Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting to the attendees of the Advertising Association of Winnipeg Breakfast on the topic of Mobile Advertising a sub-topic of the fascinating field of Mobile Marketing. In this presentation (see below) I spoke about the increasing importance of Mobile Advertising with the explosive growth of mobile devices. According to Wikipedia, “In the twenty years from 1990 to 2010, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew from 12.4 million to over 4.6 billion.” Amazing growth and this doesn’t even consider the growth of other mobile devices like tablets such as the iPad and Blackberry playbook.

While SMS and MMS (text or text with rich media) marketing messages delivered to mobile phones  have always presented a unique marketing opportunity, mobile marketing has become an even further reaching tactic since the introduction and rapid adoption of Smart Phones and Tablet PCs. Marketers now have the ability to deliver rich interactive experiences to a growing range and number of demographics as they switch from feature phones (“dumb phones” that were restricted to text and calls only) to powerful Smart Phones with internet access. In fact by the end of 2011, Nielsen project that the number of Smart Phones in the U.S. will overtake Feature Phones.

Earlier this year Google’s Eric Schmidt admitted that mobile use is growing faster than all of Google’s internal predictions. Undoubtedly, while the market and opportunities are moving at an unexpected pace, North America and specifically Canada are behind much of the world in implementing mobile marketing. In recognition of this fact, the Canadian Marketing Association recently formed the Mobile Marketing Council with Blackberry’s creator, RIM chairing the council. The mission of this new council is to support mobile marketing in Canada and support “best practices and a point of view on how marketers can integrate this important channel into their overall marketing plans”.

Our increasingly connected society, driven by social media and web 2.0 technologies, is becoming more comfortable with using new mobile technologies such as:

• Quick Response (QR) codes
• Bluetooth/Wi-Fi Proximity Marketing
• Near Field Communication (NFC)
• SMS & MMS
• Mobile Apps
• Google Mobile Advertising
• Geolocation
• Augmented Reality

Each of these technologies opens up a world of opportunity to marketers in Canada. Now is the time to differentiate your business by exploring the world of Mobile Marketing. You can view my full presentation on Mobile Advertising and Mobile Marketing tactics below. If you have any questions or comments please comment below and if you would like more insight in to the world of online marketing I recommend signing up for our Online Marketing Tips Newsletter.

Tags: Augmeneted Reality, Bluetooth Proximity Marketing, Geolocation, Google Adwords Mobile, MMS, mobile advertising, Mobile Apps, mobile marketing, Near Field Communication, QR codes, SMS

This entry was posted by Matthew Shepherd on Thursday, April 21st, 2011 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Mobile Advertising, Mobile Marketing, Online Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.