Some of the information Marriott mentioned in her articles I had heard of but a lot of the information is so new and always changing that I hadn't even considered where mobile marketing could be taking the future of advertising. Mobile marketing is the most personal marketing channel available on the market. At first glance I wasn't quite sure I believed this because cell phones being more personal??? But they truly are, people are so caught up with their mobile phones now that the advertisements come right to them. Another interesting fact I found was that mobile marketing is completely permission-based. Since opt-ins are required for text messaging campaigns only people who opt-in will receive the message. Along those same lines mobile marketing is the most powerful loyalty marketing tool, which makes sense because if a person signs up to receive something or pays for something on their phones they are going to be checking it frequently. A really interesting fact I found about this type of marketing is that in the past year the adoption of text messaging campaigns has grown 200% in the past year, which is more than any other medium, including the Internet and outdoor marketing. This is crazy. How did we ever live without cell phones??? I don't even have the Internet on my phone but I am on it a lot, I can't imagine having Internet access on my phone. I don't think I would be able to put it down...I hope it wouldn't consume me.
Although I don't have Internet access from my phone, I do use a lot of the applications on my computer. Some of these include Shutterfly and Snapfish (photo sharing), YouTube and Hulu TV (video sharing) and Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook (social networking). These aren't the only applications available, the mobile applications market is growing by leaps and bounds. In the end I really enjoyed researching this topic. It really helped me get a small grasp on what is happening now in the world of mobile marketing and a bit of what is to come.
