Mobile has forever changed the human experience. It’s brought the world’s information to our fingertips, wherever and whenever we want. And it has fundamentally changed our expectations for responsiveness and relevance. This has major implications for brands. Thanks to mobile, there are increasingly more moments when hearts, minds, and dollars are being won and lost.
Customers expect brands to address their needs with real-time relevance.
Mobile has radically reshaped the shopper’s journey. In the past, people included location qualifiers, like zip codes, when searching for ice cream shops or places to purchase a grill. Now, they just search exactly what they need and expect brands to know where they are. For brands looking to take advantage of this evolving consumer behavior, inferring and interpreting context will be key.
What begins with a consumer’s mobile search is an opportunity for retailers to deliver on and win omni-channel shoppers. 93% of people who use their phone to research a product go on to make a purchase. 82% of consumers use their phones in-store to make a decision about a purchase they are about to make. And it’s happening on phones while in the aisle— 28% of in-store sales in the US were influenced by mobile devices used before or during shopping trips last year.
With more computing power in our pockets than most of us had on our desks just a few years ago, our expectations have been massively raised. We expect everything right, and we expect it right away.
The good news for brands is that there’s a far greater opportunity to be useful and connect with people when needed most. When search ads launched, they were transformational because for the first time advertisements were tied directly to what people were looking for. With mobile, our ability to understand what people want has only gotten better, as we understand not only intent but also context. By understanding a person’s location, time of day, type of device, etc., we can tailor our marketing to help people when it matters.
In defining our strategy, there are two equally important considerations – being there and being useful. This means eliminating friction for the consumer wherever it exists — from streamlining checkout in a way that makes it easy for her to act, to honing in our story-telling capabilities in the ads and how-to videos she sees. It can mean rethinking organizations so that everyone has an incentive to help the customer where, when, and however she likes. Ultimately these new mobile moments mean that the modern marketer is constantly iterating, solving problems, and collaborating cross-functionally to connect with the customer in meaningful ways.
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