Small Business Mobile Marketing: 7 Tips for Today

If you want to get ahead of the competition today, consider this: in 18 months, most sources expect for mobile web traffic to account for more page views than traditional desktop web traffic. Is your website ready? Are your marketing campaigns? Are you? If you're not sure whether you're doing the best you can do at small business mobile marketing, this guide is here to help. Keep reading to find out how to make your mobile reputation as great as the one you've built in other areas.

Tip #1: Know Who Your Target Markets Are

Make sure that you understand the kinds of clients who are increasingly using smartphones and mobile internet. These are the potential clients that small business mobile marketing will be able to target most easily. If your law firm is a rural firm that primarily works with impoverished elderly people, it's unlikely that a lot of your potential client pool is going to have an Android or iOS device that will make mobile marketing campaigns worthwhile.

If, on the other hand, you tend to appeal to upwardly mobile and younger people as a firm, you need to leverage your small business mobile marketing as much as possible. Young people are now more likely to use apps and mobile browsing than they are to check e-mail or do other routine desktop internet tasks. These potential clients are mobile and social, and can respond within minutes to new posts made on social networking sites or geolocational apps.

Tip #2: Give Potential Clients Something of Value

The biggest mistake you can make with your mobile marketing is to just make it sound like advertising. If your marketing campaigns sound like a typical attorney ad, it's unlikely that your small business mobile marketing strategies will be particularly successful. However, if you instead choose to give something away—even brief explanations of the law having to do with a particular topic—you could make a much better reputation for yourself.

Let's say that you're a divorce attorney and you want to create a small business mobile marketing campaign that will get your firm noticed. One thing you might want to do is advertise on buses or trains, using common questions about the law and QR codes that direct to a webpage on your firm's website that explains the answer in plain English. This lets you educate potential clients on the go and shows that you're interested in making the law understandable in people's daily lives—both excellent traits for any small business mobile marketing campaign.

Tip #3: Make a Mobile Website Version

Mobile users will usually only want the most commonly used features of your website. Features that take a long time to click through or use can be difficult for mobile users, who may have relatively slow mobile internet speeds. However, many law firm websites don't redirect iOS and Android users to a different landing page or website layout that is optimized for the mobile format.

Consider consolidating your most popular website pages for some of your mobile website. Being concise is important when people have limited bandwidth and time. Your mobile website should also forego any complicated graphics and fonts that may not display correctly or that would take a long time for users to download.

Tip #4: Make Your Standard Website Mobile-Viewable

If you've made yourself a mobile-friendly website, you should also provide mobile users with an “out” that takes them to your standard site. This is useful because some percentage of people visiting your mobile site will also want to see something more complicated or unusual on your main site. Good small business mobile marketing means not just making a mobile optimized site version, but also making sure that your desktop version is at least viewable by smartphones.

It's not an issue if your standard website needs to be zoomed in on for smartphone users—this is fairly normal, and as long as you have a mobile version of the site as well is unlikely to turn anyone off. However, if your website simply breaks when an Android or iOS device is looking at it, you may want to reconsider. It's very likely that potential clients will just move on to another firm if your firm can't give them the information they need on your website without breaking.

Tip #5: Think Local With Geo-targeted Social Networks

Most attorneys get most of their clients from an area local to their offices. Small business mobile marketing for law firms often depends on getting local and understanding how best to find and market to local clients in your area. Find out how many people near you are using services like Foursquare, which can be used for microtargeted advertising campaigns. In small towns you may not find as many users, but in larger cities using services like Foursquare is a great way to improve your presence when people look for attorneys local to them.

You should also make sure you're keeping your listings updated on Google and other maps services. Small business mobile marketing depends on businesses keeping information up to date and accurate. Double check phone numbers and addresses—it only takes a single digit mistake to become an embarrassing faux pas.

Tip #6: Social and Mobile Work Together

Just because you've decided to focus on small business mobile marketing doesn't mean that you should let social media fall by the wayside. Social is still one of the best ways to talk to consumers, and you should understand the ways that social networks and mobile media work together. By making your social media presence mobile friendly, you will be ensuring greater success for all of your small business mobile marketing campaigns.

Tip #7: Be an Early Adopter When You Can

Many of the same people who are early adopters of social media and social networking sites are also early adopters of mobile technology. By tapping into these markets, you can ensure that your brand message is reaching the people who are most likely to be influencing their friends and family members in purchasing decisions.