2014 – The Year of Mobile Marketing.
According to our newly-released Mobile Marketing Benchmark Summary Report, 2014 is poised to be mobile marketing’s big year.
In a survey we conducted among over 270 marketing professionals both from the United States and abroad, we found that 42% of marketers are already utilizing the mobile medium and another 42% are planning to do so in the near future. In other words, only 16% of marketers currently have no plans to conduct mobile marketing.
Those statistics make sense when considering the current trends in the mobile market. As of January 2014, 90% of Americans now own cell phones, while 83% of 18 to 29 year olds – a core target demographic for many marketers – own smartphones. And they use them to surf the internet: In February 2014, comScore found that 55% of internet access within the U.S. originated from smartphones, outpacing desktop internet usage for the first time.
In short, audiences throughout the U.S. now spend considerable amounts of time on their phones, which is where marketers can reach them easily.
Our survey also finds marketers to be prepared for this increase in mobile marketing. Only 6% of respondents thought their companies to be unsuccessful in the field, while 25% were “very successful” and 69% were “somewhat successful.” Room for improvement certainly still exists, but the survey shows that marketers are confident to be ready for this medium.
The increase in use compared with marketer’s confidence in their abilities means we can look forward to a host of new mobile marketing initiatives in 2014. Mobile marketing now looks to be the “next big thing,” taking the torch from social media network (which are increasingly becoming a part of mobile strategies) as a new focus of the industry.
In other words, now is a great time to begin considering or fine-tuning your mobile marketing strategy!
Get Ascend2′s latest Benchmark Summary Report plus immediate access to all recent reports – including the one cited in this post – in our Free Research Library.
