The year of 2015 proved that mobile is more important than ever when it comes to consumer usage and marketing strategies. In 2015, Google released a new piece of their complicated search algorithm that placed a high importance on businesses delivering a quality experience to mobile users. Known affectionately as Mobilegeddon, Google required that every website be mobile optimized or they would be downgraded in search rankings.
Why did Google do this? In recent years with the rise in popularity of smartphones and their technology, more and more people are using their phones to perform search tasks that were done on desktop computers in the past. Google cited research in their decision to place more importance on mobile with a survey that stated 72% of consumers want mobile-friendly sites. That’s not all because StatCounter Global Stats report that 36% of online traffic in North America is from mobile devices and tablets. And this isn’t slowing down as Mediative predicts based on statistical evidence that there will be an 1525% increase in mobile data usage between 2010 and 2015.
The statistics go on and on about how mobile usage is increasing for people looking for businesses, products, services, or general information. This high usage means your business needs to adjust your marketing plan to account for mobile users. The importance of integrating your digital marketing efforts is very important, but businesses who not only integrate but take mobile strategies more seriously will see higher success in reaching their customer base.
How Does Mobile Help Reach Customers?
Many businesses have tried to ignore mobile because the percentage of mobile users was relatively small, but that is not the case anymore. Smart Insights reports that mobile digital media use has surpassed desktop use with mobile at 51% and desktop at 42%. Mediative provides another piece of information stating 70% of mobile searches result in action being taken within an hour as opposed a week for desktop. With that many more active users on mobile, especially if 70% of them are ready to buy after using their mobile device, ignoring those users means missing out on a huge chunk of business.
Business 2 Community predicts that mobile search will continue to innovate itself to be more efficient and contextual. This rapid evolution of optimizing mobile search to meet users’ needs is something that businesses need to model. For instance, businesses only take mobile optimization to their website design itself to pass Google’s guidelines and stop there. However, you can make it easier to reach them on their mobile devices as well. It is likely there are multiple calls to actions on your website prompting users to contact you for questions or more information. Making the phone number a mobile click-to-call so the number is immediately ready to dial will take mobile optimization meeting users’ needs a step further. Adding mobile buttons to leave a review or to call, either on the website or in digital advertising, is another step to meet mobile users’ needs.
How Big of a Difference Will Using Mobile Marketing Strategies Make?
It is already evident that businesses who continue to ignore mobile are losing out to competitors that are taking advantage of the emergence of mobile. Search Engine Land reports that many search queries are already ranking higher in smartphone search than desktop because the site that was ranking higher in the past is not mobile optimized. This has already begun since Mobilegeddon occurred in May 2015, so think how important this will be in the future? There is no doubt that new mobile optimization guidelines for SEO will be implemented in the near future. Since SEO affects every piece of your digital marketing strategy, it is important to stay up to date with changes and optimize in every way you can.