Cell phone marketing is extraordinarily powerful for building business, and contrary to what many people imagine it is remarkably easy to get started.

The first thing you need to do is determine precisely what you are going to use cell phone marketing for. If your business is a restaurant, your SMS text message campaigns are going to look very different from those of the local dentist's practise. Here is a list of a variety of strategies you might consider:

Plain SMS text messages Coupons or vouchers eCards or pictures mp3 audio or video messages Polls and voting Simple automated appointment reminders

You may use a combination of ideas from this list. Of course some will require more expense than others, especially if you need to hire graphic designers and so forth, but there is a way for every business to profit from cell phone marketing.

The next thing you need to do is find a mobile marketing service vendor who can provide the features you want. There may be such a vendor locally who you can deal with, but there are many such providers online. Do make it a priority to look for a provider that offers solid customer support. If one company offers only an email help desk, while another will take your phone calls as well, go with the latter.

Having decided on a vendor, take a look at the various plans that they make available. You either need to be able to buy close to the amount of text credits that you will actually be using each month, or make sure that the provider will roll over your unused credits month to month. That is the best solution.

With the above pieces of your plan in place, it's time to start letting your customer base know that they can sign up to get your SMS text deals. You need to build your subscriber list, and there are many creative ways to do this. In doing so, however, it is imperative that you do not violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. That means that you must only ever send text messages to people who have opted in to receive them from you.

Once people begin to subscribe to your list, all that is left is do is to start sending out your cell phone marketing messages. Think through the frequency and times of day that you will send your messages, and then track the results as you go. Experiment to see what works best.

Cell phone marketing is becoming a proven solution for keeping in touch with your customers. Responses are generally high in comparison with other methods and can be measured almost immediately. Get started today!

J.M. Phillips is a freelance writer and featured contributor to numerous websites and blogs. If you found this article helpful, you will want to read his blog post on How to Generate an Avalanche of Leads For SMS Text Message Marketing. Read this and more of his writing at