Mobile PPC has been making huge strides in the last year and continues to gain popularity with an ever-increasing volume of Internet searches coming from mobile devices. We know there are certain optimizations necessary to make mobile traffic work and convert for you in the PPC world, but what can be done specifically for lead generation purposes? Well, let’s talk about it!
Segmenting Mobile Traffic for Lead Gen
It’s fairly common knowledge at this point that it’s best practice to split out your mobile and desktop traffic in to separate campaigns to properly optimize, but how come mobile traffic is even more special when it’s for a lead gen account? There are optimizations and changes available that become incredibly useful once you break out your campaigns into mobile versus non-mobile segments to pull down leads. Use this checklist to make sure you’re taking advantage of them all!
- Differences in intent: Keeping in mind that searcher intent varies based on stages in the buying cycle and whichever medium the searcher is using to conduct research will save you quite a bit of back-tracking once your data starts rolling in. In general, we know that mobile searchers are looking to gain information quickly, that’s why they’re searching on their mobile as opposed to waiting to get to a desktop computer. We’ll go in to more detail about why and how to make that ‘quickly’ part happen in the next bullet.
- Landing page optimization: Providing mobile traffic specific landing pages that your users are sent to is an accepted best practice. Of course it’s no different with lead gen-oriented mobile campaigns, and having pages that show up easily on mobile devices with as little scrolling as possible is critical. Taking this into consideration when adapting for lead gen purposes is especially important, as the form or whatever is collecting customer information needs to be readily visible and ready to be filled-in via a mobile device. What could this mean for your page? Perhaps you need to have fewer cells in your mobile contact form when compared to your full browser website’s version of the form.
- Mobile specific metric goals: Splitting out your lead gen traffic by mobile versus non-mobile gives you the ability to define separate and different CPL, lead, CTR and average CPC goals for the segments. Furthermore, it provides you with the opportunity to give your mobile campaigns their own dedicated budget, as they tend to spend much differently from desktop-targeted campaigns.
- Tiered bidding based on available ad space: Mobile versions of Internet browsers display far fewer ads on each page than desktop browsers. As a result, this means that first-page bid estimates or first-page placements will be slightly more competitive. If you were mass bidding on all keywords across desktop and mobile devices, you’d be running the risk of setting a max CPC that doesn’t break the top page for mobile results because it’s a first page bid for desktops.
- Mobile device specific ad copy: Breaking out ad groups by search intent and/or product or service is typical, but the further segmentation of mobile traffic by itself allows you to call out particular mobile brands and speak directly to the users seeing your ads. A customer who sees the particular brand name of the device they are searching on at that moment will feel more secure about their click and be more likely to click and/or convert.
- Keyword performance: Finally, when it comes to optimizing mobile lead gen campaigns, you want to keep in mind the length of your keyword strings. Long-tail keywords tend to perform fairly well on desktops since they help pull in some of the most relevant traffic; however, the opposite can be said for mobile campaigns. Generally speaking, short-tail keywords are the way to go because although mobile searchers are looking for information quickly, they may not be looking for something incredibly particular or specific.
How Can You Make Mobile Lead Gen Even Better?
The mainstay here is simple: test! Once you’ve set up your initial mobile-segmented campaigns, it’s time to start testing if your typical optimizations work or if a new method is necessary. These tests can range from deciding the number of cells in your mobile form to determining if you need an entirely mobile site or if you can get by with mobile landing pages attached to the full site. I’d also encourage you to think outside the box! Typically, contests or promotional codes are offered with ecommerce or immediate sale products and services. However, who says you can’t offer a contest entry for any lead submissions sent through in a given month? Pick one entry at the end of the month and send them a swag bag from your company!
All-in-all, mobile lead generation can initially be planned using an overall mobile strategy. Once you get more granular with your optimizations and structure, considering the purpose of lead generation is imperative in finding success with PPC.
Tell us about your experiences! Have you used mobile segments for lead generation with a lot of success, or split-out what seemed to be high performing mobile traffic, only to find it bottoming out? Share your findings and ideas in the comments section below and thanks for reading PPC Hero!
