There is still an amazing number of "Marketing Executives" in charge of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollar advertising budgets, that remain absolutely clueless to what Mobile Search entails, potential to create new revenue streams, or even its existence.  I was speaking with the Head of Marketing for a Resort and Spa in Australia that had never heard of Mobile Search or the existence of URL availability for .mobi for their organization.

With travel being a highly competitive landscape, it is essential that companies are strategically positioned for not only what is available now with technology to effectively market their organization, but also what is around the corner to stay ahead of the competition.

The fortunate position Australian companies are in versus their counterparts in the North American and European markets is the ability to follow trends and take a proactive approach to position themselves against competitors that are slow to adopt advanced strategies and just continue to follow the modus operandi, wing it, or just hope nothing changes. 

If you haven't reevaluated your advertising spend recently or requested a slush fund in the latest budgetary submission to safeguard against missing out on future advertising investments-Watch out!  Because one of your competitors has and you will wake up tomorrow after your comfortable slumber to realize you missed the boat and dropped the ball.  Not an enviable position to be in representing Sales and Marketing results at the next Board Meeting.

There are some recent articles that I found interesting regarding Mobile Search trends and have included a brief introduction below:

According to new findings from the Mobile Marketing Association, consumers are becoming more comfortable with the mobile search capabilities of their phones. The association found:

• 31 percent of those surveyed have used mobile search for the first in the last month, with existing users doing so an average of nine times.
• Another 48 percent said they expect to start in the next few months and estimate they would do so about once a week.
• Close to 41 percent said sponsored links would have no impact on their mobile search results.
• Searching by voice was the top-rated feature, with 37 percent saying they would be "a lot more likely" to conduct mobile searches that are voice-enabled.

There is a great deal of information that I am going to be presenting in both the Mobile Search Arena and Social Media marketing over the next few weeks-so stay tuned for more.