Let’s say you’re in Chicago, desperate for a savory Italian manicotti that will wow your client/date/Brooklyn-born father-in-law. You type “Italian restaurants near Lincoln Park” into your phone’s search engine and several results pop up.
Success! Except when you click on the most promising website (or dining review) for Mastroianni’s Marvy Manicotti, the microscopic text is impossible to read.
It’s not formatted for mobile phones.
Today, your customers are searching for restaurants, retirement advice, and even dogwalkers on their phones and tablets. If people can’t read your marketing content on the go, you’re missing out.
The Rise of Mobile
To gauge how important mobile is, consider Facebook. With its mobile apps, targeted ad products, and phone-friendly information feeds, no one does mobile better than the social media giant.
Pew’s revered Internet Research study says 67% of adults are on Facebook, and 2/3 of the company’s revenue now comes from mobile—up from just 41% a year ago. Last fiscal quarter (Q3), that meant about $1.9 billion.
But even the King of Social Media finds that companies are still confused about earmarking money for mobile.
“Today, the average adult in the U.S. spends nearly 25% of their media time on mobile, but advertisers spend only about 11% of their budgets there,” Facebook COO Cheryl Sandberg recently opined.
Getting with the Times
Back to our hungry diner: If you were an Italian restaurant in Lincoln Park with killer manicotti, but a website or online menu formatted for 2004, you just missed out on two checks, and, if one was a Yelp reviewer, unlimited potential free advertising.
So what does mobile marketing look like? Many social media platforms, websites, and apps provide a variety of options for mobile ads.
For search results, Google offers click-to-call mobile ad extensions, which place a “call” button directly beneath your ad, or local marketing extensions that show your location on Google Maps, and ads that appear within popular third-party gaming and lifestyle apps, just to name a few.
For corporate blogs through DIY sites such as WordPress, that means mobile themes and plug-ins that magnify beautiful photos, increase the size of headlines, and otherwise make blog posts ideal for scrolling on a phone or tablet screen.
So when you’re defining your marketing budget, don’t forget mobile. Now, who’s up for manicotti?
Photo credit: Kārlis Dambrāns
