The Advantages of Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing has huge potential for businesses and customers and even though it is presently not well known predictions indicate that within the next three years more than half of those using the internet will be accessing the web through handheld devices and mobiles. This type marketing is more than just bombarding people with SMS or texting messages, it also involves mobile applications and mobile friendly websites where marketers can target much larger audiences. In addition, with the greater abundance of mobile phones marketers will be able to deliver ads specifically to these users and as GPS systems become more popular marketers will know the location of the users and send appropriate ads to individual users. For example, someone walking near a Starbucks could be sent an advertisement for a specific drink like a caramel latte with a coupon attached which would be a great enticement for that person to buy the latte.

Many users who also connect with social media applications like FourSquare, a location-based social networking website, are becoming more numerous and are being targeted by area shopping malls and stores. It is predicted that within the next decade goods and services will be sold and paid for via mobile connections.

Politicians have already begun successfully using mobile phones for campaigns as seen when the then Senator Obama took advantage of the near universal usage of cell phones by younger Americans who were potential voters and to whom were sent political text messages. This trend of capitalizing on mobile marketing by politicians and others will grow as the general population increases their use of smart phones and other devices which become their primary method of communicating and gathering information. It is also possible that grassroot organizing and advertising will be done through social networking rather than in offices and meetings.

The international technology or IT research company, Gartner, has predicted that within the next three years over half of the current internet users will be accessing the web using mobiles and other handheld devices. Additionally in “The State of Marketing 2010" results recently released by Unica the survey stated that almost half of the marketers surveyed had already begun using social medial marketing and such usage is across most of the social media outlets including Twitter, Facebook and blogs. Their conclusion was that “marketers need to think more about integrating social media with other marketing tactics”