It's not a phone: The future of mobile marketing

The paper considers how marketing will change as mobiles supersede other technologies as the preferred medium for almost all activities that currently sit on other platforms, including the impact on privacy and push-and-pull campaigns. Mobiles are becoming part of people's lives in ways that far outstrip any previous technology and the Institute suggests that this is due to the ubiquity of mobiles: you may close a magazine or a newspaper, but a phone is always on and about your person.

Mark Blayney Stuart, head of research, The Chartered Institute of Marketing, comments: "Globally, more people now have mobile phones than have bank accounts; a mobile is no longer a phone. A mobile is what everyone in the developed world will have by their sides in the year 2020. It will be the place we most often use the internet as the difference between the internet and mobile is merging and will soon be invisible."

Opportunities, but also responsibilities

Whilst the fast changes in mobile user patterns create opportunities, they also bring responsibilities for marketers. Recognising, understanding and exploiting these shifts in behaviour are the armaments for the effective future of mobile marketing, highlights the paper.

The paper recommends that marketers resist assumptions about how customers do, or do not, view their privacy. In doing so, marketers can recognise if an action could be regarded as intrusive and therefore be re-positioned as a choice: you can have this if you want it, but you don't have to. Underpinning this is the value of trade off - a principle that people will be more giving with their data if there's something in it for them in return.

'Mobiles are the extension of us'

Blayney Stuart adds: "Privacy has a value, like any other commodity, and as long as marketers are transparent about what they do with customer information, it's possible to be permitted that value if you offer the right incentive.

"Critically, marketers should no longer view mobile in isolation: it's not a separate channel - it's what people use when they visit other channels. Mobiles are the extension of us and we only use it for what we want, and we don't have to react well to anyone intruding or using it in ways we don't like - marketing via mobile platforms needs to evolve to ensure that messages are informative and useful, and not intrusive."
The paper makes the following recommendations about mobile marketing campaigns:

• position services as choice, to avoid being intrusive
  
• creativity and content are key
  
• tap into personal locations incentivise people to engage with your service of campaign
  
• ensure your websites has a mobile friendly version
  
• adjust strategies to complement the frequency which people are
  
• interacting with platforms such as Twitter and Facebook