Mobile Marketing-DIY

Mobile Marketing—the Future is Here!

Mobile Marketing now comes in many different forms, but in essence it involves communicating with your target market while they are on-the-go, using their mobile phone or other device such as an iPad or tablet. It is no coincidence that the rise of social media and the rise of the smart phone have happened concurrently—and it is the huge popularity of both that has made mobile marketing an idea whose time has come.

Methods of mobile marketing include:

• Sending a marketing message or text offer (this is like direct mail, only using text messages instead)

• Placing traditional ads on social media sites such as MyGamma, http://m.mygamma.com/n.php?nid=6&tpl=live&cntr=us&sid=61009648 a mobile community.
• Use of QR codes to take a mobile user directly to your website or landing page for a special offer.
• Creating a mobile version of your website, that is easily navigable and readable on the tiny screen of a cellphone. In fact, these social media portals all have sites specifically designed for mobile access: http://m.myspace.com/   http://m.facebook.com/    http://m.twitter.com/
• Use of specific mobile sites to connect with customers and enhance Findability, such as Yelp.com and FourSquare.com

Since the Findability Group is primarily an internet marketing agency that focuses on SEO, social media and increasing your online Findability, our use of mobile marketing focuses on using social media, and making your website mobile friendly.

Let’s start with Mobile Websites

Have you taken a look at how your own website shows up on your smartphone? Does it load quickly? Is it easy to find the page you are looking for? Is it so busy it looks messy on the tiny screen? Is the text readable?

The mobile generation is long on technology, but short on patience. They want instant gratification—if your site takes forever to load, or isn’t all that readable on a mobile phone screen—they will simply head to another site. We recommend a simplified, streamlined site specifically designed for a great mobile experience.

Contact Us at 303-841-3111 for more information about mobile websites.

Mobile Marketing using Social Media

Along with the major social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, we also recommend getting involved with:

• Yelp.com: http://www.yelp.com/

• FourSquare.com: https://foursquare.com/

Yelp.com: Customers are looking for information on their smartphones in different ways than they would on a PC. Instead of Googling something, they might search for information about a business or a restaurant recommendation, via the Yelp.com mobile app. Over 39 million people visited Yelp in November 2010 alone—posting reviews, and reading other peoples’ reviews to help them decide where to spend their money.

We recommend opening an official Yelp account for your business, and letting your customers market for you! To help business owners get the most out of their online presence, Yelp offers a suite of FREE tools to:

• Communicate with your customers—and see what they are saying about you.
• Track how many people view your business page
• Add photos, a detailed business description, up-to-date information, history, and specialties
• Announce special offers and upcoming events

Foursquare.com: This innovative site is an app that is only available on a smartphone, because it uses the GPS system in the phone to tap into your exact location. If you have not heard of them, this is how they describe themselves:

Foursquare is a mobile application that lets users "check in" to a place when they're there, tell friends where they are and track the history of where they've been and who they've been there with.

Are you thinking, “Why would anyone want to do that?”

FourSquare is such a unique concept that we recommend going onto their site and checking them out thoroughly (https://foursquare.com/business/venues) before you make any decision as to whether or not they could fit in with your mobile marketing strategies. Whether you feel like Foursquare relates to your own business or not, it’s an important part of any mobile marketing strategy to be findable inside this hugely popular and rapidly growing community.

QR Codes for Mobile Marketing

A QR Code is a specific two-dimensional code, readable by smart phones and camera phones. A user can be taken immediately to your website, see a message from your business, or instantly receive a promotional offer. People are even using QR codes on the back of their business cards, instead of taking someone’s card now you can simply scan it with your phone, and record the information on it.

Where you take customers with your QR codes is entirely up to you—your (hopefully mobile) website, your Yelp page, your Twitter feed, or to a landing page with a special offer.

To create your own QR Code, we recommend http://www.qrstuff.com/. Just put in your url and the generator will take care of the rest!  

This is an inexpensive and increasingly popular method of mobile marketing that users seem to really enjoy.

After all, what is a smartphone if not a fabulous portable toy? Successful mobile marketing will take advantage of the “fun factor” inherent in smartphones which has made them so wildly popular.

For more information about mobile websites or using social media for mobile marketing, please contact us at info@findabilitygroup.com.

Trying to get a handle on mobile marketing? Watch Heather Lutze and Natalie Henley discuss it in their Findability Caffeine video series …