The use of mobile devices to perform online searches and interact with businesses is on the rise. Nearly 30 percent of mobile searches result in consumers visiting a store, calling a business or making a purchase online, according to a recent study by research firm Nielsen and Google.
And as business owners ramp up their mobile marketing efforts to capitalize on this trend, they also need to know how -- or if -- those efforts are paying off. Google thinks it has the answer. The tech giant has launched a new tool called The Full Value of Mobile Calculator. The goal is to offer simple equations and benchmarks to help estimate the value that mobile drives over apps, over mobile sites and more. So, business owners can now gauge what's working and what isn't -- and make adjustments as needed to help achieve their goals.
"Mobility has forever changed the way consumers live and shop, giving rise to these new customer paths as the lines between digital and physical experiences blur," says Johanna Werther, Google's head of mobile ads marketing, in a company blog post. "Understanding what each of these mobile pathways means for your business is a critical piece of the larger attribution challenge that every marketer needs to meet head-on."
To start calculating, you can upload information -- such as in-store sales and sales coming through your mobile site -- manually or by importing that data from an existing Google Adwords account. Business owners can follow a step-by-step guide and get started using the calculator in about 30 minutes, Werther wrote.
Indeed, measuring the effectiveness of online and mobile sales is becoming a larger issue for business owners. User-review site Yelp also released a calculator this week that helps track exactly how many leads are sent to a business from Yelp each month.