Have you ever felt like you’re drowning in content? With so many news sources from TV, social media, email newsletters, RSS feeds and more, all often serving up the same information, you start to tune it out. You get into a groove of only opening your favorites, and skimming the headlines to see if there’s anything worth taking the time to read the full story, while ignoring the rest. Something similar recently happened to me, but luckily the old adage “a picture’s worth 1,000 words” held true, when I came across a phenomenal infographic on the growth of mobile in the post-PC era. I found myself enamored with the data this graphic offered. As I read on, it brought to light a lot of questions as well as ideas on where the mobile space is today.
Here’s a summary of the stats within the graphic that most caught my attention:
• 1.038 billion smartphones are currently in use; 1 out of every 6.7 people on the planet own one
• In 2013, mobile Internet users surpassed desktop Internet users
• Global mobile transactions were around $241 billion in 2011; expected to grow to more than $1 trillion by 2015
• In the last 16 years, 1 billion smartphones sold; the next 1 billion will be sold in the next 2 years
• 52 percent of surveyed retailers do not yet have a mobile-optimized website; but those that do are showing sales in the billions:
o Amazon: More than $4 billion in mobile sales
o eBay: More than $10 billion in goods sold
With consumers flocking in droves to their mobile devices and giving their PC less and less attention, the question becomes why aren’t all businesses going mobile? Is it because of cost? Or more so the lack of awareness of how to create a mobile strategy that generates a tangible return on investment?
As it relates to real estate specifically, with recovery underway, my answer would be the latter. We no longer need to ask the question of whether or not we should go mobile. We know we should and the numbers speak for themselves. The question is how can we do it in a manner that generates the results that make it worth the time, energy and resources?
According to NAR, two of the top three trends in the market today are mobile and local. It’s my belief that mobile is the single biggest tool an agent or broker can utilize to “win” at the local level, meaning engage and convert mobile users who are actively looking for property information. In addition, there are tools out there in the market today, such as the Win Local Agent Suite powered by Mobile Real Estate, LLC, which are designed to generate this exact result.
To see the mobile marketing infographic, visit http://bit.ly/1eihvPB.
Seth Kaplan is president of Mobile Real Estate.
For more information, please visit www.mobilerealestateid.com.
