Local Mobile Marketing - Home is Where the Phone is or Why Your Business Needs Mobile Marketing Now

When it comes to many things that used to be done at home the game is changing rapidly, very rapidly .

Over the past 10 years the playing field has been leveled by the internet and it's big search engines .  Customers found themselves being able to do things like never before. Such as looking for services, pricing, photos, photos, and anything else they want . Anything they wanted, they could get.  

This luxurious internet only had one limitation, it had to be accessed from the home or office .  Sure some have been hanging out at coffee shops slurping up free Wi-Fi, but for the most part our internet addiction has been fed by the wire or cable coming into our home .

Everything was flipped upside down when smartphones came about. Mainly the iphone. Now 55 million Americans access the internet with their handy smartphones .

 The ability to access the internet in such a way will have more of an impact than the internet itself actually had  .

Here’s Why Mobile Marketing Will Have the Greatest Impact Yet

In the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s people were introduced and became accustomed to shopping from their homes thanks to Messrs. Sears and Roebuck.

For the past 75 years or so the phone book has allowed consumers to find and engage local product and service providers from their homes or offices.

Since Google became the dominant force a decade ago consumers have been conducting research, comparing prices and even shopping from their homes .

Now, there is yet another change in consumer research and purchasing behavior .  With a smartphone and 3G & 4G networks you no longer have to be home to conduct your research, compare prices and even make a purchase .  You can do it all in the car, at a park, at the baseball game, doctor’s office, hair salon… I think you get the point !

The process looks something like this :

Idea

Hey I just remembered that I need to …

Research

Research happens as quickly as your synapse can fire and your fingers can swipe (or if you are using voice activated search, as quickly as you can speak!)

Action

You make a call, request information or visit a store or showroom without ever going back to your home or office .

What this means for you.

Buying is emotional.  People buy emotionally and justify intellectually .  If the savvy marketer takes advantege of local mobileadvertising, he can feed his potential customers when they are most hungry without the 5 hour wait for them to get home and hop online .  That’s why mobile advertising is so effective, because it immediately scratches a person’s itch and now that you know this you had better get up to speed quickly.

Depending upon how you slice and dice it they are somewhere between several and several dozen different ways to advertise your local business online.

However, if you are just getting started in the world of online advertising I strongly recommend that you confine your activities to one of these two core, proven methods to advertise your business online.

Google Adwords Paper Click Advertising

Yes, of course Yahoo and BING also have pay per click advertising available but Google is by far the largest and most sophisticated platform and for that reason we will focus our energies there. Of course, everything described herein will be directly applicable to advertising on Yahoo and BING as well.

Google Adwords is a pay-for-performance advertising platform that allows you to place your unique message in front of you either potential customers looking for your products and services using Google's search engine or potential customers who are simply surfing the web. In fact, if you choose you can place your message in front of both types of potential customers at the same time.

Using the AdWords system to gain an online presence has a couple of distinct advantages over organic search engine advertising.

The first advantage is that you can advertise your message on thousands of different third-party websites and blogs whereas organic search engine advertising only reaches those potential customers who are searching for your products and services.

The second advantage is that in a matter of an hour or two you can set up an Adwords campaign and once approved, it can be generating leads for your business with relatively little effort.

On the downside, Adwords is a pay per click model so every time someone clicks on your ad you will be paying for that click whether they had any real interest in your product or service or not.  Another drawback is that in order to get the most cost-effective clicks Google is requiring the creation of very high quality landing pages. The creation of which is quite often beyond the capability of the average business owner or his staff. Finally, there is quite a bit of evidence that suggests that your customers are becoming less and less influenced by online paid advertising. Several eye tracking studies have shown that for the most part the ads being served on search engine results pages are being ignored.

Organic Search Engine Advertising

Organic search engine advertising is what many refer to as "free" search engine traffic. To play this game well you need to have a well designed website, plenty of fresh content, inbound linking authority, and both on-site activity and user activity. Miss out on any one of these factors and your website will struggle to make it on Page One of the search results let alone occupy one of the top three spots which is where most of the click traffic comes from.

Unlike pay-per-click advertising organic search engine advertising which relies upon the science and art of search engine optimization does not require you to pay each time someone views your listing and clicks through to your website. However, in our experience, to say that this traffic is "free" is to ignore the time, energy and cost required to get your site on Page 1 for your most important keyword phrases and to maintain it there for the long haul.

Still, there is no doubt that organic search engine advertising is more effective, more trusted by consumers, and ultimately a long-term asset to your company. For these reasons organic search engine advertising makes more sense for the regional and local business that is looking to build a long-term viable online marketing system.

No matter which route you choose to go you will be best served by outsourcing your local online advertising to a professional firm that specializes in local and regional businesses. By doing so, you will leverage your time which is your most important asset and focus your energies “on” your business not “in” them.