The mobile phone has become every bit as feature-packed as most home computers, and the advantages they have over the standard computer are undeniable. Likewise, the advantages that mobile marketing has over standard internet marketing are significant indeed. Your competition is lower and your response rate is so much higher with mobile marketing, internet marketing can’t even come close.

Because of this, more and more businesses are turning to mobile marketing in order to remain highly competitive…and cost effective, There are a few different ways they go about this, but perhaps the most popular is what is known as SMS text marketing. “SMS” stands for short message service and it is, as its name would suggest, short. In fact, you will be offering your entire offer in 160 characters or fewer.

This type of marketing platform is effective on two main fronts. Firstly, the messages are sent directly to your prospects and customers. There is no need for you to wait and hope that they find your message. You deliver the message right to them. Secondly, you are essentially marketing to an opt-in list of folks who have agreed to receive your messages. This isn’t the old days of cold calling.

What really makes this method of marketing so powerful is the deliverability of your messages. Standard email marketers would be thrilled to have a 30 or 40 percent response. In fact, that would be HUGE for most online marketers. But with SMS text marketing, you are likely to have a near 100 percent response. As a matter of fact, studies have indicated that 97 percent of all text messages are opened within 4 minutes. Your potential response rate is HUGE.
In addition, because these messages are so short in nature, you don’t have to write as much to get your point across. Yet it is so powerful that it can make it addicting! You can literally run an entire SMS text marketing campaign in a matter of minutes or hours, rather than days or weeks.

Tracking is important to any type of advertising, and SMS text message marketing is certainly no exception. You are able to fully track everything about each message you send out, including messages delivered and opened, click-through rates, and conversions. This is extremely powerful data that can help you increase your revenues exponentially over time.

Now, what about Mobile Websites? Great question!

For someone who’s never seen the full version of your site, the mobile version may be their first impression of your company. And, as you know, making a good first impression is one of the first rules of any business. Having a gaping hole where a flash graphic should be; background colors that make text hard to read; or pages with wide displays that require viewers to scroll left, right, up, and down just to get through one sentence can all make a mobile viewer jump ship and go to another site. (Maybe even your competitor’s!) Having to constantly zoom in-and-out is anything but enjoyable.

Now that users can access your site from a variety of different devices, it’s time to make sure your site is designed to cater to them all.

Mobile-friendly websites typically consist of a single column layout that auto-fits the width of the device’s screen, requiring only a vertical scroll to view the whole page, images that don’t require zooming, and large, easy-to-press hyperlinks that let visitors call your company with a simple click-of-a-button (or touch-of-the-screen, as the case may be). With an easy-to-read, inviting mobile website, you can encourage web traffic, both for new visitors and for your current customers who may want to stay updated or review their order status while on the go.