The whole world is going mobile…. except for your company.
While the rest of the world uses their mobile devices any time they have a free moment, you ask your users to wait until they are back home to hop on their computers to find the information they want. Whether they are in line at Starbucks or sitting on the subway, potential customers are accessing the Internet on their mobile devices and your competitor’s results are coming up. This is 2014 and you can’t just put your head in the sand and hope that mobile use will go away, because it won’t. In fact, 50% of all mobile phone owners use their phone as their primary source for accessing the Internet and that number will only go up as mobile devices decrease in price.
While your sales from your desktop AdWords campaigns might be decent, having a mobile AdWords presence could effectively double revenue because you are doubling the reach of your campaigns. However, creating a mobile website/landing page for AdWords requires two items that are always in short supply – time and money. You need to pay specialists to design the user experience, create mobile optimized graphics, and then pay to actually get it coded.
You wish their was a way that you could create a mobile AdWords campaign instantly, without having to pay or wait for a new mobile website, and to do it in a way that has a significantly higher conversion rate.
Well Pee-wee – call me Jambi, because I am here to grant you that very wish.
The Solution: Only Allow Calls
It is hard to believe, but at one point mobile phones were actually used for phone calls. If you dispute this fact please Wikipedia Zach Morris, and then come back to this article. What I propose is to once again use mobile devices for calls- but to use them in a way that let’s you connect with Internet users. To do this you can utilize Google’s settings within AdWords to simply remove the option for users to click to your website from mobile pay per click ads, and enable only one option: to call. This is titled (creatively) click-to-call.
This solution allows you to completely side step the process of creating mobile optimized site and still allows you to have effective mobile AdWords campaigns.
Click-to-call provides you (the advertiser) many advantages including:
- A higher conversion rate – Studies find that the conversion rate is higher from click-to-call ads than standard mobile ads. One such study found the conversion rate from click-to-call was 26 times higher than that of a standard mobile campaign. This makes sense logically, if you have competent salespeople they should be able to react to the potential customer’s wants and needs based on the conversation better then even the most sophisticated website can.
- A higher click through rate – Users on their mobile phones are looking for an answer to their query, and for many queries on mobile devices it is best to talk to an actual person. By providing users with the option to call and talk to a person you align with their mobile intent. Users will reward you for aligning with their mobile intent better than your competitors by clicking on your ad. Studies have shown that utilizing click-to-call increases ad click through rate by 6- 8%. A higher click through rate leads to a higher quality score, which means cheaper clicks for you!
- Better customer engagement – You get to demonstrate that you are not some faceless corporation and you get the opportunity to by interacting with your potential customers. You can take advantage of this opportunity and actually engage with potential customers and begin to build a relationship.
Implement the Solution: How To Disable Clicks To The Website And Enable Calls To You Business From AdWords
Step One: Select the campaign that you would like to have click-to-call and go to ad extensions.
Make sure that the drop down is on “Call extensions”
Step Two: Select the big red button (BRB) that says “+Extension”.
Your screen will look like the following:
Step Three: Scroll down and select “New phone number”
Step Four: You will be taken to the new phone number screen. Enter your phone number and under “Device preference” click mobile.
Most importantly under “Show the following links”, select “Just show the phone number” (I put many arrows in this screen because this is the key to disabling the clicks to the website).
Now when your ads show, they will be click-to-call. No matter where a users clicks on the ad, they call your business. Below is an example of a click-to-call ad for Nerds Do It Better (my company).
You now have a mobile AdWords campaign without the need for a mobile website.
What kind of conversions are you trying to attain with your click-to-call mobile campaigns?
Image Credits:
Featured Image: Author created via Canva
Zach Morris: Created via Meme generator
iPhone Screen Capture: Author created on iPhone
