A new Experian whitepaper suggests that 36% of Chinese marketers have already tested or used mobile tactics in their targeted marketing programs.
China, home to the world’s largest mobile service providers, is expected to have up to 500 million mobiles in use by year-end 2013. This presents a big opportunity for mobile marketers, according to a new white paper released by Experian Marketing Services.
The research firm surveyed over 300 marketers across a range of business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) industry sectors and found that 36% of the country's marketers have tested mobile marketing and 16% have already incorporated mobile as their regular marketing channel.
“Mobile marketing is now bringing ample opportunities for Chinese businesses of all sizes to engage with their vast consumer base more effectively,” said Chris Yao, Managing Director of Experian Greater China. “Local brands today understand the power of tools like SMS and are already using that to great advantage."
Yao added that 84% of the survey respondents expected that sales through mobile devices will increase significantly in the next year.
“The business opportunity is tremendous, and we expect to see marketers adopt groundbreaking innovations in China’s highly competitive and segmented markets,” he said.
The paper noted that SMS remains the mainstay of respondents’ mobile marketing, delivering short, simple calls to action to drive foot traffic and e-commerce. Nearly 30% of companies surveyed said SMS is the most important method of communicating with customers, and 20% also said they have implemented at least one one mobile or SMS campaign to test its viability.
Marketers, however, cited some challenges such as lack of multi-channel strategies, absence of in-house resources and poor senior corporate support as obstacles to rolling out effective mobile campaigns.