Mobile Marketing – Mobile Marketing Basics for Small Businesses
Mobile marketing is creating waves in the advertising lake, and every business owner from every industry is trying this new marketing campaign. But is it really meant for all types of business? It’s pretty hard to get a grasp at any marketing campaign without getting down and dirty with the basics, and mobile marketing is no exception. In fact, mobile marketing is riddled with terms that may seem intimidating to old businesses. Words like mobile application, analytics, SMS and MMS, and mobile browsing can be confusing for businesses that have been around for decades or businesses that are still transitioning to the digital side of doing business.
In summary, mobile marketing is a marketing strategy or campaign that involves the use of a mobile device. Business owners transmit information about their products and services to their consumer’s mobile phones. It sounds easy enough, but let’s get down to the technical side of things.
The core of mobile marketing is its ability to send out messages via SMS or MMS. SMS stands for Short Message Service, or more commonly known to a lot of people as texting. SMS allows people to send out messages at 160 characters per page. This is the standard used by a lot of major cell phone networks. MMS is the acronym for Multimedia Messaging Service and is defined as the ability to send multimedia messages via a wireless network from one device to another. MMS is not only limited to text because it is able to include videos, music files, and images to be sent as a message. Because the multimedia files are large, the transmission of these images is done through a 3G network. Business owners that want to send out messages to their customers need to know the difference between SMS and MMS in order to maximize the potential of mobile marketing.
When the smartphones started to dominate the market, the words mobile browsing and mobile applications were thrown around. These are relatively new tactics that have graced the mobile marketing world. Mobile browsing is the ability of a mobile device to browse the Internet via a 3G or 4G networks, or Wi-Fi. Webmasters today are geared towards developing websites that are compatible for mobile browsing. This is due to the fact that mobile browsers do not display websites as they would in a computer, so the website has to literally shrink accordingly.
Mobile applications refer to the programs made available for smartphone users. A smartphone’s OS functions like Windows or Mac, which can accommodate the installation of applications and other programs.
When you combine mobile browsing and applications, you are giving your customers a chance to view your website through their phone or you could give them an application that will demonstrate how you can help them. You can also include your business ads in the applications, and all you have to do is pay a little money.
Once you get to know these terms, it will be easy for you to forge a mobile marketing campaign for your business.