The Value of Mobile Marketing

As the popularity of traditional media channels is starting to wane with the larger marketers, newer interactive media, such as online and mobile, are growing in popularity with both marketers and their most desirable consumer targets: youthful demographic groups.

In fact, Forrester Research projects that spending on online and mobile marketing will experience double-digit growth rates through 2010. Additionally, more and more media purchasing discussions are starting to be framed by new interactive media channels rather than being driven by 30-second TV spots. With close to 500 million mobile users in China, it would be unwise for companies to have ignored the true value of mobile marketing.

I am, of course, ecstatic that major brands, agencies and consumers in China have warmed significantly to new media channels, especially mobile. Even so, I am concerned that the true opportunities afforded by mobile and other new media are being overshadowed, and in many cases ignored, due to confusion created by marketers' and consumers' displeasure with traditional channels.

The true value of mobile will not be maximised if it is used as just another channel for invasive, tired or static marketing approaches. The true value of mobile is simple yet quite powerful. When integrated into what you do today, mobile personalizes your experience and engages audiences in new, more flexible ways, enabling your existing channels to more effectively accomplish what each one does best.

Moreover, mobile also provide marketers with something they have always desired: real-time performance indicators on campaign performance. There has never been a more real-time, always-on and closed-loop marketing channel available to help marketers quantifiably measure and quickly adjust their marketing investments.

Welcome to the new world of mobile marketing and advertising. After all, new media channels such as mobile are providing marketers with an opportunity to close the door on a long period of inefficient, blind and disruptive marketing and open the door to a more transparent, cost-effective integrated approach to marketing. Now that's something even your customers will be happy about.