Mar 31, 2016 Mobile Marketing 0 comment

Why mobile is still not fully integrated in marketers’ approach: Forrester

Just 13 percent of marketers say mobile is systematically integrated into their marketing approach, reflecting ongoing struggles to measure the return on investment for mobile and to demonstrate its value beyond ROI, according to a new report from Forrester Research.
The report, Beyond ROI: Showcasing The True Impact Of Mobile Marketing, underscores marketers’ ongoing challenges in securing budget for mobile, in part because they are not effectively showcasing mobile’s full value. Marketers must do a better job of highlighting mobile’s impact on customer experience, brand engagement, business results and agility if they want bigger budgets.
“Mobile is much more powerful than the initial numbers from a basic ROI calculation may indicate,” said Jennifer Wise, senior analyst at Forrester Research and co-author of the report.
“Yes, mobile can accomplish many marketing objectives, from boosting brand perception to increasing purchases, but integrating mobile into your strategy does more than that: it amplifies other channels, improves your relationship with your customers, acts as a catalyst for business transformation, and causes a positive ripple effects throughout the organization,” she said.
The report is an update of previously published content that includes new examples and primary research.
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Mobile budgets are lacking

Forrester’s research found that only 20 percent of marketers report that they have the budget they need for mobile.
This is not a surprise, according to the report, because marketers are not building a compelling business case for mobile.
The research shows that 27 percent of marketers says mobile is a nice-to-have, 23 percent say it is key and included on a campaign-by-campaign basis, 20 says mobile is a subset of their digital approach, 17 percent say it is just as important as other channels and only 13 percent say it is systematically integrated.
Additionally, only 27 percent of marketers said the ROI of their mobile marketing campaigns was profitable while 67 percent said they could not measure the ROI.

Mobile missteps

Marketers continue to make missteps in mobile, such as not properly aligning their objectives and key performance indicators.
Marketers’ top objectives on mobile are to increase customer engagement, named by 27 percent; improve customer satisfaction, named by 23 percent, and transform the customer experience, named by 20 percent.
When it comes to measuring mobile, 58 percent saying they measure the number of active users, 55 percent the time spent on the site or apps and 52 percent the traffic or unique visitors to Web sites and apps.
These metrics fail to account for frequency of use and emotional connection to a brand.

A complex business case

Marketers are just starting to benefit from advanced ROI tools from vendors enabling them to compare a variety of channels.
However, it is still a challenge to measure the impact of mobile offline.
Marketers also still suffer from limited mobile expertise of their own, having limited full-time resources dedicated to mobile. To support their efforts, 56 percent work with several partners. As a result, many are still getting a handle on how mobile tactics work.
“Adding to the complexity of the mobile business case is the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all business case format,” said Thomas Husson, Paris-based vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, as well as co-author on the report.
“As mobile marketing is still maturing, marketers will face wide variability in their approach to mobile: Their mobile maturity, the tactics they use, their marketing objectives, corporate culture and support, resources, and the feasible budget will be specific to each marketer,” he said.

By: Chantal Tode