Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing | Youtube Marketing

Surface Your Videos When Viewers Are Looking For What To Watch With TrueView Discovery Ads

July 21, 2016 by

Think about the last YouTube video you watched. How did you find that video? Did a friend send it to you? Did you click a link from a blog or social media? Or did you do what millions of YouTube users do every day and head to YouTube to find something to watch?

To win over users who are choosing which video to watch, we built TrueView discovery ads (formerly known as TrueView in-display) – a format tailored specifically to helping users discover your brand content. And today we’re not just changing the name – we’re supercharging TrueView discovery ads with more relevant ads on search results pages and full inventory coverage across the YouTube app. This means that for the first time ever, TrueView discovery ads will appear on mobile search results. And thanks to our changes to search ad relevance, our experiments show an aggregate 11% increase in CTR.

TrueView discovery ads are such a powerful format because they deliver high engagement – when viewers click on your video, that’s a strong signal that they’re interested in your brand. It’s why on average, users view one additional video from your brand within 24 hours of watching your TrueView discovery ad.1 This format is built for winning over your audience, and guiding them to your content when they’re searching for something great to watch.

Since TrueView discovery ads capture your audience when they’re leaning forward, we see on average TrueView discovery ads drive over 5x more clicks on advertiser-provided calls to action than TrueView in-stream. They’re also great for promoting your longer form content.

Advertisers like Benefit Cosmetics are using TrueView discovery ads to amplify their branded content. In a recent campaign, they used the format to reach viewers as they searched and browsed the latest brow trends. “We wanted to insert ourselves in a way that felt natural and really drove our brand and DNA, but also be incredibly useful to the customer when they’re looking for us,” said Nicole Frusci, Benefit’s vice president of brand and digital marketing. By serving up relevant content on YouTube search results and on related video watch pages, Benefit was able to boost subscriptions to their channel by 20% and drive an additional 663,000 earned views on top of their 1.2M paid views.

But why read all about what makes TrueView discovery ads so great when you can watch a video instead? Take it away, Josh:

These changes will roll out in the next few weeks – keep an eye out in Adwords or DoubleClick Bid Manager – so you can start engaging your most qualified audience at key moments of discovery across YouTube.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

Press Play On TrueView Video Ads For Performance – Google Best Practices

June 30, 2016 by

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog Video consumption has gone from primetime to ‘all-the-time.’ From teens to adults, people spend as much time watching online videos as they do watching TV. 1

There have never been more opportunities for brands to connect with consumers through the power of video and YouTube. We’ve published a new guide, Press Play on TrueView Video Ads, to help you understand how to optimize TrueView ads to support your performance goals. It touches on topics such as:

  • Understanding TrueView ads and how to measure success 
  • Capturing attention with compelling TrueView ads 
  • Reaching highly-qualified audiences with YouTube 
  • Tracking and optimizing video ads 

Check out these TrueView video ads best practices to drive more leads or conversions for your business.

Want to stay on top of even more Best Practices? Sign up to receive our monthly newsletter.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

Major Updates Announced For Advertising On Google

June 25, 2016 by

Amongst the many announcements made at the recent Google Performance Summit were a few about AdWords and updates that will change the way we all ‘do’ Google PPC. Make way for new ad formats, device-specific bidding options and more; here are three of the announcements that we found most intriguing.

AdWords is breaking up tablet and desktop ads, and enabling mobile base bids.

Soon, changes will occur which will alter the way search happens on mobile. This new way of setting bids will allow marketers to target ads by device type, untethering desktop and tablet bids and allowing advertisers to make mobile the focal point of campaigns.

Soon, we’ll be able to set separate bid adjustments for mobiles, desktop computers and tablets, tying keywords to whatever device is best suited for our businesses’ target audience. Then, we can simply adjust for other devices.

This update affords greater control over device-level bidding and is desperately needed considering over half of all Google searches are now done by mobile device. No longer will bids be awkwardly tied to a limited desktop multiplier.

Expanded text ads are being rolled out for all devices.

Later this year, all advertisers will be able to maximize their ad space with more text. Coinciding with the removal of right side ads, text ads with more characters will have a uniform appearance regardless of the device you’re using. They’ll also be specifically optimized for smartphones.

Marketers will then be able to make the most of ads, capturing the attention of a growing number of consumers who are keen to know exactly what we have to offer them before they click over to our websites. Attention spans are getting shorter as information becomes more readily available, so it’s up to advertisers to garner attention as quickly as possible.

The new ads will feature two longer headlines, at up to 30 characters each, and longer descriptions at up to 80 characters. The accompanying display URL can also have two directory paths used to describe the landing page content, neither of which has to match the landing page URL.

With such significant changes occurring, it’s time we all begin updating our marketing and advertising strategies!

Mobile searches will soon feature promoted pins.

Google has calculated that local search is growing at a rate that’s 50% faster than overall mobile search, and this statistic has lead them to place more emphasis on advertising through Google Maps.

Soon, marketers will be able to develop customized experiences targeted at consumers on Google Maps. Instead of just seeing the pin marking where a new restaurant or hard to find boutique is, we’ll see branded pins for all nearby locations. These can even include a range of content and customization options, from local product inventory to promotions, all designed to drive traffic to businesses.

Marketers who want to take part will need location extensions in order to appear in promoted pins, and as this feature is still being tested and experimented on, it’s expected to evolve further in the near future.

With these and several more changes on the horizon, what do you make of the future of Google AdWords? Do you see these as exciting new opportunities for marketers?

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing | Youtube Marketing

Introducing YouTube Director: A Suite Of Video Ad Creation Products For Businesses

June 15, 2016 by

Whether it’s for entertainment, indulging a passion, or discovering something new, more people are turning to YouTube to watch videos. In fact, growth in watch time on YouTube is up at least 50% year-over-year.1 Now, more than ever, businesses can connect with their customers through video advertising on YouTube.

But we know that creating a video ad can be challenging. To make it easier for every business— from a dog walker to a barber shop owner—to get started with advertising on YouTube, we’re launching the YouTube Director suite of products. Three products that make video ads more accessible to businesses.

Make a video ad right from your phone

With the free YouTube Director for business app (available for iPhone today in the U.S. and Canada) anyone can create a video ad for their business quickly and easily—right from their phone. No editing experience required. People like Woody Lovell Jr., owner of the The Barber Shop Club in Los Angeles, are already seeing positive results with YouTube Director.

Woody shot and edited a video ad by himself, uploaded it to YouTube, and worked with an AdWords expert to run a campaign. As a result, Woody’s business saw a significant increase in potential customers being able to remember and recognize his ad.2

We challenged five business owners—including Woody—to create a video ad in twenty minutes or less. Watch what happened and download the app to give it a try.

Get a professional to make your video ad

In select U.S. cities, we’re also offering YouTube Director onsite, a service that sends a professional filmmaker to shoot and edit a video ad for free whenever a business spends at least $150 to advertise on YouTube. YouTube Director onsite is available in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C.—and coming to more cities soon.

Is your business an app? We can create a video ad for you too

YouTube Director automated video creates a video ad automatically from existing assets like logos and app screenshots in the App Store or Google Play Store, and is available globally. Reach out to a Google expert (1-855-500-2756) for more information.

No matter what kind of business you’re in, getting started with advertising on YouTube just became a whole lot easier. We can’t wait to see what you make. Happy filming.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

Ads And Analytics Innovations For A Mobile-First World

May 24, 2016 by

The shift to mobile is no longer a change on the horizon. It’s here.

Every year, there are trillions of searches on Google and over half of those searches happen on mobile. And across the millions of websites using Google Analytics today, we’re seeing more than half of all web traffic now coming from smartphones and tablets.

When we asked people to describe the role smartphones play in their lives, they used phrases like “attached to my hip”, “butler” and “lifeline.” Smartphones have become the companion that people turn to in I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do and I want-to-buy moments throughout the day.

To help marketers succeed in this mobile-first world, we have redesigned AdWords — from the ground-up — and re-thought everything from creatives and bidding, to workflow and measurement.

We’re also making it easier for marketers to bridge the digital and physical worlds. With location-related mobile searches growing 50% faster than all mobile searches, it’s clear that consumers are moving seamlessly between online and offline experiences. So it’s important to help marketers think this way too.

It was incredibly exciting to share new innovations with advertisers this morning at the Google Performance Summit. Below are highlights from today’s announcements. You can watch a replay of the full program here.

AdWords re-imagined for the mobile-first world

Over the last several years, we’ve discovered that accounting for mobile and designing for mobile-first are two very different things. That’s why we’ve completely transformed how we think about and build AdWords.

In order to enable advertisers and developers to drive more downloads of mobile apps — across Google properties — we built Universal App Campaigns. To date, Universal App Campaigns has delivered more than 2 billion downloads for advertisers, across Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, and the Google Display Network. And last week at Google I/O, we announced this campaign type is now available on iOS.

Today, we are announcing even broader changes to advertising with Google, from how text and display ads work, to the way advertisers optimize campaigns.

What do text ads look like in the mobile-first world? Mobile has revolutionized the canvas where ads live. Earlier this year, we removed right-hand side ads on desktop to improve the search experience and make it more consistent across devices. This paved the way for us to introduce the biggest changes to our text ads since AdWords launched fifteen years ago.

Optimized for screen sizes of the most popular smartphones, new expanded text ads in AdWords provide more ad space so you can showcase more information about your products and services before the click. Here are the key changes:

These upgrades help your ads work harder across screens, especially for the on-the-go mobile consumer that wants to know exactly what you offer before tapping into your website.

Based on early testing, some advertisers have reported increases in clickthrough rates of up to 20% compared to current text ads. We encourage you to start planning for this upgrade before it rolls out later this year. How do display ads look in a mobile-first world? From sites to apps to videos, mobile has unlocked a universe of new spaces to reach consumers. Responsive ads for display adapt to the diverse content across the more than two million publisher sites and apps on the Google Display Network (GDN). They also unlock new native inventory so you can engage consumers with ads that match the look and feel of the content they’re browsing. Simply provide headlines, a description, an image, and a URL — and Google will automatically design these beautiful responsive ads.

We’re also extending the reach of GDN remarketing campaigns by giving you access to cross-exchange inventory, which includes more websites and apps around the world. With this inventory, European airline SAS drove about 20% more conversions at a similar CPA for its remarketing campaigns. Learn more

What does bidding look like in a mobile-first world? Marketers need more control and flexibility to optimize bids on specific devices. In the next few months, you’ll be able to set individual bid adjustments for each device type — mobile, desktop and tablet. This lets you anchor your base keyword bid to the device most valuable to your business and then set bid adjustments for each of the other devices. You will also have a wider range to adjust bids, up to +900%. With more controls, you can now optimize with greater precision while keeping things simple with a single campaign that reaches consumers across devices.

Mobile is local, bridging digital and physical worlds for marketers

Nearly one third of all mobile searches are related to location. People’s online and offline worlds are colliding — whether you’re researching restaurant ideas for dinner on Friday night or looking for a store that sells rain boots in your size.

To help advertisers reach consumers searching for physical business locations, we’re introducing new local search ads across Google.com and Google Maps. Advertisers using location extensions will be able to prominently showcase their business locations when consumers search for things like “shoe store” or “car repair near me.” Learn more

We’re also investing in more branded, customized experiences for businesses on Google Maps — geared towards helping you increase store visits. We’re currently developing and experimenting with a variety of ad formats on Maps that make it easier for users to find businesses as they navigate the world around them. For example, Maps users may start to see promoted pins for nearby coffee shops, gas stations, or lunch spots along their driving route. Local business pages are also getting a brand new look — to encourage consumers to explore your store before they even arrive, we’re adding new features like special offers and the ability to browse product inventory.

With online ads bringing more people to your storefronts, how do you measure the impact?

AdWords is the largest online-to-offline ad measurement solution in the world. In fact, since AdWords store visits were introduced two years ago, advertisers have measured over 1 billion store visits globally. 

 
Businesses across a variety of industries around the world are using insights from AdWords store visits to measure the impact of online ads on offline activity. Nissan UK discovered that 6% of mobile ad clicks result in a trip to a dealership, delivering an estimated 25x return on investment. See the full story here.

Succeeding in a mobile-first world

As consumers live their lives online and blur the lines between online and offline, it’s more important than ever to build your business for mobile. Google’s building for this mobile-first world as well and we’re excited to go on this journey with you. 

To see the full range of ads and analytics innovations announced this morning, watch the Google Performance Summit keynote here. Also, check out the new AdWords Marketing Goals site to learn how to use ad solutions to meet your business objectives. 

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

At Google I/O, New Features To Find The Right Users For Your App

May 18, 2016 by

Last year at Google I/O, we shared our mission to make app growth easier with the launch of Universal App Campaigns – one simple campaign that surfaces apps to billions of consumers who use Google Play, Search, YouTube, and more. It’s working, and more people are discovering apps on Google than ever before. Over the past year—and thanks to Universal App Campaigns—we’ve more than doubled the volume of app installs driven by ads, and to date, we’ve delivered more than 2 billion downloads to developers.

Today at Google I/O, we’re announcing multiple improvements to Universal App Campaigns to make it an even more powerful tool for app developers to find the right users for their app. 

Making app growth simple for iOS developers 

First, Universal App Campaigns are expanding beyond Android to help developers grow their iOS apps. Now, all app developers can tap into the simplicity and power of Universal App Campaigns to reach billions of Android and iOS users on YouTube, the Google Search App, and the Google Display Network. Universal App Campaigns for iOS are available in beta today and will roll out to all developers in the near future.

Finding more valuable users with less effort 

Second, we’re helping developers more easily grow an active user base by finding the right user from the start. Instead of reaching any user to install their app, developers can now also find customers who are likely to be valuable users of their app. A recent study1 showed that 17% of users drive 85% of app revenue, which is why successful apps are shifting their focus from volume to finding more of the right customers.

Universal App Campaigns will automate targeting, bidding, and creative generation to find your most valuable users based on your in app conversions. Just tell us the in app events that matter to you, whether it’s reaching level ten in your game, subscribing to your service, or making a purchase in your app, and we’ll do the rest. Our models evaluate countless signals and constantly learn and adjust, meaning every ad is based on the freshest, most relevant data. The best thing is that we do all the hard work in the background, predicting which users will be valuable and acquiring them at the right price. These innovations are in testing and will roll out in the coming months.

Pocket Gems has already been leaning on the automation of Universal App Campaigns to find quality users at scale, as David Rose, Director of Performance Marketing said:

“Universal App Campaigns have helped us acquire users with a higher LTV compared to other acquisition channels. We’re particularly excited about how the next generation of Universal App Campaigns will enable us to iterate quickly and optimize for the actions that matter most to our business. This is an app marketer’s dream.”

More ways to reach the right customers at the right moments 

That’s not all. We’re creating more chances for developers to show ads where users go to watch, discover, and communicate. Universal App Campaigns will soon reach more users on YouTube, as well as introduce a new opportunity to reach users on top of tabs in Gmail.

Insights made for apps Finally, we know app developers need the best user insights to build better apps and power their marketing campaigns, so we’re particularly excited about Firebase Analytics, our new analytics platform designed for apps from the ground-up that was announced at Google I/O earlier today. It provides prebuilt engagement and in-app actions that will help manage your conversions and lifetime value for AdWords campaigns and over 20 third-party ad networks. If you’re an AdWords user you can funnel these conversions into AdWords so it’s even easier to optimize campaigns to the things you care about.

SparkPeople, one of our early testers in the health and fitness sector, is already gaining more insights and taking a longer term view of app audience growth by linking AdWords accounts to Firebase:

“AdWords is a crucial part of my customer acquisition strategy. Linking my AdWords account to Firebase was incredibly easy, and now I can see total lifetime value for all users I’ve brought in from AdWords, broken down by campaign. The ability to sync my AdWords data to Firebase Analytics has simplified my daily management and optimization from hours to minutes, so I can spend more time building an app my users will love.” – Joe Robb, Digital Marketing Director, SparkPeople

We look forward to helping many more developers build and grow successful businesses. At Google I/O, we’ll be sharing essential insights and best practices on how to drive growth with Google tools. You can take part too by viewing the live streamed and recorded sessions here. Happy I/O!

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Web Marketing

How Mother’s Day Rates Against Other Holidays

May 8, 2016 by
Taylor Reaume Blog Headers19

How Mother’s Day Rates Against Other Holidays (According to Sales, SEO, and Strategy)

According to the National Retail Federation, Mother’s Day is the third largest retail holiday. On average, people spend over 20 million dollars every single year, and not all on candy or flowers. If we equate this per person, it would average out to over $150 each.

mothers-day1

Mother’s Day appeals to a wide range of people (grandmas, moms, and daughters), and marketing messages tend to be more effective as a result.  That said, it’s important to work smarter, not harder.  Keywords are often overused (such as “Best Mother’s Day Gift”), so it’s important to be creative with your editorializing efforts – vary those keywords!  Smart marketers and SEO strategists use the fact that many marketers are lazily using saturated keywords, to boost engagement levels by using niche, under-used keywords.

On average, about 30% of the population looks up retailer information for products. Most of the time, this demographic is generally younger people between the ages of 18 and 24. This means that it’s essential to use mobile to get millennial visitors. Totals associated with demographics continue to change, however. In 2015, 40% of adults aged 18-35 used their phone to research different products online.

You might think that viewers of your site love coupons, but this often isn’t the case. Statistics suggest that free shipping was the most important thing to buyers. Price cuts and coupons averaged less than 45% of total respondents, compared to 57% preferring free shipping.

85% of all adults between the ages of 18 and 44 have a smartphone and 1 in 4 buy all their gifts online. A tiny percentage of shoppers actually buy gifts a month or more before the holiday arrives (for example, in April or March).

Most people buy their gifts in the time frame between one week and 48 hours before the holiday (totaling about 50%). Americans spend most, but Canadians, French, and Europeans also spend over $40 per person.

The online marketing space is getting more and more crowded everyday. But with the right strategy in search advertising, you’ll be able to corner a portion of your market that your competition might not have tapped into yet. With the right online marketing strategy, you would be able to pull in more visits and see improved revenue.

For more information on getting more customers with a cutting edge online marketing strategy, contact Search Engine Pros today.

Happy Mother's Day
Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

New Merchant Center Feed Rules Helps You Submit Your Product Data Into Google Shopping Feed Format

April 27, 2016 by

Finding the right customers on Google Shopping starts with your Merchant Center product feed: it contains all the information about the products you sell to help online shoppers find just what they’re looking for. But we know that creating and maintaining a complete and compliant data feed can be challenging. To make feed management easier, we’re excited to introduce Feed Rules, a self-service tool to help you transform your existing data from your inventory management systems into the format accepted by Google Shopping. Feed Rules helps you streamline your data feed uploads, whether you’re already running Shopping campaigns or you’re just getting started.

Use Feed Rules to set up and maintain your feed in Google Shopping format 
Feed Rules allows you to perform basic transformations of your existing product data — making it easier than ever to get your data feed up and running. You can export and submit your product data in your own format, and use different rules to transform it into product attributes and values that follow the Google Shopping feed specification, directly in Merchant Center:

  • Map your column headers to the attribute names supported by Google Shopping. For example, if you have an existing feed with the unsupported column header “main title”, you can set up a rule in Merchant Center to have it recognized as the supported attribute name, “title”. 
  • Transform the values in your feed to values supported by Google Shopping. For example, to submit gender specifications for your products, you can transform the unsupported value “for women” in your existing feed to the supported value “female”. 
  • Populate missing attribute values with a fixed value, or with different values based on conditional criteria. For example, if the “condition” attribute is missing and you’re only selling new products, you can set up a rule to have this attribute automatically set to “new”. 

Once you specify new rules for a feed, all future uploads of this feed will be processed according to those rules.

Use Feed Rules to organize your data for campaign optimization You can also use conditional rules to better organize your data:

  • Implement rules for custom labels to structure your campaigns in new ways. For example, you can group products by price ranges or margins, then later bid differently on these groups. 
  • Tag your products with a shipping label. For example, you can derive “heavy” from the category, label those products, and define a particular shipping cost for those items. 

As we introduce the first version of Feed Rules, we’re eager to learn about even more use cases from you. Feedback and suggestions for this feature can be entered directly from your Merchant Center account by clicking the gear icon in the top-right corner of the page and selecting “Send Feedback” to let us know what you think.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing | Youtube Marketing

Showing How YouTube Ads Drive Sales For CPG Brands With Oracle Data Cloud

April 19, 2016 by

Measuring the impact of online video is something of a passion for us at Google. It’s been three years since we unveiled Brand Lift for YouTube and brands have seen great success. But the last piece of the puzzle has been how does online video drive offline sales? This is particularly true for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, for which the vast majority of sales – over 90% – happen offline. Thanks to our new integration with Oracle Data Cloud – a leader in the emerging Data as a Service (DaaS) industry that measures the sales impact of digital media – we now have a solution to answer that question. Today we’re announcing the availability of sales lift studies in the US, for CPG advertisers using TrueView video ads.

The value of video 

We’ve been testing this capability for a while, and have seen promising early results: 78% of TrueView campaigns we studied on YouTube showed an increase in offline sales, with 61% driving a statistically significant lift in sales of the advertised brand.1

To build this solution we worked with Oracle Data Cloud to develop the first in-depth application of their DLX ROI product on video formats, and we studied a range of CPG video campaigns running TrueView ads across food, health and beauty, beverage and homecare. We built this with privacy at the center, and no personal data is exchanged between the companies.

Early client successes 

One campaign we measured, Gatorade’s “We Love Sweat,” earned $13.50 sales in return for every dollar spent on TrueView (return on ad spend, or ROAS). This stunning success was due in part to persistent branding and strong creative geared specifically for driving sales. Gatorade’s campaign was also interesting because it delivered a remarkable 16% lift in sales among new buyers that had seen the video vs. new buyers that had not – according to Oracle Data Cloud a typical lift in this metric hovers around 2.5%.

Similar to Gatorade, parent company PepsiCo also saw sales lift success with their campaign for Doritos. Not only did our DLX ROI solution show that their 30-second creative drove higher lift in sales among exposed households than a 15-second version, but they saw particular targeting techniques – namely topic targeting and remarketing – drove greater sales lift compared to a demographic target.

Mars also participated in our DLX ROI test for their Pedigree pet food brand, and the sales lift studies helped them make key creative decisions. They tested a video that opened with strong branding against one that saved their branding for the end, and learned that the video with strong upfront branding drove nearly 7x greater sales lift.  As Laurent Larguinat, Global Director of Mars Consumer and Market Insights said, “With this new offering, YouTube is rounding out a full funnel measurement solution for video. We’re excited to continue to see these results for all of our campaigns.”
This new sales lift offering drops the last piece into place for full funnel measurement of CPG campaigns on YouTube, and we’re excited to bring you new creative and media strategy insights that drive incremental sales as we scale these studies.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

PPC Marketing | Web Marketing

5 Tips For a Successful Pay-Per-Click Campaign

April 3, 2016 by
Taylor Reaume Blog Headers20

Pay-Per-Click or PPC is one of the most effective online advertising and marketing strategies to drive customers to your business.  Among the providers of PPC advertising, Google’s AdWords is the most widely used platform.  If used properly, PPC could bring in a significant number of highly targeted leads that convert into paying customers.

Professional paid search consulting

What is Pay-Per-Click?

Essentially, pay-per-click or PPC, is a way of buying traffic or visits to a website. One of the most popular forms of PPC is search advertising provided by Google AdWords in which the advertiser pays a fee whenever an ad is clicked.

In search advertising, PPC ads appear above the organic search results. The ads appear on relevant search results. So if a PPC ad is for “baby clothing”, for example, it would show in search results for the same or related keywords.

Press Release For Local SEO

A PPC ad copy includes a short title, a description, and a link to a landing page. Some PPC ads may also have extensions. These are especially useful features that make your ad more relevant to the searcher.

According to Search Engine Watch, businesses make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on Adwords.  This is likely due to the fact that more and more people are using mobile devices, and mobile search now accounts for 52 percent of paid search clicks.

Organic Search vs. Pay-Per-Click

Optimizing your business for organic search is key to long-term success online. But trying to dominate a keyword in a competitive industry isn’t exactly a walk in the park, and it could take a few months to see significant results. But with PPC, you have a better chance of getting more clicks by leapfrogging ahead of the competition attempting to rank high in organic search.

Organic SEO campaigns take time.  They require the help of a savvy digital marketing agency in order optimize your site so that you’ll start showing up in the organic listings.  PPC is a quicker way to get awareness online.  Think of organic SEO campaigns as a marathon, and a PPC campaign like a sprint.  With PPC you need to pay every time someone clicks your ad.  Google asks each advertiser to set a maximum cost per click they are willing to spend on each keyword (for each click).

If you have the budget and you need to get in front of as many customers as fast as possible, PPC can do that for you. Organic SEO, on the other hand, sets you up for long-term success online.

Now, let’s get right down to business. If you’re looking to explore PPC, the following are the five must-haves of a successful pay per click campaign:

Paid Search Consultants

The right set of keywords

Like organic SEO, PPC requires that you research and select a certain set of keywords. Keywords are the primary key to driving success to your PPC campaign. Be sure to use the proper set of keywords that exactly describe your business.  Avoid using keywords with a high competition (high numbers of other advertisers targeting the same keyword). You need to use those with high search volume, but with low competition. Such keywords usually cost low.

The best free tool to use for your keyword research is Google’s very own AdWords Keyword Planner. It provides you with insights on keywords, competition, cost, and location targeting.

Ask us today about how we can help you dig deeper for keywords using our proprietary keyword software.

Emphasis on clicks

When running a PPC ad, you should focus mainly on the number of clicks (your CTR or click through rate), not on the number of impressions (the number of times your ad appears). This is because your PPC campaign’s costs are based on the number of times your ads have been clicked. Which is why you need to be sure that your ads have the most relevant or targeted keywords for maximum clicks and conversion.  It is crucial to keep your ad on the first page with a strong bid, because 62% of search engine users click on a search result within the first results page (28% click on 2nd or 3rd page).

Ecommerce Landing Page Optimization

Intelligence: keeping an eye on the competition

If the competition seems to be outperforming your PPC ads, there’s probably a good reason. The best way to find out what they might be doing right is to use keyword software that ‘spys’ on them (this is totally legal, ethical and part of a comprehensive PPC strategy). Study your competition’s ad copy and make a shortlist of the highest peforming ads.

Ad Extensions

PPC ad extensions are excellent tools that compel customers to click on an ad. Extensions provide more information that potential customers may be looking for, such as your business’ phone number, customer rating, links to your webpages, and mailing address.

Below are some of the ad extensions in Google AdWords:

  • Sitelink Extensions – It displays additional links in your standard text ad
  • Call Extensions – It lets you add a phone number in your standard text ad
  • Callout Extensions – It shows additional descriptive text in your standard text ad
  • Location Extensions – It allows you to display location information in your standard text ads
  • Review Extensions – A review extension that displays an accurate, current, credible, non-duplicative third-party review of your business. Like the rest of your ad text, your review extensions must comply with all AdWords policies.

Use these extensions to give more reason for customers to click on your ads. They are great tools to increase your click-through rate and improve your conversion.

Performance tracking

PPC advertising Services

Unfortunately, this is one area that many advertisers tend to take for granted. Performance tracking is essential for understanding how well your PPC ads and campaign are working. By taking a look at the performance of your ads, you would be able to make the necessary adjustments for improved performance. You’ll discover which set of keywords are driving more traffic and resulting in conversions, as well as which are performing poorly and should be eliminated.

The online marketing space is getting more and more crowded everyday. But with the right strategy in search advertising, you’ll be able to corner a portion of your market that your competition might not have tapped into yet. With the right PPC strategy, you would be able to pull in more visits and see improved revenue.

For more information on getting more customers with Pay-Per-Click, contact Search Engine Pros today.

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