MarketingCharts: Mobile marketing budgets expected to grow despite doubts about effectiveness

2013.02.22@MarketingCharts

A survey conducted by Forrester Consulting for Acquent found that mobile marketing budgets should increase in 2013. The survey pointed out that among managers who are responsible for or can influence the mobile marketing strategy of their companies, nearly 60% said that their mobile marketing budgets will increase this year - 15% said it will increase significantly, and 45% said it will increase slightly. Although the budget investment will increase, the respondents still have concerns about the ROI of mobile marketing.

When asked about the top three issues in executing mobile marketing, 42% of respondents said ROI and measurement were the most important, followed by market segmentation and data security (34% each). Interestingly, only 24% of respondents thought that combining mobile marketing with other marketing methods was important, far behind other things.

A recent CMO survey found that 1/5 of senior marketers said they have a marketing strategy that fully combines mobile marketing with other methods. Despite this, only 1/4 of the respondents said that mobile marketing has achieved definite good results. This means that there are still problems with hard indicators for mobile marketing results.

When talking about the prerequisites for enterprises to adopt mobile marketing, Aquent's survey found that 68% of respondents believe that mobile marketing needs to prove its ROI advantage. But at the same time, the ROI effect of a marketing method requires many talented organizations to join in, which seems to be a question of which comes first, the chicken or the egg. At present, for the respondents, what they need more is evidence that can illustrate the effect of mobile marketing, rather than executors who can quickly promote enterprise mobile marketing (the proportion is 30% higher).