June 21st, 2010 | Bill McIntosh, Founder

Coupons directly to your phone?

Banner ads right on your screen?

Really?

It is reality. Mobile marketing is a quickly growing segment of the market and what’s more, is it is quickly becoming very acceptable by cell phone users.

I may be a dinosaur when it comes to modern technology but I remember a time when people in restaurants would get quite annoyed when another patron would use the cell phone at the table.

Ironically I was recently sitting with my family in a restaurant and during the course of the meal everyone in the party (5 of us)  received at least one  text or a phone call or sent a text, accessed the web or made a call.

I think we will all be born with cell phones attached to us in the near future!  We’ll be passing out cigars that say: ” It’s a Droid!”

What this means for marketers is:

Now that the cell phone, in all it’s uses, is commonly accepted wherever one is, reaching out to your potential customers is now limitless.

In the article “Connecting Mobile to the Marketing Mix” (http://bit.ly/cTFVes) author Lisa Arthur writes:
“Resistance to receiving promotions such as coupons and discounts on the mobile phone is eroding. About 45 percent of survey respondents, while not enthusiastic, would accept promotions if they had some control over the process. (More evidence that consumers are most open to messages that reflect their personal preferences and interests.) (Link this sentence to previous  post “A New E-mail Manifesto.”) By contrast, in the earlier survey, only about 36 percent said they would accept these types of mobile promotions.”

That means that in the very near future the great majority of cell phone users will be completely open to receiving your marketing message on their phones.

According to CTIA (http://bit.ly/FEyKl)   there were 285.6 million cell phone subscribers in the U.S. alone as of December 2009.

The number of potential new customers for you are simply amazing.

And the ease with which Mobile Marketing can be used to reach these millions of potential customers is quite remarkable.

Ask yourself this : “Would exposure to 143,000,000 new potential customers help your business?
The world is going “mobile…and social” (a phrase I have shamelessly stolen from Bill McIntosh).

You need to be Mobile and Social as well !

Happy Marketing 🙂

Written by Carlos Gamez

Image by compujearamy

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