Cell Phone Advertising: The Next Frontier in Making Your Sales Pitch
In January 9, 2007, Apple unveiled the iPhone
In January 9, 2007, Apple unveiled the iPhone. By the fourth quarter of the same year, more than a million units had been sold.
The success of the iPhone is just part of the story of the penetration of the entire mobile phone market in today's wired society. In the US alone, the number of mobile phone users are estimated at around 285 million in 2009. These run the whole constellation of phone brands and carriers, from simple-function models to bleeding-edge technology smartphones, but each and every one of them has that gadget that allows them to connect and be contacted anytime, anywhere (so long as there's a carrier signal, that is): the now ubiquitous cellular phone.
That mighty large number is why advertisers keenly observe the cell phone industry. Many believe that this is where the future of marketing is. Cell Phone advertising is fast becoming part of the sales toolkit for any business, be they big or small.
The first appealing thing about cell phone advertising is its reach. Let's spell that out for effect: two hundred and eighty-five million. That's the number of persons who spend each day, and most likely every hour that at least they're awake, with a cellular phone unit not more than an arm's length away. Many, if not most, of these cellular phone users would sooner leave their houses half-naked than do so without their units. They can forget most anything - to eat, to brush their teeth, maybe their wallets or to wear matching socks - but they won't forget their means of easily connecting and be connected to other people.
Compared to the more traditional types of media, the sheer number of people reachable by cellular phones and the carriers through which they link with their friends and loved ones and society in general is simply staggering. If your medium has this kind of reach, think of how effective and efficient getting your sales pitch across can be.
The second important advantage cell phone advertising is that people can't just turn it off or switch to another channel like when its time to hear a word from our sponsors. There are no buttons to press to get rid of a pop-up ad like with websites, or there is no need to click a banner.
When you send a sales pitch to a phone, people will do that almost instinctive action when the unit rings or warbles or plays some weird tone: they reach for it and check who or what it is. Instant connection. Sure, the person who got your ad through SMS or an application in their smartphone can choose to just ignore you, but the important thing here is that they've seen it. With a TV commercial, the minute the ads start running, you can bet the fingers are flying over the remote flipping through channels. With newspapers, readers can simply skip your wonderfully-crafted full-page, full-color ad. Radio listeners can simply dial their tuners to a different station, or just download their music and podcasts to their mp3 and mp4 players. Those who surf the net will move their pointers to the "x" button, or just type in a new URL.
But with cell phone advertising, the mere act of reaching out for one's cellular phone to look at why it made that familiar sound and looking at the screen and the message it is displaying can be all the opportunity your sales pitch needs. The uninterested will just press a button to make you go away. But just think about how many can be informed of your latest product or service, and will be interested in checking it out, by that single message, one they wouldn't have seen or heard in other media?
Finally, there's the costs. The crudest form of cell phone advertising can be done with a dozen people manually inputing a message and sending it via SMS, also manually. There exists some programs that can set you back by a few hundred dollars but can do the same massively for a minimum amont of effort. And there are those who make beautifully-crafted advertisements for sending to the latest smartphones that use their advanced features to get the message right to the consumer's virtual doorstep with bells and whistles not possible in a TV commercial unless you have a budget straight from a Hollywood studio.
But whether you're one person typing in "txtspeak" and sending to all the names in your phone's address book that you're selling some nice brownies, or some well-oiled, tech-savvy team making a cutting-edge ad for sending to subscribers to the latest Android phone, the costs of cell phone advertising are much cheaper than the thousands of Dollars you'll have to pay for even a ten-second spot on TV and radio, or an eighth of a page on a newspaper, black and white.
And the effectiveness of it gives you that surety that, for the money you spent in cell phone advertising, your message came across. You don't have to sit there monitoring your tracking software to see if someone has clicked your banner ad. You don't have to worry whether someone saw your expensive TV commercial or newspaper ad. You don't even have to pay some survey firm an enormous amount of money to find out if your campaign was effective.
As cellular phones increasingly become an integral part of life in the 21st century, and even some of the poorest regions in the world begin to see penetration of this amazing gadget, cell phone advertising could indeed be the next frontier in sales and marketing.
Cell Phone Advertising: The Next Frontier in Making Your Sales Pitch
By: Chris Jenkins
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