Last week, a conversation with colleagues became heated when someone
challenged the well-known quote from Google’s executive chairman, “If
you don’t have a mobile strategy, you don’t have a future strategy,” as
outdated. According to my colleague, “If you don’t have a mobile
strategy, you won’t have a business.” While it’s a bold assertion, there
is a ton of evidence to support this theory.
The first round of supporting arguments proposed during this debate
here at the office focused on two of the biggest names in technology;
Facebook and Instagram.
Instagram, the ultra-popular, photo-sharing app, which facebook
purchased for $1 billion dollars in 2012 didn’t even launch their
website until just recently this year. Their business was focused
entirely on mobile and it’s made them pretty successful.
Facebook on the other hand, the ultra popular social network, which
went public in May of 2012 was getting killed on Wall Street due mainly
to analysts’ impression they were “slow to move on mobile.”
However, as
of their fourth quarter earnings, mobile now accounts for 23 percent of
total revenue and their earning per share beat Wall Street predictions.
Optimism for the company is back solely on the strength of their
opportunity for growth in the mobile space (not traditional web) which
includes 680 million monthly active unique viewers.
Facebook and Instragram present two pretty strong arguments that
without a mobile strategy you may not be in business any longer, but the
buck doesn’t stop there. In the real estate space, Zillow, Trulia and
Angie’s List all reported blowout earnings, much of which was attributed
to their mobile traffic. On Zillow’s conference call they offered some
insight into their traffic, 46 million unique, of which more than half
now come from mobile devices. In addition, those users on mobile devices
are researching homes on the go, using GPS to identify homes near them,
making them a “hot lead” that is ready to buy and thus more valuable
purchase for real estate agents. Zillow now has 23 distinct mobile apps
in its portfolio.
Yet another good point and supporting argument for the importance of
mobile is the viability of the leads from an ROI perspective. In the
real estate industry in particular, the viability of conversion for
mobile leads is far greater than traditional desktop leads.
Brokers continue to struggle online with “Mickey Mouse” leads,
consumers who enter fake names and information to get access to property
info. Mobile has inherent ways of scrubbing leads. Text message
inquires for example are 100 percent real leads, each consumer who texts
in for information is using their personal cell phone number to do so
directly linking them to the lead; guaranteeing a real person on the
other end.
There is no denying the importance of mobile is greater than it’s
ever been and will only continue to grow – the only question that
remains is whether you will be in a position to capitalize on it.
Article courtesy of RIS Media - http://rismedia.com/2013-02-24/monday-morning-mobile-no-mobile-no-business/
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