Chances are you’re reading this blog on your mobile phone. Or at the very least you saw the headline or someone shared it with you via mobile. There’s no hiding from the fact a mobile phone is a significant part of daily life, but do you realize how incredibly critical it is to your dealership and day-to-day business?
In the coming months hopefully you will takeaway some valuable tips and strategies from this blog to better position your dealership to the mobile world around you. It’s impacting your bottom line and together we can figure out how significantly and what solutions there are available to meet this ever-growing mobile demand.
First thing to understand is your customers are MOBILE. How mobile may surprise you though. Here are a few numbers to take in that will give you a better sense of the mobile audience in the U.S.
- 91 percent of adults have their mobile phone in arms reach 24/7 (Nielsen Media) and 65 percent check their phones within 15 minutes of waking up. (Nielsen Media, Mar. 2015)
- 97 percent of cell phone owners say they use text messaging on their cells. (Pew Research, Nov. 2014)
- Almost 80 percent of mobile customers in the U.S. have a smartphone. (comScore) It’s important to note in excess of 20 percent of your customers may not have a smartphone and this is impactful to your strategy. We will address this in the coming blog posts.
So what do all these numbers mean? Just ask yourself what you experience day to day with your own communication. Do you use your phone to text or talk with your spouse? Your kids? Your coworkers? Read work email on it? Send photos of a new bike? Watch a video of something related to your hobby or passion for powersports? You can be your own best market research when you realize your mobile habits are very likely that of your customers.
When it comes to dealer-specific data you may be shocked to know the phone numbers you have collected are 50 percent more likely to be mobile than landlines. You can verify this when finding a mobile vendor that can validate these phone numbers through a cellular carrier relationship. This can be a critical aspect when you start developing your mobile strategy. You may also be surprised that it’s very likely more 50 percent of your website traffic is accessing you from a mobile device. Is your website mobile optimized? Meaning, when a customer views your website on their phone do they see a pleasant, user-friendly interface or your giant site they have to scroll and zoom to view? If your site is not mobile optimized, search giants like Google will seriously impact you by not returning your site as a result when customers are on their mobile phones searching.
All these things point to a critical issue for your dealership. What resources and budget have you dedicated to a mobile strategy? Your sales can and are being directly impacted by these mobile consumers.Look at this additional data that illustrates some opportunities you should consider.
- 70 percent of mobile searches lead to action on a website within one hour of when the search was conducted (iAcquire).
- 98 percent of text messages are read compared to 22 percent emails (Frost & Sullivan).
- 64 percent of consumers think that businesses should communicate with them more often through SMS — (SAP) and 44 percent say that they’d like more deals and coupons delivered to their mobile devices (CMO Council).
- 90 percent of consumers who have joined mobile loyalty programs feel they have gained value from them (Zoomerang) and they are 10 times more likely to redeem SMS coupons than print or email coupons (eMarketer).
- By 2018, mobile video will represent 69 percent of all mobile traffic (Forbes). If this doesn’t seem relevant to you consider this: YouTube has become the 2nd Largest Search Engine — bigger than Bing, Yahoo, Ask and AOL combined (Social Media Today). Are you producing rich media, mobile-friendly content like video clips to your customers yet?
Knowing the importance of being mobile to your customers makes it a very simple decision on your part to investigate and invest more in a mobile strategy.
Ron Cariker is Owner/President of 7 Media Group, a diverse mobile marketing firm based in the U.S. and the leading mobile provider for the powersports industry. Ron and his company have worked with over 100 dealers across the U.S. for the past 6 1/2 years. He speaks extensively across the U.S. and internationally about the mobile industry and mobile education. Ron also formed a partner company called Ready2Ride exclusively for the powersports industry. This new mobile solution combines SMS, mobile application, mobile web, analytics and much more.
contact: ron@ready2ridemobile.com
website: www.Ready2RideMobile.com
