How to Make Sure Your Customer Finds You

It is no secret that mobile use and spend has exploded, and mobile search right along with it. In fact, 86 million people used a mobile device to search for local businesses in the past year, according to comScore—which means your potential customers are looking for you—on the go! Are you giving them every opportunity to find you?

 

Luckily, there are a myriad of tools offered by search platforms such as Google and Bing to help small businesses take advantage of this growing mobile opportunity. In just a few short years, these tools have become quite easy to use, very affordable and, in many cases, even free! Their intuitive features grant you access to a wealth of information in reports and metrics. Using these analytic tools can help give you insight into your search advertising spend and ROI.

 

Here’s a short list of some of the features offered by Bing Ads and Google AdWords to aid SMBs get their businesses found:

 

• List your local business for free with Google and Bing—list your store’s photo, information, services or specialties. Make your listing as robust as possible.



• A very handy feature for mobile callers is Call Extension, which is offered by both search platforms. It shows searchers your phone number within your advertisement. Advertisers only pay each time the call is completed, and includes a report.



• Location Extensions is another search product offered by Google and Bing, which give searchers not only a phone number, but also an address and even a link for directions.



• Additionally, small business owners can take advantage of Location Targeting, a technology that uses geo-targeting to get businesses’ ads to the right customers by specifying the size of the radius of where the ad runs.


 

As an SMB, there is no question that your business needs to be using mobile search advertising to some degree, if you are interested in being competitive in this new mobile world.

 

Take a look at the related article 5 Marketing Methods To Drive Business Success.

 

Written by: Donna Young, Director of Social Media