By Eric Holmen, President of SmartReply

As the close of Q4 rapidly approaches, together with one of the most lackluster holiday retailing seasons in recent years, industry analysts have once again revised their growth estimates for traditional advertising spending – downwards. TNS Media Intelligence reports that some of the country’s largest retailers have slashed their TV ad budgets by as much as 34%. Analysts, however, have largely neglected to mention that mobile advertising spend in the US is projected to break $1 billion for the first time in 2008, and surpass $7.5 billion by 2013. For marketers everywhere, this should indicate that in spite of massive industry write-downs, there is one marketing channel - above all others - that is having the kind of success that perseveres during a downturn.

Enter Mobile
CMOs and marketers in many verticals are looking to less expensive options for reaching consumers and they’re turning to the targeted and personal medium of mobile, which is gaining in traction and industry acceptance. In a recent CMO survey released by Epsilon, 63% of marketing execs were planning on increasing interactive/digital spend, while 59% reported a decrease in traditional marketing. 29% were interested in mobile and 22% have already added mobile to their marketing mix, recognizing that this tough economic period is precisely the time when highly targeted and more effective marketing channels play a crucial role. Holmen says numbers like those are very encouraging for the industry.

New media, and specifically mobile is an increasingly important way for retailers to engage their core customers, and current market conditions should not prevent any business from doing so. It’s true that a lot of marketers look at unstable periods as an unlikely time to try new things, but mobile marketing is not experimental anymore. It is a billion dollar per year industry, and growing. Importantly, brand recall is very high - with survey results as high as 51%, with 96% remembering the call-to-action from the message. That is unheard of in many marketing channels! In a July ‘08 survey by the DMA, Mobile Marketing: Consumer Perspectives, SMS campaigns were found to be the most successful mobile ad medium. 70% of those surveyed had responded to a marketing text message, whereas only 41% had responded to a survey and 30% to email offers.

As the centerpiece of non-traditional media, mobile is proving that is has the greatest potential for advertising growth and one of the best current growth profiles, even outdoing online ad growth in recent months. The perception of mobile marketing being an untested or experimental medium is quickly disappearing as marketers see this channel as the ideal way to what SmartReply calls bridging the consumer choice gap® - reaching out to message-weary consumers who want to regain control over their marketing.

Today’s consumers are making choices; choices of when and how you can talk to them, choices of what they want to hear. Now, marketers are also faced with a choice to create more profitable and loyal customers. Combine with a medium that touts more than 2.5 billion users worldwide and consumers who are increasingly willing to act upon mobile marketing messages instantly, and mobile is clearly the new marketing channel for 2009.

In our unstable economic climate, what more could mobile marketers ask for?

Eric Holmen is president of SmartReply, the largest provider of voice mobile and loyalty solutions to US retailers. He has spent the better part of his marketing career seeking to redefine the nature of marketing messages and assist the industry in resisting the status quo. Exploring methodologies like express consent, permission marketing and respectful communications have been key aspects of his mission. He can be reached at [email protected] or www.smartreply.com.