Have you missed out on the latest updates from the world of social media, mobile or pay-per-click advertising from the Easter period? You’re in luck – we’ve kept our ears to the ground for you!
Social Media News
Facebook Update Cover Image Guidelines
When Facebook launched their new “timeline” for brand pages (back in March 2012) there were some fairly strict rules accompanying the cover photo function. Users were forbidden from including the following:
Price or purchase information, such as “40 percent off,” or, “Download it on socialmusic.com.”
Contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your page’s “about” section.
References to Facebook features or actions, such as like or share, or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features.
Calls to action, such as “get it now” or “tell your friends.”
Advertisers hoping to get the most out of their cover photo space will be pleased to hear that Facebook have recently relaxed their cover photo guidelines considerably, replacing the previous bullet points with the following rules:
Cover photos can't be deceptive, misleading, infringe on anyone else's copyright or be in violation of the Pages Terms. You may not encourage people to upload your cover photo to their personal timelines.
Cover photos must be at least 399 pixels wide and may not include images with more than 20% text.
The less stringent guidelines mean that we are now free to add our URL, special offers and other information to our page’s cover photos - just as long as the text doesn’t take up more than 20% of the image.
Google+ Make Improvements
Google+ recently announced some profile page improvements, supposedly in line with the feedback they have received from users. Profile pages now offer:
A tab for the user’s local reviews
More intuitive ways to edit your “about me” information
Very, very big cover photos!
YouTube Reach 1 Billion Users per Month
On March 21st YouTube released the news that it attracts 1 billion unique users every month – that’s nearly one out of every two people on the internet. YouTube thank “Generation C” for their growth, a term they have used to describe the young adult demographic that use their smartphones as a “complementary activity to their lives” - while they commute to work or school, wait for a friend or sit through television adverts. They also have Psy to thank – the man whose popular Gangnam Style video is the most viewed on YouTube.
Mobile News
Facebook Launch Android App
Facebook have just launched “Home”, a brand new mobile app that will allow Android users to transform their smartphone’s lock screen into a version of their Facebook news feed. In Mark Zuckerberg’s words, "You're going to be able to turn your Android phone into a great social device. Our phones today are designed around apps, not people. We want to flip that around." Home will be available on Google Play from April 14th. The HTC First, a new Android phone coming “pre-loaded" and “optimised” with Facebook Home, will be released on the same day.
Yahoo Buy Summly for $30 Billion
Yahoo have acquired Summly, a company founded 17 year old Nick D’Aloisio, for $30 million last month. Summly is an iPhone app that aggregates and formats articles from various new publishers into a summarised version of the content. The app as it stands now will cease operation, and the technology powering it will “come to life” through Yahoo’s mobile products soon.
Pay-Per-Click News
Google Disapprove Phone Numbers in Ad Text
Starting from this month, AdWords ads with phone numbers in text will be disapproved. Advertisers who want to display a number in their ad will be required to use AdWords’ call extensions - a feature that allows advertisers to include a phone number in desktop ads and a “click to call” button in their mobile ads.
The release of the iPhone 5 and the growing smart phone penetration worldwide means that if ever there was a time to optimise your PPC campaigns for mobile - it’s now!
According to Google, 49% of smart phone owners search on their smart phone every day so you should really make sure your campaigns are optimised for mobile so you can display ads to these searchers.
Here are some best practices to follow when optimising your paid search activity for mobile.
1)Create separate campaigns – Separate your mobile campaigns from your desktop search campaigns to help monitor performance and control CPC bids, daily budgets, ads and keywords. People commonly make the mistake of grouping all “new media” together by targeting tablets in their mobile campaigns too, but you should target tablets in your desktop campaigns, or in a separate campaign altogether
2) Bid competitively – Fewer ads are displayed on mobile devices so you should bid competitively to secure position one or two, otherwise there is strong chance your ad will not be seen.
3) Don’t disregard “research” keywords – It has been argued that people searching on mobiles want to take action rather than research, but statistics from Google suggest otherwise. According to Google, 39% of searches on mobiles result in sales on desktop computers, whilst 24% lead to offline sales. This means you shouldn’t disregard your “research” orientated keywords altogether in favour of only “action” keywords.
4) Use AdWords sitelink extensions – Google AdWords location extensions and call extensions can be valuable additions to your PPC mobile campaigns, as they can increase click-through-rates and make your ads more prominent in the search results. Location extensions are used to display your address below your ad so that people searching on their mobile can find you and get directions. Remember to only use location extensions if you have a physical business address though! Call extensions display a click-to-call phone number below your ad so that mobile searchers can call you quickly from the search results without even landing on your website.
5) Use appropriate call-to-actions in your ads – Remember that your ads will be appearing on mobile phones so consider using call-to-actions like “call today” and “speak to us” rather than “buy online”. You don’t need to include a phone number in your ad if you are using AdWords phone extensions as your phone number will appear below your ad automatically.
6) Optimise landing pages for mobile – Your landing pages should ideally be optimised for mobile devices with clear and concise information, visible phone numbers and large buttons to make navigation easier for people with touch screens. Google’s “Get Mo Meter” is a useful tool for assessing how your website looks on mobile phones.
7) Assign unique phone numbers – If you have more than one phone number, it would be useful to assign a different number to your mobile campaigns so you can track the amount of phone calls they are generating. This will also help you monitor the average value of phone sales compared to the average value of your desktop and offline sales.
If you need help setting up and managing your PPC mobile campaigns then we can help you, get in touch with us today.
According to global shipment estimates published last month, 2011 saw total shipments of smartphones increase by a staggering 62.7%, overtaking P.C. shipments for the first time. Fortunately for those of us working to generate sales and leads through this relatively new medium, our potential customers aren’t just using their mobiles to connect with Twitter and Facebook; comScore reports that 38% of U.S. smartphone owners have completed at least one purchase using their device.
Get started by segmenting your data by device;AdWords campaigns are opted in to target “mobile devices with full browsers” by default, enabling your ads to appear to users who search via a smartphone. You can gauge how many of your AdWords visitors accessed your site via a smartphone by segmenting by device in the AdWords interface. This will allow you to compare metrics relating to desktop, smartphone and tablet users.
If your existing campaigns attract a considerable chunk of mobile traffic, or you would like to optimise your account to attract more mobile traffic, it is highly advisable to create dedicated campaigns that solely target mobile devices. Segmenting campaigns by device targeting will allow you to:
Adapt your bids; there are less ads displayed on the initial page of Google’s mobile search results than there are on a desktop, meaning that you may need to bid slightly higher to achieve a place on page one.
Use a suitable landing page; in an ideal world, you will have an optimised-for-mobile landing page that you can use as your destination URL. Otherwise, ensure that your site is easy to navigate on a smartphone and that conversions can be carried out without difficulty.
Enable appropriate ad-extensions; make it easy for the searcher to get in touch by creating a location extension (if you have a physical location) and adding a click-to-call number.
Think about your keywords
Many of the resources discussing mobile targeting in Adwords suggest that search queries made from a mobile device tend to be shorter than desktop searches. While this appears to be the case for traditional mobile phone users on the Google m platform, research conducted in 2009 showed no difference in the average number of words in an iPhone-based query and a desktop-based query. Assuming this to be true for most modern smartphones, the data implies that we don’t necessarily need to disregard all of our long tail keywords when we set up mobile-targeted campaigns.
On the other hand, keyword content might differ if users searching via a mobile make more use of Google’s suggested searches. Begin to type some of your high-volume keywords into a smartphone and have a look at the search queries that Google suggests; include them as keywords if you think that they are relevant or add appropriate negative keywords if they are not.
Consider mobiles without full web browsers
Though this may come as a surprise, the majority of internet-capable mobile phones in use today carry WAP browsers as opposed to the full internet browsers offered by most smartphones. While WAP users might not use their mobiles to browse the web in the same way as a smartphone owner (or as frequently), there is still opportunity to harness this traffic through AdWords.
Targeting searches from WAP browsers requires the creation of a WAP mobile ad, which will be subject to slightly different policies and will require your destination site to be written in a supported markup language. If you don’t have a suitable landing page, don’t worry; consider connecting clicks to your business telephone number using a “click-to-call” WAP mobile ad.
Thank you for reading! Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.
