It hasn't been so easy for businesses to keep in touch with their customers whenever and wherever they select. Smartphones, for example, are increasingly common, with 52% of Australians possessing one - a figure which is anticipated to grow by a further 10 million by 2015.

Mobile marketing taps into the omnipresent nature of mobile phones to stay in touch with consumers wherever they go. It is a gigantic opportunity for brands and advertisers, who can reach their customers in more ways than ever before. Here are just a couple of examples:

• Text message marketing : communicating brand messages, special offers or ads via SMS.

• Multimedia messaging services : the ability to send video and pictures via MMS.

• Mobile search marketing : targeted search results based on the user's location.

• Mobile display advertising : the ability to display banner ads and rich media on a mobile phone.

• Mobile video advertising : animations and interactive videos which may be shown on a tiny display.

• Mobile applications : ranging from e-commerce to information services, mobile applications make performing a task via mobile phone simple.

• Mobile bar codes : otherwise known as QR or 2D codes, mobile bar codes embedded in a magazine or display board may be read into a mobile phone to lead the user directly to unique, trackable online content.

How Mobile Marketing has increased - Mobile Marketing : A Guide for Small Business

Mobile barcodes (or QR codes) are already in use in 136 countries around the world and mobile web is anticipated to reach almost 2 billion users by 2015. This really is a growing industry that's already seeing results - already, one-third of consumers shop online via mobile rather than on a computer or in person.

QR codes are an ever more popular manner of providing on-the-spot information about products, brands or promotions. In certain nations, 50% of Smartphone users have an application effective at reading QR codes. It's this ability to provide immediate information that may support consumers to convert - by making it easy find out about a promotion, to make a purchase or sign up for an event.

The impacts for small and medium sized businesses - Mobile Marketing : A Guide for Small Business

Many businesses are successfully using mobile marketing to launch, manage and assess their advertising campaigns. However, is this new manner of marketing limited to companies with a large team of expert marketers in-house, or can smaller businesses embrace it also?

For small-scale businesses working on a local level, mobile marketing could be amazing for securing business from customers in the neighbourhood area, thanks to location-based searches.

How much does mobile marketing cost? - Mobile Marketing : A Guide for Small Business

Compared to preceding-the-line advertising channels such as radio and TV, or print marketing in newspapers and magazines, mobile marketing is cheap. That is not to imply that particular campaigns won't cost - constructing a mobile-ready website or developing an augmented reality application, for example, will not come cheap.

Nonetheless, it's possible to set up QR code campaign or an SMS on a relatively small budget, and with marketing as adaptive and multi-faceted as mobile marketing, there will always be alternatives to satisfy budgets that are lesser.

It is usually possible to run various mobile stations either as a fixed, regular cost or a pay-per-service, depending on size, time scale and the scope of your campaign.

You can learn more about the Mobile Marketing : A Guide for Small Business by digital marketing course in delhi from Techstack.