Your Guide to Mobile Marketing for Local and Small Businesses

Mobile growth is driving local search.  This is your guide to mobile marketing for local and small businesses

For local businesses to succeed online, they must incorporate mobile marketing into their digital marketing strategy. Local search is what is of most importance to local businesses. Local SEO is a highly effective form of local online marketing to local customers at exactly the time that they are looking for your type of business.

The explosive growth in local search over the past couple of years has been driven by the growth in mobile devices. A study by Google found that 40% of all mobile searches have a local intent. Additionally, one can track the growth in local search by the adoption of mobile devices.Mobile devices are about utility. We use them to find restaurants, stores and businesses in our community because mobile phone are convenient and many of us are carrying one at all times.

In 2016, Comscore found that mobile use represented 65 percent of digital media time. The same study found that desktop use declined 12 percentage points between 2013 and 2016, dropping to 35% of digital media time. As a result, mobile is now the main digital channel for most people while desktop is a secondary digital channel.

What is the takeaway from this information?

If you are a local business and you want to succeed online, local search and mobile needs to be a large part of your digital marketing strategy.

Why mobile matters

If you are serious about success online, mobile needs to be a big part of your overall strategy. Consider the following:

• 80% of Internet users own a smartphone.
• 48% of consumers start mobile research with a search engine.
• 71% of marketers believe mobile marketing is core to their business.
• Average smartphone conversion rates are up 64% compared to the average desktop conversion rates.
• 88% of consumers who search for a type of local business on a mobile device call or go to that business within 24 hours.
• Mobile offers are redeemed 10 times more frequently than print offers.

Overview

Mobile marketing is advertising using a cell phone, smart phone, tablet, or mobile device that is connected to the Internet. It is often user-initiated, unlike traditional advertising that is advertiser-initiated. As a result, you are targeting an audience that is already interested or predisposed to buy your product and services.

Mobile marketing not only targets users based upon their buying patterns and interest profiles, but also on their geographic location as well. For example, diners interested in Mexican food can receive an alert when they are near a Mexican restaurant when it is time for dinner.

Because of the fact that mobile marketing is based on geographic location and 40% of all mobile searches have a local intent, local search is largely about mobile marketing.

My goal for this article is to share with local and small business owners the basic elements of a mobile marketing campaign.  I also hope to show how important mobile marketing is to a local digital marketing campaign.

Forms of mobile marketing

A mobile marketing strategy is limited in terms of content and software programming to fit the limitations of the typical mobile device. Here are the seven channels making up location-based mobile marketing.

Short messaging service

Short messaging service is also text messaging. SMS is limited to 160 alphanumeric characters only, no images or graphics. A big advantage of SMS is that it can be sent to cell phones that don’t have smart phone capabilities. A second advantage is that the 160 character limitation ensures that content is direct and to the point. In most cases, the entire marketing message is limited to just 160 characters.

Text messaging has additional advantages over email and social media, including:

• A close to 100% open rate
• 45% of SMS campaigns generate a successful return on investment, reaching over 50% when combined with other channels.
• Is not currently subject to filtering for spam
• Easy opt-in and opt-out capabilities boost subscriber satisfaction

Multimedia messaging service

Multimedia messaging services (MMS) is text messaging that can also contain images, audio and video sent to smartphones, tablets, and other MMS-enabled devices. According to Outspoken, advantages of MMS over SMS include:

• 15% average click-through rate (CTR)
• 20 percent increase in opt-ins over SMS
• Much more likely to be shared over social media than SMS

Mobile subscription service

Mobile subscription services or push notifications started with Blackberry phones but really took off with the 2009 IPhone. Fast forward to 2017 and it is a common feature on just about every mobile device.

Push services enable a user to subscribe to receive notifications of key updates. The point is to prompt the user to open the application or go to another page to get additional details.

An example of a push notification would be to announce a sale for a very short period of time, happy hour specials or to announce when new inventory has been received.

Location and proximity technologies make push notifications work effectively as they combine convenience (the store is close by) with a sense of urgency (for a limited time only).

Mobile app marketing

If you have an idea for an app, you also have a marketing opportunity. An app for your business, product or service may be a way to increase sales and revenue, especially if you can take credit card transactions. The app can make it easy to purchase and provide content to promote. This would be your product or service. Apps can also serve as a great way to conduct market research.

An example of mobile app marketing would be foursquare or Facebook check-ins where customers can ‘check-in’ at your business. Not only can this be great marketing, but it can be a great source of market research.

Mobile game marketing

Mobile game advertising or video game advertising have been around as long as video games themselves. We are seeing an increase in advertising within gaming apps as the cost of mobile app development has dropped while use of such apps has increased

While a bit dated, a good example of mobile game marketing is the Chipotle Scarecrow campaign. It went on to become one of the top 15 free IOS apps and was downloaded 250,000 in the first four days of its release. It was downloaded close to a million times within the first six months.

Mobile display advertising

Mobile display advertising is basically online advertising adapted to the mobile platform. Mobile banners are charged to advertising in the same way as any Internet placement:

• Whether users click on the ad (pay per click or PPC)
• Number of views (pay per impression)

Mobile display advertising also includes video advertising which has experienced tremendous growth in recent years. That growth is not showing any signs of slowing down since recent surveys have shown that many businesses are allocating half of their digital marketing budgets to video marketing.

The reason mobile display and video advertising work is because it works. A study by BBC World News found that mobile advertising worldwide is twice as effective as desktop-based advertising. It was also found to be four times effective among affluent customers.

QR codes

Quick Response Codes or ‘QR codes’ are two dimensional patterns made up of square dots arranged in a unique matrix on a white background. A mobile device user can scan a QR code in a wide variety of formats of marketing collateral. Once the QR code is read, the mobile device user is redirected to a website, can download information or receive a message.

While QR code campaigns were everywhere a few years ago, there are still many advertisers running them. The reason that is is because they have been shown to work.

Essential elements of a mobile marketing campaign

All seven of the mobile marketing messaging channels mentioned above contain four essential elements that are needed to succeed. They are:

• Build a community – encourage your readers to share with others in their social networks and build ‘excitement’ around your company, product or service.
• Get the target audience to do something – sign up for a newsletter, enter a contest, or purchase a product.
• Provide easy redemption – when people respond, give them a discount, join a club, or register for special offers. This should all be very easy to do.
• Track consumer behavior – collect patterns and data about how people are interacting with your campaign.

Mobile targeting

Mobile marketing campaigns target users not only on buying patterns and user profiles, but also based upon geographic location. This is where a user is in relation to the business, product or service being marketed.

There are three ways to target mobile ads to people in a certain location. They are geo-fencing, geo-targeting, and mobile beacons.

Geo-fencing

Geo-fencing is a virtual border around a geographic area. As soon as somebody enters or leaves your virtual border area, you show them ads or offers. To receive ads or offers, the user needs to have downloaded your app.

An example of geo-fencing would be an app for a coffee shop at the mall. Whenever a user went into the virtual border area around a mall, the app would show them an ad with the special.

Geo-targeting

Geo-targeting has a much wider target area than geo-fencing. For example, you would start with a region, county, city, or zip code and within that area, you target potential customers based upon additional non-geographic criteria.

An example of geo-targeting would be to focus on women within your city between the ages of 35 and 54 who have children. An additional option is to upload your email list to Facebook and target people within a certain number of miles from your city. You can also target only mobile users within your geographic area.

Geo-targeting is an ideal strategy for a business that draws a large number of clients from within a certain area. A local business may be able to greatly benefit from this strategy.

Mobile beacons

Mobile beacons use Bluetooth technology. As a result, it has a very small range and is ideal for in-store displays.

An example of beacon technologies would be a cosmetics company that uses an app or a subscription to a website to run the campaign. The campaign can include a rewards program and can send special offers to the subscriber via SMS whenever they are within the cosmetics section of the local grocery store or retailer.

While mobile beacons have been around for a few years now, I am expecting adoption rates to increase dramatically in the coming years.

Mobile apps versus responsive design Since mobile is such an important piece of an effective local digital marketing campaign, I am often asked by clients if they should invest in developing an app for their business in the place of a website.

For all the business owners I have spoken to and worked with, my response has always been the same. Focus on developing a website and make sure that is incorporates responsive design.

Responsive design is a website development approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, orientation and platform. It consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images, and an intelligent use of cascading style sheets or CSS.

There are many small businesses that could benefit from a mobile app. However, I don’t think that a mobile app should come at the expense of a website. It should first be a website followed by an app.

An example of a local business that would benefit from an app would be a coffee shop that focuses on the pre-teen and teen market. This is a target market that is already a heavy user of mobile devices.

Lokalyze Call Me Now

WordPress is the most popular content management system in the World. 27.5% of all websites online are WordPress. WordPress greatly simplifies the process of setting up a website. It also has good security, is search engine friendly and very user friendly from a development perspective. It is ideal for the cost conscious small business owner who wants to do everything themselves.

Combining our background with WordPress, local SEO and mobile, we created the Lokalyze Call Me Now WordPress plugin. This is a free plugin that was primarily designed for local businesses. It enables WordPress site visitors using their smart phone to call the business from anywhere on the website with just one click.

The WordPress website owner can define when the Call Me Now icon is shown so that site visitors only call during business hours. Additionally, it is integrated with Google Analytics.

We have two other WordPress plugins designed for local businesses that are currently in testing. One is to better implement local SEO best practices on a WordPress website and the second one is to manage the online review process. Both address important local SEO ranking signals.

Putting it all together

My goal for this article was to show how important the mobile Internet is to a local business. Mobile marketing should have a prominent role in every local digital marketing campaign.

There are several ways to incorporate mobile into your local digital strategy. The most obvious way is to make sure that your website works on mobile devices. A very cost effective way to do this is to ensure that your site incorporates responsive web design. In fact, Google pretty much requires it if you want your website listed in mobile search results.

In April 2015, Google started using ‘mobile friendliness’ as a ranking signal in search results. Those sites that are optimized for mobile devices are included in Google search results on mobile devices. This sites that are not, may be missing out a great deal of traffic from mobile devices.

There are also paid search and social media campaigns that can be used for mobile marketing campaigns. I will discuss these in greater detail in future articles.

What are some mobile marketing campaigns you have run and what were the results. What questions or feedback do you have about what is written here? Please feel free to share your comments.