Welcome back to AIMCLEAR‘s coverage of #SESCHI! Day 3 is already roaring by with great speakers and presentations, and we’re ready for more! Diving into Smart Mobile Marketing this morning, moderator Angie Schottmuller, Founder of Interactive Artisan, got the conversation going.
This session covered really innovative strategies for mobile marketing that effectively convert mobile traffic using mobile SEO, PPC and apps. Discussing everything from how to best develop, launch and track an integrated mobile marketing strategy, speakers Helene Rosenblum, VP of Media for Leapfrog Online, and Michael Martin, Senior SEO Strategist for Covario, led us eager attendees folk through a maze of mobile marketing tips. Keep on reading for the meat and potatoes of this session!
Helene took the podium first to discuss how to keep PPC in the mobile space simple yet effective. She asked the crowd, “How do you launch a mobile PPC campaign?” And once you’ve launched it, what do you do to get the most out of it? Statistics are being released left and right from a variety of sources that all say the same thing: NOW is the time to get into mobile marketing. While most stats show that adoption of mobile is at about 50% right now, Helene has found the number to be actually closer to 60%.
People are searching, alright…25% of smart phone users say they use their smart phone as their primary method for searching. Gone is the desktop to these phone-loving types. Hello, touch-screen!
Stressing urgency, Helene said that the number of smart phone searches is almost equal to that of desktop searches—people are searching and shopping across a broad range of categories and  they are completing orders online. The industry possibilities are endless: sales are being completed in everything from home services to cable to the automobile world. The phone is becoming the action of choice. If you’re not on mobile effectively, you may be losing sales to your competitors.
How to be Effective
In order to make a mobile site produce the highest results and ROI, you need to understand why your target consumer is looking for you in mobile. How does their behavior differ from their desktop usage? When you’re on your phone, you’re looking for a location or the latest coupon. The desktop is for searching for reviews and researching, etc. Mobile is more dire and the sale is more imminent.
Helene has a few ideas for maximized effectiveness:
- Build dedicated mobile campaigns vs. just checking the box. A few things to keep in mind are quality score, optimization, and tracking. If you’re considering a tablet, separate campaigns also needed.
- Create mobile landing pages. Google added new ad quality factors which include mobile site optimization. They also added a new tool – Google sites. A mighty 50% of our initial actions are clicks and then comes the call. This is why you need a good mobile landing page.
- Develop a call tracking strategy. Track the keywords that are driving activity. Who is converting? Who is calling? This can provide you with relevant info such as call volume by group as well as call duration, which tells you the quality of the calls you’re receiving.
Okay, I know WHAT to do. But HOW do I do it?
Helene recommends to…
- Build a tight keyword list. Capture the intent in the mobile space, create a geo- specific value, and consider the negatives. What’s not working and how can you fix it?
- Focus on CTR=QSR. Use both click-to-call and a landing page. Be sure you’re utilizing sitelinks, and lastly but certainly not least, launch aggressively. Your competitors are out there. If you’re not in the second ad spot, you’re not going to get a good quality score and you’re not going to see what’s out there, you need to find the opportunities!
- Capture consumer intent that drives your objectives and  discourage behaviors that do not. What are you trying to achieve? Sales? Increased traffic? Better customer care? Showcase new customer deals? If you’re pushing a new deal, make sure your ads talk about them—make sure they know that’s what this ad is about or your costs can and will go through the roof. Do you want sales or traffic? Are you trying to drive a specific action? You need to have a clear objective first before you can design.
As you’re building your mobile campaign, its VITAL that you continue to test. You need to prioritize calls versus landing pages. Which is more worth your while? Location based campaigns are not as effective in mobile as in desktop. Helene suggests building a full mobile buy-flow. How does it fit into your mix? The more effective you are at this, the more consumers are willing to complete a mobile buy-flow online.
Another tip is to develop a call handling strategy. You are going to drive a lot of calls. Do you have an IVR in the front of your campaign? You want users to feel good about the brand, but you can’t handle all those calls without driving up your costs. If you have a customer care center that will be surprised by the number of calls you’re driving to them, you need to manage that within your organization first. Though mobile campaigns can be time-consuming, its so easy to get a basic campaign in the market – do not wait, get to it now if you haven’t already!
Michael Martin took the stage next to discuss the organic side of search. He asks:
Is it really happening?
As far as browsing behavior goes, search is the most frequent. Search engines are being used. Google approached mobile search with Android and is pushing that forward by making search very easy:
- Mobile search is growing faster than desktop search did in the 90’s.
- Androids are over 50% of all smart phones purchased.
- Google is dominant in desktop search with over 50%, but its over 90% on smart phones. Those are quite the percentages.
- In overall search, mobile is 15% of all searches, but its expected to be 25% by next year.
Bottom line: we need to think about catering to the mobile users. Mobile users are all about immediacy and location. Desktop users are checking recipes and reading news. Mobile is all about now—what can I get quickly and nearby?
But how do I get the money?
The money is there. Over 53% of mobile searches lead to click-to-calls or to a user coming into your shop. You need to track where people are coming from. How do search engines perceive mobile devices? Google delineates mobile search into 3 sectors:
- Features phones
- Smart phones
- Tablets
Search engines differentiate feature phones as having a non-web kit browser. Any BlackBerry device before OS6 is considered a feature phone.
Among mobile searches, there are definite differentiations:
- Tablets use user agent detection, mobile activist/tablet CSS rendering and can be touch friendly.
- Smart phones use click touch to call, improved location data, and further page load reduction. Smart phone and tablet rendering should be on the same URL as your desktop.
- Feature phones are 50% of all users in US, and you need to consider mobile doctype, mobile XML sitemaps, and be scroll friendly.
If there is traffic and people are buying, how do we audit? A few tools Michael suggests include:
- Firefox user agent switcher extension
- Google is really pushing people to go mobile. Gomo is a simple site that gives you a simple assessment of your mobile.
- Mobilize gives us visual rendering to see exactly what it looks like on a certain device as if it were on a particular screen.
- Mobiready is for feature phones, it goes into the details of what you should do for mobile phones
- Ipadpeek also lets you see it real life on a tablet.
Michael’s top takeaways:
- Submit physical business locations to Google Places and Bing Business portals
- Feature phone pages should be coded with an XHTML or cHTML doctype
- Feature phone results should be user agent redirected to a mobile subdomain
- Smart phone and tablet pages generally should use the same URL as the desktop but via user agent detection. Trigger a mobile CSS and jquery to provide a properly formatted app like user experience.
Thanks to the speakers for plentiful tips on how to start or optimize your mobile campaigns! That about does it for now, but be sure to come on back for more coverage, and follow along with @ericasendros @meganlichty and @merrymorud. We’re in full tweet-and-blog mode here at #SESCHI.
