Read more about Reading Devices.

This paper is a brief intro to Mobile marketing which is a way to communicate with both clients and prospects. New technological advancements mean that it's now a brilliant and cost effective strategy for small and medium sized corporations. More information on all of these sides of mobile marketing can be discovered at Mobile Marketing.

Google Places

This is a fast way to exploit mobile marketing. Most firms actually have a free Google Places listing. There is a Google Places App for the all the major smartphones. When a user launches this App, it will list businesses close to the user's current location (using the GPS). The user can select a particular business type (e.g cafes) and get all those nearby listed (with ratings and reviews). The user can also select another location for listings (e.g. a town to be visited). Therefore if you verify and complete (make sure you get some enthusiastic reviews) your Google Places listing this gives clients and prospects an easy way to find your business.

Text Marketing

Text marketing is a good way to communicate with customers and prospects but you must do this carefully so that you don't annoy them. There are lots of text marketing services that permit you to send out texts to your customers and prospects. You'll need to get their explicit permission to subscribe to your text marketing (either by a web form sign up or by them texting you). Text messages have a much better open rate than e-mail messages. The services will give you a shortcode (a 5 digit number) which allows you to send and receive from your subscribers. The services will also give you a keyword (e.g 2BUY) which subscribers can text back to the shortcode so that they can accept an offer. Texts back to the shortcode are picked up so that you are able to contact them (e.g. To approve a booking).

QR Codes & Microsoft Tags

These are like 2 dimensional bar codes. You can put these on printed material (leaflets, advertisements, shop windows, products, vehicles etc) and when scanned by a smartphone app they can make it display details about your services take users to your website, display contact details and so on. Think of it as a connection between the digital and physical worlds!

Mobile Websites & Apps

Anyone with a smartphone should be well placed to view internet sites. Being able to reach out to mobile users is a great way to advertise your business as well as connecting with purchasers and prospects. Remember, more and more web access is happening from mobile devices and a recent Ofcom report says that a third of UK adults regularly use a smartphone. You must probably develop a special mobile site or pages. Most devices can view an ordinary website but they are quite difficult to navigate around and frequently slow to load (and can take up a lot of bandwidth credits). Keep it simplistic. Don't use Flash (or at least without detection and a good alternative). iPhones, iPads and iPods won't display flash. Mobile Apps are applications which run on a smartphone. They're downloaded and installed from the smartphone operating systems supplier (e.g. Apple or Google Android). They can often (although not always) communicate with the internet and/or with your systems. They can be for entertainment, for consumers to order stuff from you, for info or to provide services.

Location Based Services

Location based services are applications that provide info or entertainment to a mobile device that is dependent upon the user's location. Some of these services also offer augmented reality where that information is overlaid onto a real time picture (taken through the device's camera) of the location.

Peter James is a WSI Internet Consultant. He is an expert in Digital Marketing and works next to clients to assist them in making their websites work better for their business. His website WSI Digital Advantage has heaps of information on Internet Marketing in general and, in particular on Mobile Marketing.

{ 0 comments }