Getting Started Promoting Your Local Business With Mobile Marketing

More people are now searching for local businesses on their smart phones than they are on their home computers. If you want to attract the most customers to your local business you need to make sure you are mobile friendly. Here are some key elements to mobile local marketing:

You need to have a website or at least a landing page that is mobile optimized. Your webpage has to show up properly on the client’s mobile phone. If you have a Google Place Search page this is done for your already by Google. If you are hosting your website with WordPress there are plugins you can use which will detect if the visitor is a mobile visitor and direct him to the mobile version of your page.

Another element of an effective mobile marketing campaign are mobile coupons. These are coupons that people show from their mobile phones at your business to get the discounts of benefits of the coupon. Google Place Search allows you to create mobile coupons directly from their interface.

Your mobile site needs to be connected to Google Maps. People need directions to your business. This is vital for a local business. With your Google Place Search page your business is already synced with Google Maps.

Click to call. Your mobile page should be set up so that when the customer sees your phone number on your mobile page all he has to do is click the link and they will automatically be calling your business without having to dial. Google Place Search is already set up for click to call. If you are creating a special mobile landing page your mobile page creator will be able to create this for you.

SMS marketing is also very effective. People see their SMS messages. One strategy is to create a special SMS landing page where you offer the customer something of value in exchange for him giving you his mobile phone number. You can then send SMS messages with special promotions to those who have opted in to your SMS list.

Paid mobile advertising. It is great to have your mobile optimized Google Place Search Page attracting search engine traffic but what if you want to drive more traffic even quicker to your page? There are many options for paid mobile local advertising. The good news is that prices are lower on these type of advertising platforms than on Google Adwords.

Here are some tools which will help you build custom mobile landing pages:

MOfuse
Beastmobi.com
MobiSiteGalore

If you are using WordPress here is a plugin which will help you create mobile optimized landing pages right from WordPress.
WordPress Mobile LP Plugin.

Another great idea to keep your local mobile customers coming back is to use create an app just for your business. Here are several sites which can help you accomplish this:

http://genwi.com/
appmaker
swebapps

Once you have creating your mobile landing pages you will need traffic. If you want to get traffic now you have the option of purchasing specific mobile local traffic. Here are some sources for this type of traffic:

Admob.com
Inmobi.com
Mojiva.com
Jumptap.com
Adfonic.com
Google Adwords Express
Yahoo Mobile
MSN Adcenter

These ideas should give you a good start on your mobile local advertising campaigns. As always your comments are appreciated.

Thank you,

Matthew Meyer