Mobile ad spending will grow to over $4 billion in the US by 2015¹ where 70% will be targeted to consumers using location awareness technologies within smart phones. The key to your success is to present your offers to the right audience, at the right time, with intelligent ads. The “call to action” should be easy to understand and bring the user to a mobile webpage designed for a conversion. A great user experience is key to a higher ROI.

Understanding how smart phone users search for information, digest mobile content and engage with advertising is the first step in selecting the mobile advertising vehicles most suited for your business. What works for a local restaurant will not necessarily work for a service oriented business like a travel agency.  Here are a few examples of mobile search based ads clients can take advantage of with eXplorations Marketing Inc.

Click To Call Location advertising is very good for restaurants, retailers and specialty shops where walk in traffic is very desirable.

In this example, Roy’s restaurant achieved an 800% return on investment by reaching “on the go” customers searching on mobile devices. By presenting click to call ads complete with a map, all the information required to take action was included in the advertisment. When the users conducted a search for dining options, the hyper-local technology within Google’s mobile search presents only relevant options with the geo targeted ad on the top of the search results.

Static Banners and Expandable Ads are great for building brand recognition across a mobile ad network of content websites and within application advertising. Google purchased AdMob in 2009 and has been integrating their ad serving technologies into their Adwords platform ever since. I personally am not a fan of PPC advertising in the desktop computer world but you cannot ignore the success PPC has in the mobile space.

Here are some of the options available to brand advertisers that leverage the mobile ad network.

 

Mobile users seek fast answers and often use search tools rather than navigation to find what they are looking for. When building a mobile website, think of how your users currently engage your main website and build a solution that is trimmed down to this group of task oriented people. Get rid of all the bells and whistle that will slow the user experience down. Site navigation should be fast, designed to go to top pages only. Provide a link to the primary site for those that seek more info. In the mobile world, get rid of lower valued content. Layout your content for easy scrolling and include a visible search box in your upper right hand corner of each page.

Mobile websites with a good user experience will be positioned higher in search results over those without a well organized mobile experience. Clickable buttons are king in the mobile world combined with a good use of white space. The content you do use should be keyword rich and actionable. Search engines will index content similar to traditional web content therefore it is important to have strong titles, META tags and headings. The ranking factors that are gaining more importance in mobile SEO are page load speeds, bounce rates, click through rates and social sharing. Pay attention to these other ranking factors.

A well optimized Google Places profile will dominate in mobile search since the entire network takes advantage of location awareness technologies. A keyword rich description, company name and well thought out use of the additional details section is very important in getting your profile more impressions. Adwords Express, formally Google Boost, is designed to help local business drive traffic to your Google Places page and interact with mapping tools in your phone’s GPS software. Offers can be added to your Places listing and be made redeemable by just showing the vendor the coupon.

What is your company doing to improve the user experience on your mobile website? Let us know in the comments section.

¹BIA Kelsey June 2011