Mobile Usage Is On The Rise So Marketers Need To Adapt

Accessing the internet from a desktop computer isn’t a process that’s going away anytime soon but now it has some stiff competition. More users around the globe are accessing the internet from mobile devices than ever before. In fact, traffic from mobile devices accounts for 51.2% of total internet traffic worldwide.

It’s a huge moment for the web overall: this means going forward, companies that haven’t yet decided to focus on a mobile-first approach to their internet services and web properties really should, as the trend line is unlikely to reverse.

Savvy marketers know the mobile experience matters, but now there are no excuses for ignoring the role mobile plays in the customer journey. There are approximately 2.6 billion smartphone users globally but an astounding number of businesses are still failing at prioritizing the mobile customer experience.

Why Marketers Still Stumble with Mobile

It’s been four years since marketers, online publications, and thought leaders everywhere proclaimed 2012 as the “year of mobile,” yet companies are still missing the mark with their mobile strategies. It’s incomprehensible considering we use mobile devices every day to explore, shop, learn, communicate, and manage just about every aspect of our lives.

Forbes columnist Steve Olenski calls the current state of mobile marketing and advertising “pathetic.” It’s a harsh call out, but he has a point. Olenski notes a Click Z study that found 56% of brands characterize their organization’s mobile advertising efforts as “beginner” level. This is completely disproportionate to the massive amount of time people are spending on mobile.

What gives, marketers?

One of the biggest and most consistent culprits is marketing's failure to take customer phone calls seriously. BIA/Kelsey reports that mobile phone calls to businesses will skyrocket to around 162 billion by 2019. For some context, that’s more than double the amount businesses received in 2014.

Consumers who take the time to locate your phone number and make a phone call are among the most committed customers you have. The effort involved versus, say, clicking a few buttons on a website, signals high buyer intent. Invoca research shows these callers spend an average of four minutes and fifty-two seconds on the phone, time marketers can use to gather useful data for improved optimization, automation, and more.

3 Reasons Marketers Must Adapt to Mobile

The takeaway message here is that adopting a mobile mindset isn’t optional for marketers. Beginner level strategies aren’t cutting it and do a disservice to customers and businesses alike. Adapting to mobile brings quick results and immeasurable benefits. Here’s just the top three:

• Better personalization: 77% of smartphone owners say their device makes them “happy.” Mobile phones play a role in the personal fulfillment of many customers and those customers expect a personalized experience in exchange for sharing their data with a business. It’s a lot to ask of customers to provide email addresses, phone numbers, and other personal tidbits but they’ll do it if you use the data responsibly.
• Improved attribution: Truly effective omnichannel journeys depend on accurate attribution to get to the heart of why customers contact you. Call intelligence tools help you drill down to granular level details so you can understand what is being said in phone conversations between callers and agents. That kind of data means the difference between effective retargeting campaigns and just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.
• Smarter optimization: Once you’ve gathered data, it’s time to put those valuable insights to good use. Use it to optimize every step of the customer journey, including the mobile experience and beyond. Phone interactions are a crucial part of the customer experience and should be one of the first things marketers optimize.

We’ve reached the tipping point of mobile internet usage and it’s unlikely the desktop will ever play as large a role in the customer journey again. The people have spoken and the message is clear. They expect businesses to create a top-notch omnichannel experience for the device they most prefer: their mobile phone.