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While this is not the most popular form of mobile marketing in the United States by a long shot, the popularity of marketing via text message or SMS is so strong that it’s definitely worth a mention. There are companies in the United States that do engage in mobile marketing through texting as well, but the restrictions on place in the United States have made this a harder avenue of media marketing to break into unless you are a startup that has a lot of money to spend on advertising.

Mobile marketing through text messages is exactly what it sounds like – a company sends out advertisements and other form of communication to customers through a texting service. This has been a very effective and popular form of advertising throughout Asia and Europe in particular, despite being unpopular at the onset due to people being concerned about spam.

If you’re an American company, you might shy away from mobile marketing through texting, as it might give the impression that you’re “bothering” the customer with your texts. While this might be true if mobile marketing through text is handled the same way as “spamming” somebody’s inbox is through email, the reality of it is that mobile marketing has found a great deal of purchase as an effective communication medium.

The trick is making it an opt-in system. In fact, in the United States it’s a legal obligation to make mobile marketing an opt-in, opt-out system, but this is the linchpin that keeps using texting as a marketing medium from becoming spam. Using texts to get a hold of potential customers is actually a great way to engage with customers in a similar way that the customers engage with their friends on a regular basis – through text. If you watch commercials, you’re likely to come across a company or two advertising their mobile marketing through text methods. Most companies who use this sort of method in the States put out print, television, or radio ads advertising the fact that interested consumers can contact the company through texting and get discounts and other such promotional offers through texting.

If you as a startup are looking to take advantage of this version of mobile marketing, you’ll need to contact a mobile operator for what’s called a short code, or the number that your customers will have to text if they’d like to opt into your text marketing scheme. Short codes can be prohibitively expensive for smaller startups, though – often they cost at least 600-1000 dollars a month to maintain. To waylay costs, though, you can team up with another startup and split the cost of the short code. This is one great way you can introduce text marketing into your repertoire without it costing you a mint.

What if you could combine the very best of television advertising with a smartphone? Many companies are looking into doing just this, by developing what can only be called a cell phone commercial. The basic tenants of this are exactly what they sound like – a video clip is sent to a customer’s cell phone, where they can watch your advertisements on the screen of the device. Consumers don’t even have to have smart phones to be reached via this method of advertising, as even the most basic phones these days have color screens and are capable of viewing video.

This might leave you scratching your head a bit – how would you get the mobile commercials to your customers? And since mobile marketing is based so much on an opt-in system, how could you convince your customers to “opt in” to seeing advertisements? In general, people dislike commercials on television and radio, so why would using a mobile phone device make it different?

The thing about mobile video commercials is that they are generally best paired up with other forms of mobile marketing so you can get the commercial to the consumer’s phone. It’s true that you just can’t start spamming the phones of customers with advertising, even if it’s the coolest mobile video ever. However, there are certain methods that you can take to get this information to the customer, and get the customer to undertake the consumption of mobile video readily.

One way is through the aforementioned QR mobile codes. With this method, the consumer takes a picture of the mobile code and is then taken to the mobile advertisement. In this way, the customer “opts in” to receiving the mobile video ad. Another way to do it is through Bluetooth projection, wherein a Bluetooth hub contacts a users’ cell phone and asks permission to input information onto the device. Should the customer accept, then the hub transmits the mobile video to them.

If this is a method of advertising that you’d like to undertake as a startup, it helps to pull in the advice of the professionals in order to do it appropriately. You don’t want your mobile commercial to be any longer than thirty seconds, or you risk annoying the consumer. There are also specialty editing processes that go into making a mobile video show up well on a phone and also project good audio.

Mobile commercials can include anything from real-life footage to animation to a straight up audio track. It’s all about how you’d like to project an image of your company to the mobile consumer. With the advent of increasingly complex technologies it’s only right that the humble television commercial advance as well – and moving onto the mobile platform is the next step along in visual, multimedia advertising.