Ideas for Launching an Effective Mobile Promotions Campaign

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by BobMorris

Mobile phone marketing, otherwise known as SMS marketing, is the modern evolution of direct marketing. Direct marketing has always been chosen by companies as a specialized and focused method of reaching new consumers and, with the rise of mobiles, SMS marketing has risen in popularity. Mobile marketing is perhaps best defined as the practice of marketing products and services using digital distribution channels to reach consumers in a quick, appropriate, personal and cost-effective way.

The most common form of digital marketing is SMS marketing, which has expanded rapidly in Europe and Asia. It is thought that several hundred million promotional messages are sent through SMS every month in Europe alone. SMS stands for 'short message service' and is a communication form specific to mobiles where a short message can be simply sent to any mobile user. As well as sending material to consumers, advertisers can often encourage consumers to participate in promotional and brand publicity campaigns by encouraging consumers to SMS a particular number at an event in order to enter a competition, to receive a prize or to have their message displayed on a multimedia wall at an event. All of these methods involves the consumer through the medium of SMS and creates brand awareness.

There are many other methods of digital marketing. One variation is sending texts via MMS, which is a multimedia version of SMS, allowing customers to receive texts with color, pictures and video. There is also mobile web marketing, where businesses advertise marketing goals through websites accessed by cells. Advertisers often make innovative use of digital marketing such as location-based services where customers are offered tailored marketing and other network-related information and marketing information based on their location. With the range of techniques and choices available to companies, it is unsurprising that a recent marketing survey found that 89% of major brands planned to market their products through digital marketing by the end of 2008.

Mobile marketing is an example of what is known within the industry as "push" marketing. The thought behind push marketing is that that the business has to send (push) the material to the subscriber in order for the material to be received. This is opposite to "pull" marketing, a more unobtrusive form of advertising, where it is consumers who seek out the content from sources such as websites or blogs.

There are lots of advantages to digital marketing. Primarily, the attraction is that this form of promotion can be personalized to the customer. This is the ideal in marketing as it means getting the material specifically to the group it's aimed at, rather than squandering money on an broad campaign. The specificity allowed by this form of promotions, which results in a more economical campaign, is one reason why a high return on investment is possible with digital marketing. Another advantage of digital marketing is the detailed tracking and reporting of users it permits. Through this medium, companies can track how many subscribers viewed their material and also access detailed data about each subscriber such as their name, their age, their demographic and where they're located. This permits a promoter to raise profiles of their subscribers; data which then guides future marketing campaigns and, ideally, their success.

It is noted in the industry that push marketing, of which SMS marketing is a form, can help build new revenue and brand reinforcement if it is used correctly and sensitively. This is because it makes users aware of recent changes that they may not think to find already and the way the material is phrased, and even the fact that the material is being delivered by a modern, young medium such as SMS, can say a lot about a brand and a business.

There are, however, some negatives to digital marketing. By its very nature, it needs a mechanism - the mobile phone - in order to send information. The company, as well, has to make use of specific hardware and applications in order to deliver the message to consumers, which can lead to significant costs. Another negative is the fact that digital marketing is heavily regulated by the telecommunications industry in response to public concerns about what data and marketing they get shown. Most Western nations have laws in place that request businesses to get the approval of consumers before marketing information is sent to them and must clearly provide them with an 'opt out' clause if they request to stop receiving content. If companies are found to be in contravention of these laws, network providers can block marketing information by businesses.

As mobile technology grows, digital marketing will certainly continue to increase in importance.

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