by Claudia Bruemmer

Mobile marketing is proving to be a viable sales channel for retailers. In fact, all merchants, including wholesalers and manufacturers, might want to consider putting mobile in their current marketing mix. Many companies have reported high click-through rates and good ROI with mobile campaigns on Google AdWords. In addition to the location-based targeting campaigns used by food and entertainment businesses, there have also been many successful m-commerce sales campaigns.

Consumers are using mobile devices for shopping, finding entertainment and many other activities on the go. Smartphones have fundamentally changed consumer mobile behavior by providing a broad range of media options. They can use email, browse the web and use apps to engage in various activities by simply grabbing a phone from their pocket or purse. The growing consumer adoption rate of mobile devices has changed mobile marketing, and this trend continues to add opportunity and extended reach for marketers. In a January report on 2011 Mobile Trends, Forrester reported the following trends.

Marketers will question the value of creating mobile apps. While mobile apps were big in 2010, consumers are deleting them shortly after download since many apps provide little utility and clutter up the phone deck. Some apps like The Weather Channel and navigation apps will survive, but most branded apps will start disappearing. The success metric for apps will shift from the number of downloads to the number of active users. Since apps are expensive to produce and market, while sometimes providing questionable value, brands will focus on providing the best mobile user experience in terms of immediacy, context and simplicity.

Mobile web search and display are dominant. These are the two main sources of revenue on mobile devices. Google accounts for 59 percent of all mobile advertising revenue in the U.S., and a majority of that revenue comes from mobile web search and display. As marketers realize this, there will be more emphasis on traditional marketing tactics that require knowledge of how to optimize existing search and display resources for mobile. Brands should examine how consumers use both apps and the mobile web. This may result in a limited number of apps for gaming, weather and sports, as the majority of mobile users favor web search and display when navigating the mobile web.

Location-based services are a boon to advertisers. Location-aware mobile services will be big with technologies like triggered push notifications, augmented reality, and barcode apps/readers. In the beginning, however, consumer adoption will be limited. Opt-in services and apps with clear privacy policies will fare better than push marketing and insensitivity to consumer concerns over privacy when it comes to consumer adoption of location-based marketing.

While mobile location-aware services can be a big boon to marketers, they can be prone to consumer backlash as the privacy debate continues between the government and the online marketing community. Advertisers should avoid missteps and focus on services that offer a true value-add to customers. They can do that by testing messages to a small audience initially and by offering opt-in services.

Adoption of mobile advertising standards is slow. Because the industry is new, there is a lack of standards, which impedes mobile campaign distribution and analytics. There are many technology issues that make distributing and tracking display ads on mobile devices challenging. The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) will introduce standards, but it will be hard to get adoption by all parties concerned, including ad agencies, ad networks and analytics providers. In the meantime, marketers will have to be creative with data to prove the value of their mobile programs for attracting investors.