Mobile Local Marketing: Reaching the Mobile Customer

Do you have a local business?

Want an effective way to market to people who are near you?

To explore how to reach your customers with mobile marketing, I interview Rich Brooks.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Rich Brooks, author of The Lead Machine: The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing. He's also host of The Agents of Change podcast and The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Conference.

Rich explores how local businesses can use mobile marketing to deliver relevant messaging to their customers.

You'll discover how to combine mobile marketing with social media.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Mobile Local Marketing
The Importance of Mobile

In 2017, every business should focus on mobile, Rich says, especially businesses with physical locations and a local audience.

Mobile is important because people always have their devices by their side. For example, when Rich takes his daughter to volleyball practices in different towns, he uses Waze on his phone to get directions. Then after dropping her off, he goes to Yelp to find a coffeehouse or asks Google or Siri to find the nearest supermarket so he can go shopping. While he waits in line, Rich explores Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram; plays a game; or reads a news article.

Because people are always on their phones, local businesses can attract customers who are looking for information on the go and making immediate decisions. If those people are in your area, you can capture their business with a strong mobile presence.

Listen to the show for more about how potential customers use mobile.

Mobile Offers and SMS Messages

To engage people on mobile, Rich says you can create mobile offers, which are being redeemed at 10 times the rate of old print coupons.

Mobile offers take many forms. You can run a Facebook campaign on mobile, promote an offer that's available on a mobile device, or tell people they can download a deal onto their phones and show it at the counter. Another option is SMS text messaging.

Rich explains that SMS offers work a lot like email marketing. For example, a pizzeria can send people discounts. A massage therapist near Rich gives customers who opt into SMS text messages first dibs on appointment times that open up due to last-minute cancellations.

To send SMS marketing messages, you start by finding an SMS marketing vendor in your area. These vendors work similarly to email marketing vendors, such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, AWeber, and smaller local players. Your vendor assigns you a short code and customers opt into your SMS messages by texting that code and confirming they want to receive your messages. Rich says a pizza restaurant might tell customers, "Text Pizza to 004400."

After you're set up to send messages, you can start building your SMS marketing list. Rich emphasizes that people will sign up to receive messages only if you offer an incentive for signing up. For a pizza business, that incentive might be a dollar off, a free topping, or free delivery. Rich suggests promoting your SMS list on your social media profiles, website, flyers, and product packaging (such as pizza boxes).

Rich says you can expect a smaller but more engaged audience for your SMS messages. Fewer people will opt in, but right now those who do are much more likely to look at their text messages immediately. Rich predicts that engagement with SMS messages may drop off if people become overwhelmed with text messages, but says that currently SMS is still fairly new and can be a boon to a local business.