Say Goodbye to Device Segmentation in PPC

Before Google’s big update early this month, mobile web ads and conventional web ads were managed from completely separate systems and programs. Your mobile ad center and your desktop/laptop ad center weren’t connected. However, since the Enhanced Campaigns feature launched on Google’s AdWords tool, mobile advertising can be rolled into your conventional web advertising campaigns.

This move by Google further underscores the importance of capturing the mobile advertising market. For lawyers and law firm marketers, mobile advertising can be a key part of capturing a tech-savvy, smartphone-using market share. For example, a Phoenix personal injury lawyer would want to reach out to young professionals on the go whose primary web navigation tool is a tablet or mobile phone.

What does it mean?

Change is always scary, but we hope to help you understand what this means for you and your firm’s business. First of all, you are not required to include mobile outreach. That said, why wouldn’t you want to? You can bid on mobile search traffic as easily as you can bid on standard search traffic with Google Adwords.

Another high point is that you can use smartphone geolocation tools to your advantage and target campaigns to particular locations. This is useful for legal professionals in specific geographic areas seeking to drive local keyword traffic. You can also track how many mobile ads led to phone calls, giving you extra information on the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

Of course, the downside is that you will have to spend some time reconfiguring your mobile ad campaign to fit inside AdWords’ system and parameters. Luckily, all signs seem to suggest that once you do so, Enhanced Campaigns will save you time and energy when you develop new advertising campaigns for your firm.

Where we go from here

People have complained about device segmentation in PPC ever since mobile advertising became a high-revenue business. Now that mobile and desktop/laptop ads are finally integrated, there are bound to be a few kinks and bugs to work out. Ultimately, however, we see this as a net positive for lawyers, law firm marketers and online entrepreneurs everywhere.