Despite all the doom and gloom that the media tends to bombard us with, reports are indicating that this post-Thanksgiving sales event was the best ever, with online recognizing a 24.3% increase in overall sales.  What’s been overlooked?  Surprisingly, mobile.
Marketers know they need to participate in the mobile space – in the same way that they know they need to participate in the social space.  But it’s daunting – and while we guide clients in the right direction (check out our White Paper), there is still some concern about entering yet another modality for client engagement.

There are some universal truths that allow us to see the future -here are a few:

• The car industry does what California says on emissions…eventually.
• Bing/Yahoo follow Google’s lead on search (and most other things).
• Apple’s product roadmap is every other phone and computer maker’s roadmap – only six months later (24 months, if you’re Microsoft).
• How people buy on Black Friday is an indicator of how they’re going to buy in the future.

We know that mobile is going to be huge, but if you remained unconvinced up until 11/25, take a look at these stats according to IBM’s Smarter Commerce Benchmark Study:

• Mobile was responsible for 14.3% on Black Friday – forecast to be up to 17% by month’s end, and according to Google – 44% of all last minute searches.  By the way, it was 5.6% last year.
• Mobile sales accounted for 9.8% of all online transactions – last year it accounted for only 3.2%

Considering “Cyber Monday” started off as a day to help the online industry feel good about themselves (back before Amazon turned a profit), the indications that it’s the real deal are intact.

Top brands are keying off the success of mobile and recognizing it as the emerging search and commerce space to be in.  Walgreens recently launched a smartphone coupon campaign that you could use in their stores.  The trick?  It was a mobile-only offering.

Shoppers have told us – unequivocally – mobile is not only viable, it may be preferable.  What we don’t know is the impact that it’s having on the growth in offline sales.  Further stats from the IBM study tell us there was a lot of click to buy – and little browsing going on in mobile.  Is it being used as a comparison engine?  Hell yeah it is – and if people are shopping on it in your store, you are losing a huge piece of the consideration set.

As we see double and triple year-over-year usage gains (triple for sales!!!), the road ahead becomes very clear.  Get your mobile house in order – it may be the biggest impact to your business since AdWords.