Guide to Mobile Marketing for Small Business

Add this to the changing face of how commerce happens: More and more, it’s going mobile. Many small businesses are already using mobile marketing to spur sales, from pizza parlors, health clubs and local retailers, to real estate agents and home-based entrepreneurs.

Buying and selling via mobile devices – mainly cell phones – is accelerating rapidly in the U.S., according to findings by The Nielsen Company. Nearly 10 million U.S. mobile subscribers have already used their cell phone to pay for goods or services. No surprise that young adults (ages 25-34) are most likely to have made a purchase using their phone – about 5.4 percent of that group, compared to 3.6 of all mobile subscribers.

Websites designed specifically for mobile users are one popular way that consumers make purchases by cell phone. The “mobile web,” which basically means people browsing the web on their portable devices, has mushroomed. Here are the trends you should know:

1. Between '07 and '08, the number of shoppers who made a mobile web purchase jumped 73 percent, according to Nielsen.
2. eBay is the most popular destination on the entire mobile web, with some 3.4 million unique visitors monthly.
3. Buying via text messaging is another fast-growing form of mobile commerce.
4. Some services let consumers send text messages to a phone number or mobile short code (a number that works only via cell) in order to charge goods or services directly to their mobile phone bills. Already, 6.5 million U.S. mobile users say they’ve used texting to buy something.

One example: Milwaukee, WI-based Pizza Shuttle now offers a text message club (“Text Msg Club” in texting shorthand), that will text message subscribers up to four discount offers monthly. The effort nabbed 400 signups the first week alone.