SEM

Drive Web Traffic With Paid Digital Advertising

February 28, 2020 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

You have a great looking website, but this is not Field Of Dreams. Just because you built it does NOT mean people will come. So, how do you increase traffic to your website? Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, Email Marketing, Paid Advertising, etc… Where should you start???

Here are a few questions to consider:

Is your website mobile-friendly?
Is your content clear and concise?
Is it easy to achieve the end goal on your website?
Do you have a budget to acquire more traffic?
Do you need web traffic immediately?

While all of the above listed options are valid methods to increase traffic, some take time (SEO), or require an existing audience (Email and Social Media.) However, if you answered “Yes” to all the above questions, then you are ready to run Paid Digital Advertising. Running Paid Ads isn’t quite that simple. What kind of ads – Search, Display, Video or Shopping? Where will these Ads be shown – Search Engines, across the internet, on Social Media? And very possibly the most important how will you reach your desired audience (targeting settings)?

While this blog will never answer all your possible questions about Paid Digital Advertising, let’s at least tackle some of the big ones.

1. Type of Paid Digital Ads

Search Ads – Context based ads that appear above and below Search Results. These ads consist of Headlines, Body Copy, URL and often various Extensions (ie. location, phone numbers and other additional information.)

Display Ads – Image ads that show on various sites above, below, next to, and among a websites content. Since these ads are not the primary reason a person comes to the given website, they need to grab their attention and give them a reason to click.

Video Ads – Often shown before, after or during a desired video similar to a tv commercial. Again, this ad needs to distract a person from their desired video and give them a reason to click.

Shopping Ads – Product focused with the goal for selling typically via an ecommerce site.

2. Placement of Paid Digital Ads

Search Engines – Seems obvious, but Search Ads are shown on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP.)

Display Network – Display Ads can show almost anywhere on the web. There are several Display Networks with the most popular being the Google Display Network (GDN) which boasts to include over 2 million websites,videos and mobile apps. Since videos are included in the Display Network, your video ads will show on this network along with your display ads

Shopping Ads – These ads mostly shown on Search Engine Shopping sections (Google and Bing). However, depending on targeting setting your shopping ads could also be Display ads and therefore be shown across the Display Network.

Social Media Advertising – Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and several other social media platforms have their own Advertising platform. These ads are often similar to display ads, since they are often shown along the side of the page and are not based upon a search, but rather other targeting settings (geographic, demographic and more.)

3. Target Audience

The success of your Ads ultimate starts with your targeting settings. Even with the greatest Ads (search, display or other) shown to the wrong audience will never succeed, While Search Ads are primarily targeting and shown based on what a user searches, there are several other targeting settings involved. A short list of setting that can (and should) be setup on most, if not all, Paid Digital Advertising campaigns:

Geographic Location
Day Parting/Time of Day
Demographics (Gender, Age, Parental Status, Household Income)
Interest/Topics (for Display Campaigns)
Bidding Strategy
Device Targeting/Bid Adjustments
ReMarketing/Similar Audiences/In-Market Audiences

Following this very oversimplified process to setting up your Paid Digital Advertising will help put you on the path to not only driving web traffic but also growing your business and bottom line. However this is only getting you setup, you will still need to monitor and optimize your Paid Advertising campaigns on a regular basis.

Ready to Start your Paid Digital Advertising? Want Help setting up, monitoring and optimizing your Advertising Campaigns, or just have additional questions – Contact DaBrian Marketing Today.

Before You Use Google AdWords…

June 13, 2018 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

Although creating an Google AdWords account is easy and free, there is a good amount of preparation work that should be done before paying for your first PPC click. Before you put your company credit card info in AdWords, make sure you can clearly answer the following questions:

What Is The End Goal For Your PPC?

Stephen Covey wrote it best in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Begin with the end in mind.” Knowing if you want to build a subscriber list, generate leads via form submissions, or increase online sales, will change your campaign targeting and setting as well as your keywords, call to actions, and extensions.

Who Is The Target Audience For Your Google AdWords Ads?

Know who you want to reach and engage with online. This will impact audience targeting setting including which network(s) to target (Search and/or Display). Are you trying to generate new traffic or focused on driving return visitors via remarketing? This would drastically impact the verbiage of your ad copy and landing page(s). Pairing the answer to the first two questions, will help you write targeted and clear Call-To-Actions within your ad copy and landing pages.

Why Should Your Audience Click On Your PPC Ad?

Without knowing your company’s value proposition, your ad copy on Google AdWords will be very generic and unlikely to get clicks. Make sure you highlight features and benefits that you (and only you) can offer your customers. Give them a reason to click on your ad. Here is the example (with my notes) from Google AdWords Support:

The Headlines hint at who they are targeting – someone looking for insurance within their budget.

The body/ad description line builds trust, offers and discount and the suggested call to action is request an online quote. (Sidenote – don’t forget to leverage Ad Extensions to add more specific details to your ads.)

How Will Your Customers Reach You After Their AdWords Click?

Go through your customers journey yourself. What are they searching, does your ad catch your own attention, and is your landing page relevant and easy to use/navigate? After you have done that once, consider doing it again on a different devices (computer, tablet, or most importantly mobile.)

After, going through these quick questions, you will be prepared to setup and begin running your Google AdWords. As you go through the setup process, keep in mind your target audience and what their needs/wants are. Use your ad copy and landing page to speak directly to their problem/pain points and your solution to them. Ensure your landing pages are as mobile friendly as possible and that your conversion funnel/path can be easily completed on any devices. Once you are ready to go live, start collecting data and reap the benefit of all your preparation work.

Have any questions, or think we missed a crucial piece of preparation work for setting up a PPC campaign, let us know in the comments or via twitter or facebook.

The Most Important PPC Metrics You Are Not Using

December 11, 2013 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

Everyone knows Impressions, Clicks, Cost and Conversions. Then comes the various calculated metrics using those – Click thru Rate (CTR), Cost per Click (CPC), Conversions Rate (CR), Cost per Conversions (CPA – A is for Acquisition.) After the calculated metrics, Quality Score and Avg. Position have been shown to be very important in generating Clicks and Conversions. But since you already are familiar with those metrics, let’s look at the lesser talked about ones, which can aid you in achieve your PPC goals and objectives.

Impressions Share (IS) Metrics

Search Impression Share

This metric reveals your competitiveness. The percentage is how often your ad is shown in comparison to how often they could have been shown. Fortunately, Google tells us exactly where and how you are losing the Impression Share battle.

Lost Impressions Share (Rank)

While Average Position tells what ad spot your Ads are showing, this metrics tells you how often your Ads are not being shown due to low ranking. If this metric is high and you are missing several impressions, you will need to either raise your Quality Score and/or CPC bid to begin outranking your competitors.

Lost Impressions Share (Budget)

If you are losing Impressions because your budget, then the easiest fix is to increase your budget. A high lost Impression Share (Budget) means that you are being outspent by your competitors and need to be willing to spend more to stay competitive.

Analytic Metrics

Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate is the percentage of searchers who clicked on one of your Ads, but only viewed the Landing Page before leaving your website. This is an indicator that your Landing Pages are not guiding visitors further into your Conversion Funnel.

Pages/Visit

This metric reveals the depth of the average visit. If your Conversion Funnel is multiple pages long, then a small Pages/Visit reveals a leak in your funnel. Shortening your Conversion funnel could be very profitable for you.

Duration of Visit (Seconds)

While this metric does not tell you exactly what users are doing on your site, it does reveal if they are staying long enough to do anything at all. If you web page if very text heavy, but duration of visits is only a few seconds, then it is safe to say that your text is not being read. Try revising your text into bullet points and adding images. A visitors that comes through PPC cost, so you want them to stay and bring value too.

While these metrics might not tell the bottom line like the more talked about Impressions, Clicks, Conversions and Cost, they do fill in the gaps and reveal a bigger more complete picture of the success or failures of PPC Campaigns. Remember to look beyond the main metrics into the ones listed above and others that are Key Performing Indicators. These indicators will help guide you to PPC success, but you have to monitor them closely and act accordingly. Let us know if they are any other metrics that help you monitor your PPC success, or if you have any questions concerning any PPC metrics.

Importance VS Urgency in PPC Advertising

August 28, 2013 by Justin Miller 2 Comments

A few years ago I had someone explain to me the difference between urgent and important. From what I can remember from this conversation, urgent matters were those that needed a decision within a short period of time. Important things were those that are crucial and must get done to accomplish a goal or task. This was explained to me so that I would 1) understand the difference and 2) not confuse the two. In today’s world of instant gratification, it seems that urgency is being given more and more importance, and the two are being blended and confused. One area where this is becoming increasingly evident is in advertising, specifically Online Advertising. Ads are written in a matter to entice the user to not only click, but to convert (buy, sign-up, or another desired action) after the click. As the writer of PPC ads it is up to us as to how to entice them. Should they be pressured into making a rushed decision or shown the benefit and importance of what they could get?

Urgency within PPC Ads

Urgency in PPC ads is easy to spot. All one has to do is look for the call to action – Buy Now, Sign-up Today, etc. Although creating a sense of urgency in a user may lead some to quickly buy, it may also push others away resulting in a loss of a sale. In some cases a sense of urgency already exists, like for repair services. For instance no one wants to wait forever to fix a leaky pipe. So an ad copy that reads “Call Now for a Plumber” creates urgency, but it matches the already urgent situation. Whereas “Buy Shoes Today” is creating urgency just to create urgency. A new pair of shoes is rarely, if ever an urgent matter.

Showing Importance in PPC

Rather than cresting urgency, the Ad Copy could tell the importance of purchasing the product or service. Focusing on the importance tells the user of the benefits of your product/service. Instead of creating urgency in the call to action in the shoe example above, explain that the shoes are the latest style, cheaper, more comfortable, or any other feature and/or benefit. Give the user a reason to click the ad and take a look at your shoes, instead of trying to pressure them into a rushed purchase. Below are examples of urgency vs. importance focused Ad Copy.

The first Ad Copy is very pushy. Focused heavily on price and getting you to buy and buy NOW. The second on the other hand is more tailored to the use of the shoes and the importance/purpose of the purchase of the shoes.

Is Urgent or Important Better for Your PPC Ads

Neither is wrong or right, rather there is a time and place for both types and focuses. And of course they can be a combination of both focuses within the character limits. The question is which focus and tactic is best for your product/service. The only way to know is through continual testing of PPC ad copy.

Here are a few questions to ask to help discover which focus might work best for your Ads:

Is there a natural time crunch with your product/service? (i.e. resolving a leaky pipe for plumbing services.)
Is your ideal customer concerned with features/benefits or speed/timing?
Are impulse sales sustainable for your company?
How long is your sales cycle – does it make sense to try to rush potential customers?

Try focusing ad copy on both urgency and importance, and let us know the results of your testing in comments. Is urgency needed to generate clicks and conversions? Or are people searching for features and benefits of your products/services? Whichever may be the case, remember to stay focused on your customers and give them what they are searching and your PPC will help increase your sales (today – if you are looking for urgency.)

Achieve PPC Success by Working Backward

July 10, 2013 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

If you are measuring your PPC Campaigns to monitor their success, then you know that there are a lot of metrics to consider. There are the straightforward metrics (Impressions, Clicks, Cost, etc.), the calculated stats (Cost/Click = CPC, Click/Impressions = CTR, etc.), and now there are even assisted metrics (referring to Impressions and/or Clicks that eventually lead to a Conversion.) With so many different ways to measure your PPC, it is not realistic to attempt to be the best (whether that is highest or lowest) in every metric. Instead, you will need to focus on specific metrics and measure your success based upon your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs.) However, with so many metrics, which should be your KPIs? This question can easily be answered by determining your Goal, or purpose, for wanting to run PPC.

What’s Your PPC Goal & Strategy?

Before you start paying for and running your PPC ads, you should have a purpose, or goal that you want the ads to achieve. This purpose can range from increasing brand awareness, to generating leads, or driving more online/in-store sales. The fulfillment of this goal will determine if your PPC is a success or if it needs more work. Once you have chosen your PPC goal or purpose, the next step is to figure out a way (strategy) to accomplish it.

Your PPC strategy is simply a more defined method of how to achieve your PPC goal. For instance, if your goal is brand awareness, then your strategy should be to expand the reach and increase the visibility of your brand. However, if your goal is to drive online sales, then you will want to focus and target your PPC efforts towards people who are ready to purchase your product/service online. And, of course, if your goal is lead generation, then your strategy will broadly target people interested in your product/service, as well as similar, related and connected products/services.

What are Your Key Performance Indicators?

Your goal and strategy are now in place, but you still need metrics to measure to ensure success. The best and easiest way to determine which metrics to monitor for success is to work backward from your goal. Ask yourself, “What does the user have to do or go through to accomplish my goal?” Using increasing online sales as an example, the user would have to:

Purchase online [Conversion]
Browse & Select a product/service
Arrive at your website [Visit]
Click on one of your Ads [Click]
See one of your Ads [Impression]
Conduct a search that would trigger one of your ads

As you read through this list, certain metrics, your KPIs, will begin to stand out. First, an Impression is needed, then a Click which leads to a Visit, and finally a sale (Conversion.) After figuring out the straightforward stats, look into the calculated stats that would help you achieve your goal. In this case, Click Thru Rate (CTR = Impressions/Clicks) would show that quality of your targeting efforts. A low CTR indicates that you are getting Impressions, but either to the wrong people, or your competitors are getting the Clicks rather than you. Another calculated metric (via analytics) that you will want to see is your Bounce Rate, which is the percentage of visits that leave your site after viewing only 1 page. Because online sales require visiting multiple pages, your Bounce Rate will reveal Visits that did not turn into sales.

After looking at those that did not make a purchase, look into your Conversion Rate (Conversions/Clicks.) This metric will, again, validate your targeting efforts and give you a success rate. Additionally, do not forget to watch your Cost. Keep track of Cost per Click (CPC) as well as Cost per Acquisition (CPA) – this is the same as Cost per Conversion, but CPC was already used. Lastly, you should also be tracking the value of your Conversions to compare it to your Cost and make sure that you are obtaining a positive ROI. This process will be different for each of your PPC goals, but is a crucial step to ensure that you are measuring the correct metrics towards your PPC success.

PPC Success – Backward is the Way Forward

Success is no accident. It requires goals, strategy and KPIs measurements. For PPC, this requires starting with your goal and working backward through a user’s process to accomplish it. The important metrics, or your KPIs, will be clear once you determine the steps people have to go through to achieve your Goal. This process may seem tedious, but is absolutely mandatory to achieve success. Of course measuring is not the final step. If something isn’t working, adjustments need to be made, but without measuring (and measuring the correct metrics) you will never know why you did, or did not, achieve your goal.

PPC Advertising Battle: AdWords Vs adCenter

May 17, 2012 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

Everyone knows that Google is king of search. But when it comes to Paid Search Advertising (PPC), is going with the Google always the best option? Although Bing and Yahoo combined do not compare to Google’s daily search volume, their paid advertising via Microsoft adCenter might be a cheaper alternative that could generate a higher ROI for you.

Round 1 of the PPC Advertising Battle: Stats & Metrics

From my experience, there seems to be less competition and therefore cheaper prices (CPC) on adCenter. Below is a snapshot look into a client’s account on adCenter.

As you can see, they had an almost 2% CTR, an Average Position within the top 2-3 spots, a CPC below $1.00, and a CPA under $20.00. Now let’s compare those performance metrics to the same time period on Google AdWords.

Stats are taken for the same Date Range from Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter. As expected, Google AdWords brought in more traffic, and therefore more conversions (7 more to be exact). However, each Click cost $0.71 ($0.07 more) and each Conversion cost $26.26 (almost $10 more.)

Round 2 of the PPC Advertising Battle: ROI

If, for example, we assume the value of each conversion is $50 each, which PPC Account has a better ROI? Microsoft adCenter is showing a Cost of $583.10 (CPA $16.66 x 35 Conversions) with a returning Value of $1750 (35 Conversions x $50 value per Conversion). That results in an ROI of $1166.90 ($1750 Value – $583.10 Cost).

Keeping the same assumption of a $50 value per Conversion, Google AdWords earned a returning value of $2100 (42 Conversions x $50 Value), but had a cost of $1102.92 (Cost/Conv. $26.26 x 42 Conversions). With that said, the ROI for Google AdWords was $997.08 ($2100 Value – $1102.92 Cost.)

In this particular case, although Google AdWords earned a 90.4% ROI ($997.08), it was trumped by Microsoft adCenter, which earned an incredible 199.9% ROI ($1166.90).

Google AdWords Vs Microsoft Adverting Battle Re-cap

Microsoft adCenter did well in Round 1 with maintaining a good CTR (almost 2%) and generating 35 Conversions. However, Google was able to out muscle Microsoft, with more than double the CTR (above 4%) as well as an additional 7 Conversions (42 in total.)

In Round 2, Microsoft adCenter came out swinging with it lower CPC and CPA (or Cost/Conversion). After multiplying the incremental costs out, it turned out to be too much for Google. Bing Ads was able to pull out the victory with a very impressive ROI of over $1,000.

If you run similar or identical campaigns on both Google AdWords & Microsoft adCenter, let us know which is performing better. Does your paid search advertising battle end the same way this one did with Microsoft earning the higher ROI?