By Sarah Benson, Paid Search Coordinator, Advertising Solutions
It is estimated that there are approximately four billion mobile devices in the world to a mere one billion computer desktops. With numbers like these it is no surprise that search is going mobile…and that many of my fellow RM’ers have also written about this topic lately. I recently was presented with the task of actually creating a paid search mobile campaign. Slightly daunted, I knew it was time to do some research and unveil a few tips on how to put all of this talk about mobile into action.
Right off the bat, how do you know if mobile is appropriate for your company? Using Google Analytics, you can find how many of your present clicks and leads are coming from mobile devices. If a good portion of your clicks and leads are already being generated from mobile devices, it’s time to make the move over to a mobile specific campaign.
So you know it’s time to start a mobile campaign. What is there to know? How different could it be from a regular desktop targeted campaign? To find the answers to these questions more research needs to be done. Queries coming from mobile devices tend to be of a different nature than those coming from desktops. For one, queries from mobile devices tend to be much shorter and more general. They also seem to be more local in nature. I just read a report recently that stated 15 percent of queries have a local modifier - what great information to stumble upon!
Throughout my research I was continually confronted with the offer of Google’s “click to call”, which is one option for developing a mobile paid search campaign. When someone conducts a search on their mobile device and a click to call campaign is in place for that query, an ad will appear along with the phone number. A visitor can either call the advertiser directly or click through the ad to get to the advertiser’s site. It’s best to create a mobile friendly page for a better user experience. This places the company’s desired action literally in the hands of the consumer, only a click away.
Another option for paid search is to develop a general mobile campaign that directs visitors to a mobile friendly page, with a standard text ad. Keeping in mind that a consumer’s attention span is short lived especially when in the mobile forum, it’s extremely important to catch their attention with your ad copy and strong calls to action. However, I discovered that this can be more challenging than a typical call to action. Campaigns targeted to mobile devices have shorter character limits than those targeted for desktops with one less description line, so you have to be more focused.
I am also testing to determine if using a display URL that indicates that the campaign is mobile would resonate better with consumers than the general URL. As for the mobile landing page itself, it is not as extensive as the typical desktop landing page. Since there’s smaller screen space and less memory on mobile devices, there are less actions available to the consumer. This is important to keep in mind when creating keywords and copy to make them as specific to the site as possible. This is even more important when thinking about what on-site actions needed to guide the consumer to take. For example, for our main paid search campaign we may track up to five on-site actions. However, with the mobile campaign we are really only focusing on one action.
Since our mobile paid search campaign will be more targeted than our general campaign, we are expecting some interesting results…you should try it too!
Mobile…Taking the Talk into Action
Resolution Media Takes Second Place in Interactive Marketing Awards
By Kiley Peters, Manager, Marketing and Business Development
In Promo Magazine’s 2010 Interactive Marketing Awards there were 13 categories, one of them being Search Engine Marketing. This category was defined as “a program that leverages search marketing or search optimization to drive traffic to a brand promotion website.” We submitted our “Clicks to Bricks” case study showing how our outstanding strategic efforts enabled online marketing to translate into offline sales. While this campaign has been quite a success story for us in many regards, it is always nice to be recognized for a job well done. I’d like to extend a big thank you to all involved in the "Clicks to Bricks Campaign" that won us second place!
Keep an eye out for us in the June/July issue of Chief Marketer magazine as well as Promo’s 2010 Interactive Marketing Awards Online Gala at www.PromoMagazine.com.
Q1 Turns to Q2 – Where Are You in Your Marketing Plan?
By Dave Tan, VP, Innovation and Product Development
It’s time for the marketing gut check. Depending on your company’s fiscal year, right now Q1 is rolling into Q2. As the media industry reports feed into marketing budgets, everyone is looking about to see what has worked so far, and what’s new to explore and test out throughout 2010.
In my opinion, this is a key time to look at beta testing new initiatives and new marketing programs. There’s plenty of hype and discussions as to what to get into, from location-based mobile applications like foursquare and gowalla, to Facebook applications that replicate complete websites, to mobile advertising among many others. All of these programs are fantastic programs to get into and many brands/companies are having great success in engaging with their core targets in these new platforms. Include the iPad, Twitter, video, and other social networks and I am sure every marketer is looking to figure out how to test those platforms out. However, the most important step that often gets overlooked is consumer research.
At Resolution Media, all of these new digital marketing initiatives are being tested and experimented with. Why are we delving into new areas that are outside of search? Simply put, it all starts with consumer behavior and research. This is one of our core areas of expertise as we are continually monitoring consumers and their behaviors online, how they search, and ultimately what content they are interacting with. This consumer focused mindset is very important for search marketing, but leads to many other marketing insights that we can consult or recommend on.
Who are your 2010 target consumers? Are they different than the 2009 targets? What’s different? Where do they spend their time online? What are they engaging with online? Why? Are there any changes to the prospective targets or customers? Are there changes to where they spend their time? Are there different platforms? Answering some of these key questions can help solidify which beta program to test out, and fight the shiny new ball syndrome that many marketers face. Quick search research, email surveys, 3rd party data pulls, consumer insights research, and qualitative research can point out what would be effective test programs. I also don’t mean three month sessions of multiple focus groups across the country. This could be research done in a few weeks.
Looking to develop a mobile app? Just from my own experiences traveling in the past month, I would say that practically a good third of Chicago “El” riders now have an iPhone or a DROID and many business travelers are toting iPhones over blackberries. Certainly there are plenty of research studies from eMarketer and other places that have more accurate stats, but if one of your target audiences is urban commuters in the 25 – 55 range, iPhone/DROID apps maybe the right thing to start testing out right now. Is your target on Hulu or YouTube? Are they searching for videos and other forms of digital content that you have? What are they looking for? All these types of questions can be answered through quick research. But again, before you jump right into development or new marketing plans, take the time to research your target’s digital behavior. In the best case, it will validate what your gut thinks, and in the worst case, it might tell you to spend effort elsewhere because your target isn’t there yet.
