The future of mobile marketing looks brighter than ever after the Mobile Marketing Association recently conducted a study which predicts that the mobile market will add over $400 billion in incremental output as well as close to 1 million new jobs by the year 2015. The study was not just meant to encourage spending on mobile, which should be obvious to any marketer by now, but it was also a piece to the Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA) continuing efforts to head off possible regulation of the mobile marketing industry. If new regulations were to be put in place, it could slow down or even stop job growth. Using the study, they wanted to highlight the fact that the industry has a vast array of job creation opportunities on the horizon and that regulations would only hinder this growth.

“Asking a bunch of people who are unfamiliar with mobile marketing to set up a digital policy might inhibit innovation,” said MMA’s CEO Greg Stuart. “Let’s not stifle job growth.”

Taking a closer look at the study, it specifically projected jobs in the mobile marketing field to increase from 524,000 in 2012 to 1.4 million in 2015. It also projected that spending on mobile marketing will more than double from $6.7 billion in 2012 to around $20 billion by 2015. Do the math and that comes out to a 52% growth rate in just 2 short years!

Additionally, the study also predicts that sales using mobile devices will dramatically increase from $139 billion in 2012 all the way up to $400 billion in 2015. So if you are a marketer and you have not gone mobile yet, you are missing out on all that money! Taking into account that the industry has already been trending upwards over the last 5 years, it is apparent that mobile has nothing but a bright future ahead of it. Make sure you’re a part of it.

Another finding in the study was that the industries and companies who spent the most on mobile also experienced the highest returns on investment from the medium.

Joe Plummer, Professor of Marketing at the Columbia School of Business and a lead researcher for the study, gave his take, “Historically, spending in all other mediums eventually flattens out and declines. We don’t see that curve in the data that we have,” he said. “We looked at the sales of high-end and low-end spenders in mobile, and while the correlation is not 1.0, it was in a positive direction.”

He also mentioned that the study was based off of federal agency research, academic journals, and primary research along the likes of surveys and interviews.

So as you can see, the future of mobile looks very promising and will only continue to grow and increase in both spending and job creation. Now is as good a time as ever to get started on your mobile marketing initiative! With thousands of companies having already gone mobile and getting proven results, you have no reason NOT to want to launch a mobile marketing campaign. You will not have a DeLorean to go back and fix the mistake of not going mobile when you should’ve, so take advantage of the opportunity you have right now to go mobile and watch your bottom line grow!