The future of search is in your hands

The internet is going mobile. In the final quarter of last year more smartphones than PCs were shipped and already marketers can expect anything between 12% and 20% of searches in their sector to originate on a mobile device, according to Google.

Morgan Stanley is predicting this rise in penetration will lead to mobile search overtaking desktop in 2013. So it is unsurprising that many brands are already seeking to understand this relatively new medium better.

Experts are warning brands they should not simply expect to transfer desktop campaigns directly into the mobile channel, because user behaviour can be different. Typically, mobile search terms will be shorter, due to the constraints of a smaller screen, and the smaller keyboard means typing errors and abbreviations are more common. Carphone Warehouse, for example, estimates that when such errors and abbreviations are factored in, it can get clicks through mobile search that cost as little as a third of the price of an average desktop click.

Timing is also different. Most mobile searches are concentrated in the morning before work and then again in the evening when people are not in front of a PC. Mobile is also a far more time-sensitive channel. Google research has shown that the average time between initial customer research and purchase is a month on the desktop but just an hour on mobile.

It is these subtle differences that make mobile search all the more worth exploring, according to Scott Gallacher, chairman of the Marketing Society Digital Network. He claims brands can do more in mobile for less budget because competition for keywords is less fierce than in desktop search, bringing down cost per click (CPC) and cost per acquisition (CPA). The latest technology offered by search engines is making mobile a great way of interacting with an audience using live, relevant information.

“Campaigns are regularly achieving 30-40% cheaper CPAs on mobile versus desktop and are already contributing 15-25% of companies’ overall search traffic,” he says. “Leaders in the field are using dynamic ad insertion to include price and other details based on user time and location that take advantage of not only the immediacy of the medium but the location.”

There are also major gains to be had through a less technologically advanced feature that all smartphones share; the ability to make calls. By returning a search advert that allows prospects to ’click to call’ a sales adviser, brands are able to drive down the cost of acquisition further still.

This has certainly been the experience of Simon England, managing director at gap car insurance provider, ALA, who has been working with digital agency, Return on Digital, to target an outdoor market. Gap insurance is an additional policy to normal car insurance that makes up the difference between the market value an insurance company pays out for a written off or stolen car, and the full cost of the vehicle as new. Dealers often use it as a means of making a bigger margin on sales.

“We’ve been using mobile for the past few months to bring our CPA down by about 40%,” says England. “We’re converting between 30% and 40% of people who click through to call. They are usually at a car dealer and so are interested in buying, and seeing if we can offer a better price. That conversion rate is three or four times better than people coming to the website.

“We’re hoping to use geotargeting soon to discover where someone is and offer them a local dialling code because we’ve found people are more willing to call our York dialling code number than they are an 0845 code, so local calls are obviously an incentive.”

Florida holiday specialist Ocean Holidays has had a similar experience. Marketing director Harry Hastings says the travel agent is regularly paying a similar fee to get a ’click to call’ lead as it is for a general click on its website. However, with callers three times more likely to convert, it is proving a profitable channel, with one proviso.

“We’re going to start working with our search agency, Tug, to make it a lot clearer in our advertising copy that people are placing a call by clicking on the link,” he says.

“We’re seeing a high dropout rate, of between 20-30% of people who click but then hang up, presumably because they didn’t realise they were starting a call, so that needs attention.”

Campaigns are regularly achieving 30-40% cheaper CPAs on mobile versus desktop

Mobile also offers a very good way of reaching people when they are not in front of a PC. Data from search engine companies shows mobile search peaks follow an intuitive pattern, with commuting hours being the busiest periods, followed by mid to late evening.

For Absolute Radio, and its digital agency Albion, this is opening up a segment of its audience that is normally hard to reach.

“Around 10% of radio streaming is to a mobile device, so it’s an obvious channel for us,” says Absolute chief operating officer Clive Dickens.

However, we see it as underlining us as a media publisher and so we have 30 apps for different interests. The main one we push through mobile search is our live football scores app because, particularly on a Saturday, our key audience is so-called ’reluctant adults’ being dragged around shops and we couldn’t reach them any other way.

“Given that the average time for our average user to spend in-app is 50 minutes on a Saturday, it opens up a very lucrative advertising market. So we time bidding to ensure we’re in front of our audience Wednesday to Friday evenings and before and during Saturday’s football games.”

For Rank Interactive’s head of acquisition John Davis, the nature of the mobile channel means that it needs to offer more inducement to attract sign-ups to its Mecca Bingo app than it does to win new customers on its website when accessed from a desktop. Hence the campaigns it runs through its agency, Positive Digital, offer more generous terms than their desktop equivalent.

“We have to be very careful about giving away money because, as you can imagine, you can end up attracting a low-value audience who just use their free credits and don’t come back,” he says.

“So we don’t tend to give away money on desktop search, but with mobile we need to help people over the hurdle of downloading our app and then registering their personal details on a small keyboard, so we find we have a lot more success when we offer £5 worth of free play.”
However, for Paul Flynn, online marketing manager at Jury’s Inn, the opposite can be true – while people on the move need content tailored to them, they do not always need an offer.

“The mobile’s a much more immediate channel than the desktop,” he says. “So if someone’s searching for ’Heathrow airport hotel’, you can be pretty certain they’re in the market for a hotel that day and so we’re less likely to offer a special rate; we’re less price-led in our mobile search marketing. We do, however, concentrate on special landing pages for each hotel to bring out its business credentials more than its leisure appeal.”

Of course, paid-for search is only one half of the mobile search landscape. Many brands are investing in natural search on the mobile versions of their websites to attract clicks without having to pay directly for them.

VoucherCloud founder Greg le Tocq reveals that the brand has been posting a constant supply of vouchers containing the key phrase ’mobile’ to ensure it has been in top natural search spot for nearly all searches relating to ’mobile vouchers’. Getting relevant links from the likes of Orange, C4 and The Daily Telegraph has helped greatly as well.

SEO may not be given the same priority on mobile as desktop for a lot of brands, but as mobile becomes more prominent this will change, believes Stuart Bryce, search marketing manager for O2. “The Google mobile ’bot’ will become increasingly prominent and powerful as more sites become mobile,” he predicts.

“The better people’s mobile experience, the more they will access content via their mobile devices, meaning search engines will give mobile search increased focus.

“At O2 we fed SEO best practice into the development of our mobile site (m.o2.co.uk) from a very early stage. A lot of this best practice was learnt from our main domain, but we also worked hard on the important mobile ranking factors such as page load speed, URL structure, and reduced keyword content which are all crucial for ranking well in mobile search.”

This has also been the approach at John Lewis. Its involvement in mobile paid search has seen the keywords it bids on rise from 400,000 to more than two million in less than a year. Meanwhile in natural mobile search the retailer is working with search agency iCrossing to ensure it also gets as many natural clicks as possible, explains Emma McLaughlin, manager of acquisitions and retention at John Lewis.

“It’s important to back up paid activity with SEO because one-in-four of the people who come through to our mobile site go on to search for their nearest store, which is a very encouraging sign,” she says. “So for anyone considering whether they should engage in pay-per-click and SEO on mobile I’d ask, why not? With PPC you only pay for a click and it’s cheaper than on a desktop; why wouldn’t you? With SEO you’re effectively getting clicks for free.

“The good news is that mobile is a medium where it’s not too late to join in. Nobody’s got it nailed yet because it’s a changing environment and there’s lots of research and free opinion to read so you can get up to speed fairly quickly.”

Those who have yet to optimise a mobile version of their website and engage in mobile search PPC campaigns may take heart from the fact that they are not alone. The crucial factor to bear in mind, however, is that the only difference in opinion between analysts is when mobile search will overtake desktop search. Not if.