A three-step approach to check for paid search campaign mistakes
In an ideal world, enterprising entrepreneurs would only need to set up shop, open their virtual doors, and find customers lining up to buy their products. Of course, it’s never that easy. Digital marketers have to actually go out looking for them. And once you find them, you need to convert them.
While conversion methods vary, many digital marketers arrive on a seemingly perfect solution when looking to invest to boost their visits: pay-per-click campaigns.
PPC campaigns can work, and some work quite well. But they can be minefields for mistakes, and the most common is the marketing equivalent of 'keeping up with the Joneses.' Many digital marketers think they should run a PPC campaign because everyone else is doing it.
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Smart Insights Alert: The new tools include a single multi-country feed
If you've ever run an AdWords campaign you'll be familiar with the process, but now the AdWords platform has introduced new Merchant Centre tools:
Adding or overriding product data with supplemental feeds
A single multi-country feed
modification of your product data from the content API with Feed Rules
Driving more clicks via opportunities
Add your entire team
The new features have been implemented before the holiday season and well benefit retailers that advertize on Google Shopping.
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Supplemental feeds
Instead of relying on one feed for product data, it is now possible to change your data from multiple sources - giving…
Get your Adwords campaign in front of your competitors with a limited budget
As a website owner, you want to be successful online and get your website found on the internet. There are many ways to promote your website. One of them could be social media. You might also use search engine optimization (SEO) services, or you can simply set up a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign (also known as an AdWords campaign).
For many small businesses, an AdWords campaign can become expensive. For example, depending on the keywords used, some clicks to your ads might cost $7 each, and others only 20 cents each. If your PPC campaign is set up correctly and optimized, you might reduce your costs even more! That’s why it is essential to set up your campaign for the most effective results.
Setting up your account
To set up an AdWords account, you will need a Google account. All you need…
PPC tips and strategy to enhance your AdWords campaign
What comes to your mind when you think about AdWords? Perhaps, a lot of data, excel sheets, and analysis. When I think about AdWords, I usually think about a customer’s choice and their range of options, as if they were buying a burger at McDonalds.
Economists put goods that are likely to sell well together and called them complementary goods. McDonalds uses this approach to sell burgers and chips as great complements. How many times have you bought a burger without chips at McDonalds? Probably never. The same theory applies to AdWords search and display ads. If you have search you should have some sort of display advertising. These are ideal components of advertising that complement each other so well and almost guarantee a great outcome. However, I won’t be able to go too far with my food theory on AdWords advertising so…
Chart of the Day: Consumers prefer to compare and switch on desktop
The need for businesses of all industries to perfect their mobile experience has never been more important than it is in 2017. Google promoting Accelerated Mobile Pages and their announcement of a Mobile First Index mean that we need to optimise our websites for mobile and desktop to remain relevant in the coming years.
As marketers, it is vitally important that we create a great online experience for our customers and potential customers no matter which device they choose to use. To help deliver the best experiences across the purchasing funnel, you need to have actionable data to guide you in the right direction for each of the marketing channels including Search, Social, Email, Display etc.
This is where recent research from Hitwise will come in useful. It shows the distinction between an industry pushing towards mobile and a consumer still using…
AdWords promises new update will save time, boost CRO and reduce CPA
Google have announced a series of new features for AdWords aimed at making dynamic search ads more effective. Dynamic search ads are the AdWords product which creates ads dynamically based on website content, rather than manually setting up keywords on which to bid. The idea is this allows businesses to not miss opportunities they wouldn't have known to bid on with a manually set up keyword-based campaign. It also means when the website content is updated the search ads automatically update, so there is no risk of having out of date ad copy after site updates.
Google has pressed ahead with the announcement despite the hurricane of negative PR whipped up by the revelations regarding ads being placed by YouTube and Google Display Network on unacceptable content, such as terrorist propaganda or far right groups. Because search ads don't appear on sites (only…
Plan, manage and optimize your Google AdWords campaigns with this new template for managing your PPC marketing
Google AdWords is a fantastic way for businesses of all sizes to drive relevant visitors to their website generating new enquiries or online sales. The beauty of AdWords is that it is really flexible and puts most of the control into your hands, so no matter which products/services you are selling you can get started within an hour or two even with the most modest of marketing budgets.
And here is where the many problems of AdWords start and why some businesses miss out because a quick trial fails since they don't work to optimise their campaigns...
"While it is very easy for anybody to set up and run their own AdWords campaigns, it is also just as easy for your campaigns to take a life of their own, spending your hard earned marketing budget on driving…
Roundup of the 3 big AdWords changes announced in the past week
In the midst of the fallout of last month's exposé in the Times that ads on Google Display Network (GDN) were appearing on terrorist or pornographic websites, Google has been busy making announcements about how they're helping brands and being transparent with their metrics.
In a brilliant move to increase the data at users fingertips, or a desperate ploy to detract from the fallout from the revelations about GDN (delete according to your take on the Google ads debacle), Google have just announced two new metrics they'll be providing to AdWords users. They've also introduced a close variants feature which changes how exact match keywords work.
Unique Reach Metric
To show users how many people are really seeing their ad content, they've created the new 'unique reach' metric. This allows you to see the number of unique users and average impressions-per-user across…
Chart of the day: Search continues to be the number on source of referrals for fashion retailers
Search engines drive the highest proportion of visitors to fashion brands. Connexity, the e-commerce & consumer analytics company looked at the channels which drive the most traffic to two high fashion brands Ted Baker and Karen Millen.
Though they found the actual numbers varied considerably, the order remained the same. Search is followed by Social, Rewards and directories then Email. What is interesting about this chart is that while Search features so high, the search strategies for both brands are mostly the same.
If you do a brand search then the ads are quite indistinguishable. While they make every effort to make their clothes distinctly there's, they could follow this through to their search marketing via the use of lesser used ad extensions e.g. review & price extensions.
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Expanded Text Ads re-write the Ad Words rulebook. Don't miss out on their benefits.
Google’s new Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) have been a real game-changer for pay-per-click marketers, rewriting the rules for AdWords best practice and forcing users to adapt. Almost doubling the character count allows greater opportunity to create engaging, unique content, and with Google reporting increased click-through rates of 20-30% during beta testing, it’s a development that PPC managers cannot afford to ignore.
The search engine giant will be shifting to the expanded format permanently, phasing out ‘standard’ ads by the end of January 2017. Any experienced AdWords marketer worth their salt will appreciate the need to lead the pack and nail their ETA game before competitors know what’s hit them, so here’s a brief guide to doing just that.
What inspired the change?
It’s been 16 years since AdWords…
