Follow Me on Twitter
Check me out on Facebook
Become successful today!
- Identify Your Ideal Customer
- Get Them to Your Website
- Keep Your Visitors
- Make the Visitor a Customer
- Keep Your Customers
The telecoms.com website is always a great resource for us in keeping abreast of developments in the market.
A recent post with the same name as ours talks about how 2012 will change the way you do business with your customers, or you will lose them. In other words, you need to invest more time and effort with your customers because the competition is just a click on their smartphone away.
Here are a couple of the many points worth reading:
Smartphones Are Everywhere
Your Customers Use Their Smartphones to Make Buying Decisions>
Your Customers Want an Experience!
2012 will be the year the you need to engage your customers more than ever. You need to acquire new customers; you need to service them; and you need to retain your existing customers – they are too valuable to let slip away!
This from telecoms.com’s website:
Visa adds NFC devices to m-payment initiative
Payment and banking services provider Visa said Tuesday that it has certified NFC-enabled smartphones from Samsung, LG and RIM for use with its PayWave mobile payments application. The PayWave application is installed on a secure SIM card and allows users to make payments at points of sale using a contactless payment terminal.
The Samsung Galaxy SII, LG Optimus NET NFC, BlackBerry Bold 9900, BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry Curve 9360 and BlackBerry Curve 9380 have been added to the list of Visa compliant payment products available for commercial deployment by financial institutions.
“The players are now in place for mobile payments to become a reality,” said Sandra Alzetta, head of mobile business unit and innovation strategy at Visa Europe. “We are working with our member banks, mobile network operators and key handset partners to ensure that future payment technologies are as easy, intuitive and secure as card-based transactions are today. Today’s announcement plays a significant role in getting those new technologies into the hands of the consumer.”
Visa payWave on mobile devices is compatible with existing contactless (NFC) payment terminals already installed at retail outlets worldwide. Research house the Yankee Group predicts that the value of NFC-based transactions will grow significantly, from $27m in 2010 to $40bn in 2014.
The following is an outline of the services we offer to help you harness the power of mobile marketing for your business.
Website Analysis
As long as you have an analytics program installed on your webiste (i.e. Google Analytics), we will provide a report of how your site is doing, telling you what your site visitor profile is, how they search your site, how much mobile traffic you are getting, where your traffic is coming from overall, and a number of other useful statistics that you should be aware of, and which will help us tailor=design the following services to your business.
Mobile websites
This is a service to provide your business with a fully mobile-device optimized website that have easy to tap buttons and the content a mobile browser needs. Works on all Apple devices, Androids and Blackberrys. Includes a feature called “Mobile Detection” that automatically sends a visitor to the mobile site when they type the business URL into their mobile browser.
Your site can be up and running in 24-48 hours.
Google Place Page set up
Google has provided free mini-websites for all businesses in the US that have their business listed in some online or offline business directory. This page shows up for local searches if you have a physical location for your business.
We help you claim the page so that you can add content, add images and videos, hours of operation, your website link, and so on. This can be an inexpensive marketing tool for you business.
Your place page can be claimed and some content added with 24 hours, in most cases.
Mobile marketing
Over 60% of all local searches for businesses are being done on mobile devices as of Summer 2011. You need to harness this trend to your business or you’ll be left in the dust. We show you how to communicate with your customers, develop customer retention programs, use QR codes to inform the public and your customers and promote specials, events, etc.
This is a process that is ongoing, but can be started within minutes.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
To really take advantage of the internet, you need people to find you who don’t already know about you. SEO is the process of doing all the techie things to your website to get the search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing) to find your site. Some of this is on-site work, some of it is off-site techniques like article marketing. Our team of specialists are experts in getting you found and getting you to be listed as far up the search results as possible.
SEO is an ongoing process that must run a minimum of 6 months for lasting results. This is not a one-time set up process.
Site Visitor Optimization (SVO)
Once SEO and other marketing has got people to find your website, do they stay and look around, or do they turn and run. Optimizing your site for real (not search engine) eyeballs is critical to turing the visitors that SEO has helped find you into paying customers. This includes page layout, ease of navigation, use of images and videos, inclusion of testimonials, industry awards, and other things that establish your credibility and authority. Prominent ways to contact you via telephone or email are essential to SVO.
This is also a continuing process. Your website, like your business, is always a work-in-progress.
Based on getting the quickest results, the priorities for these processes are:
1) Google Place Page
2) Mobile optimized website
3) Mobile marketing
Running in the background should be
SEO and SVO simultaneously.
Website design
If you have an older website already and want to move it to one of the blog platforms like WordPress, we can help you do this.
If you have no website yet, then none of the above services will work for you since they are all website-based.
Call us to discuss how we can get yoyr business Mobile-Local Optimized! (360) 894-8151
5-year-Freeze in Wireless Services Taxes
Amazing – our Congress has agreed NOT to raise taxes, at least on wireless services.
The Washington Post carried an article on November 1st that explained the decision.
“We need to encourage the development and adoption of wireless broadband, not tax it out of existence,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the sponsor of the legislation.
The article goes on to say:
Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, have introduced identical legislation in the Senate.
“Wireless is a prime example of how every time a new innovation hits the market, governments invent new ways to tax it,” Wyden said. He has argued that with the advent of 3G and 4G technology, wireless mobile devices are the gateway to the Internet but that discriminatory and duplicative taxes and fees are regressive, harm lower-income people and make access to the Internet unacceptably expensive.
Texting can be dangerous at many times, but no more so than when you have had a bit too much to drink and finally decide to tell someone off – like your boss, or girlfriend. Bad time to text!
So a clever entrepreneur has created a way to save you from yourself called Textalyzer available on the Apple App store for $0.99. Well worth what it might save you from doing!
Here’s what a recent PRWeb.com article had to say about how it works:
If the user is unable to successfully complete the games, their text is held for 12 hours, at which point they’re asked if they still want to send the message. The user can even create customized warnings so they never forget why they want to avoid sending messages to a specific contact.
Still have your beers, but stay out of trouble!
According to MarketWatch.com a new mobile app is being launched for real estate agents in the Seattle area. The Seattle market covers 21 counties and nearly 80% of Washington’s population. This market is supported by 22,000 real estate agents/brokers who service more than 55,000 real estate listings.
Here are the details on this new mobile app:
Smart local businesses are moving with this technology trend. Don’t be left behind!
I’ve been writing for quite awhile about the explosion of smartphones in use and why small businesses need to be paying attention to this.
New Smartphones Penetration Statistics
The Pew Internet Project has just released its first survey looking at smartphones in use. Here are some of the stats:
=> 35% of US adults own a smartphone
=> 18-44 year olds – ownership is 50%
=> 38 percent of US mobile phones are now smartphones
A recent article on the Search Engine Land website had this to say:
What does this mean for a small, local business? It means more and more of your potential customers are looking for you on their mobile devices. Can they find you there?
Get Found on Smartphones
Here are 2 things you can do to help them find you.
1) Claim your Google Place page, get some content in it, get some reviews and some citations. Put up a couple of images and a video, if you are really creative.
2) Optimize your website for mobile devices so that it looks good on a smartphone or pad.
This is the new wave – be on it!
Age 56 is too young for a genius to die, but for Steve Jobs it seems it was time to go.
Brilliance is so seldom seen these days with mediocrity dominating everything from business to media to education to our own lives. Steve Jobs was a shining light.
Steve Jobs Takes on the World!
He was young and brash and ready to take on the world and he did. He went up against IBM and won. He went up against Microsoft and even though MS stole the Windows concept from Apple when they were down, it didn’t stop them from introducing ever more revolutionary computers.
And then came MP3 players, then phones and now pads and the beat goes on!
Steve Jobs as We Know and Love Him!
Here are 2 great videos of Steve Jobs at his best. One when he was very young and full of life and one when he was nearly gone and reflecting on death.
This is classic Steve Jobs – Dramatic and Brash!
Bear with the long introduction to get to Steve’s powerful reflection on life.
Better Holiday Sales with Video Marketing
When people start looking for products like yours for the holiday season, probably on their mobile devices, will you be showcasing what you’ve got with video?
Video Captures the Feeling!
Video captures the feel of your product or your service. 
Showing someone how something works is so simple with video and engages the viewer with your product. If you have ever demonstrated your product to a customer, you know that the chances of them buying are much higher than if they just look at a brochure or catalog.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a video of a holiday resort or a video fashion show or a tool demonstration. Video makes it come alive for your customer.
So, do the same demonstration on camera and you can reach anyone who visits your website, 24/7/365. Do you see how powerful that can be?
Video is getting so easy that any business can use it. I wouldn’t recommend just using a cell phone camera, but good stand-alone video cameras are on the market for under $300
Here’s how a recent article in Mobile Commerce Daily put it:
Video Marketing – Just Do It!
You don’t have to be Target or Louis Vuitton to be a video marketer. Just a simple video camera and a good demonstration and you’re doing it.
Of course, you can contact a profession video production company to help you, if you have the budget. Or maybe you’ve got a friend, or even a customer, who’d be willing to help.
Video engages customers and immerses them into your product or service. Don’t overlook this powerful, but easy, way to boost your sales, especially in the upcoming holiday season.
Build Your Business Strong Now – No One Else is Going to Help!
As you have surely noticed, the US economy is not getting any better with age. Economists who get paid a lot to be wrong, politicians who lie about what is wrong, and the media who get paid not to report what’s wrong, all want you to believe that we are not in a recession, just a downturn.
What is Your Personal Economy Like?
Check your bank balances and tell me if our economy is in a depression or not. As a small business owner, you, however, do have a better chance than the job holders. You can still control how your business runs and you should be doing everything possible to build your business strongly.
Don’t overlook the impact mobile marketing will have on your business. As long as people have money to spend. they will find places to spend it using their smartphones and iPads and other mobile devices.
You MUST be found when they are looking. Otherwise, you will disappear!
If you still tend to think our economy will get better soon, here’s what a respected trend research group, Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) reported recently:
You Control Your Own Economy!
You can do something about this – build your business strong and don’t overlook opportunities to bring in the new generation of customers. Keep up with the latest trends. Don’t just win new customers, work hard and innovate to keep the ones you have. Make your own economy strong and working together and working smart we can beat this thing!