SEM Blog: Website Marketing Blog

What About Mobile Marketing?

Posted by Bryan at April 3rd, 2008

The mobile market has expanded to the point where many people rely primarily on their cell phone. Almost all cell phones currently available are capable of receiving SMS text messages and accessing the internet. With the average consumer having their cell phone on hand more often then their laptop, this market is perfect for taking advantage of but also requires a bit of finesse or you’ll wind up turning your audience away.

Before you even start thinking about Mobile Marketing, I highly encourage you to become familiar with the Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA) Best Practices Guidelines and their Mobile Advertising Guidelines to fully understand what’s considered acceptable protocol and what isn’t. Also, the Mobile Marketers Mobile Outlook 2008 is a great read for more detailed information on the topic.

The options are really limitless in this form of marketing as each day it seems that cell phones become that much closer to becoming a laptop. Starting with the basic SMS text messaging and MMS marketing, you have the option of providing one or two way communication with your audience. Your audience can opt in to receive your marketing material, respond back to you to request more or different material, and even submit information to you that you can use in a number of ways. Advertising on mobile sites is a viable option now as well and even google adsense has broken into that market. But it doesn’t just stop there, games and applications for your phone are full of advertisements and sponsorships and you paid for them.

Having been a big fan of the Heroes TV Show, I actually opted into their mobile marketing campaign which is fairly viral. I was sent at least one text message a week, offered a gateway to their WAP site, and even asked to reply back to them and help figure out clues for some mystery relevant to the show. It was very captivating in a viral marketing sense. Also, if you have frequented a bar recently, you’ll notice several of them have a tv screen advertising unit they call BarCast which lets you text and picture message their service and have that broadcast on the advertising board.

The options really are limitless, but the audience is a lot more thin skinned about how you approach the situation.