They may not quite be BFFs—”best friends forever” in today's Internet-enhanced vernacular—but a woman and her smartphone are pretty close.
In a recent study called “Women + Mobile: The Unbreakable Bond,” Time Inc. and Nuance Digital Marketing discovered that women are incredibly reliant on their mobile devices.
In fact, 60 percent of women say their smartphone is the most important device they own, and 88 percent of women say their phones give them something to do during their “empty” time every day. If you're not properly taking advantage of your presence in the mobile realm, you're missing out on a core avenue for marketing to women.
If your tire business or automotive service shop is not taking steps to go paperless, now is the time to begin. Not only is paper becoming increasingly cost-prohibitive—if you don't believe us, just take a look at how much you spend each year on printing invoices—but women are very responsive to “green” directions in any business, particularly the automotive aftermarket.
Using email invoices, Web and mobile-friendly newsletters and communication, and even using text messaging for service reminders and more, will help your business stay front-of-mind for your women customers.
Why? It's not only for its fresh, green approach, but because those initiatives reach your female customers via the conduit through which they get all other important updates: from their mobile phone.
Of course, you also want to use the mobile space to reach women who aren't already your customers, and the mobile Web is where you do that.
Smartphone and tablet users are threatening to overtake the population of desktop PC users on the Web, so if you're still using a website designed for desktop viewing, it's time to give that site a facelift and retrofit so that it fits inside the “mobile space” and is accessible to smartphones, tablets and other non-desktop devices.
Doing that will make your site cleaner, simpler and easier to navigate from a smaller screen, with some added benefits on the back-end as well: mobile SEO (search engine optimization).
Giving your website a mobile makeover is a great time to revisit your SEO practices, ensure your entire website is “crawlable,” that you're still targeting the right keywords, and most importantly, that you're capitalizing on SEO geared at the mobile user.
Mobile searchers are on the go and looking for a business that can help them RIGHT Now, so if you've got a mobile-friendly website inside and out, you're more likely to be the one she chooses to “click-to-call!”
When it comes to advertising on the Web, mobile or otherwise, most women don't mind ads as long as they can control the experience.
Location-based offers are very effective right now, with studies indicating that 41 percent of women say they prefer ads that are relevant to from where they're searching. Also, 52 percent say they prefer ads that are relevant to what they're doing on the Web.
What's the No. 1 negative? That would be intrusive ads—91 percent of women say they hate ads that pop up, take over or otherwise distract from their browsing experience, so stay away from that.
Simply make yourself visible, mobile friendly and allow your business to become part of a woman's mobile Web space. That way, when she needs your help she'll be able to find you.
Jody DeVere is the CEO of AskPatty.com Inc., based in Thousand Oaks, Calif. She can be reached via email at [email protected] or by calling 888-745-1928. Her website, www.askpatty.com, is aimed at helping automotive retailers attract, sell, retain and increase loyalty with women customers and promotes a process for shops to become “AskPatty.com Certified Female Friendly.”