Mobile Paid Search – Don’t Wait!

It should no longer be a question of whether or not hospitality clients should have a mobile presence. Rather, hotels and resorts should be focusing on ways to enhance their mobile presence in order to capitalize on the rapidly growing searches that are done on mobile devices. One of the fastest and most effective ways to generate mobile traffic is by running a mobile paid search campaign. If you are still not convinced that this is something you should be taking part in, here are some statistics that should help sway your opinion:

• Searches on mobile phones have increased 400% year over year
• 29% of searches are done on mobile devices
• It is predicted that mobile search will account for more than 16% of all Google’s paid search clicks by the end of 2011
• Mobile paid search cost-per-clicks (CPCs) are on average 59% less than desktop CPCs and are continuing to fall month over month
• 56% of business customers search and book hotels via mobile devices

With the launch of hyperlocal applications such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places, people are spending more and more time on their mobile phones. This provides an even greater opportunity that you will reach your target market by running a mobile PPC campaign. It is not a simple process to run a successful mobile campaign, but here are some of the tips and best practices that we have come across:

• Create a separate campaign for Mobile. People searching on mobile devices have a completely different user intent than people searching on computers.
• Target your ad copy to local searchers. The majority of searches done on mobile devices are geocentric, therefore your ads should be specifically targeted to people searching in certain locations.
• Use both long tail and short tail keywords – last year, just using short tail keywords was the best practice because people weren’t as comfortable with typing on their mobile phones. Now, however, we have seen an increase in mobile long tail search keywords as users become more and more comfortable with their phones.
• Utilize the click-to-call function so that searches can be connected directly with your business.
• Create a mobile optimized website with conversion factors so that it is easy for users to book a reservation when they land on your website.
• Test! Just like in a regular PPC campaign, it is important to monitor your mobile campaigns and understand what types of offers, calls to actions, etc mobile users respond to.

Running an optimized, geo-targeted paid search campaign is the fastest and most successful way for hoteliers to capitalize on mobile search. As more and more smart phone users are emerging, it is absolutely critical for them to be able to find your hotel easily on their mobile devices. Just follow the steps outlined above and you will surely have a successful campaign!

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Contributed by: Kate Rasmussen, PPC Manager, Milestone Internet Marketing