Recently eMarketer claimed that mobile ad spending will finish as high as 80% up from last year, at a total of US$15.8 billion. With overall digital spend ballooning 13% to US$117.6 billion.
This is a significant increase by anyone’s standard, and shows that consumers are becoming more and more akin to seeing advertisements on their phone. But mobile ads are not the only way to find the handsets of your consumers. Going back to the age old saying, “it costs 5 times more to acquire a customer than to retain a customer” should you be more focussed, or at least as keen to hit the handsets of your current customers?
There is a communication channel that has an amazing ROI and that will ensure that you can appear on the handset of someone you already have a relationship with – someone that already trusts your brand and likes your products or services. This communication channel is the humble SMS. Not only is it the only ubiquitous messaging platform for the mobile phone, but it also boasts amazing readership statistics, such as 98% of SMS messages are opened compared to just 22% of marketing emails (Frost & Sullivan) or that 70% of people who took part in a particular study indicated that they had previously responded to an SMS message (Direct Marketing Association). Also, it only takes, on average, 90 seconds to respond to an SMS compared to 90 minutes for an email (CTIA).
SMS is still in its infancy here in Australia, with only a handful of companies taking advantage of this marketing tool. Although it is also worth noting that it is not only great for marketing, but it is also the perfect medium for time critical messaging and customer relationship building. With SMS still being an untapped medium, it cuts through all the other noise people find in their emails or post, and lands straight into the user’s hand, or pocket.
Is it time you thought about using SMS within your business?
