How to Market Via Cell Phones

Cell phones are multi purpose communication devices in the ready hands of users, from professionals to college students. They are powerful tools that promote dynamic business connections and personal entertainment. Your business can benefit from exploring this emerging alternative phone mode to communicate with current customers or potential prospects.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Computer
• Email account
• SMS marketing service
• Cell phone

How to Plan for SMS Success

1. Select SMS. Text messaging, also known as SMS – “short message service” – complements the present media vehicles of email, web sites, RSS feeds, podcasts and ezines. SMS enables short text messages to be sent from cell phone to cell phone or from computer to cell phone. This permission-based service is ideal when your goal is communicating a short text message directly to the customer, who has agreed to receive information from you via their cell phone.

2. Research the stats. Short messages are a bonanza for wireless carriers. Business Week reports that 1.3 billion active cell phones give marketers a possible person-to-person link with consumers worldwide. The industry trade group, GSM Association, estimates that callers will send 548 billion text messages yearly. Each message costs between a penny and a dime to send, adding up to a revenue stream that’s expected to reach $27 billion per year. As cell phone models handle advanced color images, video and hi-fi sound, a river of multimedia messages will flow.

3. Pursue a plan. Chase Editor and Technology Evangelist, Ramon Ray offers a five step approach to developing a cell phone marketing plan:
   
   1. Develop a cell phone communication strategy with measurable,
   quantifiable results.
   2. Request feedback from customers, Marketing, Sales, and Technology.
   3. Start to collect customer cell phone numbers and profile information, with their permission. Treat it as private information.
   4. Look for a reputable company that can help you manage the program.
   5. Test your cell phone program with a small pilot group, before rolling it out to all customers.

4. Give to get. There is exciting potential to link the cell phone to vast databases of user profiles. A phone marketer with this data could send text messages to deliver millions of personalized pitches and ads. Technical challenges and privacy concerns have limited marketers from venturing wildly into this arena. The key to current cell phone marketing is to win customer permission to receive text ads on the phone. A typical approach involves offering a premium from free text messages to weather updates, in exchange for information about the user and permission to promote. Customers will simply message back “Stop”, if they no longer want to receive messages or ads.

5. Target teenagers. According to a survey by Enpocket, a London-based mobile marketing company, customers aged 16 to 25 actually want their phone to beep with a message six to ten times a day. The messages are a sign of popularity in their eyes. Teens welcome ads and sponsored messages on their phones.
   
   GPShopper CEO Alex Muller claimed, in USATODAY, that teens raised on the Internet respond well to text messaging via their mobile phones.
   Redemption rates of forty percent for a cell phone holiday coupon campaign, in comparison to a modest two percent for many print or online campaigns were reported.

Tips & Warnings

• Joopz provides a system where you can email a message via the Web and see customer response to you in real time. Another Net service, 4info, lets you distribute your site content to customers who request it via a text message.