by Brad Bortone, Senior Research Editor

When gathering data for the 2012 Mobile Marketing Benchmark Report, we wanted to learn more about marketers’ challenges in achieving success with mobile marketing efforts. So, we asked the following question …

Q: Which barriers exist to overcoming your organization's top challenges?

Click here to see a larger, printable version of this chart

There are inherent challenges and barriers within any marketing objective. When asked which challenges were most prevalent while aiming to achieve mobile objectives, 55% of surveyed marketers indicated "Lack of effective mobile strategy," with an equal percentage citing "Inadequate staffing resources and expertise." Budgetary limitations were also prevalent, with 45% claiming this as a concern.

Interesting enough, comparatively few respondents selected "Unclear ownership of mobile initiatives" (24%) or "Lack of executive support" (21%) as a primary obstacle to mobile marketing success.

As a new and evolving tactic, it is somewhat surprising that so many surveyed marketers felt there was clear, defined ownership of mobile initiatives.

Likewise, one would think – given mobile’s relative lack of maturity as an established marketing tactic – that marketers would face more difficulty in receiving buy-in from the C-suite to execute mobile campaigns. This is especially notable, considering 45% of respondents claimed it was difficult to receive adequate funding for mobile marketing.

POINTS TO CONSIDER

Does your organization have dedicated manpower and resources for mobile marketing? Have your mobile efforts improved as a result of having designated stakeholders? Do you anticipate your mobile marketing staffing and resources to grow, or remain the same for 2013?

Has your organization provided necessary resources and support for your mobile marketing efforts? Have executives committed to continued support and growth for mobile efforts? Do you feel these resources will be adequate as your organization’s mobile efforts expand and evolve?

Where do you place responsibility for mobile marketing in your organization? With social media or email marketing, for example? Or do they expect mobile to just be a facet of a channel marketing push?

For more information about mobile marketing, download the free excerpt from the 2012 Mobile Marketing Benchmark Report. Also, be sure to share your own analysis of this chart in the MarketingSherpa LinkedIn Group for a chance to be published in a future blog post.

Useful links related to this research

Optimizing the Evolving Landscape of Mobile Email Marketing — Full Email Summit 2012 video presentation

Mobile Marketing: How Redbox drove 1.5 million texts and added 200,000 mobile participants in 10 days

Mobile Marketing: 27% of marketers don’t know their customers’ mobile adoption rate