5 Mobile Advertising Strategies For Increased Conversions

February 6, 2018

Mobile advertising is one of the biggest opportunities to reach your target audience. As more and more consumers access the internet and shop on mobile devices, it makes good sense to reach out to them on these platforms. Mobile advertising, though, is quite competitive and you want to spend your marketing dollars wisely. Here are 5 mobile advertising strategies to increase your conversions and sales from ad campaigns.

1. Make Sure Your Landing Page is Mobile-Optimized

It’s essential to remember that viewers’ experiences on a mobile device are very different from a laptop or desktop. You need to consider this not only when creating your ads but when building landing pages. It won’t help if you get lots of clicks on your ads only to lose viewers once they find that your landing page isn’t mobile-friendly. This includes:

• Avoid features such as flash and frames that aren’t compatible with mobile devices.
• Make sure your page loads quickly. Page loading time can have a huge effect on your results and mobile users, in particular, are likely to leave if your page doesn’t load promptly.
• Keep the page brief. People on mobile phones don’t want to read multiple pages of copy.
• People should be able to see images and read the text without zooming.

2. Make It Easy For People to Call You

Most of your mobile customers will be using smartphones. The most natural way to reach out from such a device is to make a phone call rather than visit a website. While many visitors will click on your website link, you also want to make it as easy as possible for them to call you. In fact, depending on your business, you may want to use call-only ads.
At the very least, you should have a click-to-call option so people have the option of calling you. Click-to-call is a useful feature because it’s often easier to convert a customer once you have him or her on the phone. You (or your customer service rep) can answer questions and address objections. Of course, this strategy also means you need robust customer service. Smaller businesses might need to hire additional help or use a call-answering service as you can’t rely on customers to voicemail messages if no one answers the phone. To track the effectiveness of your calls, use a Google Forwarding Number that works with AdWords.

3. Take Advantage of Ad Extensions

Google offers a variety of tools you can use to optimize your mobile advertising strategies. One way is using Google’s Ad Extensions. We’ve already discussed the benefits of click-to-call. Google provides a call extension making it possible for customers to call you from the search results. Here are a few other ad extensions that are useful for mobile ads.

• Text – Click-to-text extensions are one of the best tools for mobile campaigns as they encourage people to send you text messages. Many mobile users are more comfortable texting than phoning so this is a way to reach a wider audience.
• Callouts – Highlight key information that you want to highlight, such as products, store hours, physical address, or features such as same-day delivery.
• Reviews – Review extensions make ratings and reviews visible to people browsing search results. This is a powerful way to increase click-throughs. To get the most of this, encourage your customers to leave reviews.
• Sitelinks – Send customers to specific pages on your website. This is useful for highly targeted ads. For example, if you’re selling clothing you can tailor ads to specific items such as coats, shoes, dresses, etc. and use sitelinks extensions to send people to the appropriate page.

4. Manage Your Budget and Test Everything

Managing your budget is a key factor in any type of mobile advertising campaign. When mobile ads first appeared, advertisers embraced them because they were cheaper than other types of ads and provided great value. This is still true to a great extent, but mobile advertising has gotten more expensive lately and, as mobile gets bigger, this trend is likely to continue. According to WordStream, mobile CPC has increased 150% since 2012.

When mobile advertising was new and less competitive, you didn’t have to worry as much about how much you were bidding. Now, however, with mobile advertising is getting more costly, controlling your budget is a priority. As with other PPC ad campaigns, do plenty of keyword research and make sure you’re choosing the right keywords but not bidding too much for them. Don’t forget negative keywords to exclude customers who don’t fit your criteria.

In AdWords, you can monitor and adjust your spending with Mobile Bid Adjustments. Identifying the right amount to bid on your keywords requires constant testing. It’s essential to A/B test as many elements of your ads as possible, such as images, headlines, CTA buttons, colors, and layouts. Also, test to identify the best time of day and days of the week to display your ads. All these factors help you manage your budget and improve your ROI.

5. Use Geotargeting

Location-based marketing is a powerful mobile advertising strategy that can make your mobile ads more targeted and effective. While not appropriate for every business, aiming your ads at a geotargeted audience can improve your results. You can specify locations within AdWords using criteria such as zip codes, regions, cities, or tourist attractions. This can be extremely useful for certain products or industries. For example, if you’re selling a travel-related service, you could target airports. You can target beach areas to sell swimwear, snorkeling and diving equipment. Other possibilities include colleges and busy downtown areas. You can also exclude certain places within a region. Don’t forget that you can target languages as well as locations.

Geotargeting can be especially effective for mobile campaigns because it reaches people where they are in real time. For example, people in a shopping area such as a mall are likely to search online to see if they can find a better price. By targeting such shoppers, you can show them what they’re looking for at the most opportune time.

Mobile Advertising Strategies for the Future

There’s little doubt that mobile devices are the future of online marketing. By 2019, mobile advertising is expected to account for 72% of all ad spending in the U.S. This means that the field will get more competitive, putting more pressure on businesses to manage their budgets and target their ad campaigns with precision. The above five tips will help you get the most out of your mobile advertising budget.

By: Frank DePino

Frank DePino is Principal and Founder of Mediaboom. Since 2002, Frank has led Mediaboom’s award-winning staff of creative and technical professionals building the most effective marketing and advertising solutions for its clients.