By John Lim
It’s no secret that technology is constantly evolving, and as it changes, so does human behavior. Mobile technology is at the forefront of the latest evolution, with the number of mobile phones expected to exceed the world’s population by 2014. The mass adoption of mobile technology has created a new human dependency on mobile devices. This dependency has caused an evolution in human behavior, giving birth to a new type of consumer: the mobile consumer.
The mobile consumer is unlike any we have seen before. This is a more aggressive and less vocal consumer who does not hesitate when pulling out their mobile device during meetings and dinners. With an abundance of information at their fingertips, they are a more knowledgeable and powerful consumer. And, for the first time, this new consumer has the ability to be in both the physical and digital world simultaneously, subjecting them to the real-world conditions surrounding them, especially the weather.
So, how do we effectively reach this new consumer? As I mentioned at the K2 Convention in Poland earlier this year, it starts with answering how we get the right answer to the wrong question. Companies are always looking to fit their content on a specific screen size, and they are typically told by mobile experts to create a solution that is responsive to the device itself. The problem with this is that the most important aspect is often left out: the human factor.
While companies are concerned about making their assets responsive to a mobile phone or tablet, they should be focusing their attention and budgets on making their assets responsive to the user behind each device. Simply resizing elements of your website to fit on a mobile phone or tablet is ignoring the inherent behavior of the human operating the device; the issue with this is that a user behaves differently when using their smartphone than they do when using their tablet, so you must take these behavioral differences into consideration in order to successfully monetize mobile.
Bottom line, the problem at hand is faced with the wrong solution. The solution should not answer how we fit content onto a particular mobile device, but rather, how we respond to the user in order to effectively engage them with our brand. Be responsive to the user, not the device. Once companies begin to refocus their marketing efforts on the mobile consumer, rather than the device itself, they will start to see their mobile marketing efforts pay off.
John Lim is CEO of Life in Mobile, http://www.lifeinmobile.com.
Reprinted with permission from RISMedia. ©2013. All rights reserved.
