Why recession is a great time to invest in mobile

With doom and gloom in abundance, the knee-jerk reaction for companies is to trim all marketing budgets, mobile included. Don’t. If consumers are changing their purchasing habits, surely this is the most important time to be talking to them (before your competitors do)? So why not choose mobile: the most cost-effective and targeted of channels.

MMA chief Mike Wehrs makes a convincing case for mobile marketing in times of recession in this interview. But mobiThinking wanted to go even further, so we’ve rounded up the latest analyst research and the views of the marketing elite.

First to the marketing folks…
mobiThinking approached the authors of two of the world’s most popular marketing blogs (both Top 10 in the Power 150 for their opinion.

Chris Brogan, founder, Chrisbrogan.com:
“I say marketers should shift a bit more of their budget into experiments during a recession, because that’s where the breakthrough opportunities will come. If you already know the results of the tried-and-true, then you know what your budget can sustain. But what if you tried mobile and got a huge boost? That would be worth it. For that reason alone, shifting some investment into mobile marketing would be a good call, in my estimation.”

Piers Fawkes, founder, PSFK:
“It’s about thinking different rather than investing more. Consider how applications can help deliver your brand experience and service rather than sending a message to a phone that is disconnected with a product and service. Applications are leading this charge, but I find it hard to differentiate Web spend and mobile spend when it comes to their development – it’s really the same thing these days.”

So why is recession a good time to target customers (old and new)?
According to research by Project Lighthouse only 8 percent of consumers are ostriches (i.e. they don’t change their consumption during the credit crunch). M&C Saatchi and CLEAR, who are behind the project, suggest brands adjust their marketing message to suit each of the following groups:

And why is mobile the best way to get your message across?
As outlined in the Mike Wehrs interview:

And what should the message be?
According to Forrester research:
“One-third of consumers expect to alter their use of cell phones and wireless services this year as they cope with a faltering economy, and many will change their buying habits to lower spending. Interactive marketers seeking to reach mobile consumers should seize upon this shifting behavior by offering money- or time-saving tools such as alerts, product-comparison services, or coupons.”

And marketers are optimistic about mobile…
If mobile advertising is representative of mobile marketing as a whole, then the outlook is promising. The latest Advertiser Optimism Report from Advertiser Perceptions finds media-buyers are more optimistic about mobile than any other channel. “Optimism” is defined by the number of points separating the percentages of respondents citing plans to increase or decrease their advertising budgets in each medium over the next six months.

This will be welcome news to mobile publishers. The BuzzCity Global Mobile Advertising Index suggests a bit of a slow-down in mobile advertising over the last quarter, while year-on-year, BuzzCity has seen mobile ads rise 80 percent. BuzzCity is one of the larger international mobile-advertising networks.

And the analysts agree too…
Analysts continue to paint a rosy picture of all elements of the mobile Internet and expenditure on mobile marketing. The recession appears to have done little to dent growth.

Mind Commerce on global mobile marketing:
“We expect 2009 to be a decisive year for mobile marketing spending, as marketers worldwide move from disillusionment over their expected return from this platform to the realization that they can indeed enhance consumer brand equity via the targeted precision and customized experience that mobile affords over other media placements.”
“Given the exponential adoption of mobile as a communications and promotion platform, we fully expect that global spending on mobile advertising and marketing initiatives will reach nearly US$29 billion in 2009, a 59 percent increase from 2008… We estimate the world market for mobile marketing and advertising revenues will reach nearly US$50 billion by 2014, up from about US$29 billion today, growing at a five-year CAGR rate of nearly 12 percent. Europe and North America will grow at the fastest rates, about 16 percent through the period, to reach US$16.3 billion and US$12.4 billion, respectively.

Pew Internet & American Life Project on mobile Web usage in the US:
April 2009, 32 percent of Americans said they had at some point used the internet on their mobile device (up from 24 percent in December 2007).
April 2009, 19 percent of Americans said they had yesterday accessed the internet on
their mobile (up from 11 percent in December 2007.

CCS Insight on mobile Internet growth in the UK:
“Mobile Internet use is growing at a phenomenal rate; social networking is driving that growth with a third of young adults regularly accessing Facebook and Twitter from their mobiles.”

So what are you waiting for? Recession is a great time to invest in mobile.

** mobiThinking would like to thank Eric Chan for including this blog in the latest Carnival of the Mobilists. For the uninitiated, the Carnival of the Mobilists is a weekly roundup of the very best in mobile and wireless blogs. Each week the Carnival is written by a different writer, so is constantly moving from one mobile blog to another.
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