It appears that every year is going to be the year of mobile advertising - and already the first articles claiming that 2010 will be the year of mobile advertising are starting to appear. The problem is, that it never seems to pan out - at least not for small businesses. The Denver Business Journal recently featured an article about how 2010 was going to be a big year for mobile media - "Reach your on-the-go consumers by mobile media".
The author of the piece - Ken Barber - provides some good insight and it is a very interesting read. I do disagree somewhat with his opinion that 2010 has a "mobile marketing revolution" in store. Larger companies in hypercompetitive niches that advertise on a national level will certainly want to ramp up their involvment in mobile advertising. For most Denver Small Businesses - with a couple of notable exceptions - mobile advertising is something to be aware of now and to implement later. The mobile market is just too small right now for most Denver Small Business owners to get a good ROI on their efforts - and their marketing resources would be better spent elsewhwere.
From the article:
U.S. smart-phone sales rose to one-fourth of all mobile sales during the third quarter of 2009, and will top 40 percent in the fourth quarter and 50 percent by mid-2011.
I'm thinking the 2011-2012 timeframe will provide a better chance at providing ROI for mobile marketing efforts for Denver small businesses. We're just not there yet.
Author and highly respected small business marketing expert John Jantsch also had a blog post about how to harness mobile marketing recently. He's understandably bullish on the future of mobile marketing - his blog post is a very good one and contains tons of mobile marketing related resources - one of the most comprehensive lists I have ever seen. This post is worth a look for the great information Jantsch provides.
Mobile Marketing Isn't A Must For Most Denver Small Businesses
Clearly, mobile phones with full browser capabilites are starting to get a foothold with consumers, and as a Denver Small Business owner, you need to pay very close attention to this trend. Just recently, I purchased a Droid - and I love it. It provides me full Internet capability and keeps me very productive while I'm away from my office.
For your marketing message to reach the increasing number of mobile phone users, you will eventually have to get with the program and make sure that your Denver Small Business is participating in mobile advertising campaigns - just not yet.
From my earlier blog post - Should my Denver Small Business Ads Appear on Mobile Phones, I reference a study which showed that of the total ad impressions for online text ads - just 1% were people browsing on mobile devices. Another study was recently released and cited on Tech Crunch - Only about 1% of all web page views are done via mobile. Even if this number explodes during 2010, and increases 500% - we're still looking at a tiny fraction of ad impressions that are associated with mobile phone users. Your time will be better spent building and optimizing ad campaigns for people viewing your text ads on their computer.
How Does this Help Me to Market My Denver Small Business?
Don't Worry About Mobile Advertising If....
- Your Denver Small Business isn't even running ads on AdWords or Microsoft AdCenter
- Your business advertises locally, to a very narrow audience
- Your business targets an older demographic not likely to purchase a smartphone
- Your primary focus is on obtaining new customers or clients
Mobile Advertising represents a tiny fraction of Internet users. For most businesses advertising locally, mobile ads would likely be reaching too small an audience of users to be worthwhile at the present time. Most Denver small businesses need to focus on the big piece of the pie - conventional web browsers running on good old-fashioned computers. Optimize that first before moving on to mobile. There are some exceptions as noted below.
Definitely Look at Mobile Advertising if....