As 2011 comes to its end, marketers are looking into the next year to help to predict how mobile marketing for small and medium businesses (SMBs) will look.
The dominant belief is that 2012 will be filled with many different mobile marketing opportunities, including many that have not yet been considered. This year’s figures are already showing that SMBs are largely taking on mobile.
In fact, a study by BIA/Kelsey, called “Local Commerce Monitor” showed that 87 percent of businesses of that size are already spending almost a quarter (24 percent) of their marketing budgets online. Furthermore, 40 percent of the traffic at Yelp is mobile, 40 percent of searches on Google that are performed through mobile channels (approximately 1 billion per month) are done with local intent, and 42 percent of smartphone-using mothers use their devices to shop.
Experts are recommending that SMBs consider the following:
• Smartphones were one of the top electronic gifts this year, so those over the holiday will only help to build on the mobile search trend which is already rapidly growing.
• There is a natural SEO advantage for websites that have been mobile optimized as there are fewer of them.
• Local mobile advertising competition is low, meaning that campaigns such as those using AdWords are less expensive and more effective.
Data from mobile marketing startup for SMBs, AppStack, has shown that cost-per-click using Mobile AdWords is approximately half the price when used by local mobile advertisers. This means that it costs much less to convert mobile traffic at a significantly higher rate.
