A new study by market research firm Yankee Group shows just how important a mobile presence will be for businesses in the coming decade. While Americans redeemed only 200,000 mobile coupons—offers scanned from a mobile phone or sent via text message—in 2009 so far, Yankee Group predicts that they will redeem 66.9 million by 2013.
Smartphone adoption is continuing to increase at a rapid pace, enabling mobile coupons to be delivered to more and more consumers. The bottleneck likely will occur at the point of sale, where retailers will have to install readers that can scan barcodes from mobile devices. But Yankee Group is optimistic that inexpensive solutions leveraging codes through credit card scanners or other current point of sale equipment will allow retailers to enable this technology quickly and easily.
In a separate study demonstrating demand, Deloitte found that 86 percent of respondents were interested in receiving and using coupons delivered to their cell phone. While 73 percent of respondents said they’d be interested only if it didn’t cost anything to receive the coupons, I imagine retailers wouldn’t mind spending 5 to 10 cents per message to send coupons if floor traffic increased significantly as a result.
In addition to preparing to make offers to customers via text messaging, small business marketing should center on the mobile experience in anticipation of a sea-change that is occurring currently in information delivery. Internet-capable mobile devices will drastically affect purchasing decisions, as consumers will use them to research products and services on the go much more frequently.
A small business with a mobile-optimized site is much more likely to attract customers in the future than one that makes its customers load a heavy webpage designed for a powerful computer. The beauty of the equation is that mobile pages need to be less complicated to load quickly on mobile devices. As a result, a small business marketing strategy can center on the few things the business wants to highlight in its mobile presence, without any consumer backlash.
Is your small business prepared for the coming mobile revolution?
