Can Texting Work As a Marketing Tool?

Author:

David Reich

Source:

It seems as if texting has replaced talking, if you go by the numbers alone. Michael Bush writes about this in Advertising Age, noting that marketers are still trying to figure out how they can get in on the texting explosion.
 
Maybe most marketers can’t and shouldn’t try. I’ll explain in a minute.
 
According to the wireless trade association CTIA, mobile users in the U.S. sent 1.3 trillion text messages during the year ending July 2009.  That’s nearly double the number of cell phone calls made during that same period–660 billion.
 
It may not be a fair comparison, since most text messages are short?even shorter than a Twitter tweet–and they’re often part of an ongoing dialogue. So what would count as a single call could be–in texting terms–a continuing series of text messages back and forth.
 
However you look at the numbers, they are very big and it’s only natural that marketers would want to participate in the phenomenon that’s become an important part of everyday life for so many of us. The Pew Research Center reports 68 percent of Americans 18+ send text messages and among the 18-24 year olds, 95 percent text. That’s hardly news, but what may be surprising is how pervasive texting is among older demographics including boomers like myself–43 percent of us text. The numbers are impressive across all age group...