business

Consumer Focused Mobile Marketing Drives Profits

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A recently released survey by Web.com on small business mobile usage revealed that 84% of small businesses that use mobile marketing have seen an increase in business. But before you jump blindly into mobile marketing, you need to craft a strategy that will most effectively leverage your resources to increase profits.

To know how to effectively reach your target consumers, you need to understand their wants and needs. If you have regular customers, you can ask them what they would like to see on your mobile website, if they are interested in mobile offers and what they feel your business is lacking in terms of marketing.

Another good way to analyze your mobile marketing needs is to see how browsers of your full website navigate your site. You can use free tools such as Google Analytics to see which links are most often clicked on or try a low cost ($9/month) service such as CrazyEgg.com. CrazyEgg creates a heatmap of your site that will show you what parts of your site people hover on and click on, even if they are not links.

Even if you only sign up for an analytics service for one month, this should give you an idea of what people are looking at on your full site – this should give you some ideas of what to include on your mobile website. If you offer discounts or disclose pricing on your website and see heavy activity there, this can be an indication that mobile coupons and offers would be greeted eagerly.

By looking at what areas of your full site generate the most action, you can refine your mobile marketing strategy to be most efficient. For instance, restaurant websites may see a lot of action on their online menu or delivery/takeout options. Dry cleaners may see more action on their price list areas. Based on the analysis, you can design your mobile website interface to get the consumer quickly to their area of interest.

Equally as important, you can eliminate from your mobile marketing program, the portions of your full website that aren’t seeing any action. This will streamline your marketing approach. As well as considering your standard website browsing activity, think about what people ask when they are in your establishment and what they want to know when they call. Your mobile web presence should be designed to provide all of the information people seek via all of your communication channels. Here’s what you are likely to find:

  • Callers may ask your days/hours of operation
  • Callers may ask about special events
  • Callers may ask about discounts or promotions
  • Callers may ask about your inventory/menu/services
  • Callers may ask for directions or landmarks to find your establishment

Once you’ve accumulated all of the input, you can devise a mobile marketing strategy that will meet all these needs using an easy-to-navigate format that will get them the information they need with the least clicks and least hassle possible.

When you meet the needs of potential customers by giving them a positive mobile web experience, you greatly increase the odds of them transacting with you. And if you don’t meet those needs, the results will be less in your favor. If your mobile website doesn’t load correctly or rapidly, 33% of mobile web users will immediately click off of your website and look to your competition and 57% of people will not recommend your business due to an unfavorable web experience.

So by all means, establish a mobile marketing plan for your small business, but be sure to do your pre-work rather than jumping in blindly – remember the customer is what matters!

Top of Google for $100 a Month

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On several occasions I’ve had clients tell me that a telemarketer has called with this promise. “Pay us ($40, $100, 200, etc) per month and we’ll put your website at the top of Google. We have a special relationship with Google. ”

Is this a scam?

It’s generally not a scam in the strictest sense. They aren’t lying, but they do leave out a lot of important facts. Most of these places are using Adwords to promote your business. Adwords allows you to bid on a keyword (choose an amount are willing to pay per person who clicks through to your site) and therefore is called Pay Per Click advertising. Using this system, you can be at the top of Google (the sponsored listings show at the top and on the right), by just paying enough money.

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Word of Mouth Marketing (Part 2)

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Last post I talked to you about word of mouth marketing. If you haven’t read that article yet click here to read it first and come back to this one.

Mainly I was focused on how you can get referrals from your existing customers, but I also want to talk to you about one of the most profitable marketing strategies you can use. Creating strategic alliances with complementary businesses can literally make your business. One good strategic partner could provide 25-50% of your business.

What is a strategic partner? Sometimes it’s obvious… If you’re a mortgage person, you want to have partnerships with good real estate agents, a photographer wants to have partnerships with wedding planners, etc. You want to look around and see what other kinds of businesses share your same potential customers.

Once you identify potential alliances, you’ll need to ask an important question, “what can I do for them?” You are trying to make a sale, not just meet people. This is USP (Unique Selling Proposition) revisited. What’s unique about your business as far as how you can help a potential strategic partner.

I won’t go into great detail about the concepts of this kind of marketing. The idea here is to get you thinking about it. It’s probably one of the most under used marketing strategies.

20 Minutes a Day

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How much time to you spend marketing your business. I would suggest that you spend 20 minutes every day marketing your business online. You could just go through all of the resources in this site and find useful things to do to help your business on a daily basis.

So often in business we focus on how we use our marketing dollars. While of course this is an important question, I feel the better question is, “how do we use our marketing time?” Lots of businesses don’t spend much time at all on marketing. Of course, you probably don’t fall into this category, after all your reading this.

Track it or Lose it

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Are you familiar with the 80:20 rule? In business, almost without fail, you’ll find that 80+ percent of your business will come from 20 (or less) percent of your customers. Additionally, 80% of your results will come from 20% of your activities.

What am I getting at here?

Only 20% of your marketing activities will provide 80% of the results. When you focus all of your resources on the top 10-20%, your business takes off.

So how do we do that?

You absolutely must do one thing consistently. You must test. Anytime you are running a marketing campaign of any kind, you should be looking for how you can test it. If you don’t, you could pass up that one explosive marketing powerhouse. Or, what’s even more likely, you keep dumping huge amounts of money into advertising that provides little or know benefit.

Let’s look at a few ways to test…

#1 Way, and almost no one does it – ASK

This is such an odd thing. By far the least expensive and easiest way to find out where people are coming from is to just ask. How did you hear about us? I would bet millions of dollars are lost each year because that question isn’t being asked. Businesses probably close their doors because they forgot to ask one simple question.

Coupons/Discounts

“tell us you heard it on the radio and get 10% off” This is also great for word of mouth.

Tracking Websites

You can easily setup a website that points to your main site and you’ll be able to see the number of times someone comes in through that site.

Tracking Phone Numbers

You can use a company like Telecapture setup phone numbers that forward to your main line but count the number of times the number is called. I would never run a paper ad without this unless everyone answering the phone was perfect with the question, “how did you hear about us?”

Well this turned out to be a long post. I hope it’s helpful.

Something to Talk About

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Discussion forms are another great tool. You simply set up a signature, like you did with your email, and then search for forums in your industry. When you find one, you look for questions that people are asking where you know the answer.

Important, don’t post ads for your business. You need to add real value to the discussion. This should be easy if your passionate about your business.