Mobile Listings on Google Do the Yellow Pages Better

Nov. 6, 2011 - PRLog -- Beginning about a year ago, mobile Click-to-Call listings began to explode. After years of false starts, something had changed. In December of 2010, a Google mobile product manager revealed that the company’s mobile Click-to-Call business was growing by 28% per month. (http://gigaom.com/2010/12/21/googles-click-to-call-boosts-mobile-revenues/) Within the year, Google’s revenue run rate from mobile advertising jumped to $2.5 Billion from $1 Billion.

What happened? Mobile search had crossed over to the mainstream. According to industry analyst Mary Meeker, there were more than 240 million mobile web users in the U.S. at the end of 2010. (http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/10/meeker-mobile-slides/) Long the domain of technophiles and industry insiders, using your cell phone to search for news and information was a concept that even your mother understood. Just as Web use a dozen years earlier, Mobile Web usage was now past the inflection point, and past the point of return.

And just as an earlier generation of technology enablers helped small and mid-sized businesses onto the Web, another group is now helping businesses onto mobile. Companies like Organic, Razorfish, Omniture, and Coremetrics helped enable businesses to get recognized in desktop searches. New companies like Twilio, Motally and mTrax now help businesses set up correctly for mobile.

First step? Create a mobile Click-to-Call listing.

What is a mobile Click-to-Call listing? Quite simply, it’s a paid search ad that appears when people search for local services on their cell phones. Only this ad can be clicked, and can let searchers call businesses directly with one click. So say you’re in need of a tow truck in Albuquerque. You pull out your phone and search. You will be calling a local towing service. And if one local towing service is not on mobile, not to worry. You will be calling a competitor. Mobile search just became a land rush.

And all of this is now starting to happen. Analysts expect mobile local search to be a $4 billion market in just three years. Diana Pouliot, Google’s Director of Mobile Advertising, said recently that fully one-third of Google’s searches on cell phones were for local information. Not to be left behind, Yahoo and Microsoft have ramped up their local advertising businesses.

Setting up a mobile Click-to-Call listing is the modern equivalent of buying an ad in the Yellow Pages. Only it’s better. For a tenth of the cost, mobile ads deliver guaranteed results.

So how do you take advantage of this rapidly changing environment? First, ask yourself how local your customers are, and what they are worth. Is an inbound call from a qualified prospect in your area worth at least $2? $20? If not, local mobile search is not a required need for you at this time. If calls from local prospects are worth that much, or more, then you absolutely must have a mobile strategy. So think about this with some rigor. If you run a coffee shop, getting calls for $2 each might seem expensive. If you’re selling houses, or tax planning, or cars, or towing services, then it’s time to figure this out. Evaluate every ad by the same metric: What does it cost to deliver a qualified call to you?

Unfortunately, deciding to launch in mobile is just the beginning. If you go directly to Google or Yahoo or Microsoft, you will be confronted by an array of choices. Too many, to be frank. Remember, Google makes money while you figure things out. In fact, the longer it takes you to figure it out, the more money Google makes! Bidding on the wrong keywords? Setting a daily budget that’s too high? Wasting money on poor quality clickthroughs instead of tracking successes? Guess who wins? Not you.

Mobile listing management services are available to help you launch on all the major search engines. You get to take advantage of their prior knowledge, and pay a flat fee. You will be getting calls from qualified local customers in days.

Among companies offering mobile management services, certain ones, like Twilio and mTrax, bundle in extra services such as call logging and tracking. This lets you see a record of every call, and listen to calls after they’re completed. You get to launch with ease on multiple platforms, and also have a customer sales management platform, just like a big national service provider.

Want one more reason to launch a mobile listing? According to Google’s Jason Spero, after people look up local businesses on their phones, fully 61% call in! (http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/10/mobile-its-not-too-late-...) Time for you to dial in to mobile too.


About the Author
Dev Bhatia is the CEO of mTrax. He has been involved in online marketing since 1996, and exclusively focused on mobile advertising since 2006.

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About mTrax
mTrax enables small businesses to get more calls from customers searching for their services on cell phones. We set up dedicated mobile click-to-call listings on Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, ensuring that when people search for your services locally, your listing comes up. mTrax makes mobile search super-easy, affordable, and pain-free.

For more, visit: http://mtrax.com/get-calls-now.html