Mobile Marketing – Are Australian businesses lagging?

Does the recent proliferation of devices such as tablets and smart phones have a highly significant impact on your organisation’s marketing? 36% of European businesses say it does. What sort of impact do they think it will have by 2015? 64% say highly significant, according to a report published in September by Econsultancy.

Although their report doesn’t cover Australian businesses, other sources suggest we are not grasping the opportunities as readily. After Singapore, Australia now leads the world in smart phone penetration at 37% (smh Sept 8), but although mobile advertising is on the up and there are no shortage of apps popping up from every direction, at least 70% of high profile brand’s websites are not mobile-enabled, especially in retail, where it’s often easier to buy from an international retailer than a local one (retailbiz April 12).



The chart above, extracted from the Econsultancy / Adobe Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing shows that European businesses regard the proliferation of devices as the most important development out of a range of key digital trends and tactics, including behavioural targeting and several aspects of social media marketing.

Econsultancy’s Senior Analyst, Jake Hird, suggests that we can “no longer future-gaze the implications of mobile technology upon marketing communications ... the tipping point is upon us. A combination of increasing consumer adoption and decreasing device and accessibility costs mean that we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg as far as commercial implications are concerned. Marketing professionals who choose to ignore the meteoric rise of mobile in the consumer space will undoubtedly be left behind, as the business applications continue to be realised.”

But is the perception that Australian businesses are lagging behind correct? Adam Dunne, CEO of Aura Interactive and tutor for ADMA’s mobile marketing course, comments:

“Australian marketers, broadly speaking, are good supporters of innovation. Many are willing to try out new technologies and channels but there is a problem that they often just do one test to ascertain the effectiveness of new marketing initiatives, which doesn’t provide a true indication of the real potential of a new technology or channel.”

They get caught up in what Adam refers to as the ‘shiny new toy’ syndrome of new devices or technology. “They jump in without proper forward planning. For example, build an ‘App’ that has limited entertainment value/utility and longevity, and call that a mobile strategy. This short-sightedness will most often result in a half-hearted ‘solution’ that is doomed to fail.”

However, he points out that whereas some businesses over the past 12 months have found the whole mobile experience underwhelming, some have enjoyed fantastic results, with campaigns which have been world class and incredibly innovative, often setting benchmarks for the world to follow.

“It is only really this second half of 2011 and leading into 2012 that we are seeing the smart companies really investing in developing a sustained and continuous communications strategy via mobile.” Adam says. “This starts with establishing a mobile presence (mobile –optimised website, plus maybe applications etc) and then integrating various suitable mobile technologies (SMS messaging/QRcodes/Wifi/Bluetooth/Augmented Reality/NFC etc) into their other over-arching communications programs across all channels (print/TV/OOH/Direct Mail/online/social)”

“It’s this shift from occasional campaign-based activity to continuous communication via the channel that is what gives the industry hope. It took a long time for ‘online’ to become an everyday part of the marketers life, but now we acknowledge it as well-established. Similarly today’s 26million phones and 10 million mobile internet users should confirm that mobile isn’t going to disappear either.

As consumers’ lifestyles become mobilised then brands and marketers need to embrace the channel. For the most part taking the next step comes down to education and awareness. The industry needs to deliver marketers with a good understanding of what can be achieved and provide them the confidence to invest and trial new methods of marketing. The focus needs to be on objectives and desired measurable outcomes, not getting bogged down in details of the technology.

Yes, mobile can be complex if you try to understand every technology and its capabilities and for many time-poor marketers mobile just adds another 50 consideration points and questions to their project so they simple put it in the too hard basket. However, with the fast adoption of smartphones by all Australians, marketers are fast becoming consumers themselves and beginning to get excited about what a ‘good user experience’ via mobile can do for their brand, and understand it can often be a great differentiator from their competitors”.

Adam’s half-day course on Mobile Marketing is designed to address the issues raised in this article. It is suitable for both agency and client side marketers who want to get up to speed with the technological changes happening in the mobile space and how to use them to drive sales, engage and interact with your target audience. The course is offered in Sydney and Melbourne.