The days of promoting your business through an ad in the Yellow Pages has long gone, and new marketing techniques have to take the boom of mobile devices into account. If you want to reach new leads, new customers or new clients, you have to be at the top of your game for smart phone users. Google Local Search One of the key ways that smart phone users are different from conventional customers is that they are mobile, and often do things on the go. That impacts how they search. It's no longer enough to just find a product or service they need, it also have to be local to wherever they happen to be. So that means you need to get your location set to Google Maps so a local search can identify you. You'll need a Google My Business account (which is free) where you can create a business listing with address, contact info and have a star rating along with reviews. Currently, the URL is www.google.com/business and you'll need an existing Google account to use these features. From there, you can provide all the necessary information and "claim" your business. Once done, your business will be seen on Google Maps and will come up as a local search for your area. Optimize Your Website for Mobile Search An existing website can be accessed via smart phone, but how does it look? A standard website can look very clumsy and difficult to view as you scroll around a page designed for a much larger screen. Today, you need a responsive design that will adjust to be better viewable on any size screen, including smart phones and tablets. This creates a far better customer experience, and that is what leads to sales. This also applies to any online advertising. Focus on mobile-only ads so that they display properly on the smaller phone screens. If you are sticking to the usual banner ads on web sites, you're missing out on some added reach. Add an App You can also go beyond the website entirely, and have a custom app designed for your business instead. A website is still a must, but smart phone users are much more likely to just click on an app icon when they can rather than use a mobile browser. You don't necessarily have to invest a huge amount of money to have a custom-designed coded from scratch. There are several services and sites out there that will allow you to create a simple app with some drag-and-drop tools with very little investment. Pull together some informational pages with photos about your business, a contact form, current news and anything else that would be relevant to potential or existing customers. Always Provide Quick Responses Conventional website visitors expect a relatively quick response from you to any email inquiries they have. If you don't get back to them within the day, there is a good chance you'll lose your opportunity to engage them. Smart phone users are even more impatient, and are used to instant communication and instant responses. If you encourage people to text you, you had better be equipped to communicate immediately. And speaking of text messages, they are getting to be more important for communication than emails, so you should consider that route when sending messages out as well as receiving them. Promotions via text are more likely to be seen, compared to emails.