2014: The Year of Mobile
Posted on by Timothy Boyle
According to a recent Forbes article on mobile technology, 2014 is going to be ‘the year of mobile.’ What is meant by this is that mobile will finally become a “mainstream marketing solution.”
Mobile has been largely adopted by consumers, and yet it has taken marketers a few years to catch up, or really to even put themselves in the race. The numbers though are getting to a point where marketers must take this increasing gap seriously. According to data from IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark, mobile traffic is driving 25% of total online traffic to retail sites, is accounting for more than 20% of all online sales, and mobile sales are up 55% over last year with exponential growth appearing very likely.
According to the Forbes article, the average firm invests only two to three percent towards their mobile budgets, but the leading mobile firms are beginning to increase their mobile budgets to 10 or even 25%. Indicating that some firms are finally starting to take mobile as seriously as they should.
As Jay Henderson, Strategy Program Director at IBM, states in the Forbes article, the best strategy for firms is “to take a ‘mobile first’ approach,” and he “encourages marketers to build mobile sites form the ground up, rather than force fitting an existing website into a smaller format.” This is also what we would advise at Qfuse.
This is an important point, because rather than viewing mobile as separate and relatively insignificant, it should be viewed as vital to how business will be done in the near future, and integrated into the overall business plan.
As Henderson is quoted in the article, it is forward thinking marketers that “are investing in their mobile apps to include maps of the store, special promotions, and location based targeting. Companies are adding QR codes and NFC to their in-store display to help bridge from physical to mobile.” These sort of integrated plans will go a long way for the firms which implement them earliest. Helping to increase in store sales, prevent lost sales from showrooming, helping increase brand interaction and awareness, and simply creating a better experience for the customer.
For marketers, 2014 should be a year of transition to mobile, and a year of mastering mobile technology and its existing tools. Creating a strategy to build mobile from the ground up, and then connecting mobile to your physical marketing plan—through tools like QR codes, NFC tags, and mobile apps—will greatly increase the efficiency of the overall marketing strategy and enhance the end objectives.
To read more on this issues check out the Forbes article here, and to get started on, or improve upon you existing mobile strategy, check out Qfuse here.
