A new survey conducted by R2integrated (R2i) discovered several reasons why marketers are still showing reluctance to the concept. Primarily, a general lack of understanding and a way of quantifying the return on investment were two areas respondents indicated were of most concern.

Still, 22% of survey respondents said that mobile marketing is “very important” to their overall marketing strategy for 2010, while 26% said “important” and 28% said “somewhat important.” Overall, only 8% said “not important,” while the majority of respondents, 41%, said their main reason for executing a mobile marketing campaign was “company awareness,” followed by “lead generation” at 33%.

Not understanding how to fully determine ROI was deemed the “most critical area of improvement” for planned mobile marketing campaigns among respondents at 43%, while 49% said an increase in customers would measure a successful campaign. With so many mobile channels to utilize, the apparent ambiguity surrounding the concept for most marketers, and a lack of certain analytics all make determining and planning for ROI more difficult. “It appears that 2010 will be a year of experimentation and education on mobile marketing as marketers struggle to come to terms with its practicality and ROI,” said Matt Goddard, co-founder and CEO, R2i. “This shouldn’t suggest that marketers ought to table their mobile marketing plans, but that they should pay considerable attention to how they can connect the dots back to driving revenue.”

The most interesting aspect of the survey was how respondents plan to utilize mobile marketing; more than half (52%) of respondents said that their mobile marketing campaign would focus on mobile Web site development, while 40% said they would focus on mobile application development. When asked to rate the importance of mobile platforms, 59% of respondents said the iPhone and 40% said the BlackBerry were “very important,” while only 7% thought that Android was a “very important” platform. Blackberry never seems to be high on the list of attractive mobile platforms for mobile app developers, so this struck me as surprising.

“I think because the technology is still working to fully prove itself, most marketers are playing it safe by focusing on the mobile browsing experience, where they can leverage existing Web assets, rather than on mobile marketing where the ROI proposition is still being evaluated,” said Goddard. “The iPhone still reflects the largest base for marketers to sell into even though Android may be the platform du jour in terms of hype.”