Being Where Your Customers Are

As a business owner, you know that one of the most important parts of your business is marketing and promotion. Reaching people with the right message about what you do is crucial to getting prospects to try you and getting customers to come back to you. In just the last two decades, there has been a dramatic shift from reaching people by newspapers, radio and broadcast television to reaching them on their personal computers. That does not mean that the need to advertise in newspapers, radio and/or television has gone away entirely. But it does mean that they take up a smaller percentage of what companies spend on promoting their business.

Companies made this shift because people have dramatically increased the amount of time that they spend online. As time goes forward, people engage in those traditional media sources like television, radio and news on their personal computer (laptop or desktop). Of course, businesses adapted, and now it is commonplace for a company to have a website that promotes their business to those people while they are on their computer.

Customers have responded accordingly, as 85 percent of the world’s population has now made a purchase online, according to Nielson, a consumer behavior data collection company. This means that the pattern is set that as customers and prospects begin to spend their time in different ways, advertisers have to follow them, if they want to be effective in getting their message to them.

What would have happened if companies insisted on advertising solely in the yellow pages, in newspapers, television ads and on radio during the period of time between 2000 and 2011? They still would have reached some prospects and customers, for certain. However, they would have missed getting their message in front of 150 million internet users on average during that period of time. As of March 2011, that number was 272 million in North America alone. Whether a company is large or small, it is now inconceivable not to have a website to promote itself on the Internet, since a significant number of buyers have shifted their habits of spending time from offline to online.

But a similar shift has taken place recently in terms of how customers and prospects are spending that time online. Even though they are engaged in Internet based activities, they are no longer limited to accessing the Internet on a personal computer (a laptop or a desktop computer). Technology has advanced so that they can now access the Internet on a mobile device such as a Smartphone, tablet PC or an I-pad. Because of this, their behavior has changed so that they are spending more time on their mobile device (relative to their personal computers) when accessing the internet.

What does this mean for a business owner or manager?

It means that companies need to reach people, not only when they are on their personal computers, but also on their mobile device. Specifically it means:

1. They will need to make sure that their website appears correctly when it is accessed on a mobile device.
2. They will need to make sure that they are reaching out to potential customers, not only by email and internet search; but also by SMS text messages and location based ‘proximity’ alerts.

There is no question that customers can be reached on their mobile devices. The key to success with this medium (of mobile technology) is understanding what kind of communication works best for the customers and prospects a business has.

Keeping up with the changes in ways to communicate can be overwhelming. That is why we take pride in removing the burden of knowing them all from you; and then putting them into an effective strategy for you. We keep up with ‘what’s working’ in marketing so that we can customize the right solutions for our clients. We do this to help them get their share of revenues in an increasingly competitive market. Call us today so that we can look at what your business is doing, and tailor a strategy for your customers and clients who access the internet on their mobile device as well as their personal computer.

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