By Mike Scotto, Account Supervisor, Client Solutions
This is the year of mobile.
How many times have you heard that before? Were they right? Wrong? If so, when is going to be the year of mobile? I think the answers to all of those questions are relative. It’s relative to you, your target market, and your objectives. In any case, this is definitely the decade of mobile, and as strategic forward thinkers, it is imperative for us to leverage this powerful channel and proactively lead our clients approach to mobile.
Why now? Let me provide you with some prospective.
According to recent forecasts compiled by The Kelsey Group, U.S. mobile advertising revenues (search and display) will grow to $3.1 billion in 2013, from $160 million in 2008, representing a compound annual growth rate of 81%. During the same period, mobile local search advertising revenues will increase from $20 million to $1.3 billion, a compound annual growth rate of 130%. The percentage of mobile searches with local intent will increase from 28% in 2008 to 35% in 2013. Sound familiar? Let me refresh your memory: U.S. spending on paid search advertising rose to about $2.06 billion in 2003, up 123% from $923 million in 2002. Similar to 2003, mobile search advertising is experiencing another explosive growth spurt.
Beyond the incremental growth of search volume, what impact will the growth of mobile search have on ongoing paid search campaigns?
The answer is:
1. Shorter search queries
2. Queries more local in nature. According to a 2009 report by The Kelsey Group, 15% of queries have a local modifier.
3. A greater impact of online marketing on offline sales: Over 30% of clicks are looking for a local office/store.
This increased search volume is an additional amount of data that should be monitored. It will help determine how to manage the results and provide insights in setting the proper expectations and objectives for your clients.
How should you suggest getting started?
First and foremost, set a clear objective. Then outline a strategy to achieve it and the metrics by which to measure performance.
Mobile marketing should revolve around:
1. Driving in-store traffic
2. Lead generation
3. Branding
Driving in-store traffic starts by setting up campaigns and ad groups with geo-modified keywords revolving around the brand and the services/products offered by the advertiser. For example, a mobile campaign for a copy & print office supplier should include “office nyc,” “office manhattan,” “printing store nyc,” etc. and include their brand name.
Although the user may find a local listing already present in the organic search results, an ad will allow the advertiser to communicate particular brand attributes, promotions, special events, etc., and provide a clear advantage over the competition.
Mobile can also be leveraged to generate leads in a cost effective manner. Depending on the goals set, one choice would be click-to-call ads. Google provides the means to insert an 800 number within your ad so mobile users can easily call to get more information. The cost of the call would be the same as the cost per click.
An alternative choice would be to drive users to a simple mobile-optimized landing page where the user can easily provide his or her email or phone number. To maximize lead generation it is recommended that the advertiser provide an incentive for signing up, such as a one-time coupon or the opportunity to continuously receive promotions and special offers. The benefits of mobile lead generation will spill over to other marketing channels the advertiser may be using – i.e. traditional email marketing – and provide the opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell services and products.
If the objective is pure branding, the best strategy would be to maximize exposure on mobile search results related to the advertiser’s services and products. Best practices also call for implementing a branded mobile landing page where the user would be able to garner further information and possibly interact with the brand.
Once the strategic direction has been defined, communicated and approved, campaign parameters and launching is as easy as setting up and launching a traditional paid search campaign. Prior to implementing on all engines, I advise starting with a one month test campaign on Google alone, since they currently own 65% of the mobile search market share.
Work with your advertising team on setting up the campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads in AdWords. Under settings, select “iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers” in “Networks, devices and extensions.” Make sure to de-select “Desktop and laptop computers.” Depending on your campaign goals, set up the rest as you would for a traditional paid search campaign.
Optimize Your Results
Within AdWords, segment campaign performance metrics by device to identify opportunities for optimization.
Conclusion:
What You Can Do to Get Started This Week:
• Consider separating your desktop and mobile ad campaigns to enable more refined optimizations.
• Look at your website traffic to see what percentage is already coming from mobile devices.
• Define a mobile conversion for your business.
• Do you want to drive local phone calls? Visits to your store locator page?
• Do you want to drive downloads of your mobile app? Video views?
• Gather information from your customers about how they are engaging with your business on mobile devices.
• Which search terms are over- or under-indexing on mobile devices?
• Which pages are people visiting on your website?
• How does the conversion funnel look on mobile?
What You Can Do to Take Your Campaign to the Next Level This Week:
• Visit your website from different mobile phones, especially those driving the most traffic, to understand your user’s experience.
• Look at what your competitors are doing on mobile. Search for their businesses, visit their websites, and learn from how they drive conversions.
• Define the ideal experience for a mobile customer. Assess your proximity.
• Test and optimize your online ad campaigns.
• Which landing page drives mobile conversions?
• Identify your highest performing keywords and ad text on mobile.
Mobile Search: Now Is The Time
Your Brand in Search
By Ted Schuster, Paid Search Supervisor, Advertising Solutions
Questions occasionally arise from advertisers that are concerned about the proper use of their brand in search. It’s an especially potent issue too, because of the very nature of search: People are explicitly telling you what they’re looking for online, and if you can’t deliver something relevant, it can sour your brand with that searcher. It’s essential in search to always keep that user experience in mind, because the more you can improve your brand relevance to searchers, the more interaction and success you’ll see online (and potentially offline).
Do you own your brand?
Arguably the biggest consideration when debating whether or not to bid on brand terms is your brand visibility. Depending on how many of your competitors and vendors are in your brand term space, you may be struggling to own your brand in the search engine results. Having the top natural listing is important, but it’s all about the real estate on the page. If you’re the maker of a sports drink, for instance, and someone searches a brand term of yours, are you comfortable with 10%, 20%, or 30% of those searchers going to a competitor’s site or a vendor who are above you on the page? If you’re not dominating that top-of-page real estate, that’s exactly what can happen.
The engines get more “rich” with content beyond just traditional listings and you have to do more than just own the top of the page. Google, Yahoo and Bing all display various forms of shopping feed results, image results, local business results (with maps), and so on, depending on the keyword searched. Therefore, it’s crucial to also make sure that you’re on shopping comparison engines (or at least Google Product Search, which is free), that you have an updated feed with all of your store locations for the engines, and that you’re taking advantage of any betas that are allowing images or rich content to show prominently on the page.
Also consider your brand from a PR perspective. Search ads are flexible in that the messages can be updated within minutes—not days or weeks. Your brand can be positioned front-and-center as news breaks, product developments unfold, or as important promotions get rolled out. Working with your Web development team is also crucial, to try and get the most compelling and relevant copy and functionality on your site. People are largely using search engines to gather information, so why not be the source of that information?
Your Brand in PPC ads
As mentioned above, search ads are easily adaptable and thus easy to test. Remember that search is unique from most other forms of advertising, so what works in print or on TV won’t necessarily translate to search. But don’t take my word for it—test it. There are many components to consider, all of which are worth testing for your brand. To name just a few:
• Is your brand well-known for the non-brand keywords you’re running on? If it is, keeping your brand in the title of your text ads or displayed prominently otherwise can mean significant performance gains. If you’re a smaller or lesser-known brand, devoting that prime space to your brand may be a mistake, unless you’re solely concerned with gaining awareness. Run an A/B test to determine what effect your brand is having on your paid ads.
• Test display URLs and whether it’s better to use vanity URLs (www.company.com/product) or just the root URL (www.company.com).
• If you have the flexibility, test how you’re talking about your brand. Positioning yourself differently based on the particular keyword group you’re bidding on can bring performance improvements. For instance, if you are traditionally known as a high-end retailer but are selling products that are doing especially well for discount retailers, you may want to consider putting some focus on your discounted or on-sale products. Adapt to market conditions whenever you can.
• Try testing out rich ad products that several of the engines have supported. Yahoo! RAIS and Google Site Links (among others) can give your ads more real estate and provide an improved user experience by showing deep links into your site, or having images, videos, etc.
Understand Your Brand
It can be very insightful to take an in-depth look at the site visitors who came in off of brand terms. What are they actually buying or converting on? What pages are they frequenting? Understanding your site analytics for your brand terms can give you great page optimization insights and even help inform your search ad copy. For example, if you see that 65% of visitors to your site off of your core brand term are signing up for a particular service, you should definitely be testing out ads that are tailored more specifically to that service. Also, if there are any areas of the site where your brand term traffic is dying off and you’re seeing high bounce rates, consider making some landing page optimization recommendations and giving that page a second look if you’re landing any other keywords there.
These are just three areas to focus on that, if optimized, should improve your users’ experience and of course your online performance. As with anything in search, test it out for yourself and run with what works.
