5 Mobile Marketing Strategies for a Shoestring Budget
Local mobile marketing can be a virtual goldmine!
However, given the marketing activities of most small businesses, you’d probably never know this.
The era of the smart phone is here but many small local business owners are still in the dark ages. They’re playing catch up with their customers and their behavior. An interesting Web.com survey showed of 500 small business owners showed on 26 percent of respondents invested time and money in optimizing their site for mobile devices! Exactly what does this mean for small businesses? It means this is a great time to stand out from the crowd. The mobile customers are ripe for the picking and you are in perfect position to reap the rewards!
More than half of all searches are now being done on a mobile device and you being a small business owner can take advantage of it. Even a small business on a tight budget can make use of these five ways to target mobile users.
- Optimize the Site for Mobile Users – Google did a survey and found that 61 percent of consumers will leave a website if it is not properly optimized for mobile users. Without having a mobile optimized site, the rest falls by the wayside. The site must be mobile friendly and available on all platforms.
- Get into Mobile Ads – As surprising as it may seem, mobile ad platforms are often cheap and effective. Also, there is lots of inventory going unsold each month, keeping prices down. Now would be the time to explore mobile ads.
- SMS and Push Notifications – SMS messages have several great advantages. First and foremost; they get opened. A lot. According to Frost and Sullivan, SMS messages offer an astounding 95 percent open rate! Push notifications are also a great way to connect with your client base.
- Combining Mobile and Your Social Media – Nothing says social media like real-time connections with your customer base. This is the latest trend and the smallest of businesses can get in on the craze by combining their social media site with a mobile devices. Combine specials, events, coupons or just link a YouTube video to create buzz. Then Tweets and traffic will soon start coming to your web site. Next thing you know your site’s search engine ranking will begin climbing and so will your Google . However, the best part is, you’ll be connecting with your customer base in a real-time way and they’ll provide you with valuable feedback.
- Location Based Marketing and Passbook – Your small business needs to be found on the web. Up to now, it meant Foursquare and Yelp. While this still holds true, you also have to begin researching new technology like Passbook also. Passbook is an excellent new app that enables its user to keep all kinds of things like boarding passes, gift cards, coupons, store cards, coupons and all kinds of mobile payments.
Using mobile marketing in local business doesn’t need to be either complex or expensive. The secret is to gather knowledge first, and add pieces as you go.
