It’s clear that businesses who don’t embrace mobile phone technology in the coming year will be left behind, much as those businesses who sat on the sidelines during the early days of digital or social media are now playing catch up!

Mobile marketing is the best and most direct way of connecting with your customers. It also adds an interactive dimension to your marketing efforts which is unrivaled in effectiveness and immediacy. For most businesses traditional advertising is no longer an effective strategy to drive new customers into the business and it is not showing any measurable return on investment. With the recent boom in sales of smartphones it has been predicted that by 2013 mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common device to access the internet.

There has been a fundamental shift in consumer behavior and this is where mobile comes in as a marketing channel. For the first time in history you can reach your target market at any time and anywhere via their mobile device.

Think about this for a minute what are the three things you never leave the house without they are your:

• Your Keys
• Your Wallet &
• Your Mobile Phone

The potential that mobile marketing offers with the ability to reach your market on the go is why mobile marketing the first interactive mass medium. Although even though it is clear to most that mobile represents a huge opportunity to help grow your business many are struggling to head their head around how they can use mobile marketing to promote their business. Now mobile marketing can be broken down into four main areas mobile websites, apps, text/SMS messaging and QR Codes.

Here are some stats on what users are searching for on mobile from a study released by Google.

1: Search Engines Are the Most Visited Sites on Mobile!
Search engine websites are the most visited websites with 77 percent of smartphone users citing this, followed by social networking, retail, and video sharing websites.

2: Searchers Look for a Variety of Information on Mobile!
While a range of topics top the list, news, dining, and navigational information are all sought by over 50 percent of smartphone users, which are all information types that lend themselves particularly well to mobile access and action.

3: Mobile Phone Searchers Take Action
Nine out of 10 smartphone searches result in an action (purchasing, visiting a business, etc.). 24 percent recommended a brand or product to others as a result of a smartphone search.

4: Local Information Seekers Are Even More Action-Oriented
95 percent of smartphone users have looked for local information.
88 percent of these users take action within a day.
77 percent have contacted a business, with 61 percent calling and 59 percent visiting the local business.

So with this in mind a mobile website is vital in mobile marketing today. It’s no longer a luxury, but rather it is essential that you have a mobile web presence. It has been estimated that 40 percent of all local searches are performed via mobile devices and if your website is not mobile friendly people won’t scroll around or pinch/expand to find what they want they will just click away.

• Now Losing 40% of business is a big loss for most companies.

Would you like to keep the mobile traffic that lands on your site ON your site to stay on your site so they can call you, find you, do business with you?  Then a mobile website is essential and absolutely the best way to start. You need to make it easy for them with a mobile website that features “Click to call”, Location and the information they’re looking for in a easy read and navigate format.