Planning a mobile ad campaign can seem very daunting but is actually very simple so long as you bear in mind some key points.  Here Jide Sobo head of mobile at global media agency MEC gives up some industry wisdom on how to tackle the mobile space.    

Think about your objectives. What is it you are trying to achieve with your mobile campaign? Are you trying to drive app downloads, get people to sign up to a service, a free trial or enter a competition? Do you want to drive people into your physical stores? Or are you just running an awareness campaign. Each of these objectives will require different ad units and different sources of inventory. For example, an app download campaign requires a high volume of simple ads, run across a large network of sites and apps, with a clear call to action, as you want to attract a user’s attention and then deliver them to the app download page as quickly as possible. However, an awareness campaign is more likely to consist of a smaller volume of engaging rich media ad units that appear in more premium positions on well known mobile sites and apps.

Creative. Make sure your creative has a strong, clear call to action so that customers know what they are getting when they tap on the ad. This will mean that you can grab people’s attention and your conversion rates are higher. It is also a good idea to run several different creatives so that you can optimise depending on which ad is providing the best results. Lots of different creatives also stop users from becoming accustomed to your ads, and helps to keep the campaign feeling fresh, which will have a beneficial impact on engagement rates.

Make sure you’re delivering a relevant mobile experience. There is no point directing people from a mobile ad through to your desktop website to enter a competition or find out more about your products. The site will be difficult to read and people are likely to have a negative reaction to your brand for not delivering a joined up mobile experience. This will also make it much harder to meet your objectives as users are likely to drop out, rather than performing whatever action you are trying to get them to do. It is also important to minimise the number of actions that a user has to take by deep linking to relevant product pages, rather than your homepage.

Ensure that you have the right analytics to be able to measure your campaign. If you are running an app download campaign then make sure that you can actually measure how many downloads are being delivered by your paid for media versus organic downloads. Rich media campaigns enable you to measure the time spent on each part of your ad, as well as how many times people interact with each activity. This means that you know how many people are viewing a video over a 360 degree product showcase, for example. If you can’t measure your campaign beyond impressions and clicks, you won’t know whether it’s working or not.

Optimise to your objectives. By running with several sources of inventory you can look at the results from each source and optimise your campaign accordingly. If you are running an app download campaign then which network is providing you with the best cost per download. If it’s an awareness campaign, are you seeing longer engagements from one inventory source than another? Which source is giving you the most sign-ups or competition entries? Once you have identified which inventory provider is providing you with the best results, move your budget around so that you can maximise your results.

Thinking about the objectives of your mobile campaign should enable you to make the right choices and deliver a successful campaign that makes a real difference. As soon as you lose sight of those objectives your mobile campaign will founder and not be as effective.

Follow Jide on twitter: @mobilemarketeer.  And Jide’s excellent blog is here.