• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, January 13, 2015

As 2014 saw the maturation of mobile as a marketer’s medium, one thing became ever more apparent to me: Mobile is not a strategy unto itself.  It is a channel and should be treated as such.

Mobile may be THE most important channel for marketers moving forward.  That being said, much of how a marketer utilizes mobile is interconnected to other channels.  The implementation of mobile marketing efforts can be executed in unison using some of the same toolsets (DMPs, DSPs, site optimization, etc.). 

In old-school hip-hop terms (quoting Boogie Down Productions), mobile is “like a piggy bank, this is one penny.” If you’re planning your mobile strategy separately from your online, offline, in-store and/or other channels than I am here to advise you, you are destined to fail.

I feel as though mobile and TV are going to be the two most important channels for marketers over the next 20 years.  20 years might feel like a long time, but it goes by very, very quickly.  Just 20 years ago, you weren’t using the Internet on a daily basis and you were still distributing printed memos in the office rather than using email.  20 years from now, mobile will be even more important, since time spent there will radically outweigh the amount of media time used when compared to the desktop, and may even exceed that of TV as TV continues to morph, expanding to encompass network-developed video on a mobile device. 

My point is, you shouldn’t be planning mobile in a vacuum.  Those of you engaging with a mobile agency, a traditional agency and a digital agency are setting yourselves up for a difficult road ahead. 

The truth is, all marketers are playing catch-up when it comes to the integration of technology, and your customers are building a technology stack far in advance of whatever you might be pulling together.  Your customers are architecting their experiences with your brand leveraging their mobile devices, your website, your in-store experience and more. 

According to a stat I’ve been using quite often lately, from an Accenture report, 78% of customers don’t receive a consistent [brand] experience across all channels.  My hypothesis is, most marketers are not even recognizing the customer when they see them, whether it be on a mobile device, the website or in-store. How can marketers expect to change that, with different teams creating strategies for these various channels?  The answer is (wait for it): They can’t.

If mobile is a channel, like TV and online, then you have to determine two things.  First, what channels are you able to prioritize in your outbound strategy?  Second, how can you leverage existing tools and partnerships to plan for managing inbound activity? 

In the case of mobile specifically, you have to develop messaging that will enable you to engage with them across a multitude of devices and you have to use data to identify your customers vs. prospects when you come across them.  On the flipside, if you aren’t ready to take the messaging to them in that environment, you at least have to be prepared for when they find you, by fortifying your mobile presence and having a strategy to get them to another platform quickly.  That platform can be, say, a call center or in-store.  This second option is a stopgap until you can make the business case to be forward-facing in mobile.  The success you have with either of these tactics will stem from your strategic integration, with mobile planned in coordination with these “hand-off” channels where you eventually push your audience.

So my somewhat long-winded point this week is, don’t try to specialize your resources across the board in mobile.  It’s better to educate all of your teams in the value of mobile and integrate it into every aspect of your marketing. Your long-term success may depend on this as mobile becomes the centerpiece of your audience messaging strategy.