PPC Hero’s mobile-focused June series kicks off today with step one of the process: getting your client on board with opening up to the mobile traffic funnel. If I had to guess, I’d say most practicing account managers know the importance of mobile traffic, but how do you convince your client to make the investment? Most people would have a hard time arguing with direct statistics, so today I’m going to arm you with the top 3 stats you can throw at the conversation to at least begin explaining the importance of mobile traffic to any client.
- Mobile-based web traffic is up 162.73% from 2010 to 2012 worldwide (source: Pingdom, May 2012).Much of this increase in web traffic is internationally targeted, with Asia & Europe leading the pack. However, North America is making gains in this area as well, with a 69.00% increase from 2010 to 2012 (see table below). Bringing up this point to a client could really help when trying to show the growth potential of the mobile medium. It’s no secret that more and more people are trading in landline telephones for mobile devices, but this statistic shows that not only are people trading out their devices, they’re using them to access the internet while on the go and not just to make phone calls.
Courtesy of Pingdom, May 2012
- 25% of those using the Internet in the United States are doing so ONLY from their mobile devices (source: mobiThinking, February 2012).What does this mean? Essentially, it means that one quarter of all those individuals who are getting on the Internet rarely, if ever, do so from a more ‘traditional’ device like a laptop or desktop machine. The best way to use this knowledge to your advantage with a client is to emphasize what they would be missing by ignoring this section of traffic. By choosing to avoid mobile-targeted campaigns, they’ve eliminated 25% of their possible profit base right out of the gate because that quarter will more than likely never interact with the client’s brand on another device.
Courtesy of mobiThinking, February 2012
- Mobile Internet usage should overtake desktop/laptop-based usage by 2014 (source: Microsoft Tag via Digital Buzz, April 2011). This seems to be a fairly strong argument for targeting mobile traffic all on it’s own. In just two years, there will be more people accessing the web from their mobile devices than their desktops and laptops of old. Waiting until that time comes to get in the mobile game would put your clients behind the curve with the competition, and we all know how hard it is to get ahead when you start at the back of the pack.
Backing up the first two statistics with the final, future outlook should be the knockout punch to any client objections against targeting mobile traffic. There’s proven growth over the last two years and many of the users responsible for that growth are reporting that their mobile device is the sole mode of their Internet surfing. Those two data points combine to determine the numbers for two years from now, and the numbers say mobile will be HMIC (Head Medium In Charge).
Now that you’re prepared with the reasons why your client should buy in to mobile-based advertising, make sure you stay tuned for the rest of the series! Our esteemed PPC Hero’s will be explaining how your mobile landing pages should be different from your regular ones, how to build a mobile site using Duda, how to optimize mobile traffic for ecommerce accounts and finally how to dive-in to Analytics and pull out beneficial mobile data. We’ll also be posting a special edition of Whaddya’know Wednesdays this week addressing the differences in writing ad copy for mobile traffic compared to desktop and laptop-based traffic.
Have you had any client conversations regarding mobile traffic for their paid search advertising? Tell us about the good, or the bad, experiences you’ve had and how you tackled them in the comments section below! As always, thanks for reading!
