Business Report: Mobile Marketing Tactics for 2012

Business executives are interested in many aspects of mobile marketing, according to a just released study by AT&T.  The executives showed the most interest (43%) in developing mobile apps.  Mobile bar codes, or QR Codes, also showed great interest among the businesspersons (41%).  Of course, if you are using a QR Code, you had better have it lead to a proper mobile website and 35% have interest in developing a mobile version of their website.  Text message marketing was also of great interest to the business owners.

 

ESPN Scores with Mobile Web Site

Online Media Daily recently spoke with David Coletti, vice president, digital media research and analytics at ESPN, to find out more about how the cable network’s viewership is playing out in mobile, and what it means for advertising.

Coletti gave some interesting and powerful statistics in regard to the use of the ESPN mobile web site and the ESPN app.

“Overall, our mobile usage is extremely strong and growing at an incredibly rapid pace. I had mentioned on the recent Nielsen panel that the last two Sundays in September, we had 10 million people come to the ESPN mobile Web site, and each of those Sundays, we had about 13 million people come to the traditional ESPN.com site. Which is a remarkable parity of scale for a platform like mobile that still has a lot of room for growth.”

And in regards to apps, Coletti had this to say.

“We’re seeing extremely rapid growth on the app side of things. For example, in September, our Score Center app, which is our main app across iPhone and Android, we had about 3 million people per day on average across the month. And that was up 100% from a year ago. Between our mobile Web and our mobile apps in September, we had 104,000 people per minute using one of those platforms. To contextualize that, if you stack that 104,000 people per minute up against the way Nielsen measures cable television, that’s a larger audience than 31 ad-supported cable networks. I find that amazing.”

Businesses Need a Mobile Strategy

Statistics Show that Simply Having a Good Web Site Doesn’t Cut it Any More

A business needs a mobile strategy today.

Businesses are being forced to re-evaluate their digital strategy as more and more Americans use a mobile device as the entry point to the internet.  No longer is a good web site the cornerstone of a business’ digital strategy.  Today, a business needs an app, a mobile web site, and text message marketing.

According to new research from Nielsen, consumers increasingly prefer obtaining content from mobile apps.  The typical Android user spends 56 minutes per day interacting with the web and mobile apps from his phone.  Of that time, two-thirds is spent on apps.

The US mobile web population is anticipated to grow by 25% this year as 97 million mobile owners log on to the internet monthly, according to eMarketer.  By 2015, it is anticipated that almost half of the American public will be using the mobile web.  Much of this growth will be thanks to the burgeoning growth in smartphone adoption.  The number of smartphone users is expected to increase by half this year and will continue to grow steadily through 2015 when American smartphone penetration will top 150 million.

A business without a mobile strategy is going to suffer in the future.  Mobile is today what the internet was in 2001.

More Minutes with Apps than Internet

In June, 2011, for the first time ever, US mobile consumers with smartphones spent more time with mobile apps than they did with the internet itself.  Other studies have shown that more people will access the web from their mobile phone than through a computer by the end of 2013.  This study concerning the soaring use of apps seems to confirm this idea.

Is Apple Changing How it Ranks Apps?

Looks like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) might be putting a more sophisticated—and potentially more helpful—spin on how it ranks the most popular apps in its ginormous App Store, which currently features an almost inconceivable 350,000+ apps in its catalog. But the news comes amidst allegations that Apple is at the same time making it harder for pay-per-install apps to make their way into the store.

According to some observations from the mobile app analytics firm Flurry, in the last three days, the rankings for several popular apps have been jumping: for example, Facebook has jumped to the number-one ranking, having previously placed between 10th place and 20th place.

One good guess from InsideMobileApps is that Apple has started to factor in active usage into its rankings, rather than basing those rankings on downloads alone, which is similar to how Google (NSDQ: GOOG) ranks apps in the Android Market.

This makes sense, particularly in a market that has been around for long enough now to have an established base of consumers who have definitely taken their foot off the download gas, but might still be heavy app users.

Auto Dealer App

More than a quarter of smart phone users plan to purchase a new or used car in the next year.  And, a whopping 78% of those new buyers will use their mobile device as part of the decision making process, according to an article in Media Post.

The findings come from a new study of 851 mobile users over a three month period ending February 15, 2011.

According to the survey, 15.6% of mobile users plan to buy a new car in the next year and 10.4% will purchase a previously owned vehicle.  That figure bodes well for an auto industry that is clearly on the rebound after several lackluster years.

Clearly, there is a distinct correlation between the higher income users of smart phones and the typical US adult population.  While only 5.5% of adult Americans plan on buying a new car in the next year, 15.6% of smart phone users are making such plans.

And, the car buying plans are being made on the mobile phone.  The study found that 48% of smart phone users planning to buy a car this year are using their mobile phones to conduct initial research on a new car.  44% are using their mobile devices to comparison shop right on the auto dealer’s lot.  32% are even using their smart phones to locate an auto dealer. 

Jim Stutzman Chevrolet-Cadillac is one auto dealer that is investing in the power of mobile marketing for its auto dealership.  The Winchester, Virginia GM auto dealer uses the Cars2Go auto dealer app from Advanced Mobile Solutions to allow consumers to gain real time access to its current auto inventory on his lot.  Consumers can also schedule service appointments via the mobile phone app.

If Stutzman wishes to contact his customers or prospects, he can do so via the send notification of the Cars2Go app or through the company’s text message marketing product.  The service also generates trade in leads via its Cell Ur Car feature.

By 2013, more Americans will access the internet through their mobile device than through the internet.  That’s why Jim Stutzman Chevrolet-Cadillac has invested in a mobile web site so that users can use its Click to Call feature to contact the dealership.

Jim Stutzman Chevrolet-Cadillac knows that its mobile marketing tool will drive more car sales to his dealership so that’s why he’s made the investment in it.

“Everything is moving to the mobile phone,” said Stutzman, “so why should car buying be any different?”

Golf Channel App

The following was taken from the pages of Mashable and its review of the Top 10 Golf Apps to have for the golf season.  It’s great to see our Golf Channel app mentioned in the pages of Mashable.  If you haven’t downloaded Advanced Mobile’s new Golf Channel app, what are you waiting for?  It’s FREE!

8. Golf Channel Mobile

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 To keep up to speed on the latest news and updates from the world of golf, the Golf Channel Mobile app is a good one to have. It provides breaking news, up-to-the-minute tournament scoreboards, player profiles and clips from recent Golf Channel shows. There are also clips of instructional videos from popular shows such as The Golf Fix and The Daily Brew. It’s also available for Android phones.Cost: FREE

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ATS & AMS Sponsor NAA Show in Dallas

Advanced Telecom Services and Advanced Mobile Solutions were sponsors of the NAA mediaXchange show in Dallas from March 24-26.  The companies were showing its online dating affiliate program and mobile classifieds products for newspapers.  Cars2Go is a mobile marketing product for auto dealers that provides a text message marketing, mobile web site, and mobile app to dealers.

Time Spent with Mobile Apps

According to the latest findings from GetJar, the global open app store boasting some 1.5 billion downloads to date, 58% of mobile application users are now using the mobile apps on their devices more than once a day.

More than one-third of mobile users, in fact, now spend at least one full hour engrossed in their favorite apps on a daily basis. App usage is clearly on the rise with the survey results showing almost 34 percent of consumers spending one hour or more using apps per day, compared to 49 percent who spend the same amount of time watching television.

Auto Dealer Apps and Mobile Marketing

Advanced Mobile Solutions offers its Triple Play for auto dealers. This unique mobile marketing product provides a mobile web site, text message marketing, and a mobile app for car dealers.