We are addicted to smartphones – at a personal level at least. But then, being part of the RE-UP gang and working in the digital field makes it clear: whether you’re at home, at work, or on the move: your phone follows you everywhere – and of course that’s a huge thumbs-up for brands.
The role smartphones play in daily life: a necessity.
There’s the reality: our phone is our best companion. We keep it keep close all the time and we spend 3.3 hours on it everyday, according to this 2014 Mobile Behaviour Report. And we are quite loyal, given that we keep a phone 2 years on average. Of course, it’s not only a matter of loyalty. Our phone IS indeed useful and functional. From basic features like calls, to geolocation and online search, our smartphone assists us all day long. Think about it – throughout the day, you basically:
- Wake up with your phone’s alarm clock,
- Check weather forecasts to match your outfit,
- Check bus schedules on Citymapper,
- Listen to music on Spotify to extend your daydreams,
- Whatsapp your friends abroad,
- Scroll down news feeds on Facebook whenever you’re bored,
- Retweet daily news that particularly striked you,
- Post funny street life pictures with Instagram,
- Go running with the Nike App to keep track of your (great) achievements,
- Go home late with an Uber even if it means paying the 2.4x price because you’re too lazy anyway.
– At least that’s what I do. The list is infinite.
According to this U.S. study performed by the Pew Research Centre, we need our phones the most to get directions, meet up with friends and keep in touch. Not only do phones help us through the day, they also make us feel productive and happy. Big LIKE to that:
Beyond the necessity: a symptomatic addiction.
The fact that smartphones assist us in our daily life is a thing. Our mobile-obsession is another. Clearly, the relationship we have with our mobile phones have shifted from a daily necessity to an addiction with which we can’t live anymore.
First, there is our addiction to the ‘now’. For example, if we’d had to make food plans for a few days ahead, we’d probably go for something healthy. When it comes to know what we’d like for desert right now, most chance is we prefer chocolate or candies to fruits. Our ability to resist desire in the present is much weaker than making plans in the future. When it comes to immediate consumption, the same thing applies with mobile technology. With continuous flows of information, from status updates to instant messaging, we just keep on feeding our addiction to new things – and there’s the first Big Up for marketers.
Of course, our desire for immediate consumption is linked to our addiction to the ‘here’. Look at iBeacon, the revolutionary Bluetooth proximity sensing technology available on iOS. The concept is simple: iBeacon alerts apps when users approach or leave a location, allowing instant access to special deals and mobile payments features. The win-win situation with this app is a facilitated purchase experience on consumers’ side, as well as increased visibility and better monitoring on brands’ side.
We are also addicted to ‘free’. Downloading free Apps requires very low engagement, which is what makes it so irresistible in the first place. However, once we spend time on it, we become addicted, thus more willing to add value on it. And it works: free Apps on smartphones are the most successful ones and have generated over $2 billion in sales. Look at Angry Birds’ success: more than € 160 millions turnover in 2013, with 50% of it generating from derived products – not bad for a free App game! For brands, there’s the magic equation: if an app is free, we are eager to spend time on it. If we spend time on something, we are OK to spend money on it.
Finally, we’re addicted to social rewards, and the power of smartphones also lies in the fact that they allow us to connect instantly with others. Mobile makes it increasingly easier to access and share, and we cannot ever get enough of it. And it works – just look at Facebook’s Second Quarter 2015 results, 30% of users are connected to their phone and 60% of Facebook’s revenue is generated from mobile devices. Social networks, be it Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, bring us to continuously share content with others, and our phones are the best tools to do so on a 24/7 basis.
Even phone companies have a good laugh at our mobile addiction. Just look at this Windows Phone advert in 2010 and the irony of the message: “It’s time for a phone, to save us from our phones”.
So what’s the point then? – Well, obviously, all this brings huge opportunities for marketers.
How brands impose themselves on our daily phone habits: messaging apps and social media.
Leveraging our mobile-addiction can be tricky for brands, but this has become essential to gain awareness in our growing mobile-first society.
Looking at this Business Insider graph on daily mobile user experience, we see that marketers tend to forget that we mostly use our phone as a communication tool (55%), including talking, texting and emailing – even more than we play (8%) or spend time on social networks (15%). This explains why the Messaging App business is such a big deal, with its 3 billion users. For instance, the number of Whatsapp messages sent everyday now exceeds the number of standard texts. And there is more to these apps than simple messages. They are also great marketing tools. Not only they can be monetized with premium upgrades, but streams can also be diversified with advertising content, sponsored stickers, merchandising, and so on.
Leveraging our addiction to social media is another thing. Given that we spend more time accessing social media from our phone than our desktop, there is a great land of opportunities for brands to optimize their presence on social media apps. Marketers are already targeting mobile users thanks to combined uses of organic content and paid advertising that are specially adapted to mobiles. Doing so, there are a few things to keep in mind while thinking about reaching mobile users appropriately, such as:
- Continuously checking that content appears well on mobile feeds before posting,
- Targeting types of mobile users when posting – for instance, target Wi-Fi users when posting a video,
- Making the content easily shareable from mobile devices
- Choosing mobile-friendly websites when posting their URL,
- Make sure to pin posts, given than mobile versions only display posts by time and not popularity.
Of course, brands should not only focus on Facebook but adapt their content to Twitter and Instagram in order to attract as much mobile users as possible.
Integration, visibility and monitoring are key to optimize mobile marketing.
Smartphones – whether they are considered as a necessity or an addiction – are now completely integrated in our everyday life. Understanding the way we use them is perhaps the most essential step that all businesses should face before developing a proper mobile strategy.
While visibility is key, reaching it though improved features is crucial to increase brand awareness.
It is up to brands and advertisers to fully capitalise on smartphone technology, particularly in relation to interactivity and gamification, to truly capture the individual and evoke an emotional or physical response. If we fail in this, then we run the risk of not truly benefiting off the habits of smartphone and digital users.
Finally, given the increasing layers of data generated from mobile devices, and the opportunities we have to gather and analyse this through improved and adapted analytical tools, we now have the chance to develop deeper and more enriching content that can talk to the individual on a direct level.
With this in mind, we could in theory produce smartphone ads that were directly tailored to the behavioural habits of the user (specifically in relation to how they are interacting with their phone) as a way to encourage a physical response that feels natural to the them.