Did you know that search is one of the top mobile activities? In today’s Deep Dive Week article, Integrated Media Supervisor Nick Pirlis gives you an introduction to mobile paid search and how you can use it to leverage this important channel for your brand or business.  If you’ve found this useful we invite you to share it with your friends or join the conversation on twitter via the hashtag #DeepDiveWeek. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

We’ve all seen the statistics from rising adoption rates of smart phones to the increases in mobile advertising.  Some of this information was covered in one of our last deep dive week articles titled “Mobile Search – Are We There Yet?” By now it might be time to assess your current paid search efforts and make some changes. Find out how to make your PPC campaigns mobile-friendly.

Is mobile paid search for you?

• If your campaigns are already enabled for ‘iPhones and other mobile devices’ take a look at the percentage of traffic coming through mobile.  If 10-20% of traffic is coming from mobile devices you may want to consider segmenting your paid search campaign.
  • To figure this out, go to the campaigns tab in AdWords and select ‘Segment’ then by ‘Device’.
• Generally mobile paid search works well with lower price point/low-consideration products.  Consumers are typically looking for information quickly.  Advertising for immediate actions like downloading apps or music, or finding places to eat/drink works well.
• You may want to consider the cost vs. benefits if your products are of a higher consideration or longer conversion process.  That’s not to say that businesses with these product sets don’t do mobile paid search, you just need to have the proper goals built in.
  • Whether the goal is an actual monetary transaction or folded into your current local search strategy, mobile PPC can be an integral and successful component in your overall paid search program.

Setup and Structure

• The first step is to create mobile-only campaigns.  Take the desired campaigns (or all of them) and make copies denoting these with ‘-mobile’.  Then under campaign settings, change the device targeting to ‘iPhone and other mobile devices.’
• Now uncheck this setting in your non-mobile versions of the campaigns.
  • This will split out campaigns for non-mobile and mobile giving you more options to customize ads as well as tailor landing page experiences.

Opportunities

Now that your campaigns are setup to address mobile specifically, there are a few options to provide searchers with a better user experience. Some of these opportunities synch up directly with items discussed in an article during our last deep dive week around local search.

Click to Call (left)

• Phone extensions allow you to place your business phone number as a clickable link within text ads.  This is useful when driving consumers to a particular retail store or place of business.

Local Search and Extensions

• Since a high volume of mobile search queries are location focused, use extensions to easily show the location of your place of business.
• Link to your Google Places page or a Google Maps listing to give searchers easy access to the most pertinent business information.

Mobile Site

• Similar to the rationale for segmenting campaigns for mobile specifically, if you’ve noticed a fair amount of site traffic coming from mobile devices, it’s time to make some adjustments for a mobile friendly experience.
• Simplify the site, cut down on copy and image clutter.  Focus on the most important information a customer might be interested in.
• Avoid heavy imagery for faster load times.  This goes for flash as well, especially considering flash and iPhones don’t play well together.
• Provide clear navigation to things like lead forms and store locators.
• If your site has an elaborate lead form, try shortening or cutting down on form requirements to promote completion on mobile devices.

Considerations

• Take a look at Google Analytics data to get a good sense of your mobile browsing audience.  Use this information when segmenting/targeting your mobile campaigns in AdWords.  Google gives you the option to segment by devices and carriers.
  • Don’t forget that a user’s mobile experience may differ if they are using a mobile phone or a tablet.
• Spend some time optimizing keyword selections.
  • Desktop search queries vs. mobile queries vary.  Mobile queries also skew high for local results.  Along with your own research and organic keyword traffic check out Google’s mobile selection tool for assistance
• If you have multiple locations, consider segmenting campaigns to mobile and leveraging geo-targeting.  This will provide a super customized experience for mobile searchers.
• Ad positioning.  If you’ve just let campaigns run on mobile devices without segmentation or optimizing ad positioning, you might be losing out.  Bid up and test performance lift.  Smaller screen sizes make search real estate even more valuable.  You may find that bidding to the top one or two spots can provide considerable performance improvements.
• For local businesses think about how local searchers might be finding your place(s) of business as well as your competition
  • Take into account the number of competitor listings a search might come across, and how you can differentiate ad copy and the user’s mobile search experience to maximize conversion.
  • For example a local pizza shop could display a special, or a bar could show their happy hour specials.  Then direct them to your mobile friendly site, places page, or Google maps listing to get directions!

Conclusion

Regardless if we’re actually in the ‘Year of Mobile’ or not, it’s clear that smartphone adoption is on the rise as well as mobile search usage.   With a small amount of effort you can easily segment and tailor your target audience’s mobile experience.

Mobile paid search can certainly prove positive for specific KPIs and objectives, but be sure to test and optimize accordingly. Make it easy for searchers to get the information they desire, and test messaging as well as bidding strategies.