1. It's where your customers are
The average US consumer spends an average of 2 hours and 19 minutes on mobile apps a week right now. Now that statistic is a lie, but if it was real it would be profound and reason enough to make sure that you are investing significantly in mobile app marketing. Right?
The real figure is much more staggering. The average US consumer doesn't spend 2 hours and 19 minutes on mobile apps every week. No, they spend that much time on their mobile apps - are you ready for this - every day!
2. Your customers prefer Apps over Browsing
85% of US consumers preferred mobile apps over mobile websites. When asked why, their answers were that native app experiences are: more convenient, faster, and easier to navigate.
In fact mobile apps now account for 86% of the average user's time on their mobile devices, with web browsing fighting to hang on to the remaining 14%.
3. Less competition
How many browser based real estate search websites do you think are there in the US right now? 10,000... 100,000?
There are about 2 million licensed real estate agents in the US, so I'd think it would be safe to apply the 80/20 rule and asssume that at least the top 20% of agents have a website. So there are probably 400,000 websites where home buyers can search for homes.
How many mobile based search apps are there? You can probably count them all using just the fingers on your two hands.
This means that there are hundreds of thousands of websites all competing for the attention of desktop users, and just a dozen mobile apps having a free for all for the more valuable mobile users. It makes sense then, why Zillow reports that 70% of their users now access their site from a mobile device. - They don't have any competition.
Today, you have a simple choice. You can either compete against 400,000 other people for a market that is shrinking by about 25% a year (316 million visits to real estate desktop sites in February of this year from about 416 million in February from the year prior), or to compete against just a handful of people in a market that is doubling every year.
4. Mobile shoppers are more valuable
Zillow reports that their mobile based users are three times more likely to contact an agent, and Trulia reports that their mobile users increase from about 50% of their site traffic on weekdays to about 2/3's on the weekends. If you think about it for a second, the reason is obvious: Home buyers use mobile apps while they are actually out looking at houses.
So you can either spend you money marketing to people on desktop computers while they are in their homes, or you can reach home buyers while they are out and about, looking for houses.
Here is my final staggering statistic: Glenn Kelman, Redfin's CEO announced at Inman this year that 50% of the showing requests they receive are from home buyers while they are standing in front of the house they are interested in buying! The only way that you are going to be in a position to receive this call is if the user is using your app or you are buying leads from third party portals.
The 3 best ways to reach home buyers on mobile
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