Internet marketing tips for mobile local search
Internet marketing for mobile local search is growing fast – very fast – and it’s something small businesses should be addressing now to stay ahead of the competition. In this article we show you how you should be adapting for the mobile media boom and how to take advantage of local search.
The mobile media boom is here!
Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past 2 years then it’s highly unlikely that you haven’t heard of the iPhone phenomenon sweeping the Globe. But it’s not only iPhones, there are smartphones of all types in use such as the Blackberry, the Samsung clones, the Nokia N Series and so on. Virtually everywhere you look, whether it be on the bus, the train or in a restaurant you will see someone tapping away into a smartphone screen to text, send an email or more importantly - search the internet!
The mobile media boom is definitely here and in a recent article from Orange a staggering increase in mobile media usage was revealed with monthly data more than doubling. Add to this the Kelsey Group forecast that predicts mobile local search will account for $1.3 billion in the next four years in the USA so it’s clearly exciting times ahead. According to their report 1 in 4 people who currently use the internet are mobile users and 15% of iPhone applications are local so mobile local search is an opportunity that local businesses cannot afford to ignore.
Local search marketing will be a big winner!
Reports and forecasts aside, we are actually seeing increases in local search and mobile devices for ourselves. So if you are a local business then now is the time to adopt early and make sure your website is friendly towards mobile devices.
Identify any how people search for your business, products or services.
Probably the best way to do this is to actually have a few people perform a local search for one of your products or a shop similar to yours in the area. Using a music shop as an example you could ask them to search for “Music shops in Edinburgh” or just simply ask them to search for a penny whistle. This point of this excercise is to show you that people search for the same thing in different ways. For example if they were searching on an iPhone some people may use the google search field in the browser whilst others may use the inbuilt maps search function.
Others may have a local search application. Either way you will learn something about their habits and be able to apply things later to your website marketing efforts.
Are you being found?
It’s no use if your business isn’t listed in local listings so this is something you need to address immediately. From the searches your friends performed are you found on all, some or none of the searches performed? If you aren’t found on any services then make a point of registering with these now.
When you register with a local service like Google or Yahoo local you should make sure you fill in all the fields and provide a decent amount of information about your company. If you only fill in a few fields then the local search engine will give preference to those listings that provide good quality information.
Check your website renders in the mobile device.
We conducted a small survey of mobile users and the top complaint was that of websites that display their phone numbers in image format. This was described as especially annoying because more often than not a pen would be needed in order to write the telephone number down. Make sure your website displays your phone number in text format and preferably near the top of the page. Mobile phone browsers can recognise telephone numbers in web pages so all the user has to do is click on the number and the phone will automatically dial through.
Avoid Flash in your website contact details. Better still avoid Flash altogether. iPhones do not read flash and this was the second most complaint in our survey of mobile users. All of the users we asked told us they would go to another website if this happened. In one example a user told us he was flat hunting around the city and upon seeing a sales placard for a house, he keyed in the website address of the estate agents into his iPhone. However the site was in Flash and he could not see the details aso never followed it up. That was a potentially big sale to lose!
If you have to have a flash website or image based website then try to provide an alternative version for mobile users. If you have wordpress for example you can download a plugin that will render your website for the majority of mobile phones. If you have a static or ecommerce site then try and provide a non styled version for mobile users.
