How does Mobilegeddon impact your Mobile Marketing Strategy ?

A mete­or has just hit the world of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing. Google has once again altered its algo­rithm, this time to increas­ing­ly favour mobile-opti­mised web­sites in search results on mobile. Is this ‘mobi­leged­don’? Not quite. But what this is, is a wake-up call to busi­ness­es. Be where your cus­tomers are and make that expe­ri­ence easy, enjoy­able, and effec­tive if you’re going to win in busi­ness, and indeed, stay in business.

This makes two things imper­a­tive for suc­cess: 1) make sure you have a mobile opti­mised site, and 2) flaw­less exe­cu­tion in Search Engine Mar­ket­ing on mobile.

Why? Don’t just do it because Google says so. Think like a con­sumer – What’s your expe­ri­ence when you come upon a site that’s not mobile-friend­ly? How does this impact your propen­si­ty to pur­chase? What does this make you think of the brand? Hands up if you’ve been on the brink of buy­ing, but you just couldn’t be both­ered with the incon­ve­nience of the unop­ti­mised site you’re on, so you roll your eyes and buy from some­where else.

Guilty.

And if that’s the expe­ri­ence you’re cre­at­ing for your cus­tomers, you are los­ing busi­ness. Fact.

And here’s anoth­er one – some of us have been wrestling with our IT teams and C‑suite for years try­ing to get them on-board with cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able, scal­able mobile-opti­mised site. And it’s just. Not. Budg­ing. Whether or not this mobile mete­or deliv­ers a blow to the bot­tom line that grabs their atten­tion, what actions can you take to secure max­i­mum vis­i­bil­i­ty in search results on smartphones?

Google has now made it more crit­i­cal than ever to opti­mise your Paid Search activ­i­ty, specif­i­cal­ly on mobile. This is where Adobe Media Opti­miz­er has been help­ing busi­ness­es get ahead and stay ahead of the com­pe­ti­tion for over a year. It all comes down to three pow­er­ful components:

1. Data is col­lect­ed at key­word lev­el and split by device

No mat­ter what way you slice the num­bers, it is more busi­ness-crit­i­cal than ever to have per­for­mance data for your Paid Search activ­i­ty at the most gran­u­lar lev­el pos­si­ble. This means every key­word, every day, every device. An algo­rithm is only as good as the data it’s being fed, and only we pull in data and build fore­casts for each key­word for desk­top and for mobile and make that data ful­ly trans­par­ent to you.

This is crit­i­cal if you’re going to set the right Mobile Bid Adjust­ments (MBAs) so you can be con­fi­dent you are pay­ing the most com­pet­i­tive price for your mobile traf­fic and secur­ing those top ad posi­tions (which are even few­er on mobile UIs) to dri­ve smart­phone search­es to your business.

2. Mobile Bid Adjust­ments are algo­rith­mic and automatic

When was the last time you updat­ed your MBAs? Was it a fin­ger in the air gues­ti­mate or an Excel-break­ing (and let’s be hon­est, some­what soul-crush­ing) num­ber crunch of doom? What­ev­er your sce­nario, none are effi­cient and all are wast­ing your business’s time and money.

Adobe was first to mar­ket to sup­port Google’s Enhanced Cam­paigns, and short­ly there­after, we deliv­ered the abil­i­ty for our clients to opti­mise their MBAs just like they do their stan­dard CPCs.

All the device-lev­el key­word per­for­mance data we col­lect for you enables our algo­rithms to math­e­mat­i­cal­ly cal­cu­late what the MBAs need to be at the ad group lev­el to help you achieve your busi­ness goals. And those trade-offs are done for you at an astro­nom­i­cal scale auto­mat­i­cal­ly every day with the tick of a box.

This means you can be con­fi­dent your MBAs are accu­rate and up to date based on your account and your data – not a blan­ket ver­ti­cal fig­ure released by Google and not at the expense of the time and exper­tise of your PPC team, who can be deliv­er­ing more val­ue devis­ing and exe­cut­ing on strat­e­gy – some­thing a machine can’t do.

3. You con­trol the val­ue of mobile to your business

At the core of strat­e­gy is being smart about iden­ti­fy­ing what is valu­able to your busi­ness and zero­ing in on chas­ing and cap­tur­ing that traf­fic. We all know as con­sumers, let alone as mar­keters, that the way we inter­act with our mobiles is dif­fer­ent than what we do on our desk­tops. Espe­cial­ly if your site isn’t mobile opti­mised, actions such as an app down­load or call into a call cen­tre can be far more valu­able to pur­sue on mobile than an actu­al purchase.

Your busi­ness needs the agili­ty to define exact­ly what traf­fic you want to pur­sue by device and inform your bid­ding algo­rithm as to what a high-per­form­ing key­word looks like.

When you join the com­bined pow­er of device-spe­cif­ic key­word data and the abil­i­ty to auto­mat­i­cal­ly adjust your MBAs with tar­get­ed, strate­gic con­trol of exact­ly what you want your PPC activ­i­ty to be chas­ing, Google’s recent algo­rithm changes trans­form from wor­ry to opportunity.

Whether it’s direct­ly man­ag­ing your accounts or part­ner­ing with your in-house team or agency, you need to have the right tools and tech­nol­o­gy in order to dri­ve mobile mar­ket­ing results for your busi­ness where it mat­ters to you and to your cus­tomers most.