You’re getting ready to leave for a morning meeting with a new client on the other side of town. You remember there’s a popular donut shop that just opened a second location in that area. You decide it would be a nice touch to bring a box of warm donuts to the meeting. Luckily, the shop has an App you downloaded to your smartphone and in moments you know exactly how to get to them and you see that they’re offering a 10% discount on a dozen donuts to mobile users today. Your morning just got easier because a savvy small business owner took full advantage of mobile marketing.
People live out of their smartphones (and tablets) these days; they take them to lunch, the dog park, errand running and the movies. And while they’re on the go, in between texting, they’re looking for information about businesses and services. Small business owners who haven’t created a mobile strategy stand to miss out on customer connections.
Here are 6 workable solutions to start making your business more mobile-friendly:
1. Create a Mobile App. Apps were originally developed to help with productivity and information gathering. (Think of the online calendar, weather, and email Apps on earlier cell phone models). According to a recent eMarketer article, businesses use Apps as a multi-faceted customer engagement tool. These same Apps also allow customers to bypass an internet search in favor of a quick link to the information they need. No idea how to create an App? Several companies offer a range of services to help you build one. Here are three: Appmakr, AppInstitute, and MobileRoadie. There are dozens more you can find in a Google search but these can get you started with some good ideas. Keep in mind the most frequently sought content by customers using Apps:
• Location
• Services/products offered
• Discounts/Sales
• Contact Information
• Hours of operation
• Directions
2. Make your website mobile-friendly. This should go without saying, but a number of business owners still haven’t taken the time to invest in a responsive design. A responsive design ensures that your website will be readable on smartphones and tablets of varying screen size.
3. Offer mobile-only discounts for smartphone shoppers. Geo-location technology helps you target your mobile customers. If you already have an App that they’re using, you can send them an alert as they enter your store notifying them about a current sale or offering a discount coupon good for that day. If you don’t have an App but your website is mobile-friendly you can advertise a coupon for those customers who are not in-store but are shopping your site on their smartphone or tablet. The point with mobile is to be able to reach people wherever they are.
4. Bounce-it-back. Let’s say you offered a discount coupon to that in-store shopper who happily took advantage of the offer. Once the customer leaves, how do you get her to come back? Why not offer a mobile “bounce-back” coupon to that same customer? Something she can use at a date in the very near future? This encourages repeat business and is a way of thanking her for coming in and spending her time and money with you when she could have stayed home and shopped online with a competitor.
5. Accept credit cards via smartphone or iPad. If you aren’t doing this yet, give it a second look. For example, a device like Square makes it incredibly easy to take a payment, get a signature and send the customer an electronic receipt via text or email right there in the store. This method of taking mobile payments also helps lessen long lines at stand-alone registers during peak shopping hours. And a sales rep can make a transaction out on the floor if a customer is in a hurry.
6. Make your Google profile mobile-friendly. Did you know that Google makes sure your Google+ user profile renders properly on smartphones? Time to give it a buff and shine. If you’re publishing content on your blog, Google Authorship can link your content to your author profile. As Google’s Hummingbird updates focus on the more “natural-language” aspects of how people type questions into a search you can take advantage of this by offering content on your website and/or blog that answers specific questions related to your business. Make it easier, not harder, for people to find you using Google on their smartphones.
As you explore your increasingly available options in mobile marketing here are three key points to always keep in mind: 1) Make it Searchable, 2) Design for Visibility, 3) Use Mobile Site Re-Directs. With your customers now using smartphones to conduct so much of their daily lives, you need the opportunity to connect with them while they’re on the go, not just when they’re home sitting in front of a computer screen, because that’s where they’re currently spending the least amount of time.
