To be a mobile marketer is to be a marketer.

Mobile is table stakes to marketers, as evidenced by the ubiquitous adoption of mobile devices and services throughout the world in every aspect of our lives. As a marketer, it is important to remember that mobile is not used just for commercial activities; it is used throughout every facet of our lives. We use our mobile devices for everything, from work, play, social, banking, shopping, sex, taxes, death, and religion. No industry, no company, no relationship is immune to mobile. Mobile contributes nearly $4.4 trillion to the world’s GDP (The Mobile Economy 2021, 2021). Mobile plays a role in every customer experience and journey; what Julie Ask (2014) considers micro-moments. With mobile, people are connected, and it is important to recognize that the connected individual is the media, is the point-of-sale display. The connected individual is the future of your business. You must learn to be of service to the connected individual and eventually engage them on their terms (more on this later).

By the Numbers

The numbers are clear. There are,

• 5.22 billion unique mobile users (66% of the global population (Kemp et al., 2021), which is estimated to grow to 5.7 billion by 2025 (The Mobile Economy 2021, 2021).
• The mobile device is the great unifying digital platform across all racial groups, at least in the U.S. (Atske & Perrin, 2021).
• 8.02 billion mobile connections (yes, many of us have more than one mobile device) (Kemp et al., 2021), which is predicted to grow to 8.8 billion by 2025 (The Mobile Economy 2021, 2021), and if you take connected devices (devices without a direct mobile network connection) into account the theoretical connections map goes even higher, 24 billion by 2025 (The Mobile Economy 2021, 2021).
• Time spent online and in mobile apps is going through the roof; the average person worldwide spends 6h 54m a day on the Internet, 4h 10m a day in mobile apps (Kemp et al., 2021).
• As of Oct. 2020, mobile device market share (aka web traffic) exceeds desktop computers, today mobile accounts for 55.7% of web traffic compared to 41.5% for desktops and 2.73% for tablets (“Desktop Vs Mobile Vs Tablet Market Share Worldwide,” 2021).
• Mobile accounts for 31% of retail e-commerce sales in the U.S. (Coppola, 2021)

We could list stat after stat, but the story will be the same. Mobile, connectivity, is here, and it is not going anywhere.

Three Favorite Resources

I was asked were by Stukent,“What are your three top favorite mobile marketing resources?” Sidebar: I’m a co-author of Mobile Marketing Essentials (Hanley et al., 2021).

This is a difficult question to answer, not because I don’t have favorite resources, but because of all of the follow-up questions that come to mind. Resources for what? Understanding the people and their sentiments, needs, wants, and desires? Understanding the connected individual’s behavior? Understanding a specific market sector? Understanding the latest and greatest technologies, where they’ve been, where they are, and where they’re going? Understanding and influencing change on organizational leadership, structure and management? Steps for building out and executing on a multi-channel comms matrix? Methods for measurement and tracking? Estimates for building out a mobile presence—web, apps, messaging? Different engagement tactics at each step along the customer journey? Strategies for mobile enhancing physical media? Understanding the regulatory front and what’s going to happen to all the data to which we’ve become so addicted to, Remember, people are connected, they are concerned, and they want control of their data. Pretty soon, you’ll be accessing data on the connected individual’s terms, not yours. By 2023, per a Gartner prediction, 65% of the world’s population will be protected by modern privacy legislation, that’s up from 10% in 2020 (“Gartner Says By 2023, 65% of the World’s Population Will Have Its Personal Data Covered Under Modern Privacy Regulations,” 2020).

To be an exceptional mobile marketer is to be a polymath. You must be able to look at and evaluate the market and serve your customers through these five lenses—technology, economics, law and regulation, culture, and politics—if you are going to effectively serve people, at scale, and on their terms.

As for what my favorite resources are, rather than pointing specifically to three specific resources, I'd prefer to suggest three resource categories:

• The people you serve, the people you serve, are your greatest and most important resource. You must do everything in your power to understand them and fulfill their needs. Keep in mind, as the tools of surveillance capitalism are pulled apart (Zuboff, 2019), it will be even more important for you to find ways to build direct, trusted, bi-directional channels of communications. Your customer database will become your most valued asset.
• Government and non-governmental organizations, governments, non-governmental organizations, agencies, media properties, and schools (trade groups, sector analysts, consumer advocates, think-tanks/fact tanks, like the PEW Research Center (“Pew Research Center,” 2021) or Chiefmartc (“Chief Marketing Technologist - Marketing Technology Management,” 2021), and working professors and libraries, etc.) are an invaluable treasure-trove of specific and directional consumer and market insight that you can tap into, often for free.
• MarTech vendors, vendors provide insights on how to engage the connected (mobile) individual by providing blogs, research, and reports. Yes, they’re there to sell you their services, so you need to be careful and try to read through the hyperbole at times, but if you want to learn about a mobile channel, engage the vendor. Get your hands dirty, subscribe to a free trial of their service. Read their reports. Attend their webinars. Build a relationship with them.

We live in a connected world; consequently, mobile, regardless of the form factor and medium— smartphone, tablet, watch, earbud, voice, email, SMS, OTT message, etc.— is here to stay.

REFERENCES

Ask, J. (2014). Micro Moments Are The Next Frontier For Mobile. Forrester. https://www.forrester.com/report/Micro+Moments+Are+The+Next+Frontier+For+Mobile/RES118691

Atske, S., & Perrin, A. (2021). Home broadband adoption, computer ownership vary by race, ethnicity in the U.S. In Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/16/home-broadband-adoption-computer-ownership-vary-by-race-ethnicity-in-the-u-s/

Chief Marketing Technologist - Marketing Technology Management. (2021). In Chief Marketing Technologist. https://chiefmartec.com/

Coppola, D. (2021). Topic: Mobile commerce in the United States. Statista. https://www.statista.com/topics/1185/mobile-commerce/

Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet Market Share Worldwide. (2021). In StatCounter Global Stats. https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mobile-tablet

Gartner Says By 2023, 65% of the World’s Population Will Have Its Personal Data Covered Under Modern Privacy Regulations. (2020). Gartner. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-09-14-gartner-says-by-2023--65--of-the-world-s-population-w

Hanley, M, McCabe, M., Becker, M. (2021). Mobile Marketing Essentials(Fourth). Stukent. https://www.stukent.com/mobile-marketing-textbook/

Kemp, S., Kepios, Hootsuite, & Social, W. A. (2021). Digital 2021: Global Overview Report. https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2021-global-overview-report

Pew Research Center. (2021). In Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/

The Mobile Economy 2021. (2021). GSMA. https://www.gsma.com/mobileeconomy/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/GSMA_MobileEconomy2021_3.pdf

Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (1st Edition). PublicAffairs.