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Making Your Business Social

Is Your Business Making The Mobile Connection?

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Living in Bellingham these days requires a bit more patience than it used to. When you combine holiday shopping with the now regular swarms of Canadians coming down for a “good deal” you have the potential for the nominally laid back Bellinghamster to really lose it.

It’s a good thing I have two small children that have clued me in to what real frustration is like.

However, if you’re a local retailer or restaurant you’re likely pretty happy with all the new customers coming down to pick up a few things, eh?

But are you getting all the business you could be from out of town travellers?

When someone comes in from out of town, they are not going to be carrying a full sized computer around with them to figure out where to shop and eat. They probably are not going to be using  a laptop computer either.

They will be using an iPhone or other type of smart phone to help them get around and figure out where they are going.

Hopefully not while they are driving – it’s bad enough as it is!

So while the Canadians and other visitors are looking for the kinds of products and services you offer on their smartphones, what do they see when they visit your site?

Your website may look great on a big high resolution monitor, but when it gets shrunk down to a few inches on a side how does it perform? Are visitors able to click on a phone number to call you? Can they easily find out where you are? Is it simple for them to navigate and find out what you offer?

Most of the time even a very expensive website will not work well, if at all, when a person tries to use it on a mobile phone.

And it’s not just a problem with people who are from out of town and don’t have access to their regular computer. Increasing numbers of locals are using smartphones more than regular computers to do their web browsing and email. If a site does not work properly on mobile it’s going to get ignored and the potential customer will go elsewhere.

But there is a solution!

Building a site for your mobile visitors can be as easy as having a few simple pages that give your location and a “tap to call” phone nubmer. It can also get more complex, even having a mobile website work like an “app” that is compatible with any smartphone (not just iPhone or Android).

A mobile friendly site is typically built separately, but along side, your existing website. The only modification that needs to happen with your existing site is to add a bit of code that will detect when a visitor is on a smart phone. This bit of code will send them to the mobile friendly version of your site so they can continue to shop, find out where you are, and pay you visit. Hopefully without causing any frustration to other drivers along the way. 🙂

Questions about how mobile and social help local businesses connect with more customers? Leave a note in the comments area and I’ll do my best to answer!

SMS For The Holidays?

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The holiday shopping season always seems to sneak up on us, doesn’t it?

Here it’s only Halloween, but as business people we need to be thinking about “Black Friday” and the final days before Christmas.

SMS Is A Gift For Your Business

Many stores and shops started gearing up over the summer. Every year it’s the same guessing game on what’s going to be popular and what’s going to just sit on the shelves.

Of course, you want to try and bend your customers’ buying decisions in the direction of whatever makes you the most profit. As Christmas gets closer you want to try and guide that buying decision on whatever you have most in stock.

As the final frenzied days get closer, you have less time to run ads to bring in customers. What if you could reach out to them individually?

This is what text message (SMS) marketing lets you do. When a person signs up to receive text messages from your business, it gives you direct access to their mobile phone.

This lets you get very creative on what you can do next. You can send out coupons and offers that are only valid for a certain number of hours or on certain days. This drives people to your store when you what them there!

The technology works a lot like email marketing, but is much more effective. Most people actually read their text messages, whereas email messages are more often ignored even if they are received on a mobile.

You can try it out for yourself.

On the right side of this page you can see a short form where you can enter your mobile phone number. When you do, you will get an automatic response back from the system. Imagine having this on your own site for your customers!

From Your Website To Their Phone

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Can You Get Your Business Here?

People don’t like to commit. No, it’s not just a guy thing.

When a person first meets you or your company, they make a judgement. It’s not whether to buy from you or not. It’s way before that.

The first decision is whether or not they’re going to trust you. It’s instinctual.

You want your website visitors to trust you, but you only get a few seconds to make a good impression. And with people so busy, they’re likely not going to browse around your entire site to find out how great you are.

You need to give people the option to learn more about you on their own schedule.

And you need to make it easy.

This is why it is so important to give your interested visitors a chance to leave you with their email address or mobile number.

Keeping in touch with people through email marketing is almost as old as the internet. It’s a little more challenging to get the attention of people in their inbox, but email does give you a chance to tell more of your story at once. You can also direct them to your main site to find out more about you and your offers.

A new and exciting way to keep in touch with your visitors is with text messaging (also known as SMS).

Visitors can just enter their mobile number in a form on your site and they will instantly get updates from you! By setting expectations on how often you will be sending messages you can be a welcome visitor with interesting news just for them right on their phone!

And when they are ready to make a purchase, they will have your contact information right on their phone. A simple tap on their phone and you have a hot lead calling you, ready to do business with you.

Want to see how it works? Just enter your own phone number in the form to the right of this page. You can also find the link on our mobile marketing home page.

Try it out and let me know what you think!