The State of the Mobile Landscape 2013

By the end of 2013 there will be more mobile devices on the planet than people! Our friends at IM Grind just posted a great infographic about the State of Mobile 2013, inspiring this post on the State of the Mobile Landscape in 2013. It’s safe to say that mobile is growing!

In its annual Mobile Fact Book, Portio Research estimates that the worldwide mobile subscriber base will reach nearly 8.5 billion by the end of 2016 with a CAGR of more than 7 percent. More and more, subscribers use their mobile devices as all-purpose devices for shopping, research and payments, not just for keeping I touch by calling and texting. According to Google’s Our Mobile Planet, 58 percent of smartphone owners use their devices at some point in the purchase journey, with the majority of the usage occurring in the research and decision making activities.

However, the number of users who do not complete the purchase on their smartphone is high, with more than 40 percent of the users reporting that they were uncomfortable with entrusting their credit card information to their mobile device’s security, and 25 percent reporting that it is too hard to type their information on the device. Pay per call is the ideal solution to capture these sales before they are lost to inertia or a competitor who catches their eye either online or in a physical location.

Just as marketers have adjusted to providing product through online and offline channels to suit the buyer’s preference, they also need to provide advertising that allows users to complete online purchases in the way that makes them most comfortable. Although mobile device ownership is nearly universal in the developed world and most users are comfortable researching their potential purchases using their devices, not all users are comfortable completing the purchase on their devices.

The addition of Pay Per Call to mobile advertising helps turn buyer inaction into increased revenue with conversion rates of up to 50 percent or more. When users can simply click on the phone number to connect to a live person, the immediate connection provides the opportunity to answer any lingering questions or to entice the user to buy additional products with effective cross selling and upselling techniques. Buyers are often more comfortable providing their credit card information to a person and providing necessary delivery information is easier by voice than on most mobile keyboards. Pay per call eliminates two of the steepest barriers to buying behavior on mobile devices.

By adding a Pay Per Call capability to mobile advertising, astute marketers take advantage of the ubiquity of mobile devices and the immediacy that users enjoy when researching potential purchases, while preventing inertia from derailing the buying process and eliminating the two biggest reasons that people don’t complete purchases on their mobile devices.

Adding Pay Per Call capabilities to mobile advertising helps attract additional affiliates and simplifies reporting on each affiliates’ performance through the use of unique numbers or extensions, so it enables marketers to improve the quality of the channel while increasing conversion rates and providing more accurate reporting. Given the multiple benefits of Pay Per Call marketing, it makes sense for every advertiser to add the capability to all their mobile ads.

Read More: Is Mobile Advertising Right for Your Business