There is a growing shift on how people are accessing information, and if you are thinking about how to effectively reach your target market it is important to position yourself where people are spending their time. These days, that is very likely to be on their mobile device.
With the convenience and portability of mobile devices, a large majority of people are increasingly relying on their smartphones in place of their computers. As a marketer, the key tool for accomplishing this is to have a mobile-friendly website which will optimize the way your audience sees your webpages on mobile devices.
Other mobile centric tools such as smart phone apps, QR codes, and text messaging make interacting with your visitors even easier via mobile. The key to keep in mind is by using mobile-centric and web-centric solutions together; you are able to engage with your visitors when and where they want to communicate.
For example:
Smart phones are everywhere, and with each generation they get faster, easier to see, and easier to operate. This is making mobile marketing one of fastest growing, most effective ways to reach your target audience. That said, what works on the relatively small screen of a mobile phone might be very different from what works on a desktop website. Modifying your advertising strategy to include this new medium will give you a leg up on your competition. This not only means different formats and layouts for ads, but maybe even different keywords and PPC campaigns to make sure you are optimally targeting your message to each platform.
Mobile marketing should not be used in place of full scale websites, but in support of them as a means of extending and enhancing your reach.
Suppose, for example, you market a hotel and 40% of the traffic coming to your site is from smart phones. If you have a mobile friendly reservation tool then they can book a room right then from their phone. If you don’t then they will have to come back when they are at their PC. Do you really want to take the chance that they don’t come back? or worse that they book another hotel using that hotel’s mobile friendly site?
Here are some important factors that will help you understand some of the advantages that the mobile marketing landscape has to offer:
Mobile advertising allows you to follow your target market on the go, rather then having to wait for them to get back to a desk. Additionally, many people who have mobile phones are benefiting from location-based services (LBS) to get important and useful information about products and services near their exact location. It is becoming more and more beneficial for businesses to implement a solid location-based mobile marketing strategy.
If, for example, your business has an office or store at a physical location; then you want to be sure that you have optimized your mobile site for local search as well using Google Maps, Google+ and other tools that influence and impact mobile marketing. Knowing what specific geographical area potential customers are in can be extremely beneficial, giving you round-the-clock access to effectively engage with your customers.
Mobile users take their phones everywhere, rarely turning them off. This can be extremely advantageous as time-sensitive messages can reach customers almost instantaneously. Unlike other forms of media – past and present – smart phones provide an “always on” benefit to your business, keeping you better in touch with your customers. Mobile SMS/MMS and mobile micro-blogging also allow for a quicker response time that will enhance the quantity and quality of your customer engagement.
A mobile campaign is very economically practical, costing only a fraction of what you would pay for television and radio advertisements, enabling you to reach more potential customers for less money. An extremely cost-effective way to initiate dialogue with your client base, you can use an affordable text messaging campaign to resend or send new messages, offering incentives and reminders to your customers that won’t break the bank.
Google and Bing increase search rankings for websites that that have links and mentions on social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. And the main source of these interactions are coming from people on mobile devices. There is also evidence that these search engines favour sites that support mobile device interaction. Remember, the big search engine companies live & die based on the satisfaction people have with their search results.
With a mobile site:
Without a mobile site:
If people are searching for your services on their mobile device and your business has a mobile friendly website, then this is a good match. Chances are these people will stick around on your mobile website to interact and have a positive experience.
If instead, your beautiful website is on a desktop only platform, then it is completely unusable to the potential customers on a smart phone; and they will most likely leave quickly and possibly go to your competition! Search engines know this and thus realize that mobile users are not happy with desktop pages, so they are not as likely to recommend your site despite the otherwise nice design and great SEO work you have done.
The lesson? Not being mobile works against you!
Here at Guaranteed SEO, we can develop a mobile-friendly website for your business which will improve your rankings in the search engines; ultimately increasing your conversion rates and turning online visitors into loyal customers!
