When is a Smartphone Just a Phone?

I received an interesting request today from one of the advertising agencies I work with concerning a client campaign. 
 
"Can we pause their mobile campaign?  They are happy with the CTR (Click Through Rate), but not their conversion rate.  Any ideas on how to improve this?"  So I paused the campaign and went to take a look.

This campaign is complex and is designed to recruit volunteers to work with disadvantaged youth.  The targeting is impressive.  Hispanic females, age 40 to 65, high school diploma or more, bilingual, +$50K income...  Targeting ten cities throughout the state...  Mobile is a great way to target this specific community.

Looking at the landing page we were directing traffic to, I believe they could leverage the campaign to take advantage of the medium they are advertising on.  This is a mobile campaign and they have no way for an interested individual to call for more information.  They are simply directing traffic to a mobile enabled version of their desktop web site.

This is ironic because the creative asks several times “ready to speak up for a child who needs you?”, but there is no way for the individual to speak to an employee of XXXX (or a fellow volunteer).  If you do scroll all the way to the bottom of the page you can find an office phone number in font size that I have difficulty reading. 

We just finished running a campaign for a local university targeting high school students.  For the landing page they built a campaign specific landing page (not a link to the regular web site).  If you were a high school student looking at a college ad and were interested, what would be the next logical step you would expect?  Access to answers.  So each high school was assigned to one of two specific enrollment counselors at the university.   When you clicked on the ad, depending on your school, you saw a landing page with three simple elements.  “Hi, I am Jeff.  I am your enrollment counselor and I am here to answer any questions you may have.”  And there was a picture of Jeff with the following two options.  “Click here to talk to me.”  “Click here to email me.”

Three weeks into the campaign, the university contacted me asking if they could add additional counselors to handle the volume. 

People do business with people, and I believe that a personal commitment like volunteering to help children at risk is a harder decision than ordering new shoes online.  And mobile phones offer a call to action that is superior to any other medium (TV, radio, print, yellow pages, email, desktop ads) – with one click you can talk to someone.

With digital marketing, the click to a web site is only the beginning.  In many ways, it is the easiest part of the campaign.  But we have to look beyond the click and identify the obstacles to achieving the desired goal.  In this case - engagement leading to enrollment.  And for all the excitement about mobile devices taking over web traffic, remember - a smartphone is still a phone and then in lies the competitive advantage of a mobile campaign.

Frequently the Very Best Optimization Factors are Sitting on Your Desk.

Below is a simple, yet powerful, article on the use of pronouns in digital marketing.  All to often we fret over the advertising channel, the sites we should run on and how we optimize the campaign to generate the very best results.  "The campaign isn't working!  Get the vendor on the phone." 

And all along, the very best optimization factors are sitting on your desk.  Choosing the right pronoun for the Call To Action.  Frequently when we think of A/B Testing, we are looking a creative and landing pages.  But as this study proves, "Words Matter".  Enjoy!

Mevs. You: How Pronouns Affect Click Conversion Rates

Posted by Tim Ash on 9 April 2014 | Comments

The pronoun you choose to use in your call-to-action button can make a huge difference in whether people click on your button and buy or pass you up for the next guy's website.

If you've never considered whether you should use "your" or "my" when you write the text on your call-to-action button, it could be costing you a lot of money. The pronoun you choose makes a huge difference in whether people click on your button (and subsequently buy) or if they pass you up for the next guy's (properly worded) website. Even some of the most experienced conversion optimizers will test hundreds of elements on their site but still rely on intuition (or what "sounds right") instead of doing the proper research.

If you’re having foggy memories of sitting glassy-eyed through your high school English class, here’s a primer on choosing the best pronoun for the job.

Pronoun Use: By the Numbers

The limited data available on the conversion benefits of using first person vs. second person pronouns when you write your call-to-action buttons indicates that using first person will help you generate more sales. Unbounce and ContentVerve conducted a split test which compared two pages that were identical except for the call to action at the bottom of the page. One page asked site visitors to "start your free 30-day trial period." The other page asked them to "start my free 30-day trial period." The results: the "my" page resulted in 90 percent more clicks than the "your" page. That's pretty dramatic.
 

They repeated the test with another two pages. One page said "create account;" the other said "create your account." The "your" page resulted in 24.91 percent fewer clicks than the "my" page. Joanna Wiebe from Copyblogger, replicated the test with one of her own clients and also found that the first person pronoun (that's "I" and "my") beat out the second person pronoun ("you' and "your") by 24 percent.

Wouldn’t you like to get a 24 percent increase in conversions? Try this simple experiment on your own site and see what happens.

The Psychology of "I"

To understand why using first person pronouns like "I" and "my" are more effective that using "you and "your," it pays to look a little at the psychology of sales. When a person feels personally connected to a product or service, they buy, according to Entrepreneur and others. That's not always easy to achieve on the Internet, where your sales copy and products compete with thousands and thousands of other sites. Using first-person pronouns takes your sales pitch from the impersonal Internet back to the 1950s corner store, where the store owner greeted everyone by name. No one wants to feel that they are merely a number in a stats column to you. The simple use of "me," "my" and "mine" helps to avoid that.

Another explanation for the power of "I" is to consider how people arrive at purchase decisions. Ultimately, decisions are made based on feelings and emotions. Using first-person pronouns in your call to action leverages this knowledge by helping visitors feel the personal benefit of clicking.

First-Person Pronouns and Click Conversions

Of course, designing good, effective call-to-action buttons is not quite as simple as just using first-person pronouns. Any good call-to-action button is only as good as the copy that leads the reader to the end of the page and, of course, the product that it represents. However, if you're still urging site visitors to "click here for your free trial" or even "start your free trial," a simple adjustment could make a big impact on your bottom line.

“It doesn’t do any good to sit up and take notice, if all you do is keep on sitting.”

“The very best marketing comes from observing consumer behavior and inserting your message into their behavior.” 

eMarketer released a report today – “USMobile Ad Dollars Shift to Search Apps” – that shows that several marketers are certainly taking this to heart – at Google’s expense. 

It is no secret that Google has owned the Search category on desktops “forever” with a share of voice in the mid-60’s.  And as the consumer moved over to mobile devices, Google was at the forefront of mobile search.  In 2012 it was estimated that Google had a +82% share of the mobile search market.  eMarketer is reporting that Google’s mobile share has dropped to 68% in 2013 and much of this decline has occurred because of a shift in the behavior of mobile consumers. 

Part of this shift is occurring because of the increased use of mobile apps for search.  They are projecting that apps like Yelp are taking a bite out of Google’s dominance.

“App-based searching is a new phenomenon that pales in comparison with the longstanding practice of querying a search engine, and the degree to which mobile users rely on both methods for finding information is unclear,” Boyle added. “Still, in light of the growing popularity and time spent with apps, search marketers that recognize this behavior and focus on increasing visibility within apps aligned to their industry and business objectives will be best positioned to connect with the largest number of mobile users.”

The desktop versus mobile web site debate is dead.  While it is not time to abandon the desktop web site, as mobile traffic grows, it is time for businesses to quick “thinking” and “start doing” something about web sites that are not mobile friendly.  Personally, I can’t imagine designing a web site that fails to support the soon to be largest segment of web traffic (mobile) and segment that is growing (mobile).  It is the equivalent of building a web site that doesn’t support English.

“But I have all this money sunk into my legacy web site and it will cost a large/medium/small fortune to convert it to mobile responsive.”  And I have a closet full of double breasted suits and wide/skinny ties.  It doesn’t matter… 

Last month I analyzed the web sites of 20 clients/prospects.  17 of them do not have a mobile enabled web site. 

·       Overall 30% of web traffic now comes from a mobile device.  For many businesses the amount of mobile traffic is already more than 50% (ask someone in the news media).

·       56% of American adults are now smartphone owners.  

·       By 2015, 81% of U.S. cell users will have smartphones

·       Smartphones outsell desktop computers and have since the 4^th quarter of 2011.

·       By the end of 2013, there will be more mobile devices on Earth than people.

·       48% use or would like to use a smartphone to shop while in-store or on the go.

·       Time spent with mobile apps starting to challenge television: consumers are spending 127 minutes per day in mobile apps–up 35 percent from 94 minutes a day in the same time last year–and spend 168 minutes watching television per day.

·       Mobile searches related to restaurants have a conversion rate of 90% with 64% converting within the hour

 

Need +100 more reasons to stop thinking and start acting, click here - Mobile Industry Statistics

 “It doesn’t do any good to sit up and take notice, if all you do is keep on sitting.”