It is no wonder that the biggest marketing rage right now is the idea of having a website that is “thumb friendly”. According to Google, the mobile marketing revolution is growing 8x’s faster than the original web boom!

Of course, with any new wave, you will have your early adopters and the “it’s just a fad” naysayers. This wave is going to be bad news for the people who don’t get on it, because if you do not adapt to it now, your competition will pass you by very quickly. Some of these statistics should be frightening to any business that at the very least does not have a mobile friendly website.

• By 2013 more people will use their mobile phones than PC’s to get online (Gartner 2012)
• 61% of local searches on a mobile phone result in a phone call (Google 2012)
• Smartphone Shipments Surpass PCs for First Time (PC Magazine Feb 8, 2011)
• 44% of Facebook’s 900 million monthly users access Facebook on their phones. These people are twice as active on Facebook as non-mobile users (Facebook 2012)

Let’s look at it from a different global perspective… Of the 6.8 billion people on the planet, 4 billion of them own a mobile phone… that’s almost 60%! Consider globally, that there only slightly over 1.4 billion television sets.  Of those 4 billion mobile phone owners, 1 billion of them own a smartphone. That is 15% of the world’s population owning a smartphone, making them completely “mobile ready”.

Creating Mobile-Friendly Websites to Better Serve Your Mobile Customers

What does being “mobile ready” mean for your business? If you have not created a mobile marketing plan, then hopefully you will be doing so soon. If you don’t, you will be left 8 times further behind than the people who thought the Internet was just a fad. Remember them? No, you don’t… because they are not online and might as well be invisible.

A few keys to creating a great mobile marketing plan all start with having a worthy understanding of:

• The importance of having a mobile friendly website
• What is a true mobile friendly website?
• Strategies to creating a mobile site that results in action(s).

When it comes to creating a great mobile strategy for your business, or any business, it all starts with the mobile friendly version of your site. It will be the foundation that all your mobile marketing ventures will be based upon.

When building your mobile website, be sure to create content and access to information that your mobile visitors really want. Mobile site visitors are typically on-the-go. So to start with, when creating your mobile site, check your Google Analytics for your online website and then limit your mobile site pages to only those that your visitors access the most. Doing this along with a strong home page with “tap” buttons (tap to call, tap for map, tap for coupon, etc.), will help your mobile visitor find what they need faster.

Using QR Code Marketing Techniques

There is a lot more to mobile marketing than just having a mobile website, but again, the site is where you need to begin. After you’ve created your site, you can incorporate other mobile tools into your new mobile platform.

QR (Quick Response) codes are one of the most common types of 2 dimensional barcodes in use today. They were first used by the automotive industry in 1994 to watch the progress of a vehicle during manufacturing. QR codes consist of a pattern of black squares arranged on a white background. The code can store information, much in the same way a typical barcode, such as one on a grocery item which is scanned at the checkout to provide a price, stores data.

QR codes are capable of storing much more information than the previously used barcodes. The type of data and size of the code affect how much data each code can store. This is where you can use QR code marketing to increase traffic from places you never thought you could… or never could before.

By having a good QR code strategy, you can build lists for motivated buyers and sellers for your real estate investing business and provide many other benefits for your clients. Here are only 7 of the hundreds of ways to benefit your customers and your business by using QR codes:

1. Build prospect lists through lead capture forms
2. Encourage people to join your VIP Club
3. Drive customers to downloadable coupons
4. Drive buyers to your properties for sale online
5. Increase your business’s brand recognition
6. Schedule appointments
7. Get quick and easy links,  maps and driving directions

Using Text-Message Marketing to Build Lists Fast!

Take full advantage of all the mobile tools and include Text Message Marketing (SMS) in your overall mobile marketing strategy. This will make all your mobile strategies work in concert with one another.

Here some important facts to consider about mobile text messaging.

• 95% of text messages are opened within 5 minutes
• 91% of all smart phone users have their phone within arm’s reach 24/7 (Morgan Stanley 2012)
• Building your Mobile Marketing list is much easier for most than building an email list
• Electronic Email Marketing (EMM) is getting old and over-used, most of your emails will never get opened or go straight SPAM! (This is not to say that you should not have a good email campaign as well.)
• It’s new and people always want to be part of what’s new

Go Mobile Now or Go No Where Fast!

Check this out… of all Facebook users, 44% access it from their mobile device. So now you have (or are going to have) a list of buyers and sellers via your website, email, social media and offline marketing. Now you’re going to market out to those people, sending them a link to your newest property for sale or other important information on your website via website, email, social media and offline marketing. Since it is already proven that most people are now using their mobile devices to answer email, view their Facebook and Twitter pages, don’t you think you should be marketing to them as well? Fact is, close to 70% of people will leave a non-mobile-friendly webpage within the first 10 seconds.

When mobile marketing first started trending, it was the larger companies who could only afford to take advantage of this type of marketing technology. Most of these companies are spending thousands of dollars a month on this type of marketing. Now there are tools and systems available that can give you all this power, at a fraction of the price that your well-funded competitors are paying.

When beginning your mobile campaign, you have many choices. You can start conservatively by implementing a mobile landing page or a mobile text-marketing campaign. If you want to be more aggressive, you could develop a complete mobile website and/or a QR code campaign.

Mark Twain gives a great reason why today is the best day to start learning more about mobile strategies… “Plan for the future because that’s where you are going to spend the rest of your life.”

Happy Mobile Marketing!

Mike Barnes