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Did you know user behavior is different depending on the device used?
Multiple surveys show habits and intentions are different when people are looking at a website via a desktop compared to when looking at the same website on a mobile device.
If user habits change, so should your pay-per-click (PPC) strategy.
This is why you need to get to grips with device targeting, especially given you manage multiple PPC campaigns on behalf of other businesses.
The rise of smartphone usage has made mobile internet browsing the rule, rather than the exception, with around 60% of all searches carried out on Google being made on mobile devices.
You really need to customize your clients’ PPC ad campaigns for different types of devices to drive substantial desirable results.
The rise of artificial intelligence in the paid search industry is really a game-changer due to its accuracy, convenience, and most importantly, costs reduction. AI-driven tools help automate recurring and most time-intensive tasks, such as sifting through bulks of data for actionable intelligence.
Any seasoned search engine marketing (SEM) manager will tell you managing campaigns is not an easy feat as Google and other self-proclaimed gurus make it appear.
There is lots of stuff to be done within the limited hours you have in a typical working day, namely:
The list above is not even a fraction of the activities you have to accomplish within a day. There is an innumerable number of metrics and dimension combinations you should be looking out for.
Remember, mobile device targeting is just one of the many dimensions that can combine with other metrics to drive optimal results for your paid search clients.
This is where AI-driven tools come in to help you save tons of hours a day, cut costs, and most importantly, provide you timely access to actionable insights.
What could you do with extra hours in a working day?
This blog will walk you through tested and proven tactics and AI-driven tools you actually need to achieve a precise and profitable PPC mobile device targeting.
What is Device Targeting?
Device targeting is a tool in Google Ads that lets you choose which ads are shown on which devices.
You can create mobile-only campaigns, specific ad variations for tablets, or run different bidding strategies for desktop ad groups.
Hit the bull’s eye with device targeting.
There are four device targeting options on the Google Ads platform, namely:
You can also break things down further by specifically targeting different operating systems.
Currently, the most popular mobile device systems are Android and iOS.
Imagine your PPC client is selling software that only works on iPhones. You could exclude ads on Google Chrome albeit that may be a risky tactic as iPhone users could still be using Chrome.
Alternatively, you can send users from mobile devices to a mobile-specific landing page. More interesting, you could create totally different ads for users who are using iOS.
Being able to create specific ads for specific platforms has a multiplying effect on your clients’ ad campaigns.
You’ll be flexible to increase, or decrease, bids separately for different devices. If you notice that mobile users are converting more than desktop, you should raise bid adjustments to drive maximum ROIs and other goals.
Read below to find great information regarding device targeting with good benefits.
Mobile devices are on a hyper-growth path in today’s global economy.
The number of smartphones in circulation is almost the same as the world’s population. Device segmentation allows you to target with precision the users of these devices.
Take a look at how many of your visitors come via a mobile device in your analytics.
You might be surprised to find more mobile visitors than any other device.
Ideally, you’ll be able to make adjustments in your campaigns based on the devices being used. Look out for trends that indicate the most popular times and days and devices and create separate campaigns to benefit from the differences.
One of the most prolific features that artificial intelligence has brought to marketing is precision targeting.
Why do you think the rise of Amazon led to the sudden death of brick-and-mortar book stores?
When you go to Amazon, you are presented with book options specifically tailored for you based on past search history and other factors.
If you’re an avid reader of cat books, you won’t be led to the dog section. Essentially, you don’t have to waste time sifting through the whole stock of books just to get your preferred one.
You can now tailor marketing content to speak only to the target audience.
You can tailor the campaigns based on the age and gender of your audiences as well as household income. Mobile users are often younger, desktop users are more commonly used by men, and tablet users tend to be older females, according to multiple surveys.
Ideally, you should create PPC campaigns tailor-made for different behaviors on various mobile devices.
Why don’t you take advantage of this by tailoring your clients’ PPC campaigns to align with voice search requirements?
Device segmentation can help you split the budget efficiently between the devices based on their performance.
Remember, data in today’s world is the new currency.
You can use data to derive actionable insights on how to optimize budget allocation for the best-performing devices for maximum desired goals.
Bidding is one of the areas where most PPC managers fail. They overbid for keywords when they should not.
The vice-versa is also true.
Some managers underbid, which causes the ads to lose out to the competition when opportunities arise.
Didn’t you receive the memo that the rules of the PPC game are now governed by data?
Data-driven systems can really help you know when to raise or lower bids based on the data. For instance, if your data shows that a huge chunk of your mobile audiences is converting than other devices, it’s time to pull the plug.
What do I mean?
It’s time to cut expenditure on desktops, smart TVs, and tablets and focus on your top earner. The aforementioned is aligned with the Pareto rule, which states that 80% of the effects are driven by 20% causes.
If the mobile device audiences constitute 20% driving 80% of your client’s results, cut other sources of wastage without mercy.
Now, this is what seasoned PPC managers call precision targeting.
After all, your major goal is to help your clients drive maximum desired results (traffic, clicks, ROIs, etc.) with a minimum cost per action (CPA).
If you’re setting up different ads for mobile devices, the first thing to ask:
What different behaviors or trends have you noticed from different mobile users that will influence changes in your clients’ PPC ad campaigns?
Putting aside differences that will be specific to your clients, there are several basic things to consider when considering mobile users:
A mobile or tablet screen is smaller than a desktop.
Because of this, the search engine results page (and your landing pages/ website) will display differently.
If your clients’ PPC ads are shown in positions one or two on mobile, then they will be at the top of the SERP and take up almost the whole mobile screen.
Conversely, on desktop, the SERP is large.
Your ads will take up a lower percentage of the screen, potentially making the ads less visible to attract clicks.
Consider what the typical users do while on mobile.
When users are using a desktop computer to browse Google they’re typically sitting down and relatively settled.
On the other hand, mobile users could be doing anything, from riding the subway, eating in a restaurant, to working out at the gym.
Because of the aforementioned, attention spans will differ.
Keeping your clients’ PPC ads, simple and easy to skim for mobile users could be the difference-maker.
Complex buying decisions with a high degree of financial and/or emotional risk may be less likely to happen on a mobile device.
With only 34% of high-value online purchases happening on mobile, you potentially need to think about your clients’ goals when running mobile-only campaigns.
Instead of focusing purposely on purchases, you could use CTAs offering more content, or persuade leads to join your clients’ mailing lists.
Like I said earlier, there are VERY many devices on the market.
It’s incredibly easy to show your ads on the wrong ones, which can have a disastrous effect on your PPC ad campaigns’ performance.
So, how do you determine what device works and what doesn’t in your clients’ ad campaigns,
Before we jump into the most recommended AI-driven PPC management tools, it’s essential to first understand how a proper marketing funnel functions.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these stages to gain a clearer understanding of your marketing funnel and the buyer’s journey.
In the first stage of every advertising campaign, the objective is to develop brand recognition among audiences and gauge your paid search campaigns’ processes.
At this stage, you must also measure your campaigns’ impressions, impression share, lost IS and EMIS
Awareness Stage: Device Analysis
The awareness stage is located at the top of the funnel.
At this stage, it’s vital to identify what device your target audience is using the most. For instance, if you’re marketing a mobile-based item, it makes the most sense to tailor-make ads specifically for mobile users.
Here are some metrics you could use to measure for device targeting during the awareness stage:
This is where you switch your focus from creating brand awareness to generating leads for your esteem paid search clients.
It involves developing relevant and engaging ad content to encourage your target audience to purchase the products (and services) you’re clients are offering.
Here, you have to consider clickthrough rates (CTR) and engagements.
Consideration Stage: Device Analysis
This stage correlates with the consideration stage of the customer journey. Below are some vital device targeting metrics to measure in the device analysis:
This is the final goal of every PPC ad campaign as it deals with conversions, i.e., the action you have defined as valuable to your search engine marketing (SEM) clients.
You can use reports to analyze the conversions and costs of different device types.
Ideally, you have to ensure you’ve measured the device performance during each stage of your leads’ journey.
Why?
This will help you determine whether the device is working correctly for a specific campaign.
Below are critical device targeting metrics to measure when you’re at the decision stage or device analysis point of your marketing funnel and customer journey.
Data-driven decision-making is based on the insights derived from the information database.
The process is more objective and can be quickly evaluated according to the influence of the data on metrics. Essentially, you can use past information to predict the future.
Device targeting is very complex than it seems.
Allow me to prove this!
Some PPC campaigns have in-depth levels of complexity. Essentially, there are massive amounts of data to go over if multiple Google Ads accounts are involved.
Did I even mention the countless metrics + dimensions combinations you have to sift through individually?
When dealing with multiple PPC campaigns, you need to bring all of your data to the forefront and apply analysis for actionable insights.
Imagine you have a campaign with 20 ad groups, each group consisting of 20 keywords. This campaign targets 4 device types over 50 geographic locations with ads running 24 /7.
It’s not hard to imagine how quickly such a campaign could turn into an incredibly complex maze.
There’s a FREE and popular tool that seasoned PPC managers use to measure the complexity of their clients’ PPC campaigns. This tool is called PPCexpo Combinations Calculator.
This free tool allows you to determine the exact number of combinations in your campaigns.
The Combinations Calculator looks at campaigns, ad groups, keywords per ad group, device types, hours of the day, etc., and determines how many unique possible combinations can be made from all of this.
Let’s measure the number of possible combinations in a single campaign featuring the following:
Imagine going through all the 474,000 combinations, one by one. How long would you take just to implement a single optimization?
This is why you really need AI-driven tools.
This brings us to the device performance report. Before you decide which device to keep and what to do away with, you need an easy report to inform on your decision-making.
Remember, today’s paid search management has no room for decisions made based on intuition and gut.
There’s an AI-driven tool that scan scans your clients’ PPC ad campaigns and sends highly interactive and easy-to-read PDF reports to your inbox. This tool is called PPCexpo PPC Reports.
That tool provides a device performance report can help organize your device targeting strategy to drive maximum desired results. It scans your clients’ ad accounts and reports on the performance of the devices.
Essentially, it provides you with quick, actionable insights that allow you to make better decisions.
This analysis by segmentation offers a categorized overview of key metrics and core aspects of your PPC campaign.
This is instrumental in helping you identify the areas that need attention, which facilitates more optimized campaigns that can deliver more for your clients.
After getting actionable insights from PPC Reports…what’s next? It’s time to improve your device targeting to derive maximum desired results for your PPC clients.
How?
Dig deeper to get in-depth insights into how to optimize your campaigns using the device and other dimensions and metrics for maximum performance and more profits for your clients.
Not manually though. Use AI-driven solutions.
Like I said earlier, managing a PPC campaign is not a walk in the park. Please, revisit the earlier example of the Combinations Calculator to enhance your understanding.
Click this link to access this absolutely FREE PPCexpo Combinations Calculator.
You need an AI-driven PPC management solution to help you sift through thousands and thousands of metrics + dimension combos to find the ultimate and optimum combination to drive maximum results.
How feasible is it, to go through each combination manually?
Unless you’ve got the speed and efficiency of a quantum supercomputer, it’s virtually impossible to crunch all those combinations.
Understanding the level of complexity in your account (i.e., the number of combinations) is a great start.
However, there is still a looming problem of managing and optimizing multiple Google Ads accounts profitably.
For that challenge, you need an intelligent tool like PPC Signal.
PPC Signal is the leading and arguably the only application built from the ground up to mitigate complexities in your clients’ ad campaigns.
The sensational PPC management app uses advanced algorithms and machine learning to detect opportunities and risks in your campaigns automatically.
No matter how complex or paralyzing your data is, PPC Signal provides timely, actionable observations about positive and negative changes occurring in your campaigns.
With these observations and signals, you can overcome complexities problems with ease and escape the dread of managing multiple Google Ad accounts.
The once tedious task of dissecting complex data to discover valuable and actionable insights is now AI-driven.
Essentially, this allows you to zero in on the combinations and changes that have colossal importance.
Time dedicated to PPC management can be spent entirely on making continuous improvements rather than dealing with complexities.
Check out the PPC Signal screenshot below.
It’s incredibly easy for you to filter out the results based on the device criteria.
Ideally, the two aforementioned metrics should go hand in hand, i.e., rise and fall simultaneously.
P.S. The main role of PPCexpo PPC reports is to do reporting on your data as the name suggests.
Conversely, PPC Signal is an AI-driven data analytics tool that sifts through your massive campaign data for timely, actionable insights. A combination of PPCexpo PPC Reports and Signal can help you manage your clients’ PPC profitably, stress-free, and with less time.
It’s time for you to sit, relax, and have a cup of coffee, and let AI do the heavy lifting for you at a fraction of cost and time.
It’s clear the user behavior is different depending on the device used through device performance report. Your overall PPC strategy should be proactive i.e. should change with user behavior.
This is why you should pay attention to device targeting on your clients’ paid search ad campaigns. In today’s world, the proliferation of mobile devices is incredibly massive. You really need to leverage effective and most importantly, accurate device targeting for your clients’ PPC ad campaigns.
PPC Signal is a best choice which uses power AI and ML to analyze the data and give you best results which can help you to optimize your targeting.
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