Several Techniques Mobile Marketing Can Boost Your Local Business

Mobile Marketing refers to the many new new methods for you to engage your customers and prospects through their mobile handheld device. Especially if you are brick-and-mortar or locally based business, it is among the fastest growing and most exciting new marketing techniques out there. Now is the time to get into it, if you haven't already. Allow me to share four creative ways you can use mobile marketing to increase your local business today.

1. Put your Social media on steroids. You might have heard of local social networking sites like Yelp, Google Places, Foursquare, and today Fb too. People are using these web sites to locate and review local businesses in increasing numbers, nevertheless the real news is the fact that most of this activity is occurring directly on their cell phone. These types of services allow you stand above your competition with good reviews, and to offer coupons or promotions to your customers directly from within your mobile profile. Local companies who view the impact of this get this amazing advantage over their competitors.

2. Text customers with special deals. Here's a crucial fact for you. 95% of mobile messages are read by the people they are delivered to, and most within the first minute! The best way to leverage that potential is using text messages to deliver targeted offers directly to your clients mobile devices, like a coupon code they can redeem at your place business. The response rate for this approach is phenomenal, and it is especially effective when offering time sensitive deals.

3. Include mobile offers on your printed advertising. Yet another excellent technique to engage people through mobile is to ask them to send a text to get a special offer.

4. Crank it up with QR Codes. QR codes are 2D barcodes which can be easily scanned by many smartphones and devices today, and they are a thrilling way to bridge your offline marketing channels to your mobile marketing solution online presence. Here's how it works: you generate a qr code and print it on your marketing materials. Once its scanned, it will point the mobile user to any website you want. It could be your site, your Yelp or Google places profile with a special offer, or perhaps a custom website landing page where visitor can provide their email address in return for free training or a special report. Your options are endless. And you can print these cool little codes on almost anything your company uses: brochures, business cards, magazine ads, newspapers, billboards, banners, and promotional gifts.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what you can use with mobile marketing, but hopefully mobile text marketing you are start to appreciate just how powerful this new medium is. My advice? Use mobile marketing now while you are still ahead of the curve, and get yourself an unfair advantage over your competitors!