Who do you know that doesn’t have a mobile phone these days? Pretty much everyone has one, don’t they… Is it any wonder mobile phones have now reached over 4.6 BILLION worldwide? Estimates show that mobile phones and other mobile devices will be the primary way to access the internet by 2020.

So, what does this mean to your business? Well, picture this: Most people take their mobiles with them everywhere they go, so what better way to connect with them when they are on the move and away from their desk.

This is vital, because, unless you have the ability to communicate to them via their mobile phones, you are off their radar – out of sight and out of mind.

Mobile marketing allows small business owners the ability to easily reach consumers, directly into the palm of their hand – anytime and anywhere.

Mobile marketing for small businesses is really taking off fast right now. There are so many new marketing strategies and applications in the mobile space every day, that the possibilities are endless.

A few examples are:

• Mobile Coupons
• Mobile Donations
• Mobile Subscription
• Mobile Lead Capture
• Mobile CV/Resume
• Appointment Reminders
• Mobile Event Tickets
• Travel Tickets etc.

8 Benefits of Mobile Marketing

1 Instant

Mobile marketing campaigns are fairly easy to create and can be delivered to recipients almost instantly.

2 Reach

The delivery rate of your marketing messages to mobile phones is far closer to 100%. This can make your marketing budget reach just so much further.

With direct mail you will never really know how many of your marketing pieces were delivered to prospects.
In the case of email marketing, email service providers can easily block your messages as spam, just for the use of  the “wrong” choice of words or phrases.

Allowing prospects to opt-in via shortcodes or 2D barcodes to mobile marketing campaigns, allows far less room for errors.

Consider the old way of doing it:

• Collect prospects details via paper based lead generation forms.
• Enter details manually.

Every misspelling of a email address or a missing digit to a mobile number can leave serious amounts of cash on the table. Just consider what each prospect on your database is worth to your business.

3 Mobility

Customers can receive your marketing message on their mobile phone and devices anytime and anywhere.

4 Affordability

The cost of sending SMS marketing messages  and other mobile marketing strategies are very cost effective. You can save even more with some providers for “bulk orders”.

5 Effectiveness

Studies show that 95% of mobile phone users open text messages received, while 85% of message are opened within 15 minutes. Add to that response rates as high as 24% and case studies that show almost 30-fold ROI.

6 Personalisation

Mobile Marketing can be very personalised with content being delivered to users who requested that specific information.

7 Compliments other forms of marketing

Mobile Marketing is highly complementary to other forms of marketing, online and offline. In particular, mobile marketing allows offline marketing such as TV, radio and print media to be able to track their results easily, which otherwise would be hard to do.

8 Viral communication

Mobile technology encourages viral marketing with built-in tools for forwarding marketing messages easily, by sharing them with contacts via SMS, MMS, email etc.

Things to consider are:

• Your business objectives for using mobile marketing.
• Pricing plans – be sure to choose a pricing structure to fit your needs and budget.
• Detailed analytics - track as many usable metrics of your campaigns.
• Customer support – easily contactable eg, email, live chat, ticket submission or via the phone.
• Customer training – ensuring you get the most value out of the tools.
• Split testing – the ability to test different versions of your message to find which have the hightest conversion rates.
• List Segmentation – narrow your market to send specificly targeted focused messages, ie via demographocs, gender, job title etc.
• Current mobile contact list – most companies allow you to import your current contacts via .csv files
• Additional features – some providers intergrate additional marketing features, eg: Audio/Video Marketing, Social Media Marketing etc, these can be invaluable to your business.

With many different mobile marketing service providers available, and so many possible applications for mobile marketing technology, you will need to decide what your own business requirements are.

A final, but significant consideration is whether you will manage your own mobile marketing campaigns, or would you require the expert services of a mobile marketing consulting agency?