Canadians are attached to their smartphones and the Internet, which is why it’s important to have a mobile advertising strategy in place.

Data shows that Canada’s smartphone penetration is at 72 per cent, which is greater than the United States where it’s 62 per cent, according to comScore. Also, in 2012, the average Canadian user surfed the web for 41.3 hours per month, which deems Canada as the second most frequent Internet users compared to the countries comScore tracks. Canadians also view an average of 120 web pages each day.

Before making a purchase, consumers will spend more than 15 hours a week researching products/services, according to Google. If you don’t have a site optimized for mobile you could be missing out on buying opportunities with 55 per cent of customers using their phone for research expecting to buy a product/service within an hour and 83 per cent of customers expecting to buy that day.

Many companies are taking notice of more and more people becoming glued to their mobile phones, which is why mobile advertising spend in the U.S. tripled in 2013 to $3 billion from $1.2 billion the year before, according to Linkedin Marketing Solutions.

One of the most important aspects of mobile advertising strategy is ensuring that your site has a responsive design. Don’t create a separate mobile site, but rather your website’s coding will resize your website’s features to a smaller-sized screen, which is also useful for tablet users. This way users will have an easy time navigating your website, which also improves your chance of site conversions.

Mobile users also have high expectations. In 2011, 71 per cent of mobile users expected that web pages would load up faster on their devices than on desktops, according to research by Gomez. You have five seconds for your mobile page to load or else 74 per cent of mobile users will abandon the site. Unfortunately, many sites are slower than that and a mobile page takes an average of seven seconds to load, says Google.

To tackle your site’s mobile SEO, it’s important to think about how you might search differently using a phone rather than a desktop. While many smartphone users start researching through a search engine, the way they search can be influenced through the use of voice search and the keywords you would target may differ. It’s important to make separate lists for frequently used keywords on desktop versus frequently used keywords on mobile.

As for PPC, it’s important to take advantage of either a click-to-call ad extension or a location extension, which perform better than regular ads. It makes it very easy for the consumer to find your business and when smartphone users use their phones to research, 69 per cent expect the business to be within five miles from their current location. Targeting local keywords or geotargeting your ads makes them more relevant to users.

You should run both a paid search and SEO campaign to improve your brand recognition and click-through rate. If you’re concerned that running mobile paid search ads will harm your search traffic, you’re mistaken. A recent study by Google shows that mobile PPC ads contributed on an average an 88 per cent increase in mobile search clicks that would have been missed otherwise. You can also use your paid search campaigns to determine how people are reaching you and apply that data to your SEO.

GrowthEngine Media can help you create or improve your mobile marketing strategy with our GrowthOptimization in combinations with our GrowthSearch to help you grow your business. We are your trusted expert and advocate in an ever-changing digital environment and we offer a tailored online ad campaign to help you increase brand awareness and direct qualified leads to your website. Let GrowthEngine Media’s knowledge and expertise speak for itself. Call us today at 416.318.5373 to find out more about our services.