Trajectory and Speed: Why you need Mobile Skills

Trajectory and Speed: Why you need Mobile Skills

Paul Berney is the Co-founder, Managing Partner & CEO EMEA of mCordis with almost 10 years of experience in mobile marketing. Previously as Chief Marketing Officer & Managing Director of the EMEA branch of the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), Paul lead the MMA’s global marketing efforts and more specifically the activities involving more than 150 member companies in EMEA. Paul is a guest lecturer on our Digital Marketing Programmes. 

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]t almost every presentation and meeting I have been to in the past 10 years people have asked me what do I think will happen next in mobile. My answer is normally to ask the person asking the question to think back five years or to when they got their first smartphone and ask if they could imagine the change it has brought to them personally? Could you have predicted five years ago just how much mobile has changed your life let alone how the functionality has changed. Think forward another five years from today and the possibilities of mobile seem almost endless.

Mobile or rather mobility is having a profound affect upon all of our lives: it has caused an enabled an irrevocable change in our behaviour. As an always on, always with us companion it has become our primary means of staying connected to the world. In the course of this, mobile has become the remote control of our lives, the connector between the digital and physical worlds and we are all becoming mobile consumers. This change is global. Very shortly there will be more mobile phones than people in the world and once we start the add in all the objects like cars, fridges, fitness trackers and everything else that is becoming connected, we start to see a world where mobility and connectivity are integral to our lives.

Mobile technology is constantly evolving and we are changing our behaviour as a result. I chose the world ‘evolving’ deliberately. Charles Darwin said “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” As we evolve into a mobile centric world you need to respond to that change personally and professionally. If you want your career or your business to thrive rather than just survive then your focus should always be on the behaviour not the technology. Think about what mobility means to your target audience? How is it affecting the way they behave? How is mobile changing their expectations? Remembering that those expectations and needs are not just built on their mobile interaction with you but on every mobile interaction they have.

What does this have to do with you? Well it means that it has become imperative for you as a marketer to understand mobility and to learn the skills you need to use it. Regardless of whether you think you are a marketer or whether marketing is in your job title, you need to understand how to connect, engage and influence your customers with and through mobile. These skills will become essential to everyone in business because as I already said, the changes brought about my mobile are irrevocable.

So I cannot tell you exactly how mobile is gong to change the world in the next five years. I can only advise you to look at the direction the world is going (towards greater connectivity and mobility) and the speed at which that is happening (fast!) and ask you in return, can you afford not to make mobile marketing an essential skill in your job?

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