Mobile is the Key to Local Marketing

Make the convergence of local search and mobile marketing your sweet spot to drive conversions and increase your sales. Mobile marketing is becoming increasingly more important as the majority of U.S. adults own a smartphone and use it to obtain information on the go. Everyone knows this but what most businesses don’t know is how to use mobile marketing to gain more customers. By taking the time to create a mobile strategy that focuses on local search, you can start to capture more market share while your competition continues to scratch their head.

Here’s What You Can Do Today

• Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. If you are trying to reach customers on their smartphone or tablet, your website needs to be responsive or mobile friendly. If not, you will be wasting your marketing dollars. Statistically, 57 percent of mobile users will abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Additionally, 30 percent will abandon a purchase they have already started if the website isn’t mobile optimized. It comes down to the basic user experience. Traditional websites are difficult to read and navigate on a smartphone. The more difficult it is, and the greater frustration navigation causes, the more likely prospective customers are to give up and go elsewhere.
• Focus on local marketing. As a small business, it is important to note that mobile marketing and local search go hand in hand. Smartphone users are typically looking for products or services in the immediate vicinity of where they are currently located. With this in mind, it is important to have updated business listings that can come up in a search for your business type. This way you can gain businesses from last minute shoppers, people needing an immediate haircut, dinner out, etc. The goal is to reach users exactly when and where they need you which will increase your conversions.
• SMS marketing. Text messages have a 90 percent open rate, making them an excellent form of marketing. The key is to have a strategy for how to use SMS to drive conversions. Since you know your text is likely to be opened, it is critical that you send a message that is relevant, valuable to the users, and prompts immediate action. For example, if you have a restaurant and it’s a slow night, send out a 2 for 1 coupon or all-night happy hour special. As a retailer you could send out a 10 percent off coupon that has to be used by 8pm, etc. This is something that you can and should experiment with. Try different offers, change the time of day you send the message, and adjust your wording in order to find out which offers generate the most traffic and conversions.

When planning for your mobile marketing strategy, remember to provide an easy user experience. Everything from the message you send, to your website load time, clicking for directions, or clicking to call you, needs to be mobile-friendly and easy to use. Test out everything, you do to ensure that the user experience flows smoothly so that you don’t lose any prospective customers. If your web site needs an overall, Local SEO Sites can help.