My cell phone provider is Centennial Wireless and I actually saw the first mobile marketing effort this past week directed at me.  The text read,  “Buy one ringtone at centennialwireless.com and get one free.  Happy Holidays!”  Mobile marketing is the new wave of reaching the customer personally.  When a person receives a text message, no matter what it is, they read it.  Just the other day, I was talking about this very subject with one of my friends and she said, “Whenever you get a text message, you always read it because you feel important and think that one of your friends is trying to reach you.” 

Mobile marketing has been a huge breakthrough for marketers, but will this continue with the current state of the economy.  We have already seen a decline in advertising because of the recession, but will this affect the mobile to mobile marketing efforts?  According to the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), there are now 267 million mobile phone users in the U.S.—up from 251 million at the end of Q4 of 2007.  This means that more people in the US have a mobile phone than an Internet-connected PC.  This is a very interesting fact considering that many don’t have disposable income and many are losing their jobs.   

ABI Research has found that that the current economy is not affecting  M2M marketing.  “In fact, the firm predicts that worldwide mobile messaging service revenues will grow from $151 billion in 2008 to more than $212 billion by 2013.  Additionally, Nielsen’s latest measure of mobile Internet usage shows an ongoing and steady rise, recording more than 100 million unique mobile subscribers and $1.8 billion in revenues for the second quarter of 2008.”  This is a crucial finding and shows the opportunity in M2M marketing. 

In my opinion, mobile marketing is one of the best forms of marketing out there.  It grabs my attention every time a text message is sent.  It is very hard to ignore a text message, which is what the company’s want.  It will be interesting to see what company’s do not back down and take advantage of the M2M marketing outlet during this hardship with the economy. 

Reference:

http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/