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First Annual Fanminder Mobile Marketing Survey Mobile marketing is here to stay.

Google, Apple, Facebook. The biggest names in consumer technology, along with an army of ad agencies, big brands and venture capital firms, are pouring billions of dollars into mobile marketing. Why? Because every day there’s more evidence that mobile marketing widely outperforms traditional marketing. Even as investment in mobile marketing grows, overall, small businesses have not embraced mobile marketing.

So what’s holding small businesses back?

Results from the first annual Fanminder Small Business Mobile Marketing Survey provide some insight as to why. It’s not that small business owners lack awareness, as 81 percent say they have heard of mobile marketing. But fully 70 percent of those haven’t tried it. Why? Some “mobile marketing myths” appear to be holding entrepreneurs back.

What are these myths, and what is the truth?

Of those aware of mobile marketing, but who haven’t tried it:

44 percent think they “don’t have time to figure out a new technology.” This suggests that small business owners think mobile marketing will be “hard” to do—a time-consuming process and/or difficult to figure out. As small businesses discover simple-to-use solutions, this perception should decrease.
30 percent think mobile marketing “sounds expensive.”It’s true that text message campaigns can cost $50 to $100 per campaign or per month. However, when the focus shifts from cost to results, the power of mobile marketing becomes clear. The business results that small business owners experience with the unmatched response rates of mobile more than justify the cost. And some services start as low as $10 or $25 per month, so getting started with mobile marketing can be affordable for even the smallest businesses.
30 percent simply “don’t know how to get started.” Answering this question requires knowledge of mobile marketing providers, different program options and the value of mobile marketing. As this knowledge reaches small business owners, adoption of mobile marketing among small businesses will increase.

The survey also dispelled some commonly-held beliefs as myths:

Satisfaction with current marketing programs is not a barrier to trying mobile marketing. Less than 20 percent of respondents cited “my current marketing programs are working” as a reason for not trying mobile marketing.
Only 13 percent worry “my customers won’t like it.” Since owners know their customers, concerns about customer acceptance seem overblown.

What do small businesses say about mobile marketing benefits?

Small businesses of all sizes and types can benefit from mobile marketing. Appointment-based businesses, such as a hair salon, can send appointment reminders. Retailers can alert fans to new products or sales. And any business can communicate with its employees quickly and effectively.

The survey validates compelling benefits of mobile marketing programs to small businesses:

More than 50 percent of respondents were “very” or “extremely” interested in four out of the five benefits listed.

Letting customers send referrals to their friends came out on top, showing the social power of mobile marketing when customers can reach out to their contacts instantly, from anywhere. Right behind referrals were sending promotions (coupons, offers and specials) and sharing news and information.

Complete results for the five benefits in the survey are:

Benefit of Mobile Marketing Program	% Very or Extremely Interested
Let your customers send referrals to their friends’ mobile phones	68 percent
Send coupons, offers and specials to customers’ mobile phone	65 percent
Instantly alert customers to news, events and other store info	65 percent
Answer customers’ questions on their mobile phones	53 percent
Communicate with your staff via their phones	32 percent

What mobile marketing programs are most interesting?

The survey listed six popular mobile marketing programs, asking respondents to rank their interest in them.

As with the mobile marketing benefits, all six mobile marketing programs presented in the survey generated high interest from respondents—the lowest-rated program was still very or extremely interesting to more than 40 percent of respondents.

Respondents were most interested in a mobile website—a business website optimized for mobile devices. A recent study by the Pew Research Center in Washington showed that 40 percent of American adults use their cell phones to surf the Web, e-mail or use instant messaging,”so these business owners are definitely onto something!

Complete results for the six programs in the survey are:

Mobile Marketing Program	% Very or Extremely Interested
Mobile website	69 percent
Text message reminders	53 percent
Birthday clubs	50 percent
Customer reviews	50 percent
Mobile coupons	50 percent
Frequent buyer card	44 percent

Conclusions

The Fanminder Small Business Mobile Marketing Survey shows that small businesses are starting to enter the world of mobile marketing, if slowly. Many of their concerns about mobile marketing are based on myths that can be dispelled with careful education by mobile marketing providers. Once their concerns are addressed, small business owners can be expected to take action on their strong interest in mobile marketing’s benefits and program options.

From Small Business Trends

First Annual Fanminder Mobile Marketing Survey

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

Mobile is all the rage, at least that what’s you hear from the media. The iPhone and the iPad are everywhere, and smart phones are changing the world. “Droid Does” but do you?

Keeping up with mobile devices is tough enough and keeping up with the mobile customer isn’t easy, either. Fanminder is a service to make mobile marketing possible for small business.

When you hear about mobile marketing, most of the time it refers to sending a text message (also known as SMS, for “short message service”) to someone’s mobile phone. To many this is invasive, but keep in mind that almost all mobile marketing is permission-based or opt-in. A customer gives you his or her cell phone number and asks to be sent appointment reminders, special promotions or simply news (sports scores are common). It is easy to scrape a site and capture someone’s e-mail, but much harder to harvest cell phone numbers.

The challenge for many of us is how to send a message to all the people who want to receive a text message. You certainly don’t want to try to send dozens of customer texts from your phone directly. And you may also be wondering about what you should send.

Here’s where Fanminder comes in: They manage the send part (to as many cell phone numbers as you want) from the Web. They also help you create the content with a step-by-step process that walks you through writing the short, 122-character message (they reserve some characters for opt-outs). You can add opt-in customers manually as well and manage your customer database from the Web. In addition, Fanminder has a terrific learning center. I signed up for the free 7-day trial for this review. (I should also note that the founder, Paul Rosenfeld, is a FoSBT, or Friend of Small Business Trends, in that he has been a guest author on this site previously.)

What I liked:

It truly took less than five minutes to set up and send a simple promotional message out to a few customers (my test base was family).

Fans use their phones to sign up automatically.

Fanminder gives you ideas to create a marketing sign to encourage signups, but the best part is they offer to create one for you. All you have to do is call in to the support line.

There is a nifty self-subscribe widget for your website.

They offer a great tracking tool for managing your texts and customers (and allow you to segment them into groups, too).

What could have been better:

Not much, frankly. The only small weak point I noticed was that it took me a while to find the customer testimonials that I wanted to read as a newcomer to mobile marketing. I did finally find them under the Why Mobile? navigation tab under “Fanatics.”

The service seems to me to apply to many industries, but the site highlights six categories: health care, studios and classroom oriented businesses, retail stores, service businesses, bars and night clubs, and restaurants and cafes. The learning center offered sample texts in each of these business categories.

Overall, Fanminder is a great way to reach the mobile customer (and who isn’t a mobile customer, really?). Even though text messaging has been around for years, it is only recently that it has grown in the U.S. I appreciated that Fanminder dedicates a page to give the skinny on what’s real in mobile marketing and to explain the difference between social media marketing and mobile marketing with a page entitled: Mobile vs. Social: “It’s time for results, not chit chat.”

Learn more about Fanminder.

From Small Business Trends

Fanminder: Mobile Marketing Solution for SMBs