How to get More Engagement from Your Mobile Campaigns

April 12th 2018 | By Emma Grant

We’ve talked a lot in the past about the importance of personalisation in marketing. So it was not much of a surprise to learn what new research has revealed: that location based mobile ads perform a great deal better than generic mobile ads.

Location-based mobile ads related to users’ interests pastimes and ambitions are twice as likely to achieve engagement as generic ads according to research by Verve. In a survey of 2,000 UK adults, the company found that adverts making use of location data perform better than ads without any personalisation.

33 per cent of the surveyed adults said they would be more likely to engage with an ad related to somewhere or something they had planned to buy or visit in the future.

Are you delivering the mobile ads that people want to engage with?

All good news. Well you would think so. Strangely, the fact is, marketers don’t seem to be delivering the mobile ads that people are so keen to engage with. Check out these statistics.

56 per cent of those surveyed feel the ads they currently see on mobile search are dull and boring. And only 11 per cent say they find the adverts helpful. 78 per cent believe mobile ads are overly wordy or too small to read property. Verve actually reckons that the average UK consumer ignores more than seven mobile ads EVERY DAY.

There is clearly a problem here that needs addressing. The question is, how?

It all starts with optimisation

The place to start is with optimisation. If you read our blogs regularly, you’ll know how we feel about making everything mobile friendly. Not just websites, but landing pages, blogs and newsletters too.

The Verve report uncovered that people want to see ads making use of mobile formats and features. 20 per cent would like adverts that use things like zoom, tap and tilt. 19% want ads that resemble games or take them on a journey. And 21 per cent are keen to be asked a question.

Here are some tips for optimising your online ads for a mobile audience:

Calls to action

Whilst people are usually pretty happy to scroll when viewing ads on mobile, it’s still important to get a quick call to action in right at the top to encourage a sale or enquiry. Ads on mobile MUST be just as effective with their calls to action as desktop ads, so be sure to encourage a call or click with compelling wording and a prominent phone number or link.

Click to call

If your call to action involves encouraging people to get in touch via phone, be sure to make it easy to do so with a click to call function. Google AdWords allows you to add Call Extensions to your account, making it possible to measure calls courtesy of a Google Call Forwarding number. This is a free to use feature and is incredibly valuable in measuring the performance of your ads and the effectiveness of your calls to action.

Long refresh

The refresh rate determines how regularly a new ad impression is generated on a mobile app. You can choose not to refresh ads at all, or choose a refresh time between 30 and 120 seconds. It is highly recommended that mobile ads stick around for as long as possible, i.e. two minutes, as tests have shown that this leads to users being more likely to engage.

Remember: Mobile Leads can be Higher Quality Leads

With mobile taking over as the preferred platform for search, it is crucial to get it right when it comes to your mobile advertising campaigns. Local businesses have an incredibly high percentage of prospects searching for them via mobile and, with prospects poised to use the very devices they are searching on to make a direct call, there is so much opportunity ready and waiting to be snapped up.

Hopefully you now have something of an insight into how to improve the performance of your mobile adverts. Still not sure or ready to call in some help to get even more out of your online presence? Talk to Figment!