of the screen, which by its nature limits what can be done in a compelling and engaging manner, and demands a very different approach.
Whilst this is not easy to implement, new standards and software are fast enabling a dynamic and richer proposition. Brands that are rising to the challenge by developing attention grabbing ‘socolo’ (social media and location based targeting) messaging understand the power of personal and relevance, also that delivering value to the individual at the time of need is worth its weight in gold.
Getting this right drives affinity, lifetime customer value and a deeper more trusting relationship. This demands more than just a one click strategy, and to drive repeat traffic requires a fully optimised mobile site.
While 60% of the UK’s 100 biggest advertisers have yet to invest in a fully mobile site, evidence shows consumers will spend 70% longer, at up to 5 minutes.
M-commerce delivers a 24/7 shopping experience and is anticipated to grow 50% over the next 2 years to 580 million shoppers. eBay forecast £373m purchases will be made on mobile devices this Christmas, with a third of items from its UK site during its Christmas campaign bought by smartphones.
For those that are still reticent to purchase by mobile there is still a great reliance on mobile search (ROPO research online purchase offline), therefore demanding brands deliver a pleasurable and convenient shopping experience.
Falling short means only one thing, falling sales.
With 41% of smartphone owners anticipating Christmas shopping by mobile, the stakes are high and one bad experience can harm a brand at a much bigger level.
Mobiles have become an extension of who we are and how we live (our self-phones), brands need to develop strategies that leverage the personal intimate nature of the device and how we interact.
When developing mobile marketing, customer needs and usage should work holistically working as the “connective tissue between traditional, digital and social”. In 2013 it is anticipated 70% of marketers will increase their mobile budgets. It’s not just about how much is spent, but how smart the spending is.