70% of Marketers Intend to Increase 2017 Mobile Marketing Budgets

Modern marketers are turning to mobile for new opportunities, and research suggests that they intend to invest more in this channel in 2017.

The “Mobile Marketing Trends 2017” report from MobileBridge has discovered that this year, 70 percent of marketers intend to “somewhat” or “significantly” increase their budgets to execute their mobile strategy.

Eighty-four percent use mobile apps to engage customers, and 66 percent utilize them to drive revenue. Sixty-three percent of marketers have an app to build customer loyalty.

About 90 percent of marketing mobile initiatives are geared toward existing customers, according to respondents. Approximately 40 percent are designed to attract new prospects.

To engage customers and prospects, 88 percent of marketers say they primarily use push messaging through their company apps. Social media (72 percent) and in-app messages (56 percent) are also frequently used engagement tactics.

However, the report indicated that marketers are struggling to measure their mobile and app ROI. About 78 percent said they are only “somewhat” or “not very” sufficient in terms of gauging their mobile success.

The Growing Investment in Mobile Marketing

Last year, many marketers began diving deep into the use of mobile tactics to enhance their relationships with customers.

The “Quantifying The Rise of Mobile Apps & The Value of Deep Linking” report from The Relevancy Group and Branch showed that 45 percent of marketers are deploying apps to improve customer engagement. Forty percent are using them to build loyalty, and the same percentage are utilizing apps to drive sales.

In terms of efficiency, marketers said that mobile apps (75.3 percent) were their fourth-most effective channel for driving revenue. This was behind display advertising (75.9 percent), social media marketing (85.6 percent) and email marketing (88.7 percent).