With yet more stats showing a majority of mobile owners now using a smartphone, marketers should brace themselves for even more talk about mobile this year. People like to talk about how mobile is going to change marketing, but the truth is, it already has.
If you are still talking about how mobile is going to change everything, it’s not integrated enough into your marketing strategy yet. In the same way that you don’t describe how incredible it is that people have hands, marketers need to stop remarking how amazing it is that mobile usage is exploding.
The conversation about mobile and its impact on marketing needs to change. Here are four aspects of mobile that deserves more attention from CMOs.
1. Understanding that mobile isn’t one thing
“Digital” once encompassed everything from e-commerce to social media. Today, “mobile” is used as an unhelpfully broad term to describe anything that happens on a device that doesn’t plug into a wall. But, smartphones, tablets and “feature phones” (i.e. non-smart mobile phones) offer very different customer experiences.
“Mobile marketing” is also not one thing. It’s more than just about having a responsive website. Branded apps, mobile websites, mobile advertising and adaptive websites all represent different strategies. Mobile marketing tactics are also numerous: anything from pushing messages via SMS to using geo-fencing technologies to send timely promotions.
CMOs need to lead by establishing the conversation more clearly and identifying which specific aspects of mobile marketing are in question. We also need to determine the business goals we’re trying to achieve with the help of the different mobile technologies.
2. Understanding unmet needs on mobile
Mobile technologies have come a long way, but there are things smartphones can’t do. The greatest opportunities for mobile tech and marketing may be less about features, and more about improving workflow and user experience—about making mobile disappear into the background. I want to make it easier to share my calendar with my assistant; I want to talk with my young sons when I’m on the road; I want to set some boundaries so that my wife and I don’t get distracted by our phones when we spend time together. These problems call less for new technologies than for new ways of packaging or working with the technologies that are already here.
Marketers know the mobile technologies that are already out there, but what are the tech toys consumers want that don’t exist yet? For brands looking to use mobile technologies to grow, this is the key question. Consumers, myself included, want things that don’t exist yet.
3. Using mobile not just to broadcast, but to actually get to know customers
Traditionally, marketers are programmed to think of ways of pushing their messages out. In the era of mobile technologies, this hasn’t changed: when marketing professionals think about mobile, it’s usually seen as a way to promote, promote, promote.
But, if there’s one thing marketers should have learned from the emergence of social media, it’s that consumers want brands to listen as much as broadcast. The real promise of mobile’s ubiquity isn’t that it will allow brands to promote their stuff anywhere the consumer happens to be—it’s that mobile technology has the potential to help brands truly understand their customers.
The good news is that mobile research has come a long way. Surveys, discussions and other engagement methods are more seamless on mobile devices, and the technology keeps on improving. By using these technologies and avoiding common research mistakes, marketers can use mobile research to gain a deeper understanding of their customers.
All the hype about mobile is not unfounded, but claiming that 2014 is the year of mobile is saying something people already know. This year, I challenge marketing leaders to maximize the use of mobile by using this technology to accomplish things we haven’t achieved yet.
via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/1kdVSrS
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