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The Performance Of Mobile Marketing

With all the hoopla about Mobile Marketing and the fact you can hardly go anywhere without over hearing someones conversation on a mobile phone, it does not take Einstein to figure out there is a huge marketing potential if this medium can be leveraged properly.

The problem for most small business owners is this is just one other thing I have to learn how to do. Which usually means it is going to be put on the back burner and never implemented. This happens despite the data concerning how mobile marketing is currently out performing traditional marketing strategies.

According to Mobile Watch:

Mobile marketing is a smart investment, delivering higher return-on-investment (ROI) than traditional marketing programs, according to recent research findings. SoundBite Communications, Inc. SDBT +1.85% , a leading provider of Mobile Marketing and Hosted Contact Center solutions, commissioned Luth Research, a research partner of the Mobile Marketing Association, to explore trends, issues and the future direction of mobile marketing. Luth surveyed key marketing executives at companies ranging from $100 million to $1 billion+ in annual revenue across retail, consumer package goods, travel and hospitality, media and financial services industries.

When asked about mobile marketing ROI compared to traditional initiatives, 52 percent of mobile marketers stated mobile returns were higher while only 15 percent stated their returns as lower. For those reporting results, the average ROI was 32 percent. As a result, nearly three-quarters of marketers are increasing mobile marketing budgets and/or shifting budget to mobile from other marketing programs by an average of more than 20 percent.

The marketing thought leaders surveyed identified three major benefits of mobile marketing solutions:

– Quantifiable: mobile marketing provides measurable increases in revenue
and purchase frequency
– Personalized: enables more targeted, relevant programs — driving higher
response rates
– Immediacy/Real-Time: the ubiquity of mobile leads to more timely offers
and better results

According to the research, adoption of mobile marketing by major brands will be approaching 100 percent by 2013. This adoption is a result of initial mobile communication programs and trials and will be paving the way for deeper usage and more robust, complex programs. With the majority of mobile consumers now owning Smartphones — mobile has become the ultimate convergent device with SMS, voice, email and web all easily accessible and frequently used.

Despite this success, marketers continue to express concerns about technology constraints, access to mobile marketing expertise and consumer consent issues, including:

– Building internal expertise on using mobile as a marketing channel
– Building and managing large opt-in databases and properly communicating
with consumers
– Identifying technology solutions
– Combating mobile perception and consumer receptivity challenges

“Consumers’ rapid smartphone adoption is an absolute game-changer,” said Mark Friedman, executive vice president of SoundBite’s Mobile Services Business Unit. “This survey proves that those that invest in growing and managing mobile marketing databases in an intelligent and compliant manner have a tremendous opportunity to reap the rewards with high ROI marketing programs.”

“With mobile marketing budgets and consumer adoption increasing, it’s time for companies to align the mobile channel to every phase of the customer lifecycle,” stated Roseanne Luth, president, Luth Research.”The touch points provided by mobile marketing are critical in customer acquisition, retention, engagement and care. Building a companywide mobile strategy is vital, and aligning with the right partners to execute that strategy is the key to long-term success.”

Knowing facts can do nothing unless you decide to get into the game. The best place to start is to have a mobile version of your website developed. One of the most annoying things is to visit a website on a mobile phone and find that it has not been optimized to viewed on these devices. Not only is the end user disappointed but in most cases will not visit that bran anymore.

Accept it or not, the mobile device is here to stay it is up to you to get your businesses infrastructure up to date with these new advancements in technology. You should not have to overcome any learning and that is where we come in.