4 Effective Local Mobile Marketing Strategies

Local mobile marketing is a growing concept in the marketing world today. There is a fundamental change in the way people communicate and use the internet.

People go out with items like car keys, house keys, wallet and mobile phones. Communication by mobile phones is now the order of the day. Recent statistics show that people now communicate more and more through SMS than by conventional phone calls.
People no longer stay by their computers to surf the web. Tablets and smart phones now provide a platform for users to surf the web on the go.
The recent advances in mobile technology and the increased use of mobile devices have brought about the concept of local mobile marketing. Local Mobile Marketing is the usage of mobile technology to promote products and services of companies. Firms now take advantage of this type of technology to establish a strong mobile presence and get more customers to buy their products.
There are some steps to take to achieve local mobile marketing success. These steps are listed below.
Make a Mobile Version of your Website
The majority of people browse with their smart-phones and tablets. This means that firms need to have a mobile version of their website so that customers can easily patronize their goods and services.
It is very frustrating to browse a desktop website on a mobile device. For this reason, it is important for firms to create a version of their website for easy navigation by customers.

Do You Need a Mobile Version of Your Web Site?

More and more people are accessing the Internet using their mobile phones and tablets. So how do you make your Web site work effectively when accessed from mobile phones and tablets? Don't automatically assume you need to create a completely new site - or even a phone app. Those might not be the best options.

Broadly, there are three options - from easiest to hardest:



1.Mobile-friendly Web site: Make sure your existing site works well when viewed on a mobile device.
2.Mobile Web site: Build a separate site specially for use on mobile devices.
3.Mobile app: Create a mobile app instead.

1. Mobile-friendly Web site
A Web site is "mobile friendly" if it works when viewed on a mobile phone. It means you don't have to design and maintain a separate site or app; your main Web site just works.
This isn't as hard as it seems, unless your site uses fancy graphic design techniques or complex technology. But if it's designed well, according to the rules of good, solid Web design, it should work.

Here are some things that could "break" a site on mobile devices:
Flash: Your site won't work on iPhones, iPads and other Apple devices.
Certain kinds of drop-down menus: These won't always work on mobile devices.
A design that's too wide and can't be shrunk: This will be clumsy to use on a mobile device, especially if it involves horizontal scrolling.
Font too small: A small font is OK, as long as the user can enlarge it. But some sites don't allow this, and this will make the site difficult to read.
Buttons and links too small: Apart from being difficult to read, this can make them difficult to click.
Lots of graphics: Web sites load slower on mobile devices, so use fewer graphics and smaller graphics.
If you have a site already, simply load it on as many mobile phones and tablets as possible, and just try reading and clicking your way around as if you were a first-time visitor. If it works well, that's a good sign. It's not a 100% guarantee, because there are so many mobile devices now, and you can't possibly test all of them - but it's a good start.

From Typewriters to Tablets

When I was in college during the early 80's, we had to type our term papers on type writers or pay someone else to do it for us. OK, so now you know that I am not a spring chicken. Anyway, as I ponder the proliferation of various "smart" devises used by everyone today, and I mean everyone, I can't help but to reflect upon the how we did things without smart phones, computers, laptops, and tablets and how that has changed as the technologies advanced.
Less than 30 years ago, only the elite may have had early forms of these technological devises that have changed the way we do many things in our lives. At that time, even a mobile phone was only affordable to the very few. I can recall, in the 90's, when my employer announced that he bought a car with a phone in it. The phone had a cord permanently attached to the inside of the center console of his car. He thought he was on top of the world, no longer having to stop at phone booths to call the office for messages, or respond to customers' needs.

Bag phones, cordless phones and beepers
Next came the bag phone, which weighed about 10 Lbs., but was portable with a battery that lasted a couple of hours. Imagine actually trying to a carry a bag phone around with a small shoulder strap. Well I never did. I just left it in their car. Soon after that, came the cordless phone for conventional land lines. Most of us have those today, if we still have a land line installed at home. The early versions now seem like bricks with an antennae attached. This also is around the time that beepers became popular. Anyone could dial my beeper number and no matter where I was, and I would know that somebody wanted to speak to me. Of course, I would likely have to find a pay phone in order to return the call.