Usability Must Be Top Priority in Mobile Search
By Keith Trivitt | @KeithTrivitt | Director, Marketing and Communications
Of all the hot trends in digital marketing — Facebook advertising, the future of display ads, mobile payments — perhaps none is getting more attention at the moment than mobile search. As developed nations continue their march into the era of the mobile-dominated Web, mobile search marketing has taken on an increasingly important role for brands, marketers and advertisers.
According to IBM and other industry observers, 2012 is shaping up to be the year of mobile. Direct Marketing News reported in May that mobile commerce accounted for 13.3 percent of all online sales in Q1 2012, up from 7 percent a year ago. The growth and power of mobile commerce is further magnified by data from IBM showing that mobile traffic to retailer sites made up 17 percent of all online traffic in Q1 2012.
And as Kleiner Perkins partner and Internet analyst Mary Meeker famously reported in 2010 (and others have confirmed since then) mobile Internet is projected to overtake fixed Internet by 2015.
Clearly, mobile marketing and mobile search have taken their places as digital marketing’s rising stars.
Here at MediaWhiz, mobile search is part of the lifeblood of our successful and growing search marketing practice. It has helped us retain a top-20 ranking among search agencies in Advertising Age’s Agency Report, and it is increasingly being utilized across various client campaigns.
It’s also a topic we love to talk about, both internally among colleagues and externally with clients, analysts and the media. The latter is where we recently had the opportunity to discuss this fascinating industry trend.
In a detailed report out this month in Direct Marketing News, Adam Riff, MediaWhiz’s senior vice president of digital strategy, offers analysis and perspective on how brands and agencies can develop effective mobile search marketing campaigns.
According to DMNews, Riff “says usability should be the top priority for brands developing mobile search strategies.
‘You have to make sure that you are answering that challenge on the phone, they certainly don’t want to go to a website to call you, they want to be able to click a little link right in the ad or organic listing that dials the phone number,” Riff says. “Understanding not just the device, but the intent and behavior of the user while using the device is an integral part of [mobile SEM].’”
Mobile search, much like the larger search marketing industry, is poised for strong growth in the months and years ahead. As Google, Bing and the other search engines continue to personalize search by augmenting users’ searches with social media data, and as mobile Internet use eventually overtakes fixed Internet use, look for mobile search to play an increasingly visible and important role in brands’ digital marketing campaigns.
Kindle
