NEW YORK ? Coca-Cola and MasterCard executives at the 2015 Mobile Marketing Association Forum New York urged other brands to partake in fact-based mobile marketing to insure that all facets of a company understand the potential of mobile and its wide consumer reach.

During the ?Participating Marketers Discuss the Impact of the Research on their Future Marketing Efforts? session, executives from MasterCard, Coca-Cola and Marketing Evolution highlighted their experiences taking part in the Mobile Marketing Association?s Smart Mobile Cross Marketing research study, also known as SMoX. They stressed the importance of leveraging data to help other executives understand that mobile spend is an imperative part of a brand?s budget, and that research reports such as SMoX can show individuals what is possible with the help of mobile.

?While everybody in this room has a mobile device, they don?t have the empirical data or the fact-based foundation for what they?re doing,? said Tom Daly, group director of global connections at The Coca-Cola Company, Atlanta, GA. ?It?s really important to bring to the discussion a set of facts.?

Potential for mobile
While bigger brands are already allocating parts of their media budgets to mobile, others must begin getting executives from various departments more exposed to where the future of marketing is headed. Research studies such as SMoX offer marketers the tools needed to undertake analysis and decipher the results.

?When you think about MasterCard, it is a technology company,? said Adam Broitman, vice president and senior business leader of global digital marketing at MasterCard, Purchase, NY. ?We don?t issue credit, we process the payments.

?Increasingly, the way we distribute our product is via the mobile device. It?s really a no brainer that we want to be part of a groundbreaking study like this, and we want to be first to market with some of these practices.?

Mr. Broitman advised brands to be aware of the fact that while they can spend more on certain types of media that work best for their needs, they can also be more efficient by wasting less. MasterCard learned which various media types worked through the research, and found that video offered a richer experience and more of an impact.

Therefore, the brand is content with spending more on video in social media, as it is proven not to be a waste of dollars.

Learning from results
The SMoX research study involved several of the nation?s top brands, but the participants argue that many smaller companies can benefit from its learnings. 

?If you are a smaller organization reading these results, I would argue there?s a lot to think about here,? Coca-Cola?s Mr. Daly said. ?It gives all the teams, particularly in the United States, something to think about.?

Organizations must also be flexible in incorporating research results and experimenting with mobile marketing efforts if they do not have a tried-and-true strategy cemented yet.

?We had made change more complicated in the past than it needs to be,? said Rex Briggs, CEO of Marketing Evolution, Sacramento, CA. ?Don?t lock in all of your budget 100 percent up front.

?Keep 20 percent flexible.?

Ultimately, mobile has helped MasterCard, Coca-Cola and countless other major brands target consumers more effectively via data such as location, time of day and type of device used.

?There are these nuances and differences that you can absolutely explore to increase ROI quite a bit,? Mr. Briggs said.

Final Take
Alex Samuely is an editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York