Take a walk down any city street these days and what's the one thing you can't avoid seeing? People talking on their cell phones or using other mobile devices. Over the last few years, cell phone subscriptions alone have increased dramatically to the tune of over 1.5 billion users worldwide. This spells out OPPORTUNITY for marketing managers everywhere and a new tool for lead generation marketing.

As a lead generation marketing tool, mobile devices have the potential to play a significant role in target marketing. Lead generation marketing efforts are made easier as each phone is primarily used by one subscriber, giving each device a unique profile for targeting demographics. If an ad interests a subscriber, they can opt to click on it and be taken to a page that will request an email address, an SMS number or just serve them more content from the advertiser. And there you have it, a lead is generated. Because a phone is linked to one person and not a general group, that person should no longer be subject to useless advertising messages. Age, sex, geography and key words will play into the distribution of every ad. The concept is to actually make advertising an enhancement to content distribution, not an intrusion. What this boils down to from a marketing prospective, if leveraged correctly, is that a message can be delivered to the exact profile that it was created to reach and a qualified lead is generated.

Although this form of lead generation marketing is still in the early stages of development, it won't be long before it is implemented on a larger scale and will be as common as the lead generation marketing initiatives businesses are currently using on the Internet. It is anticipated that this form of lead generation has the potential to result in a much more accurate set of sales leads because of its market segmentation abilities.