Welcome to Cultivative’s weekly roundup for all things PPC from around the web—everything you need to know right now about PPC!
At Cultivative, we’re all about making your life easier. We’ve gathered the top PPC news and innovations from around the web and getting it into your hands. Check out what we found this past week.
Google’s new holiday gift guide is built to send users to Google Shopping results
By George Nguyen | Dec 2, 2020
The “Google Shopping Gift Guide,” is a newly launched microsite that highlights products it predicts will increase in popularity in the US this month, according to Google search trends over the last several months. The site contains the year’s top 100 trending gifts, divided into seven product categories. Clicking on a generic term takes the user to the Google Shopping results page for that term, where clicking on a specific product brings the user to that item’s Google Shopping product detail page. This may lead to more users viewing Google’s Shopping listings.
5 Content Marketing Ideas for January 2021
By Armando Roggio | Dec 3, 2020
As we gear up for the new year, January is go-time for content marketers planning out 2021. Armando Roggio defines it as, “Content marketing is the act of curating or creating content such as articles, podcasts, videos, and graphics and then publishing and promoting that content to attract, engage, and retain an audience of customers and potential customers.” He offers these five recommendations to try this January:
1. Create a Content-driven Community
2. Start a Live Video Series
3. Focus on National Holidays
4. Industry News Stories
5. Chart of the Week/Month
4 Underrated YouTube Metrics to Quantify Your Video Campaign Success
By Joe Martinez | Dec 3, 2020
It can be challenging to explain to a client the value of YouTube ads, especially if clients have a false expectation to perform similarly to Google Search campaigns. Video campaigns in Google Ads are an effective way to build awareness, but we cannot look at only conversions as a success metric. Joe Martinez recommends reviewing four other KPIs to see if ads are engaging users to perform the actions we want them to take, including:
1. “Video played to” column
2. Earned actions
3. View-through and cross-device conversions
4. Audience performance
When to Apply Google Ads Recommendations (or Not)
By Matthew Umbro | Dec 3, 2020
Google Ads provides a recommendations tab to help optimize core account components such as keywords, ad copy, budgets, and bidding. But how do you know when you should take Google’s recommendations when the recommendations do not guarantee a performance improvement? With more than 100 types of Google recommendations, Matt Umbro focuses on the ones that have the most impact, including:
- Ads and extensions
- Automated Campaigns
- Bidding and budgets
- Keywords and targeting
- Repairs
Competitive Analysis Best Practices
By Caleb Mynatt | Dec 3, 2020
“Competitive analysis…allows you to understand the competitors that you’re up against, but it also shows you all the ways your business could be doing more,” explains Caleb Mynatt. Understanding your competitors helps you define the edge you have in the market place and sets you apart from the competition. To take your competitive analysis from good to great, Mynatt recommends:
1. Do it over the course of a few days
2. Identify differentiators, not expectations
3. Think beyond the price points
PPC Town Hall 29: Revamping Outdated PPC Strategies
By Frederick Vallaeys | Dec 4, 2020
Optmyzr’s Town Hall features guests Kirk Williams, Aaron Levy, and Joe Martinez, leading a discussion on how to revamp outdated PPC strategies during a year of unexpected challenges. While Google has been shifting to more automated processes, it leaves PPC professionals space to recondition the earlier approaches to get an edge over the competition. Some of the topics covered include:
1. Thoughts on Black Friday & Cyber Monday
2. An unusual year for PPC
3. Using different shopping strategies
4. Converting digital newbies & feeding data to the system
5. Get your messaging right in Responsive Search Ads
6. Looking towards automation
7. How do we structure our campaigns?
PPC Keyword Research Guide: How to Find Keywords for Your Paid Advertising
By Lidia Hovhan | Dec 4, 2020
Lidia Hovhan argues that the keywords you choose to bid on are the most critical element to a PPC campaign, making or breaking performance success. She provides a comprehensive guide for PPC keyword research, including:
- Define the search intent for your ads
- Collect potential keywords
- Expand Your List Using Keyword Researching Tools
- Niche Down Your Keywords With Specific Description
- Sorting and Organizing Your PPC Keywords
- Don’t Forget Negative Keywords
- Spend your budget on terms that actually drive revenue!
Google Ads Unveils Enhancements to Lead Form Extensions
By Susan Wenograd | Dec 7, 2020
Google Ads has announced two new features to enhance their lead form extensions to help streamline and add better controls for advertisers. Lead Form extensions can now be easily applied and shared among all the campaign types via the “Ads and Extensions” option. Secondly, Lead Forms can be connected via a webhook or via an automation such as Zapier.
We hope you learned something new you can apply to your PPC business strategy. Let us know in the comments below what you want to start implementing. As always, we are happy to be a resource for your paid advertising needs. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.
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