If you’re a business owner, you probably already know the importance of a good marketing strategy, and now more than ever, mobile marketing should be part of your plan. The most successful marketers use a combination of voice broadcasting and other methods- here are the top five ways to market your business in the digital age.

1. Enable your website for mobile users. A simple Web search for a mobile emulator will bring you to mltd.mobi, which will show you what your site looks like to users of mobile devices. In some cases, sites display as a miniaturized version of the full site, and in others, sites aren’t visible at all. If your site falls into this category, you should take steps to mobile-enable it (there are both free and paid tools, with the free ones being more limited in scope and features).
2. Mobile SEO is practically the Holy Grail of marketing to mobile users, and optimizing your site for mobile search engines is one of the best ways to build a solid campaign. Being found by mobile users is important, as is building a sitemap. As is the case with conventional SEO, backlinks are king; get some links from other mobile sites and watch your site climb in the rankings. Just by taking these simple steps, you’re already ahead of 90% of your competition.




3. Use the Hcard Micro format. This may sound complex, but it really isn’t; it’s just your business information displayed in a format that’s mobile SEO-friendly. Do an online search for an “Hcard creator”, build your code, and then put it in the section of your site where your contact information is displayed.
4. Join Foursquare’s business section. Sign up for the sites merchant platform and grab your venue before someone else does! Foursquare is one of the most rapidly-growing social networking segments, and it’s run like a game where customers virtually “check in” to your business. With their merchant platform, customers can also use Foursquare’s app to enter contests and win perks such as mobile coupons.
5. Build an SMS (text message) marketing list, and build it quickly. Only about 20% of business emails are opened, compared to almost 95% of text messages. SMS marketing is one of the cheapest, fastest and most effective ways to gain new customers, and keep them coming back for more.

As with conventional marketing, digital efforts are much more likely to succeed if you keep adding value to your offerings. Every time you come out with a new product or service, you’re creating an opportunity to make more sales; it attracts new customers who weren’t previously interested in what you have to offer, it results in repeat business from customers who want your new offering, and it allows you to earn larger sales by combining two or more products into a package deal.

There’s a lot to be said for conventional methods of advertising – such as voice broadcasting on radio and television – but there’s even more to be said for mobile marketing. The methods we’ve listed above will allow you to more easily recruit and interact with customers, and the nature of SMS marketing in particular will generate a higher response rate from customers.

This article was written by James Harper on behalf of Collstream, providers of voice broadcasting and SMS marketing services. To find out more about voice broadcasting, SMS marketing or Collstream; take a look at their site.

Photo: rayand