The Importance of a Mobile Search Strategy

Increasingly, mobile’s importance in our lives is becoming more evident. Our mobile phones can essentially be considered a permanent fixture of our daily routines. Can you leave home without it?

In conjunction with Nielsen, Google’s new report, “Mobile Search Moments: Understanding How Mobile Drives Conversions”, attempts to decipher what triggers people to do mobile searches and when, what actions follow as a result and how marketers can utilize this intelligence. This report explains the measurable connections between mobile searches and their correlated online and offline conversions.

What are the main drivers for mobile searches? Speed and convenience, with 77% of mobile searches performed in a location (work or home) likely to have a PC available to them.

Here are a few additional highlights from the report:

• 45% of all mobile searches are goal-oriented and conducted to help make a decision

• 81% of conversions (store visit, call or purchase) triggered by mobile search occur within 5 hours

• 55% of conversions from mobile searches happen within one hour

As a key factor in the decision-making process, a mobile search strategy is an essential piece of your overall marketing strategy.

What mobile search opportunities do you see for your business? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

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Image credit: Johan Larsson

Understanding a Customer’s Mobile Experience

Many of us continue to hear about the necessity of having our business accessible via mobile. What does that mean exactly? Can we just duplicate what’s working on the web to mobile?

A mobile experience is vastly different from a web experience. Think about how many times you visit a website on the web to only be frustrated by the usability of the site. Imagine how that experience translates to mobile. Businesses must see the two experiences as polarizing forms of interaction.

With mobile, you must pay close attention to how a message will be consumed. For instance, will deals be delivered to a customer’s mobile device when they check into your store? Are they receiving your message at home or work?

To ensure a positive impact on a customer’s experience with your brand, embrace the various ways they will interact with your business. Be sure to craft your mobile marketing messages based on how they will consume them.

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7 Noteworthy Mobile Ads Insights & Stats

Recently, Mashable released an article of insights into the world of mobile based on a couple of valuable studies. Encapsulating statistics from an annual presentation on Internet trends by Venture Capitalist Mary Meeker and a study by leading mobile ad platform Opera, some statistics have been unveiled that require your attention.

Here are 7 insights & statistics I extracted from these sources:

1. The effective cost per thousand impressions (CPM) for desktop web ads is about $3.50, while the CPM for mobile ads is just $0.75; (Mary Meeker)
2. At $2.85, the iPhone has the highest average CPM for mobile ads of any smartphone, but still falls short of the CPM ($3.50) for web ads on a desktop. (Opera)
3. In comparison, print ads can command rates of as much as $100 CPM. (Opera)
4. iPads had a CPM of $3.96 (more than a dollar higher than the iPhone) but accounted for less than 7% of mobile traffic in the second quarter of 2012. (Opera)
5. It isn't recommended that advertisers take the same approach of using desktop web ads for mobile - tailor a specific strategy for your mobile campaigns. (Mashable)
6. It is worth the investment to build and test mobile specific landing pages for lead capture. (Mashable)
7. An alternative to using “cookies” for mobile, geofencing technology may be used to target ads based on GPS locations. (Mashable)

As mobile usage and adoption continues to grow, it is inevitable that mobile advertising costs will increase. Remember, the key is testing! Keep an eye on how the market is evolving and evolve with it. How do you plan to test mobile ads for your business?

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New Strategies for Your Mobile Playbook

As you may have already noticed, I place a lot of importance on having a mobile strategy for your business. Interacting with your customers via mobile in some form or fashion is inevitably going to be a part of your business’s future. Mobile is a critical component to the overall success of your marketing strategy.

Google has released an update to the prior Mobile Playbook that includes new strategies on mobile creativity and ROI. The two main areas of focus expanded upon examples of compelling mobile creative and measuring the real ROI of mobile and its associated impact on a business.

The Playbook also features case studies covering the 5 mobile conversion types. This consists of mobile web, from apps, phone calls, cross-device and in-store. Using the “mobile web” conversion type case study as an example, TicketNetwork’s mobile site was designed with two critical components at the forefront – speed and simplicity. Four months after launch, ticket sales from mobile grew by 184% due to their efforts to build a mobile site that made the purchasing process easy for the consumer.

You can find the updated Mobile Playbook here. What mobile conversion type have you experienced the most success with?

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The Top 5 Trends for Optimization to Increase ROI

Adobe recently released results of the 2012 Digital Marketing Optimization Survey in which they compiled global responses from over 1,700 digital marketers. The survey reports that digital marketers need to excel in four key areas to achieve success: social, mobile, personalization and the customer experience. The survey also uncovered areas of opportunity for improving conversion through optimization and, in turn, improving your ROI.

The five biggest trends for achieving optimum conversion are:

1.       Make optimization a strategic process – with just a few small adjustments, double-digits lifts in conversion can be achieved, resulting in deeper customer loyalties and a greater competitive advantage. 

2.       Utilize a data-driven approach to optimization – balance acquisition and optimization efforts to drive higher returns and include tactics like optimized site search, personalization, automated recommendations and testing.

3.       Implement a video marketing plan – video can educate, entertain and engage customers; 61% of survey respondents named video as one of the top rich media features to focus conversion efforts on this year.

4.       Optimize mobile channels – customer experiences that are device-appropriate will generate a higher ROI, especially for tablet users. Adobe’s survey found that consumers who access retail websites via tablets spend more than customers on other devices or computers and are 3 times more likely than smartphone visitors to make a purchase.

5.       Capitalize on social engagement - encourage social sharing within your social media networks and implement tools for moderating and measuring your social media channels.

You can download the survey results here. Strategic optimization can boost conversion rates through the entire sales funnel. Is there any room for improvement in your customers’ experience?

Structuring Your Business for Mobile Success

Google recently released The Mobile Playbook, The Busy Executive’s Guide to Winning with Mobile, By Jason Spero and Johanna Werther. While exploring the Playbook, a panel of leading mobile experts reviewed the following 5 necessary questions for mobile success:

1. How does mobile change our value proposition?
2. How does mobile impact our digital destinations?
3. Is your organization adapting to mobile?
4. How should our marketing adapt to mobile?
5. How can we connect with our tablet audience?

The Mobile Playbook ends with a helpful action items checklist and an additional resources list.

I recommend reviewing this ebook if you are looking to further your business’s mobile strategy. One of my favorite tips from the Playbook is the GoMoMeter. This Google website (How To Go Mo) allows you to test a website’s mobile appearance, learn the top ten mobile design practices, and the ability to generate a custom report with improvement recommendations along with a vendor list to help you get started.

Please share your comments and questions about mobile for business below.

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[Free Report] Smartphone Usage and Understanding Mobile Consumer Behavior

I am a firm believer that the question isn’t if your business should be in mobile but in what way.

As mobile technology continues to evolve, people around the world are growingly having their mobile device become an extension of them. Now is the time to start thinking about how to get started with mobile marketing for your business.

Yesterday, Jason Spero, Head of Global Mobile for Google, released a list of interesting predictions for mobile in 2012.

1. More than 1 billion people will use mobile devices as their primary internet access point
2. There will be 10 days where >50% of trending search terms will be on mobile
3. Mobile’s role in driving people into stores will be proven and it will blow us away
4. “Mobile driven spend” will emerge as a big category
5. Smartphones will prove exceptional at driving a new consumer behavior
6. Tablets will take their place as the 4th screen
7. New industry standards will make mobile display easy to run
8. 5 new, mobile first companies will reach the Angry Birds level of success
9. The ROI on mobile and tablet advertising will increase as a result of the unmatched relevance of proximity
10. The intersection of mobile and social will spark a dramatic new form of engaging consumers
11. 80% of the largest 2,000 websites globally will have an HTML5 site
12. One million small businesses globally will build a mobile website

One of his predictions that I would like to highlight is #12. A recommended first step in delving into the world of mobile is to build a mobile version of your website.

For more information about mobile usage and its related consumer behavior in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and Japan, download Google’s latest report “Our Mobile Planet: Global Smartphone Users”.

Image Credit: jetalone

Getting Started: 7 Mobile Marketing Resources

Are you interested in testing mobile marketing for your business but need a few resources to brush up on your knowledge or to get started altogether? While pursuing my own knowledge about mobile marketing, I thought, what a perfect opportunity to share these resources with you.

Google’s “The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users” study found a staggering 82% notice mobile ads and 74% make a purchase as a result of using their phone during the shopping process. By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide (Gartner). Statistics like these only lead me to believe there is a lot of opportunity in mobile marketing for business – and the time to move on it is now.

Mobile marketing resources (in no particular order):

• Google Mobile Ads
• Mobile Marketing Watch
• MMA Global
• MarketingProfs
• Mobile Marketer
• 60 Second Marketer
• Top Rank Blog

How do you see mobile affecting the marketing space in the future?

Image credit: Incase

InternetMarketingClub.org Presents Why The Small Screen Gets BIG Results!

There will soon be more mobile phones than there are people on the planet. If you are like most people, that phone in your pocket has dramatically changed your behavior and the way you think about and access your information, communications and entertainment. For the younger generations, the mobile phone truly is the center of their universe and the hub for their social interactions. What better place for advertisers and marketers to reach a captive and attentive audience?

In this discussion we will review:

• Why Mobile? Another device vs. a personal accessory…
• Mobile Advertising vs. Mobile Marketing
• If Content is King, is mobile content Master of the Universe?
• Is there really an App for that? How should marketers leverage the current “app” craze

Jeff Sass is the VP of Business Development for leading Mobile Entertainment site, Myxer. With more than 28 million users, Myxer delivers over 70 million mobile downloads per month and is a pioneer in ad-supported mobile content. A former entertainment and game industry exec, Jeff Sass has more than 10 years experience in Mobile and was co-founder and CEO of early mobile commerce player, BarPoint.com.

This webinar will take place on Wednesday, December 30, 2009 12:30pmEST – 1:30pmEST. To register please visit: Why The Small Screen Gets BIG Results!