Consumers Are Not Shy, They Want Mobility
Take a look around.
As a business owner, does it seem like most customers you come in contact with wanted your product yesterday and not today or tomorrow?
As it turns out, more and more consumers are turning to mobile devices to help them with their shopping needs. With that in mind, are you prepared for the mobile onslaught or are you prepared to lose potential sales because your mobile efforts are not up to speed?
A recent report from IBM points out that the highest number of online orders via mobile devices for Christmas was placed by iOS users as opposed to Android users.
The report showed that 23 percent of Christmas online sales in the U.S. came through iOS devices, with just over 4.5 percent via Android devices. In looking at overall online traffic, iOS devices scored a 32.6 percent to 14.8 percent victory over Android.
Are You Touting Your Mobility?
Just as you would promote your products and/or services, the same must be true if you allow shoppers to use mobile devices in doing business with you.
For those businesses that are not already doing this, they are likely to find themselves behind the eight ball for starters.
So, what are some of the better ways to show consumers that you get their mobile needs?
Spread the Word
Among some of the best ways to reach out and show you understand that consumers prefer iOS for mobile shopping include:
Customer surveys – These are a great tool for getting feedback from current and potential customers. So, how do you go about doing a survey that consumers will actually partake in? If you’re like many business owners, you know that many consumers don’t have enough time in their daily lives for work and family, let alone filling out a survey. Make them want to complete the survey by giving them an incentive. They can be registered for contest prizes, discounts and more;
Advertising – The old standby still remains advertising, though more and more small business owners have had to scale back their advertising dollars in recent years for a variety of reasons. According to a recent IBM Global CEO Study, nearly 90 percent of CEO’s noted that “getting closer to customers” was their number one business goal during the next five years. In order to make paid advertising more effective, it behooves those running companies to spend more time getting a few good ads that will capture audience attention than sending out multiple ads that don’t. Bottom line, spend a little extra on making one ad count over releasing a number of ads that do not;
Social media – Last but not least, social media is a great tool to promote your company’s mobile offerings. Best of all, it is essentially free to use, though time and effort are certainly required. Remember that earlier mention of contests and prizes? You can use your company’s Facebook fan page for just that. If you can afford to, you can even give away mobile gadgets as prizes. Face it, the more incentive consumers have to come to your social site or sites, the more traffic you will draw over time. You should also have a presence on Google+, which has since surpassed Twitter as the number two social network (Facebook leads the way). With that said, that does not mean you should not have a presence on Twitter or move away from your current Twitter offerings. Twitter is still a powerful social tool, especially in the celebrity and business world. Using the site to promote your mobile devices simply makes sense. You can include links to mobile studies, new mobile gadgets and more. Lastly, are you using Vine in your social campaigns? You may think that a mere 6 seconds is not enough time to tell your mobile story, but much can be done in that time to promote your mobility.
With more and more consumers going the mobile route, are you at the other end to give them what they want?
If not, they won’t be shy about going over to your competition who gets the mobile way of thinking.
Photo credit: mactrast.com
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