Local Business Mobile Advertising

Local Business Mobile Advertising – How to Get More Customers With Local Business Mobile Marketing and Advertising

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 technology pundits predict that more of your customers will be accessing the Internet via mobile devices than hardwired desktop anchors!

So unless you want to find yourself way behind your competition you’d better get smart quickly about the ins and outs of mobile marketing and advertising.

Understanding the Landscape of Local Mobile Advertising and Marketing

Mobile Internet Search Functionality

Probably the easiest way to take advantage of the approaching tidal wave of mobile marketing is to make sure you have a high-quality website that is easy to view and navigate using one of the new smart phones such as the iPhone or one of its Android equivalents. You see, very 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 this 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 device only advertising platforms springing up all over that allow you to create banner ads that can then be distributed to mobile phone users. Google’s Adwords, Admob, Adfonic and their competitors can all display your ads. Each network has its own peculiarities and most differ in the types of targeting you can do. So, depending upon what you’re trying to accomplish some of the networks will be a better fit than others.

Text Messaging Advertising – Short Codes and SMS Messaging

Short codes are those messages you see associated with all the big brands and reality TV shows that ask you to text a word to a specific number such as Denny’s campaign “text GRANDSLAM to 30101. To get a short code you’ll need to spend between $500 – $1000 per month for the short code itself… and then you still have to market and advertise it! Because of the cost of this method I strongly suggest you steer clear of short code advertising for your local business unless you already have a substantial budget to spend.

SMS messaging is simply sending text advertisements to a targeted demographic of individuals. Since text open rates are so high (but will surely decline just as we saw with e-mail over the past 5 years) SMS messaging can be a good means to get your advertising message across. Think of SMS messaging like you would opt in e-mail… only better.

Push Notifications

“Push” technology allows you to “push” your Twitter, Facebook and other social media feeds out to mobile device and smartphone users (primarily iPhone) who have downloaded Apps to allow them to receive updates from their social feeds. If you already have a solid social marketing plan in place “push” can make it that much more powerful by tying in your followers through mobile content.

App Display Ads

“There’s an App for That.” You should be familiar with that phrase by now even if you are not familiar with what an “App” is. Apps are little software programs that can be downloaded to mobile devices such as the iPhone and Google’s android phone that allow the user to play games, calculate distances, make funny noises… virtually anything you can imagine. Smartphone users love Apps and download them constantly. Most of these apps are “free” to the user because they are used as platforms to serve advertisements. And these ads can be yours!

Click to Call

In some ways, what could be more powerful? Your potential customers are already using their mobile phones to conduct research, check in with their other social networks and generally stay in touch. So by using a click to call advertisement you can take your potential customer from a visually engaging ad to a visually engaging conversation in just one click. Your options are only limited by your imagination but since clicking on this type of ad instantly dials a phone number you can make a connection to either a live operator, an informative recording or a combination of the two. This is powerful marketing technology whether you use it for lead generation, appointment setting or product and service sales.

Search Ads

Once you have a smartphone you can conduct immediate research, gather information and even make purchases the instant your awareness of a need manifests. So it only stands to reason that the big search-engine companies like Google, Yahoo and Bing allow you as an advertiser to display your ads contextually right along with the user’s search.

The difference here and what is so powerful is that soon, no one will need to come back to their office or their home in order to conduct the research they need to purchases products and services like yours.

Click to Map

Click to map advertising functions in a manner similar to click to call. The difference here is that when the advertisement is clicked the user is immediately served directions from their location to the location of your business. As you can imagine, click to map advertising is perfect for nail salons, restaurants, hair salons, oil change facilities and other broad appeal products and services where the target audience is someone who is already out and about.

Time to Act!

The local mobile advertising and marketing trend is moving quickly and you do not want to be left behind!