Hi! How’s it going? It’s Monday here in sunny San Diego. It’s so sunny that I have to wear sunglasses. Actually the weathers been really bad lately. It’s been cloudy and it was raining pretty hard this morning. Anyway it’s Monday, it’s Labor Day and normally this video post is uploaded on Mondays, but of course, since it’s a holiday, I’m taking a break and I’m filming it today and it will be posted tomorrow, Tuesday.

Right now I’m down town and I’m heading to North County for lunch to meet a friend. And I’ve been given the task that every marketer dreads on a daily basis. It’s one of those complex questions you have to answer every single day at work around noon time. And that is, what do I want to eat for lunch or where do I want to eat for lunch? And I know what you might be saying. You might be saying, “That’s a simple question” and I’m ridiculous and what am I talking about?

Well, if you’re a serious marketer, you’re spending most of your morning working like crazy, taking a look at your clients’ campaigns, looking at their status, looking at the analytics, statistics, all of that information so that you can tweak and improve the campaign. And you’re working hard all morning and noon comes around and the last thing you want to do is figure out where you’re going to eat or what you’re going to eat. It’s difficult because there are a lot of choices out there. Do you want fast food? Do you want something healthy? Are you going to eat Asian food, Mexican food, Spanish food, Italian food? What are you going to eat? So it’s not that simple. To make things worse for me, I’m heading to North County to visit my friend and I have no idea what’s in the area. So it’s going to be tough for me. But, I have a solution! And I’m going to find something, find some place to eat using my mobile phone. And that’s the key, the mobile phone. Why do I mention that?

Times are really changing. If you haven’t noticed, everyone leaves their home with their keys, their wallet, and their mobile phone, preferably a smart phone. And everyone now-a-days is searching for local businesses, whether they’re restaurants, doctors, different local services. They’re using their mobile phone; they’re not necessarily at home searching anymore. If they’re out and about shopping around they might as well use their mobile phone. And because of that, it’s important to make sure you have a mobile website, which is in line with the topic I want to cover for today’s video post.

Leslie, from Florida, sent me a message during the week. And she understands that mobile marketing’s important and it’s important to have a mobile website. She’s very clear on that. But she wants to know if it’s really a necessity and if she really does have to pay thousands of dollars just to create a new website because she’s already spent a lot of money on her existing website. Well Leslie, the good thing is, you have some options. And no, you do not have to spend thousands of dollars on a mobile website. There are other ways around it. First, it’s really important; you are going to need a mobile website. Everyone needs a mobile presence and a mobile optimized presence, so you don’t want them going to your normal website and the surfing experience when they view your website on their mobile phone is unoptimized and all your text is very little. It makes things difficult. But there are ways around it as I mentioned, and that’s what I’m going to teach you today. So Leslie, you’ll want to pay attention if you’re watching this video and for everyone else, there is a mobile and local integration, an opportunity that you may not be aware of. And when you create a local presence through, let’s say, Google Places pages, you’re actually optimizing your website or your business to have a mobile presence.

You literally can use your mobile Google Places page as your mobile website. And that’s what I’m going to do in this particular video post. I’m going to teach you how you can redirect mobile users whether they’re on mobile phones, any kind of mobile phone, iPad, or any kind of touch pad to your mobile places page. And that way, you don’t have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a mobile website. You can simply redirect them to your mobile Google Places page, which is already optimized for mobile phones and it looks great! And if you have really good reviews and an optimized listing, that Good Places page may be all you really need because it really is a converting monster. What I mean by that is if you have lots of reviews, all the calls to action are already in the mobile version of a Google Places page. So that’s all you need. So pay attention to the video. What I’m going to cover are ways that you can redirect mobile users to your Google Places page.

I’ve already explained how there’s a fundamental shift in how people are looking for good services and different businesses around them these days, and that’s through their mobile phones. It’s becoming very important for different companies, whether they’re small businesses, medium businesses, or large size businesses, it’s very important for them all to have a mobile website that’s easy for users to browse through all the information on a typical website. As you know, there are certain websites that have a lot of information and if you look at those websites on a puny phone, mobile phone, it’s hard to navigate, so mobile websites are extremely important because you people to find the information they’re looking for.

A lot of people spend thousands and thousands of dollars on mobile websites and some companies can’t afford it and for some companies, it makes sense. But for small businesses or those who are trying to be very frugal and cost effective, maybe creating an entire mobile website isn’t the right step at this time. I already explained though, that if you optimize your Google Places page, you claim it and you optimize it, you will already have enabled yourself, your business to be found in mobile search. That’s the great thing about Google Places. When you claim your Google Places page, you now have a mobile integration already implemented.

Instead of creating a separate mobile website, you can use the mobile version of your Google Places page and that will suffice. And sometimes for certain businesses it’s much more effective than a normal mobile website that you might pay thousands and thousands of dollars for. As you see on your screen, I’ve conducted a search for San Diego realtor and I’m scrolling through the results. Imagine I was on my mobile phone and I’m looking at all these results and I click through to go to this website right here. And when I see the actual website, imagine I’m using my mobile phone. This particular page may not load properly or look very nice and easy to navigate on a mobile phone, whether I’m using an android, iPhone, or a mobile phone with a smaller screen. Because of that, this website owner may want to create a mobile friendly website that might costs hundreds or thousands of dollars and it can get very costly to create some really good mobile websites. So instead of creating a separate mobile website, it’s a possibility to use this business’s or this website’s Google Places page. Now, let me pull up the Google Places page. This is how it looks like and all the information here is completed. They have some great photos of the staff. They have great reviews here, which will stand out and it’s a pretty complete listing.

Its owner verified and they have great reviews. It’s all listed here. So why not use the mobile version of this Google Places page rather than spending thousands of dollars on a separate mobile website. When you view a Google Places page on a mobile phone, it’s formatted well and the layout is great and the reviews stand out so it encourages visitors to really reach out to you and read the positive reviews. And if you have a brick and mortar business that requires people to go to your business, those reviews can really push people over the edge to actually visit your store. And if you have a consulting business or you require people to call you first to inquire about different questions and services, again that Google Places page, the mobile version is great because it highlights the reviews. And if you have outstanding reviews, then most likely they’ll visit your Google Places page through their mobile phone and call you right away. On the flip side, if you have a bad Google Places page that has a lot of negative reviews, then I don’t recommend this particular technique. But if you do have a great Google Places page, then you can use the mobile redirect to lead everyone to the mobile Google Places page.

Now let me walk you through how you would use the scripts that I’ve provided to do the redirect. This is going to be a general overview and it does get a little techy, but it’s quite simple if you have a basic background. Now, if you don’t have any background in coding or HTML or website development, you can give these instructions, the files, to somebody who is experienced in web development and they can literally do everything.