Mobile advertising for local businesses: how to get more customers with mobile advertising and marketing for local businesses
In case you haven’t noticed, the biggest emerging trend in local business marketing and advertising is mobile phone marketing. How big is this trend? Well, let’s just say that by 2013 all the techies are predicting that more of their customers will be accessing the internet through mobile devices than connected desktop anchors.
So unless you want to find yourself shape behind your competition you better be smart quickly about the ins and outs of mobile marketing and advertising.
Understand the local mobile advertising and marketing landscape
Mobile Internet search functionality
Probably the easiest way to take advantage of the coming mobile marketing tidal wave is to make sure you have a high-quality website that is easy to view and navigate with one of the new smartphones, like the iPhone or one of its Android equivalents. . . You see, pretty soon people will no longer be using their wired connection to conduct product and service research for offline purchases, that job will fall to their smartphones, so it’s important that you get it right. Now, of course, beyond just having a pretty website, you need to have one that is designed to sell, capture leads, and create conversations.
Display ads – Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)
There are dozens of mobile-only advertising platforms popping up everywhere that allow you to create banner ads that can then be distributed to mobile phone users. Adwords, Admob, Adfonic by Google and your competitors can show your ads. Each network has its own peculiarities and most differ in the types of targeting they can perform. So depending on what you’re trying to achieve, some of the networks will be a better fit than others.
Text message advertising: short codes and SMS messages
Shortcodes are those messages you see associated with all the big brands and reality TV shows asking you to text a word to a specific number, like Denny’s campaign “text GRANDSLAM to 30101. To get a shortcode you will need to spend anywhere from $500 – $1000 per month for the shortcode itself…and then you still have to market and advertise it!Because of the cost of this method, I suggest you avoid shortcode advertising for your local business unless you already have a substantial budget to spend.
SMS messaging is simply sending text ads to a specific demographic of people. Since text message open rates are so high (but surely going down just like we’ve seen with email in the last 5 years), SMS messaging can be a good medium to deliver your advertising message. Think of SMS messaging like email… only better.
push notifications
“Push” technology allows you to “push” your Twitter, Facebook and other social media feeds to mobile device and smartphone (mainly iPhone) users who have downloaded applications to enable them to receive updates from your social feeds. If you already have a strong social marketing plan, “push” can make it much more powerful by engaging your followers through mobile content.
App Display Ads
“There’s an application for that”. You should be familiar with that phrase by now, even if you’re not familiar with what an “app” is. Apps are small software programs that can be downloaded to mobile devices like the iPhone and Google’s Android phone that allow the user to play games, calculate distances, make funny noises…pretty much anything you can imagine. Smartphone users love apps and are constantly downloading them. Most of these apps are “free” to the user because they are used as platforms to serve ads. And these ads can be yours!
click to call
Somehow, what could be more powerful? Your potential customers are already using their mobile phones to conduct research, check their other social networks, and generally keep in touch. So by using a click to call ad, you can take your prospect from a visually appealing ad to a visually appealing conversation with just one click. Your options are only limited by your imagination, but since clicking this type of ad instantly dials a phone number, you can establish a connection to a live operator, an informational recording, or a combination of both. This is powerful marketing technology, whether you use it for lead generation, appointment scheduling, or selling products and services.
search ads
Once you have a smartphone, you can do immediate research, gather information, and even make purchases the instant your awareness of a need arises. So it stands to reason that big search engine companies like Google, Yahoo and Bing allow you as an advertiser to display your ads contextually alongside the user’s search.
The difference here, and what’s so powerful, is that soon, no one will need to go back to their office or home to do the research they need to buy products and services like yours.
Click to map
Click to map advertising features similar to click to call. The difference here is that when the ad is clicked, the user is immediately given directions from their location to the location of your business. As you can imagine, map click advertising is perfect for hair salons, restaurants, hair salons, oil change facilities, and other broad-appeal products and services where the target audience is someone already out and about. .
Time to act!
The local mobile advertising and marketing trend is moving fast and you don’t want to be left behind!
