The scope of marketing and advertising has grown with every step of technology advancement. Advertisers and marketers leave no media or technology unused for their campaign. The world of marketing is marked by constant innovation with each passing day.
Mobile marketing is marketing a product or a brand using a mobile device. It began with SMS (Short Message Service) in 2000, in Europe and some parts of Asia, when mobile phones became popular and mobile numbers found place in business databases. With the release of mobile short codes to the companies, it became easy for consumers to interact with brands and consumer services. The consecutive stages of mobile marketing have been MMS, mobile interactive games and mobile web marketing.
With
phenomenal increase in the number of mobile users,
decrease in handset prices along with tariffs from
service providers, and the so called `Cell Evolution',
companies in India and the world over are resorting
to mobile marketing. By the end of year 2008, the
number of cellular users will be more than 100 million.
The mobile phones today have high-end features like
WAP, Sound Recording, MMS, GPRS, SMS, MP3 media players,
Bluetooth, Infrared and even office features like
Word, PowerPoint, etc. These value-added features
have become a tool for marketing. Mobile marketing
has existed for sometime: SMS and MMS are being used
for marketing special offers; and Bollywood ring tones
for movie promotion. |
