If you own or run a business that relies on and serves local customers, you need to pay attention. The proliferation of connected mobile devices - specifically smartphones and tablets - means your customers and potential customers are on the go and always connected. It is no longer necessary for them to be at a laptop or desktop computer to look up your product or service. Forget about the Yellow Pages. We're talking real-time, hyper-local search - from mobile devices.
Underscoring the importance of leveraging hyper-local search, is the statistic that over 50 percent of all local searches were conducted from a mobile device (according to searchengineland.com). This means that more often than not, when someone is searching for a local product or service, they are using a mobile device to conduct that search. They are likely on the go. Even more compelling is that 89% of smartphone owners will take some kind of action after looking up local content (according to searchenginewatch.com). These actions range from calling a business, to visiting a business to making a purchase among other actions.
Imagine some scenarios. You are driving home from work. Your car breaks down. You need to 1) find a ride home or a tow home and 2) find a repair shop to fix your vehicle. Here's another: you go out for dinner and find that there is a three hour wait at your favorite restaurant. You decide not to wait and start looking for other options. In each case, what do you think you'll use to find what you are looking for? You guessed it, your smartphone.
If you are a towing company, an auto repair shop or a restaurant, you want to be found at that moment when someone is looking for your product or service. But are you being found? To find out the answer, you need to look at the search results on your phone based on the keywords someone would be searching for to find your product or service. For example, 'towing companies' or 'car repair" or 'Italian restaurant'. You also need to look at your website analytics and see how much search traffic you receive from mobile devices. Are you getting any mobile traffic? Is it a growing number?
If you are not being found you quickly need to fix this problem. There are a few ways to go about resolving this. One solution that will quickly get you to the top of the search results for the examples above is setting up a paid search campaign that targets mobile devices. Put your paid search ad square in the face of the consumer at the very moment they are looking for a tow truck, a repair shop or a place to eat (or insert the product or service you sell). Be sure to show all the surrounding locations and your phone number allowing the user to determine how far you are from their exact location and easily call you with the tap of a thumb.
Other ways to get more visibility in mobile search include optimizing your website and making sure you are in all the local directories including Google Maps/Places. Or, inclusion in sites such as yelp.com.
Bottom line here is that if you have not been paying attention to how your business is appearing on mobile search results and looking at the metrics of your call volume and web traffic from mobile devices, you are surely missing enormous opportunities. These opportunities are going to continue to pass you by, along with the competition.
Here are your immediate next steps: Open your smartphone. Open a browser. Start doing some searches for your product or service. Analyze the search results you see. Where is your company or brand showing up if at all? How about the competition? Look at your call tracking and website metrics for mobile. Not seeing what you'd like to see? Start planning and testing local/mobile search.
It's time to take action and be found when mobile searchers are looking for you. Need help getting started? Give us a shout.