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.