Mobile applications are on the rise especially with iPhone, Blackberry and a growing number of smart phones on the market. Mobile applications are basically software applications that mobile phones and devices can download from the internet.

Examples of mobile applications are games, online utilities or applications that provide online news and search capabilities. While the numbers of mobile applications are increasing, they are still not common enough to make a huge marketing impact compared to SMS (Short Message Service) text messages and other online marketing methods such as pay per click.

However, the trend of mobile applications should not be ignored. You should actually jump in now and start using them while they are not mainstream, so that the costs are lower. Get your feet wet and learn the ropes now to start getting a firm foothold on these types of applications for your business growth.

You can market your business using mobile applications in 2 ways:

1.    Creating the mobile application

You can outsource a project to a freelancer to create a mobile application for you such as an online game. If you’re selling computers, then you could design a game where people can answer questions on computers and get ranked globally on the number of correct questions answered.

Here are examples of websites where you can find a developer:

Elance (http://www.elance.com)
Scriptlance (http://www.scriptlance.com)
Rentacoder (http://www.rentacoder.com)

The mobile application can be offered as a free download so that you can get as many users as possible.

The way you market your business using this application is by promoting your website on the application’s download page. When people visit your website to download the free application, they will get to know your business website. This is your blatant advertisement that cannot be ignored when people download the application.

Furthermore, you can also market your website by displaying your advert on the mobile application first, every time they play the game. You can also update this advertisement to everyone who has downloaded the game whenever you have a new promotion.

2.    Advertising on mobile applications

Another way of marketing your business with mobile applications is to buy advertisements on the applications that are near your area. What this means is that the application will only show your ads to people who are locally in your area.
These are very targeted advertisements. People who read your ads will be within traveling distance to your business, and hence they’ll have a much better chance of becoming your customers.

Additionally, you could buy advertisement from the owner of the game on their download page. I.E. reach out to extend your own reach.

Note: you may need to do a little research to see whether or not certain mobile applications you’d like to consider using, can offer you advertisement options that are strictly for your local area. Not everyone offers this.
An example of a well known local mobile application is Yelp (http://www.yelp.com). They are a review site which has a section specifically designed for mobile applications at http://mobile.yelp.com . The website allows their users to submit reviews on anything from restaurants to barbers and more in the local area, specified by the user.

People using their mobile devices can search for reviews on the go, too. If they are travelling to the city or visiting somewhere, they can search for the best place to go for food, shopping and where to go for a spa.  You can market on Yelp by writing a review on your business website under the appropriate category, listed in your local area. This is free advertisement for you which appears in mobile devices using the Yelp application.