The Importance of a Mobile Search Strategy

Increasingly, mobile’s importance in our lives is becoming more evident. Our mobile phones can essentially be considered a permanent fixture of our daily routines. Can you leave home without it?

In conjunction with Nielsen, Google’s new report, “Mobile Search Moments: Understanding How Mobile Drives Conversions”, attempts to decipher what triggers people to do mobile searches and when, what actions follow as a result and how marketers can utilize this intelligence. This report explains the measurable connections between mobile searches and their correlated online and offline conversions.

What are the main drivers for mobile searches? Speed and convenience, with 77% of mobile searches performed in a location (work or home) likely to have a PC available to them.

Here are a few additional highlights from the report:

• 45% of all mobile searches are goal-oriented and conducted to help make a decision

• 81% of conversions (store visit, call or purchase) triggered by mobile search occur within 5 hours

• 55% of conversions from mobile searches happen within one hour

As a key factor in the decision-making process, a mobile search strategy is an essential piece of your overall marketing strategy.

What mobile search opportunities do you see for your business? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

Like this post? Connect with Erika Barbosa on Google+.

Image credit: Johan Larsson

New Strategies for Your Mobile Playbook

As you may have already noticed, I place a lot of importance on having a mobile strategy for your business. Interacting with your customers via mobile in some form or fashion is inevitably going to be a part of your business’s future. Mobile is a critical component to the overall success of your marketing strategy.

Google has released an update to the prior Mobile Playbook that includes new strategies on mobile creativity and ROI. The two main areas of focus expanded upon examples of compelling mobile creative and measuring the real ROI of mobile and its associated impact on a business.

The Playbook also features case studies covering the 5 mobile conversion types. This consists of mobile web, from apps, phone calls, cross-device and in-store. Using the “mobile web” conversion type case study as an example, TicketNetwork’s mobile site was designed with two critical components at the forefront – speed and simplicity. Four months after launch, ticket sales from mobile grew by 184% due to their efforts to build a mobile site that made the purchasing process easy for the consumer.

You can find the updated Mobile Playbook here. What mobile conversion type have you experienced the most success with?

Like this post? Connect with Erika Barbosa on Google+.

Image credit: mroach

Structuring Your Business for Mobile Success

Google recently released The Mobile Playbook, The Busy Executive’s Guide to Winning with Mobile, By Jason Spero and Johanna Werther. While exploring the Playbook, a panel of leading mobile experts reviewed the following 5 necessary questions for mobile success:

1. How does mobile change our value proposition?
2. How does mobile impact our digital destinations?
3. Is your organization adapting to mobile?
4. How should our marketing adapt to mobile?
5. How can we connect with our tablet audience?

The Mobile Playbook ends with a helpful action items checklist and an additional resources list.

I recommend reviewing this ebook if you are looking to further your business’s mobile strategy. One of my favorite tips from the Playbook is the GoMoMeter. This Google website (How To Go Mo) allows you to test a website’s mobile appearance, learn the top ten mobile design practices, and the ability to generate a custom report with improvement recommendations along with a vendor list to help you get started.

Please share your comments and questions about mobile for business below.

Like this post? Connect with Erika Barbosa on Google+.

[Free Report] Smartphone Usage and Understanding Mobile Consumer Behavior

I am a firm believer that the question isn’t if your business should be in mobile but in what way.

As mobile technology continues to evolve, people around the world are growingly having their mobile device become an extension of them. Now is the time to start thinking about how to get started with mobile marketing for your business.

Yesterday, Jason Spero, Head of Global Mobile for Google, released a list of interesting predictions for mobile in 2012.

1. More than 1 billion people will use mobile devices as their primary internet access point
2. There will be 10 days where >50% of trending search terms will be on mobile
3. Mobile’s role in driving people into stores will be proven and it will blow us away
4. “Mobile driven spend” will emerge as a big category
5. Smartphones will prove exceptional at driving a new consumer behavior
6. Tablets will take their place as the 4th screen
7. New industry standards will make mobile display easy to run
8. 5 new, mobile first companies will reach the Angry Birds level of success
9. The ROI on mobile and tablet advertising will increase as a result of the unmatched relevance of proximity
10. The intersection of mobile and social will spark a dramatic new form of engaging consumers
11. 80% of the largest 2,000 websites globally will have an HTML5 site
12. One million small businesses globally will build a mobile website

One of his predictions that I would like to highlight is #12. A recommended first step in delving into the world of mobile is to build a mobile version of your website.

For more information about mobile usage and its related consumer behavior in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and Japan, download Google’s latest report “Our Mobile Planet: Global Smartphone Users”.

Image Credit: jetalone

Getting Started: 7 Mobile Marketing Resources

Are you interested in testing mobile marketing for your business but need a few resources to brush up on your knowledge or to get started altogether? While pursuing my own knowledge about mobile marketing, I thought, what a perfect opportunity to share these resources with you.

Google’s “The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users” study found a staggering 82% notice mobile ads and 74% make a purchase as a result of using their phone during the shopping process. By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide (Gartner). Statistics like these only lead me to believe there is a lot of opportunity in mobile marketing for business – and the time to move on it is now.

Mobile marketing resources (in no particular order):

• Google Mobile Ads
• Mobile Marketing Watch
• MMA Global
• MarketingProfs
• Mobile Marketer
• 60 Second Marketer
• Top Rank Blog

How do you see mobile affecting the marketing space in the future?

Image credit: Incase