How to Make Mobile Marketing Work for your Business

One of the main reasons the mobile platform is gaining momentum as a marketing tool is because of its enormous growth potential. The number of mobile phone users is almost double that of PC owners — and growing exponentially every year.

Mobile marketing is fast becoming the most feasible way to boost sales, spread awareness about your business, and create customer loyalty. Keep in mind however, that mobile marketing campaigns may require more capital that you had planned. You don't want to spend money only to put out a lackluster campaign.

How Mobile Marketing Works

Opt-in SMS (Short Message Service) campaigns are one of the most popular and widely used mobile marketing strategies. It’s simple and effective. Customers voluntarily provide their cell phone number to business so that they can receive special promotional offers and alerts as text messages.

Businesses then use these phone numbers to send SMS alerts to inform customers about new happenings, re-orders, and special promotions.

Another form of mobile marketing is via advertisements that are specifically designed for mobile web pages. This works as an effective way of driving target traffic to your real website. Customers trying to locate musical instrument using Google on their mobile phone might come across an ad for a musical instrument store located nearby.

The Potential of Mobile Marketing for Your Business

A few reasons that mobile marketing has such huge potential for businesses include:

• Mobile phones are portable. Look around. People carry them everywhere. Users can be reached anytime and anyplace where there's a signal. This increases the odds of businesses reaching out to their customers at opportune moments — when they are making major buying decisions.
  
  
• This ready access to customers also makes it easier for businesses to establish and strengthen a one-to-one relationship with their customers through their mobile phones.
  
  
• Mobile marketing campaigns are generally initiated using opt-in strategies, making it highly targeted. Customers who receive promotional offers or discount coupons through their mobile phones are more likely to be receptive, especially users already in the marketplace physically.
  
  
• SMS messages are also more likely to reach their target and be read as compared to promotional e-mails sent to a computer, where they can be routed to the spam folder.
  

The Pitfalls of Mobile Marketing for Your Business

The major mobile marketing pitfall for businesses is the very personal nature of cell phones. A mobile marketing campaign is essentially an intrusion into a customer’s private space and has to be handled correctly. For a mobile marketing campaign to be successful, just like email, you must have permission via some type of opt-in. Spamming is spamming, whether through email or phone.

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