August 26, 2010 by The Mobile Marketer

Mobile marketing spend ‘set to boom’ over the next 12 months

Mobile marketing is set to boom over the next with 79% of businesses currently incorporating it into their marketing strategies, claims new research commissioned by 2ergo.

Of those businesses currently delivering mobile marketing strategies, 70% intend to increase their mobile marketing budgets next year.

Mobile marketing budgets are growing faster than traditional marketing budgets. With 56% of respondents saying their marketing budget would increase next year, over 50% of respondents believe that mobile marketing will be more important than other traditional marketing techniques within the next two years.

The most popular objective of mobile marketing for marketers are customer retention and brand building. Some 52% of respondents measure success of their mobile marketing campaigns by these two factors.

Business decision makers see iPhone and Smartphone apps (53%) and mobile tickets and coupons (38%) as the key uses for mobile marketing. Just over half (53%) also recognise interactive messaging as a strategy for mobile marketing.

The response indicates that many businesses need to develop an understanding of the full breadth of what a business can do through mobile and its corresponding potential.

“Businesses have woken up to the potential value of mobile marketing and doing business on mobile and realize that whilst reaching customers through traditional channels has become increasingly difficult, consumers are now spending an average of 6.5 hours a week on the mobile web,” said Colin McCaffery, Director of Products at 2ergo.

“Those who don’t leverage this opportunity now are likely to get crowded out by brands with first mover advantage.”

Those who have engaged a mobile marketing campaign are experiencing significant returns on their investment, claims the report, with a quarter of people using mobile marketing experiencing significantly reduced costs of sale and half believing they are delivering significantly improved customer service.

The survey also highlights that the most popular types of mobile marketing are presently mobile publishing/websites and outbound SMS. However the development of smartphone apps is the channel that most companies are looking to activate over the next 12 months.
When asked what factors prevent their organizations from using mobile marketing, survey respondents cited a lack of their own research into its benefits (52%) as the main factor.