Are You Giving Consumers What They Want?

The days of cornering a market with a product are over: there are too many products and too many ways to get them. The days of creating in a vacuum are over as well: consumers want to be involved in how you develop your products. The days of selling your product where and how you want are DEFINATELY over.

While social media has been everyone’s buzz AND bash target of late, how can you argue with stats like these:

85% believe a company should not only be present in, but also interact with its consumers via social media.

I‘d like to layoff social media for this post and focus on 1 thing that has been boggling my mind of late when it comes to retail:

Why don’t you have a mobile site?

40% of mobile users have Internet access (likely to triple in the next 3 years). That’s 546 MILLION people! If you’re in charge of marketing for a retailer and a mobile website is not part of your IMMEDIATE strategy, you should be fired. You just cost your company 546 million potential customers. A mobile site is not complicated, as a matter of fact it is a much less complicated site than a regular website. SInce you’re limited in the amount of information you can show, and bandwidth is limited, it’s easier to narrow your offerings down to basics like contact, store finder, etc. Good God man, my site even has a mobile version!

In recent weeks I’ve  been doing last minute baby and house shopping. I’ll often find myself wondering if something is in stock at another branch of Lowe’s, where the closest Office Max is, are there specials on diapers, etc. How often do you think I’ve been able to access a mobile site? Right, never. I’ll admit that I’m an early adopter, cash permitting, but I’ve had an iPhone for over a year now. But that also makes me a more frequent user AND proponent to my sphere of influence. Do you really want to ignore me?

• Half of iPhone users responded to a mobile ad in some way
• iPhone users call an 800 number, the most common call-to-action, twice as often as non-iPhon users
• 20% of iPhone users visit a mobile website compared to 14% of non-iPhone users
• 25% of iPhone users purchased a product or visited the store of a mobile marketer

So, for those retailers out there without a mobile site, next time you don’t make your quarterly numbers, look to the marketing guy. After all, what better way to differentiate yourself from your competitor than to be more accessible to your customers?