Smartphones are seemingly everywhere nowadays. The iPhone and Google Android phones have invigorated sales across the US and world. People are using these Web connected phones to make important buying decisions at the point-of-sale.
Here’s four key statistics:
- Smartphone ownership in the United States has grown from 15% of US consumers in October 2006 to 42% in December 2009. (source)
- The average smartphone user generates 10 times the amount of traffic generated by the average non-smartphone user. (source)
- Google has seen a 30x increase in mobile shopping queries over the last three years. (source)
- 35% of smartphone owners browse the mobile Internet at least daily versus only 4% of featurephone owners. (source)
Lately, in the Web marketing world, there’s been a bit of a secret – one that’s closely guarded by those in search marketing. The secret is that the few people who are using mobile search advertising, with local and hyperlocal targeting extensions enabled, are seeing incredible CTRs and conversion rates.
Google recently let the cat out of the bag on the hidden ROI benefits of mobile search engine advertising with a case study published on their mobile ads blog. The case study highlights an 800% ROI from mobile search ads using hyperlocal extensions for a US restaurant chain.
There’s many reasons for such a high ROI from mobile marketing, but one of the primary ones is the lack of saturation. This marketing channel is changing quickly and I’m sure more people will be bidding on mobile search keywords in 2011.
Additionally, we suspect that many companies and marketers are still learning about the impressive targeting power of Google AdWords location extensions, including the recently introduced hyperlocal extensions.
It’s now possible to target only the people who are near your business when they’re searching for search terms related to your business. How’s that for hyperlocal targeting?
We strongly encourage you to start researching this marketing channel now and begin optimizing your search marketing campaigns for it. You’ll be several steps ahead of your competitors if you start today.
Photo Credit: Johan Larsson // CC