Exploring Mobile Advertising Opportunities

Everyone’s talking about mobile – time and time again, we hear how people are searching for local information on their mobile devices (iPhones, tablets, etc.) at a ever-growing rate and how mobile usage is likely to overtake desktop in just a few short years. But what does that mean for you when you’re marketing your business? Do mobile ads really make more sense for you than desktop ads? How do you design a mobile-friendly search ad campaign? MarketingSherpa, a noted source for case studies and news, sought to answer these questions with a feature on King Schools, a home-study program for pilot’s license seekers.

Pamela Olson, King Schools’ Marketing Manager, had heard all of the buzz about mobile usage, but mobile just didn’t seem relevant to her business: only a fraction of the traffic to their website was from mobile devices. But Olson saw an opportunity to use mobile not to reach current customers, but to get more people with potential interest in their product to call and ask for information.

She did this using the PPC (pay-per-click) program her company already set up, but modifying their campaign to target mobile. She added a big, bold “click to call” button to the ad, along with language encouraging readers not to click for more info or to read more, but to call a live representative and learn more about the program. When readers view these ads on a mobile device, they can actually go straight into a phone call when they click that button.

The result? 25% more people called in looking for information when Olson’s team ran the ad. You might argue that these were people with “butterthumbs,” clicking on a link they didn’t mean to click and, even worse, getting into a phone call they did not want to make. But Olson went a step further and demonstrated that not only did calls go up, but actual sales went up as well: 103% more people ended up purchasing the home-study course from the mobile ad after Olson added the “click to call” button.

What’s the lesson here? At first glance, a new way of advertising may not make much sense for your business – Olson was aware that only a small percentage of her site traffic came from mobile devices, which was why her company had not focused on mobile in the past. But with a clever campaign that made sense for her business and a close eye to the results, Olson was able to use this new, under-utilized platform to create a whole new audience for her business and expand the opportunity for success.

To read the entire case study, visit MarketingSherpa.

Image courtesy of adamr / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.