5 Ways Mobile Marketing Beats Print Marketing is the ninth in a series of articles that we'll be posting this fall. Small Business Marketing Tips To Build Sales In A Down Economy will teach you how to use do-it-yourself tools like SMS, email and social media to effectively market your business.
Entry By Jason Brick
When you're ready to add mobile marketing to your in-place marketing plan, you'll have to learn some new tricks. Maybe you want to replace more traditional methods with a mobile message, or maybe you're thinking about expanding your mobile platform at the expense of some other options. Whatever the reason, consider these five ways mobile outperforms print, radio and television.
1. Affordable Expandability
Although you get some discount for scale, 1,000 fliers cost significantly more than 100 fliers. The larger the audience, the more you'll pay for print and on-air ads. With mobile marketing, you'll pay a bit extra for bandwidth if you're broadcasting on a very wide scale, but for most small businesses, expanding your reach won't mean significantly increasing your budget.
2. Instantaneous Response
Mobile marketing is a conversation. As your opt-in list expands, you know exactly how many people are receiving your message. Polls, contests, and discounts for responses, will tell you exactly how many people that broadcast engaged. This lets you know in real time which messages worked and which ones didn't. That's a lot better than waiting until next year to tweak your Yellow Book spot.
3. Greater Engagement
Modern consumers want to feel invested and involved. If they don't, they'll just find the cheapest offer online. You can make your broadcast list feel like a club, by being responsive to replies. The more you encourage this feeling, the better the results. Ironically, this means you can create the personal touch in a broadcast to hundreds or thousands of contacts.
4. Simpler Process
Even a quarter-page, black-and-white newspaper spot requires graphic design, compelling copy, and formatting. Your mobile message is a short series of characters you can knock off in a few minutes. It's true that you'll have to put some thought and attention into what those characters say -- but you won't have to worry about all the aesthetic trappings that accompany traditional marketing.
5. Contact Sharing
Sharing a print coupon means mailing it or handing it to someone. Sharing a TV ad means recording it and showing it -- or at least uploading it to YouTube. If a fan likes your mobile message, though, he can immediately forward it to other people he thinks might also appreciate it. Some of those recipients will opt in for your broadcast -- a benefit that did not exist for earlier marketing methods.
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