While online marketing took nearly 10 years to peak, mobile is gaining speed quickly and aggressively. If you don’t believe the daily influx of business reports, consider these two eye-opening statistics:

• 9 out of 10 mobile searches lead to action, over half leading to purchase. (Search Engine Land)
• A little more than half of the entire US population used their phone to research while in a store in 2011. (Comscore)

Because of numbers such as these, many businesses are looking for ways to incorporate mobile into their business plan; both your online marketing efforts and offline direct advertisements can be leveraged. So, if you’re hoping to include mobile in your overall business strategy, consider these five opportunities, from coupons to traditional advertising options.

Mobile Coupons

Mobile coupons are easy for you to deploy and easy for your customer to use. Therefore, it’s a great way to get people through the door, whether they are shopping in your store or eating at your restaurant. Keep in mind that there are a number of platforms you can send your coupons to.

• Email: As part of your standard email marketing campaigns, send out digitally redeemable coupons. Allow these to be used in store directly from the phone to get customer spending regardless of whether the coupon is printed or not.
• Push Notifications or SMS Messaging: On average it takes 90 minutes for an email to be opened, but only 90 seconds for a push or text to be read, according to CTIA.org. Consider that a customer gets your coupon while out shopping, and suddenly has a reason to stop into your place of business.

QR Codes

QR codes came as fast as they went. And now, with such a large variety of cell phone manufacturers on the market, many businesses professionals are deeming QR codes useless. However, when done correctly, they can be a valuable tool in your mobile marketing campaigns.

Place these barcode like graphics on the walls of bus stations, around your store, or on your restaurant menu. These can take the customer to a discount page on your website, or a coupon that is digitally redeemable. It’s a cheap way to get your customers active.

Check-In Rewards

Your customers want to tell their friends where they are at all times. According to VenueLabs.com, “33% of smartphone owners have shared their location with retailers via a check-in service such as Foursquare.” As a business, you can take advantage of this by offering rewards for frequent check-ins.

• Loyalty: Offer certain rewards for customers that check-in; a free appetizer for every 5^th check-in, for example.
• Friend: Allow customers to redeem a gift for checking-in with a friend, but the reward can only be earned when the entire party is in attendance.

Optimized Local Search

The best way to use mobile to get customers through your door is optimize your local listing pages. Microsoft Tag reported that half of all local searches are performed on a mobile device. This gives your business a great opportunity, if you do it right.

• Claim all your profiles: Be sure to claim every business profile you have – from Yelp to Google and Facebook; you don’t want wrong information listed.
• Optimize: Optimize them for local searches and your top products so you come up in search before competitors.

 Mobile Ads

Lastly, you can take the most traditional route which is developing mobile ads. These can appear while browsing as well as within apps. You can target these ads based on who is seeing them, where the person is, and other searches that have been done with that device. In this way, they can be incredibly effective in getting customers through your doors.

While having a mobile website is critical, you can use mobile to get people into your store or restaurant, too. From traditional advertising to check-ins, mobile is a valuable business tactic that is quickly becoming necessary for any and every business.

Jessica Sanders is an avid small business writer. As the marketing copyeditor of Resource Nation, she touches on a range of topics such as marketing and advertising. Check out their blog, and find them on Facebook.