If there’s an untapped area on the map of marketing, it surely is mobile marketing. Companies have dabbled in sending coupons and ads via text, urging customers to scan QR codes and placed advertisements at the bottom of mobile apps. While many of these haven’t succeeded long-term, there’s one thing we can’t deny: people use their phones to find local retailers.
The days of the Yellow Pages being the primary source for local vendors may be limited: 79% of smartphone users now use their phones to help with shopping, says Google. This presents many opportunities for local retailers, restaurants and service providers, as getting to the top of search results on mobile is a highly coveted prize.
Fiercer Competition for Mobile AdWords
Online marketing service provider Web.com recently announced its new SmartCalls service. With it, small businesses get Web.com’s Google AdWords expertise, applied to mobile. When a potential customer searches for, let’s say “dog grooming” from their smartphone, they’ll get a list of local businesses, with two sponsored AdWords results based on their location at the top of the page.
You can then check out the map to see where the business is located, or even tap the hyperlinked phone number to call the company instantly. Google’s mobile version shows fewer AdWords results, which can make it difficult to compete for that space.
Explains Aman Devgan, VP of Products at Web.com:
“Small businesses recognize the importance of being visible to the millions of consumers who are actively, and sometimes urgently, searching for local services on their mobile devices. The opportunity is especially great when you consider that mobile searches are hyper local and a favorable response to a mobile advertisement is to either walk in or place a call directly to that business.”
Users of the SmartCalls service gain access to their Scorecard, which provides lead alerts, call tracking and call recordings.
Understanding the Real Value
The value here focuses on geo-targeting results. If you’re looking for a restaurant while you’re on the go, you want one close by, not across town. And with 47% of smartphone users looking for local, businesses advertising with Google AdWords Mobile increase the chance of drawing local new customers. You certainly could set up your own AdWords Mobile account, but there are Google AdWords partners for a reason: small businesses often don’t have the savvy skills to choose the right keywords at the right price, with ad copy that will turn searchers into customers.
I know many small businesses who have tried to run their own AdWords campaigns, only to bleed money without seeing the ROI. Working with a partner like SmartCalls may take some of the guesswork out of the process.
My beef with these offers is the lack of transparency. Businesses don’t know what keywords they’re showing for and don’t control ad copy or messaging. While it’s convenient to offload it, I still like knowing what’s going on with my account.
That said, mobile is a huge opportunity. For one company I work with they were able to get 16% more clicks by going into mobile.
piJnz
Great points in this article. Many small businesses have yet to recognize that the vast portion of searches for their type of business is now done on smartphones, and local mobile searches on Google bring nothing but Google Places results and Adwords ads on the first page (or the screen space the visitor would bother too look).
Driving a Google Places ranking is important, but that’s a big undertaking. Local mobile Google Adwords may be a much cheaper and faster option.
Create a deal ad (e.g. “$5 off your visit”) linking to a mobile coupon page – and increase the ad effectiveness even more.
Mobile coupons in general offer up to 10X the redemption rate of the traditional coupons. “Mobilizing” any traditional ad (print ad or online) with a way to get a redeemable deal on the phone is a very cost-effective way to drive more traffic, increase sales and track your advertising efforts.
Today a majority of folks access the internet via their mobiles yet many business are still yet to dip their toes into mobile, those that do are being rewarded with additional business and customers and ultimately profits.
Mobile allows the combination of time and context – directing people towards a nearby product/promotion and expanding the concept of the impulse purchase unlocking a powerful tool to drive more real-world transactions.
There are several free tools out there to ease people into mobile such as Dizilife which creates mobile sites (independently or linked from an existing website (http://www.dizilife.com) and provides locational and QR code features as well.