mobile revolution

By Rieva Lesonsky

Entrepreneurs like to take pride in the fact they’re leaders, quickly adapting to—or even starting market movements. But the mobile revolution has left many small business owners flat-footed, trailing consumers who’ve embraced mobile with surprising speed.

Part of the problem is many business owners assume they’re mobile-compliant—after all they’ve optimized their websites for mobile viewing. And while that is a crucial component—it’s just not enough anymore. If your goal is to grow your business—mobile sales, marketing, email and payments must also become part of your business practices.

Think I’m exaggerating? I’m not. Mobile technology has become so important because it’s increasingly the most common way consumers go online. A report from Zenith Mobile Advertising Forecasts says 75% of internet usage will be via mobile this year.  And by “usage” we mean people actually picking up and checking their mobile devices 150 to 200 times a day. Research from Facebook underscores this—it shows 73% of consumers always have their phones with them. And according to the Zenith Media Consumption Forecast, consumers spend an average of 86 minutes a day using the mobile web—compared to 36 minutes on desktop internet.

Now let’s look at some specifics.

Mobile search

Consumers generally start their hunt looking for products and services by going to a search engine—and increasingly that search engine is on a mobile device.

Mobile searches in general are on the rise, and mobile searches for something “near me” are growing by 146% year-over-year, reports Google. Already, 88% of all “near me” searches are done on a mobile device. Those mobile searches get results. Seventy-six percent of people who search online for something nearby visit a business within a day; 28 percent of those visits result in a sale. With the average adult projected to spend a whopping 3 hours and 18 minutes a day on a mobile device this year, mobile searches will only increase

More generally, according to the report, Realizing the Potential of Mobile Measurement, from Google, Bain & Company and Econsultancy, 69% of smartphone owners search on mobile first when they need something. And 76% of local smartphone searches lead to a visit to a related business within one day—and 28% of those searches lead to a purchase.

Mobile email

So many small businesses rely on email marketing because it’s affordable. And it has great potential reach—Statista reports by 2019 there will be 2.9 billion global email users. In the U.S. alone, it’s projected there’ll be 244.5 million email users by the end of this year—growing to 254.7 million by 2020.

The DMA (Data & Marketing Association) reports email marketing has a 122% return-on-investment (ROI) and “outperforms all other channels.” And 74% of consumers say they prefer (and welcome) email marketing messages from businesses.

Email marketing today must be mobile-friendly. And yet businesses are lagging consumers in their embrace of mobile email marketing. Statista says more e-mails are being read on mobile devices—in fact, email, it says, is the third most popular smartphone activity—86% of Americans use their mobile devices to check personal e-mail.

Reinforcing these stats, last year’s Adestra Consumer Adoption & Usage Study shows more than 25% of consumers first read their emails on mobile devices. Nearly 75% of them delete their emails if they don’t look good on their mobile devices—and yet only 17% of emails are optimized for mobile viewing. In other words, consumers who want your emails are likely deleting them before they’re read because they are not mobile-friendly. No small business can survive with those kinds of numbers.

Mobile commerce

2017 is expected to be a “benchmark year” for m-commerce—sales from phones and tablets. Already about 60% of consumers use their smartphones to research products before making a purchase—and 65% use tablets. According to Kahuna, 28% of Millennials (a huge market just hitting its peak purchasing power), prefer to shop on their smartphones.

Almost half of shoppers say it’s now easier to buy products on mobile devices. But they want businesses to offer more promotions, coupons and discounts for mobile purchasing.

Mobile payments

More and more consumers want to pay for products and services via their mobile devices. BI Intelligence reports mobile payment sales will reach $503 billion by 2020, up from $75 billion last year. And TechCrunch reports by 2020 90% of smartphone users will have made a purchase from a mobile device.

You ignore the mobile revolution at your risk. There’s a lot more to learn. I hope you’ll join me on May 17th at 2 ET for a webinar and join the Mobile Revolution.