Small Business

3 Reasons Why Your Small Business Needs a Mobile Strategy

By Mark Henricks

Updated on: July 29, 2011 / 1:02 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

U.S. consumers have been receiving ads on their cell phones for years. But if you're like most small business owners, that's one advertising frontier you have yet to cross. But you should. And soon.

Consider these stats:

Mobile ads are growing fast. Total U.S. mobile ad spending will grow from $790 million in 2010 to $4 billion in 2015, according to media adviser BIA/Kelsey. Globally, mobile advertising is expected to expand from $3.3 billion this year, to $20.6 billion by 2015, according to Gartner.
Powerful technological forces are propelling mobile advertising. Cell phones already outnumber TV sets 3 to 1, and PCs plus laptops by 4 to 1. Tablets -- an ideal platform for mobile advertising -- are set to explode. IDG recently said 67 percent of respondents to a global survey planned to buy one within 12 months.
Mobile ads can target users by location. Groupon, for one, is counting on growing its business by pushing location-based coupons to its subscribers in real time. BIA/Kelsey projects locally targeted mobile ads to rise faster than mobile as a whole, from $404 million, or 51 percent of mobile ad spending, to $2.8 billion, or 70 percent. Using smartphones for location-targeted vouchers, deals, and offers may not be wildly popular in the U.S. yet -- only about 29 percent of Americans use them (compared to 42 percent of Chinese consumers). But it will be.

If you're going to ride this trend, figure out now the best way to reach your target market. Mobile Marketing describes how Groupon can send texts to the mobile phones of subscribers near your location, offering special deals to those who respond. But you don't have to go through Groupon. The Small Business Mobile Advertising Resource Center suggests sending via text an advertising coupon for a freebie. You could do the same with an announcement of a special sale or other event.

Ultimately, effective mobile marketing through cell phones starts with basics such as making sure your business shows up in search results and on online maps, and goes up to building mobile apps and working with Foursquare or other location-based social networks. It's understating to say the possibilities are limited only by our imaginations. Right now, imagination probably can't conceive of the many ways cell phone-delivered ads are going to change business.

Has your business had success with location-based mobile advertising? Tell us what worked for you.

Mark Henricks is an Austin, Texas, freelance journalist whose reporting on business, technology and other topics has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, and other leading publications. Learn more about him at The Article Authority. Follow him on Twitter @bizmyths.

Image courtesy of Flickr user robzand, CC2.0