Marriage has popped up in the news quite a bit during the past few years, and pundits aplenty across the political spectrum have offered their own prescriptions for and prognostications about the topic. But no one foresaw the course that Los Angeles-based director Adam Chervenak’s nuptials would take. On May 20, Chervenak married his iPhone in Las Vegas and uploaded a short film documenting it to YouTube. “If we’re going to be honest with ourselves, we connect with our phones on so many levels,” he stated. “In a sense, my smartphone has been my longest relationship.”

Okay, Chervenak’s stunt smacks more of performance than personal commitment, but he highlights something important: The smartphone has fundamentally altered human culture. A recent Pew survey revealed that 68 percent of U.S. adults own one, and a large number of them use it to …

• Research health conditions (62 percent)

• Bank online (57 percent)

• Browse real estate listings or various locales they’re considering calling home (44 percent)

• Engage in education pursuits (30 percent)

• Apply for jobs (18 percent)

Their behavior stratifies even further once you factor in age and income. Lower-income smartphone owners use their devices to find new employment, while those who draw down higher earnings like to communicate with financial institutions or suss out new properties, but those who are younger seek out educational pursuits, and do you know what all of this means? Mobile marketing is an exciting frontier for businesses of every stripe.

If you’ve reached this blog, you probably don’t need to be convinced that SMS marketing can benefit your company. Still, humor us for a moment. Why? Well, even people who have seen the mobile-marketing light don’t realize just how bright the future can be for their businesses. Consider how a Mobile Marketing Association report states that “mobile messaging is the most used non-voice channel in the world.” Indeed, Deloitte Consulting found that consumers are using mobile devices all of the time, including when they’re …

• Shopping (92 percent)

• Relaxing (89 percent)

• Conversing with family and friends (87 percent)

• Watching television (87 percent)

• Eating out (81 percent)

• Using public transportation (54 percent)

What’s more, it’s not only the big multinational firms who can make an impact in the mobile space. The United States alone racked up 81.8 billion—yes, with a “b”—local searches on smartphones in 2015 alone. Whether large or small, seasoned or nascent, international established or neighborhood based, businesses benefit from having a mobile presence.

But there are downsides, too. Phones are multitasking machines, which means that even though consumers are using them all the time, they aren’t giving them their full attention—or your marketing messages, either. That might sound ominous, but a carefully crafted short messaging service (SMS) marketing plan can cut through the clutter and right to the heart of users’ needs. In upcoming posts, we’re going to take the time to detail some best mobile-marketing practices and how they can help you craft a coherent campaign. After all, an informed entrepreneur is a marketer’s best friend.