Brand Marketing

By Mark Kersteen - June 9th, 2015

What’s the deal with mobile, anyway? We all know it’s where everything is heading, yet most of us aren’t doing nearly enough to take advantage of it. We asked our audience to give us the scoop. Here’s what they had to say:

Some Marketers are Confident, Others, Less So.

Of the marketers we polled, 12.8% were very confident in their ability to use mobile marketing. 40.8% were confident. 25.0% were unconfident. 6.1% were very unconfident. 15.0% Said mobile marketing didn’t apply to them. So things are pretty split. A lot of marketers feel confident with mobile, though only a minority feel very confident. Inversely, almost half the respondents were unconfident, very unconfident, or said that mobile marketing wasn’t applicable to them. From the comments we’ve received, the most prevalent reason marketers said that mobile marketing was irrelevant to them was because they hadn’t finished building out their mobile initiatives. Clearly, there’s catching up to do for many marketers.

Important, but not Critical.

When we asked marketers, “How important is mobile marketing to your current marketing mix?”, the response was: 17.9% Critical 52.15% Important 32.7% Unimportant 7.36% N/A So over half of marketers said that mobile is currently important to their marketing mix, but only a minority said it was critical. Almost every single comment on this question was either: “This is becoming important” or “This is becoming critical”. We imagine that critical percentage is going to be more than a few points higher within a year (see below). It seems like mobile has been at a tipping point for a while, but we’re all still waiting for the tip.

A Big Deal

Well, that tip might be coming soon. When asked how important mobile is going to be for marketers, the response was: 52.35% Critical 44.71% Important 2.94% Unimportant

“Desktop computers are already going the way of radio.”

So marketers really do think mobile is going to be important, even though they aren’t as comfortable with it as other channels. However, it’s easy to say something is going to be critical, but it’s hard to actually do anything about it.

There’s lots of buzz around mobile, but little action. Low ad revenues and a general feeling of “What do we do with this?” would seem to be to blame. The question that hangs over any discussion of mobile marketing is: who’s going to nail it?

When is someone going to see such a boom in ROI that fists will be slamming down in unison on every boardroom table in the world, as every CEO says: “We have to own mobile.”? Because let’s be honest here, we all know it: mobile is going to take over everything.

I spoke with a marketer the other day who said that he felt that “desktop computers are already going the way of radio.” I can’t imagine a future where mobile isn’t even more ingrained into the everyday. The changes constant connection to information and to one another are going to render in our work and personal lives are going to be nothing short of fundamental.

While I don’t know if we’ll be be living in a future as miraculously and mundanely technological as the film Her anytime soon, I don’t think that anyone can dispute mobile’s swiftly growing and evolving place in all of our lives. I guess the bottom line is: no, marketers have not figured out mobile yet. But they’re going to have to, and I’m excited to see what they come up with.