Mobile impacts all businesses but it may affect them in different ways depending on size.

While many of the major brands have well-developed apps and some are beginning to embrace the mobile Web, small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) may be charting a somewhat different course.

With mobile media spending projected by Strategy Analytics to hit almost $12 billion this year (compared to mobile consumer spending of $138 billion), there’s somewhat of a wide range in how marketers allocate budgets vs. how consumers are behaving with mobile.

There is also a gap between national vs. local advertising revenue, with national closing out the year at about $1.6 billion compared to local at $211 million, according to PQ Media. The disparity in dollars spent can be rationalized by the fact that brands focus on national buys, such as through mobile video and search while smaller businesses focus more locally.

This leaves the question of what SMBs are doing with mobile if not investing in national advertising or other areas that attract the larger national brands.

We looked to Borrell Associates, the research firm that focuses on the SMB marketplace and found some insights and early indicators of where that market may be heading compared to their larger counterparts.

For mobile campaigns by SMBs, the number one tactic, as you might expect, is SMS with almost half (46%) of the businesses using it.  In the context of global research from Chetan Sharma Consulting that came out earlier this week, non-messaging services now account for more than half of all mobile data revenue, showing that texting no longer dominates data revenue as it did seemingly forever.

But while texting is king for SMBs, rich media, not so much.

Only five percent of them use MMS, the same percentage that use NFC (Near Field Communication) or location-based tactics, which could translate into simple ads on Foursquare.

Video also has potential as a growth usage, since only eight percent currently use it.

More surprising is that the number two mobile tactic after texting is using 2D barcodes, with 41 percent saying they use them. Of the leading brands and agencies using 2D codes, a percentage of them don’t even lead to a mobile optimized experience, which begs the question of where the SMB codes are taking their customers, but that’s for another day.

With consumers projected to download 66 billion mobile apps annually within four years, which is more than double the number downloaded last year says Juniper Research, many of those will not be coming from SMBs.

As a mobile tactic, only one in five SMBs use apps, which trails the number using mobile websites (38%) and mobile advertising (26%).

The SMBs in the research are defined as non-traditional accounts that have contacted for advertising in various media and these early findings are from a series of three different market studies.

One of the early indicators of the research is that SMBs may be starting to differentiate social marketing programs as a branding tool to reach new customers while mobile is being used as a direct response platform, according to Borrell Associates’ Senior Researcher Greg Harmon, who is leading the study.

He found that to measure the success of social marketing programs, the key metric was getting new customers, listed as very important by 83 percent of SMBs.  Meanwhile, the most intensive success metric for mobile media programs was increased sales volume, to 78 percent of the SMBs.

Key success measurements for both social and mobile media programs was creating visits to websites, with 84 percent of those using social marketing programs saying it was very or somewhat important, and 91 percent of those using mobile media programs saying it was.

As context, the top success metrics for success in a recent mobile study by The Center for Media Research at MediaPost Communications, were behavioral metrics (ad interaction, click through, etc.) and conversion (sales, email registration, coupon download).

We’ll be watching over time to see if the mobile tactics of the national brands and SMBs sync or go their separate ways.

Chuck Martin is author of The Third Screen; Marketing to Your Customers in a World Gone Mobile, CEO of Mobile Future Institute and Director of the Center for Media Research at MediaPost Communications.

The world mobile is not exactly getting simplified, but some consumer behaviors are beginning to take shape.

While it’s likely to be some time before final usage patterns evolve, as more smartphone capabilities are utilized and more tablets are acquired, some early indicators are beginning to emerge.

There are single-screen as well as multi-screen uses, as consumers view various screens for different reasons at different times and marketers are going to be challenged to mine this puzzle.

Depending on whom you may be trying to reach with what message can determine at least an approach or two. There is the age-old issue of the mobile Web vs. apps.

For example, Nielsen recently found that the majority of smartphone owners used their devices to shop but they would rather access the mobile website via smartphone rather than using the retailers’ apps.

They also found that during the holiday shopping season those who did use the retailers’ apps tend to spend more time on them and that male shoppers were more likely to try an app.

Then there’s the platform issue, with Android and Apple controlling 71 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, according to comScore, with some projections having Microsoft displacing Apple for the number two spot in coming years.

Though Android leads Apple in markets share, Apple is number one in mobile commerce shopping satisfaction, according to the analytics company ForeSee.

The type of product or service being sold and the location of the consumer also will play a significant coming role.

As one example, the number of tickets sent to mobile phones is projected to increase to 23 billion within four years, according to Juniper Research. And this year, the researchers expect marketers to spend $15 billion globally on mobile retail campaigns, linking retailers with mobile shoppers.

And for marketers who may have totally nailed how to deal with mobile websites, apps, platforms and location, along comes the issue of using multiple screens simultaneously.

The first screen, television, is obviously not going away, but the second screen of the PC is migrating to the tablet, which frees consumers to use those two together, or at least in the same room.

New research from GfK Knowledge Networks reported earlier this week found that more than half (52%) of minutes spent with tablets were while watching TV.

Meanwhile, these same consumers still likely have on their body the third screen of their smartphone, which is always on, and the researchers found the same smartphone usage time spent was while with TV.

Outside of multi-screen viewing, additional information from the GfK Knowledge Networks MultiMedia Mentor research found some different smartphone and tablet usage patterns, especially in daily usage based on age and sex. Overall findings among all users:

• 40 minutes a day are spent on smartphones and 29 minutes on tablets.
• Males: 36 minutes a day on smartphone, 32 minutes on tablets.
• Females: 44 minutes a day on smartphone, 27 minutes on tablets.

But depending on the particular demographic, the smartphone and tablet usage varies widely, especially by age group.

In the 18- to 34-year-old group, 52 minutes a day are spent on smartphones and 34 minutes on tablets. But males in that age group spend more time on both, with 57 minutes on smartphones and 39 minutes on tablets. Females spend 47 minutes on smartphones and 28 minutes on tablets.

But in the 35- to 49-year-old demographic, smartphone minutes a day (24) are eclipsed by tablet minutes (29). And GfK Knowledge Networks also found that in this group, females used tablets for 28 minutes a day compared to 13 minutes for males.

Part of that time spent on both smartphones and tablets will be focused on shopping and buying.

One piece of recent research from RichRelevance showed that the mobile share of shopping sessions by platform is still only at 9 percent compared to 91 percent from PCs. There is no doubt that is about to dramatically change.

Whether consumers are using one, two, three or even four screens either alone or in various combinations, they will be searching, shopping and buying wirelessly.

The issue for marketers is how to be in the right place at the right time on the right screen(s).

Chuck Martin is author of The Third Screen; Marketing to Your Customers in a World Gone Mobile, CEO of Mobile Future Institute and Director of the Center for Media Research at MediaPost Communications.

We’re in a state of mobile transition.

Pouring over some of the various pieces of mobile research this week, of which there is a lot these days, it stuck me that mobile is moving into its next phase, which we plead not to be called Mobile 2.0.

Smartphone penetration in the U.S. has finally reached 50 percent, though higher in the 25-34-year-old demographic, says Nielsen, and comScore pegs Android at half of that entire share.

Latin America is on its way to more than 50 percent smartphones in a few years and in the last quarter, 24 million smartphones were shipped in China, more than in the U.S. for the first time. More smartphones than full-featured phones are now sold in the U.S.

But the number of smartphones is not just about small, high-speed processing hardware. It points to new empowerment being placed into the hands of what will be billions of consumers as new capabilities are incorporated into mobile phones.

The number of NFC (near-field communications) handsets shipped is expected to grow from about 44 million last year to more than 630 million within three years, according to UK-based research firm Informa Telecoms and Media.

By that time, three quarters of the NFC handsets are projected to be smartphones, the largest number being Androids, estimates SmartCard Trends.

The swipe and tap-enabled buying capabilities built-in to these NFC phones will allow an easier modification in how consumers buy, or at least pay.

And with smarpthones comes the need for speed, which is growing along with the growth of mobile devices, and not just via 4G mobile networks.

For example, 61 percent of American households now have Wi-Fi, according to new data from Strategy Analytics, and the U.S. doesn’t even lead the global markets. In South Korea, 80 percent of homes have Wi-Fi, 73 percent in the U.K., 71 percent in Germany and France, 68 percent in Japan and Canada and 61 percent in Italy.

This growth of mobile capability will change behavior as more consumers expect to do more on their own timeframe in their own location at any given moment.

The challenge and opportunity for marketers in this evolution is to attempt to stay a step or two ahead of the consumer, who tends to be a leap ahead of companies in their wireless behaviors while many businesses in various parts of the world work toward solutions.

For example, on recent trips to South America and China, leaders of large companies and businesses of various categories told me they intend to embrace mobile in a big way moving forward and planning mobile investments for short and long-term growth.

Many businesses in the U.S. have a similar viewpoint and approach, but still can manage to be somewhat surprised by mobile consumer behavior.

After all, how many retailers and brands accurately anticipated the amount of shopping and transactions conducted via tablets over the holidays? (Based on a recent MediaPost mobile conference, not many).

The bottom line is that money is not only moving to mobile it will be moving through mobile. Lots of money.

The value of mobile commerce transactions is projected to grow 97 percent a year for the next three years, according to a recent study by KPMG. That’s almost 100 percent annual growth in one category. Comparing this percentage increase to the mobile marketing budget percentage growth of any business you know might help explain why mobile consumers are leading the way.

Mobile spending around the world is expected to reach $945 billion in three years. Spending by SMS is forecast to drop from 75 percent of transactions to 52 percent, says IE Market Research, driven in part by the adoptions of NFC technology.

Another indicator of the growth of mobile also is the slowed growth of PCs, now estimated by IDC to be 9 percent this year, as more consumers spend more time on wireless devices. In South America for example, 27 percent of IT professional have completely replaced their laptops with an iPad, according to IDC.

The next stage in mobile is not about one new thing, such as NFC, ubiquitous Wi-Fi, mobile wallets, the size of transactions or more sophisticated mobile users. It’s about all of these things — and more — combined.

Chuck Martin is author of The Third Screen; Marketing to Your Customers in a World Gone Mobile, CEO of Mobile Future Institute and Director of the Center for Media Research at MediaPost Communications.

 There’s a unique form of mobile targeting going on in China.

Last week I had the opportunity to share some mobile insights with the general managers, directors and heads of many luxury brands in China, such as Chanel, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Estee Lauder, Swatch Group, Bvlgari and Hermes.

As in other markets, the brand leaders were looking for what they should be doing in mobile and were highly interested in any mobile innovation occurring in the West. Their main focus is on viable mobile business models, ranging from advertising to commerce and anything in between.

Most in the audience said they have a mobile strategy, many for more than a year. Individually, almost half of them said they carried two mobile phones, which I also regularly find common in executive audiences in the U.S. and other countries.

As background, the mobile market in China is somewhat different than the U.S. The leading phones sold in China are from Nokia and Samsung while the U.S. market is led by HTC and Apple, according to Strategy Analytics.

Perhaps the biggest personal usage difference is the actual cost of the phones. For example, unlike the U.S. where carriers subsidize the cost of phones, people in China pay the entire cost themselves.

I visited the major Shanghai Apple store, which was jammed with people on each of the two floors, to check pricing. An iPhone 4S, depending on memory, costs either $790 or $932 in U.S. dollars. And people were lined up to buy them. Lots of people.

This also partly explains why everyone has a passcode lock on the opening screens of their phones, since they are reportedly frequent targets of theft due to the value.

The other dynamic is that the I-must-have-an-iPhone phenomenon among certain demographics in China provides a self-defined market.

As one example of a business taking advantage of Apple obsession, the two-year-old mobile lifestyle publication iWeekly is made available as an app for only  iPhones and iPads. So while Android leads the operating system market and Nokia and Samsung lead in hardware sales, iWeekly sticks with just Apple.

The choice seems to have worked, since the app has been downloaded 5 million times and is the number one lifestyle category app in China, according to Jane Yu, vice president and general manager of IWeekly, who notes that it is on 20 percent of all iPhones in China.

Other executives in the company told me that marketers easily understand the demographic of all iPhone and iPad owners, since the devices are so expensive. The reasoning goes that since the devices are bought by the most affluent, they must be the prime target for luxury brands.

It will be interesting to watch as more smartphones enter the China market, which last quarter saw 24 million smartphones shipped, more than in the U.S., according to Strategy Analytics, to monitor if targeting only Apple wireless devices continues to be a winning formula.

Another observation is that in some ways, the mobile market in China resembles that of Latin America, where there are 630 million mobile connections while China has a billion. But in both markets, two geographies dominate the market, Brazil and Colombia in Latin America and Beijing and Shanghai in China.

The remaining areas in both countries have less of an affluent target mobile population. This begs the question of how to target within the markets, whether by Apple products only or some other means.

As a personal observation, I found that some things mobile work in China and others don’t.

A rather annoying finding came after Verizon assured me (twice) that my Samsung Galaxy Nexus would be fully functional in China. They then easily sold me the global roaming package, data, texting and all that.

While the phone worked for voice, none of the data features ever worked except over Wi-Fi, which could easily be found. A bit more difficult to find were the passwords protecting all the Wi-Fi locations.

The good news was that my iPhone 4S on AT&T worked flawlessly everywhere, including location-based services.

Twitter and Facebook? Blocked in Shanghai. Every once in a great while, a random Tweet seemed to get through but otherwise no outside social networks worked, other than those locally originated, such as Sina Weibo, the microblogging site the government throttled back for a few days last week.

My trusty Speed-o-Meter app, which I sometimes use to clock the Amtrak Acela at up to 150 MPH, didn’t work on the famous Maglev high-speed train that reaches the airport in minutes at speeds of up to 260 MPH. No GPS could be located, though the app later worked in a car on the way to the same airport.

Price comparison by barcode scanning was a big disappointment, since none of the codes at any of the major stores visited, such as the Gap, could be identified by any of my usually reliable code readers, such as ShopSavvy.

As in other markets, the other observation is that everyone is always using their mobile phone, for talking and texting.

But virtually no one looks at their phone while crossing the streets. As I was repeatedly reminded in Shanghai, there are no rules for driving and vehicles have the right of way, and they take advantage of it.

I can vouch for that.

Chuck Martin is author of The Third Screen; Marketing to Your Customers in a World Gone Mobile, CEO of Mobile Future Institute and Director of the Center for Media Research at MediaPost Communications.

It’s still early in the higher-speed mobile revolution.

While the answer to the need for mobile speed is just around the corner, it could be interesting to monitor how the market adapts to the cost.

It’s no secret that 4G mobile network speeds being rolled out by carriers like Verizon Wireless and AT&T provide dramatically faster mobile downloads. The actuality is that more data can be sent in a shorter amount of time, though consumers are not charged by time but rather by the amount of data.

Remember the unlimited data plans? They were popular when ‘unlimited’ data couldn’t really be received and ultimately were replaced by the current pay-by-the amount model.

What may not be so noticeable is the anticipated increase in the need for speed by mobile phones, now just at the tip of the proverbial iceberg that will impact both carriers and consumers.

With U.S. smartphone penetration at about 50 percent of the mobile marketplace and tens of thousands of tablets being sold just in the past few months, it might appear that the masses have moved to high-speed mobile. But the reality is that high speed mobile is in its infancy.

The latest estimates from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) pegs the number of mobile subscribers at almost 6 billion. But only about 10 percent the market comprises smartphones and markets vary widely.

So while the number of mobile phones exceeds the entire population in 97 countries, the percentage of smartphones is just becoming poised to take off in earnest.

• China, the largest mobile market, has 1.3 billion people and a billion mobile phones. Only 25 percent of them are smartphones.
• In Latin America, smartphone penetration is not expected to hit 33 percent for two years, but then take off into the 60 percent rage in subsequent years.
• In Indonesia, smartphones account for only 6 percent of the market, Kenya 23 percent and Nigeria 9 percent, according to OnDevice Research.
• Smartphone ownership in the UK increased from 30 percent to 45 percent of the total population, according to a recent Google/Ipsos study.

Markets around the world are gradually moving to smartphones.

Smartphone unit sales last year were 472 million, according to a Business Insider study, but projected to more than triple within four years, representing two-thirds of all mobile phones purchased.

Research has continually shown that smartphone owners use their phones to do more. As mobile video gets better, more people watch. They do more, play games more, text more, check location, send and receive photos and more.

Higher communications speeds are allowing smartphone users to do more even faster and  higher speed phones are coming. One projection from Strategy Analytics has sales of the higher speed LTE handsets increasing from seven million units last year to 67 million this year, a 10-X increase.

However, there is still the issue of consumers using the higher speeds on a continual basis.

For example, in the world of tablets, Localytics found that fewer than one in 10 tablet users went online by a cellular network, presumably preferring the no-cost Wi-Fi option.

And using data can be costly, depending on the market. In the U.S., the carriers talk in terms of gigabytes but while traveling the language changes to megabytes.

U.S. data plans for carriers such as Verizon and AT&T are in the range of $30 for two to three gigabytes if used domestically, with dramatically different cost structures for serious on-the-road travelers.

For example, while roaming in China, $30 would allow for 50 megabytes of data. For context, streaming an hour of video over an LTE connection in the U.S. is estimated to consume well over 500 megabytes.

Higher speed phones and networks hold all the promise of that wave of technology that would lead to the paperless office.

So will the promise of being able to do everything faster on mobile let us get back to other things or will it allow everyone to do more, continuously?

Chuck Martin is author of The Third Screen; Marketing to Your Customers in a World Gone Mobile, CEO of Mobile Future Institute and Director of the Center for Media Research at MediaPost Communications.

It seems like announcements about new mobile wallets and mobile payments are occurring with increasing frequency.

There of course is industry-darling Square, which you can plug in to the top of an iPhone or the bottom of an Android phone allowing personal swiping of credit cards, which works easily and well.

And there are various other credit card devices that attach to mobile phones, and even my local taxi driver in New Orleans last week had one connected to his full featured phone, along with a mini-printer for receipts.

At SXSW in Austin recently, a panel on mobile payments tackled the issues of the why and when of mobile payments. The panelists focused on Isis, the joint venture with Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile aiming to provide a mobile commerce network for merchants, banks and other carriers.

The panelists agreed that a lot of mobile banking already is taking place, with some $4 billion of transactions already. They also agreed that this is not going to be the year of large-scale adoption of any mobile payment options, including Isis.

The first two test markets for Isis are Austin and Salt Lake City, both slated to launch this summer. Isis uses NFC (near field communication) and they say about a quarter of U.S. retailers are essentially NFC ready.

“The technology (NFC) is nothing new,” said Ryan Hughes, Chief Marketing Officer of ISIS. “VeriFone says 100 percent of their terminals are NFC.”

Earlier this week, payment gateway VeriFone announced that more than $10 billion worth of U.S. transactions a year now go through its mobile payments system.

But the panelists were not so much focused on the actual payment using a mobile phone but rather the value a consumer could potentially receive because of the mobile payment capability.

The idea is that with on-the-spot information about customer location and payment history, retailers could provide coupons and other deals with higher relevance to “enrich the shopping experience,” as one of the panelists said. “It’s just a shift in experience,” said Hughes.

Hughes and team also brought an Isis-enabled vending machine as a demo for SXSW attendees. At the booth, on the main floor of the Austin Convention Center, large crowds of people continually waited in line to see the machine in action.

One of the many Isis marketers would tap their NFC-enabled phone to the front of the machine where you’d normally insert coins and the phone would be charged the 50 cents for a promo booklet to drop out of the front slot of the machine.

One of the more intriguing factors was the level of interest in contactless payments, both at the demo display and at the sessions. The panel session was packed and when it came time for questions an extremely long line of people rapidly lined up behind the microphone.

While Isis is focused on serving retailers, the questioners overwhelmingly wanted to know about person-to-person payments.

One of the questions dealt with the obvious issue of security, which Hughes cited as the number one concern of customers. The Hughes answer? “A single call to your carrier can shut your wallet down.”

As a side note, to test compatibility, I loaded my Google Wallet MasterCard app on my Samsung Galaxy Nexus and sure enough, my account was instantly charged and out came the booklet.

However, when I pointed out to the person demonstrating the system that my wallet was charged $1.25 rather than 50 cents, he said the number would ultimately be corrected, though my account is still out the $1.25 for a 50 cent booklet.

Chuck Martin is author of The Third Screen; Marketing to Your Customers in a World Gone Mobile, CEO of Mobile Future Institute and Director of the Center for Media Research at MediaPost Communications.

Mobile is truly a global phenomenon but all markets are not yet in sync.

This can pose some interesting challenges for both marketers within each of the geographies as well as visitors who travel outside their mobile home base into another market, as many business travelers have learned over the years.

Mobile markets function in different ways, some due to culture and habit, some to technological infrastructure and others just a matter of timing and consumer acceptance. For example:

• In the U.S., carriers pay Apple a reported two to three hundred dollars each time a person buys an iPhone with a two-year contract. By contrast, 82 percent of the mobile phone connections in Brazil are pre-paid, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

• A mobile phone user in one country may swap SIM cards in and out of their phone to leverage the most effective pricing of the moment or situation while those in the US exclusively use their contracted carrier.

• In Japan, consumers swipe cell phones rather than credit cards and in South Korea free mobile television has been around for several years. Both of those capabilities are in their infancy in the U.S.

And users of phones within given markets learn the mobile rates in their respective areas and are essentially accommodated within those markets while visitors could pay a significant premium.

I found this out the hard way not long ago on a trip to Canada where both my Verizon and AT&T mobile bills well exceeded $1,000 for just a few days of what in the U.S. might be considered ‘normal’ use. Sending photos back home and using location-based services there use very high-priced megabytes of data, which can vary widely by country.

Much farther to south is another example of the evolution of mobile. In Latin America, with 47 countries and territories with 594 million people, 20 countries account for 98 percent of the mobile connections, according to a recent GSMA study.

After addressing a group of heads of banks from throughout Latin America gathered in Colombia last weekend, one of the bankers asked me whether his bank should have an app, which in context was an interesting question.

In Latin American, about 70 percent of adults don’t have a bank account, so the bankers are looking for ways to use mobile to increase their customer base. On the other hand, banks in some of the markets, such as Brazil and Colombia, have a significant number of affluent customers using smartphones.

It will be another two years before smartphone penetration in Latin America reaches 33 percent, compared to nearly 50 percent penetration in the U.S. But within six years, it is estimated that Latin America will more closely resemble the U.S. market, with some 60 percent smartphone penetration, says GSMA.

So the banks face both a short-term and long-term marketing challenge of when to use which mobile approach, whether SMS, MMS, mobile Web, apps or even NFC (Near Field Communication) for on-location proximity marketing.

The short-term approach for each of the Latin American bankers ends up being dependent on their specific region and customer adoption rate, though the bankers did seem to agree that mobile is the way to go. And that is just one market.

Mobile usage continues to increase globally, with penetration exceeding 100 percent in 97 countries, according to the ITU. For example, Saudi Arabia has 51 million cellphones with 26 million people, Hong Kong has 13 million phones and seven million people and Brazil has 242 million phones with 203 million people.

While the U.S. is also a member of the 100 percent mobile penetration club, with 328 mobile phones and 316 million people, according to trade industry group CTIA Wireless, it is not among the largest mobile markets. By volume, those markets are Asia Pacific, Africa and Latin America, says GSMA.

Then there is the issue of someone traveling into a different mobile zone, since rates for American smartphone owners can take some advance planning and cost calculations.

We found that Verizon smartphones won’t work in Colombia, so I rented a Verizon phone for $20 (they sent me a classic clamshell, such memories!).

The usage rates in Colombia, though, are something to pay close attention to, since talking on the phone is $2 to $3 a minute and data usage is measured in megabytes, as in $50 for 125 MB. For 500 text messages, there’s another fee of $50.

My AT&T iPhone service did work in Colombia, along with the Verizon flip phone, so now we’ll just wait to see what the premium will be. But then again, all the phone features did work, for a price.

Chuck Martin is author of The Third Screen; Marketing to Your Customers in a World Gone Mobile, CEO of Mobile Future Institute and Director of the Center for Media Research at MediaPost Communications.

Mobile makes coupons matter.

While coupons have been around since 1887 when Coca-Cola first offered them to promote free samples of Coke, nothing has revolutionized the phenomenon as mobile will.

Consumers consistently are attracted to value from those who provide goods and services to them to those who want to provide goods and services to them.

To attract these consumers marketers have traditionally used paper-based coupons leading shoppers to cut them out of newspapers and stack them for the next trip to the store.

But traditionally, the only way for businesses to target consumers was based on where they lived. Mobile turns that model on its head.

Several hundred billions of coupons a year are distributed with several billion of those being redeemed, according to NCH Marketing Services, so the consumer-coupon behavior already is well established.

With mobile, location-based marketing enters the picture, in which there are three distinct categories:
• Location Drivers: These involve creating incentives to attract a customer to a location.
• Location Magnets: these offer value once a customer arrives at a location.
• Location Activators: These involve the interactions with the mobile customer at the moment of purchase.

Coupons dominate the first of the location categories, since coupons cause or drive a person to go to a particular location. And with mobile, the static nature of coupons is eliminated and customer location can be added to the equation.

While we could forever measure supply and demand, now we can add time and location via mobile, which has the potential to dramatically increase the value of coupons.

Once a marketer can leverage customer location and time of day to existing supply, mobile coupons can become significantly more targeted, and therefore of high value to a shopping consumer.

Mobile coupons simply make life easier for consumers. From the consumer’s viewpoint, coupons provide value in several ways.

For example, nearly half (45%) of consumers use coupons to save money on something they usually buy, according to a recent the Borrelll Associates study involving more than 39,000 consumers.

The study also found that almost a third (29%) use coupons to try something new and a quarter (26%) use them to try something that’s usually too expensive.

The researchers also found that age plays a factor in mobile coupon usage, with three times more of those under 45 years old using mobile coupons compared to those over 45. This is consistent with higher smartphone ownership among younger demographics.

Mobile makes coupons portable, so that Target coupons sent via SMS, and the associated expiration reminders, can remain in phone storage until time for usage and barcode redemption at checkout.

Mobile coupons also can be highly relevant based on the consumer location within a store or in relation to a product as well as being connected to brands and shopping behaviors. Kraft and coupons.com demonstrated this some time ago as well as Shopkick shows for shoppers at stores such as Macy’s and Best Buy.

From a consumer standpoint, mobile coupons can always be with them since they always have their phones.

From a marketer and brand viewpoint, mobile coupons also rank highly. In a study of agencies and brands by The Center for Media Research, the best mobile ROI came from coupons, followed by text links and display banners.

Coupons also rated highly with clients as to what excites clients the most in mobile marketing, along with branded apps and mobile video in that study.

From a marketing standpoint, mobile coupons work. They also work for consumers since they provide value.

The migration of coupons to mobile can’t occur fast enough for either.