7 Mobile Marketing Tactics to Give Your Small Business the Edge

Are you searching for highly effective new business marketing tactics to give your enterprise the edge? Mobile is not only essential for small business owners that are serious about surviving today, but an excellent way to level the playing field and even get the jump on bigger competitors.

Go Mobile or Go Home

Desktop Internet usage will be surpassed by mobile devices within months if it hasn’t already. Check your analytics and you may be surprised at just how much of your website traffic is from mobile. Many U.S. consumers that are having trouble keeping the lights on can be seen with the new iPad and flexing the latest Samsung smartphones and the iPhone 5.

Perhaps even closer to the hearts and wallets of most small business owners today; mobile offers superior targeting options for maximizing direct response results marketing ROI.

The only question is which are the best strategies for leveraging mobile today?

7 Small Business Mobile Marketing Tactics to Bank On:

1. SMS Alerts

Forget email. Gmail has put a big dent in email marketing effectiveness with its new inbox. Have users sign up for SMS alerts instead and ensure they get your messages. Open and response rates are far higher for SMS.

2. Check-Ins

Boost your social followings, social mentions, and engagement by encouraging consumers to check in with Facebook or Foursquare with the lure of incentives. Wow them, and they’ll become automatic brand ambassadors and referral agents without you even having to ask.

3. Apps

Mobile apps have become far cheaper to develop and publish today, and can be a great way to increase brand loyalty. The Huffington Post’s GPS for the Soul is a great example of this. However, there are now even more budget friendly ways to leverage mobile apps and ensure downloads including advertising through another organization’s app, taking advantage of white label programs and even getting in on gaming.

4. Responsive Web Design

Most small business owners are already familiar with the availability of and need for mobile responsive web design which automatically resizes to fit users’ screens. Even good DIY website builders offer this today. However, the savviest web marketers are already onto the next thing. This is content optimization which delivers a new, customized experienced with content personalized to users depending on how they are classified and which devices they are using. This allows for highly targeted marketing and gradual and consistent upsells.

5. Mobile Advertising

Paid mobile advertising can actually not only be incredibly effective today, but in many cases beats out some other small business marketing tactics which are being pushed on entrepreneurs.

Two great examples of this are:

a.    Using mobile search to push consumers and hot live leads through click-to-call ads to toll free numbers

b.    Twitter ads for leveraging online influencers, eliminating the need for costly third party social media ‘experts’ and for both direct B2C and B2B marketing

6. Augmented Reality

Small business owners can already gain the same benefits for blending brick and mortar and print with digital by using a wide range of AR apps and creation services. Use them to make your ads come to life, create a buzz and kick the competition to the curb.

7. Mobile Customer Service

Make everything you do better by delivering mobile customer service. Done right this could even be the industry disrupting element which puts your small business firmly on top. Chase and Capital One have done it with toll free numbers and live call center agents in the banking industry and Amazon just rocked it in online publishing with ‘May Day’.

Line up these business marketing tactics and take your company to the top of the mobile game in your field…