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Category Archives: Paid Search

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LinkedIn PPC Advertising, Part II: Avoiding Ad Fatigue

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Just as I stated in a previous post about Facebook ads, keeping your LinkedIn ads fresh can be tricky at times.  Ads can completely stop showing if you do not make proper adjustments. If your campaign’s CTR is lower than the minimum 0.025%, then your ads will be penalized. This typically happens within the first 10,000 impressions your campaign gets.

That being said, here’s how to avoid ad fatigue:

  1. Pause poor-performing ads. When poor performing ads are live they reflect poorly on your top performing ads and will hurt the number of impressions that they will potentially see.
  2. If you are consistently having problems, start making adjustments to your ads. Whether it’s editing your ad copy, changing out an image or editing the URL. This can help refresh your ads in the LinkedIn system and allow you to begin receiving impressions again.
  3. If you have the financial means, try increasing your maximum CPC bid a little to help your ad show more than others who are bidding below you.
  4. Make adjustments to your audience if you are seeing a drop in performance. For example, if you are targeting certain groups, LinkedIn gives you options for similar groups that may be relevant if you cannot think of new groups to target on your own.
  5. If you are targeting a certain age group, it might be wise to remove that parameter from your campaign. Not many people share their age on LinkedIn, so if you do target a certain age group exclusively through that filter, you are missing out on all those who do not have age listed in their profiles.

 

Want more insight into LinkedIn sponsored ads? Check out this blog’s popular introduction to LinkedIn PPC Advertising by Joe Castro, Fathom’s Director of Online Advertising.

Posted in LinkedIn, Paid Search | Tagged , , , , ,

 

Paid Search: Top 10 Reasons Why Your Company Should Be Bidding on Branded Keywords

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In the world of paid-search marketing, a common topic of debate is around bidding on your brand. Generally, 10-20% of our clients request us as paid-search marketers to pause branded campaigns/keywords because they feel we are either:

1. Wasting money on branded keywords for which they are already ranking organically
OR
2. Cannibalizing organic traffic

Now that the paid search market has matured, Google and others have been able to conduct statistically significant tests as to how bidding on branded keywords affects organic traffic. It really is a no-brainer—even with a limited budget, you should be bidding on branded search for the following reasons:

Continue reading →

Posted in Paid Search | Tagged , , , , , , ,

 

Sitelinks and Mobile Marketing

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By now we’ve all heard of Google sitelinks. Some of us are even aware of enhanced sitelinks, if we were lucky enough to get on the white list for this beta. But, are you aware of the benefit of using sitelinks in your mobile marketing strategy? Let me enlighten you!

First, let me clarify what I mean by ‘mobile marketing.’ In this case, I am referring to campaigns within Google Adwords set to target only mobile devices.  Also let me note that the client does not have a mobile site or landing page. The desktop landing page renders well enough on mobile devices to direct traffic there until a mobile page can be created.

When I first started running these mobile-targeted campaigns, I had not included sitelinks. To be honest, the idea hadn’t even crossed my mind. However, when I did a search from my cell phone for something unrelated to my client’s business, I noticed an ad with two sitelinks underneath and then organic listings. It was the only sponsored ad at the top of the screen. Because mobile ads typically display 2 ads at the top of the screen and 2 ads at the bottom, the addition of the sitelinks takes up the real estate of the 2nd ad.

I then did search for one of my client’s keywords and noticed our ad and then a competitor’s ad in the top of the screen. I immediately added sitelinks to the mobile campaigns in hopes of taking up all of the top real estate. Within a week, impressions, clicks, and even conversions had increased on these campaigns. When I searched the same keyword as before, I noticed my client’s ad with two sitelinks underneath at the top of the screen, followed immediately by my client’s organic listing. By the end of the month, conversions had doubled since the day of sitelinks launch and cost-per-conversion was still within our goal.

Including sitelinks in mobile-targeted campaigns is an easy addition that can yield great results. You not only better your chances of top exposure, you help eliminate competitor “interference” and increase your chances for conversions. In this case, conversions doubled. Why not take advantage of these ad extensions and see the difference they can make for you?

Posted in Mobile, Paid Search | Tagged , , , ,

 

No Mobile Site? No Problem!

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By now, I am sure everyone has heard about the importance of being optimized for mobile. (Heck, we even have an entire category on our blog dedicated to mobile marketing.) More specifically, mobile PPC is starting to really become a must to try, especially if you do any business locally. If you have had contact with anyone from Google in the past year, they practically begin and end every conversation talking about mobile. Well here is a dirty little secret that you may not know about …

You DO NOT need a mobile site to get leads from a mobile PPC campaign.

Yes, you read that correctly, and I am not crazy. How, Matt, you ask, is this possible?

By setting up a “Call Only” campaign—and it’s really quite simple.  All you need to have is a working phone number and the ability to handle calls to your business.

Duplicate any campaign you desire and change the settings to target Mobile Devices. Then, enter the Ad Extensions tab and select Call Extensions.  Enter in the phone number you would like to appear with your ads (bonus points if this is a line that can be tracked to see the volume this effort is generating). Select the option to “Show my phone number only on mobile phones”. Then select “Show only the link to my phone number”. Save and that is it!

When somebody conducts a search on a mobile device and triggers your ad, it appears with a phone number. When somebody clicks your ad, instead of going to your website, the phone number is automatically loaded into their phone and places a call. It’s like magic! Just remember to answer your phone when it starts ringing.

Posted in Mobile, Paid Search

 

Evaluating Display for Brand Marketing

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Google rolled out “Brand Activate” today at Ad Age’s Digital Conference. Current standardized metrics such as clicks, user interaction and conversions only depict a piece of the pie for brand advertisers. Google’s new initiative addresses the challenge of measuring brand favorability. Google is attempting to chip away at the billions of dollars spent on television advertising and increase revenue by offering Brand Activate.

Here are the first two Brand Activate solutions, which will be available to users in coming weeks:

1.)    Active View:  Measures whether an ad was at least 50% viewable on the screen for at least 1 second. This tool will be available on the Google Display Network Reserve first and eventually DoubleClick. Google says advertisers will then be able to pay only for viewed impressions.

2.)    Active GRP (Gross Profit Rating): Builds upon the standard measure used in television buying. GRP captures reach multiplied by frequency, and is expressed as a percentage. This tool will be built into Google’s ad-serving tools, allowing users to make campaign adjustments while ads are in progress.

Coming soon to Brand Activate:

  • Brand Impact Survey Pilot
  • Brand Lift Measurement Product
  • Other Cross-Media measurement capabilities
Posted in Display Advertising, Google, Paid Search | Tagged

 

If You Haven’t Tried Microsoft adCenter for Paid Search, Now Is the Time

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Quite a few welcome changes have arrived from Microsoft adCenter lately, providing more control and flexibility when managing paid search accounts.

I recently sat in on a webinar from adCenter which highlighted these changes as well as a few announcements for more enhancements this coming quarter.

 Change highlights from Q1:

  • You can now target specific smartphones and devices.
  • Ad description character limit from 70 to 71.  Although this is small, this slight increase helps for an easier copy of ads from Google AdWords into adCenter.
  • Improved geo-targeting options.
  • Ad group keywords no longer override campaign-level negatives.  This now aligns with AdWords, allowing for more general negatives to be applied across the account in addition to negative keywords that apply to only a few ad groups within a campaign.

Exciting management & advertising opportunities: 

These are being rolled out (in some cases, slowly) over the next few months:

  • The ability to more easily manage keywords by match type individually.  Within the interface, you can see keywords by each match type individually to adjust status, assign bidding, params and destination URLs.
  • The ability to use the “broad match modifier” match type.  If you are not familiar with this in AdWords, you can add a “+” in front of all or a few keywords to give you more control, like “phrase match” with the flexibility of “broad.” The terms within the keyword with a “+” must be in the search query for your ad to be triggered.  For example, if your keyword is +soccer shoes, your ad could show for soccer balls or shoes for soccer, but not for tennis shoes or shoes for prom.
  • You will be able to include location extensions with your ads.
  • For campaigns that use the new ad location extensions, you will also be able to use click-to-call.
  • For exact-match brand terms only, you will be able to utilize rich ads on search.yahoo.com and bing.com.  They will only show for ads in the first-page position.  This is in beta right now, so if you have an account representative, you will need to reach out to them to apply.

For the past two months, adCenter has had about 29% of the US search market share, according to comScore’s recent reports.  With all of the new marketing features that have been implemented and changes coming, now is the time to start advertising in adCenter and capturing that 29%!

Posted in Analytics, Paid Search, Search Engines | Tagged , ,

 

Why You Should Run Mobile PPC Campaigns

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If you’re not running mobile PPC campaigns, you’re definitely behind your competition. Mobile ad spending will increase to $4.39 billion by 2015 (eMarketer, September 2011). In addition, according to Google/OTC, over 50% of searchers’ purchases were as a result of a smartphone search in the U.S (The Mobile Movement, U.S, 4/2011).

Mobile PPC Spend

Today, many advertisers are running mobile paid search campaigns within Google AdWords. However, the majority of advertisers are running mobile campaigns within the same campaigns as desktop/laptop targeting. This is a big no-no for the following reasons:

1. Bidding is Different: Only 2 ads show on most smartphones (and sometimes up to 3 ads under all the organic listings at the very bottom), so you have to bid higher (in some cases) to make sure your ad is appearing. In desktop/laptops SERPs, as many as 10 or 11 ads will show on the first page (up to 3 at the top plus ads on the right side)!

2. Better Understanding of ROI: Although you may segment by device when targeting desktop/laptop campaigns in the same campaign, doing this still makes it more difficult to know how each is doing individually vs. having completely separate campaigns.

3. Click 2 Call: Targeting just mobile devices allows you to have ads where users can click from the ads without actually having to visit your website. This is very important if you have a better close rate via your call center/customer service representatives or if you lack a mobile site or landing page.

4. Mobile-Specific Landing Pages: If you have a mobile-specific website or landing page, it is definitely necessary you have mobile campaigns separated from desktop computers, as Google cannot automatically detect the difference.

5. Mobile-Specific Ad Copy: By having a separate mobile PPC campaign, you can tailor your ads by audience. You may want to use different calls-to-action, such as “Call Today,” that relate to your users’ intent and capabilities.

Still not convinced to try mobile advertising? Look at the graph below to see mobile purchases after ad exposure by industry. (From ROI Research, Inc. & Microsoft, Multi Country Mobile Advertising Research Study, March 2011):

Mobile PPC By Industry

Posted in Mobile, Online Marketing, Paid Search | Tagged , , , ,

 

Google’s Game-Changing Display Network Tab

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Google finally released to the public today its next generation of display network tactics. Soon to be available in all Google Adwords accounts is the Display Network Tab, which will now house your networks, audiences, topics, interests & remarketing information. Most of these changes aren’t revolutionary; it’s basically a new, easier way to keep track of all your display efforts. Here is a screenshot from the Google Adwords blog highlighting the new set-up:

There is, however, one HUGE change that I am extremely excited about. With this new feature we can finally track data in the display network down to the keyword using next-gen keyword contextual targeting. If you’re familiar with the search side of the business, we mainly optimize campaigns based on keyword-level data. This will be the first time EVER that we can now do this for the display network.

Why do I think this is game-changing, you ask? Traditionally, we here at Fathom don’t see as good a return in the display network as we do in search. Don’t get me wrong: I fully believe everyone should be in the display network in some capacity, especially if they are doing well in search and want to grow their account.  It’s just been harder to completely optimize a display campaign when we’ve only seen data down to the ad group level. The tightly themed ad groups we made didn’t necessarily provide us with accurate data. What if we paused off an ad group that had one awesome keyword in it, but other keywords were bogging down the numbers?

This new solution will most likely bring better results to those who have been running in the display network. Another great insight is that your account history is already in there. I can go back over the last year (if my display campaigns were up and running) and see all the keyword data now. It’s definitely time to scrub your display campaigns if you haven’t in awhile, and even if you have! For those of you who might have thrown in the towel for Google display, I would suggest that it may be time to pick it back up again and be a leader in this new game.

Posted in Display Advertising, Paid Search | Tagged , , , ,

 

Additional Google Sitelinks Opportunities

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To follow up on Amanda Jerele’s recent post on enhanced sitelinks in paid search, Google is now offering another feature involving google sitelinks.

Have you wanted to know how the performance of your campaigns could improve by adding sitelinks? Now you can! Google has released a new feature on the “Opportunities” tab which can show an advertiser the impact of adding google sitelinks to his/her campaign.

Here is how it works, thanks to the Google AdWords blog:

In the AdWords interface, once on the “Opportunities” tab, click the “Sitelinks” tab as circled below.

google-sitelinks-update

Here you can see the potential spend and click increase projected on a campaign basis.
google sitelinks updated

When drilling in further, you can see how your ads would look with sitelinks in preview mode as well as the specific current/future projections by campaign:

google sitelinks changes

It is always recommended to add even more google sitelinks than the minimum requirement because Google shows the top performers more frequently. Therefore, adding more can boost performance.

Well, what are you waiting for? Implement those google sitelinks today!

Posted in Online Marketing, Paid Search | Tagged , , , , , ,

 

My Beef with Google AdWords

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While most people would normally bow down to the lords of paid search advertising, today I must protest my infinite quarrels with them. In this ever-changing market, Google makes it difficult to stay ahead of the game. Here are a few of my biggest beefs:

Outdated Information – Dear Google, would it kill you to update your Help and Learning Centers? I realize you are busy creating new methods of making money, but please replace the information on things that don’t exist anymore.

Certification Exams – Here is a prime example of outdated information. I recently took (and passed!) the Google Display Network Certification exam with little to no help from Google. Most of the questions pertained to features that have since been updated or modified. There was not one question related to TrueView ads, remarketing, topic or interest categories, and I could go on! These are all features that I find extremely important to know about the GDN. They even asked how I would go about locating Google’s Wonder Wheel tool … which no longer exists.

Account Changes – Never allow someone at Google to add or change things to your account, even if everything is uploaded paused. This mainly concerns the addition of keywords to expand the account. I am grateful that Google is willing to help with these tasks; however, they are always way off base. They will add keywords that are not related to your account. While I realize I can pause these off, it takes me longer to go through and clean up after their mess than it would have taken me to do the task myself, and do it better. Also, once uploaded to the account, it stays there even after being deleted, which is just a pain.

1-866-2-GOOGLE – Now, I am fairly lucky on this count. I do have the luxury of having a few talented dedicated support reps for some of my larger clients. However, if I have a question regarding a smaller client, the first thing anyone at Google recommends is calling the AdWords hotline. These people know less about Google than I do, and they work for the company! I’m constantly surprised at their lack of knowledge when it comes to new products and optimization methods. So, how are they supposed to help me when I have a complicated question? Answer: they don’t.

Google Philosophy – This isn’t the company’s stated philosophy; it’s what I’ve come to realize when working with Google. Every recommendation it will ever make is in regards to getting you to spend more money. Why didn’t I think of spending more money to get more conversions?! I keep this fact in mind whenever I get any suggestions. I’m all for trying new things, but I won’t flush my clients’ money down the drain. I do what’s best for my client, and if that means spending more money in a different engine, then I’m all for that, too.

My Philosophy – While I could go on and on, I will do a quick “180” to end my proclamation. Despite Google’s shortcomings, I must tip my hat to it; without Google I would not have a career. Therefore, I will continue to maneuver the AdWords world the best way I know how: by taking Google’s advice with a grain of salt and putting my own knowledge to use.

Posted in Online Marketing, Paid Search | Tagged , ,

 

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