Four Keys To Marketing Success in a Mobile-First World

It’s a mobile-first world, or so we are seemingly told every day. Certainly, the statistics back it up. Most of the world’s Internet traffic is now mobile. Almost 70% of the dollars spent on digital advertising is spent on mobile. More than 90% (!) of Facebook’s revenue comes from mobile advertising.

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But while consumers are deep into the mobile adoption curve, many marketers are still playing catch-up. For companies to connect with today’s mobile-first consumers, they must keep these four principles in mind.

Understand how and when we use our phones.

The world has been shifting toward mobile for over a decade, and Q4 2016 marked a traffic tipping point – for the first time more of the world’s Internet traffic was on smartphones rather than computers. Of course, geography matters – mobile use is higher in the developing world (e.g., our data show that ~75% of Internet traffic in India is mobile), while Russia and some European countries still skew slightly desktop.

More crucially for marketers, most consumers have multiple devices and still prefer to do certain activities on computers, so effective mobile marketing begins with understanding how people allocate activities to devices. In the United States, for example, our data show traffic to the top 100 sites is 58% mobile but rises in:

• “snackable” media categories such as sports and entertainment news (~70% mobile)
• “vice” categories such a gambling and adult sites (80%+ mobile)
   

In contrast, categories that skew relatively more desktop tend to be:

• transaction-oriented (financial sites average 58% desktop)     
• research-heavy (science publications are 60% desktop)
• binge-worthy (website traffic for Netflix and Hulu are 70-80% desktop)
   

Help consumers go the last mile.

As mobile use has taken off, mobile purchasing has lagged. Consumers routinely did the platform-switcheroo – researching on mobile, but purchasing on their computers (driven by the perceived security of their home wi-fi, and the emotional comfort of a keyboard). Historically, our phones have known what we shop for, while our computers have known what we buy. But mobile purchasing is finally hitting the tipping point, now accounting for more than a third of digital sales, and projected to be a majority of digital sales by 2021. Helping consumers go the last mile starts with means technical execution (loading delays of even one second significantly reduce conversion rates, and delays of three seconds or more cause a majority of visits to be abandoned).  Prompting mobile purchases also means migrating visitors from mobile web to apps, where conversion rates are up to 5X higher.

Benchmark mobile-to-mobile.

Dollars chase growth and mobile is where the growth is . The digital travel market, for example, continues growing, driven entirely by growth in mobile sales (+16.7% in 2017), while computer-based sales fell (-1.6%). But when a rising tide lifts all boats, competitive benchmarking becomes more important than ever. The good news: your mobile numbers are probably up big. The bad news: everybody’s mobile numbers are up big. In a growing category, the 20% growth you take pride in could easily mean you are losing share to faster-growing competitors.

Understand the unique language of mobile search.

Mobile search is qualitatively and quantitatively different from desktop search. Mobile search tends to be more personal, and more proximal in time and place. Mobile search fuels the immediacy economy. For example, use of the search phrase “near me” has doubled over the past two years, with much of that growth coming from mobile. Restaurants near me. Hair salons near me. Clothing stores. Hotels. Things to do. The list goes on. Consumers are increasingly learning how to leverage their location, and companies are utilizing location intelligence to better meet consumer needs. Once largely the province of Yelp, many brands (including Google) are trying to optimize their ability to guide consumers to resources “in real life.” Mobile search is also more immediate in time, and deeper in the funnel. Travel-related mobile searches for “today” and “tonight” are up 150% over the past two years – meaning growing numbers of searches for things like “flights today” and “hotels tonight.” And as much as 80% of last-minute travel are booked on mobile.

Summing Up: Being mobile-ready helps winning today and preparing for tomorrow.

Marketers historically have been at least one step behind consumers. Many marketers were (and still are) slow to truly integrate digital into their efforts. Now many playing catch-up in mobile, while consumers are pushing ahead to voice search and the Internet of Things. But there is still tremendous growth potential in mobile. Mobile traffic has only recently surpassed desktop.  Mobile purchasing is still a minority of digital purchases but is accelerating quickly. And the half of the world that still doesn’t have Internet access is likely to go mobile first. 

Mobile search, and mobile use more generally, has a different flavor from computer-based usage: it is more immediate, more personal, more proximal, more location-based. Tomorrow’s technologies will further intensify many of these characteristics and expectations. As a result, excellence in mobile will help marketers compete today, and be better prepared to compete after the technological paradigm shifts of tomorrow.