3 Tips for Marketers Ready to Invest More in Mobile

By Bill Dinan at Search Engine Watch:
With more than 2 million orders of the iPhone 5 placed within the first 24 hours, the consumer mobile movement shows no sign of waning. Mobile touches every demographic regardless of gender, age, race, and even income.

Many advertisers now recognize this and plan to integrate mobile into their overall marketing and media plans. However, given the high quality, ready to buy nature of the mobile consumer, advertisers still aren't fully capitalizing on the opportunity.

At a recent Mobile Marketing Association event, one ROI firm recommended that marketers allocate 7 percent of their budgets to mobile with growth to 10 percent by 2016. I disagree. Mobile monetization opportunities are high and should be commanding a much higher rate of ad budgets.

The xAd-Telmetrics Mobile Path to Purchase Study, conducted by Nielsen, found that local mobile searchers are converting at dramatic rates – more than 60 percent of those surveyed say they ultimately make a purchase.



In the travel category alone – which has a longer path to purchase than the restaurant or automotive categories that were analyzed – nearly 50 percent of those surveyed say they ultimately made a purchase and one-third convert the same day (regardless of smartphone or tablet usage). In fact, 20 percent are looking to make a purchase immediately or within the hour, revealing an important window of opportunity for marketers to reach users at this final stage of their path to purchase.

Also in the travel category, 75 percent of mobile travel users reported that they notice mobile ads and only 25 percent have a preferred brand before the search. Marketers have an opportunity to influence these searchers with the right mobile content as more than 50 percent say they clicked on an ad because it was targeted to their needs or recent search behavior.

These findings are in line with mobile call duration statistics across our call measurement network. Mobile call duration is the amount of time a consumer is on the phone with a business it contacts via a mobile ad and is a common proxy for measuring lead quality.

Mobile call durations average 3.5 mins/call, longer than call durations stemming from other media including print and paid search, and longer calls indicate a positive propensity to make a purchase, representing higher quality leads/increased conversion opportunities. As many as 47 percent of mobile travel searches result in calls (compared to up to 73 percent of mobile restaurant searchers – where immediacy is more prevalent for reservations, confirming hours and checking availability), according to the Mobile Path to Purchase findings.

Here are three tips for mobile marketers ready to allocate more to their mobile budgets and fully leverage the mobile opportunity.

 

1. Know Your Mobile Consumer

Successful mobile advertising campaigns can no longer take a one-size-fits-all approach. Advertisers must understand consumer motivations and intent related to each specific vertical market they are searching within before deciding how and where to best engage them in mobile.

 

2. Contact Info Reigns Supreme

Calls and location information are key activities along the mobile path to purchase. Mobile marketers should ensure their campaigns include phone numbers, location info and maps as most consumers want to connect with the business before making a final purchase decision. If an ad or listing doesn’t have local relevance at the time of action, the consumer will move on to the next business, so including local phone numbers rather than toll-free numbers is helpful.

 

3. Understand Smartphone vs. Tablet Nuances

For mobile marketers evaluating their ad placement options, remember that smartphones are used more for finding and contacting businesses while tablets are used more for research activities (price comparisons, reviews, etc.). This can affect your distribution channel strategy, promotions, and content. Brand websites are most popular for tablet searches and smartphone travel searches while local directory apps are most popular for smartphone restaurant and automotive searches.