Mobile Marketing: Huge Growth Opportunity
Mobile Marketing is a huge growth opportunity for local businesses. More and more people are carrying smartphones that have always-on internet connections, and they’re using them to find local businesses when they’re on the go.
There are very few businesses that approach mobile marketing correctly, however.
Most companies have either no “mobile” version of their website, or if they do it’s really just a smaller version of the same site. The latter is a little better option, but it’s still not very effective.
As far as the first problem – having no mobile-specific version of your website – this makes it extremely likely that someone searching for more information will simply leave the page and look for another site that’s more friendly.
Look at this website for the City of Boston, for example:
This is what a “regular” website looks like on a typical smartphone. It’s practically impossible to read, and even if someone zooms in to see what’s there, it’s still not going to be very effective.
Having a mobile-friendly version of your website is a better option. You can see what the City of Boston’s mobile site looks like in this example:
Much easier to read, right?
This type of site might be fine for the City of Boston, since people are more than likely looking for information. But it isn’t the best option for local businesses. After all, what are people looking for when they look up a business on their mobile phone?
99% of the time, they’re looking for one of two things – a phone number or an address. They don’t want to read the website or anything else, they’re just trying to either call or get to the right location.
Let’s look at an example of a much more effective mobile website:
If someone searches for a local business on their smartphone, and winds up on a page like this, don’t you think the chances are much better that they’re going to actually call and/or visit as a result?
And that’s not all you can do with mobile websites. Most of today’s smartphones have various other functions that can be integrated into a mobile site.
Many smartphones have GPS functions built right in. What if you could include GPS coordinates on your website so all your potential customer had to do was click on the link and it would open their GPS and give them exact directions to get from wherever they are to your location?
Or how about including all that contact information on your website so that customer could click another link and automatically have it all loaded into their phone’s address book? Don’t you think they’d be a lot more likely to make multiple visits to your business if the details were all loaded in their phone whenever they needed your products or services?
