Mobile Marketing 101: What Your Business Needs to Know

Your business already boasts its own interactive Web site. You run a busy blog promoting your company and its services. You Tweet your followers whenever your business is holding special sales or launches a new service or product. Your business's Facebook page is steadily adding followers.

Unfortunately, to reach today's consumers, all that isn't enough. You must also master mobile marketing.

Mobile marketing matters

For time-strapped business owners, this might seem like one too many ways in which to reach consumers. However, today's customers rely extensively on their smart phones and tablets. If you want to reach them, you have to make sure that they are receiving your marketing messages on their mobile devices.

There are several ways to do this. The most important is to develop a Web site that is optimized for mobile devices. Far too many businesses today boast highly interactive Web sites that look great on a computer screen but cluttered and messy on a tablet or smart phone.

Optimize your site for mobile

And that's unfortunate. What happens when customers on the road seek an Italian restaurant near them? They'll log onto your Web site, struggle to read the particulars on their smart phone or tablet, and then search for an alternative, a competitor who might have a Web site that fits nicely in the confines of the smaller screens common to mobile devices.

Savvy businesses today operate both standard and mobile-optimized Web sites, giving consumers the option to visit their mobile sites when they're accessing them through smart phones or tablets.

Offer your customers value

Business owners can also send short text messages advertising their business and services to mobile devices. It's important, though, to make sure that your customers actually want this service. You can, for instance, ask your customers to sign up for mobile messages through your Web site. Usually, you'll have to entice your customers to sign up. You might, for instance, offer savings and discount opportunities in the mobile messages you send out. A beauty salon might send a message to clients that all perms will be 15 percent off on a specific date. A fast-food restaurant might send a message that French fries are free to all mobile customers with an order of $15 or more.

In short, customers don't want their smart phones and tablets flooded with marketing messages. But if these messages actually offer them something worthwhile – first crack at a newly released movie or book, a discount on their next purchase – your customers will come to appreciate the value in them.