The other day, my trusty first generation Droid’s screen stopped behaving nicely. It would either go wild, like someone was just running their fingers all over it, or not respond at all.
Needless to say, I’ve been a bit beside myself as I wait for the replacement phone to show up.
Nothing lets you know just how much you rely on something more quickly than having it suddenly gone.
According to a report recently released by the Pew Research Center (Americans and Their Cell Phones – PDF), I’m not alone in how much I’ve come to rely on my outboard brain. Out of the 83 percent of adults who have cell phones, more than half of them use those cell phones to get information right away.
That means that businesses now have yet another way to get in touch with potential customers.
Almost all cell phone users use their phones to send and receive text messages. Other studies have shown that almost every text message sent gets opened and read within a couple of hours (at most) of being received. This makes text message marketing one of the best new opt-in ways to keep in touch with your customers and inspire them to take action.
Those with smart phones (like the ever popular iPhone and growing army of Android-powered devices), make even more use of what their phones have to offer. According to the Pew report, 84 percent of them regularly access the Internet from their phones. That means they could be browsing your website (which is hopefully proper formatted for mobile browsing) when they have a question about your company.
Social media usage wasn’t something explicitly covered in the Pew study, but other studies have confirmed that the majority of people with smart phones are making use of services like Twitter, Facebook, and Four Square while they’re out and about.
We’ve come a long way from people doing all their research and communication at home or in the office… and even further from when they had to rely on the Yellow Pages to figure out what businesses were around.
Now, your potential customers are always just a quick search away from finding your business when they need it.
Are you doing everything you can to be accessible when someone’s looking for you? If you’re not, you need to be.
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