According to Business Day, a Nigerian newspaper, local mobile advertising is going to be huge. Mobile advertising in general is expected to gross $10 billion by the year 2011 . . . an astounding number and one that shows how important it is that you get in now before there is much competition!

According to Naphtal, what is certain is that this industry is growing, and growing fast. By attending the summit, delegates will learn how to take advantage of new revenue streams to drive growth in mobile data usage and generate highly profitable advertising revenue.
Naphtal said that the summit is the foremost event of the year dedicated to communication and loyalty on the mobile in the emerging markets.

At the moment, local mobile marketing is still a relatively fresh field, but it is one that is expected to open up fairly rapidly, as you can see. The advantages for anyone getting in early is that people aren´t jaded by text messages and online mobile ads. It´s a very narrow window, but right now is the perfect opportunity to start using local mobile marketing while it is still new and fresh!

Local mobile marketing can be an excellent way to get some publicity, but it can also be an excellent way to lose money if you aren´t careful. That´s why it pays to start your campaign off slowly and gradually build up to the point where you can really determine which marketing techniques work best for you.

Rather than leaping into paid downloads and such, start your local mobile marketing campaigns a bit smaller. Text messages are perfect for this. Sending short text messages will catch people´s attention (consumers aren´t immune to these yet, unlike emails!) and give you the opportunity to make contact and possibly turn it into some sales.

When writing your short text messages, you´ll need to keep it snappy and make sure that people will want to respond just by reading them. As you progress, moving on to banners and proper ads can be more profitable, but still a step down from the full on downloads. Getting your bearings in the new world of local mobile marketing is a great idea and you´ll have better results in the long run because you´ll know what you are doing by the time you start shelling out some real cash.

Local mobile marketing is still a fairly untapped method of marketing, but it will soon be big. More and more companies are learning about new techniques for advertising and local mobile marketing is one of these methods that is very popular. Here´s why:

• In the US, there are 2x as many mobile phones as PCs, making local mobile marketing wider reaching.

• Regular internet ads have around 1% response rate, while mobile ads have a whopping 5%.

• People carry their cell phone with them wherever they go, making them accessible day and night, whether they are home or off somewhere else.

• Phones don´t yet have spam filters, meaning that it is easier to get worthwhile messages through to the end user.

• Once a customer responds to an ad, you have an in and can continue sending them relevant messages.

• You can actually give shoppers information that they can use while deciding which brand to buy right there in the store.

• It´s estimated that people will eventually access the internet more often on their mobiles than their PCs, making local mobile marketing even more effective.

Local mobile marketing is definitely something to consider. You can have a mobile opt-in list, the same as you would do with email lists, ensuring that only those who are actually interested will be receiving your messages. It´s going to be big, but as always, getting in early makes all the difference.

The latest trend in local mobile marketing is pay per call advertising. With this method, mobile users are presented with an ad that gives them a phone number to call for more information. It´s a great way to get new leads with local mobile marketing, but it can be pretty pricey in comparison to pay per click leads online . . . is it really worth it?

Studies have shown that personal interaction is the best way to make a sale and with a phone call, you have the opportunity to interact with the caller. This makes pay per call a very valuable method of local mobile marketing. You are aiming at people in your area, so you can offer local service which tends to be a huge plus for consumers.

It is pretty evident that local mobile marketing is the wave of the future, but with options like pay per call, it could be even more effective for businesses. After all, no one is going to call if they aren´t at least a little interested in your business and talking to a good salesperson can convince many hesitant buyers to make the leap, something you simply don´t get the opportunity to do when someone comes to your website.

For all these reasons, and the fact that a person who calls your business after seeing a local mobile marketing ad is more likely to be looking to purchase, pay per call is being embraced by many local businesses. It may cost more, but most agree that the benefits are far greater, too.

Mobile phones aren´t just phones anymore and they are ripe for local mobile marketing. These days, people do everything on their mobiles, from storing their daily to do list to doing local searches online. You can use this to create a better system of advertising . . . putting ads where people are most often . . . on their cell phones.

The competition for local mobile marketing is still fairly low and spam hasn´t caught up with it yet. Though you can bet that this will be an issue in the future, right now is a great time to be involved with local mobile advertising. Here are a few reasons why you should get into this if you haven´t already:

Local Mobile Marketing Facts

• 94% of text messages are read.
• There are fewer land lines than mobile phones.
• Over 30 million Americans use texting on a regular basis.
• 24% of mobile phone users forward their text messages.
• Response rates with local mobile marketing range from 15-20%. Regular media is around 1%.

There are a lot of reasons why local mobile marketing is a good idea, but the main one is that it is a great way to boost your business!

With a user base that is expected to grow to 462 million by 2012, mobile television is heating up phone circuits everywhere. But the latest developments have local mobile marketing experts excited . . . as mobile TV goes local.

According to Fierce Mobile Content, not one, but TWO companies are vying for the position of local mobile television provider.

Independent telcos seeking a competitive edge against cable and satellite providers have long made local programming a cornerstone of their IPTV efforts–after all, any cable or satellite service can deliver network sitcoms, premium dramas and Hollywood blockbusters, but only a broadcaster rooted in its community will offer on-demand viewing of the high school football team’s thrashing of its cross-town rival or a particularly heated city council meeting. It’s a situation mirrored in the current mobile TV environment, where operator-backed services deliver programming selected for maximum demographic-wide appeal, offering little that isn’t already available via other national broadcast platforms.

A-VSB and MPH promise something truly different, expanding the personal relevancy of what mobile subscribers watch as well as when and how they watch it. For example, a local affiliate could make the latest headlines, traffic and weather available on-demand immediately after the traditional newscast airs, enabling viewers to tune in and catch up via mobile whenever the opportunity presents itself. Add search and advertising revenues to the mix, and local-centric mobile TV seems even more lucrative.

It may not be Super Bowl coverage, but the ability of local mobile marketing to place ads during live coverage of the college football game offers unlimited possibilities! Or have shots of your restaurant and delicious food come up around dinner time, when your potential patrons are looking for a place to eat.

While the majority of local mobile marketing is done on a text message level, there´s no question that mobile phones are rapidly improving and local mobile marketing can only follow it on the upward curve, of which, video ads are the next logical step. This is definitely something to keep an eye on.

One third of Americans with mobile phones have noticed ads on their phones in the past few months. That´s about 78 million people, not an insignificant number! This data was reported by mobile entertainment company Limbo, which teamed up with GfK NOP Research, a British marketing research company, to analyze local mobile marketing.

You can read more about the report at MediaPost Publications, but here is an interesting tidbit:

Among other key findings, the report confirmed that SMS text messaging remains the dominant non-voice service used by U.S. mobile subscribers, with 56% tapping away on phones. Mobile gaming and surfing the mobile Web were both about half that percentage, while less than 10% watch mobile TV.

Of the one-third of cell customers who have seen mobile ads, most received them via SMS or MMS text messaging. “A third of mobile phone owners saying they’ve seen advertising on their phones is significant,” said Rob Lawson, CMO at Limbo, which creates games and other mobile content. “It means the first hurdle has been crossed to reaching the mass market.”

For small businesses who are still hesitant about local mobile marketing, the proof is in the pudding. It´s time to jump in now, or you´ll quickly become a straggler as local mobile marketing starts to go through the roof. The simple fact that 78 million people are seeing and paying attention to ads on their phones lets us know that this is a marketing medium that simply won´t be going away.

Local mobile marketing allows you to reach consumers where they are, literally anywhere. This has great benefits and if you market correctly, you´ll end up with a very successful campaign. However, when operating in a medium that is so intimate, such as local mobile marketing, there is always the risk of problems.

Creating a successful campaign is obviously the goal in local mobile marketing. The problem is when your local mobile marketing interferes with what your potential clients are trying to do. They will get annoyed and fed up and rather than buy your product or invest in your service, they are far more likely to hate you! So, this is a pretty delicate situation.

Ideally, your local mobile marketing ads should be useful and interesting so they don´t irritate mobile users. Also, you want to be careful that you don´t send anything that could be construed as inappropriate. Keep in mind that people are going to be accessing your ads in public places, like the subway or at the office. Avoid using images that could be construed as racy or insulting.

Local mobile marketing should be something that fits seamlessly into mobile browsing and doesn´t interfere with the user´s tasks. Once you manage that, you will be quite successful.

Though nearly a third of small businesses are getting into local online marketing, the area of local mobile marketing is really just coming into its own. Until recently, it wasn´t very practical to use your phone for internet access, but bigger and better phones, PDAs and Blackberries have made the mobile search a very popular thing.

Getting in on local mobile marketing now is a good plan. The main reason for this is that at the moment, twice as many cell phones exist as PCs . . . . a number that can only increase as more and more people have access to cell phones. This means that local mobile marketing is an area that is set for an explosion of growth and at the moment there is very little competition.

Making sure that you are in on local mobile marketing is a great way to beat out the competition. People are more likely to search for local businesses with their cell phones, too, since they are probably already in the area where they hope to make a purchase. This is obviously in your favor if you are the only ad on their phone!

Local mobile marketing may not yet be a big player in the world of local online marketing, but mark my words, it will soon be one of the best options out there.

While local online advertising is something that has been around for quite some time, local mobile marketing is relatively new and promising. As more and more people rely on their mobile phones to surf the net while commuting or waiting in a doctor´s office, more possibilities in the world of local mobile marketing are opening up.

It is estimated that by 2010, there will be about 3.3 billion mobile users world-wide, which means your target market will most likely have a cell phone and will probably be surfing the web on it. More people have access to a mobile than they do to a PC, plus with such easy usability, they will be more likely to look things up online using their phones. This can only improve as phones do, making local mobile marketing one of the top ways to advertise your business in the near future.

One of the benefits of local mobile marketing is that your messages are far more likely to be actually read by the recipient. On a PC, these messages might be flagged as spam for certain words, but on a mobile, you can get straight to the user, at least for now.

Experts agree that while local mobile marketing is just getting started now, it will shortly be a very popular and useful medium for local advertising. It is well worth it to start looking into local mobile marketing now.

(Source) Google Maps has added some new ways for you to find your way using your mobile device. You’ve now got contacts integration and GPS functionality on Windows Mobile, for version 2003 or higher.

This is great news for mobile users, but is it good news for local businesses? I say it is. Increased functionality means more people using the mobile features available to them. As more people use the features, businesses will have more opportunities to use them to advertise to mobile users. I see mobile marketing reaching the same increase in business that local search is currently making. Right now, mobile marketing is still in its infancy, but in five years it will be as commonplace as search itself. Businesses that want to get in on the ground floor opportunities and get a head start on their competition will start right now taking advantage of the local mobile marketing features available at their fingertips.

Local mobile marketing is gaining ground. Text message and viral video have taken over on college campuses and big Metro areas. If you have a business that targets college students or a clientele susceptible to technological changes then you would benefit by considering local mobile marketing for your business.

All of the search engines now have mobile components. Since most mobile phones now come with browsers, it is easy to view websites on a mobile phone and contact a local business from your car. Text messages, pay per call, and other similar marketing methods are becoming all the rage.

Google, for instance, uses http://www.google.com/mobile/ as its interface for mobile marketers. The services offered through Google’s mobile marketing interface are:

• Search
• Maps
• Gmail (Surprise!)
• Picasa
• YouTube
• And GOOG-411 (the voice operator for mobile phone users)

These services make it easy for local mobile marketing professionals to find their target market. And all of the major search engines have similar services. The following URLs are the addresses for each of the search engines’ local mobile marketing pages. I hope you’ll use them, set up your accounts, and get started today.

• http://www.google.com/mobile/
• http://mobile.yahoo.com/
• http://mobile.msn.com
• http://mobile.aol.com/

Local mobile marketing has a lot of potential. One of the latest and greatest online marketing tools is something called pay per call. Like PPC (pay per click), pay per call allows advertisers to place an ad on a website and pay only when a user clicks the ad to make a phone call.

Obviously, we’re talking about mobile marketing (have you ever seen anyone log online from a land line and be able to call using their dial up?).

Today’s mobile phones come with browsers and users can log onto the internet and do a great many things that they can do on a laptop or PC. One of the many unique features of mobile browsing, however, is that the mobile user can click and link and a phone call will be made automatically using Internet-based technologies. This is the advent of a growing new segment called pay per call.

If you are interested in pay per call options, here is a list of online advertising companies that offer pay per call services:

• Superpages (www.superpages.com)
• Ingenio (www.ingenio.com)
• Perfect Storm Media (www.perfectstormmedia.com)
• U Pay Per Call (www.upaypercall.com)

There are likely more pay per call companies out there and you can find them just by typing in “pay per call” or “pay per call service” in any search engine.

Ring-To-Number looks like an interesting service:

Bear in mind that I haven’t used the service. It’s fairly new. But it does look like it might have some useful application for local businesses.

There are two service levels. One is free and the other costs $4.99 per month. I’m not sure why they’ve priced it that way, but it’s interesting.

If you do business over long distance or think you might attract customers from outside your local area then you can use the free service. You get an anonymous phone number to place on your website and site visitors can call you at any phone number you specify. It’s essentially a phone transfer service utilizing Internet technology.

The second level of service is the paid one. You get a local phone number. I’m not sure why this one costs $5 and the other one is free. It seems like it would be the other way around. Nevertheless, that’s the way it’s priced. If you want a local anonymous phone number then you can have people in your local area call your anonymous number and ring to you anywhere. This looks like a great service to maintain your privacy.

I can see at least one practical use for this technology beyond the blindingly obvious. If you want to test your Internet marketing campaigns then you can set up more than one number - one for each website or online ad. You can promote one product or service in two different ways, assign each one of them an anonymous number and see how many people call based on those two ads. It’s the old-fashioned split-testing model.

Ring-To-Number has a pretty good list of FAQs, but the one I didn’t see was, “Can I have more than one number?” If this is a service you might be interested in then feel free to send them a message and ask.

Local retailers who want to increase their customer bases are beginning to look to local mobile marketing. Supposedly, it’s the next big thing in local online marketing.

There are reasons to believe that local mobile marketing will get BIG. It believe it will be a huge business, if for no other reason, because it allows consumers to find a business while in their cars and drive directly to it while on the road. This will be a major time saver. How many times have you been on the road, wanted to go somewhere and couldn’t remember its location so you went home to look it up in the phone book before heading over? Plus, as GPS systems get more popular, allowing drivers to chart courses while in their cars, there are some great opportunities to mix technologies and allow drivers to search for retail businesses by keywords then find them on the map while in their cars.

Obvious safety issues aside, I think there is a market for this technology, which means companies have already begun advertising. Soon, you’ll be getting advertising messages on your cell phone - if you haven’t already. Just be sure to pull over and park before you do any searching, or shopping.