Increasing your Business Presence on Mobiles (1 of 2)

Love them or hate them, mobile phones now take a significant % of web traffic. In December last year 25% of the UK’s population accessed the internet from their phone which led to a total of 6.7 billion page views. One fifth of UK mobile phone subscribers now have smartphones which is driving usage. How can a business take advantage of mobile?

Creating a Mobile Ad

396 million minutes were spent on Google by UK users in December so being visible in some way in a Google mobile search is recommended. The quickest way to do this is by creating a mobile ad using the Google AdWords system. AdWords is a web service provided by Google which in a simple explanation creates the sponsored ads on the right hand side of a traditional Google search. When setting up a campaign in AdWords there are settings to target specific devices only. In this section you can choose which mobile devices you want to target and even which operator.

Targeting Mobile Devices within Google AdWords

The strategy above is available for targeting phones with full internet capabilities where there are no restrictions on ad creation. If you want to target the remaining four fifths of mobile users using AdWords this can be done by creating a ‘WAP mobile ad’. This is done by adding a new ad group at the ad group level.

Creating an advert for WAP does have limitations due to small screen sizes. The ad headline and description are limited to 18 characters each which can be a bit of a squeeze! If your website isn’t particularly WAP friendly there is an option to remove the standard web link and replace it with ‘click to call’ function. Clicking on this within the ad will call a specified business phone number.

Creating a WAP Text Ad within Google AdWords

Creating a Local Business Ad

Google Maps is a popular app for the latest mobile phones. It uses mapping and geo-tracking functionality to make it very useful for users on the move. It allows you to find places, attractions and businesses around you. If your business has a customer facing shop or office then adding a listing to Google Place Pages is pretty important. The amount of data you can add to a listing is detailed from name and address to opening hours. It’s even possible to add images and YouTube videos to a listing. Because they only allow valid businesses, Google will verify a business listing by phone, text or even postcard.

The points above are a couple of quick but effective ways of reaching your mobile audience in the short term. In my next blog post I’ll discuss taking advantage of the mobile platform in the long term, including how to develop a specific website optimised for mobiles.