Marketing may at times be misunderstood or given a bum rap, but it remains true that companies which don’t market, don’t exist. New technologies in the past few years have opened up previously unforeseen venues for getting the word out about products and services.

 

One such venue, mobile marketing, holds great promise for the advertising and mobile industries. In a new report out this week, IDC (News - Alert) explores the benefits of mobile marketing and examines how this medium can best be leveraged.

 

In particular, IDC sees great power for mobile marketing in the developing world. The firm believes that the two billion mobile users worldwide represent a first-ever opportunity to reach large audiences in the developing world on an individual basis.

 

IDC sees such strong benefits of mobile marketing that it expects 2006 brand spend for this industry in the U.S. will have doubled over 2005.

 

Despite the promise that mobile marketing holds, a key question remains: how will mobile users react to the messages being fed to them? The answer, IDC said in its report, likes in how well companies succeed in capturing the attention of users and engaging them.

 

A key factor in succeeding with mobile marketing, IDC said, is respecting the limited tolerance mobile users have for pitches that last more then 8-10 seconds. Successful mobile marketing campaigns engage the user in the first few second, rather than treating them as a captive audience.

 

“If done right, mobile marketing provides an unparalleled window into the lives of mobile users such as their search, discovery and sharing of content,” the IDC report said. “In addition, there are more than a dozen different mobile marketing formats that offer ways to create entirely new marketing experiences.”

Scott Ellison, vice president of IDC’s wireless and mobile communications department, said that mobile marketing is one of the few areas where current hype underestimates full potential of a market opportunity.

 

“The winners will be those players who fully leverage the mobile ecosystem rather than try to simply translate other marketing and advertising business models to mobile,” Ellison said in a statement.

 

If IDC is correct, the success of mobile marketing, then, lies in both adaptability and originality.

 

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