Top Tips for Creating a Mobile PPC Campaign

Over 7.1 million people in the UK access the internet from their mobile phones, and the number of mobile internet users is set to surpass that of desktop users within the next five years. 

With this in mind, never has it been more important to make sure your site is optimised for mobile phones and other mobile devices such as IPads and related tablet devices. 

Not only should you make sure your web build and design is optimised for mobile devices, you should be taking advantage of mobile marketing options. 

It’s pointless having a mobile friendly site if your PPC doesn’t take this traffic into account.

Here we provide our top tips for creating a mobile PPC campaign. 

First of all, pick your search engine. Google is by far the most dominant search engine across all devices; so you should start here.

Keep keywords simple and relevant

Unlike standard PPC campaigns, mobile users will tend to use short, generic terms to find what they are looking for. Your keywords and key phrases should therefore reflect this and be kept simple to reach your audience most effectively.

Choose keywords that relate closely to one another and to the ads in the ad group. Remember to limit how often your ads appear on content network pages with irrelevant themes through negative keywords.

Separate your keywords into themed ad groups of 5 to 20 keywords that relate closely to one another and to the ads in that ad group.

Use direct and compelling ad text

Mobile ads are shorter than standard ad text and are formatted to fit the small screens of a feature phone with a character limit of 18, as well as one description line instead of two.

Using direct and compelling ad text will maximize qualified clicks received. Include strong call-to-actions (“Call now” / “Click to register”) to set user expectation and define your intended goals and conversions.

Highlight special offers and features including product prices that will help you stand out from competitors.

Use promotional language and mobile-specific copy to appeal directly to the mobile user, for example, “book today from your android”.

Create new campaigns for your mobile ads

A new campaign should be set up for any mobile ads as mobile-specific campaigns have seen a 12% increase in average click-through rates and a 29% increase in clicks over hybrid campaigns.

Keep smartphone and WAP campaigns separate as they will require different settings.

Set up extensions on your ads

Give your customers the right information about your business, leading to a higher conversion rate.

Location extensions show your local business phone number, while phone extensions show your national number. 

Both extensions are available to customers using a smartphone with full browser capabilities.

Optimise your landing pages

Optimise your landing pages for mobile to contribute to your Quality Score and furthermore keyword positions.

Landing pages need to:

•         Be kept simple and concise.
•         Be easy to navigate with buttons that are easily clickable.
•         Avoid using flash.
•         Contain the most important content at the top.
•         Scroll down, not across.
•         Make conversions easy and obvious.
•         Minimize load time.
•         Have short URLs / page titles. 

Analyse keyword performance regularly

After your ad group has been allowed to run, you will start to gather valuable data that you can turn into action items.

You need to understand how your ads are doing in terms of:

•         ad performance
•         placement performance
•         ad group performance

Monitor what specific keywords and ad text is performing the best, and where. Such insights will be valuable in the adding or removing of priority keywords / negative keywords and key phrases.

Combine this information with your analytics data to make informed decisions about the success of your campaigns.

Test, improve & refine

Understanding what works is essential to identifying key target areas for your campaigns and showcases what matters to you as an advertiser.

Measuring these results against your KPIs (number of unique visitors from each advert, no. of pages browsed, length of time on site) will establish what can be improved, optimised, changed or even removed.

Test your initial campaign and highlight patterns into what variables deliver the highest conversions in terms of users, timings, advertising and landing pages.

Measuring ‘post-click behaviour’ will give insight into real goals such as form completion, click to play and ROI.

Advertising opportunities presented in the rise in smartphone ownership

Welcome to the world of the mobile.

The digital era is rapidly evolving and marketers should be at the forefront; jumping on the mobile bandwagon and falling in love with the prospects it presents.

Mobile usage is arguably the fastest growing digital marketing opportunity since social media, with 89% of the UK population now having or using a mobile phone. It is, however, the impressive growth of the smartphone that has really knocked socks off.

With YouGov predicting that 68% of the population will be upgrading to a smartphone in their next contract cycle, reaching out to existing and potential customers has never seemed so easy.

Or has it?

Even though mobile advertising has been described as something of a ‘Shangri-la’ for online ad networks, low marketing usage up-to-date suggests otherwise.

Consumers are mobile. But mobile is personal; with many users anti receiving such direct advertising.

So we ask (and answer!), what real advertising opportunities are presented to marketers by smartphones?

A good platform?

Smartphone allows more innovative and interactive ways to connect with consumers. But what happens when users don’t want to connect back?

With a recent survey by YouGov identifying 86% of users ignoring mobile advertising, the use of current advertising mechanics at present may not always strike the right chord with consumers.

A good example of this is in the somewhat outdated SMS advertising, with users receiving alerts when coming in a certain distance of a store. A recent Econsultancy survey found this too intrusive.

Given such exponential growth over such a short period of time, confidence is however improving and attitudes are changing.

Mobile is fast-paced, on the go, convenient and immediate. It’s like a conversation - talking at your customers will make them switch off as quickly as they have switched on.

The advertisers’ challenge is to therefore instantly highlight user benefit from responding to such targeted advertising.

Why this channel?

Mobiles are, well, mobile.

As a dream advertising platform for marketing goes, it doesn’t get much better.

Devices are carried with consumers everywhere, and are typically always on. Penetration of smartphones is also growing and set to overtake desktops in 2014/2015.

The best advertising opportunities that smartphones can present is through the ability to target.

From cruising round Tesco online, to tweeting about @katyperry, mobiles are used for different objectives and can be placed in a variety of ways, places and means.

Interaction with users can also be made in different ways including: SMS messaging, voice, codes, images and video.

In its simplest form, the channel of smartphone advertising is ideal, but it’s always the hardest channel to get right.

Ask yourself how mobile advertising differs from desktop – and what precisely should marketers be doing?

Make it responsive

Let us start at the very beginning (a very good place to start!)…as stupid as it sounds, make your mobile pages mobile-friendly.

Customer expectation for mobile sites is high.

Recent research by Gomez suggests 74% of users will abandon trying to connect to a site within 5 seconds. It is important to think your mobile user journey – limit scrolling, strip back navigation, optimise content and think about pageload time.

Search is different

Whilst Search Engine Optimisation for mobile has the same principles for web, online user behaviour is drastically different.

Mobile users are in a different mind-set to those using a desktop and click-through rate is much higher. Getting a site to the top of engine results and making your site super mobile-friendly could make a real difference.

Mobile searches are location-based and made up of shorter keywords / key phrases, so optimising your mobile content is a must for climbing SERPs.

Don’t forget PPC

Once a website is thoroughly optimised and mobile-friendly, it makes sense to open those virtual gates to the mobile public.

As users are more impatient, PPC advertising could be seen to receive the most clicks as the top ranking search positions are so important on a smaller screen.

Creating a mobile specific campaign, keeping keywords relevant and simple, and using direct and compelling ad text will all contribute to grabbing the attention of a smartphone user.

Email not snail mail

It’s no surprise that in a recent review by JupiterResearch, 18% of users were utilising mobile devices to sort email accounts. One of the first objectives of smartphone giants was to create a smooth transition for businesses, in and out of the office. The social boom has continued to increase email use dramatically, now being regularly used for both work and leisure.

Smartphone users will check regularly and respond quickly; meaning that email campaigns should work harder for mobile devices through personalised subject lines, simplicity and urgency.

It’s all about display

A variety of aggregators are available as platforms to manage mobile banner advertising and display marketing.

Admob, one the world’s largest mobile advertising networks, describes mobile devices as a critical media platform to enable every business on earth the opportunity to leverage mobile.

An aggregator will charge you to buy and place campaigns across a mobile network, and is an easy platform to help meet ROI objectives.

Having a clear strategy and defining your audience are essential before focusing on a compelling design and strong CTA. Unnecessary images and vague headlines will merge into the ‘ad noise’ and will fail to stand out for consumers.

According to research carried out by e-Dialog (2011), 27% of users would be happy to receive special offer messaging.  It is therefore arguable to be specific with your ad content and where your ads are shown.

The list goes on

Other advertising opportunities are available to leverage users of the mobile network, in order to increase brand awareness and generate sales.

An App is a good example of an opportunity that needs to be well thought through in terms of customer need and want. Apple is strict in its approval process, making sure advertisers have built an App that is genuinely fulfilling an objective.

QR codes have already proved successful as users must scan, and consequently ‘opt in’ to the campaign before being pulled through to the message / website etc. In the same way, Augmented Reality (AR) helps to merge the online and offline world by scanning ‘real life’.

The Adido Viewpoint

It’s clear that no advertiser is clear of the mobile world.

Even if you have no interest and are happy with a normal website, it is more than likely that consumers will at one point or another, access your website by smartphone.

They will be put off quickly and easily, and often for life.

Our advice: invest in responsive design.

Take baby steps in making sure your website is fully optimised and attractive in the smartphone world.

Then, and only then, can you begin to think about paid advertising and hitting the mobile ad network running.

With such a fast growth of smartphone users year on year and current low online advertising usage, mobile marketing should be carefully thought through in terms of its objectives and benefits.

Why your site needs to be mobile friendly

As you might know, we’ve recently written a White Paper on mobile marketing and why your site and marketing campaign needs to be optimised for the ever-growing amount of mobile users.

You can access this excellent document here.

Did you know that smartphone internet connections are predicted to exceed those by desktop computers by 2014? If you didn’t know that then you’re in very good company.

Mobile marketing is hot property and it has never been more important to make sure that your site and the marketing of your site is catered for mobile users as well as people who find you with a laptop, tablet device or PC.

A massive 32% of adult users connect to the internet through their mobile phones, most of these are under 34 and social networking is the most popular activity by smartphone users by far.

However, more and more people are using their mobile phones to order pizzas, buy clothes and even pay their bills.

This is why you need to be on the ball and make sure your site is mobile friendly.

Adapting your site to mobile users

The most important thing to have in order for your site to remain current and relevant as technologies change and diversify is a fully responsive website.

Yes you need your site to look great on a desktop PC of laptop, but as we’ve said above, more and more people are accessing YOUR site using mobile phones and tablet devices.

So what is a fully responsive website?

Stanford University defines a responsive website as:

“A website that responds to the device that accesses it and delivers the appropriate output for it uses responsive design. Rather than designing multiple sites for different-sized devices, this approach designs one site but specifies how it should appear on varied devices”

A responsive site adjusts to the device it has been accessed from – see below:

The image above shows the differing appearance of the Postgoldforcash.com site when accessed from desktop and mobile devices.

Key points to consider when building a responsive website

Don’t worry if your site looks different

The screen size is so different that getting all of the main information onto a mobile site may involve a dramatic redesign of the page.

As long as it is on brand, it’s fine if your site looks very different to its desktop orientated counterpart. In fact, this is normal.

Consider touchscreen users

Most people find it annoying when buttons are too close to each other or two small to use properly. With touchscreen users (the vast majority of the smartphone using population), it’s important that the buttons aren’t too close together for large fingers!

Speed is even more important

Mobile users are even more impatient than desktop users and the vast majority (around 74%) will abandon a site within five seconds if it hasn’t loaded.

A surefire way to increase the speed of your site is to ensure it isn’t loaded with lots of graphics as these will slow down loading times.

If your site is not optimised for mobile phones

Find out more about mobile marketing – including how to optimise your advertising for mobile devices – by accessing our excellent white paper now.

Alternatively, please call one of our talented team on 0845 260 2343 to see how we may be able to help you.

Adido get their wellies on to take part in ‘Those Who Plant Trees Plant Hope’

In the spirit of ‘Doing Better’ and looking after the beautiful Dorset countryside surrounding our offices, Adido recently took part in Rock Recruitment’s 2012 Tree Planting Event.

The annual event is in association with The Bournemouth Echo and East Dorset District Council and was held at Penningtons Copse in West Moors.

Jo, our Digital Media Account Manager, headed down to the woods armed with a pair of Wellington Boots and got stuck in with the day’s activities.

Tree planting was first on the agenda. This involved planting 3 5-6ft high whip trees. After this came the Rhododendrons clearing.

Attendees were taught about the management of local forest habitats by Education Rangers from East Dorset District Council and given information about the trees that grow in our local forests.



Once the trees were planted, Jo and the other participants were taught how to make a natural willow birdfeeder to take back to their offices.

To complete the morning, lunch was served in the woodland clearing; allowing the participants to relax and chat to representatives of other local businesses.



It was a great event all round and we look forward to seeing the article in April’s Dorset Business Magazine, which will provide more coverage on this event.

Social Media – Quantity Vs. Quality

The social media landscape is exciting, fascinating and incredibly fast moving. Never before has it been so easy for companies to touch base and keep their finger on the collective pulse of their existing and potential customers.

With research by the Chartered Institute of Marketing stating that 34% of businesses do not believe social media marketing has much of a positive effect on their businesses, it’s time to look at social media marketing and ask ourselves if it is really that essential that businesses are on every social network out there or whether they would be better off improving the quality of the connections they already have.

So we ask (and attempt to provide an answer to) this two part question:

1.  Is it better to have a presence on all of the popular social networks or to establish your brand on one or two of the most popular sites like Twitter or Facebook? 
2.  Does the quality vs. quantity debate also apply to the amount of connections/friends/fans or followers you have on these social networking sites.

The argument for quality over quantity

Time 

For a start, the great thing about social media is that it gives companies a chance to develop genuine connections with their customers. 

If you are managing your presence on ten different sites and have thousands of connections on each, how are you ever going to keep in touch with them all? 

Companies would need to employ whole teams of people just to manage this. 

Conversion of connections into sales

As Jamie Fitzgerald of Fitzgerald Analytics says to Socialmediatoday.com, your bank manager isn’t going to give you a loan based on how many Twitter followers you have. As Jamie quite rightly says:

"Ironically but inevitably, the key measure of your social media success is offline: how many new customers did you gain? How much new profit did you drive as a result of your online presence?"

"If your business model depends on authentic relationships, on credibility, on influencing the offline world - that does not scale in a linear fashion. For most professionals, and even many corporations, quantity is over-rated."

If you’re not converting your Twitter followers into cold hard business, then why waste time and money getting thousands of followers?

Social media noise

Lief Larson from Business2community.com talks about how being on every social networking site blogging, Facebooking and tweeting away can simply create the effect of noise. 

Everyone’s doing it. 

He asks: how are businesses differentiating themselves from their competition?

He has a point here. Customers want to feel talked to, not talked AT. Mass noise doesn’t allow for dialogue. 

The beauty of using social media to connect with your customers is the fact that you can engage in dialogue with them that makes businesses seem more human and less faceless. This makes your posts seem less like noise and more like content that your customers want and need to come into contact with.  

It’s an old cliché but people buy from people. 

Can’t buy me love

A great example of this is the experience Southwestecommerce.com had when they decided to pay a company to get them “fans” on a social networking site.

Graeme Olsen told Socialmediatoday.com that the company had decided to buy fans for their social page that targeted people in the UK and Australia:

“We paid extra for the “targeted fans” option [but] it became clear early on that all fans were from the USA.” 

Graeme also noted that fans were posting identical “weird/random” comments on both pages, leading them to suspect that “many of the fans (or at least the ones that comment) are either junk profiles, or perhaps paid to join our page and comment.”

A strike back for quantity over an overreliance on quality

Well-known LinkedIn personality Ron Bates seems to disagree. The search consultant was once lauded as the world’s number one LinkedIn user and says “there can be quality in quantity”.

According to Bates, having lots of connections across social media sites means that the odds of making a valuable connection are higher.  

Bates also makes the point that customers buy from companies they trust and that companies with a high social presence across social networks are more likely to be trusted. If your nearest competitor is on Twitter and you are not and a potential customer searches for your company on Twitter, how likely do you think you are to get the business? 

Social networking is such a core part of many people’s lives that companies without an established presence on these sites can be seen to have less credibility than a competitor who has popular and well maintained Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Pinterest, Google + and LinkedIn profiles.

Broadcasting messages to large groups of people on people on different sites might not generate revenue immediately via a sudden increase in sales but companies will increase their brand presence and could find themselves the first port of call for people when they need something the company offers due to having placed themselves in the immediate radar of their customers. 

For example, a photographer that has profiles on Facebook and Twitter, posts video montages of their work on YouTube, creates beautiful pinboards of their favourite images on Pinterest.com and invites customers to check in via Foursquare could pop up in the mind of one of their connections when they need such a service or know someone who does. 

An important point to make in the favour of quantity is that social networking sites all have different advantages. For example, Facebook allows users to post multimedia content of all kinds which is easy to share and comment on whereas YouTube allows engagement in a visual way. 

Depending on the market niche of the business, they will find different uses for the different sites. 

This in theory allows them to engage with their followers/fans/friends in subtly different ways. 

There is much to be said for casting the net as wide as possible

The Adido viewpoint

We think that while both quality and quantity have their benefits – quantity because it gives the high breadth of web presence which we have seen can engineer feelings of trust in customers and quality because it allows businesses to connect properly with their audience, finding out their wants, needs and desires; we can’t help but feel that taking the best bits of both is the answer.

While breadth is great, depth is more important. It’s far better to be on three social networking sites and post regularly, engaging with fans, friends and followers as human beings than to tick the boxes and be on everything knowing that no one will never be able to devote a tremendous amount of time to any. 

The key is to avoid the “one size fits all” perspective and tailor the social networking to both:

• The aims and needs of the business
• The aims and needs of their customers
• What networks target customers are on
• What competitors are doing
• How much time is available for social media marketing

With regards to whether it is better to have lots of friends or a select few – we think that Ron Bates has a point when he says that having presence online tells customers you are more trustworthy. It is also clear that if you have twenty friends on Facebook, you’re theoretically going to reach less people when you update your status than when you have two thousand.

He also has a valid point when he says that the more sites a business is on and the more friends they have, the greater the odds are of finding valuable connections and converting them into sales. 

Better social media filtering

However, we’ll carry on with the Facebook example by saying that with news feeds being more and more geared towards what people do the most on Facebook, your chance of reaching two thousand people with one status is less than it would have been two years ago. 

Also, why cast your net too wide and wait for your customers to come to you? Targeting a smaller but more relevant core market via your social networks makes it easier to go to them, to post content you know they will love because you will have researched their potential habits and tastes – you get the point.

Yes, a lot of fan and group pages send out notifications when posts are updated, but users can hide these for evermore with one click of their mouse. The days of spamming are over!

Nowadays, the only way to be sure you reach thousands of people on Facebook is to pay for their (admittedly effective) advertising. 

The argument veers back towards quality. News feeds on Facebook, like Google searches, are based on presenting the data users most want to see when they log in. This is ascertained by an algorithm that looks at the people the user interacts with the most on Facebook and the pages they comment on. 

It therefore makes perfect logical sense to make friends with the core market on a social network like Facebook and interact with them regularly, posting content they are likely to want to share and comment on. This will mean the business/profile page is more likely to appear in newsfeeds and make an impact.

Give us your views on social media!

What do you think? We love feedback and comments so feel free to leave yours under this post. What do you think is more important about social media? The quantity of friends and networking sites you're on (breadth) or the quality of the connections you make and the relationships you maintain (depth)? 

Or do you think the ideal situation is a mix of the best bits of both?

Adido is a cutting edge digital marketing and web design bournemouth agency that is highly skilled in all aspects of digital marketing and research. We work hard to always do digital better than last year, last month and yesterday which is why we're thought leaders in our field.

Request your free SEO report now.

 

Google Search Plus Your World

One of Google’s recent innovations is the introduction of ‘Search Plus Your World’ to their own social media channel Google+; when you type something into Google and have a Google+ account, you not only get search results from Google's algorithm but also from content that has been shared with you privately.

Although there was outrage by a few industry experts (for example Twitter citing it as a bad day for the internet) it does seem to make sense. In a study undertaken by Nielsen it was stated that 42% of people trust search engine results, while a huge 90% trust recommendations from people they know.



The Implications for SEO

The introduction of Search Plus Your World shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to search engine marketers and has been welcomed by many who are already incorporating social media into their SEO strategies.

Since Facebook and Twitter started their online domination many SEO companies wondered when not if, the huge amount of likes, shares and re-tweets would influence the Google search results.

Google suggested that it had started to take into account social signals in the results it served up, but it was never going to be a partnership of open information sharing between staunch rivals Facebook and Google.

So in June last year Google introduced the beta version of its own social network Google+, +1 buttons started to appear next to organic search results and then they started to influence results. This cemented the use of social signals in influencing search results.

However the introduction of Google+ and +1’s didn’t cause many ripples in the SEO world, especially as the official branded company pages only became available in November 2011.
Many saw it as a desperate attempt to keep up with the increasingly dominant Facebook and the underdog Twitter. The introduction of Search Plus Your World in January 2012 gave search engine marketers an insight into what Google is planning for the future – personalised search results dependant on the content online that your connections like and share.

What this means is that gaining good rankings on personalised searches will depend on having fresh, interesting and shareable content rather than depending on links and domain authority.
And don’t think that personalised results are isolated; Google has hinted that personalised results will influence the public algorithm and therefore general results.



What does this mean for your search engine strategy

What we have to remember is that Search Plus Your World is still in its infancy and is only relevant for a small minority of people who are actively using Google+ enough for results to show.

With many people dismissing it as just a way for Google to give life to its own version of a social network, it is however still a sign of things to come as social signals and peer recommendations become ever more important in the search engine results that are served. And although Google+ is used by a fairly niche audience at the moment it has huge potential for growth, as this chart shows comparing it’s growth to Facebook and Twitter:



It has also given clout to Google+, with many people now seeing it as a more sophisticated version of Facebook that integrates all your online experiences.

The next step for Google is to ensure it filters out spam results and ensures privacy issues don’t tarnish what it is trying to achieve. And In order to live by their mantra to serve up the most relevant results to searchers they also need to incorporate other social network’s results as it did in it’s now legendary Real Time Search results (pre-Twitter and Google breakup).



The Adido viewpoint

We feel that Google Search Plus Your World is a really exciting development and is a great insight into Google’s vision of the future of search.

We are strong advocates of brands creating engaging, shareable content and already work with many brands to create meaningful relationships with their customers through social media.
With social media, SEO and PR becoming increasingly intertwined we are looking forward to working on some really strong integrated strategies for our clients. We do a lot of SEO work and are sick of seeing websites sneaking into good search engine positions because of their spammy backlinks and outdated SEO practices.

There is always going to be an element of gaming Google but we feel that Search Plus Your World is going to force brands to pull their socks up and work hard to gain those good rankings through genuine customer service and engagement.

What do you think? Have you had any experience of Search Plus Your World yet? Are you or your brand on Google+? We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

Why your business needs a responsive website

Responsive web design is a solution that deals with the ever changing technology hardware that consumers are using to access the internet.

It has become a necessary aspect of the design and build of websites in 2012 because it is vital to ensure your website is as usable on every browser size and every mobile device on the marketplace.

It has been forecast that by the end of 2015, more users will connect via mobile devices to the internet than PC’s which just shows the speed at which this change is moving.

Smartphone sales have already surpassed PC sales, which gives us a clear indication with regards to where the market is going. 

Changing the web

In short, a responsive website is a web build that adjusts itself according to the screen resolution of the device you are accessing it from.

Seems simple, but it has in actual fact been a difficult thing to implement. 

Let’s show you how it works. One excellent site that has implemented responsive web design is http://foodsense.is/

When looking at it, note how it automatically adjusts the content when you resize your browser.

This technology is exactly what is needed in the current digital climate and is the future of web design.

Joel Draper, technical web design expert at Adido says:

“A responsive website is the way forward and will benefit our many clients considerably. Having a site that is optimised to show the most important content, no matter if is accessed from a mobile phone, iPad or PC, is vital and means that potential customers on the move can find the information they need quickly and easily". 

"I think that by the end of 2012, responsive websites will be standard because of the increasing popularity of mobile devices”. 

Other aspects of responsive websites

As well as making your site more friendly to many types of devices, your content - arguably the most important thing on your site – is also adjusted with the general layout of the page so that it reads well no matter what the size of your browser is. 

This content - as stated on Trentwalton.com now fits “its container”.

We can’t help but add a water metaphor here when we say that web content now has the potential to be like a fluidic substance. The particle structure of water enables it to adapt to fit its container and content on responsive web sites is designed to do this in a similar way.

Like water, we suspect responsive web design may not make all content fit its container and there are still issues relating to HTML/CSS compatibility with browsers. 

However, with these problems ironed out, we can see that  - with the technology refined – responsive web design can really help your business by making your content readable and engaging, no matter where it is accessed from. 

Find out more about responsive web design and what we can offer your business by going to http://www.adido-digital.co.uk/services/creative/fully-responsive-web-design.aspx