Marketers who talk about being “mobile capable” but still only spend a fraction of their digital budget on the medium are “fooling themselves”, the head of a mobile tech firm told delegates at the Mobile Marketing Association Forum Indonesia in Jakarta last week.
Dippak Khurana, founder and CEO of Mumbai-based Vserv, said in a panel discussion that marketers needed to “wake up” to the staggering mobile usage data in countries such as Indonesia and invest more in the medium.
Why are most brands still spending only three to five per cent of their digital spend on mobile, Khurana asked his audience. “You should be waking up and saying that I need to spend at least 50 per cent of my digital spend on mobile,” he said.
The main barrier to adoption of mobile is a marketer’s “mindset,” Khurana said.
Brands are taking an “incremental approach” to mobile, with a gradual increase in spend the norm, he observed, with marketers saying they will take another five years or so before mobile makes up half of their digital spend.
“Whenever I meet CMOs I really question them. I say what are you doing with all the usage data?” he said, questioning why marketers are not taking “meaningful action” in response to the rapid uptake of mobile use.
“Marketers talk about being mobile capable. But as a marketer, if you’re not spending 50 per cent of your digital budget on mobile, you’re fooling yourself, you’re far off from being mobile capable,” he said.
Khurana was on a panel titled ‘The Key Principles to Becoming Mobile Capable’, moderated by Mindshare’s chairman and CEO, global emerging markets, Ashutosh Srivastava.
