Formulating a Strategy to Reach Mobile Users

Katherine Bennett - June 30, 2011

The mobile market is booming.  In fact, one would be hard pressed to find someone without a cell phone. However, a big question is what strategies businesses should use to reach people on their mobile devices? Businesses have to learn how people interact with their mobile devices, in order to craft a proper strategy to reach them.

It’s no surprise that mobile users are constantly on the move and looking to get information quickly when searching for it.  Therefore, businesses have to make information quickly and easily accessible to them.  For example, let’s say a business has a landing page with a lead generation form. In order to get more details, a person has to fill out the form. This is fine for computer users, but probably not the best way to reach mobile users. It would be better to have a landing page with a phone number that says to call for more information.  For a mobile user, calling a business is easier than trying to fill out an online form.

Another way to reach mobile users is through geo-targeting; specifically physical location targeting. Basically, physical location targets device-based location signals and only shows your ads to people who are physically in your target area.  A local business can truly benefit from using this targeting strategy.  Let’s say a couple from North Carolina is visiting family in New York. They are driving around looking for a good restaurant. They check their mobile device and receive an advertisement from a restaurant that is only 2 miles away and decide to try it out. This restaurant benefitted by using physical location targeting. If they had just targeted the New York area, they might have missed out on the couple from North Carolina. However, by doing physical location targeting they were able to reach the North Carolina couple because the couple’s actual location was only a few miles from their restaurant.

They are many different strategies which can be employed to reach mobile users, and businesses should sit down and decide on the best ways for their business to proceed. Once the strategy is created, implement it and make adjustments as you go.