Did you know that Canadians are now spending five hours per day on mobile phones? Chances are you’re reading this article on a smartphone right now. With so many people spending so much time on mobile devices, it’s only natural as a business owner to think about how you can get in front of those consumers.
Here are some ways you can use digital marketing to capitalize on that smartphone screen time.
Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
One of the biggest goals for online marketing is to drive visitors to your website, and that goal extends to marketing for mobile devices. In 2015, Google announced that more searches were happening on mobile phones than on desktop computers. And, now, Google has switched to mobile-first indexing, which means they look at the mobile version of your website instead of the desktop version when determining how to source your site in search results. This means that having a mobile-friendly site is very important to the experience your potential customers have, and it can affect where Google shows your website in search results.
Mobile sites have a few distinguishing features that cause them to differ from sites not optimized for mobile. Mobile-friendly or responsive websites resize your images and content to fit within almost any-sized phone screen. This allows the user to easily read your content and interact with your site without needing to scroll or zoom in. Other common characteristics of mobile sites include static images, a navigation bar that is easy to use, and not using software phones typically do not have such as Flash.
Make Your Search Ads Visible on Mobile
As mentioned, more searches are currently occurring on mobile devices than on desktop. This not only affects your site but also your text ads. On a phone, the screen is smaller than a desktop or laptop, which means that fewer ads will appear on search engine results pages before people have to scroll down. And, if searchers are able to find what they need in the first or second position, they are likely to not scroll down. This puts extra weight on not only your keyword or ad creative strategy, but also which extensions you have enabled. If you would like to entice potential customers with your ad, let them know that they can easily make a purchase from their phone. If you would prefer customers call you or visit your location, you can add a phone number extension or an address extension.
Target Mobile Users with Geofencing
Wouldn’t it be great if you could target your potential customers based off where they are around town? For example, if you are a sporting goods store, you would probably want to show ads to people at local gyms. Geofence marketing gives you an opportunity to do just that. Since we are spending so much time on our phones, that means we are also carrying them with us everywhere. Geofencing allows you to draw a virtual fence around a certain area, and when someone walks into the area with their phone they are eligible to be served an ad. These ads can appear in popular apps they are using. And, with WEBSHARK’s geofencing solution you can track which customers walk into your business after seeing the ad.
Being able and ready to advertise on mobile devices should be an important piece of your marketing plan.