Mobile Marketing on the Move

In today's world for any business no matter how big or small requires good marketing to succeed. Marketing helps in taking the product or the service of a particular business to the consumers. This therefore results in improved sales and many times in improved profits. The ways of marketing have changed a lot over the years with new ways being adopted to influence the customer and reach higher sales figures. One such technique is mobile marketing.

Any marketing practice in which any mobile device or network is used by organizations to effectively communicate with the customers can be term as mobile marketing. Mobile marketing defines two ways of marketing, that is it includes marketing which is done by moving clips or videos or doing road shows to gather the interest of the customers and it also involves marketing using a movable device such as the mobile phone. The first one is a traditional definition while the later one is a new definition clearly given due to the advancement in technology.

Mobile marketing can be done by various ways such as mobile marketing by SMS, mobile marketing by MMS, mobile web marketing, mobile marketing by Bluetooth, and mobile marketing by infrared amongst others. Mobile marketing by SMS (short message service) is highly popular as the organization simply sends a message on the mobile phone mentioning the product details and the contact details at which the interested customer can call. Due its simplicity and comparatively less costs it is popular. It is more effective when an organization intends to reach to a specific group of people only.

While only text could be sent through SMS, by mobile marketing through MMS (Multimedia Message Service), images, audio and video can also be sent. These create a better impact on the customer though they are costly. Apart from this there is a possibility that MMS facility is not available on some phones and this makes it difficult to reach out to a large number of customers. Promotional advertisements within video games are also an effective technique which many companies are now following to influence the customers.

The oldest form of mobile marketing though is mobile marketing via infra red. The problem with infrared mobile marketing is that the infrared has a very less range with maximum of 1 meter. This acts as a serious limitation for using this technique for marketing.

The advantage of mobile marketing though is not only for the producers, it is for the consumers as well. They have the comfort of getting the knowledge about a particular product or service in the market by simply sitting at their homes. It is highly suitable for those people who are too busy with their work and do not have the time to check TV or newspaper advertisements. Though it may act like a disturbance at times its effect cannot be ignored.