Mobile SEM: Are You Missing Out on Conversions?
Chris Mulvaney is the CEO of CMDS. I make things... I’m the creative entrepreneur with passion for (re)making brands and inventing solutions to problems no one knows exist.
Optimizing Mobile Marketing Campaigns
Mobile ad strategies are critical to the success of your marketing plan. Without a specific, detailed strategy in place, you could be missing out on a huge opportunity. To no surprise, your business’ target audience (along with the rest of the world) is spending more time on their smart phones. According to Search Engine Watch, mobile internet usage increased by over 73% in the year 2014 and now exceeds PC internet usage for the first time in history. Effectively reaching, attracting and closing customers on their mobile devices requires a dedicated, mobile-specific marketing strategy. If you are engaging in one-size-fits-all digital marketing campaigns, it’s time to seriously consider optimizing your mobile marketing efforts to make the most impact with today’s customers.
Competitive Advantage
When you embrace the shift in behavior and meet your customers where they are spending their time (on their phones), you develop a competitive advantage above the rest. To start, you need to have a responsive website design that is optimized specifically for mobile users. Once this update has been made, you can start focusing on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) that keeps mobile search results top-of-mind.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing is marketing designed to increase a website’s visibility in Google and other search engines and includes SEO and PPC. Searching on a smartphone and searching on a desktop computer are wildly different experiences…which is why mobile SEM campaigns should also be different from desktop SEM campaigns.
Mobile SEO
Search Engine Optimization makes a website search engine friendly relating to unpaid, “organic” search results. A good goal is to have your business’ search results located on the first page. These organic search positions cannot be bought, you have to work for it. Users are searching for easy-to-navigate mobile websites with dynamic designs and clear, organized (logical) writing. A few other considerations must be prioritized to get the most out of your mobile SEO results:
• Page speed is a priority for mobile users (even more so than for desktop users) because of the wide variety of hardware and connectivity speeds that might experience.
• Mobile titles and meta descriptions have less character limits than the title tags and descriptions (55 and 115 respectively) for a desktop. Target keywords using specific, optimized language.
• Speaking of specific, since the majority of mobile searches are looking for local results, if you’re a local business, be sure to include these elements (company name, address including city and state and phone number) into your site’s metadata.
PPC Marketing
Pay-Per-Click Advertising includes top-of-the-page mobile ads on Google, Yahoo and Bing (you can usually find them on the top, right hand side of most desktop search pages and sometimes Facebook pages). When a viewer clicks on the ad, the account is charged (hence “pay-per-click”). The most popular PPC options is Google’s AdWords and is a very easy way to promote your company website specific to your mobile target audience by utilizing bid modifiers.
AdWords Mobile Bid Modifiers
Device Bid modifiers within Google AdWords are a power feature that cuts ineffective spending and boosts up high-performing keywords. You can specify this feature to act as a percentage of bid amount considering the device used, location and scheduling. Unless specified, your mobile keywords will have the same bids as your desktop terms. Based on the fact that mobile is exceeding PC internet usage; however, the mobile bid modifier should be adjusted.
When creating your ad, it’s critical to speak the mobile language (which is different than desktop ad language). Create a catchy call-to-action, let users know that your page is mobile-friendly then send them to your mobile landing page.
Is Your Business Making the Right Mobile Marketing Investments?
We realize that all of these mobile marketing investment options can be confusing, but that’s where our mobile marketing professionals come in. With optimized mobile websites, mobile-specific SEO and PPC strategies, your mobile advertising results will shoot right through the smartphone screen. Consider these tactics within your mobile marketing campaigns and start making some adjustments to see a jump in your results today. Give us a shout at 732-706-5555.