This past Thursday, I had the privilege of hearing @TheTimHayden speak at the Social Media Club of Dallas. Aside from being a fellow bobcat (shout out, Texas State!), he is also an incredible marketer with great tales from campaigns where he has seamlessly integrated the online with the offline.
What I took away from his talk were a lot of solid campaign ideas, a lot of thoughts about what’s to come down the pipeline for marketers and a lot of excitement about the world of mobile.
Needless to say, he got my wheels a’ turnin’.
While digital marketers and communicators can often get caught up in the hype of the next-best-thing, Tim’s talk made it clear that mobile is still something to watch. While he suggests that the application platform will break down into something only used for temporary and disposable needs, like a travel guide app for a vacation, he was quick to point out that we haven’t seen the last – or even the half – of what mobile can do.
Less than half of mobile phones in the market today are smart phones. According to the latest data by Gartner, smart phones only made up 17.3 percent of cell phone sales in the first quarter (up from 13.6 percent last year).
So, what does this mean? It means potential – serious potential. As the price for smart phones continues to drop, and service prices continue to drop – the price of entry into the world of mobile has also dropped to attract more and more people. As Tim pointed out, what will happen when all these people have limitless communication capacity in their hand?
Well, we don’t exactly know. Why? Because we haven’t even seen half of our audience yet. And for people who work in mobile and digital, that’s very exciting.
Now is the time to test the behavioral waters and learn. Around the corner waits a whole new group of people; and they are just as hungry for communication and just as eager to join the mobile/social conversation as the groups that came before them.