You might not realize it, but Google AdWords is automatically set to display your PPC ads on mobile phones. For some companies, this will be a good thing. Other companies may well lose significant amounts of money to this default setting.
There is no doubt that mobile advertising is important, but all businesses will not benefit from all forms of mobile advertising at all times.
There are three questions that you should be asking when determining whether or not you want to allow your PPC ads to show up on mobile phones.
Does your business meet an urgent need?
Mobile PPC benefits business owners in industries which require an immediate response to a customer’s needs.
For example, if you are a roofer or a plumber, a customer might well need to reach you right away for an emergency leak repair. The customer is looking for a company’s phone number—that’s it. There’s water cascading out of the roof. They can’t turn their water back on unless they want to risk imminent flooding. They need help, and they need help now. The PPC ad pops up at the top of their screen with a click to call phone number, the customers assume that your presence in the top spot makes you a good fit for their crisis, the call is made, and everyone is happy. After all, nobody takes the time to evaluate five different websites when water is gushing in through the roof.
Most businesses don’t require quite so much urgency. An e-commerce company who sells women’s clothing is rarely going to be in this kind of a position. Very rarely is someone ever going to be quite that frantic to buy the latest dress. Most shoppers will go and browse the site on a PC rather than on their smartphone. If they browse your site at all it will be to pass the time—not to make a purchase. This just isn’t the kind of business where you’d expect to see a high volume of transactions over the phone.
Does my business serve a specific local area?
Mobile PPC works best for local service oriented or, in some cases, brick and mortar businesses. Mobile search is geared towards people who want to do business right here, right now. If they didn’t need it now, they’d probably wait till they got home and do the search from their larger, easier to use pc.
So while the need for a cup of coffee might not present customers with a crisis situation (though some days this is debatable), a local coffee shop might still benefit from mobile PPC simply because customers will use mobile search to find and patronize establishments close to their current location.
Will customers be making a phone call or a visit?
When customers are on their PCs you can use PPC advertising to funnel them toward a landing page, where they will spend a few minutes looking around your site and making decisions.
Mobile PPC is at its strongest when it encourages people to use the “click to call” feature. You get an immediate lead and an immediate chance to make a sale while they get the answers they need very quickly.
What about our coffee shop? People rarely call coffee shops—they just go to them. There are a couple of ways to handle that. Right now when I type “coffee shops near me” on my mobile phone browser it brings up the PPC ad for Duncan Donuts. They’ve linked it directly to their store locator. Someone with just a single location could make sure that their mobile PPC ads land on a page with their address and directions, instead. In addition we’d make sure their ads are only showing in a certain radius around their shop so people far away (who aren’t likely to make the trip) don’t see or click on the ad and waste a click.
Either way it’s really important to spend some time thinking about the customer’s experience, and to adjust your PPC ads in a way that is going to be congruent with the way they’re going to want to interact with your business.
What if you’re a poor fit for mobile ppc ads?
If you don’t meet any of the above criteria you should probably make sure that your PPC ads don’t show up on mobile phones so that you don’t have to pay for any unproductive clicks. This can be accomplished via bid management techniques that Neon Ambition uses on behalf of its clients every single day.
If you feel like you’re losing money on your PPC advertisements, whether because you’re getting inappropriate exposure from mobile PPC ads or because you’re facing other issues please call us. Our Austin PPC management services have helped companies just like yours get the most out of their PPC, and we can help you, too.
