Recent states show that only 12% of local small to medium businesses in North America catch up with mobile marketing trend since 2010. Most of them never aware that mobile marketing is so close to them everyday. At least mobile device already becomes one of the most important things to carry everyday just like wallet to everyone.

What sets local mobile marketing apart from any other local marketing ways?

Instant marketing

The traditional tools of marketing have become outdated just because they can not be in touch with the target customers day in and day out. They may come out with new offers and schemes but the customers are not aware of them. It is not always possible for all to stick glued to the television to catch the latest development of every product that they are using.

So, it is the responsibility of the company to make the customers know about all the recent developments of their products and services. There is no better way than local mobile marketing.

Life span

Mobile marketing service is more effective than any other marketing because the life span is longer. If you send a message to your customer, it will be there in the inbox, whereas the other tools of marketing are ephemeral and short lived. But the customer can always take a look on the message whenever he wants later on. So, the life span and effect of local mobile marketing is far reaching.

Existing and new customers

This marketing tool helps to maintain the existing customers. At the same time, it is easier to gain new customers as well. The service will send message to the existing customers. It will also set some target of the new customers as well.

Small and medium scale businesses thrive on local mobile marketing primarily. There are a number of local marketing services that will claim make your product popular. But you have to consider a few things before you take recourse to a local mobile marketing service.

• Who are your target customers? Before deciding your marketing strategy, you must identify your target customers.
• Identify their mobile using habits.
• It is important to know when they are using their mobiles and to what extent, whether they delete the messages or take a look again when free.

Local mobile marketing service is not only about messages. There are interactive voice calls, picture messages and so on. Whatever it may be, the main aim is to extend the reach of a company. Marketing strategies can not be predefined and static. It has to evolve itself according to the requirements. Local mobile marketing strategies too can change itself from time to time according to the need of the business.

Not surprising to me though, Google has recently stated that 20% of all searches are related to location. That translates to approximately 2.6 billion searches a month, and that number is increasing by about 50% per year.

But how you can take advantage of this local search trend to generate more qualified leads to your website? There are three steps you can do about it.

First of all, find out the geo modified keyword phrases for your business. What is Geo-modified keyword? Simple, it is the best word to describe your business or professionalism plus the city, town or even postal code of your area. For example, if you are a real estate agent who specializes in selling West Vancouver properties. The best Geo-modified keywords for your business are “West Vancouver real estate agent”, “Realtor in West Van”, “selling properties in West Vancouver” and so on.

Secondly, you will want to optimize those geo-modified keywords in your website (if you have one), which I call it “on page SEO“. How to do the optimization job? Easy but could take relatively long time. Technically, you will want to mention the keywords almost everywhere and as often as possible. (But don’t overdo it, otherwise Google could think it spam.) What I mean by “everywhere” – In the site meta keyword, site description, site title, blog title, blog content, footer, deep linkings and so on.

Thirdly, you will need to hire local marketing company or professional to do all kinds of search engine marketing, which I call it “off page SEO“, to push your website to rank for those Geo-modified keywords. Although nobody (including Google itself) could guarantee the rankings of your site for any keyword, meaning you will find your website’s ranking will be up and down for any keyword, the overall ranking of your website can be improved in the long term if that marketing company or professional use the correct and most efficient marketing strategies.

Pretty much like to SEO any web content, the first step to SEO your APP no matter its a iPhone, iPad, Android App or Blackberry App, always starts with proper keyword research.

Ask yourself the following questions before you will come up with the primary keyword term:
1. What’s the best category of your app?
2. What OS platform is your app good for?
3. What problem does your app solve?
4. What’s the uniqueness of your app? Comparing to similar ones in your category.
5. What is the name of any related app which ranked on the top?

When you have your primary keyword term to your best knowledge, put them in Google search to find its competition level, which is how many search results do you get for that primary term? Add modifiers to that primary keyword till you will find some variation keyword phrase whose phrase match search result is less than 100k in Google. At the same time, you’d better find out the actual search volume for that variation keyword phrase. If it comes up with decent amount of search numbers, you want to use that one for your app marketing.

I suggest that you should come up with 3 to 5 keyword phrases to put in your app title and description. And when you promote your app, use those keyword phrases as the anchor text links to your app download url or to your app review links.

Apple announced last week that more than 15 billion app’s have been downloaded from their App Store. Here are some other numbers revealed:

- More than 425,000 app’s of all kinds
- More than 100,000 app’s specifically for the iPad
- 20 categories of app’s
- App’s available in 90 countries
- More than 200 million iOS devices sold
- $2.5 billion dollars paid out to developers

And also consider about this:
Half of iPhone users buy at least an app a month

According to a study released Feb 25, 2010 by AdMob and reported by Crave, half of iPhone users buy at least an app a month. (Unfortunately I don’t have the latest figure yet.)

And here some interesting iPhone apps reality check:
According to Communities Dominate Brands:

– 85% of all downloadable apps are free

– The proportion of spending on apps is under 3% of the amount spent on the device

– The average app development cost is between $15,000 and $50,000 dollars

– For an investment of of $35,000 in an app that gets average downloads, it would take 10 years to recoup its development costs

What tells you about having your own iPhone app is:
The initial investment on creating an app is huge. Not everyone can afford it. Or if you are an app coder yourself, it is going to be a big challenge to design and come up with great app ideas. Or you really got some talent and created a great app, can you get it out of the void because there are over 500,000 apps. If not, you are going to loose all your investment in money and time. Because you are not going to get enough many downloads to cover the cost and make profit. That’s why app marketing really matters now.

Think about it, among 500,000 iPhone apps, you will want to become the top 1% which is to become top 5000. It is going to be tough. But if you do, you will make a fortune and share maybe 1% of 2.5 billion revenue!

I don’t have to convince you more about how REALLY big the mobile market is. If you’ve come to my blog before you will probably remember I had quite a few posts about what is and why mobile marketing.

But I am sure this is the first time I am revealing the information below about mobile apps.

You may have heard of or be quite familiar with iPhone Apps especially iPhone becomes the #1 popular smartphone on the market in Canada. iPhone users can download iPhone apps from iTune online store. You will find tons of tons of iPhone apps available in the store under over 20 categories.

Apple said: Apple has over 500,000 APP’s so far and it’s continue growing…
Apple projected over 15 billion revenue from iPhone app sale in 2011. That’s 190% revenue increase from 2010.

If you think “wow” already, I have to remind you that we haven’t counted Android phone yet! Plus Android is already taken over iPhone to become the most popular smartphone in US. How many Android phone apps we are talking about? At least 400,000 apps so far!

Don’t you realize that how those 1 million apps will mean to you and me as a internet marketer? If we will share tiny little portion of the market revenue there, you and I can easily make hundreds of thousands of dollars a month!

But how? From marketing those iPhone and Android apps!

I know, this doesn’t sound familiar to you. Neither to me! But right now I am studying and testing on it and until next time, I will show you what I’ve learnt and found.

Although Google used to include social network updates i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr updates in its organic search results, (and I believe Google is still testing it for some of the keyword search terms), most marketers believe that social media won’t count in SEO the website itself.

Because to SEO the website is totally different than to SEO the social media properties. For example, you can and have to SEO your Facebook page and your twitter account with the proper keywords. But all the SEO jobs you did to optimize your social media properties won’t improve the ranking of your money site directly.

Well, that may not be the case any longer with Google’s official introducing about its +1 social sharing button. What’s +1 button? According to Google:

As the site owner, you would probably like to add +1 button on your web pages and encourage visitors to click on that button, so that the site will likely to be ranked on Google’s organic search results, in another word your site’s SEO could be impacted by numbers of clicks on that +1 button.

We will see down the road how +1 button really plays in SEO. Or at least we believe that Google thinks it really important to have social sharing to play its role in SEO.

I offer Any and Every kind of online marketing that will make your business dominate your niche market in multiple languages, which include but not limit to:

Social media marketing

Video marketing

Search engine marketing

Mobile marketing

…

Here are some of the service packages that I offer. And I always welcome and encourage client to sit down with me to specify the needs and goals.

The Local Online Marketing Tactics

The Local Online Marketing Tactics is designed for overworked, time-starved local business owners who know they need to take advantage of online marketing … but don’t want to waste time with unproven advice. Each month, Delphine Zhu breaks down 1-3 specific strategies you can put to work in your local business to generate new business, increase repeat business, and produce referrals.

Sign up my free online course here

Online Marketing Surviving Package

The online marketing surviving package is created for local business owners who want to build up a basic yet professional internet presence.

• An assessment of your business
• A suggestion of up to 5 keywords to optimize
• A professional and SEO friendly website design
• An email auto responder marketing system set up and maintain

Book a free consultation meeting here

Comprehensive Web Design & Online Marketing Package

This is a high-end package created specifically for local businesses that are committed to driving their business to new levels using the Internet. It is meant for owners who are not willing to waste time with trial-and-error and do want a comprehensive strategy and implementation that works from day one.

• A comprehensive assessment of where your business is and where it wants to go
• A full 365-day marketing strategy including e-mail marketing, web site strategy, publicity and more
• A complete web site design and implementation, including a blog plus social media integration
• All or any most efficient online marketing channels to make your business shine
• A full 365-day concierge-level support package

There is an application and interview process involved in being accepted for this level of service.

Book a free consultation meeting here

For most of the experienced internet marketers, we are quite familiar with the general rules of SEO. But not quite the same when SEO a mobile site.

Considering having 10% of search volume from mobile searches in 2010, and expected to reach 16% from mobile queries by Sep 2011 (according to Performics), it is really a must to SEO a site both for desktop computers and mobile devices, i.e. iPhone, smartphone.

Keyword research is always a key for any type of SEO and/or SEM job. Thanks to Google Mobile Keyword Research Tool, we now can accurately figure out the monthly searches for any particular keyword phrase from those mobile devices.

Remember, the bouncing rate and average time length that every visitor stay on the site, are still playing an very important role for search engines to decide whether to rank a site to the top page or not. That’s why it is so important to direct each mobile queries to a mobile formatted site, also known as mobile friendly site.

iPhone and Android App Marketing

We Generate QRcode And Track Performace

We Do SMS Marketing And Track Performance

Wondering how many percentage of mobile users are using the mobile devices to read email, browse the internet and send instant message? According to a 2010 Pew Research Center study, 40% of adults use the Internet, email or instant messaging on a mobile phone, up from 32% in 2009. In addition, over two-thirds of business-to-business emailers read emails on their mobile devices.

So if you want to reach your potential buyers by emails, you should not only look at your email marketing for computers, but make it mobile friendly.

However there are some challenges when you use email marketing to mobile users. And I just want to mention a few of them here:

Challenge 1: How do you know people are using which devices and what software to read emails on the go?

Because some people are using the simple or old mobile phones that might only get plain text messages. While those iPhone users can get and view HTML rich messages without a problem.

Solution: Always make two versions of your email: plain text version and HTML version. And you want also to make your message short and to the point. And don’t forget to make your email title tidy and clear to give readers a best snapshot of your offer.

The thing is mobile users are only seeing a short portion of your message at a time due to the limited screen space (up to 4 inches). SO make sure your message title will entice the readers to open up your email. And your message in the first one or two sentences will make sense to them at all. Otherwise you will find your email marketing could easily fail.

Some of the other challenges to mobile email marketing are:

- Mobile only email addresses may reflect specific demographics or be subject to special anti-spam rules.

- You can add links to the message because links are clickable in most smartphones. That is a great way to get readers to your site. However how do you make your landing page both PC and mobile friendly?

You are more than welcome to add other challenges you know about mobile email marketing in the comment below.

According to the local Vancouver news today (Oct 18, 2010): Joseph Luk’s Movie Finder app has rocketed to the top of its category in the Android market. And why would a mobile application like that movie finder be so popular?

In order to answer this question, you got to know about Android first. Android has exceeded iPhone in American’s mobile operating system market share in 2010. And Google is that big hand behind Android.

Google has made tremendous strides in mobile, including mobile search and the development of the Android operating system powering phones such as the Motorola Droid and its own Nexus One. Google‘s increasing presence in mobile is reshaping not just the mobile business but also marketing in general.

Why mobile?

Because We should be looking at mobile across the entire world as a global play.

Two-thirds of the world‘s population has a mobile phone subscription—4 billion people—and there will be 5 billion wireless subscribers worldwide by the end of this year, according to some estimates.

According to Google, mobile will soon have more reach than TV, radio or the Internet and mobile is the access point to the Internet in the developing world.

Google also claimed that “Search has been our core business for many years now, and we actually receive many more searches on mobile than we do on desktops in developing markets.”

Morgan Stanley recently predicted that more users will access the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within five years.

Market researcher IDC is even more bullish, predicting that this is going to happen sooner than that—by 2013.

As you can see, Google has realized this mobile marketing trend and is taking massive actions to welcome the internet future. Android is one of its mobile marketing strategies. By far it’s very successful.