Its rare these days that people turn on a computer to search for something. Why would you when you have a smartphone in your pocket? It is reported that 61% of smartphone owners use their phone for searching every day. So if you know a lot of users are searching your site via mobile, optimise your AdWords by focusing on mobile as well as computers. If most of your traffic is still coming through desktops, it might not be worth the money.

So how do you set up PPC for mobile? Well, just like you would a normal campaign! Decide on your goals, such as traffic or conversions and define your audience (keeping in mind the age group and demographics that are confident using smartphones). Next, just like usual, decide on your keywords. Think whether your potential users will use different keywords when using their mobile. People often want to make a quicker purchase on mobile versus computers. And remember to include negative keywords so you don’t waste your money!

Now to the slightly different part. You need to optimise your ads and landing pages for mobile. Over half of consumers won’t recommend a company that has a bad mobile site, often forcing them into the hands of a competitor. What else can you do?

• Enable Ad Extensions – They are free to display so why not!
• Use action focused keywords – Mobile users often want a quick decision, so help them by nailing your keywords.
• Calls to action – The screen is small, so make it obvious what you want your users to do. Of course, offers are always a good place to start for conversions. Typical short, snappy phrases are “call us today” or “free trial”.
• Timings – Set specific times that you want your add to appear. When are your users on their phones? Are they likely not to be using their phones at work? Are they likely to be looking for a pub at 8am?
• Page load – The page needs to load quickly
• Easy to read – You might have to remove text and images from your desktop page to make the mobile site clean and simple.
• Phone number – It has been reported that 43% of search-related conversions occur over the phone, so use call tracking and make your phone number obvious.

There are many similarities between desktop PPC and mobile PPC, but if you need help cracking the differences, then get it touch with Monster.