• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 2, 2011

Mobile handsets are fast becoming a shopping tool. Near field communication (NFC) technology catapults that movement with the inclusion in devices and service by Google, Nokia, Apple, AT&T, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless.

This year, mobile becomes a marketing discipline or practice in overall ad strategies, rather than an application in a campaign or on a handset or tablet, according to the white paper "Upward Mobility: Developing an Effective Mobile Shopper Marketing Strategy" that Augme will release this week.

Sitting on the front line in campaign planning sessions with consumer product goods companies like Johnson & Johnson in 2010 reveals that many strategies were based on applications or QR codes for specific products, according to David Apple, CMO of Augme. That changes this year, he says, as more consumers use mobile devices to advance consumption, knowledge and capabilities about products and services with or without assistance from the brand.

CPG companies have begun making the transition to integrate technologies, such as NFC, into point-of-sale platforms in stores, Apple says. "Many things still must happen, and it will become easier for chips to be integrated into mobile devices, than retailers to rip out lasers and put in imagers," he says, referring to NFC technology. "The big catalyst in the U.S. becomes what companies and carriers get paid in the process."

The U.S. remains far behind other countries around the world when it comes to integrating mobile tools for data transfer and m-commerce. Marketers, however, will be forced to look at mobile devices as an agnostic tool -- a connection to a campaign rather than an application, as slightly more than half -- 51% -- of the U.S. population will have a smartphone by the end of 2011, estimates Augme, citing Nielsen statistics.

Market research firm IHS iSuppli estimates global smartphone unit shipments will rise from 288 million in 2010 to 651 million in 2014.

The white paper draws a conclusion between the reality of the marketplace and the device capabilities in the market, and highlights strategies to reach consumers. "The reality of the market is the U.S. remains a 35% smartphone marketplace, which leaves the remainder of the country in feature phones and messaging phones," Apple says. "The real question becomes, as a marketer, how do I effectively communicate with that population without segmenting anybody based on their technology or device capabilities."

Apple says it's done through the use of consumer-response type technologies and strategies, reaching out to the 65% of consumers who don't carry a Web-enabled phone. They can still respond and receive a coupon through SMS, search or QR campaigns. An SMS campaign initiated on a piece of physical media such as billboard or magazine instantly allows the brand to reach 248 million consumers, he says. "It's not sexy, but that's how you create sales," he adds. "Universal codes like QR are open source, allowing the consumer to engage from the digital to the physical world."

Augme provides services and mobile technology Ad Life to consumer and healthcare brands. The company says it's working with HBO, Johnson & Johnson, Colgate Palmolive, Lionsgate, among others, allowing them to plan, create, test, deploy and track mobile marketing programs.