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How to Grow Your Business With Mobile Paid Search

via Mashable! by Jamie Turner on 1/18/12

Jamie Turner's most recent book is Go Mobile, co-authored with Jeanne Hopkins, VP of marketing at HubSpot. He is also the founder of the 60 Second Marketer and a popular mobile marketing speaker at events and corporations around the globe.

Many business owners are trying to figure out how to use mobile marketing to grow sales and revenues. You may already have a mobile website, and may have even explored creating a mobile app for your business. But after that, things may have come to a standstill.

So, what's the next easiest thing you can do to acquire new customers via mobile?

The low-hanging fruit in the mobile world just happens to be mobile search, which differs from regular search in that it appeals to prospects who are on-the-go and actively searching for a product or service. Mobile Marketer reported a study from Google, which revealed 70% of all mobile searches result in action within an hour. For desktop searches, that figure drops to 30%.

SEE ALSO: 5 Google Paid Search Products You Need to Know

Here are some tips and techniques you can use to grow your sales and revenue using mobile paid search.

Start With Your Keyword List

When you're creating a keyword list for your mobile campaign, it's a good idea to consider what people are doing when they're searching from a mobile device. People who conduct searches from their smartphones want information quickly that can be acted upon right away. They're not looking for in-depth company bios or details about your corporate philosophy; they want short, quick answers about your street address, phone number or customer service department.

Google has a keyword tool that lets you research keywords used on mobile devices vs. desktops. That's important because when people are doing a mobile search they're often looking for something immediate.

As you develop your keyword list, be sure to add a mobile spin to it. For example, if you own a chain of restaurants, you'll not only want to buy "Tony's Italian Pizza," you'll also want to search "Tony's Italian Pizza Locations" and "Tony's Italian Pizza on Peachtree Street." Also, don't forget to buy zip codes ("Florists in 30342") and urgency terms ("Plumbing Emergency Repair").

How to Buy Mobile Keywords

1. List All Relevant Keywords For a Campaign.

Let's say you're a florist — you'd want to list all the keywords and keyword phrases that might attract people doing searches for florists. This includes obvious terms, like "Florist" and "Flowers for Birthday," but it should also include broader terms, like "Anniversary Gifts" and "Birthday Gift Ideas."

2. Split Keywords into Themed Ad Groups

Florists typically have seasons in which sales skyrocket, like Valentine's Day, but they also have non-seasonal triggers. Therefore, you want to divide your keyword ad groups out by themes. Of course, one theme would be Valentine's Day, but other themes could be groups like Birthday Gifts, Special Offers or Summer Promotions.

3. Refine Your List

Once you've done everything outlined above, review and refine your list. For example, you won't want to bid on terms like "Flowers" because your ad would show up every time a gardener, biology student or artist searched for that term. You should also avoid using the same keyword in multiple ad groups within the same campaign, since that would effectively put you in competition with yourself. (Why is that a bad thing? You'd artificially bid the price of the keyword up.)
Also, using negative match keywords like "Free" will prevent your ad from showing up when someone is looking for free stuff – people looking for free stuff are not in your target market.

Writing Your Ads

Here are some tips to get a head start on what works and what doesn't work in mobile paid search.

1. Focus on Your Product, Not Your Company

A common mistake many people make when writing their first paid search ad is focusing on their company instead of the product. In paid search, people aren't buying your company – they're buying your product (preferably at some sort of discount). For example, Valentine's Day Specials would be a product-focused ad. Peachtree Road Florist is a company-focused ad, which is not as effective.

2. Provide Benefits in the Body Copy

Your ad should help people understand why your product or service is exactly what they're looking for. Focus on the benefits of purchasing your specific product or service, not on a generic, fluffy description.

3. Include a Call-to-Action

Research shows that ads perform better when there's a specific call-to-action in the copy. Be sure to have a sense of urgency – you'll receive better results if you give people a deadline.

4. Develop a Mobile Landing Page, Not Your Homepage

In the example we've been using here, the florist would want the person who clicked the ad to land on a page that was selling Valentine's Day flowers at a discount. Driving people to a generic homepage is a waste of money. More importantly, be sure your landing page is optimized for mobile – there's nothing more frustrating than clicking on a mobile paid search ad, only to be driven to a page with text that's too small to read.

5. Use Keywords in Your Ad

According to Google, the best-performing ads are the ones with keywords in the headlines. For instance, if you're running an ad that has "Valentine's Day Discounts" as a keyword phrase, you'll want to regularly use that phrase in the headline of your paid search ad. That way, the user knows the ad specifically matches what he's searched for.

Measuring the Success of Your Campaign

One of the great things about mobile marketing is that it's digital, and therefore, can be easily tracked. One of the very first things you should do when setting-up a mobile paid search campaign is to figure out how you're going to track the results of your ads.

Here are some things you should be measuring in your paid search campaign.

1. Click Through Rate (CTR)

As mentioned earlier, your CTR is one of the fundamental things you should be keeping an eye on. Less than 1% CTR means your ad is not targeted properly — in other words, the ad you've written isn't matching the keywords people are searching for. If you have a CTR less than 1%, you'll want to double-check that the keywords match what your ads are promoting ("Valentine's Day Specials" vs. "Valentine's Day Sale").

2. Average Position

Be sure to check your average position to find out where your ad is appearing on the search results page. On a regular paid search campaign, there are up to 11 ads shown on any given page. But in mobile, that's usually limited to two or three. So, if your average position in your mobile paid search campaign isn't better than three, you're really not showing up where you need to be.

3. Conversion Tracking

All roads in mobile paid search should lead to conversions, which in a classic sense, means a customer buys your product. For mobile paid search purposes, you may have to provide a coupon to track conversions. Since many mobile searchers are searching for locations (rather than ecommerce web pages), you can't really sell to them via your mobile landing page.
What's a business to do? Simply provide a mobile coupon on the landing page that can be scanned (and, thus, tracked) at your store location. By doing that, you'll be able to drive people to your location and measure the results of your campaign when the coupon is scanned.

Mobile websites and mobile apps are gaining a lot of attention, but I'd encourage you to zig while other people zag by diving into mobile paid search today. There's plenty of low-hanging fruit, which translates into increased revenues.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sjlocke

More About: Business, contributor, features, Mobile, paid search