We touched briefly in our last post about mobile marketing, that emerging marketing trend in which a business can market directly to consumers via their smartphones. Here is some more information on this growing — and growing fast — marketing trend.
- According to a December article at SmallBusinessTrends.com, 20 percent of all U.S. households are “mobile only,” meaning they access the Internet only through a mobile device, not through a desktop, laptop or other “wired” device.
- There are more than four times the number of cellphones on the planet than there are PCs.
- Many experts are predicting that mobile marketing and advertising revenue will grow to $3-5 billion by 2012.
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So what does this mean for a business owner? It means you should at least start looking into marketing to your prospects via their mobiles.
Text messaging is one relatively simple way to do so. This is similar to e-mail marketing, but instead of getting e-mail addresses, you need to gather your prospects’ cellphone numbers. You can get these numbers the same way you get e-mail addresses, by capturing them via your website. You do this by offering people something — the chance to win a prize, for example.
You also can get phone numbers using “traditional” marketing (such as a newspaper or magazine ad) as well as an ad on the Internet. Many such ads invite people to call for more information and you could include a short message code, as well. Prospects could then “message” this code via their mobile phone to get information on your product and/or service. Voila, you then have their cell number.
Brick and mortar retailers can use this in in-store events. Highlight a short code at a product which people can then use to get more information about the product. This will do two things: 1) you’ll get the cell number and 2) you’ll be able to give the person the exact information about the product you want to give.
You also should be sure to build an interactive platform that allows mobile users to purchase an item right then. Otherwise you could lose customers if you can only give them information but don’t allow them to purchase the item.
Contact us here at GoiMarketing.com about marketing to your prospects via their mobile phones. We look forward to helping you capture the growing mobile market.
