2018 Digital Mobile Marketing Trends & Their Future

Introduction

We all know that there has been a major advancement in the mobile technology within the past ten years. The average time spent on digital platforms like Facebook , Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube etc has been on a constant rise. More and more marketers are leveraging these platforms on mobile to engage with their present and potential customers as the number of new user signups on such platforms are increasing by the second. Gone are the days when advertisements in Newspapers and Magazines gained new customers- In today’s time, an average consumer spends more time on mobile phones, then tablets, and then desktops reading new articles, magazines etc- than an actual paper publication. This article discusses some key questions related to mobile trends as of year 2018:

• Where do mobile phones stand right now in the current marketing economy?
• What are the best practices to increase sales and conversions on Mobile phone?
• Which are the top platforms for mobile advertising these days?

By the year 2019, the mobile ad spending will rise to approximate $66 
billion, or about 72% of total digital ad spend. 

Where do mobile phones stand right now in the current marketing economy?

Mobile phones have come a long way - from having a basic black and white screen that only displayed 0-9 digits- to 4K ultra HD screens that show 3D visual content as well now!

That being said, Mobile phones are the most common way people access the web these days and if a company is strategizing its content right, there is no way one can not meet user expectations across multiple devices. But the fact is, the current stats suggest that most businesses are still learning how to fully utilize this technology and optimize on it.

The reason being that each second matters to mobile users, as per a recent research that was released from Google, as they tested a little less than Million mobile websites. They concluded that the longer a page takes to load, the higher the probability of the user leaving the page. As per their research, the bounce rate on a website doubles if the page load time increases by 5 seconds. So If a website has 35% bounce rate with 10 seconds of page load time, then it’s bounce rate will become 70% if the same page now takes 15 seconds to load- and that is a big determining factor in mobile conversions. As an industry standard, the best practice page loading time is 3 seconds or less. Interestingly, the page load speeds differ with different categories of businesses. Surprisingly, page loading speeds on Technology-related websites were the highest- averaging 11.3 seconds to display page content to users. That’s almost 4 times longer than the best practice time.

Travel sites are right behind the Technology sites at 10.1 seconds, followed closely by retail at 9.8 seconds; research has suggested that retail sites are taking longer and longer to load. While various factors account for slow-loading mobile pages that test mobile users’ patience, including mobile ads; the extent to which ads contribute to longer load times appears to be a significant factor in the rapid increase of ad blocking usage.An abundance of content served by a company will work well on desktop sites, but it does the opposite in the mobile world where speed is more vital. According to a report by Google, having fewer than 50 pieces of content on a mobile page is an ideal case scenario where the site would load under 3 seconds as per any industry standards. But the actual number is very different. Tech sites have around 140 pieces of content, retail sites have around 129 pieces and automotive sites have around 119 pieces of content- All more than double of an ideal site- and this is a huge factor in the slower page load speeds.

As mobile ad spend continues to increase, more and more marketing money is being spent on digital ads on Mobile phones, according to a new study by eMarketer. In the beginning of 2016, the mobile ad spend in the US was approximately $29 billion - that’s almost 50% of all digital ad spending. By the year 2019, the mobile ad spending will rise to approximate $66 billion, or about 72% of total digital ad spend. It is in the year 2019 itself, where mobile ad spending will surpass desktop. The desktop advertising will be flat at approximately $25 billion in the next couple of years, while mobile will continue to grow in double digits and gain more market share by the year.

What are the best practices to increase sales and conversions on Mobile phone?

The first golden rule of improving mobile conversion rates is increasing site speed- and a lot! Top performing mobile sites load between one to four seconds. Every extra second increases the bounce rate by 10% which means that users either close the site or switch to a different one- and most of them never return. As per industry standards, mobile loading speed has to be less than 3 seconds while an average site is around 6 seconds load time. To reduce the site loading speed from 6 seconds to 3 seconds, it involves a lot of strategies, implementations, trials and errors, keep and kill sessions, coding, optimization of apps, images and content within the site.

Here are a couple of best practice pointers to increase sales and conversions on mobile phones:

1. Using mobile responsive design/theme: Choosing a mobile responsive theme to begin with is the key to make sure that your site is mobile-friendly from the roots itself.
2. Creating a user-friendly site design: The site design that you choose has to be user-friendly in the sense that it has to appeal to the user in terms of looks and functionality. The site design also has to be simple and not too complex for any user to navigate through.
3. Using attractive images: Using attractive images on the website is very crucial because content with images get around 94% more views than content without images. Images of people work the best because as humans, we’re hardwired to look at other people. At the same time images that elicit an emotion or images that showcase the product clearly are very crucial and work for the benefit of the user and hence the website.
4. Implementing Autocomplete on Site searches: Implementing autocomplete on site searches has become a norm these days as the user needs to be assisted while he is searching for something on the website so that his time is saved on the site and he can get to the results faster.
5. Using Product Videos: Using product videos has now become more necessary than ever as around 90% of the videos are now watched on mobile phones. 80% of the consumers would rather watch a product video than read about it. Also, around 84% of people make their purchase decision to buy something after watching a video.
6. Trust Building: Trust building involves using social proofs ike testimonials, IG feeds etc that make a user realize that he is not the only only buying the product and that there are many other people who have used the product and love it. Trust building is important as around 95% of people will buy a product only if it has lots of good 4-star and above reviews. Showcasing information to the user that makes them believe that their personal and financial information on the site is safe and secure is also a very simple but effective way of building user trust on your site.
7. Using Urgency: Creating urgency makes sure that the user engages quickly on your site with a fear of losing what you have to offer. To create an urgency, there are a lot of different tactics one can deploy, but the main one is where the call-to-action is clearly defined and that the user is given only a short amount of time to make his decision or miss out on the promotion.
8. Optimizing Mobile SEO: An site that is mobile SEO optimized means that a user will find the website higher up in the search results when he searches for those keywords that you want your website to rank for. Doing keyword research and making sure those keywords are included in the phrases of the site content is very important. Writing keyword rich blogs and articles on a consistent basis is the key to rank higher up in the search results.
9. Using Optin Pop-up windows: Pop-up windows are not new and are controversial when it comes to number of people opting in and number of people bouncing back from the site. How short is the opt-in form and when does it appear on the site also determines the opt-in and bounce off rate for a user. Sites that have pop-up windows within the first few seconds of the mobile site being loaded, see a significant amount of bounce-offs because a user who is wanting to experience the site is distracted by the pop-up and hence there is a very high chance of the user closing the site completely. Some industry experts say showing pop-up opt-in form after 10-15 seconds has a 50% higher chance of being filled up by the user than in the first few seconds when the user has just begun to explore the site.

Which are the top platforms for mobile advertising these days?

As people spend more and more time on their mobile phones (At least 5 hours/day on an average), delivering ads on the right platform is very crucial. The top most ad platforms in current times are:

1. Google Search Ads
2. Facebook Ads
3. Instagram Ads
4. Mobile In-App Ads

Although there are many more ad platforms that one can spend their energy, money and time on, but the famous 80-20 rule applies here as well without a doubt- 80% of the ads displayed & clicked are through these four ad platforms, and the rest 20% of the ads clicks are done on platforms other than these four.

Google ranks # 1 because it shows up relevant search results only when a user searches for a particular thing. Facebook, IG on the other hand, are social media platforms and not primarily search engines and thus the ads shown on these platforms are sometimes not relevant to the user and since they are not user-generated searches, they result in lower click-through rate than Google ads. Relevance is a key factor when choosing what mobile platform to use for promoting your brand.

Facebook Ads have come a long way from where they started but have not been winning the Ad platform battle with Google. Reason being that Google is user initiated, while Facebook is Advertiser initiated. When a user wants to look for something, he will take the first step and search for it on a search engine like Google. On the other hand, an advertiser on Facebook will create an Advertisement and push it out to the user- and there lies the trouble- There could be many factors that could decrease the probability of the user to make an action on the advert he is shown forcefully on his mobile phone while he’s browsing through other people’s posts in his feed. The ad forced on his facebook feed might not be relevant to the user because of various reasons- Maybe the user has already got what he was looking for, or that the ad content is not attractive enough per his personal preferences. When a user initiates a search with his own will, the probability of him clicking through the top search results is more than him being shown an ad without his own will. Instagram ads are no different and hold lesser relevance as compared to Google ads.

Mobile in-app ads have been gaining a lot of momentum but again, 3rd-party ads are not as relevant as the native ads by the apps promoting in-app purchases. Click through rates on mobile in-app ads is lesser than Facebook & Instagram because a user engaged in an gaming / social app, would only click through the ads presented to him if it is relevant to him at that moment.

Having said that, Google ads are the top performing ads as of 2018- and chances are that this would not change anytime in the near future. Google has been diligently working in order to make the user experience better -both from advertiser point of view as well as the consumer point of view. One interesting thing to know is that Google, unlike Facebook, has a very good team of ad account managers that work with you consistently without charge and help you create ads, run campaigns, manage budgets and everything else. They even have a scalability team that primarily help with companies spending $1000/ day or more in ad spends. Below is an Infographic on the best times to advertise on Facebook & Instagram for maximum user engagement.

For Facebook, on a global level:Wednesday at noon and 2 p.m. and Thursday at 1 and 2 p.m.Thursday is the best day to post on Facebook in the week.The safest times to post include weekdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.Saturday has the least amount of engagement for Facebook in the week.Evenings and early mornings have the least amount of engagement in the day.

For Instagram, on a global level:The best time to post on Instagram is Wednesday at 3 p.m., Thursday at 5 a.m., 11 a.m., and 3 to 4 p.m. and Friday at 5 a.m.Thursday is the best day to post to Instagram.The safest times to post to Instagram are Tuesday through Friday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.Sunday is the least engaging day for Instagram.

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