Marketing is all about eyeballs. Getting your message in front of your audience is the first step to getting more business (making your message compelling and getting people to take action is a story for another post). So when you want to boost your business, you need to find those eyeballs wherever they prefer to be.

So, where do eyeballs prefer to be, these days?

Well, some businesses use billboards and print ads, but eyeballs only spend a few minutes there each day. The window of opportunity is open only briefly. A better alternative is television ads – eyeballs spend a lot of time there each day. But the cost can be huge. There are many other options that we don’t have to get into here. One of them is offering an amazing cost/return ratio: mobile.

According to a report from the mobile analytics firm Flurry, consumers are spending an average of almost 3 hours on smartphones and tablets each day. Now that’s a serious eyeful, right? People are spending almost a fifth of their waking hours using their mobile devices, and there are still small businesses that are ignoring mobile marketing.

Unfortunately, when you do that, you risk the market ignoring you.

Mobile Apps Are Cost-Effective

Mobile strategies really could not be more cost effective than they are today. For a small monthly fee, a small business can publish an app and have a dedicated, persistent ad right on a user’s mobile screen. That little app icon, once downloaded, is itself an ad for your business that will be seen many times each day by all of your fans. That is, without even going into the many revenue-generating marketing opportunities present in apps after launch, just the fact that your app was downloaded is already providing you with a marketing boost.

Who needs traditional ads when you’ve got some of the most valuable visual real estate in the modern world? A mobile business app specifically tailored to your customers needs!

Then you throw in all the amazing ways that apps boost business – mobile ordering, push notifications of offers and events, even something as simple as making the address easy to look up – and you’ve got a winning combo that’s about as cost-effective as can be.

Small business owners: don’t miss out. The mobile marketing deal is just too sweet!