Mobile Marketing Tech for the Little Guys and Gals

I wrote last week that in 2010 we no longer have to worry about selling agencies on the value of mobile interactivity. What I didn’t think about, though, was that smaller agencies still need to work hard to convince their clients that mobile marketing is a good place to spend ad dollars. Especially if and when their clients are smaller customers who are immersed in their own retail shop and have neither the time nor the inclination to follow emerging media trends.


So, for the agencies working hard to sell to small and medium sized businesses, here are some facts to sprinkle into the next sales pitch:

• While overall Ad spending was down 15% in 2009, mobile marketing spending grew 62% to 2.6 billion USD (AdAge, JPMorgan 2009)
• Of that 2.6b USD spent on mobile marketing, 2.3b was spent on text messaging (JPMorgan)
• From June 2005 to June 2009, monthly SMS’s sent jumped from 7.5b to 135billion. Annualized, that’s 1.36 trillion messages per year. (CTIA 2009)
• On average, Americans send and receive twice as many text messages as phone calls per month (Nielson Mobile)
• American teens (ages 13 – 17) sent and received an average of 1742 text messages per month in Q2 2008. (Nielson Mobile)
• Text message usage among people in their 40s jumped from 56% to 64% (Vlingo 2009)
• The number of mobile data users who recalled seeing advertising jumped 38%, from 42 million to 58 million, between Q2 and Q4 2007 (Nielson Mobile).
• 51% of mobile data subscribers who saw an ad responded to it by sending a text-message, clicking on it, or calling a specific number. (Nielson Mobile).

What kinds of mobile marketing works for small retailers? Mobile coupons, mobile quizzes, text alert opt-ins, mobile polling. Give us a call or an e-mail to discuss how we can help your clients mobilize their marketing.