Choosing Between Twitter And Mobile Advertising

Twitter and mobile text advertising have a lot of similarities between the two. Twitter’s short message service (SMS) allows users to send and receive messages with a 140-character limit on any device, including computer, phones and pdas.

And you may have noticed that Twitter has even begun offering promoted tweets, which are tweets paid by advertisers that are available for viewing by the entire Twitter user base. Thus far, only large advertisers such as Starbucks and Best Buy are being offered promoted tweets, and with Twitter boasting a community of almost 106 Million, it may be awhile before small business owners can afford a piece of that pie.

But, why can’t a small business owner just use Twitter, which is free, to promote their business? What are the benefits of using mobile phone advertising as well? Here are a few things to consider:

1. Twitter tweets are available only to those Twitter users who have chosen to follow you. While you can and should certainly attempt to get your customers to follow you if they use Twitter, the fact of the matter is that not everyone does. Yes, 106 Million sounds like a lot and it is. But that represents less than 20% of all Internet users. And believe it or not, there are those customers who still even use the Internet infrequently or even not at all. Cell phone carriers, however, represent a much larger group of people, 82% of Americans, in fact.

2. If you have ever used Twitter, you know that your tweets can come and go pretty quickly. The effectiveness can wear off quickly, although the immediate response is often very favorable. This makes Twitter a good option for building brand loyalty, but not the greatest source to promote an event such as a sale or a limited time coupon offer. You can more easily reach your customers for that type of promotion through a direct mobile advertising message.

3. Mobile advertising, unlike Twitter, offers mobile keyword technology which makes it a more powerful targeting option for a small business advertiser. Most small businesses want to target specific types of customers, which mobile keyword technology can do, as opposed to the larger advertisers like Starbucks and Best Buy. People can simply text your mobile keyword right where they see it – at the cash register, webpage, event, or even when hearing an advertisement on the radio. It is even possible to import cell phone numbers into your campaign, so you aren’t building your contact list from scratch.

Twitter can be a powerful marketing option for the small business owner, but cannot replace the strength of a well thought out mobile advertising campaign. With affordable options and the ability to start out on a month to month basis at a low cost (it can be as low as $10/month), mobile phone advertising is a great addition to the small business owner’s marketing plan.

Be sure to stop by SmallBusinessMobileAdvertising.com to learn much more about how entrepreneurs can use mobile phone advertising to expand their business. Make sure to sign up for your free mobile phone advertising trial (and mention the promo code “mobilenow” and receive double the credits during your free trial period).

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