Legal Internet Marketing Blog
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is expecting that businesses will expand their mobile marketing budgets by up to 26 percent in the coming year, despite evidence that suggests that businesses will be spending slightly less on marketing this year overall. While mobile marketing is still quite small compared to the reach, relevance and revenue generated by Internet marketing, as more and more users use their personal communication devices to browse the Web, the effectiveness and market share of mobile marketing is expected to rise in the foreseeable future.
While mobile marketing currently represents only 1.8 percent of total marketing budgets, the MMA expects that the total spending on mobile marketing will climb from $1.7 billion to $2.16 billion in 2010. Approximately half of the brands and agencies the MMA polled recently said that they were experimenting with at least one type of mobile marketing, with SMS text campaigns the most popular choice, followed by mobile Web sites and mobile email marketing, respectively.
Most often, marketers are integrating their mobile marketing efforts with the Internet as statistics suggest that mobile Internet access increased 36 percent in the United States over the last year. Further, the research indicated that over 18 million Americans currently have mobile Internet access, and 54 million people worldwide enjoy mobile Internet access. Although mobile marketing has steadily gained market share over the last several years, the research also found that slow connections, spotty network connectivity and extra fees are still the principal barriers to entice mobile users online.
Industry experts believe that mobile Internet marketing has been and continues to be effective because it reaches consumers when they are shopping, running errands and making purchasing decisions away from their home. A research study conducted by Universal McCann on smartphone usage patterns found that more than one-third of smartphone users described as “high-use” respond to mobile advertisements. The study found that:
- 53 percent of smartphone users click on mobile advertising
- 35 percent request more information or a coupon
- 24 percent make purchases through their handsets
- 82 percent said that they use mobile devices while at work
- 81 percent said that they used their mobile devices while shopping
Industry experts predict that local mobile advertising will become the next hot trend, especially for local mobile search as users modify their searches with the names of local towns and even neighborhoods in larger metropolitan areas to find goods and services locally. This follows a similar trend in home- and business-based Internet searches where users increasingly use “long tail searches” to find local merchants. According to the latest figures, fewer than 28 percent of all Internet searches in 2008 were local searches, and that market share is expected to climb to 35 percent in 2013.
Internet marketing professionals have employed effective local search engine marketing strategies for their clients for several years now to help them capitalize on this trend. Local mobile marketing may represent the next step in the evolution of this increasingly important method of Internet marketing. To learn more about what a legal Internet marketing specialist can do for your law firm, call SLS Consulting at 323-254-1510.