If you look back just 15 years, you would never have thought that you could do all the things you can do with smart phones. You certainly never thought you could access the Internet from your cell phone, right?

Now, technology allows you to do all kinds of things from smart phones or iPhones. Is your website ready to be accessed? It needs to be because more people today are using their phones to access the Internet and you will be left in the dust as far as users to your site go if you are not mobile web ready.

So, how do you do it? It is really quite simple. Your first step is to see if your site is mobile ready. You can do this with a free service called MobiReady. This will give you a report about how easy it is for your site to be viewed.

Then make sure your site is a clean, easy-to-read site. This in turn will make your site faster, which is what you need for it to be accessible to cell phones. It’s also a good idea to not use Flash on your website. It is not necessary for a site, especially when viewed from a smart phone.

Make sure you use HTML phone numbers instead of making users type in a phone number and use voice search. More users are using their voice option on the phone. This is another step to your marketing strategy.

As you can see, it’s quite simple to make your site mobile ready. You don’t want to be left in the dirt when it comes to users wanting to go to your site but don’t because they can’t get to you on their phone. They are not going to wait till they get home, so you need to get up to speed and become mobile web ready.

It seems that smartphone apps are making a big play. They are becoming more and more popular and present themselves as an awesome way for businesses on the go to take advantage of mobile marketing. But is it a fad or this trend here to stay?

I certainly don’t think mobile marketing is going anywhere. It will only get better. And it seems that smartphones – iPhones and Androids – may stick around as well. But who can predict the future?

I think, at least, for the near future, you can bet on smartphones to be influential in the mobile marketing arena. Small businesses and large businesses alike are getting in on the action. So if you are thinking about having a smartphone app developed for your business, I’d encourage you to go ahead while the action is still hot. You can always redirect your mobile marketing efforts later if the trend changes or migrates to new devices.

When it comes to any type of marketing, taking action now is always better than waiting to see what happens later. You can wait yourself right out of an opportunity, but if you’ve already taken advantage of the opportunity that has presented itself, then when it’s time to move on to something else your migration can go a lot more smoothly.

What do I recommend for your mobile marketing efforts right now? A smartphone app and a QR code. Next year is a different story.

Amidst all the hype with social media, there’s a growing trend that sometimes gets lost in the shuffle: Mobile marketing.

Before starting my own company in 2006, I worked for 16 years in the wireless industry for AT&T Wireless and Cingular, so I’ve watched mobile develop over the years with more than a casual passers-by interest.

For many reasons, mobile marketing has been slow to grow in the United States.

“Mobile marketing in the US has been hindered by relatively slow adoption compared to the rest of the world.  For marketers, however, this can be a benefit because there are so many solid mobile marketing case studies from Europe and Southeast Asia,” says Lisa Foote, founder of MixMobi, a user-friendly mobile marketing service based right here in Minneapolis, MN.

A recent study by Pew Internet showed that 47% of American adults use their smartphone or tablet device to obtain local news or information.

Developments in mobile technology such as the iPhone and other web-enabled smart phones have propelled this growth.
One of the biggest growth areas I’ve seen in mobile marketing is the use of digital coupons. According to NCH Marketing Services, “more than 45 million American consumers are now taking advantage of digital coupons” and “search queries for coupons and discounts have increased by more than 50%” since last year.

Who uses digital coupons? According to Coupons.com:

• Consumers with an average household income of $96k annually
• 33% of consumers with college degrees
• Consumers who have an annual household income of $100,000 and who have college degrees are twice as likely to use digital coupons.

The very best mobile marketing strategies are those that are integrated with your overall marketing program and can include:

• A website designed with mobile device access in mind
• Local business listings in directories such as Yahoo, Google, and others
• Use of social media to build location-specific relationships
• Leveraging applications such as FourSquare and Twitter with geo-targeting capabilities to target your reach
• Adding mobile/digital coupon offers that allow you to reach your audience via text message, e-mail, Facebook and Twitter
• Adding Quick Response (QR) Codes to your collateral, business cards, print ads, signage, etc. to build a link between your physical and online presence and extend your marketing capabilities

Where Mobile is headed

As you can see, the real opportunity with mobile marketing is when you integrate with everything else you are doing from a marketing standpoint.

Venture capitalist Fred Wilson says that “combining mobile, social media, and real-time creates a ‘golden triangle‘ of opportunity for marketers. Coca Cola reported tremendous success leveraging sponsored Tweets during the World Cup, for example. When marketers figure out what their prospects and customers are following in real time and present attractive promotions via social, accessible on mobile, they have a compelling combination.”

I couldn’t agree more!

Recent changes to Google Latitude give new spark to marketing on the Android for small businesses. The big change is that now you can check in and let your friends know where you are while you’re there.

I performed a search for offers in the Minneapolis area and found 10 offers at over 70 locations. Businesses represented in the check-in offers include:

• Arby’s
• Radio Shack
• Quizno’s
• Great Clips

That may not look like much, but all of those are major chain stores. What if you were to make an Android-Latitude offer for your small business? Anyone searching for offers in the Minneapolis area (if you’re in Minneapolis) could find you easily on their Android Latitude app.

Or what if you were in Austin? You’d be competing only with offers for 60 places. In New York City, you’d be competing with 770 offers. That’s not bad.

I think the Google Latitude check-in offers service could grow more popular in the next year or two. Google seems to be paying a bit more attention to this local mobile marketing product, which it seemed to have abandoned as of last year.

If you are a local small business anywhere in the U.S., you’d be doing yourself and your customers a favor to at least look into using Google Latitude for the Android.

It’s official: the iPhone, the Android, SmartPhones, they are here to stay, and they are here in full force. Everyone is using the cell phone these days to log on, tune in, and plug up. So is that a great opportunity to promote your small business?

You bet it is. In fact, cell phone apps are poised to be some of the biggest innovations in the next few years. Small businesses are even getting in on the picture and it won’t be long before having your own iPhone app is going to be as important as having your own website. It may already be.

And apps are flexible products. You can use them for so much. You can incorporate a customer service component into just about any creative app that you can create. If your users find the app interesting and useful, they’ll use it and you’ll be top-of-mind all the time.

The key to a good app is to create one that is related to your business in some way and useful. For instance, an auto parts shop might create an app that lets users order parts in real time while on the go. Wouldn’t that be useful? Or a restaurant may let users order carry out. Maybe a bookstore would allow users to place books on hold, or even order and pay for them right through their phones.

There are all sorts of ways to get creative with iPhone apps. Now is the time to start thinking about how you can keep your customers tuned into your business through their iPhones.

If you’ve been sleeping lately and haven’t heard about the new mobile “barcode” device called QR Code, then allow me to be the first to give you a heads up. QR stands for Quick Response.

I think QR Codes represent the future of online marketing – at least, the future of mobile marketing.

The idea is for your customer to scan a “barcode”-like image with their cell phone and immediately be taken to your web page to download something, sign up for your newsletter marketing list, or to buy something. Right now, there are just a few companies using it successfully. Five years from now, I think it will be as commonplace as search.

What can you do with a QR code? You can put it on your business card, brochures, and flyers; you can put it on your sign in your store window; you can put it on your car magnets – even billboards; hey, why not put it on your big sign out front?

You can put your QR Code on any print or digital marketing material you own. The idea is for your customers and prospects to use their cell phone to scan the QR Code and immediately be transported to your website on their cell phone or PDA.

QR Codes are brand new so they’re not that sophisticated yet, but I can foresee a time when you will use QR Codes for special promotions – in addition to your primary QR Code for general marketing purposes. The bottom line is: QR Codes are powerful new mobile marketing tools that will transform mobile marketing in the same way that low-cost and no-cost shopping cart software transformed online marketing. It’s here now, and you can have it.

Mobile access of the internet is growing with, according to ComScore, 43% of mobile users in the US doing just that. What is their number one site? Facebook followed by Myspace, Yourtube and Twitter.  According to the statistics, 21% of users accessed either social media or blogs. Those numbers look good, but what does it mean for your business?

Statistics never tell a full picture. For example, they don’t tell us what users are doing when they access social media for example. Are they just checking on friends or sending a tweet to tell friends where they are and what they are doing? Mobile marketing for small business is becoming an important issue, especially in business sectors that relate to people on the go. Having presence on Facebook and Twitter certainly won’t hurt your business if that presence is handled correctly.

What is clear is that today’s web sites do need to accessible by mobile users. If the do find your business, either through search or social, your site has to be in a position to deliver the information they are looking for. If your site doesn’t deliver, users will simply move on to the next site. Once users find sites that meet their needs, there is a good chance they will save those details for later retrieval. This means that a users that is lost today will most likely be lost for some time.

Facebook may be the number one site for mobile users, but at around 20% of users, that still leaves 80% accessing other sites, search included. Is your site mobile ready? Have you looked at your own site from the perspective of a mobile user? Most business owners haven’t!

You are likely no stranger to Facebook. Almost everyone uses it these days and the company boasts 150 million users on mobile phones alone. The local Groups feature has been a popular Facebook offering since the beginning of the social service and it allows users to connect with people in their local areas. But Facebook Places takes local social networking a bit further.

Enter real time location-based social networking.

Facebook Places allows you to let your friends know exactly where you are located right now. For instance, you’re sitting in a Starbucks at the corner of Fifth and Main. If someone you know is approaching that intersection and sees you sitting there, she could just pop in and say hi. The courtesy of a heads up would be her choice, of course.

The biggest downside seems to be a loss of privacy, but you can change who sees and who can interact with your Facebook Places settings through the service’s privacy settings.

This puts Facebook on the forefront of location-based networking and close to the leading edge on location-based advertising, which is sure to follow. It’s interesting that other location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla see Facebook as friendly to their services rather than a competitor.

(Source) Appearing at Facebook’s announcement, some initial partners, including Foursquare and Gowalla, said they thought Facebook would be an enabler—not a competitor—by introducing a lot of new users to the world of sharing their locations.

Foursquare beat Facebook to the location-based networking space by a year and a half. Gowalla arrived on the scene somewhat earlier but doesn’t have as many users as Foursquare.

Of course, these are not the only location-based networking services online. Facebook Places does have its competition, including Google. Google’s service is called Latitude, which allows you to see where your friends are on Google Maps.

I have a feeling that location-based social networking is just getting started. According to JiWire, more than half of mobile users want to see location-based advertising. That means Facebook Places has a unique opportunity to capitalize and being that Facebook is the most trafficked website online, it has the market clout needed to rival Google in paid advertising services. Places could just be its ticket to the big leagues.

Google has rolled out a new program for local business called Favorite Places. At first glance, the program looks promising. But I can’t help but wonder about the implementation.

Google has picked 100,000 local U.S. businesses to be “favorite places.” They sent these businesses a decal to place on their store windows. It is expected that mobile phone users will scan the decals to learn more about the the businesses and to leave a review of them. Question: How serious do you think mobile phone users will be to take advantage of this moment? Mobile searchers already have that capability with other websites.

This looks like another Google attempt to move into an area where someone else is already doing a better job and where Google thinks it might pick up more advertising money. It is, after all, a Google Maps program. Google clearly wants to add your business to its database. What then? I suspect you’ll start getting snail mail from the company, and possibly e-mail, offering you opportunities to advertise through Google AdWords.

What do you think? Is this a slick advertising move on Google’s part or do you think it will actually attract support from businesses and mobile searchers alike? Would you do it? You can.

The people behind Opera Mini, a web browser for cell phones, reports that Opera Mini users have saved billions of dollars just by using the popular web browser. Furthermore, usage of Opera Mini has gone up 238% since October 2008.

The lesson here for web marketers is that the age of mobile web marketing has begun. If you have started your plan for a mobile presence on the web then you should seriously start thinking about that now. I only see mobile web usage going up.

And if you are doing business in some non-U.S. countries, a mobile web presence could be even more important.

In Latin America, the top 10 countries using Opera Mini are:

• Brazil
• Mexico
• Argentina
• Venezuela
• Chile
• Costa Rica
• Colombia
• Peru
• Paraguay
• Ecuador

But are consumers in these countries making purchasing online through their cell phones? My bet is if they aren’t now they certainly will be. Google, Facebook, and Live are very popular in Latin America and Orkut is popular in Paraguay and Brazil.

All that means is that mobile phone users are searching and using social networks in Latin America. This presents a great opportunity for marketers.

Whether in Latin America, the U.S., or elsewhere, you can expect the mobile web to be an important part of doing business online in the future. I only see these numbers going up.