PPC News

Here are a few resources that kept me thinking last week:

Learning Adwords Scripts by @Mel66 – Melissa Mackey: “I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t ever set up a single script.”

Outsource Everything! (And Why This Fails for Service Businesses)– It’s not what you do for clients, but how they feel about working with you.

34 Excel Tricks to Save Your PPC Life by @Hanapin – Not only will you become better at analyzing account performance, but you’ll also save time with Excel and all of it’s features, formulas, and shortcuts.

5 Tactics to Monitor Your Competition’s Digital Ad Strategies by @Pathmatics – How other brands are advertising can offer clues into their next big move.

How to optimize Facebook Lookalike Audiences for UA campaigns by @appnique – Facebook lookalike audiences are a form of affinity-based marketing that can achieve game-changing results for your app marketing campaigns.

Welcome to the triumphant return of our weekly PPC Articles and Updates newsletter. 

Here are some articles that we think you will find useful in your pursuit of PPC perfection.

Tools and announcements:

• Google Consumer Barometer – New Tool from Google to understand how people use the Internet worldwide
• Google’s AdWords App Finally Comes to iPhone via Search Engine Journal – Great news for all of us who want a lightweight way to check campaigns on our phones.

• 5 Common PPC Misconceptions
• PPC Management When Time and Sanity Are Scarce
• AdWords Quality Score 101: Everything You Need to Know to Improve Your Scores
• How To Evaluate Your Ad Extensions

• 5 Steps to Kick Start Your Facebook Ads Campaign
• How To Make Facebook Ad Targeting More Effective

Another great week of PPC Content. Here are some of our favorite articles!

Diminishing Returns in PPC – When Doubling Your Budget Doesn’t Mean Doubling Your Profits

PPC Hero explains why you can’t always expect double the revenue simply from doubling budgets in campaigns you’re already running.

How Segmented Is Too Segmented In PPC Accounts?

There is such a thing as over segmentation in PPC campaigns and it can be just as harmful as under segmentation.

Strategic Tools Your PPC Agency Should Be Providing – Part 2

Using focus group feedback, we have implemented new processes to create additional value for our clients.

Why Dynamic Search Ads Are The Perfect Solution For Internal Paid Search Cannibalization

Dynamic Search Ads are a nice, ancillary way to provide your clients additional paid search traffic.

Google forwarding numbers arrive in Canada

The ability to call a business is often critical in helping potential customers complete a purchase. In fact, 61% of mobile searchers say it’s extremely important to be able to call a business during the purchase phase of the shopping process.

8 Killer Landing Page Optimization Tips for PPC in 2015

Back in 2013, I asked some of the best minds in search to give me their #1 landing page optimization tip. Their answers led to what has become one of the most popular posts on this blog. The advice is so good, I decided to revisit it and update it for 2015. With that, here […] The post 8 Killer Landing Page Optimization Tips for PPC in 2015 appeared first on Beyond the Paid.

The Importance of Focus for Your PPC Strategy

Note From Melissa: I’m thrilled to have Julie Friedman Bacchini of Neptune Moon as my guest blogger today, covering a topic near and dear to my heart: PPC strategy. Anyone who works in marketing has certainly heard the advice to “know your audience.” It is such a well-known adage, that honestly it seems like it […] The post The Importance of Focus for Your PPC Strategy appeared first on Beyond the Paid.

5 AdWords Filters to Make Your Job Easier

Improve the execution of PPC marketing campaigns by taking advantage of the many filtering features in Google AdWords. Here are five fundamental filters that are easy to operate.

Here are some of our favorite PPC related articles over the past week. Enjoy!

Re-Examining The Top 10 Paid Search Best Practices, Part 1

Is following the conventional wisdom on search advertising actually wise? Contributor Josh Dreller asks tough questions about five of the biggies. The post Re-Examining The Top 10 Paid Search Best Practices, Part 1 appeared first on Search Engine Land. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

The 4 Stages Of Learning PPC by Amanda_WestBook

As my last blog post on PPC Hero as a Hanapin Marketing employee, I’d like to share some knowledge on the stages of learning PPC.

A 14 Point Checklist for Designing a PPC Landing Page

For a successful PPC strategy that regularly transforms clicks into conversions, consider this 13 point checklist to help improve the layout and design of your landing pages.

How To Write A PPC Job Description In Today’s World by frederikhyldig

In this post, I’ll describe some of the most important skills to look for and point out items to consider before you write your next PPC job posting.

Strategic Tools Your PPC Agency Should Be Providing by cass_oumedian

While performance is a big part of the PPC relationship, what can provide value beyond just the numbers is the communicating strategy and account insights.

Boost Your PPC Strategy By Focusing On Where Users Are Going by @runnerkik

As marketers, we follow the masses and learn to show ads where people play. And we make our ads look so great that people can’t help but click. We entice.

Bing Reveals a Frighteningly Delicious Recipe for PPC Success

Fall is nearly here, marking the start of the annual holiday shopping season. In anticipation of Halloween, here are tips to help marketers polish up omni-device PPC advertising campaigns.

3 Facebook Lead Gen Strategies That Will Blow Your Mind by cass_oumedian

Creating digital strategies for lead gen accounts can sometimes be dull. Here we will reveal 3 Facebook lead gen strategies to breathe life into your account.

Bing Ads Releases New Ad Extensions

This explains the functionality of the upcoming ad extensions for Bing Ads. How will the launch of these features influence your cross-device PPC marketing campaign strategy?

Use Google Analytics To Stop Wasting Remarketing Dollars On People That “Just Aren’t That Into You”

By: Susan Waldes

We usually share at least one article per week that pertains to utilizing remarketing within AdWords to capture sales/leads from visitors who have previously visited your site but did not convert. It can be an extremely successful tactic to help drive growth and revenue, and its popularity is only increasing. This week, I encourage everyone to check out this article on how to use Google Analytics to find out who you should stop remarketing. Here is an overview:

• Check your content: Use the landing pages report to find low-value pages that do not contribute to conversions.
• Exclude visits: Use the engagement report to elimate remarketing to users who have spent 10 seconds or less on your site – they probably will never convert anyways.
• Leverage affinity and in-market segments: Use the interest categories reports to find consumer categories unrelated to your product or service to reduce waste.

Make sure to check out the full post for the instructions on how to find and use each report.

10 Top Retargeting Tips For AdWords Users

By: Rebekah Schelfhout

One more remarketing article for this week because it was too good to not link. Sometimes simply browsing a list of tips is all that is needed to help inform your next strategy or perhaps give you an idea to help fix an ongoing issue. This is why I am such a fan of the “listicles” because they provide not only a multitude of tips and tricks, but they also explain each one for those that are interested. Here are the 10 tips for remarketing:

1. Utilize dynamic remarketing for all verticals – new features allow more than just retail to use dynamic remarketing
2. Use YouTube – If you have the bandwidth to do video, it can be a great tool
3. Use the time lag to conversions report in GA – Can be used to judge success of remarketing campaigns
4. Link AdWords and Google Play – App engagement campaigns!
5. Exclude lists for RLSA – Refer to the above article for even more tips
6. Referrer URL Remarketing Lists – Target lists of users from certain sources
7. Tag email links – Use the Google URL builder and keep it simple
8. Use Google Analytics – plenty of options within GA to help find new users/segments
9. Test out smart lists – Uses your conversion data to generate lists
10. Audience data from other companies?

7 Ways to Ruin Your AdWords Campaigns

By: Tamar Weinberg

AdWords can be challenging, difficult to maintain, hard to set up, expensive, stressful, and every other negative emotion. It’s not easy, but with enough research and work, anyone can master it and turn a positive ROI. However, stay away from these seven issues which are guaranteed ways to ruin your campaigns:

1. Don’t use keywords in your ad copy – Pretty straightforward – keep ad copy relevant aka use keywords
2. Don’t use negative keywords in your settings – So many garbage queries will come up – make sure to eliminate them
3. Don’t use locations – So many targeting options – use them!
4. Send PPC traffic to your homepage – Relevant, simple, and targeted landing pages please
5. Don’t test anything – A/B split test as much as possible
6. Don’t change the big stuff – the smallest changes to major aspects can have a huge impact
7. Don’t bother creating an autoresponder – A simple thank you goes a long way

Remember, these seven points are what not to do, and the responses are what should be done. Refer to the article for even more details.

Is Your Landing Page Missing These Critical Conversion Factors?

By: Rohan Ayyar

The PPC landing page – a tool that can make a break your return on advertising dollars. With so much cost and potential revenue on the line, it is important to optimize your PPC campaigns. The best way to do this is to keep quality score high. One way to do this is to have an awesome landing page. Also, if people click on your ad and can’t find what they need on your landing page, they will absolutely leave the site without converting. Here are a few tips for landing page optimization:

• Solve a problem – You’ve got 15 seconds or less before the visitor leaves – you better explain how you can answer their question or solve their problem in that time
• Make it personal – Use those precious seconds to really connect with the user on a personal level
• Go mobile – Responsive design is a must as well as thinking through the conversion funnel on mobile vs. desktop

Make sure to check out the full post for all the landing page tips and tricks.

Search Ascending: The New Brand Strategy

By: John Cosley

After all the tips, information, and actionable resources, I wanted to provide more of a thought-provoking article. Here, John speaks to why PPC and search in general is becoming more and more a brand strategy versus finding people who are actively looking for a product or service.Rather than go into details about this post, I will intro it here and encourage everyone to read it, because it really is an interesting idea, with data to back everything up, of course. Check it out!

16 OF THE MOST VALUABLE PPC POSTS FROM 2015

By: Elisa Silverman

Hard to believe 2015 is already more than half done, I have no idea where the time goes these days. We are also already on the 15th installment of this weekly round-up! Just as we try to provide weekly PPC resources, Pagewiz has put together a list of the best overall PPC related articles so far in 2015. They are broken down by category and are as follows:

• Google AdWords features – What has Google added to AdWords so far in 2015?
• Mobilegedon – How did the major mobile update by Google affect the search landscape?
• Call tracking – How can you utilize click-to-call for more sales/leads?
• Store visits – New offline metrics to be utilized
• The video showdown – Can video ads be right for your strategy?
• Facebook ads – What’s happened with Facebook advertising in the first half of 2015?
• Bing – New features, new opportunities via Bing ads
• Using your words – Write better ad copy

Make sure to check out all the articles and guides linked via Pagewiz.

3 Incredible Social PPC Hacks For Crazy Engagement & ROI

By: Larry Kim

As a follow-up to last week’s article on CRO hacks for PPC, Larry Kim has shared several social PPC hacks you can start using today to beef up your Facebook and Twitter advertising campaigns. The focus for these tips is geared towards Facebook and Twitter only because those are the two best social platforms for advertisers at the moment. In this article, PPC expert Larry Kim gives us three tips to help win on Facebook and Twitter via paid. Here are his tips:

1. Pick your winners and promote them like crazy – Use Facebook and Twitter analytics to fond content that has historically performed well with high engagement and spend your money promoting those types of posts
2. Target smarter – With the rise of offline 3rd party data being bought by social media companies, the level of granularity for targeting has gotten insane – take advantage
3. Pimp your social PPC ride – Use the newer features for your actual ads to help them stand out from the competition

Make sure to check out the full post for all the tips, tricks, and information.

A Newbie’s Guide to Writing AdWords Ads

By: Amanda Grinavich

Whenever I stumble across a good article on ad copywriting I always include it because it can be such an important part of the overall paid search campaign, but is often overlooked. Between hyper-competitive niches, character count restrictions, and quality guidelines, writing engaging, effective ads that fulfill all of these requirements can be tremendously difficult. For those with little to no experience, the copywriting process can be a nightmare. This article is geared for those beginners and covers several excellent points that should be engrained in your mind if you will be managing AdWords campaigns for the foreseeable future. Some points to think about:

• Character count (25-35-35) for each line of your ad
• Think about ad text from the searcher’s point of view
• Does the ad copy translate to the content on your landing page?
• Follow Google’s policies regarding what you can and cannot say
• Test and retest your messaging for optimal results

Gauging The Impact Of The AdWords Countdown Customizer

By: Matt Umbro

One lesser-known AdWords feature is the countdown customizer, which allows you to declare an end-date for a promotion and “countdown” the time left dynamically in your ads. So, if someone triggers your ad for 20% off and that coupon expires in two days, the ad text will update itself to say that there are 2 days left for the promotion. This feature is rather new and has not been covered here in much detail, so I am glad Matt put together this case study for us to learn more about the results of using a countdown customizer. Make sure to check out the article to learn the results.

5 Questions To Identify Missed Opportunities In Your PPC Account

By: Pauline Jakober

There is no shortage of advice on optimizing, evaluating, and measuring the effectiveness of a PPC campaign. But so much of the literature available focuses on finding ways to reduce ad spend. Now, this is great, but if more money in equals a higher rate of returns, then why would anyone want to cut ad spend? Well, Pauline has given us five ways to maximize spend and exposure to provide even more ROI. Here are the points:

1. Exhaust keyword lists for each campaign – keep doing your keyword research and adding new words/match types within your ad groups!
2. Remarketing – No reason to NOT use remarketing in 2015
3. For e-commerce, do you have  a shopping strategy?
4. Utilize the Google Display Network – with 90% of the internet reachable via GDN partner sites why not give it a shot?
5. Video Ads – As discussed earlier in this article, give YouTube video ads a shot for a different type of advertising