Mobile media marketing has achieved worldwide fame in the beginning of the 2000s, the time when short messaging service system or SMS started to flourish in countries across Europe, North America, and Asia. Since then, many businesses performed the same marketing tactic they had done in the then-successful email marketing campaigns. They would collect mobile phone numbers like they were email addresses, and then blast off different SMS advertisements to numerous recipients.
In 2005, just five years after SMS became an essential mobile communication tool, advertising products and services through text messages became a legitimate form of marketing in the United States and Canada and many countries worldwide. Organizations that could regulate mobile marketing practices and set rules and guidelines for businesses were immediately founded. These same organizations too would launch and are still launching several campaigns aiming to evangelize businesses to utilize the power of mobile communications.
If you’re a business owner planning to channel a part of your marketing budget to mobile advertising and promotions, don’t be afraid to jump into the bandwagon as SMS marketing is continuously and unstoppably expanding. As you read this article, hundreds or perhaps thousands of text messages are being sent by different companies to their prospective consumers, facilitating direct, personal, and interactive communication between brands and buyers.
One issue that needs to be addressed in mobile media marketing is the misconception that sending promotional text messages is plain spamming. This may be true a few years ago, but not anymore today. In the early years of mobile marketing, there were still no rules in terms of how, when, and who to send promotional messages to. Today however, given the presence of national and international bodies that police mobile business communications, people who receive promotional messages from businesses are able to do so because they are willing to accept such messages. Mobile phone service companies too are now punishable by law if they are proven to sell personal and contact information of their subscribers to third party firms.
Phone service companies are also working hard to develop programs which can help small and medium business owners utilize different mobile marketing techniques. Short codes-the four to six digit numbers that many businesses use to represent their official mobile number-are becoming cheaper and cheaper so they can be more accessible small business owners. These short codes are rented every month for a certain fee and can freely be utilized to create innovative mobile campaigns and provide consumer services.
As mentioned, there are also mobile media marketing organizations and associations that regularly provide free seminars, training sessions, and conferences to boost the development of the mobile marketing and advertising industry. These groups can give business owners a general overview on the local, national, and international status of mobile marketing and consultations on how to start off the utilization of mobile advertising and promotions in certain types of business. Because this type of marketing practice is still expanding, businesses are basically given a huge, unexplored terrain wherein they can discover and craft creative and innovative practices and techniques to engage with their target consumers more efficiently.