It’s not easy to find an iPhone 5 right now. Demand is so incredible that the visionary giant is having trouble making enough of them to go around. AT&T alone has already activated 1.3 million new iPhone devices, and lets not forget about the 3 million new iPads and iPad Mini’s sold during launch weekend. So, right now, millions of people are touching a new iDevice, most completely unaware they are sending marketers into a frenzy to rethink old policies.
We’ve known for sometime the benefits of mobile marketing. After all, around 90 percent of completed searches from a mobile device result in a purchase or a visit to the business’ link, and about 50 percent of consumers made a purchase through their smartphones within the last six months. But have you been focusing your optimization strategy in all of the wrong places?
Let’s learn from Margo…
Apple is in the mobile business, period. Sales from the iPhone now makes up 48 percent of Apple’s revenue, and are up 58 percent from just last year. Its revenue this fiscal year is $156.5 billion, or more than Microsoft, Google and Facebook combined. Consider the individual iPhone, iPad or iPad Mini buyer. Let’s put a face to this person and call her “Margo.” Margo’s never owned an iPhone before, but like millions of others she’s decided to take the Apple plunge again or for the first time. Inundated with the different technology and hype surrounding it, Margo can’t wait to use Siri.
“Hello, Siri!” says an excited Margo.
“Hi,” Siri says back. Margo thinks for a moment, then proceeds to ask Siri a series of inconsequential questions, to which Siri responded: “I don’t think you’re taking this very seriously,” “I would not wish any companion in the world but you,” and “I can’t answer that.” Siri even told her an entire story about the odd questions people ask it. But after the honeymoon phase was over, Margo stopped asking silly questions and began using Siri, well, seriously.
“Hey, Siri, where’s a good place to get dinner?”
“I found fifteen restaurants, thirteen of them are fairly close to you. I’ve sorted them by rating.”
Like Siri, you must adjust.
What’s happening here is a shift from the traditional local searches people used to do in Google or Bing, to a voice assisted search which bypasses search engines and Pay-Per-Click altogether, opting for user reviews from Yelp to draw its results. This means the way a business optimizes itself for search results has to take into account the changing climate of mobile searching. For local business, getting to the top of search results in Google is no longer enough. It takes less time to quickly ask Siri where to find a certain store than it does to open a browser and type a desired destination, especially when you take into account the amount of searches that take place while driving. This isn’t to say that voice assistants like Siri won’t show up on other devices which decide to include Google, like Android, but the importance of peer reviewed sites like Yelp cannot be understated now. Marketers now must take into account Yelp’s 33 million local reviews and events, it’s primary audience of college educated women ages 25 to 34 (according to data from Alexa), and buying Yelp ad space over traditional PPC campaigns. But, of course, none of this guarantees top reviews or an allowance of a business to change or re-order its reviews. In order to keep moving forward in search marketing and be relevant to the increasing number of mobile users, business need to consider Yelp, and other sites like it, in their optimization plan, while continuing to produce great results from the consumer.
Source: Bridged Design