A sur­vey of mar­ket­ing lead­ers con­duct­ed by the CMO Coun­cil has revealed a com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture of the state of mobile mar­ket­ing and tech­nol­o­gy. When it comes to mobile, change is being led by con­sumers. The sur­vey sug­gests that brands need to change and restruc­ture the way they think about mobile to keep pace with con­sumer expec­ta­tions and demands.

There is a con­sen­sus among those in the dig­i­tal indus­try that 2015 will be an excit­ing year for fur­ther improve­ments in mobile tech­nol­o­gy.

The momen­tum eclipses that of dig­i­tal chan­nels, and for good rea­son. Accord­ing to the recent CMO Coun­cil report, Get­ting in Sync with Mobile Cus­tomers: Cap­i­tal­iz­ing on Mar­ket­ing’s Big Mobile Oppor­tu­ni­ty:

“Mobile, at its core, is more than just anoth­er chan­nel because inter­ac­tive devices such as tablets and smart­phones are dig­i­tal, search and social, all in one.”

Mobile is a defin­ing fac­tor in the way con­sumers engage in dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences as they nav­i­gate their pur­chase jour­neys, and the way they are using the tech­nol­o­gy is evolv­ing to fit their needs. It’s some­thing senior mar­keters are acute­ly aware of; accord­ing to 32 per­cent of the respon­dents sur­veyed in the CMO Coun­cil’s report, “the rea­son that mobile is increas­ing­ly impor­tant is because cus­tomers are using mobile and social to con­nect with brands.”

Capitalizing On The Mobile Opportunity

The change pro­lif­er­at­ing on mobile devices and plat­forms is cre­at­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands and orga­ni­za­tions to engage with cus­tomers, but grasp­ing this oppor­tu­ni­ty means busi­ness­es need to prop­er­ly under­stand the way con­sumers con­sid­er and use mobile, and pro­vide for their needs accord­ing­ly.

Research from eMar­keter and InMo­bi has revealed the fol­low­ing impres­sive sta­tis­tics about the state of mobile search:

• 4.55 bil­lion mobile phone users glob­al­ly.
• 1.74 bil­lion of those have smart­phones.
• 25 per­cent of online search­es are now con­duct­ed via mobile web.
• Mobile com­merce now accounts for 15 per­cent of total U.S. eCom­merce rev­enue.
• Also, mobile media con­sump­tion now accounts for 12 per­cent of a typ­i­cal consumer’s media con­sump­tion time.
• 54 per­cent of mil­len­ni­als use mobile web as their pri­ma­ry or exclu­sive means of going online.
• 48 per­cent of con­sumers say that mobile direct­ly influ­enced their in-store buy­ing deci­sions.

The speed of change means that orga­ni­za­tions face a con­tin­u­ous chal­lenge to pro­vide for con­sumer touch­points, as they use mobiles to inter­act and be influ­enced by brands and prod­ucts through­out entire pur­chase jour­neys.

To keep pace, brands need the vision and agili­ty to enact change. It requires “new think­ing, new plat­forms and new tal­ent,” the break­ing down of cum­ber­some orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­tures and bar­ri­ers, and the restruc­tur­ing nec­es­sary to prop­a­gate a “mobile-first” mind­set through­out entire cus­tomer jour­neys.

Under­stand­ing cus­tomers intent (how con­sumers wish to engage with dif­fer­ent devices at dif­fer­ent times) rep­re­sents a chal­lenge, but an abun­dance of data is now avail­able to inform brands of the strate­gies that will meet their cus­tomers needs. How­ev­er, change will only be effec­tive if it prop­a­gates through­out the mar­ket­ing and oper­a­tional divi­sions of a brand – indi­vid­ual cam­paigns may achieve short-term gains, but only through an intrin­sic inte­gra­tion of the crit­i­cal nature of the mobile mind­set will brand find true affin­i­ty with con­sumers, and reap the rewards.

Are Brands Ready To Meet The Mobile Opportunity?

The good news: while orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­tures may present a sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­er to change, there is an appre­ci­a­tion in the indus­try for the need for change.

When asked whether their busi­ness had a “ful­ly inte­grat­ed mobile mar­ket­ing rela­tion­ship strat­e­gy,” 61 per­cent of respon­dents said that they had some form of mobile strat­e­gy imple­ment­ed or in devel­op­ment.

Thir­ty-one per­cent of respon­dents, how­ev­er, indi­cat­ed that they had no, or only lim­it­ed mobile cam­paigns, and just 17 per­cent stat­ed that they had already devel­oped a mobile strat­e­gy that was ful­ly imple­ment­ed in their over­all mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.

When it came to busi­ness inten­tions, the results were pos­i­tive. Not a sin­gle respon­dent con­sid­ered mobile to be the “lat­est shiny toy” in mar­ket­ing, and 45 per­cent of respon­dents stat­ed who had inte­grat­ed mobile with over­all mar­ket­ing strate­gies said that they were prac­tic­ing mobile-first strate­gies.

In com­par­ing mobile to oth­er mar­ket­ing strate­gies, the results were diverse. The major­i­ty (64 per­cent) regard mobile as a crit­i­cal chan­nel, say­ing that mobile helps their brand deliv­er more per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences.

On the oth­er end of the scale, 48 per­cent of respon­dents did­n’t con­sid­er mobile to be cen­tral to their mar­ket­ing strate­gies.

Developing A Customer-Centric Mobile Experience

The results rep­re­sent a pic­ture of mobile mar­ket­ing that is qui­et­ly opti­mistic. While some of the results from the respon­dents to the CMO Coun­cil’s sur­vey depict slow progress in adapt­ing busi­ness­es to a ful­ly inte­grat­ed mobile mind­set, there is undoubt­ed­ly appetite and will­ing­ness among indus­try pro­fes­sion­als to improve mobile expe­ri­ence deliv­ery.

The great­est gains for brands will be in devel­op­ing mobile expe­ri­ences that keep pace, and deliv­er a cus­tomer-cen­tric mobile expe­ri­ence that seam­less­ly enables per­sua­sive con­sumer jour­neys as they con­sumer and inter­act with dig­i­tal media.

Devel­op­ing a cus­tomer-cen­tric mobile expe­ri­ence requires improve­ments in many aspects, and mar­keters remain divid­ed as to their exact pri­or­i­ties. The major­i­ty, 64 per­cent, aim to devel­op mobile expe­ri­ence “across oper­at­ing sys­tems”; 31 per­cent aim to devel­op “unique expe­ri­ences”; and 13 per­cent are look­ing to devel­op a “sin­gle mobile expe­ri­ence.”

Final­ly, a final insight of CMO Coun­cil’s report encour­ages mar­keters to con­sid­er how they can bet­ter lever­age data insights to devel­op a cus­tomer-cen­tric approach to mobile. Only via greater under­stand­ing and imple­men­ta­tion of con­sumer needs and behav­iors will brands main­tain con­tact with advanc­ing mobile usage and matu­ri­ty. After all, the dis­par­i­ty between what con­sumers want, and what they are expe­ri­enc­ing, fuels an oppor­tu­ni­ty for orga­ni­za­tions to advance mobile tech­nol­o­gy, and the growth of their own brands.

You can access CMO Coun­cil’s full report here.