More and more, mobile marketing initiatives are being adopted in the US. According to a study by the MMA, overall wireless phone usage is up 48%, texting is up 69% and 44 percent utilize it to communicate on a daily basis. As you can imagine, the use of mobile phones and their capabilities will only increase over time. Phones are becoming more and more capable of handling daily computing needs which serve well to our content hungry lifestyles. For some, mobile initiatives have crept onto the scene as one of the most effective mediums to reach consumers as a marketer. The ability to communicate with your target audience at any time or any place is extremely valuable. Although adoption is increasing, many still don’t understand the capabilities of their own handset and what forms of useful content it can serve up. That’s why for a while mobile will relay on traditional media tactics.

You’ll often hear the term “integrated marketing” when in the Advertising or Marketing space and at times it seems like a textbook term but media vehicles like mobile cannot survive on its own. As mobile usage is infused within our daily lives, brands can deploy mobile specific campaigns that will not have to rely on other forms of media. Until that day comes you’ll see brands utilizing vehicles such as newspapers to drive users to the their handset.

A great example of this is a company called 4Info, the leader in SMS/Text Messaging services and their recent deal with USA Today. As seen here, 4Info utilizes call to actions on many pages including the front page of USA Today to drive users to their handset to obtain valuable information such as weather, scores, stock quotes and even health tips.

USA Today also implements these call to actions on their website:

Programs like this as well as other promotional type initiatives, sweepstakes and voting mechanisms are allowing people to engage with their mobile handset in ways they never have. Ultimately, programs like these drive users to their handsets for relatively short periods of time, however, its causing them to further understand the navigation of their phone. This will only in turn allow for areas like mobile advertising to grow to be effective in the near future. It will be interesting to see what type of traffic 4Info receives do to their new increased visibility with USA Today. I plan on reaching out to obtain some information regarding this initiative so stay tuned for results.

Keep your eyes peeled for other forms of mobile call to actions whether its on the web, print or even TV. Submit any interesting programs you may find for review here at toonice4tv.com!

If you're new here at toonice4TV, please subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for tuning in!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 5:30 am and is filed under Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.