The sector will still not be able to reach its full potential due to a skills gap that will continue to exist.
The results of a study by Experian Marketing Services have predicted that by the year 2017, companies and brands will be spending 50 percent of their budgets on mobile marketing.
However, at the moment, progress is stunted due to a lack of understanding of the sector.
Those responsible for implementing mobile marketing techniques are still struggling to fully comprehend the medium and are challenged by the methods used in order to measure the return on investment of the campaigns and techniques.
There were 320 respondents that took part in the mobile marketing study by Experian.
Among them, only 4 percent stated that they were regularly implementing activities related to mobile marketing, even though the majority of them feel that this will be one of the most important ways in which they can communicate and connect with customers over the years to come.
Dave Audley, the Experian head of research and consulting, stated that there are three main reasons that mobile marketing has faced such a slow adoption. These include: a challenge in demonstrating the return on investment through the channel, an industry skills gap, and the budget constraints that cause marketers to have to carefully split their dollars between traditional methods and smartphone and tablet channels.
According to Audley, “There’s some confusion and difficulty when it comes to budget allocation.” He went on to say that “Marketers are finding its quite difficult to quantify return on investment by channel. Organisations are reluctant or not committing to investing in the [mobile] channel just yet until they fell confident that they can measure the return that they get.”
Mobile marketing has also created another struggle among businesses and brands that have to further narrow their budgeting dollars. At a time when belts are being tightened, companies are now faced with the challenge of determining how much money they should allocate to a new and relatively untested channel while they retail the traditional channels that have proven successful for them in the past.
