Reid will be speaking about “Mobile Marketing Strategies & Tactics” at SearchFest 2011, which will take place on February 23rd at the Governor Hotel in Portland, Oregon. Tickets are available now. To purchase, please click the following link.
1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I’ve worked in the search space (primarily paid search with a stint in SEO) for the past 7 years: I started at Newgate Internet and then we were acquired by iCrossing in Fall of 2006. I currently manage iCrossing‘s Search Media Insights team which is a small strategy group inside our larger paid search discipline. My team is tasked with research, training, our technology roadmap and key account support in addition to serving as a resource for our paid search teams worldwide. When I’m not at work I spend a good bit of my free time on photography.
2) What criteria should a company use in deciding whether a mobile app should be part of their mobile strategy?
So much of this depends on the particular type of product/service the company offers. Many offerings are simply not well-suited to mobile so, in some cases, the investment may be more impactful in another area. The other critical issue is around the marketing & promotional plan for the app: with 300,000 apps in the Apple App Store, you need a solid strategy to distinguish yourself in that market. Finally, you need to be really careful to build something that is truly useful and impactful. Studies have repeatedly shown that users wind up ignoring the vast majority of apps that they download (I know this is certainly true for me) so building something that gets downloaded and used once is still not a particularly powerful experience for the customer (despite the fact that you registered a Download in your KPI tracking).
3) What are some hallmarks for effective mobile PPC campaigns?
First, you must separate Mobile campaigns from Desktop/Laptop campaigns or you will never get clean data for reporting & optimization. Second, write custom ad copy for your mobile campaign, ideally calling out the handset or the carrier for stronger CTR and QS. Third, consider different targets & metrics for mobile campaigns – for example, maybe customers are doing mobile research and then buying later with a desktop/laptop? Finally, if you have a call center, you should consider using Click-to-Call and Google Call Metrics because converting with a phone operator can be much more efficient than trying to type in a 16 digit credit card number on a tiny keyboard.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.