9 Mobile Marketing Trends You Need to Know for 2018

According to trend watchers, the message for businesses and marketers this year is: go mobile or go home. The focus of 2018 will be to cater to the exponential growth of consumers who now use smart phones and/or tablets as their first -- and many times only -- device.

Before we go into the 2018 trends, let's set the mobile stage. It's no longer a question of whether mobile marketing is important -- we know it is -- it's now the case of understanding how consumers behave on mobile devices. By 2018, more than half of all consumers will be using mobile devices first for anything they do online, according to Gartner.

Across the globe, mobile devices dominate total minutes spent online. For example, in the U.S., 71 percent of total digital minutes comes from mobile devices. Even more stagerring, in Indonesia 91 percent of time spent online comes from mobile. The average time spent browsing on a smartphone per month is 87 hours in the U.S., compared to 34 hours on desktop. And these numbers have only increased in the past year.

According to official Google statements, more than 50 percent of search queries globally come from mobile devices (experts say this number is now closer to 60 percent). The category with the highest percentage of mobile search volume is "Food & Beverage" with 72 percent. Following the restaurant industry, is health, sports, news, lifestyle and retail. Businesses in these industries, and many others, will instantly see results when going mobile.

Now that you're up to date on the current mobile landscape, let's take a look at the 9 mobile marketing trends that will define 2018.