Are you ready for Mobile Marketing?

Communication has changed.  We'll leave the argument of whether it's changed for the better or worse for another time, but nobody can disagree that it's changed over the years.

Pagers - car phones - bag phones - cellular phones - fax machines -
e-mail - e-fax - answering machines - voicemail

I remember the first person I knew who had a "bag phone".  He was a voice-over guy, and had to be available on a moment's notice.  He didn't like pagers, as that meant he had to find a phone, and what if he was in the car... he might have missed an audition.  So he got the phone you see in the illustration to the left.  We called it the "brick" bag phone.

It had a 2-hour battery life, you had to stand near a window when you answered the phone.  It weighed enough to qualify as a "work-out" just to lift it to your ear, and the actual cost of using the phone was enough per minute to cause your ears to bleed.

Yegods, I can't even envision what the communication mode will be 10 years from now.  You'll probably be having your personal communication system installed by your surgeon, with a small out-patient procedure directly behind the ear.

There's no escaping that a massive shift has taken place in communication style and well as the way we absorb information.  My children's generation, as a rule, are not installing land-lines, nor are they subscribing to newspapers.

Here are some interesting (and frightening) statistics that I've recently learned:

*  Over half of all mobile phone subscribers in the U.S. will be using a smart phone by the end of this year!!

*  50% of all web traffic will be on mobile devices in the next two to three years.  (That includes cell phones, tablets, laptops).

*  Over 91% of all U.S. citizens who own a cell phone, keep their cell phone within three feet of them, 24 hours a day!!  That's right, 24 hours a day!!  (okay.. how many of you just patted your pocket to make sure you had your cell phone??)

We must keep up.  Mobile marketing is the way today, and we need to embrace it. 

Make sure that you have your site optimized for mobile viewing.  If you're using QR codes, make sure that it leads to a mobile-friendly site. If you just have it linked to your normal site, you're not doing your viewers a favour.  It will bog down their mobile device, and tick them off... and they'll just click off and go to the next site.

If you don't have a smart-phone, or a tablet, or some sort of mobile access to the internet... get one!  They have real-estate specific applications for your tablets that will enhance your value to your clients.

Now, that doesn't mean that I'm totally prepared either... and it will take me some time to get there.  But we need to be aware that mobile marketing is the wave of NOW (not the future!).  This is how today's homebuyer is accessing information.

Be there, or be passed-over.

(254  -30)
 
Whoops... the technology changed
While I was writing this post!