Inc. Magazine On Mobile Marketing & SMB's: Here's The Real Story

Cellit and others want to help you sell it - for less.

I've posted about how technologies from Cellit are enabling even local advertisers to make movie theater ads interactive by enabling theatergoers to text the advertiser's keyword to a short code to instantly obtain additional product information, text their vote on a topic, or participate in games and contests.

Now, Inc. magazine is reporting that Chicago-based Cellit, and a Florida-based company called Movo, are making short codes available for just about any SMB.

According to the pub, the companies sell short codes for $500 to $1,000 per month, plus a one-time setup fee of a few thousand dollars and a charge of 4 cents to 7 cents for each text message. You can also rent a code for as little as $225 per month.

As the pub points out, you'll need to keep in mind that technological standards vary. Nearly every phone on the market is equipped to send and receive texts, but some systems won't let you embed complex graphics or photographs.

This is all fine and well, but Inc. magazine missed Princeton, NJ-based Mobile Visions, Inc., which has a solution called Mobivity.

As I posted almost exactly a year ago, Mobivity provides an automated, do-it-yourself solution to set up keywords and short codes, and then configure opt-in style mobile campaigns through a simple, Web-based dashboard - for as little as $79 per month.

Now, Txt2win contests, voting, coupons, specials and alerts are within the reach of any business.

"The possibilities are endless," says Greg Harris, CEO of Mobile Visions, Inc. "Mobivity provides a public access cable TV show with the same text message voting abilities that American Idol has. We give a local restaurant the same abilities to reach the consumer as Starbucks at a fraction of the cost."

In fact, says Harris, a mobile campaign that costs $10,000 could be achieved for far less.

"The same campaign using Mobivity would cost only $79.00, and could have been set up in minutes." he explains. Print, TV & Radio advertisers can enhance their ads by offering more information via sms to their audience. Banks can offer up to the minute loan rates. Movie theaters can offer show times. Large chains can offer a store locater.  The list goes on - and smart SMBs will surely add a few of their own.

Read the Inc. piece, here.

And read more about Mobivity, here.

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Rick Mathieson.com