CMOs: New Mobile Marketing Strategies Needed To Match Consumer Demands

To seize the mobile oppor­tu­ni­ty, brands must change the way they think about mobile to keep pace with con­sumer expec­ta­tions and demands.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

A sur­vey of mar­ket­ing lead­ers con­duct­ed by the CMO Coun­cil has revealed a com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture of the state of mobile mar­ket­ing and tech­nol­o­gy. When it comes to mobile, change is being led by con­sumers. The sur­vey sug­gests that brands need to change and restruc­ture the way they think about mobile to keep pace with con­sumer expec­ta­tions and demands.


There is a con­sen­sus among those in the dig­i­tal indus­try that 2015 will be an excit­ing year for fur­ther improve­ments in mobile tech­nol­o­gy.

The momen­tum eclipses that of dig­i­tal chan­nels, and for good rea­son. Accord­ing to the recent CMO Coun­cil report, Get­ting in Sync with Mobile Cus­tomers: Cap­i­tal­iz­ing on Mar­ket­ing’s Big Mobile Oppor­tu­ni­ty:

Mobile, at its core, is more than just anoth­er chan­nel because inter­ac­tive devices such as tablets and smart­phones are dig­i­tal, search and social, all in one.”

Mobile is a defin­ing fac­tor in the way con­sumers engage in dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences as they nav­i­gate their pur­chase jour­neys, and the way they are using the tech­nol­o­gy is evolv­ing to fit their needs. It’s some­thing senior mar­keters are acute­ly aware of; accord­ing to 32 per­cent of the respon­dents sur­veyed in the CMO Coun­cil’s report, “the rea­son that mobile is increas­ing­ly impor­tant is because cus­tomers are using mobile and social to con­nect with brands.”

Capitalizing On The Mobile Opportunity

The change pro­lif­er­at­ing on mobile devices and plat­forms is cre­at­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands and orga­ni­za­tions to engage with cus­tomers, but grasp­ing this oppor­tu­ni­ty means busi­ness­es need to prop­er­ly under­stand the way con­sumers con­sid­er and use mobile, and pro­vide for their needs accord­ing­ly.

Research from eMar­keter and InMo­bi has revealed the fol­low­ing impres­sive sta­tis­tics about the state of mobile search:

  • 4.55 bil­lion mobile phone users glob­al­ly.
  • 1.74 bil­lion of those have smart­phones.
  • 25 per­cent of online search­es are now con­duct­ed via mobile web.
  • Mobile com­merce now accounts for 15 per­cent of total U.S. eCom­merce rev­enue.
  • Also, mobile media con­sump­tion now accounts for 12 per­cent of a typ­i­cal consumer’s media con­sump­tion time.
  • 54 per­cent of mil­len­ni­als use mobile web as their pri­ma­ry or exclu­sive means of going online.
  • 48 per­cent of con­sumers say that mobile direct­ly influ­enced their in-store buy­ing deci­sions.

The speed of change means that orga­ni­za­tions face a con­tin­u­ous chal­lenge to pro­vide for con­sumer touch­points, as they use mobiles to inter­act and be influ­enced by brands and prod­ucts through­out entire pur­chase jour­neys.

To keep pace, brands need the vision and agili­ty to enact change. It requires “new think­ing, new plat­forms and new tal­ent,” the break­ing down of cum­ber­some orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­tures and bar­ri­ers, and the restruc­tur­ing nec­es­sary to prop­a­gate a “mobile-first” mind­set through­out entire cus­tomer jour­neys.

Under­stand­ing cus­tomers intent (how con­sumers wish to engage with dif­fer­ent devices at dif­fer­ent times) rep­re­sents a chal­lenge, but an abun­dance of data is now avail­able to inform brands of the strate­gies that will meet their cus­tomers needs. How­ev­er, change will only be effec­tive if it prop­a­gates through­out the mar­ket­ing and oper­a­tional divi­sions of a brand – indi­vid­ual cam­paigns may achieve short-term gains, but only through an intrin­sic inte­gra­tion of the crit­i­cal nature of the mobile mind­set will brand find true affin­i­ty with con­sumers, and reap the rewards.

Are Brands Ready To Meet The Mobile Opportunity?

The good news: while orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­tures may present a sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­er to change, there is an appre­ci­a­tion in the indus­try for the need for change.

When asked whether their busi­ness had a “ful­ly inte­grat­ed mobile mar­ket­ing rela­tion­ship strat­e­gy,” 61 per­cent of respon­dents said that they had some form of mobile strat­e­gy imple­ment­ed or in devel­op­ment.

mobile-strategy

Thir­ty-one per­cent of respon­dents, how­ev­er, indi­cat­ed that they had no, or only lim­it­ed mobile cam­paigns, and just 17 per­cent stat­ed that they had already devel­oped a mobile strat­e­gy that was ful­ly imple­ment­ed in their over­all mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.

When it came to busi­ness inten­tions, the results were pos­i­tive. Not a sin­gle respon­dent con­sid­ered mobile to be the “lat­est shiny toy” in mar­ket­ing, and 45 per­cent of respon­dents stat­ed who had inte­grat­ed mobile with over­all mar­ket­ing strate­gies said that they were prac­tic­ing mobile-first strate­gies. mobile-implementation

In com­par­ing mobile to oth­er mar­ket­ing strate­gies, the results were diverse. The major­i­ty (64 per­cent) regard mobile as a crit­i­cal chan­nel, say­ing that mobile helps their brand deliv­er more per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences.

mobile-personalization

On the oth­er end of the scale, 48 per­cent of respon­dents did­n’t con­sid­er mobile to be cen­tral to their mar­ket­ing strate­gies.

Developing A Customer-Centric Mobile Experience

The results rep­re­sent a pic­ture of mobile mar­ket­ing that is qui­et­ly opti­mistic. While some of the results from the respon­dents to the CMO Coun­cil’s sur­vey depict slow progress in adapt­ing busi­ness­es to a ful­ly inte­grat­ed mobile mind­set, there is undoubt­ed­ly appetite and will­ing­ness among indus­try pro­fes­sion­als to improve mobile expe­ri­ence deliv­ery.

The great­est gains for brands will be in devel­op­ing mobile expe­ri­ences that keep pace, and deliv­er a cus­tomer-cen­tric mobile expe­ri­ence that seam­less­ly enables per­sua­sive con­sumer jour­neys as they con­sumer and inter­act with dig­i­tal media.

Devel­op­ing a cus­tomer-cen­tric mobile expe­ri­ence requires improve­ments in many aspects, and mar­keters remain divid­ed as to their exact pri­or­i­ties. The major­i­ty, 64 per­cent, aim to devel­op mobile expe­ri­ence “across oper­at­ing sys­tems”; 31 per­cent aim to devel­op “unique expe­ri­ences”; and 13 per­cent are look­ing to devel­op a “sin­gle mobile expe­ri­ence.”

mobile-experiences

Final­ly, a final insight of CMO Coun­cil’s report encour­ages mar­keters to con­sid­er how they can bet­ter lever­age data insights to devel­op a cus­tomer-cen­tric approach to mobile. Only via greater under­stand­ing and imple­men­ta­tion of con­sumer needs and behav­iors will brands main­tain con­tact with advanc­ing mobile usage and matu­ri­ty. After all, the dis­par­i­ty between what con­sumers want, and what they are expe­ri­enc­ing, fuels an oppor­tu­ni­ty for orga­ni­za­tions to advance mobile tech­nol­o­gy, and the growth of their own brands.

You can access CMO Coun­cil’s full report here.

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Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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