A recent study by MarketsandMarkets outlined the global mobile marketing forecast for the next four years, focusing on SMS, MMS, location-based and app marketing trends, among others. According to the report, as smartphones and tablets penetrate further into consumer culture, the potential of mobile marketing efforts skyrockets. Companies are able to see continuously advancing returns on mobile marketing investments, and more firms are increasing their spending in this area as a result.

The overall mobile marketing market size is expected to grow from $4,314.5 million in 2014 to $15,287.4 million by 2019, at an estimated CAGR of 28.8 percent.

"Mobile devices offer marketers an attractive opportunity to deliver the best customer experience at a particular time by using the right combination of data, insights, and content through mobile marketing solutions," the report notes. "Analytics and geo-location services have augmented the capabilities of mobile marketing platforms by helping marketers to understand their customers better and helping them reach more targeted users."

While North America, Asia and Europe have the highest adoption rates for mobile marketing, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa are beginning to catch up and offer new opportunities for mobile marketing growth, especially if small businesses begin adopting mobile more aggressively.

The report noted that lack of education and awareness are two of the primary challenges businesses encounter in mobile marketing efforts.

Mobile marketing efforts have some serious benefits for businesses looking to optimize not only their marketing strategies, but several other areas of operations as well. From customer relationship management to application engagement nearly every facet of customer-facing operations can be improved through mobile efforts, allowing companies to advance other campaigns as well, not just mobile text marketing ones.