Over the last year-and-a-half, we’ve seen developments occurring in the paid search industry from both Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising. So far, the changes have involved audiences, average position, smart bidding, and ad copy.

As innovation in digital marketing continues to grow exponentially, smart pay-per-click pros need to be able to keep up with the market.

To stay ahead of the game, here are five trends we are on the look for in 2020.

Voice Search

Comscore predicts that by next year, half of all searches will be voice searches. The search terms that trigger ads that will appear will change as people interact with the search engines more conversationally when they use their voice-enabled devices.

Though we are still quite a long way away from seeing paid search within voice, there’s no reason you shouldn’t start preparing for it now. You can do this by:

• Beginning to use more conversational and long-tail keyword terms you are targeting
• Keeping your landing pages more conversational for the user experience and SEO reasons
• Testing and learning more Long Trail terms in 2020. Focus on the impression and impression share, as well as the CTR and CVR.

Account Management and Automation

We’ve already seen automation start, but we’re going to see it become even more crucial in 2020.

We’ve seen automation in PPC optimization and account management. The ability to identify opportunities within your PPC account and make changes to improve performance and account hygiene is now automated. When it comes to account management, you can automate rules within your account to manage the bidding and daily account management tasks.

Though it’s a good start, there’s not enough automation in the industry. Automating processes such as big management can help harness the power of automation. Even if you are not too keen on the idea of automating bid management, there are many other areas you can apply automation to.

For example, Albert is an AI tool that takes data from across all of your marketing activities to decide where your investment should be focusing. There are moment marketing tools like Mporium that allow marketers to automate changes to their campaigns based on triggers from third-party sources such as social media content, weather, stock market changes, and TV.

In 2020, we’ll see even more attention placed on marketing performance with businesses and clients requiring additional data analysis, reporting, planning, and servicing. As more companies advertise online, it will become increasingly challenging to cut through the clutter.

Because of the higher prominence of automation tools to help with optimization, account management, daily tasks, and reporting, you should start looking into ways you can use automation in your paid search, such as:

• Using scripts in Bing and Google to automate your account management alerts and changes
• Testing smart campaigns in Google ads to hit your target KPIs
• Reduce manual reporting time with automated reporting
• Rely on bidding rules to manage campaign performance
• Set up alerts across all of your activities to find out about significant changes
• Spend more time analyzing your audiences and data so you can deliver the best possible experience for your customers

Audience Segmentation

Audience segmentation is based on taking a group of people who have interacted with you online, either on your website, through a YouTube channel, your CRM, or another social media channel.

You segment the audience based on the URL they visited on your website, how they’ve interacted on your site, and the videos they’ve watched.

You place them into buckets that serve specific ads based on how they’ve interacted with you. This allows you to increase or decrease bids to make sure you are more or less prominent to the audiences based on the value they have to your business. Though it seems very in-depth, this is still among the most basic ways to use audiences.

As we gather more data on our customers and audiences, we can break them up into specific buckets and thereby personalized are messaging and visiting strategies even more based on certain data points, such as:

• What demographic group they fall under
• Age and gender
• The type of user they are
• Their interests
• What devices they are on
• How they came to your website and what keywords they found you through

Including specific data sets as well as inferred emotional data allows you to make your ads extremely personalized toward the people you want to target. You can also identify the type of person you should be spending your resources on to grow your business. You can create audience lists in Google Ads to make use of this opportunity.

Visual Search

Search is not only becoming possible without a screen, but it is also becoming more visual. Now it’s possible to upload an image to a search engine and use it to find relevant results based on other images similar to the one you uploaded. This development started in the social media world with Pinterest and its visual search tool in 2015. Since then, both Snapchat and Instagram have also allowed users to search with images.

Last year, Snapchat announced a visible search partnership with Amazon to allow users to search for products on Amazon straight from their Snapchat camera.

In response, Bing has also released its own visual search engine that allows people to do the same thing with their entire and Ducks of the web rather than just what’s available on a social media platform or retail website.

Preparing for the growth of visual search now will make it easier for you in the future. Do this by:

• Ensuring you have plenty of images that showcase what you offer on your site
• Fine-tuning the ALT text of these images have the correct alt text to allow the search engines to pick them up
• Ensuring you’re using only the best quality images to Showcase your products and services.
• Where possible, using multiple images, so the bots have a choice of what images to index.

PPC and SEO Integration

As we move forward, it’s essential to address the relationship between PPC and SEO. Both of them have their pros and cons, but you can use them together to get the most of your results.

In 2020, you can make an effort to integrate your PPC and SEO strategies with:

• Efficient position strategy
• Keyword unearthing
• Increased SERP coverage
• Data and information sharing

What do you think the next few years will bring in terms of PPC? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The post PPC Trends to Watch for in 2020 appeared first on Sachs Marketing Group.

Google Webmasters has started a new video series designed to dispel SEO myths – called SEO Mythbusting. The first episode debuted May 15th, and in it, Martin Splitt, one of Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst speaks with his guest about how search engines work. As part of the discussion, he discusses how Google chooses relevant pages for its millions of searches every day, and the three most influential factors that webmasters need to consider when attempting to rank for any given keyword.

How Google Determines Relevance

Splitt says, “We have over 200 signals to do so. So we look at things like the title, the meta description, the actual content that you’ve got on your page, images, links… All sorts of things. It’s a very complicated question to answer what ranks you best, but yeah… we look at a bunch of signals.”

When asked about the top three things that someone should consider, Splitt responds with content, meta data, and performance.

Content is King – Number One Ranking Factor

“So… us being developers, originally, you probably want me to say, oh use this framework or use that framework… that’s not how it works.

You have to have really good content. And that means you have to have content… that serves a purpose for the user.

It’s something that users need and/or want. Optimally they need it and want it, like ice cream.

So, if your content says where you are, what you do, how you help me with what I’m trying to accomplish, that’s fantastic.”

Focus on the purpose of the page and build the content around that, rather than focusing specifically on the keyword.

If someone is looking for a Blue Soccer Ball, Google tends to rank product pages that are exact matches for Blue Soccer Balls. Google knows users are happier with pages that are direct matches to what they are looking for.

In the case of product page, the purpose is to provide accurate information about the specific item for sale. For a better user experience, add the ability to compare products.

When it comes to searches related to a topic rather than a product, Google ranks pages a bit differently, which is why many online businesses struggle with their SEO. It can be hard to take the focus away from the keyword and see the purpose of the page.

That’s where taking the time to match user intent to the keyword phrase matters. If you write content based on the phrase itself, rather than the stage of the buyer journey that someone would use for that phrase, you’ll miss the relevancy mark.

Meta Data

“So the second biggest things is [to] make sure that you have meta tags that describe your content, so have a meta description because that gives you the possibility to have a little snippet in the search results that let people find out which of the many results might be the ones that help them the best. And have page titles that are specific to the page that you are serving. So don’t have a title for everything. The same title is bad.

If you have titles that change with the content that you are showing, that is fantastic. And frameworks have ways of doing that. So consult the documentation but there’s definitely something that helps with the content.”

This means you need to pay special attention to the title and meta description. Using a template and automation can make it look and feel like cookie cutter content – which isn’t the best approach. But, tools like the Yoast SEO plugin use placeholders that make sure the title and meta descriptions are unique, and still follow automation.

For example, Yoast will take the WordPress post title and will automatically use it as the page title, with the site name appended to the end. Unless you create a custom meta description, it will automatically pull the first 160 characters of the blog post to use. You also have the option to create a unique page title for the meta data. This is particularly helpful if you want to create a blog post headline to encourage clicks, that doesn’t necessarily feature your keyword – because you can create the variant that features your keyword in the actual page title, instead of using your WordPress page or post title.

For years, the SEO community has understood that the meta description itself is not a ranking factor, but with the word from a Google employee that a meta description is part of the top three things to consider – even ahead of links. It’s a fairly good indication that Google has changed something.

Performance

Your website’s performance has been a top SEO factor for a long time. John Mueller, a senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google has said that as a ranking factor, performance (page speed) does not override other factors. In a Webmaster Hangout, Mueller says:

“…the good part is that we have lots of ranking factors. So you don’t have to do everything perfect.

But that also means that you run across situations like this where you say, Google says speed is important but the top sites here are not so fast therefore it must not be important.

So for us it is definitely important. But that doesn’t mean it kind of overrides everything else.

You could imagine the fastest page you can think of is probably an empty page, right? But an empty page would be a really terrible search result if someone is searching for something really specific.

It’s really fast but there is no content there. The user wouldn’t be happy.

So we have to balance all of these different factors. The content, the links, all of the signals that we have and kind of figure out how to do the ranking based on this mix of different factors that we have.”

Ultimately, because performance is a soft ranking factor, if you’ve nailed everything else, and the user experience will suffer because Google chooses not to show this site, you may still rank well even if your site speed is lacking a bit.

If the user expects to see a slow website, then that’s what Google will display.

A better way to look at it is performance is a top SEO factor, but it’s not often a top algorithmic ranking factor.

Splitt says, “Performance is fantastic, we’re talking about it constantly but we’re probably missing out on the fact that this is also good for being discovered online.” Google wants to be sure that people clicking on your website are getting the content quickly, so it’s not just about making your website faster, but making your website more visible to others, too.

While the full Google algorithm will never be released to the public, SEOs have been working for years to identify what influences rankings. Most of us had a pretty good idea about how content and site speed do influence rankings – and we use this knowledge to help our clients. I’ll be keeping a close eye on the Mythbusting show to share more insights with you as they come along.

The post Google Breaks Silence: Top 3 SEO Factors appeared first on Sachs Marketing Group.

If you’re not working in the digital marketing space, it’s easy to see why you may believe investing in pay per click, or PPC, paid search campaigns could serve you better than investing in search engine optimization, or SEO efforts. The truth is, they both serve their purpose in marketing your business, and the best digital marketing strategies include both. Let’s break them down and take a closer look at why you shouldn’t choose one over the other.

What Is Paid Search?

When you’re investing in paid search, you’re paying a certain amount of money each time someone clicks one of your ads that display in the search engines for certain keywords. These paid ads always appear at the top of the page, above the organic listings that are influenced by SEO.

It involves using the Google Keyword Planner Tool to determine the value of each possible keyword you want to run ads for. Certain keywords that have a high search volume are highly competitive, meaning that if and when your ad shows, you’ll pay a hefty penny for each one of those clicks. (And just because someone clicks doesn’t mean they will make a purchase, so that’s something to keep in mind when looking at those costly phrases.)

The Keyword Planner tool will help you see the estimated cost per click, and you can decide what keywords you want to use, along with the details of the campaign within Google AdWords. If you’re not too sure about handling it all on your own, the team here at Sachs Marketing Group can assist you in setting up and managing your campaigns – choosing the best keywords and budgets for your goals.

What Is SEO?

SEO, on the other hand, focuses on using a variety of methods to have your website’s content rank highly in the organic search for any given keyword. The traffic from organic SEO efforts is free, though unless you’re an expert yourself, or willing to spend time learning (and there’s a lot to learn!) you’ll need to pay someone to help you with the various stages of SEO – from the technical side of ensuring your website is well-coded and fast loading, to the content creation and marketing, link building, and social media.

Content is a huge part of SEO because Google expects users to receive high quality results that suit their needs. The average length of a #1 ranking page in a Google query is 1,890 words. And it pays off to have a content marketing strategy, as data shows it leads to a 2,000% increase in blog traffic and 40% increase in revenue.

Why You Need Both

With organic traffic from search engines from SEO, you have a number of benefits.

Branding and Awareness

Visibility in search engines around your targeted keywords puts your business in front of potential customers much the same way advertising would. That same visibility around commercial terms and informational queries related to your business helps you build trust and credibility with searchers as they conduct the research that leads to a purchase. It allows you to become an authority on industry topics.

Trust and Credibility

When your site shows up in organic search results, you can improve your perceived credibility with people who are looking for your services. Many users skip the ads and go to the organic search results because they trust them more. The visibility gives your business a stamp of approval. If you can strengthen that with review and reputation signals, you’ll get even more benefit.

Cost Per Click

The traffic from SEO is free – aside from the money you’re spending to get help with it. You’re not paying a direct charge for each click. SEO isn’t cheap or easy, but over the long term, it is more cost-effective than other marketing tactics. It helps deliver brand awareness and relevant traffic to your website at a lower overall cost.

Return on Investment (ROI)

SEO, when done correctly, can have a better ROI compared to various forms of paid media, and can improve upon your PPC efforts.

Sustainability

Organic traffic won’t stop the second you stop paying for it, but PPC traffic will. Organic traffic can help sustain your business if and when you must reduce marketing spend.

Better Click Through Rate (CTR)

More users click organic results than they do ad. There are some exceptions to this rule, of course, but typically you’ll get more traffic from a highly ranked organic listing than an ad.

Strategic Advantage

Visibility in organic search isn’t easy or quick, which is a double-edged sword. Establishing yourself in organic search results ensures your competitors can’t just buy their way in – as long as you’ve done things the right way. If your competition is relying on paid search, you have the advantage. That said, it can be difficult if you’re competing against long established players, so you may need to adjust strategy.

Scope

Because of the volume of queries every day, if you want to maximize scope, you’ll need strong organic visibility. You won’t want to pay for all kinds of clicks or advertise all the content on your website.

PPC Considerations

PPC offers the benefit of laser targeting. You can target people who you know are most likely interested in what you’re selling, and those who are far enough along in their journey to consider making a purchase from you. Google provides the ability to offer visual shopping ads, known as product listing ads, that helps users see what they’re clicking on, which can improve click through rate because that feature isn’t available in organic search. Consumers who click on a Google search ad before visiting a brick-and-mortar store are 27% more likely to make an in-store purchase, and on average spend over 10% more.

According to Google, businesses generally earn an average of $2 for every $1 they invest in search ads. Because ads dominate the above the fold space on the screen, users will see the ads even if they choose to scroll past them. Desktop users see four ads above organic results, while mobile users see three. And, because of the tight budget control options, you are in great control of your spending. You’ll set a maximum amount you’re willing to spend every day, and go from there.

However, because PPC stops as soon as you stop paying for it, you can’t rely on it as a steady lead generation machine unless you have an unlimited amount of money to continuously invest.

That’s why it’s wise to invest in both PPC and SEO initiatives, and align your strategies. PPC is a great way to start driving traffic and generating leads when you’re a brand new business and need to work on building brand awareness and credibility while your SEO efforts are working for you. Search ads can increase brand awareness by 80%.  Where SEO takes time to generate results, you can start getting instant traffic and benefits from PPC.

Neither SEO nor PPC are “set and forget” options. Both require skilled management and optimization to ensure they are working for you as hard as they can be. If you have to choose between investing in one or the other at first because of financial constraints – it’s hard to give you a clear cut answer. It really comes down to the unique situation of the business at hand.

If you’re a hyper-local business with little competition and you only need a few leads a week, a little effort in the SEO area could give you good visibility in the local organic search results. But, a new e-commerce store that’s competing against big players such as Amazon and eBay and department stores, is going to struggle, in the short term, anyway, to gain traction in organic results. It really depends on how quickly you need leads, whether you’re looking at the long game, the competition in local search, the cost per click in paid search, and what you have in terms of website authority.

If you need help making that decision, get in touch with us today. We can help you develop a digital marketing strategy that clearly identifies both short-term and long-term goals, to help you choose how to make SEO and PPC work together for your company. Ideally, it is best to work with both strategically, so they can support one another.

The post Why Invest in Both Paid Search and SEO appeared first on Sachs Marketing Group.

The holiday season is officially here! Stores were decking the halls with Christmas decorations while the kids were still out trick-or-treating. Thanksgiving-related holiday ads started flooding our inboxes the second the clock struck 12:01 am on November 1st.

The festive season is one of significantly LOUD online noise. It seems like the whole world is sending ads and running specials at the same time. Everyone is competing for who will grab enough attention to make consumers part with their hard-earned cash. What’s the best way to make sure your business doesn’t get lost in the crowd? Get your holiday PPC campaigns are ready to break through.

We’ll show you how.

Prepping for Rockin’ PPC Ads

Everyone’s been telling you to start “gearing up” for the holiday season for months now; if you haven’t gotten the message, now is your final chance. Even if the holidays aren’t your focus, you can still get involved – you just need to do it RIGHT NOW. Let’s start by taking a look at what you need to have in place to make it all work.

You should already have a keyword list in place for SEO purposes. Take some time to go through it to make sure it is completely up to date. If needed, add some new products or services specially geared towards the holiday season. Pause older campaigns, or at least remove outdated terms if they’re no longer relevant. Cleaning up your list ensures you don’t waste time (and dollars) on badly-matched keywords at this critical time of year.

Have your design team get together to ensure your ad copy (or related creatives) are on point. Check, double check, and triple-check what you’re putting out into the world this season. Above all else, please don’t be that guy — the one we’re all talking about in the break room because someone targeted an inappropriate ad towards children or let an ad with a racist undertone hit the market.

Take a look at past years; how has bidding changed? Take steps to prepare or increase your budget to compensate where necessary. Ads are useless if they never reach your target audience, so it’s okay to invest a bit of money into the season because you are focusing on getting that return.

Tips for Optimizing Your Holiday PPC Campaigns

Your keywords are on point, your ad creatives are ready, and you know your budget (or at least have enough flexibility to extend it). Now what? It’s time to tweak and optimize to ensure success.

Is Your Website Mobile-Friendly?

This should be a given in 2018, but a few businesses are still behind the eight ball on this one. More than half of the searches done on Google today will come in from a mobile device. You will lose out on sales if someone who lands on your website from a mobile device can’t read your text and/or needs to zoom your pages to see them. It’s annoying, frustrating, and maddening when shopping. An outdated site also takes away some of your trustworthiness and credibility.

Did You Incorporate Holiday Keywords?

We discussed going over your keyword list, but have you adjusted some of your most popular keywords to make them more relevant for the season?

For example, if you usually target “gifts” you may need to adjust to target “best holiday gifts.” If you usually promote “movies,” you should be adding keywords that promote “Christmas movies” to your campaigns. These little holiday distinctions will make a big difference to your traffic.

Create a Spending Calendar

No two days are alike, and this is especially true during the holiday season. There are very distinct behavioral patterns that dictate which days of the month are more popular for shoppers. While patterns tend to stay stable from January through October, you’ll see distinct changes in November and December.

During November, you’ll see a spike in sales near the end of the month (especially Thanksgiving weekend). In December, you’ll see higher sales at the beginning of the month. The numbers start to taper down the closer you get to the actual holidays.

To beat the heat, plan ahead. Create a monthly bid schedule with your budget allocated differently for hotbed days. This one tiny move can actually improve your conversions.

Incorporate Facebook into Your Strategy

A lot of people think of PPC and immediately jump to AdWords. Facebook isn’t a bad place to spend your marketing dollars, though — especially during the holiday season.

What makes it so great? Facebook offers a lot of different ad formats ranging from traditional arrangements to video and even lead generation ads. As with AdWords, you’ll need to have a clear plan and some great visual creatives to go with any campaign you run. Because it can be expensive, you should also be prepared to track it closely.

Start Remarketing

Remarketing, or retargeting, is crucial this time of year. You know what we’re talking about, right? You visit a website, and suddenly, you’re seeing ads for the product you were looking for everywhere you go. Twilight zone!

Actually, what’s happening here is a very common marketing phenomenon. It’s a product of websites using remarketing programs to make sure you don’t forget about the amazing products you saw before, in hopes that you’ll buy again. Businesses want to stay visible to you until you make a purchasing decision.

Remarketing is an especially important tool for recapturing shoppers who weren’t ready to buy at the time they were browsing. They’ll remember to come back to your website to make that final purchase, and they might even refer their friends, too.

Gmail Sponsored Promotions

Have you ever noticed sponsored ads/promotions at the top of your Gmail inbox? Were you tempted to click on one (be honest; you know you’ve at least thought about it…)? Believe it or not, this type of PPC campaign can be rather cost-effective. Studies show that Gmail users don’t necessarily find this type of ad to be intrusive, and they will often click on the emails to see what they’re about.

In this case, your ad name and preview text needs to be spot-on when it comes to creativity. People won’t see your full ad or visual creatives until they click through, which means you’re paying for them to open the emails. The same concepts apply in terms of keywords and targeting. People who have received organic emails with similar keywords will see your inbox ads.

Time might be running out, but you do have some time left to launch a holiday campaign if you haven’t already. Move quickly and get the ball rolling right now. Enjoy the holiday momentum, have fun and happy holidays!

The post ‘Tis the Season to Optimize Your PPC Campaigns for the Holidays appeared first on Sachs Marketing Group.

Pay Per Click (PPC) can be incredibly lucrative, both for making money outright and in line with a sales or remarketing campaign. But it can also be a pretty high-risk strategy, especially if you don’t fully understand how fast competition can change and what influences your success over time. That’s exactly what drives many entrepreneurs and business owners to seek the advice of a PPC expert in the first place.

The PPC “Expert” Problem

Here’s the problem: a quick Google search will convince you there’s an endless number of PPC experts out there. Pretty much everyone on sites like Fiverr.com or PeoplePerHour claim they have years of experience with PPC. For some, that’s probably true. But how many of them are actually experts, and which ones are using tired, old-school strategies that worsen risk instead of taking a measured approach?

It can be hard to trust the people you find, especially if they aren’t backed by an agency or you use someone from an online marketplace or site. Even if they show examples and have references, they may or may not be up to date on the latest strategies and techniques. And even true experts can falter and produce sour results if they aren’t dedicated and committed to serving their clients.

So, what can you do? Figure out exactly what qualifies someone as an “expert,” which skills fall in line with your goals, and which red flags may point to someone who’s masquerading by claiming they have skills that really don’t exist.

Similarly to hiring an in-house employee, there’s no “magic bullet” that will instantly reveal a scammer to you before you contract an expert. But the next few sections will give you examples of the most critical skills they need.

Google Auction Know-How

Ask if your PPC expert knows how Google Auction works. If they can’t provide a thorough answer, or they seem confused about terms and ideas, that’s a major red flag. Not sure what to listen for? Here’s a quick layman’s explanation.

Google Auction lets advertisers browse for and “bid on” keywords in the Google AdWords program. But it isn’t always just about bidding; the system also scores your web content and decides the strength of your bid using a “Maximum Bid x Quality Score” formula. Your score impacts both your success rate and your Cost Per Click (CPC).

How to Calculate CTR

Click-Through Rate (CTR) refers to the number of times someone actively “clicks through” your advertisement when they see it on the web. A low CTR is an indication of a problem with advertising or placement. High CTR means you’re getting positive results, but be careful; a high CTR alone won’t win conversions.

Gold Standard Tools of the Trade

There are as many tools out there for AdWords and SEO as there are unqualified PPC experts. Many provide at least some value; others are just an outright scam. You should always do your research before using tools, especially if they cost money or require a monetary subscription.

That said, there are a few standards most experts use:

• Google AdWords platform – Self-explanatory
• Google’s Keyword Planner tool – Self-explanatory
• SEMRush – Contains research tools for PPC campaigns
• Google Trends – Trend tracking and analysis by keyword
• Bing Ads Editor – Same as Google AdWords, but for Bing
• Google Analytics – a must-have for content and website tweaks

And this next one isn’t industry standard, but it’s well worth a mention because it’s quickly growing in popularity. Answer the Public is a relatively new website that suggests spin-off keywords from a single keyphrase.

Bing’s Relevance in PPC

There’s a common misconception that Bing is the search no one uses, but that’s no longer true. Bing, a Microsoft product embedded into every Windows installation, corners about a quarter of the market, so it’s worth at least taking a glance at. Some experts believe it’s growing faster than Google thanks to Cortana’s voice search.

Your PPC expert should at least be aware of Bing and how it affects the overall market, including trends. If you’re interested in targeting keywords through Bing, they should have a thorough understanding of how Bing’s platform works.

Amazon Ads Basics

Wait…Amazon Ads? Yes! Amazon offers a suite of self-serve or Amazon-managed PPC advertising options that can be quite lucrative if handled correctly. They’re really only applicable to sellers on Amazon, but if you do sell product, be sure to hire an expert who understands this niche.

Additionally, make this an even more important factor if you’ve mainly been using Google-based PPC to drive viewers to your Amazon sales pages. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with either approach, it doesn’t hurt to diversify.

How Facebook PPC Ads Work

Yes, your PPC expert should understand how Facebook PPC ads work, too, even if you’ve already made the choice to move away from the platform like thousands of other sellers. Understanding the most standard advertising and PPC platforms is an earmark of an accomplished expert; someone who only knows Google or only knows Facebook may be relying on Lynda.com or Udemy for their “schooling” instead of having experience.

Facebook’s PPC works slightly different than other platforms; instead of a bidding system, you set a budget and rate and a time length. Your CPC is calculated by the number of people you reach, not by your quality or payment total.

How Content Factors in To PPC

This one’s a big one, and it’s also a factor many people overlook. Content plays a serious role in PPC success. You can bid on keywords all day long; if you win, it will be all for nothing if you don’t have the content in place for people to access before you get started.

Ultimately, content needs to be “high-quality.” This will mean something a little bit different for every niche and industry. Your PPC expert should have at least a baseline idea of what it means for you because, at the end of the day, the goal is for you to get more conversions and views. Your content should be informative, easy-to-read, skimmable content with flawless grammar, spelling, and flow, all while managing to work in common keywords in a natural way (without stuffing).

Over time, content trends can change. A good, long-term PPC manager should also stay on top of these trends and tell you when you need to adjust. A PPC expert who never touches your website may be simply crunching numbers with little disregard for the end result.

There is one last piece of advice we can recommend: give us a call! We’re more than happy to help out with PPC campaigns and give you a hand with content and SEO at the same time. Everything is completed in-house, so you can always be sure of who you’re working with.

The post Hiring a PPC Specialist? Here’s What You Need to Know First appeared first on Sachs Marketing Group.

When it comes to pay per click (PPC) advertising, the first thing most marketers think of is Google AdWords. And that’s okay, because it works. And it works well, if you know how to optimize the campaign to get the best possible result. (See my post about keyword tiering if you’re looking for a new strategy.) It works because Google holds the largest portion of the search engine market, but it’s important to remember it’s not the only option.

Start Working with Bing

Using AdWords is a wonderful way to drive traffic (and hopefully sales) to your ecommerce business, but if you’re not dedicating a portion of your budget to Bing, you’re missing out. That’s where most of the search volume that doesn’t go to Google goes –so if you can’t catch your audience on Google, go to Bing to find them. This is especially helpful if you find your AdWords ROI diminishing.

If you’re already running campaigns on AdWords, Bing has an import option, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time recreating campaigns. And, as an added bonus, many keywords have lower bids on the Bing/Yahoo network than they do in AdWords.

Look Into Other Ad Networks

Yahoo Gemini: This lesser used option allows a range of ad types to target users across devices and platforms. It’s based on user intent, which makes it great to generate revenue, increase brand awareness, and promote your apps.

AdRoll: This is a popular retargeted programs. It supports Google’s display network, in adition to its own ad network. Though AdRoll’s prices are a bit high, the conversion rates typically are, too. Beyond retargeting, AdRoll now offers programmatic display, email retargeting, and “AdRoll Onsite” to provide personalized popups, which help push people through your funnel.

Advertising.com/AdSonar: If you want to run ads on premium websites like AOL.com’s network (think Huffington Post and the like), CNN Money, Slate, and CNN Money, this is where you need to be running campaigns.

AdBlade: This is another premium network to help you reach over 300 million users. One major draw back is that it uses a cost per thousand viewable impression (CPM) bidding model, rather than a cost per click (CPC) model. With this approach, you’re paying each time the ad is served, regardless of whether someone actually sees it or clicks it. That means you may or may not have a chance to earn your investment back – and it can yield a much lower ROI than CPC campaigns where you only pay for the ad when someone clicks it. Though it claims to be premium advertiser, the site doesn’t publicly list where your ads are served. You do not have the option to choose which sites your ads are displayed on – the system will do it for you based on where it believes your ads will perform the best.

Amazon: Ideal for ecommerce merchants who use Amazon, advertising here gives you the chance to feature your product in sponsored shopping ads, which send users directly to your products on Amazon. There’s also premium services to help you drive traffic off Amazon, but I always recommend people start with the Amazon Seller platform to create keyword campaigns to drive people to your products on Amazon.com. Once you have some traction there, you can upgrade to the premium services.

Infolinks: This is another user intent and real-time engagement ad platform. Since they are focused on that real-time engagement factor now, users are shown relevant ads based on what and where they are searching. Advertisers can choose from six types of ads:

• inarticle – “User-initiated expanding ad”
• infold – “Search and display, above the fold”
• inscreen – User intent focused using interstitial ads
• inframe – “Display ads with an edge”
• intext – Native ads presented in a page’s text
• intag – Display valuable keywords based on the page content

Go Social

Social advertising is done on a PPC basis, and expands your reach beyond showing up in search engines, while still ensuring your ads show on highly trafficked websites. In many cases, you can use actual content from your social channels, such as status updates, as part of your advertising, which allows you to blue the lights between advertising and social media content. Think about how many suggested posts you’ve seen on Facebook that look just like they are a status update from one of your friends. How many of those have you clicked?

Facebook: Advertising here isn’t just about getting more likes on your page. Yes, you can use it for that, but you can also use it to drive traffic to your website, or to remarket to people who’ve been to your website, but haven’t made a purchase. There are a variety of ad types, including video, mobile, and shopping ads.

Twitter: Like with Facebook, advertising on Twitter can be used for more than getting new followers. You can use it to drive traffic to your website, increase brand awareness, get people talking about your business, and amplify your reach with quick promote. You can target based on a number of demographics, including: location, language, gender, interest, device, behavior, keywords, and even followers of certain accounts.

LinkedIn: Advertising here is ideal for those in the B2B sector. There are plenty of targeting options, including job titles, and business type or job type. You can choose to display ads in the feed so you’re more focused on content, or you can choose to display text-based ads in the upper right hand side of the screen.

Pinterest Buyable Pins: This is another good option for ecommerce businesses. Pinterest says 87% of pinners have made a purchase because of something they’ve seen on the platform. It’s easy to think that people wouldn’t use the network to actually shop, but the opposite seems to be the case. Using the buyable pin format makes the pin blue, and includes the price tag. You’re still in control of the shipping and such, but shoppers can buy on the web and from their mobile devices with ease. And if you want to advertise those products, you then promote those pins. The ads are naturally included in the platform so they look and feel like the rest of the content experience. All you have to do to get started is pin the content to your own profile, and then you can promote it in a few clicks.

Instagram: Like you can run ads on YouTube with the Google AdWords platform, you can run ads on Instagram from within the Facebook power editor. You can run photo or video ads, or carousel ads where users can swipe to see additional photos or videos within a single ad. It’s also possible to run ads within Instagram Stories. You can use these ads to drive awareness of your products, services, apps, or business. You can also use them to drive traffic to your website where they can learn more about you, or use them increase sales, visits to your ecommerce store, or app downloads.

Worth it? Yes!

It is definitely worth experimenting with PPC campaigns outside of Google AdWords. If you don’t have much of a budget and can’t afford to run things on more than one network at a time, create a plan that allows you to adequately test each network. Run several variations of ads on each network so you can use the analytics data to determine if it was the ad content or the network itself that made a difference in your overall results.

It’s important to remember that while it’s worth it to deviate from Google AdWords, not all ad networks are created equally. If you find the ROI is consistently low, stop spending money with that network, and pour that portion of your ad budget into a network that is bringing you great results.

What networks besides Google AdWords do you use? Tell me in the comments below.

The post PPC Beyond Google AdWords: Worth the Investment? appeared first on Sachs Marketing Group.