Marketing Mash Up for the Single Mobile Lifestyle!

The big buzz in 2010 seems to be the thrust towards the all-singing, all-dancing mobile that is the total living your life solution! Everything you’ll ever need when you need it – for work, rest and play!

The phenomenal success of the iPhone and the explosion in apps downloads has given rise to predictions that we are moving away from a ‘web of content to a web of applications’. Consequently, there has been some talk recently of paid search slowing as the rapid spread of gadgets and apps indicates that the way we access content is increasingly bypassing search engines to go directly via the mobile app!

If this is true, what does this revelation mean for business online marketing and future website accessibility?

It had seemed until only ‘yesterday’ that for most of planet Earth’s online population, Google has been the supreme starting point for content search, but increasingly the new entry point is becoming the mobile app. Consumers are on average, downloading between 20 to 40 applications to their devices and the market is seeing a steep growth curve.

If the revolution in online access and content search truly overturns everything we previously understood about optimisation, traffic driving, brand identity and advertising presence, then website design and functionality will have to adapt to survive!

The same applies to business and web based marketing strategies!

As technologies develop and markets evolve, change is inevitable and savvy business will embrace it, with always one eye firmly focused on which way the ship is heading and the wind is blowing!

If mobiles apps are taking over, then Google is also poised to take advantage of the new trade winds! Even back in 2008, they were saying : ‘the most obvious large space of advertising is the mobile internet and the next big wave in mobile advertising is the mobile internet.’

Taking control of ‘mobile internet space’ looks like Google’s forwarding strategy with the acquisition of Android, the open source operating system for mobile phones back in 2005, the more recent purchase of AdMob, and much-talked up Nexus One launch. Not forgetting of course, iPad, soon to be possibly everywhere in 2010!

It seems Google is assembling all the pieces that will enable it to deliver what they are calling ‘the single mobile lifestyle’ – the go-to source for all your needs on the move, all seamlessly joined together. Thus, you have the device, the data, the network, the map and the discount coupon, literally – all in hand! And much of the content will be accessed not necessarily by search, but via apps!

The mobile web doesn’t yet have the reach of the desktop web but it does have more engagement and immediacy but you can be certain that they soon will have! For businesses and web designer developers alike, who are preparing to capitalise, it represents the next valuable leap forward into the true mobile era.