Along with topics like ‘inbound marketing,’ ‘growth hacking’ and ‘social media,’ the ‘mobilization of marketing’ has been one of the most written-about topics on most of the marketing blog sites and portals for some time.
So, with “everyone” accessing the internet for from their mobile devices, shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to move our marketing initiatives to align with that? Not so fast, my friend! (with props to Lee Corso of ESPN).
Yes, the use of smart phones in the U.S. continues to increase at a pretty frenetic clip – from 63M users in 2010 to a projected 220M users in 2017A.
And yes, the all-powerful Google changed their search algorithms last April to reward mobile-optimized websites with higher rankingsB.
So, is there any reason you shouldn’t have a mobile strategy? Not really.
But before you start freaking out that you’re way behind the curve, consider the two most common marketing efforts for most firms – your website and email marketing.
For your website, use Google Analytics to determine just what percentage of website visitors are coming from mobile devices. Maybe in our B2B world it’s a little different than in the B2C world, but here are the annual percentage of mobile visitors to the Harpeth Marketing website:
- 2013 13.2%
- 2014 15.2%
- 2105 17.8%
Not insignificant percentages… but also not a huge percentage of website visitors. As you can see, it is growing, so pay attention and make plans for mobile optimizing your site when you’re ready.
For your marketing emails, like your website, look at the percentage of recipients that open their emails with a hand-held device. For Harpeth Marketing, it averages between 17-25% each month. Not surprisingly, it’s higher than the website visitor percentages (after all, who doesn’t check their email from their cell phone a few times a day?!)… but again, it’s still not a staggering percentage of all email activity.
And like your website, as the percentage increases, makes plans to transition your emails to mobile-optimized when you’re ready.
What’s the tipping point… the number at which it’s time to transition to mobile-optimized marketing, particularly your website? Sorry – no perfect answer here. You have to decide where you comfort level lies. Are you OK with 1 in 8 people (12%) not being able to surf your website easily? Or 1 in 7 (14%)? Or 1 in 6 (16%)? That one is up to you.
So, yes – the mobilization of marketing is here (at least to some extent). And yes – you should have plans to make sure you’re ready. But move to it for the right reasons… because your clients and prospects have shown that mobile-friendly is their preferred method for receiving communications… not because some marketing pundits say so.
Good luck.
A http://www.statista.com/statistics/201182/forecast-of-smartphone-users-in-the-us/
B http://searchengineland.com/google-the-mobile-friendly-algorithm-has-fully-rolled-out-220094