Just 16% of Marketers have a Mobile Strategy

Given the explosive growth of mobile technology and the positive impact it has on the way brands interact with consumers, it was quite surprising to read recently that just 16% of marketers have a mobile strategy in place, a report prepared by the CMO Council said.

The study, which gauged the potential of mobile advertising and the attitudes towards the segment by 550 brand marketers, revealed that mobile relationship marketing (MRM) was the field industry professionals explored, tested and piloted the most last year. The small share of organisations which are adapting their strategies to mobile, however, implies that marketers are still dubious of mobile marketing effectiveness, hence its capacity to drive a strong return on investment, the Marketing Week reported.

According to the results of the survey, just 14% of marketers who have already devised a mobile strategy are content with the results. The biggest challenge that restrains marketers from raising their mobile-dedicated budgets is the shortage of case studies outlining best practices in the field, according to 77% of the sample. Amongst the problems marketers come across is also the fragmentation within the mobile industry, which makes customer outreach hard. This is mainly a result of the large number of operating systems like Android and iOS that power mobile devices. What also deters marketers from investing in mobile is the lack of a unified technology platform that can help for mobile analytics.

The results are similar to those established by another recent study, this time from the Internet Advertising Bureau, which found that both brands and agencies consider their lack of sufficient knowledge of m-commerce as the main reason for their modest investments in mobile advertising.