Top Tips to Grow a Mobile Ad Campaign - The Great American Small Business Challenge | The Great American Small Business Challenge

Mobile ad spending is increasing, and there are new tools to help narrow down to the audience you want to show ads to. If you want to grow your mobile campaigns, you will need to design every aspect of your ads with mobile users in mind.

Speed

Mobile users are on data plans that may take longer than a normal land Internet line to render a page. As a result, speed is a factor in mobile ad conversions. Design your site, and your banner advertising, so that it displays as quickly as possible. Smaller ad sizes help, but alternate formats like PNG allow you to keep the look of your image in a file size that is compressed.

Navigation should also get an overhaul. Remember that most mobile users will be using their thumbs to navigate their screen. Don’t complicate that with a lot of drop downs and links that are hard to see. Design your site and your ads to feature prominent links that are accessible to those with large hands.

Design

Mobile users have to deal with a small screen size, and usually adverse lighting conditions. If your ad is designed with too much white, for instance, it won’t be as accessible as if it featured some darker colors. Limit the text on your page, and use larger fonts so that users can easily read your copy. You should also do some work on your conversion funnel to see if you can make the process from landing to thank you page more efficient. Clicks are valuable on desktop, even more so on mobile. Simplify the process and make it one single step to convert for higher success rates.

Targeting

Mobile users tend to search for location-specific keywords, so localizing your landing page will go a long way towards netting conversions. You should also design your display advertising with location in mind, perhaps with the home state featured prominently in the ad with “proudly serving the local area” text. Also include functions that help people communicate easily with you, especially if you are leading someone to a brick and mortar store. A phone number, a Skype click-to-call button or a map can all help bring more clients to you.

The most important tip to grow is to learn from your mistakes. Try running some kind of feedback campaign, and actually ask users what features are most important to include in a mobile site.

Bio: Ted Dhanik is the CEO and co-founder of display advertising buy-side platform engage:BDR. Ted Dhanik has used display advertising to put brands like MySpace and LowerMyBills on the map. Find out how to use mobile advertising to generate business leads with tips from Ted Dhanik.