Mobile marketing gaining a stronger foothold?

When we attended CommunicAsia 2008 last year, we faced questions that revolved mostly around what mobile marketing is and what it consists of besides text-based messaging.

We don’t know what to expect for the same event this year but we were amazed at how different it turned out!

Most of our visitors, both local and international, had acquired a great deal of knowledge . The question wasn’t as much “What is mobile marketing?”, but was more of “How can mobile marketing be of a benefit to me and my company?”.

The top 5 common questions we faced were:
1. How can we use mobile marketing to work with our current media strategy?
2. How long does it take to execute a mobile advertising campaign for our case?
3. What are the other services you can give us if we launch a campaign?
4. What information do I need to provide if I were to take up a campaign for the mobile?
5. What can mobile marketing do for me if I spend S$1000?

This could imply that mobile marketing is beginning to take a stronger position in companies’ marketing strategies where this area is something they think it’s worth considering.

Last year, eMarketers.com suggested an estimate of growth to increase from US$1,336 millions in 2008 to US$2,108 millions in 2009 in the Asia-Pacific region.

From the depth of the questions raised during our panel discussion at the conference for Mobile Marketing and Advertising as well as at the booth, I can conclude that the same industry players are now growing an interest in implementing mobile marketing.

“Overall interest levels in the mobile marketing concept vary by market and geographic region – however, common in all markets is the importance of mobile phones in daily life. Further, all markets show an ever increasing reliance on services that are precursors and enablers to mobile marketing efforts” Beth Ritchey, Vice President, Synovate Tech and Telecom about their report “Mobile Marketing Association Annual Study”.

Another recent report presented by Juniper Research claims that mobile advertising might not experience a decline in adspend due to the global recession unlike the other types of advertising media. The report states that mobile advertising will emerge to account for a 1, 5% of total global adspend, which might seem like a small portion. Nevertheless, to actually show an increase in adspend in today’s situation is stating a lot by my opinion. Brands are starting to acknowledge the importance of the mobile as an advertising medium and this will result in some market growth in the mobile advertising industry. We cannot say that the mobile advertising industry has a large piece of the total marketing pie yet, but it is surely starting to gain a stronger foothold.

Do you have your own top 3 mobile marketing questions? Drop me a comment or send it to bernita@incent.com.sg so that I can address them in my next blog post. I would also like to know about your experiences as a fellow mobile advertiser in this industry, especially if you have any stories to share.

 

Bernita