Mobile Advertising : A New Communication Media :: Mobile Phones Cell Phones Technology

Mobile Advertising : A New Communication Media Mobile marketing is becoming the most productive and cost effective medium for reaching a highly desirable demographic. It purposes are numerous : canvassing, building up customer loyalty and of course selling. The mobile phone is a good tool to exchange information with customers with several medium : Small Message Service (SMS), Mini Message Service (MMS), video MMS or internet. Today, it is also possible to pay with your mobile phone and some people think that mobile-phones will replace credit-cards or loyalty-cards in a next future. The mobile marketing is born thanks to a huge development of high-technologies, which allow to have high-performances cell-phones. It is particularly targeted on young people, who use cell phones of the new generation. The market on mobile marketing should reach 150 millions of dollars in 2006 (three times more comparing to 2005). The market will grow very quickly to reach 1 billion of dollars in 2009. Companies such as AvantGO were born, just in order to provide services in terms of Mobile Marketing Advertising and Campaigns. Services provided include a huge database and mobile research surveys. Some major companies trust in AvantGo to build their mobile website : American Airlines or Rolling Stone for instance. Building up customers loyalty : it is common acknowledged that it costs about five times less to build up loyalty with a customer than to find another one. That is why companies have to focus on existing customers. And because they often have a databases with a lot of information about their customers (including mobile phone numbers), sending SMS or MMS is an easy way to reach customers. And when effective, this type of campaign can contribute to significant brand awareness and loyalty, especially for a young demographic. Today most ambitious marketers try to associate a specialist ringtone or wallpaper with their brand. They are convinced that it could spread awareness of their own brand. Canvassing : the method to canvass people with mobile marketing is not difficult. Companies have to buy a cell-phone database or to constitute it by their own, corresponding to their respective targets and then to send a message and/or pictures. They can ad an internet website, a call-centre number. Selling: in Japan and South-Korea it is already possible to pay small bills like restaurants, cinema seats or public transports with mobile phones. The concept is being tested in the USA now.