There are many important elements to consider when developing a business plan for your company, but the first step is to fully understand the main uses of a business-plan. A well-crafted Business Plan is a written document that:

• Drives tactical planning and provides a management tool for your business, often done on an annual basis
• You can use in your search for external financing
• Shows the capacity of your team to control and manage all the aspects of the company
• Enables you to identify new ideas to refine your business or take it in a new direction

Should you call in a consultant or write the Business Plan by yourself?

The owner (in a small company) or the management team should be the main author of a business-plan, because the Business Plan is, so to speak, your own “baby”. It should be a reflection of your personality and the tool that your investors will discover with whom they are collaborating.

But your business may be too important and you may want to call in a consultant for help and consultation. Even so, you should stay in control of its development!

Tips for developing a quality business-plan

1. To be credible, a business-plan must be coherent and each parameter in the plan must be based on facts.

2. Define what your Mission is. Your mission is what you’ll seek to achieve within 12 to 18 months. You can’t change the world in that time frame, but you can accomplish a lot. The better you define where you are going, the better your chances of getting there will be.

3. Once you have your mission defined, identify the most critical things that need to happen to get you there. We call these Critical Goal Categories.

4. For each Critical Goal Category, identify the specific Goals that need to be accomplished during the plan period. This process will be the heart of your plan and will logically lead to the Action Plan, a listing of concrete steps that will be executed in order to ensure the success of the plan. You’ll need to identify both who will be responsible for each action step as well as when it will be done.

5. Make sure that all your Goals are SMART. That is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time bound. Each one should have all 5 elements so that you can ensure that they’ll get done.

6. Next is the Budget which is the result of the all of the other work embodied in the plan. The calculation of the costs of the planned actions and the resulting revenue in your Business Plan are essential and make overall financial projections possible.

7. The last point and certainly not the least significant: Business Planning should not be “once and done”. A regular follow-up and comparison between the Business Plan and the reality of its execution are essential. This should happen at least once a quarter. You can then modify your Business Plan and adapt it to improve performance and achieve your goals.

In conclusion, careful and thoughtful planning should result in a plan that is achievable and useful in managing your business. By following the roadmap established through the planning process, you will enable a business to reach new levels of success.

About Our Author:

Paul Clough is a business leader with 25+ years of experience spanning several functional areas including Business Development, Strategic Planning, Leadership Development, B2C and B2B Marketing and Operations. He helps business owners develop a marketing strategy and a strategic business plan for midsize companies . He is a trusted advisor for senior executives of entrepreneurial companies, enabling them to more effectively manage and expand their businesses. A central theme of Mr. Clough’s career has been developing new businesses, brands and product lines. He earned an MBA from Harvard University and a BS in Accounting from Bucknell University.

Are you ready to embrace the power of mobile advertising? There is no doubt that smartphones are changing the way we consume information and navigate through our lives. In an independent study by IPSOS OTX in 2011, 82% of smartphone users notice mobile ads and 71% searched because of that advertising. The big news is that 9 out of 10 of the people that searched took some type of action as a result of that search. Watch this video to better understand this mobile movement. Mobil advertising trends indicate that 2012 will continue to set new standards. Mobile marketers agree that the time is now to optimize your mobile website presence for both search and m-Commerce.

Proximity Marketing & Hyper Local Advertising

We have seen some of the best success using mobile ads on the Google network. If you are trying to drive traffic into your local retail store, restaurant or entertainment venue, nothing works better than the hyper local search ads. Most smartphones integrate the geo IP technology of the device (iPads and tablets included) with the search feature. The advertising for mobile in Adwords also uses this information to display ads. Therefore your mobile ads are only served to users that are in a close proximity to your business if you have set up your mobile campaign properly. In this example, the client has some strong mobile SEO combined with a hyper local mobile ad that dominates the smartphone screen.

Mobile Website & Mobile Landing Pages

The key ingredient to your mobile advertising success or failure lies in the user experience after the click through from the search page. In many cases, the “Click to Call” feature or mapping feature of a local extension campaign will remove the need to click through to a website. When there is a click through or your goal is to drive other actions like m-Commerce, content delivery or a download…there is the need for a well thought out mobile website. Here are a few things to consider when designing your mobile website or landing page.

• Make it Easy – Prioritize content into short bite size units and do away with unnecessary information. Mobile users are starved for time so don’t waste their time or they will bounce.

• Simple Thumb Friendly Navigation – Use large buttons, check boxes and clickable text for all actions and be sure to have white space around these actions for us with big thumbs.

• Multiple Device Friendly – iPads, Tablets and smartphones come in different shapes, sizes and use different operating systems. Use HTML5 instead of Flash whenever possible for animation and interactivity. Test and retest on as many different devices before you launch your mobile friendly web pages.

• Clean Visibility in Design – Create contrast between text and backgrounds and remove the need for a visitor to zoom or pinch the screen. Less is more in the mobile world.

• Clear Calls to Action – Get to the point…what do you want your mobile visitors to do when they arrive? Use information that helps conversion. Use short forms for data collection. Keep the number of steps to complete a transaction to a minimum.

Search advertising on mobile devices requires a well thought out mobile strategy. Start with your objectives, define some goals and get some help if this is all new to you. You only have one shot to make a first impression. Let’s make your first impression in mobile advertising a lasting one.

eXplorations Marketing Inc. serves clients in Philadelphia, Montgomery County and Bucks County in Pennsylvania. In New Jersey we work with clients in Princeton, Cherry Hill and South Jersey. Contact us today to begin using mobile advertising for your local business.

Search marketing to me in 2001 was all about Pay Per Click advertising (PPC). While working as a marketing guy for Royal Caribbean at that time, SEO was still very mysterious to most that were willing to listen. So explaining the fundamentals or organic optimization was a difficult concept for most of our travel partners to absorb. The value of PPC was an easier concept and the results of our campaigns together were immediate. Instant gratification was what the HIPPO’s (Highest Paid Persons Opinion) wanted to spend their cooperative marketing dollars on.

The Searchers back then didn’t really know the difference between Organic Listings and Sponsored Listings (PPC). Today, those same CPC’s (Cost per Clicks) are 10 times more expensive and the percentage of those clicking on a sponsored link has gone from 38% in 2001 to less than 5% in 2011. Talk about diminishing returns on your advertising dollars.

What is Search Marketing?

Search Marketing comes primarily in two different forms.

1) Paid Advertising or 2) Organic Listings

Paid Advertising

Using this image below, if the goal of search marketing is to arrive on the Promised Land or page one of Google, there are two ways to get there. At the very top of the page and along the right hand column, companies have entered into an advertising agreement with Google and are bidding for a position on this page for this specific keyword phrase, “Car Insurance”. The highest bidder is Progressive, then AAA and Geico. There are hundreds of others bidding for the same piece of real estate but on this occasion, they are not willing to pay as much for each click as these three big brands…so yes…the deeper pockets win this round. The question is at what cost and who is clicking through?

As of this post, the #1 position would cost Progressive $38.40/click and they could possible get close to 5250 clicks in one day. Their advertising costs for 1 day for that one keyword are over $201,600. How many people bought insurance from this advertising?

What happens when your budget runs out?

Easy…your ad disappears and the clicks go away. I hope their sale people are good!

Good luck seeing a favorable return on your investment. Some are smarter than others and use this medium very effectively, the balance pay royally and Google is getting richer every day. Click image to enlarge.

Organic Listings

The smarter companies are optimizing their web pages , removing technical barriers for proper indexing of these web pages and building high quality authoritative links to these web pages. Sounds like allot of work? Well it is. If 95% of today’s search engine users assign more credibility and trust to these organic listings, then the investment of time and resources are well worth it.

Now Progressive is also # 1 in organic listings using the same keyword and they can expect to receive approximately 105,000 people clicking through to their web page. The question is how much time and money did it cost to optimize for this #1 organic listing on Google? I don’t know that answer…here is their phone number 1-800-Progressive and you can ask them.

Organic optimization is a long term investment and once you arrive on page one of Google, chances are you will stay there for a long period of time assuming you are keeping your website fresh, developing great content and acquiring valuable links.

Internet Search Marketing

Now Google is not the only search engine in town but they are certainly the 500 pound gorilla. Chances are if you are well optimized to arrive on page one of Google, you are doing just fine in the other search engines as well.

Search Engine Marketing Companies to Watch

Rather than listing a bunch of companies, it might be more appropriate to ask you how much are you willing to pay someone to manage your internal search marketing efforts. SEOmoz posted this blog of average salaries for search marketing professionals are being paid by businesses all over the county. Or you can hire a local seo in Pennsylvania and you can focus on taking care of all your new customers.

Client: Thomas G. Wells Construction, LLC

On October 5th, we published a little information about the initial Phases of our SEO program for this home renovations contractor in Bucks County. After optimizing the key elements on six primary web pages with the keywords we are targeting. The next step was to do some smart SEO web mastering. I use a 15 item checklist that addresses broken links, page redirects, crawl errors, page speed and 404 pages. Nothing stops a search engine robot faster than a broken link. Web Spiders follow links. Quality Links – Internal and External are VERY IMPORTANT. Sorry to shout but no one seems to give this subject enough attention it deserves.

What is Link Building?

SEOmoz published this article in their Beginners Guide to SEO that does a good job explaining the seo link building best practices. Our link building service is what sets us apart from everyone that claims to do local SEO. We employ a very methodical approach to building high quality links that bring trust, authority and a diverse link profile for clients…All White Hat and Google LOVES IT!!

Link Building from High Value Directories

There are many ways to get quality links and it is important to be diverse. There are 1000’s of business directories online…most of them are WORTHLESS and not great for SEO. I do optimize 7 local profiles for a client from the few directories that have value. I don’t consider the SEO link value in some of these cases, rather their business opportunity value and to improve our ability to manage a client’s reputation.

• Google Places is a must for every local business.
• Yahoo Local will drive traffic and SEO juice.
• Bing’s Business Portal is also a must.
• Yellowpages.com allows 7 plus links…don’t expect anyone to find you there. I do this only for the seo link juice.

Clients often select three more that help with online reputation management and are relevant to their specific industry.

Blog Links, SEO Content Development and SEO Articles

Squidoo.com

Link building should look natural. In this case the client started with 7 links, a few months later we have over 110. Too many too fast will send up red flags. Our off page SEO leverages SEO Articles like these, content development websites like Squidoo and a blog link here and a blog link there are all good. We also used news resources, our client vendors and we have a treasure trove of high page rank resources that I will never divulge.

The result is SEO Optimization Gold for this client that is now busier than ever and is booked business through most of the winter and hiring subcontractors to help him keep up with the demand.

Is SEO right for your business? Let’s find out. Contact us today to set up an evaluation of your website!

Client:  Thomas G. Wells Construction, LLC

Contractor that specializes in Green Homes & Energy Efficient Programs

Thomas G. Wells Construction approached e-xplorations Marketing in March of 2011 inquiring about Search Engine Marketing and their desire to improve the quality of traffic to their website. We preformed a site evaluation for http://www.tgw-construction.com/. The site evaluation included the following information:

• Current rankings in search engines for the top ten keyword phrases for their market.
• An evaluation of their current on page SEO elements including page Titles, Description Tags, Headings, content, links and images.
• A backlink profile and new linking opportunity
• An understanding of the direct competition online for their services.
• Additional items that are important for SEO success

Wells construction developed and launched their website in the summer of 2009. The client was unaware of any site traffic when we first met with them in March of 2011.  However, they had less than 20 calls within a two-year period.  The first action we took was to install Google Analytics  when we were hired in late March We quickly noticed that the site averaged LESS than 30 visits per month from all over the country. Of those 30 visits, 44% was direct traffic and 48% from search engines. The keywords used in search were all variations of the company name representing people who already knew who the company was and most likely sought a phone number or additional information on the “About Us” page.

The next step in the process teased out 50 plus high value keyword phrases that would deliver qualified search traffic, low barriers for success and showed good promise for converting visitors into buyers.   Here are three examples of the Long Tail keywords we are using:

best contractors for energy efficiency bucks county

Remodeling contractor for Green Homes in PA

Age in place home remodelers in Bucks County

By optimizing six (6) on three of our primary pages, we will lay the foundation for 100’s of variations of these primary phrases.

Stay tuned to the next installment of this case study to learn what we did next to get this client to page one of Google.

Want to find out how your website is currently ranked?  A basic website evaluation is always a good place to begin. Contact e-Xplorations Marketing  today to get your website evaluation performed and let’s schedule a consultation! Local Search Marketing is one of the best forms of marketing one’s business today!

Mobile ad spending will grow to over $4 billion in the US by 2015¹ where 70% will be targeted to consumers using location awareness technologies within smart phones. The key to your success is to present your offers to the right audience, at the right time, with intelligent ads. The “call to action” should be easy to understand and bring the user to a mobile webpage designed for a conversion. A great user experience is key to a higher ROI.

Mobile Phone Advertising

Understanding how smart phone users search for information, digest mobile content and engage with advertising is the first step in selecting the mobile advertising vehicles most suited for your business. What works for a local restaurant will not necessarily work for a service oriented business like a travel agency.  Here are a few examples of mobile search based ads clients can take advantage of with eXplorations Marketing Inc.

Click To Call Location advertising is very good for restaurants, retailers and specialty shops where walk in traffic is very desirable.

In this example, Roy’s restaurant achieved an 800% return on investment by reaching “on the go” customers searching on mobile devices. By presenting click to call ads complete with a map, all the information required to take action was included in the advertisment. When the users conducted a search for dining options, the hyper-local technology within Google’s mobile search presents only relevant options with the geo targeted ad on the top of the search results.

Static Banners and Expandable Ads are great for building brand recognition across a mobile ad network of content websites and within application advertising. Google purchased AdMob in 2009 and has been integrating their ad serving technologies into their Adwords platform ever since. I personally am not a fan of PPC advertising in the desktop computer world but you cannot ignore the success PPC has in the mobile space.

Here are some of the options available to brand advertisers that leverage the mobile ad network.
 

SEO for Mobile Websites

Mobile users seek fast answers and often use search tools rather than navigation to find what they are looking for. When building a mobile website, think of how your users currently engage your main website and build a solution that is trimmed down to this group of task oriented people. Get rid of all the bells and whistle that will slow the user experience down. Site navigation should be fast, designed to go to top pages only. Provide a link to the primary site for those that seek more info. In the mobile world, get rid of lower valued content. Layout your content for easy scrolling and include a visible search box in your upper right hand corner of each page.

Mobile websites with a good user experience will be positioned higher in search results over those without a well organized mobile experience. Clickable buttons are king in the mobile world combined with a good use of white space. The content you do use should be keyword rich and actionable. Search engines will index content similar to traditional web content therefore it is important to have strong titles, META tags and headings. The ranking factors that are gaining more importance in mobile SEO are page load speeds, bounce rates, click through rates and social sharing. Pay attention to these other ranking factors.

Google Places Optimization

A well optimized Google Places profile will dominate in mobile search since the entire network takes advantage of location awareness technologies. A keyword rich description, company name and well thought out use of the additional details section is very important in getting your profile more impressions. Adwords Express, formally Google Boost, is designed to help local business drive traffic to your Google Places page and interact with mapping tools in your phone’s GPS software. Offers can be added to your Places listing and be made redeemable by just showing the vendor the coupon.

What is your company doing to improve the user experience on your mobile website? Let us know in the comments section.

¹BIA Kelsey June 2011

By Kaitlin Friedmann, Public Relations Manager, Creative Marketing Alliance (CMA)

I grew up in the MTV generation so when I hear social media experts predict the death of the press release, it makes me think of the panic that must have stricken radio stations across the country when “Video Killed the Radio Star” was popular.

Rather than making predictions for one thing eclipsing the other, PR pros should embrace the many tools available to them. A mix of classic media relations skills and web-savvy strategies are essential now more than ever to raising awareness and proving ROI.  

To maximize your social strategy, increase the reach of your content and stay as relevant as you can to your target audience, PR professionals should take the necessary steps to optimize their next press release distribution or overall social media strategy.

The Role of the Press Release

Past – The only eyes on a press release were that of a reporter, editor or other member of the media (setting aside investor relations). Its purpose was purely informational and was rarely taken verbatim.

Present – Press releases are seen by a larger audience—they are blasted out to far-reaching lists of media and the general public through PRNewswire, PRWeb and other distribution sites. In the age of Google Alerts and RSS feeds, mass distribution is as crucial as ever. Press releases are additionally posted on company websites, sent in customer e-newsletters and linked to social networks.

While I can’t speak about the pre-Internet days of PR, I can make an educated assumption that the most proven public relations tactic has always been flexibility. What this analysis says is that PR pros don’t rely on any one method of communication and the press release must simply be newsworthy for the media and, more broadly, for the end user. The above-mentioned wire services will take care of the release’s optimized delivery, but it’s up to the PR pro to use keywords, anchor text and key messages that resonate with the target audience. The press release in the “classic sense” must also still have a real-live voice behind it (the PR pro’s follow-up calls) to increase the chance of media placement. 

The Gatekeeper-Free World of Social Media

Social media content has the power to bypass the media as the “gatekeepers” of information and go straight to your target audience. This is not just an awareness-raising tactic—there are sales to be made directly from social media working in concert with SEO. According to a comScore study, buyers “who purchase or convert online are almost as likely to use a combination of search and social resources (48 percent) as they are to use just search (51 percent) along the path to purchase.”

It’s nearly impossible to not mention social media in the discussion of the “future” of public relations, so let’s examine the future of the press release in this context.

Infographics for Social Media Hierarchy

Future – As attention spans shrink, experts say the press release could be phased out and replaced by viral infographics (visual representations of announcements that particularly involve statistical data used most prominently by FourSquare) or social media posts (Tweets, Status Updates, Discussion Points, etc).

To these predictions, again, my answer is to diversify. Why does one have to replace the other? Some of CMA’s most successful PR campaigns have been those that utilize the full arsenal of PR, SEO and social media tactics.

We recently used a healthy mix of classic PR practices, SEO and social media to “scare” up awareness for an association of haunted attractions. The first foray into our Halloween PR campaign started earlier this month with the keyword-riddled press release describing haunted attractions’ ability to compete for young adults’ attention. Distributed via PRNewswire, the release was also posted on 10 free press release distribution websites.

We also recruited the social media savvy of the association member base to further widen the reach of the press release to industry insiders, while following up directly with phone calls to a variety of consumer media covering the Millennial generation’s behavior. The results—placement on over 200 news websites, a feature article secured in an industry magazine and an in-depth feature article in the works on 10 haunted attractions for a major consumer magazine with more than 10 million circulation.

The bottom line here—SEO gets you on the right pages, but it’s up to you to make the most of your opportunity once you’re there.

About the Author – Kaitlin Friedmann
Kaitlin Friedmann is the Public Relations Manager at CMA. She is responsible for all media strategy and communications, as well as the overall management of the public relations team. Her experience and success is diverse including media relations campaigns for political advocacy groups, children’s charities, museums and documentary filmmakers, as well as non-profit associations, and business-to-business and consumer clients. 

About Creative Marketing Alliance (CMA)
Based in Princeton Junction, NJ, Creative Marketing Alliance (CMA) provides integrated marketing programs, high-impact creative services and single-source association and event management to produce measurable results on a regional, national and global scale. For over 24 years, CMA has powered its clients’ success through strategic and tactical solutions including marketing, advertising, public relations, sales support, interactive digital communications, direct response and publications. Please visit www.cmasolutions.com or our blog www.CMAcentralblog.com for more information.

Running Google Analytics on your website is a must for any business interested in spending their marketing dollars wisely.

Effective Advertising?

If you are in the habit of just writing checks and not concerned about your return on investment, please feel free to make your next check payable to me and I will be happy to personally oversee a team to put up a billboard for you on Bermuda’s Southampton beach.

Website Analytics for Small Business Websites

But if you are a small business owner, it is important to measure everything you do and make some smart decisions on the most effective advertising for your dollar. Google Analytics is free and still in my opinion, the most robust web analytics tool on the market today. It is also the most underutilized tool used by small business websites. Primarily this is because no one has shown you how yet. Read this for some Google Analytics basics. Once you have the basics covered, here are a few ways to help you generate some actionable information.

Every landing page should have a primary “Call to Action” and perhaps a few secondary conversion goals like “Follow Us on Twitter”, “Like Us on Facebook” or “sign up for our newsletter”. Too much get’s confusing for the visitor so be sure to design your landing pages with a  focus on the primary action. All of your advertising should direct traffic to your landing pages, and yes can be your home page if you must.

1) Record all marketing events as a new annotation. Start at the Dashboard visits graph and click on the down arrow at the bottom of the graph. Click “create new annotation” and indicate the date and event you are measuring. Regardless if it is an offline or online marketing initiative, you now indicated when your advertising began and can measure the increase in page views from your targeted segment of visitors. Make sure you have set up a custom segment for your most qualified group as well as one that represents your campaign demographics.

2) Need to set up some advanced segments for a specific groups of visitors? Not a problem. Avinash describes how to be a segmentation maniac in this post “Do or Die Segmentation”. There are so many variations. Most small business owners with a local clientelle just wish to measure the local traffic volume that is qualified to make a buying decision. Check out this video on how to create a custom segmentation in Google Analytics.

3) Measure Conversion Goals. Most new clients I start with never filled out the Goals section of their Analytics account. After rearranging the Dashboard, this is the first area I visit and always start with a few URL destination goals that quantify events like:

• Contact form completions
• Newsletter sign ups
• PDF downloads
• Click to call, email or chat events

as well as any other obvious conversions. This short video will get you started on setting up some basic goals for your website. 

4) Funnel Visualization is good for those that have a buying process or use Bread Crumbs to lead a prospect through a decision making process. The funnel is the URL path a visitor follows to a completed goal. It is inevitable that some visitors will abandon the shopping cart or bread crumb trail and not complete the purchase. Watch this visualization video  to learn how and soon you will know what page is causing your visitors to leave and even where they are going. Conversion rate optimization will help create greater “stickiness” and simplify the decision-making process along this funnel.

Optimization Marketing ROI

Web site analytics data is worthless if you do nothing with it. Actionable insights are what you need to continually optimize your marketing efforts. Google analytics can be your ROI calculator for both marketing investments and operational investments if you are using your website to perform services with your clients.

Not only can small business compete online…You can dominate the search engine result pages provided your local profiles are well optimized for search traffic and consumer reviews are in your favor. If a local restaurant in Newtown PA, local attraction in New Hope or a day spa in Bucks County wants to succeed online they need to take ownership of the local reviews…it’s your Online Reputation

Manage your Local Profiles & Reputation

Last year we decided to launch our Local Search Domination marketing package when a client received a negative review on Philadelphia.citysearch.com. Bing’s Local Business Portal relies almost entirely on CitySearch as their ratings tool and therefore this was a VERY big deal. By setting up an account, optimizing the local profile with keywords we identified with his website SEO program, we have since been able to bury the 1 negative review with many positive ratings. Their partner sites, InsiderPages and MerchantCircle have now become a primary resource for website traffic and new clients. Embrace these communities, present them with exclusive offers and show them some love. You too can count on gaining more positive reviews in the future.

Good Keyword Research is a Must

Keyword research should be part of the foundation of any local optimization project. The next step is to understand the local community and how consumer reviews integrate with search results. Google Places for example presents reviews from Yahoo, SuperPages, Yelp and many niche directories.  That means that you should have an optimized local profile within each directory that influences social search results. What we mean by optimized is to produce keyword rich descriptions, anchor text links, categories and rich media like images and video. You have to choose your battles and select only the local business profiles that make the most sense for your industry. You just can’t manage them all, so choose wisely.

InnerSpa of Newtown is a Day Spa reliant upon local clientele therefore our Local Profile Domination package for them focused on:

• 3 Search Engine profiles (Google Places, Bing Business Portal & Yahoo Local) 
• 2 social sharing communities (Yelp & Merchant Circle) 
• 2 niche directories (SpaFinder.com and an Alternative Medicine directory)

If the client was a restaurant, the niche directories may have been Zagat’s and UrbanSpoon since they both solicit reviews from their community members, are very highly rated and most importantly, Google uses these reviews in search results.

Now it is time to engage your audience, encourage them to share your good news within their own communities by being a giver first and asking them to return the favor. Reaping the benefits of these social communities will come provided you are consistent in your messaging.

What type of business benefits most from a Local Search Domination package:

• Restaurants ♦ Day Spas & Massage Therapists  ♦ Medical Doctors – Dentists
• Alternative Medicine Practitioners ♦ Sports and Recreation venues
• Remodeling Contractors ♦ Lawn and Garden Services  ♦  Home Services
• Automotive Repairs  ♦  Preschools – Adult Education  ♦  Arts and Entertainment 
• Smaller Retailers: ♦ Jewelers ♦ Bike Shops ♦ Consignment stores

Thumbtack.com is a newer local directory that seems to have a growing footprint in the Philadelphia market for small business. I will keep an eye on this directory and report back in a couple of months its value. Do you have any local directories that work for you? Tell us about it.

Successful SMS text marketing promotions should be fully integrated with your current online marketing initiatives as well as your more traditional communication strategies. This tactic cannot yet stand by itself. Text messaging is a very personal experience for most mobile phone users in the US. Gaining brand trust starts by respecting this personal space. Therefore building your mobile marketing list is a process that takes time and is part of an overall client relationship strategy. The higher the level of interactivity with your clients, the more likely these clients will offer you (Opt-in) their cell phone number and take advantage of your offers.

Mobile List Building Ideas

• Social Media Integration: No question that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Linked-In should be part of your marketing mix. Web widgets are very effective for mobile list development. These “Micro Apps” can be installed into a Facebook fan page tab or a webpage for those that are accessing the internet from a PC. Tiny Url’s can be customized and used in Twitter to drive traffic to your web widget. 
• Pay Per Click advertising can be highly targeted on Facebook and a powerful resource if your ad is positioned in front of the right target audience. The creative should be direct and offer value to the visitor. I’m not a big fan of Linked-in PPC but I do see some good positive signs from the new YouTube advertising opportunities. 
• Email marketing and eNewsletters offer a great opportunity since these recipients should have already opted into your campaign. Including “Mobile Only Offers” creative within these emails should help you increase your mobile list with loyal fans. The right images used to support the copy is very important and don’t be afraid to do some split testing for improved performance. 
• In-store signage works great for restaurants, retail stores, Gyms and entertainment venues. Develop the right phrasing that delivers a clear and concise message on your signage. Visual and Audio “Calls-to-Action” should be simple like: “Text [KEYWORD] to {Short Code} for …your special offer” 
• Radio Advertising spots have their place and assuming your audience is listening when your spot runs, this can be a very effective tool for building your list. The cost may be prohibitive for list building alone but when part of a larger campaign, radio can be a great vehicle for your advertising message.

SMS Text Marketing Guidelines

Always be upfront with your audience and provide them an opportunity to opt out of your mobile coupon campaign. Wireless carriers have a number of regulations and Mobile Marketing Best Practices should be followed. Not everyone takes advantage of an unlimited texting plan and most carriers require you to notify consumers of the cost of service. A simple statement like: “Msg&data rates may apply” will satisfy this requirement.

Mobile Landing Pages Convert Better

Mobile enabled landing pages show up better on Smartphone’s and improve the customer experience ten fold. They are not difficult to design if you are using a WordPress site or you can have your mobile marketing supplier include a mobile landing page in the campaign. Mobile is a FAST medium and the clearer the communication, the higher the conversion ratios. If the landing page is cumbersome and requires scrolling and advanced navigation, your prospects will get frustrated and will reduce your ROI for your mobile marketing campaign.