When we set up Simply Zesty nearly 3 years ago we knew that social media was about to change the world and brands and businesses would be ill equipped to deal with the rapid change. Timing was everything and we started the company with a mixture of great foresight and luck. I often  wonder what I would be doing now if I had been a couple of years late and if I was starting a new company tomorrow morning. The answer is simple, it would be a 100% mobile focused agency.

The world is changing and you only have to have a look around you on your commute to work in the morning to see it happening. People have their eyes glued to smartphones, tablets and eReaders. Mobile commerce is absolutely exploding and publishers are reporting 2011 as the year that mobile traffic started exploding in terms of percentages of people coming to their sites. Mobile is nothing new but the combination of increased connectivity, better phones, location based advertising, social media services and new commerce solutions means that mobile is entering a golden age. People watch television with a phone in their hand. Tablets are seriously starting to hurt newspaper and magazine sales. Mobile is pretty much taking over and the change in consumer behavior is astonishing to watch. By next year your mobile will probably replace your wallet and we can already talk to our mobiles using tools like Siri.

Despite all of this 99% of brands and businesses are ill prepared for this new flood of mobile tech. They literally don’t have a clue where to start. Most brands think that building an app is the solution to all their mobile problems but with over a million apps across the various platforms they are notoriously hard to promote and rarely get cut through. Many businesses have started implementing mobile sites but that is only really the tip of the iceberg and the vast majority of businesses wouldn’t even know what a mobile site was (have a look at some of the biggest businesses in your country to see how bad it is). The simple reality is that brands and businesses don’t even know that they should have a strong mobile presence yet and that presents a huge opportunity to a new breed of entrepreneurs willing to provide solutions.

You would need lots of technical expertize. Developers. People who have a strong knowledge of the likes of Google and Facebook advertising (both will have robust mobile ad platforms humming along by the end of 2012). You would also have to have lots of patience and the ability to sell because like with all disruptive technology most people don’t even know that they want to buy the knowledge you have yet. Mobile is a funny one because web development companies can do some of it but most don’t specialize and they certainly won’t do the marketing side of things. Digital agencies will still be pumping out apps for the next couple of years to support campaigns and PR firms are not even at the races. Most importantly you would have to focus. Focus on nothing but mobile. As tempting as it would be to build websites and carry out traditional advertising that will just bring you down to the level of your competitors. The opportunities are immense though because mobile is not something that is just going to go away. It would take you 2-3 years to position yourself correctly but if you started now you would be miles ahead of the curve when this stuff really hit the mainstream from a marketing perspective.

We are adding our own mobile capabilities to compliment social because the two go hand in hand but there is plenty more room for agencies all over the world to spring up who are purely focused on mobile. It will without a doubt be the next big marketing frontier. That is my free business idea for the year so just send over the check if you do go ahead and give it a go and it turns in to a huge success