PAID
SEARCH
Our team at Elevated Internet Marketing has the knowledge and tools you need. We specialize in identifying actionable data and elevating our clients’ marketing strategy. To get started, contact us and get a free marketing review today!
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WHAT WE DO
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KEYWORD RESEARCH
One of the most important aspects of a successful campaign is well-researched keywords. Using high-quality keywords helps to increase your conversion rate while using irrelevant or poorly researched ones can end up costing you instead.
CAMPAIGN SETUP
There are multiple campaign settings you can customize to best fit your business needs, ensuring you reach the right audience. Every step, from selecting the general campaign type to determining your bidding method, will impact your campaign’s effectiveness.
AD COPY
When it comes to writing copy for paid search ads, you are working with limited space. That’s why it’s critical to find ways to condense the information while still getting people’s attention, including keywords, and showing off your business.
CAMPAIGN OPTIMIZATION
Even if your current pay-per-click campaigns are netting you positive results, that doesn’t mean there isn’t always room for improvement. Striving to optimize your campaign can help further your success and reduce your expenses.
LET’S GET REAL
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WHY SHOULD YOU CONSIDER
USING PAID SEARCH?
When it comes to finding avenues to promote your website, one useful method is via paid search advertising. These are types of advertisements displayed on the results pages of search engine sites. By showing your ads to people who are actively searching for information on goods and services on the Internet, you are far more likely to see an increase in clicks and conversions.
Paid search advertising can be customized in several ways to ensure you are getting the most out of your ads. One of the most important aspects of your ads is the use of keywords to target your audience. This allows for the search engine to display your ad to people actively searching for a business like yours.
SHOULD YOU ADVERTISE
ON BING.COM?
When people think of search engine ads, it’s understandable that some might assume that Google is the best choice. After all, it’s been around for a long time, has great household recognition, and is very well established. But as it turns out, there are actually several reasons why Bing is an impressive contender.
For starters, Bing ads see a significant amount of traffic, as they are displayed to users on Bing, AOL, and Yahoo, increasing your exposure. Additionally, with Bing’s marketing options, it’s possible to run a successful campaign on Bing for a significantly reduced cost. Understanding your target audience and figuring out your cost per click can go a long way towards deciding which search engine ads are best for you.
GOOGLE SHOPPING ADS
(GOOGLE PRODUCT LISTING ADS)
Google offers businesses multiple different ways to display advertisements on search engine result pages, and one of those ways is through Google Shopping Ads. These are ads that show up as results for product searches before other results are listed, drawing the immediate attention of the online user. Instead of keywords, these use Merchant Center product data. When creating your ad, you can customize all sorts of aspects regarding how it’s displayed, from informative titles and descriptions to eye-catching, high-quality images.
One innovative feature of Google Shopping Ads is the ability to run a Smart Shopping campaign, which applies automation to the marketing process. While somewhat restricting, Smart Shopping can really help to simplify the process.
PAID SEARCH STATISTICS
THAT MATTER
There are many important factors to the creation of a strong marketing campaign, and it can sometimes be a little overwhelming to try and sort out how to get the best return on your investment. Basing these decisions on relevant data and statistics will give you the best chances of success, but with so much information available, it’s not always immediately clear what data points you should take into consideration or prioritize over others. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of paid search statistics you should review while deciding if PPC advertising is right for you.
- Social Media Today reported that in 2017, over 7 million businesses and organizations opted to use PPC advertising, collectively investing over 10 billion dollars in the process. This demonstrates the perceived viability of this method of marketing from advertisers, who continue to assess these ads as worth the investment.
- Hanapin Marketing further supported this observation with results of a survey conducted in 2018. 62% of the surveyed professionals stated that they intended to increase their marketing budgets allocated towards PPC campaigns for the following year, and 68% confirmed their current budget was already larger than it had been in the previous year.
- A very large portion of the population relies on the internet to find goods and services. In fact, BrightLocal discovered that 97% of consumers use the internet for such purposes, and 12% do this on a daily basis. Strictly limiting your promotional content to other forms of media, such as radio and television, means missing out on an extremely large consumer base.
- In addition to the appeal of a wider audience, advertising online also improves your chances of getting clicks and conversions, and using the right keywords is a great way to capitalize on this. WordLead found that 65% of online users click on ads containing keywords relevant to making a purchase, such as “buy,” “shop,” and “checkout.”
- Advertising online isn’t just for large corporations with deep pockets. Smaller local businesses can benefit as well. According to Google, over the past two years, searches for products using the keywords “to buy” and “near me” increased by more than 500%. This shows that customers are increasingly interested in finding local alternatives for their shopping needs. Investing in PPC campaigns is a great way to take advantage of said interest.
- Per DisruptiveAdvertising, video ads are generally clicked on more often than banner ads by 73%. This is an important piece of information to keep in mind when deciding what kinds of ads to run for your campaign. Failing to include any sort of video content could lead to limited success.
- There is a catch to advertising with videos, and that is a limited attention span. Facebook reported that users around 18-24 years old have a reduced attention span regarding watching videos on the social media platform. The average attention span for members of that age group was only 75% of the oldest age group studied. This is an important factor to consider when determining what length to run video ads.
- With advertising, you want a high conversion ratio, not just a high number of clicks. Moz found that users who’ve opted to click on PPC ads displayed by Google are 50% more likely to become paying customers than those who come across the same website naturally.
- Choosing which platforms to explore for advertising purposes is an important choice and should factor in your target audience and your budget, among other things. However, knowing which platforms are the most popular and successful in general gives you a much clearer picture of what your viable options might be. According to eMarketer, in 2018, the top three advertising platforms were Google, Facebook, and Amazon.
- As you continue looking towards the future, it’s good to keep an eye on growing PPC trends. BizTraffic revealed that in 2019, over 52% of PPC clicks originated from a mobile device. If your marketing strategy does not include mobile users, it may be time to give it an update.
LET’S GET REAL
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WHAT IS GOOGLE ADS
QUALITY SCORE?
A significant element to consider when making decisions about mounting an online PPC campaign with Google Ads is the cost per click. Consider how we determine profits for a business. Profits are how we refer to the revenue remaining after you have subtracted the costs of operating the business. A business could be earning revenue at a fairly steady rate, however, if the costs of operation exceed the amount of income, the business would still be operating at a loss. Likewise, your campaign could be netting you a satisfactory number of clicks and conversions, but if the cost per click is too high, you could ultimately end up losing money in the process.
To understand how the cost per click is determined for Google Ads, you need to familiarize yourself with Google’s Quality Score, which directly impacts said cost. The Quality Score is Google’s way of quantifying the relevance and quality of your PPC campaign and chosen keywords. While there is a lot that goes into the concept, the key thing to remember is that the higher the quality, the better the rank, and the lower the cost.
The first factor that goes into assessing your Quality Score is your click-through rate. This term is used to describe what percentage of the people that view your ad actually decide to click on it. Getting people to click on your ad is the first step towards increasing the views on your site and earning more conversions, making it a critical piece of the puzzle. That’s why this particular factor is weighted most heavily in the determination of your Quality Score. Ads with a very low click-through rate are perceived by Google as ultimately irrelevant to consumers and as such not worthy of a high score.
Another factor involved is the relevance of the individual keywords assigned to each ad. Keywords are a big part of how Google determines what ads should be shown to which users. Spending time researching relevant keywords and organizing them into groups can go a long way towards ensuring you are reaching the right people. This, in turn, helps to increase your click-through rate and improve your Quality Score.
The assessment of your campaign doesn’t stop after the initial click. The overall quality of your landing page is also assessed, preventing businesses from focusing solely on the ads and failing to provide any substance. Landing pages should be relevant regarding the keywords used, load quickly, and be easy to navigate, so the desired information can be located without the need for further assistance.
Focusing on the above is a great start to optimizing your campaign and improving your score. However, if you’ve already addressed these areas, there are other details you can continue to improve on, such as the text in your ad copy. Testing out different variations of ad copy can seem unnecessary and time-consuming, but if done properly, can help you determine what verbiage is most effective in your ad. Simply updating the product description in your ad could lead to an increase in your click-through rate and improve your Quality Score.
This might seem like a lot of work, especially if you are just getting ready to launch your first big PPC campaign. In fact, it might even be tempting to overlook some of these areas in favor of being able to launch said campaign sooner. You should know that the Quality Score also factors in the historical performance of your ads. This means that a poorly performing ad will have a difficult time netting a high score. That’s why it’s important to keep all of the above in mind from the very beginning. Ultimately, the stronger your record, the better your score.
LET’S GET REAL
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THE IMPORTANCE OF A/B TESTING IN PAID SEARCH
TESTING IN PAID SEARCH
There is a lot of information available regarding how you should set up your PPC ads to maximize their effectiveness and quality. However, even the most detailed plan cannot account for everything. Unexpected or unseen factors can drive people to behave in ways that we don’t expect or cause them to change their behavior over time. Accordingly, the keywords and copy you initially selected for your PPC ad might not actually be the most optimal choice. This is why it’s important to continually evaluate the success of your ads and strive to make improvements.
How to Improve Your PPC Campaign
There are a number of different ways in which you can tackle a perceived shortcoming, and sometimes it can be challenging to determine what changes you should implement. One strategy that can be incredibly effective in such a scenario is A/B Testing. A/B Testing refers to a process that directly compares two different choices, allowing you to have a more concrete idea of which variation is most effective. Note that the term A/B Testing refers specifically to the style of testing, and not the type of data being tested. This means that A/B Testing can be applied to any aspect of your campaign, whether that’s the ad title, the ad copy, the keywords chosen, etc.
The advantage of A/B Testing lies in the clarity of the data. When you are exclusively looking at two options, A or B, and one is more successful than the other, you are provided with actionable feedback, which can then be immediately applied to your benefit. Depending on the type of data, this could help you refocus your entire marketing strategy, leading to a significant improvement in your conversion rate.
Comparing the Variations
While performing an A/B Test, you can compare two variations using a number of metrics. The metrics that are most appropriate for your particular test will vary greatly depending on your ultimate goal, but without them, you won’t be able to accurately draw any conclusions from the data. That’s why your team should discuss which metrics to observe during the test, whether those include conversion rates, link clicks, bounce rates, etc.
If you decide to use A/B Testing, it’s vital to keep certain things in mind. The first of these is that A/B Testing is, as the name implies, strictly limited to testing out two different variations of some aspect of your ad. You are essentially experimenting, and like any good experiment, only one variable can be tested at a time. For instance, if you want to perform an A/B Test involving the headline of your ad, you should refrain from making any other changes to the campaign. If you were to also change the ad copy, it will be much more difficult to tell which change people are responding to, which in turn, makes it impossible to create a good plan in response to the data.
It’s also important to allow your experiment to run for a significant amount of time. By limiting the changes made to just one category, you are successfully controlling all of the variables you can, but there are other variables out in the world that could influence the results. Waiting for a longer period of time will help you to better identify anomalies in the data and get a more accurate look at patterns of behavior.
Finally, keep in mind that your findings, while significant, are a reflection of user behavior during a specific time period, and will likely change for several years. This is why it’s critical to continue revisiting A/B Testing and viewing it more as a continual process than a one-time tool.
LET’S GET REAL
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
One of the most popular choices for PPC advertising is via search engines like Google, as these see a large amount of internet traffic and are often one of the first places people go when they’re looking to make a purchase online. However, depending on your target audience, it might make sense to explore other avenues as well. One other popular choice for PPC advertising is on various social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more. When assessing your choices, consider the demographics of the user base, and the types of PPC ads offered.
Have you ever searched for a product and ultimately decided against making a purchase from an advertisement, only to find yourself stumbling onto the same ad over and over again? Whether you initially refrained from purchasing the product due to budget concerns, a change of heart, or some other reason, you’re more likely to purchase it later if you keep getting reminders. This is remarketing. If used effectively, it can help you target customers who have shown some interest but have yet to follow through.
It might be tempting to go out and try to find your own ads on the internet, giving you concrete proof that it’s working as expected. To that end, some advertisers attempt to run online searches using your chosen keywords to see if your ads pop up. But that can actually hurt you and your ad campaign. Because PPC campaigns charge per click, clicking on your own ad will actually increase your expenses unnecessarily. Viewing your ad and refraining from clicking on it is harmful as well, as it decreases your click-through rate, lowering your Quality Score. Instead, it’s best to look at the tools provided by the platform to collect data and metrics and rely on those to determine effectiveness.
Understandably, you might be eager to see how well your carefully crafted campaign works out, but the truth of the matter is that it might take some time before you start seeing results. PPC campaigns rely on algorithms to ensure your ads are being displayed in the right places and to the right people. Waiting about 2-3 weeks will allow the algorithm the time it needs to adjust while providing you with enough data to start noticing trends and patterns of behavior in response to your ads.
LET’S GET REAL
Give us 15 minutes of your time, and we will tell you if we think we can help or not. Click the button, fill out the form, and we’ll email you to coordinate a time to chat.
