You probably get lots of marketing tips throughout the year on how to make yourself easier for customers to find you on the Internet and from the street, whether to accept e-coupons, even your business hours. These are all worthwhile concerns. Here are some tips that can help you assess how you’re doing in these areas: make your information accessible on popular social media sites, get yourself on sites with a strong local component, and make sure your site is friendly for mobile use, particularly for smartphones. In other words, market with SOLOMO (social, local, and mobile) in mind this year.
Think Like a Consumer
What do you look for when you’re searching for a particular service in your area? Thinking like a consumer can help you develop more effective content to boost your marketing. If you have a restaurant, make it clear whether it’s family-style or upscale. Full bar, beer and wine only, or BYOB? Carryout or delivery? These are the kinds of descriptions people want to read before they make a visit.
Think Like You’re Using a Smartphone to Research a Service
Get yourself on local listings and review sites, particularly Yelp, CitySearch, and Insider Pages, and on industry-specific sites like Zagat and UrbanSpoon for restaurants. Of course, a Facebook business page and Twitter account remain standard tools.
These sites are also optimized for mobile searching, especially on smartphones, which your customers are using more often for search, according to the June 2013 Nielsen Mobile Path-to-Purchase survey which found 46% of smartphone owners use smartphones exclusively for research, eschewing tablets and computers. As shown in the infographic representation below, one out of three are simply looking for local contact information.
Fifty-six percent of American adults own smartphones, according to the Pew Research Center. Not surprisingly, smartphone owners use mobile apps offered by Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and other sites. Pay attention to how you’re reviewed on these sites and what people are posting. Get a Twitter account to alert customers about sales and special events, and share local business news. Attach mobile coupons to your tweets or include a link to a Groupon for your business.
Is Your Site Mobile-Friendly?
Do you have to get a mobile site? Yes, because your customers are using mobile and your site probably doesn’t look very good on their smartphones.
While lots of content for a standard web page is good, mobile devices, especially smartphones, have smaller screens where standard web content often looks crammed. This trend may be reversing as Google has teamed up with Nexus to offer the Google Nexus 5, with a larger, five-inch screen. The Samsung Galaxy further blurs the line between tablets and smartphones.
Some services are offering mobile customization. If you decide to use one, be sure they let you revise your content. Make sure your contact information is easy to see and that your site is touch-friendly so that customers can quickly and easily call. They are, after all, working with a phone.
Zemanta, a company specializing in mobile marketing, says short and simple works best for mobile content. It recommends reducing the number and size of images, using more paragraph breaks, and avoiding Flash or video that takes too long to download.
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