Mobile commerce engagement is the marketing strategy of the future

If experts in the mobile payments industry were making a "what's in, what's out," list for 2013, it would read: social media engagement, out, mobile commerce engagement, in.

No one is advising businesses to give up their Facebook pages, but using them a little differently might be lucrative. Relying on social media to bolster mobile commerce and increase in-store traffic at the same time, retailers need to use mobile interaction as the trigger that drives the connection.

"I predict that smart retailers will start bridging the social-mobile engagement gap by linking physical stores to mobile experiences that offer the option for transactions when the intent to buy is the strongest," Wilson Kerr, vice president of business development and sales at Unbound Commerce, told Mobile Commerce Daily.

Focusing on electronic payments made through smartphones and tablets with debit, credit and prepaid ACH cards will provide businesses with a trackable return on investment if they are well-integrated with stores' existing ecommerce operations, Kerr said.

Chris Mason, co-founder and CEO of Branding Brand in Boston, told the newspaper he advises businesses to design their online and offline marketing efforts based on the belief that payments made by smartphones and tablets are edging out online sales made from desktops and laptops.