Happy New Year! I hope you had a great holiday.
One of the questions that always seems to come up after Christmas is “What did you get for Christmas?”
It seems a lot of people will answer that question with “a new cell phone” or “a new tablet” this year.
While surfing the net after Christmas, I read the number of mobile devices activated in December jumped from an average of 4 million to 17.4 million on Christmas Day. That’s a 332 percent increase and, according to analytics firm Flurry, more than double the amount activated Christmas Day 2011. Earlier this year, Pew Internet and America Life Project and Nielsen reported that, based on consumer polling, 50% of the population now owns smartphones. Which means more and more people are using smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices to search for the product or service your business sells.
Because of this trend, it is increasingly a smart business strategy to target these mobile device users. Today, I’d like to share with you what you need to do to make more sales and beat your competition:
Create a mobile compatible website.
According to Google up to 50% of mobile searches are for local information for things such as restaurants, retail, physicians, auto, hair salons, etc. If you aren’t setup to handle that traffic with a mobile website, then you are losing 50% of that traffic to your competition who is. That means if you are open for business seven days a week, not having a mobile site is like not doing business for three and a half days a week!
Set up a separate PPC ad campaign targeting smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices.
When consumers search for products and services on their mobile devices, they aren’t usually doing it for research. They are at the end of the buying cycle and many times ready to purchase. (Doing research is something typically done on laptops and PC’s so they can save it for when they are ready.)
Setting up a mobile PPC campaign helps you reach customers or clients who are ready to do business.
Another thing to consider is that people search differently on their mobile devices. Typically fewer words or characters are used and keywords tend to be more generic when searching on mobile devices than when they are searching on laptops or PC’s. Regular PPC campaigns aren’t designed for the mobile user because at the time, there wasn’t a need for it. Now there is.
Combine “click to call” technology with your mobile PPC ads.
“Click to call” technology is technology that allows people who click on your mobile PPC ad to be instantly connected to you by allowing their phone or other device to call your business. This makes it easier for people to do business with you.
Combine this with the fact that a high percentage of searches are local and most mobile search is done by people ready to purchase, and you could potentially see a significant sales boost for your products and services.
Plus, because mobile PPC campaigns are not yet a standard practice, it is likely your competitors won’t even know such a campaign exists. That means you will face less competition from other advertisers and often end up getting more for your money–stretching your ad budget dollars further.
So if you are looking for a way to boost your bottom line this year, consider creating a mobile website and mobile PPC campaign to your plan. You’ll face less competition, make your ad dollars stretch further and target an audience who is most likely ready to buy immediately.
John Pfeiffer