If there is one trend your brand needs to focus on in 2011, it’s mobile marketing. However, mobile marketing with a local marketing twist will take that trend to the next level.
Yelp is a website that helps people find local businesses, review local businesses, and interact with other users. If there was any question as to whether or not local targeting through mobile marketing matters, new statistics released by Yelp will put things into perspective for you.
According to Yelp, in December 2010, Yelp mobile app users called a local business every other second. Keep in mind, that statistic only includes activities by users of the Yelp mobile app, not the website.
More data about Yelp mobile app usage as reported on the Yelp blog follows:
- 3.2 million unique visitors used a Yelp mobile app.
- 35% of all searches on Yelp.com came from a Yelp mobile app.
- Every other second, a consumer generated directions to a local business.
- A photo was uploaded every 30 seconds from a Yelp mobile app.
The Yelp website has been doing well, too. Yelp reported the following data on the Yelp blog for January 2011:
- More than 45 million unique visitors used Yelp.com to make a spending decision based on 15 million reviews on the site.
- 50% of reviewed businesses on Yelp.com are in the shopping or restaurants categories.
There is no doubt that mobile marketing and geo-targeting are both huge opportunities for brands and businesses, and the popularity of sites like Yelp demonstrates the power of mobile, local and social media marketing when they’re combined. This is a trend that’s not going away. The final quarter of 2010 marked the first time in history that smart phone sales outpaced PC sales as reported by research group IDC. During the final three months of 2010, consumer electronics manufacturers shipped 100.9 million smart phones. PC shipments for the same time period reached just 92.1 million.
If mobile marketing and local marketing aren’t already a part of your brand’s marketing plan, then you need to bump them up to the top of your prioritization list. Consumers are looking to their mobile devices to find the kind of local and social information they need to make purchase decisions. Your brand needs to be there, too.
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Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
