New Mobile User Insights

Mobile users are not identical to Web users. They have different needs, wants and preferences. Early mobile users were younger, predominantly male, affluent and tech-savvy. But newer user groups include busy white-collar professionals, multitasking parents, business travelers dashing through airports—or just killing time waiting to board a plane or get through the security checkpoint. And of course, millennials scarcely leave home without their mobile devices in hand.

There is a growing demographic of cell-phone-only users, i.e., having no land-line phone service. (Telemarketers everywhere, face your destiny…) These users skew younger (46 percent in this group are 18-29 year-olds), with lower incomes than typical land-line users (but younger adults do tend to earn less than older age groups). Only 16 percent of individuals in this group fall into the $75,000+ income bracket, according to a 2008 Pew Research Center for the People and the Press study. During the recession, cell-phone-only use expanded to include segments of all demographic groups, as consumers recognized cost-savings by switching phone service to their mobile plans.

A Deloitte & Touche study in early 2008 found a growing number of cell-phone-only users increasingly use their handsets as entertainment devices—a 24 percent increase for this use in just one year. This finding aligns with the increased interest of young adult women in casual gaming.

In 2009, with wider adoption of smart phones and the spread of wi-fi access, studies tracked the upsurge in mobile web use. And new demographic groups moved front and center. The heaviest mobile web users are multi-tasking parents, according to Scarborough Research. Working moms are the new “power users,” relying on mobile devices for information, organization, communications, networking and shopping.

Another group to watch is seniors (aged 65 and older). According to Nielsen, mobile web use among seniors increased 67 percent between July 2008 and July 2009. And Forrester Research reported that mobile access of social networking sites doubled in the past six months. Increased usage is attributed to more smart phones, better user experience and increased social interaction. Mobile is meeting our demand for immediacy in online interactions, tapping into our need for “right now.”

Currently, social identities are fragmented; users have multiple profiles across multiple networks. In the future, “universal social IDs will enable a portable identity that will empower consumers. And that is when the mobile phone will become the hub of social computing activities—the glue that holds the social graph together,” says Dan Butcher of MobileMarketer.com.

Mobile sites need to offer content that satisfies both the immediate needs of mobile users—current, right-this-minute news and information and trusted resources from known brands—and sometimes, a desire for something fun and amusing that they can play, read or interact with for a few minutes.

Useful, functional apps, and strategies aimed at providing positive user experiences will be most successful. Marketers who rely on gimmicks—ringtones, wallpaper, irrelevant text alerts, and poorly targeted and timed coupon offers—will fall by the wayside as mobile users become more sophisticated.

Current successful mobile campaigns integrate with and add interest to other media, broadening the user experience and more effectively drawing users into the brand interaction. Mobile users should be invited to participate; push marketing is just mobile spam.

Chris Quick, mobile media analyst at The Nielsen Company, suggested marketers can use mobile to “reach consumers at each step in the marketing funnel—awareness, trial, persuasion and loyalty—to deliver brand affinity and drive sales.”