Mobile Marketing – Marketing Options for Small Businesses
Mobile marketing is a way for business owners to market their company’s products or services through their customers’ mobile or smart phones. This can be done through sending SMS/MMS, downloading of the company mobile applications, and transforming the company website into a website that can be browsed on a mobile browser. These terminologies and concepts may sound intimidating, expensive, or even technical, but it shouldn’t scare small business owners. By now, small business owners should accept the fact that more and more of their customers are going over to the digital side and relying on their smart phones to help them with their daily personal and business tasks.
Mobile marketing provides business owners a chance to reach out to their customers on a local or global scale, depending on their industry. However, mobile marketing is more geared towards improving local brand presence and scale, so how will a small businesses make use of a mobile marketing?
– SMS and MMS are two common features of any mobile or smart phone. SMS is the transmission of texts via a wireless network, while MMS is a transmission of both text and media via a wireless network. Ideally, small businesses can reach out to their customers by sending SMS or MMS texts. These messages would range from product release dates, schedules of sales and discounts, and other important matters. This is considered a very effective mobile marketing option because 90% of all SMS or MMS messages are opened instantly. This is a way for your business to get instantaneous and immediate recognition.
– Mobile applications are programs developed to run on a mobile OS, like Symbian and Android. Today, smartphones are equipped with Apple OS or Android and they are providing business owners a chance to create their own company application or software that will attract customers. The process sounds and looks expensive, but mobile developers can be hired at an affordable rate. These people are trained in different programming languages that will help them create your mobile application. Once the application is created, it is loaded into Android stores where customers can purchase or download them for free.
– Mobile ads are the equivalent of displaying your business’ advertisement on any mobile application. This is a cheap form of advertising because you only have to pay every time your referrer (the one who displayed your ad) has referred someone to your company website or mobile application.
Mobile marketing provides small business owners with different avenues on how to reach out to their local audience without letting them spend too much on any of these options.
