Marketers and businesses are well aware of the mobile first approach, upsurge in mobile demand and need of integrating means of mobile marketing into you marketing mix and adapt a mobile advertising strategy.
The benefits speaks for themselves where mobile marketing:

1. Provide higher conversion rates and ROMI of your marketing efforts.
2. Is easily quantifiable in terms of outcome and market data of consumer behaviour to act upon.
3. Enable you to bridge your offline and online activates.
4. Offer engaging means of interaction with the consumer.
5. Supports location based marketing and relevancy.
6. Deliver a personalised experience and engagement.
7. Is immediate and enable real time interaction.

Sound really awesome and it is, if used in the right manner.. The truth is however that mobile marketing is still very much about learning and adapting best practices given the objectives and target audience as mobile marketing largely is still in its infancy. Also the handsets do have limitations, foremost in regards to screen size, visualisation of content, data access, connectivity and lack of standards (multiple platforms to support). On the other hand mobile is many times proven not to cannibalise on your other businesses but rather increase frequency of purchase so it’s worthwhile the effort to include in your business model and a necessity for any business if they want to stay competitive.

Nevertheless there is another dimension to it in terms of marketing – In absolute numbers other marketing channels are driving more revenues and this is true for the lion share of companies. Something which also was brought to the agenda before the Facebook IPO and Facebook’s difficulties in delivering encouraging numbers of revenues from the influx of mobile adverts. With this in mind The Guardian published a worth considering article about the mirage of mobile marketing and the need of adapting to a leaner income stream from mobile: http://www.guardian.co.uk/..

Main takeaways – don’t seek what mobile business and marketing can replace or what should be altered to mobile but look at it from another angle as something new: Be aware of the different behaviours of mobile usage vs desktop thus the need of different business models (or advertising strategies) and also consider what mobile truly can add in terms of value? Everything shouldn’t be adjusted but rather look at what it can deliver in terms of expansion not just as a necessity due to market demands but rather as in blue ocean thinking. Clearly you still need to consider the hygiene factors of mobile and how the mobile can interact with your other marketing channels and revenue streams but do take advantage of the innovative opportunities it holds.