Tips for managing mobile search campaigns

Didit Editorial

12 years ago

February 20, 2013: Search queries flowing in from smartphones and tablets will soon overtake current desktop searches, with forecasters projecting the transition point somewhere between 2014 and 2016. The trend shows that search-related mobile advertising revenues are projected to rise proportionally, from $400 million in 2011 to $3.2 billion in 2016. While no one doubts the long-term trends, many marketers have been slow to make the transition to a mobile-centric world.

Didit’s Mark Simon, writing in the pages of iMedia Connection, has some useful tips for marketers seeking to get up to speed in the race to cater to mobile shoppers. They include:

Create unique KPIs for mobile campaigns
Forcing your mobile campaign to conform to a traditional desktop-based PPC campaign might result in under-spending and loss of mobile search market share of voice. Because mobile users behave differently, convert differently, and have different informational needs (multiple studies state that almost half of mobile search queries have local intent), it’s best not to hold them to the same benchmarks as desktop and tablet campaigns.

Separate mobile and desktop/notebook campaigns
CTR and conversion rates are lower on smartphones and tablets. The competitive landscape is also very different both because there are fewer marketers bidding for positions and because mobile SERPs cannot provide the kind of commercial real estate available, thus rewarding winners over also-rans in the auction.

Use click-to-call ad extensions
According to multiple studies, more than 50 percent of mobile searches result in a phone call. Google’s AdWords call extensions provide a click-to-call option that can distinguish your campaign. According to Google, correct implementation of click-to-call can result in conversion rate improvements of 6 to 8 percent.

Create mobile-specific landing pages
Mobile users have neither the patience nor the bandwidth to tolerate overly verbose sites or those slow to load. Although destination pages viewed on tablets are often as usable as those on desktop/notebook screens, smartphone usability almost always suffers by comparison. Mobile-specific pages can also contain unique calls-to-action targeted at the mobile user (e.g., click-to-call).

Think local
Marketers with a local presence or with branch offices will especially benefit from deploying landing pages with specific presentations and offers for this locally minded audience. According to Google, up to 50 percent of queries from mobile devices have local intent. This number could be higher because a sizeable percentage of these queries likely occur through apps (such as Maps).

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