MySingleFriend overhauls mobile strategy after adopting Google Enhanced Campaigns

She told The Drum the insight gained from running multi-device campaigns using Enhanced Campaigns has “massively increased where mobile is on our radar".

McLaughlan continued: “We were under the impression that mobile wasn’t working for us, so we had actually turned it off, or rather - paused it.

“The sign-up process isn’t as simple as the average dating site because we require a friend of the person to write their profile, so it’s not as simple as just adding a bit of data.

“We thought that was the problem for mobile. But with Enhanced Campaigns we tried it again and it showed us there is actually a real opportunity there and a real appetite from consumers,” she added.

MySingleFriend appointed PPC agency Periscopix to help it restructure its accounts around the same time that Google rolled out the AdWords upgrade – the biggest in the history of paid search.

“We were lucky with the timing of it. While some may have had to spend time migrating over we were able to just start from scratch and structure our activity around Enhanced Campaigns,” she said.

The insight gained will help it shape future mobile and other digital products as well as informing its marketing as a whole, according to McLaughlan.

It is now overhauling its digital properties so they are responsive-design based to improve the consistency of the user experience. “Previously we had separate mobile sites but had paused all marketing activity to actively drive anything there so our cost-per-acquisitions (CPAs) for mobile looked horrific.

“Now we are using enhanced campaigns…we understand more how to treat customers as they come through the different routes. We have a lot of new products to roll out over the year and then can start looking at apps.

Google rolled out the AdWords upgrade in February, letting marketers adjust bids for ads according to device type, location and time of day, all within the same campaign.

MySingleFriend has reduced the number of separate campaigns running from around 70 to 10 as a result of the rollout, which has helped simplify and clarify reporting and optimisation.

“We can now focus on the kinds of markets that are of most interest to us. That clarity from the reporting helps us focus not just our mobile activity but our marketing and product portfolio,” she said.

MySingleFriend’s unique mobile visitors have shot up 85 per cent year on year, according to McLaughlan.

“I will be having conversations about slicing and dicing budget and looking for ways to invest more in mobile now. Mobile phones are private places for people where they can check Facebook and their dating profiles. It’s becoming part of people’s daily habits and so is an interesting thing for us to invest in, we can’t ignore it.”

When Google first revealed the AdWords overhaul many in the industry were concerned there would be an inevitable rise in mobile cost-per-clicks (CPCs).

McLaughlan admits she also was worried the chances would spell increased costs for them, as they would be forced to run mobile campaigns which they didn’t previously believe would be an effective use of their marketing budget.

“We were worried there would be a negative impact but for some keywords it was actually converting more effectively than on desktop, which we weren’t expecting at all. We thought we were miles behind on mobile but now this has shown us we have the right to invest in it – rather than just looking at market trends and the fact everyone is saying it’s the right thing to do – now we have our own data to back that,” she said.

The dating site, along with its agency Periscopix reported that adjusting the mobile bid multipliers across its campaigns has brought mobile CPAs in line with desktop, and led to a a 25 per cent increase in non-brands click-through rates.