Most Popular Mobile Search Business Types

The following are the most popular mobile search business types according to Google stats.

• pizza
• restaurants
• bars
• taxi
• car service
• limo also limousine
• auto repair also car repair
• auto insurance also car insurance
• tire repair
• oil change
• car wash
• used cars
• car rental also auto rental
• car towing also auto towing
• bike shops also bicycle shops
• bike repair also bicycle repair
• bike rental also bicycle rental
• flower delivery
• delivery
• nail salons
• hair salons

Obviously those businesses are reaching the most consumers on the go. If your business type is in one of them, you’d better have a mobile ready website which works perfectly under both traditional internet browsing and mobile browsing.

Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?

As you know that mobile devices are having much smaller screen than those laptops or desktop computers, most of the websites (I would say more than 80% of them) are not mobile friendly, which means their website look awful on smartphones like iPhone, BlackBerry, and so on.

Yet their website may have a  fancy and functional view on a computer, they won’t be looking good on smartphones if traditional websites are not optimized for mobile browsers.

Besides those fancy flash won’t work on any mobile browser. Plus people won’t be able to select the telephone number and make calls directly to the local businesses if they want, because those phone numbers are “nicely” made in images rather than plain texts.

For local businesses, especially for those pizza stores, car wash, flower delivery, car rental, taxi, restaurants, etc., it is critical to have a website working under both traditional computers and mobile devices. Because those businesses are most frequently searched by the mobile users.

Think of this: mobile has the broadest reach of 4.8 billion users vs. internet 1.7 billion. By the end of 2010, there will be about 5 billion mobile users when the world population gets 6.8 billion. Mobile gets 5 times better sales conversion rate than traditional online. Mobile gets 7 times better coupon redemption rate than online and offline…

So really mobile marketing is the future of internet marketing, best of all it just gets started.

If you want to know whether your local business website is mobile friendly or not, please go to this useful website for checkup. And if  you want to have a mobile friendly website setup, just contact your local business marketing consultant.

Onsite Video Interview Local Real Estate Agent

As one part of my marketing services, video marketing is considered to be the quickest and the most effective online marketing channel. Plus it is a lot more easier to get ranked by Google. (But it depends on what niche you are in. For real estate niche, it is the case.) It allows your potential customers to know you and like you without having to see you fact to face. Video interview is one of the most influential way to build local professional’s rapport. After producing and editing the video, I will then submit it to over 40 video sharing sites, like youtube, dailymotion, clip.tv, Metacafe and so on.

If you are interested to get the service, please contact me here.

How Mobile Marketing Is Different From Other Online Marketing

In the simplest of terms, mobile marketing is all about communicating and engaging with the consumer through mobile devices such as mobile phones. Some examples of mobile marketing vehicles are short message services (SMS), multimedia messaging service (MMS), unstructured supplementary service data (USSD), mobile internet, and mobile applications.

Short Message Service (SMS)

SMS, also known as text messaging, which first came out in the early 90s, continues to be one of the most popular mobile marketing vehicles. There are forecasts indicating that it will remain to be so for many more years into the future.

Although the majority of text messages are transmitted person-to-person, more and more Americans are using SMS to interact with brands. We see a growing number of people using SMS to interact with TV shows (like voting on “American Idol”, joining trivia contests about program content, and getting program alerts). We also see people participating in on-pack promotions (e.g., texting codes found on product packages for a chance to win an instant prize). There are also the mobile coupons which drive buyers to retail outlets (like discount vouchers for Dunkin Donuts Lattes and EA games) and so on.

Text messaging is to the mobile world as the email is to the Internet—just without the graphics. It is a great potential for local business also to promote own brand and to build relationship with clients in limited budget.

Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS)

MMS, also known as picture messaging, which functions quite similar to SMS. The nice thing about MMS is that it supports images, animation, video, and audio, and that enables marketers to push rich media ads to consumers. Additionally, MMS is interactive in a way similar to SMS that it enables recipients to respond to messages and engage with brands.

While MMS has a smaller reach than what SMS has, promotional MMS is more capable in terms of activating consumers. The ROI (return of investment) on MMS is quite compelling–five percent is actually considered a low response rate to an MMS campaign. There are evidences of conversion rates of over 20 percent on well targeted MMS programs.

Mobile Internet

Just like the banner ads in many web pages, marketers are placing banner ads on mobile contents. There is a big trend for mobile internet usage although it only took about 7% usage rate for Canadian mobile users in 2008 (according to Canada Mobile Association), and there were 54.5 million mobile internet users in the US in early 2009, representing 25% of online users.

One of the greatest benefits of mobile display advertising is that it provides a richer palette for brand advertising (albeit a smaller one), while avoiding the need for opt-ins or consumer-initiated reply messages.

Mobile App

The popularity of mobile application is up since the mobile app download is expected to exceed 4.5 billion in 2010, and will grow to 21 billion by 2013. Many free applications derive their revenue from advertising. This is typically done with banners as well as full page advertising (e.g., between game levels).

Cellular phones have evolved over recent years to the point where they perform a wide variety of functions that were traditionally only available though stand-alone devices or services, such as digital camera, MP3 player, video camera and so on. People could go everywhere with just a mobile phone to do things they now do with computers. The future online marketing success will largely rely on how successful the mobile marketing will be.

How You Can Make Money From Podcasting For Local Business

Let’s face it, most of the people go into podcast as a hobby. They contribute many funny and somewhat valuable contents for free. Maybe they got hundreds of subscribers who share the common interests. But they rarely make good amount of money. Did you know that you can turn it to a revenue generating marketing channel?

First of all, what is podcasting?

In a nutshell, podcasting is a form of blogging that utilizes the spoken word and/or video as the method of delivery as compared to traditional blogging which utilizes the written text.  However, it should be noted that podcasting is not used for just “blogging” . Some companies/businesses have used podcasting as a means of communication, as well as a vehicle for their marketing activities. With its rapidly growing popularity, podcasting is seen by some as the future of radio and radio broadcasts.

Technically speaking, podcasting is a method of delivering series of digital content (primarily audio and video) through the net for listening and viewing on digital media players/devices and computers (desktops and laptops).

Podcast differ from the traditional downloading of media files (though websites and web browsers) such that they rely on RSS feeds (just like blogs and news feeds) which automatically notifies the end-users, particularly subscribers, of new releases/episodes and automatically downloads the material to the user’s preferred device without the user having to revisit the site on which the files are hosted.

How do you make money by podcast marketing?

For local businesses, no matter what you provide (product or service), it’s the best way to use podcast to brand you and your business. You can do this by providing podcast subscribers with valuable content/information, for free.

Just go all out and do your best to earn the trust of your subscribers. And while you’re at it, briefly talk about your brand, talk about your products or services once in a while. Just don’t rub it in, don’t smother your audience with it.

Don’t worry you won’t see any new leads for your local business for the first few weeks or even months. Once you’ve earned your subscribers’ trust, it’s highly probable that when your subscribers would need the products or services you are offering, they will go to you rather than go look for them some place else. And that’s where you’ll get your revenue.

What’s great about podcasting is that you can use this brand building techniques in combination with other techniques such as paid (extra) contents and advertising, thus maximizing your podcasting earning potential.

Mobile Marketing Potential For Local Business in Canada

According to the “Small Business Technology Poll” in US from AT&T, mobile and wireless technologies such as smartphones, Wi-Fi hotspots and laptop data cards are becoming more important for small-business owners.

More than one-fifth of respondents said they could not be in business at all without wireless technologies, and a further 43% claimed it would be a major challenge. That makes mobile and wireless critical for about two-thirds of small businesses. This reflects the increase in use of mobile and wireless tech among small businesses over the past two years.

You must be asking how’s the mobile usage between Canadians.

In 2008, the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) commissioned Harris/Decima to assess the penetration of wireless phones among Canadian households and to help them understand key usage trends, behaviors, and attitudes surrounding wireless phones.

The results from the 2008 study reveal that not only has wireless phone usage increased significantly over the past 10 years, but that the way in which wireless phones are used has also changed a fair bit.

Text messaging and taking pictures tops the list of the most common activities that are performed with cellular phones (excluding voice calls). Canadians use mobile phones to send or receive text message at 44% of the total usage; to take pictures at 36% usage; to search on the internet at 7% usage.

Since more and more people use mobile phone to browse the internet, especially searching for local information, i.e. local weather, local news, local restaurants and stores, there are huge potentials for local businesses to approach their potential buyers through mobile marketing.

In a press release dated February 24, 2009, BIA/Kelsey predicted that mobile local search ad revenues in the U.S. will grow to $1.3 billion by 2013, from $20 million in 2008, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 130.5 percent.

Additionally, BIA/Kelsey also predicts that mobile local searches will make up for 35% of all searches in 2013, up from 28% in 2008.

“As mobile data consumption rises, we expect local marketing to be a big winner,” said Michael Boland, program director, Mobile Local Media, The Kelsey Group.

It all matters to be on the first page of Google!

Why? Because organic search engine still reigns.

Natural search results, which are also known as organic search results, are critical to be successful in marketing online. After all, people are easily giving up after just one or two clicks when searching for something on the internet.

According to iCrossing, of all the organic search visits, 95.8% were on Google’s first page and then left for other search terms; only 2.5% of them went to the second page; and the remaining 1.7% might go further to third or forth pages.

That was true across the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing), with at least 95% of traffic from each originating from the first page of results after a nonbranded search. Less than 2% of search-referred traffic came from clickers persistent enough to look for results after the second page.

That’s why businesses owners are willing to invest big in search engine optimization so they will appear in those results and benefit from the huge portion of clicks that go to the top hits.

Note: The market share of organic search visits between three major search engines: Google 74%; Yahoo 13%; Bing 13%.

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