One of the most important components to being a mobile-ready business is being accessible; you want your customers to be able to easily find your small business online and interact with you in streamlined manner. Without mobile marketing integrated into your organization’s overall marketing plan, you are missing out on potential business. Ensure your company is findable, accessible, and functional on mobile platforms with these tips.

Making Your Small Business Marketing Plan Mobile-Ready

  • Make your website mobile-friendly. The most important step you can take to making your business mobile-ready is having a website with a design responsive to mobile browsers. If you don’t, you risk having a difficult-to-read site with text that doesn’t fit on the page correctly, confused readers that can’t find information that doesn’t appear properly on their mobile browser, and eventually frustrated users who won’t be visiting your website again anytime soon.
  • Make sure signup forms can be easily completed by users on mobile devices. If some information is difficult to find or if necessary information can’t be completed, you may effectively prevent customers from signing up for your service. Be particularly careful with animations and video. These features may translate poorly to mobile and may simply take too long to load on many wireless networks, frustrating potential customers and stopping them from visiting your website in the future. Mobile-friendly websites also rank higher in Google search results than those not optimized for mobile devices.
  • Take advantage of searches conducted on mobile devices locally. Businesses with physical locations have an advantage on mobile search. Most search engines vary results based on the location of the mobile device on which a search is conducted, so if a user googles “shoe repair”, near your shoe repair store, your website is more likely to appear higher in results. This highlights the importance of search engine optimization (SEO). Additionally, make use of tools that provide search engines with detailed information about your business, including Google My Business and Bing Places. Finally, target sites and apps that allow users to find businesses by location by ensuring that your business has a complete profile. For example, the Yelp app, allow users to search by proximity. You should make sure that Yelp has all relevant information about your business and encourage your best customers to rank your business on Yelp.
  • Make purchasing and discounting customer-friendly via social media and apps. Facebook and Twitter aren’t just for finding out what your high school nemesis is up to these days. Social media platforms offer great ways to find and secure new customers too. When people seek to make purchases on mobile devices, they need a simplified purchasing process. You can use “buy now” buttons on many social media networks so users don’t even have to navigate away from their news feed to make a purchase. You can even offer mobile-only deals sent straight to your consumers’ smartphones (for those who have signed up, of course). SMS coupons have redemption rates 10 times higher than print coupons, which is good news for business. You can also use mobile-only social media applications like Snapchat and Periscope to interact with your customers by conducting fun FAQ sessions, sending exclusive invites to in-person or online sales events, or host contests to engage your client base.

70% of searches performed on mobile devices are connected with a business. 52% of searchers called a business they looked up, 50% looked for a business address or location on a map, 48% visited the website of the business, and 66% of people who performed a mobile search actually visited the business. Mobile search provides a great opportunity to convert potential customers in your vicinity. Make sure that those nearby mobile users can find your business and, when they do, that it’s portrayed in the best possible light.