This week, I attended an AMA Houston event to celebrate Houston Marketers and award the best “Marketer of the Year” for 2008. At the event, Kevin Bertram, CEO of Distributive Networks spoke about “How Mobile Marketing Has Changed Everything.” Bertram’s company created all the Obama text messaging tactics for the campaign.

First, it got me thinking about how text messaging could really be an interactive experience. After all, all of those people voting each week on “America Idol” must certainly feel like their participation matters to the outcome, or they wouldn’t bother voting. A text message can be more than just a casual note between friends, or that unwanted spam text message, though. Given the right campaign, it can be a call-to-action or an impromptu survey or a way to entice word of mouth.

Second, I was reminded by just how much mobile matters as part of your toolkit for a marketing channel. Bertram mentioned that the typical cell phone owner has their phone with them for an average of 19 hours a day. I don’t know of any other channel with that type of lengthy reach. Additionally, certain demographics tend to rely on their cell phones even more than others – those that do not have easy access to computers or the internet may rely on their phone more for messages.

From the B2B marketing side, mobile marketing could be utilized more, even if it’s not quite ready for the volume that makes the consumer side such a success. After all, your company isn’t “American Idol,” but there could be an industry event or conference that might benefit from some additional attendee interaction via text messages. Also, take a look at your Web statistics and see how many of your visitors are coming via mobile devices. Now might be the time to start planning mobile into your Web site development.

Tags: Mobile Marketing, mobile media, text messaging