According to SMS Marketing NW, of the 7 billion people throughout the world, 5.9 billion own mobile phones. That means 87% of the world’s population are mobile users. Any businesses looking for that competitive edge can’t afford to ignore this fact. Not only that, but 2012 has been a banner year for mobile growth, with sales up over 60% from last year. In fact, one could make a direct correlation with the steep rise in mobile sales as well as the steep rise in text messaging and mobile advertising.

Some other noteworthy facts regarding the rise of mobile traffic include:

• 300,000 new mobile apps have been developed in the last three years and have been downloaded 10.9 billion times.
• 81% of mobile device owners use their handhelds to surf the web and visit social networking sites.
• 77% of mobile users search for specific information via search engines.
• Mobile web surfing is projected to overtake desktop web surfing by 2015.

And according to the Acquity Group, retail organizations have been aggressively pursuing mobile marketing strategies in order to stay abreast of their customers’ habits, interests and behaviors.

This all means that businesses everywhere need to obtain a functioning mobile website or risk being left out in the cold. And without a comprehensive SMS (Short Message Service) marketing campaign that takes advantage of text-message advertising, the business may already be dead in the water.

So in the interest of staying current, here are five major trends in mobile marketing that businesses can expect to see carry over into the new year.

Smartphones Become The Dominant Mobile Devices

Smartphones have been projected to overtake other mobile devices by the end of 2012, and every indicator suggests these devices are on track to accomplish just that. According to statistics from Infonetics Research, smartphone units are up 14.9%, so this new demographic – mostly younger people – should be on any Internet marketer’s radar.

More Text Messaging

All data suggests that by the end of the year 2012 some 8 trillion SMS texts will have been sent between mobile users. This is a rise of some 1 billion messages since 2011. What businesses should take from these statistics is that text messaging will stay strong as long as there are mobile devices on which to send them. That means SMS marketers need to start concentrating on how to create snappy copy and eye-catching visuals for their text ads.

The writing has been on the wall for some time that social networking sites would end up getting most of their exposure on mobile devices, and that time is here. People are increasingly moving beyond the computer and accessing sites like Facebook and Twitter anywhere and everywhere. In fact, Facebook currently has 350 million active users that access the site from their mobiles. This is a veritable gold mine for marketers who want to branch out to social media advertising.

More Video Advertising

These days most smartphones have video capabilities, so expect to see a greater trend in mobile marketing that utilizes video. This goes beyond YouTube and takes advantage of the fact mobile devices can play video anytime, anywhere.

Mobile Purchases and Money Transfers

With the rise in popularity of mobile payment apps like PayPal and Square, expect POS (Point of Sale) apps to eventually become the default method of making purchases and receiving payments. And with some $86 billion dollars having been exchanged through mobiles in 2011, look for a sharp rise in mobile banking this year and the next.

These are just a few trends that are shaping the landscape of mobile marketing. But businesses need to act fast if they truly wish to harness the awesome power of the mobile uprising. For example, mobile advertising by SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) has doubled every year since 2010 and 2013 should see a continuation of this trend.

Brent Messenger is the CMO of TextMarks.com, an industry leading SMS Marketing and Communication platform.