The Blog

How Mobile is Your Business?

Is your business mobile? I don’t mean literally, unless you own a food truck, but are you taking advantage of mobile marketing? According to eMarketer, U.S. adults spend an average of 2 hours and 20 minutes on non-voice mobile devices every day! Are you taking advantage of this? Better yet, are you reading this on a mobile device?

Going forward, your marketing must be designed with both mobile and desktop in mind. Before you create that next email, ask yourself, “How will this look on a mobile device?” Internet traffic on mobile devices will soon exceed traffic from traditional desktops.

Use mobile marketing to create loyalty among your customers. If you are relying on loyalty “punch cards,” you might actually have the reverse effect in some cases! Let’s say you own a restaurant and pass out loyalty cards. A potential customer is out looking for a place to eat and passes by, but has forgotten their loyalty card so they probably won’t stop in. Even if they were in the mood for your food, they will go somewhere else and wait until they have their card to eat at your place. If you were to offer a deal for anyone who checks in on Foursquare (a location-based social network), you would never have to worry about that. People can also connect their Twitter or Facebook page to Foursquare so all their friends see they’re at your place. That is some great user-generated marketing right there.

If the weather is bad or you’re having a slow night, send out a quick tweet offering a special. For example, most people aren’t inclined to go out to dinner on a cold and snowy evening. As a restaurant, send out a tweet that you’ll give half priced bottles of wine to anyone who shows their server the tweet tonight. It’s a great, easy way to market on-the-go, and it also rewards your social media fans for following you.

Have you ever been into an Apple store? No matter how many people crowd their stores, you never see an angry line of people waiting to check out. Each employee can fulfill your purchase anywhere in the store with their mobile device. Imagine how much better your customer service would be if a customer walks in and finishes a transaction with one person without having to deal with multiple people or waiting in line to resolve their issues.

With mobile subscribers projected to reach 7.5 billion people by the end of 2014, can you afford not to use mobile marketing? Over the next few weeks, I will be discussing different tools and techniques for mobile marketing. Are you already using FourSquare for your business? What kind of promotions have you successfully ran? Leave a comment or connect with me on Twitter!