A Little Bit of Market Research Goes a Long Way
Of all of the market research companies available in the world, Nielsen is one of the most respectable and credible. It is Nelsen’s job to stay on top of market trends, and it’s no surprise that they have created a factsheet called the “U.S. Media Universe” that focuses on reporting the key trends in U.S. consumers’ relationships with their favorite media tools. Read on for some facts that will help you understand U.S. consumers and predict their media-related behavior for 2011.
As of January 2011, there are 228 million mobile phone users in the U.S. Of those, 83.2 million have access and use the web on their phones. That’s about 36 percent of total mobile phone users. Sixty six percent of mobile phone users send text messages, according to their study. Nielsen has broken down the amount of texters by age group. The highest amount of texts comes from 13-17 year olds, an age group that sends 3,705 text messages a month! That’s over 44 thousand text messages a year. The remaining age groups usage goes down steadily. Eighteen to 24 year olds send 1,707 a month, 25 to 34 year olds send 758, 35 to 44 year olds send 583, 45-54 year olds send 349, 55 to 64 years olds send 124, and all 65 plus year olds send on average 41 messages a month. The key thing to note is that there is not a single age group that is NOT texting, they all are.
When it comes to gender, women tend to send more texts and talk more on the phone than males. On average, a woman will send 716 texts a month compared to a man’s 555.
How can this information help you? Well, if you are a marketer or business owner, knowing that the total U.S. population is 310 million and that 228 million of them are texting, it’s safe to say that if your target market is between the ages of 13-64, you can reach them by text. Also, if you are targeting various age groups, you can use this information to help allocate your advertising budget based on your understanding of how that group communicates. Obviously, if 13-17 year olds are within your target market, the unparelleled communication tool to get their attention is a text. The same goes for allocating budgets for targeting women versus men.
With consumer spending set to increase in 2011, now is a good time to get your marketing message into the hands of your target consumers via text.