Though small businesses aren’t the ones marketing via mobile or trying to figure out how programmatic advertising works, they still need mobile to do business.
Small biz owners (SBOs) and their phones are “attached at the hip” — sometimes literally.
The latest research from Manta showed that 80.5 percent of U.S. SBOs use their mobile devices for business once a day or more. Almost 25.3 percent used these once an hour, 11 percent between three and five times daily, and 17.3 percent nearly 10 times a day.
“All of that mobile time cuts into computer time,” suggests eMarketer. “Nearly 80 percent of SBOs used their mobile devices while at work in front of their PCs. The main reason for doing so was to check personal messages, cited by 48 percent of respondents. Surprisingly, 25 percent said their email came in faster on their mobile devices.”
Other stats showed only 12 percent admitted to being addicts and 8 percent multiscreened because they preferred using their mobiles over a computer. Another 7 percent said they were often distracted by the alerts from social and gaming apps.
How do SBOs use their phones for business? Most indicated they use mobile devices to schedule appointments and communicate with customers, cited by 55.5 percent.
“Notes and to-do lists as well as social media monitoring and participation were used by nearly three in 10, while a quarter conducted business-related banking,” reports eMarketer. “Expense and inventory management were much less common, as were accounting and drafting text-heavy documents and presentations.”
Manta’s research also indicated SBOs are frequent app users. About half access mobile apps for business between two and three times a day.
