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.
How to Build and Optimize CTA Buttons That Convert
By Melanie Deziel | Aug 19, 2021
The CTA is a critical part of every landing page strategy because it leads visitors to the action you want them to take. It’s the last text your visitor will read before they decide to convert, so you want it to lay a clear path to your conversion goal. Most CTAs come in the form of a clickable button because it draws attention and asks for a simple action from the visitor. By mastering the techniques behind a compelling CTA button, you’ll get even more from your landing page. Melanie Deziel covers these three main elements to optimize:
- Copy
- Location
- Design
Why You Need a Facebook Ads Audit (Free Template)
By Ana Gotter | Aug 25, 2021
Facebook Ads audits are essential to assess the overall performance of your campaigns. Auditing will examine all of the metrics involved with your ad campaigns, including what results you’re getting and how much they’re costing you, and can help you spot trends and patterns, making it easier to create stronger campaigns both in the short and long-term future. Ana Gotter walks you through how to perform a Facebook Ads Audit and provides a free template.
The Complete Guide to Google Ads Lead Forms Extensions
By Brooke Osmundson | Aug 26, 2021
“If your company is struggling to see leads flow in due to a poor user experience, give Google Lead Form extensions a try. Because of the vast variety of options, such as using in Search, Display, YouTube, or Discovery, they’re worth testing out. You may see higher conversion rates and more closed deals by introducing a user to this seamless experience,” writes Brooke Osmundson. She explains the pros and cons of using Lead Form Extensions, setting them up, and optimizing them.
How to Set Up Google Analytics Goals & 10 Tips to Get Ahead
By Josh McCoy | Aug 30, 2021
Goal tracking in Google Analytics (GA) will help you understand if your site is helping you to move forward or causing a lot of confusion for your users. Josh McCoy walks you through how to set up goals in GA. Additionally, he offers these ten tips to help you get the most of your goal tracking ability:
- Use Real Time Analytics to Test Your Goals
- Monitor Your Goal URLs
- Filter Landing Page Views to Goal URLs to Assess Tracking Inaccuracy
- Utilize Reverse Goal Path for Funnel Testing
- Use, Peruse & Obsess Over Multi-Channel Funnel Data
- Set up Goal Alerts
- Play with Your Data
- Geographically Verify Your Data
- Connect Your Data
- Report on Your Data
Q4 PPC Planning: Key Areas of Strategic Focus for Large Ecomm Brands
By Mike Ryan | Aug 30, 2021
“Black Friday has transformed from a quirk of American brick-and-mortar retail into a global omni-channel phenomenon. For merchants in most B2C verticals, it’s a promotional period that can make or break the year, and where success is therefore imperative,” writes Mike Ryan. Businesses that take an integrated and end-to-end approach to their Q4 offering will outpace those who do not. Ryan recommends large e-commerce brands focus strategic Q4 PPC planning around these key areas:
- Timing
- Product Discovery
- Pricing and Profit
- Anti-Conversions
- Supply Chain and Fulfillment
- Customer Capture
- Security
Google Plans to Sunset Expanded Text Ads: Here’s What Advertisers Can Do
By Amy Bishop | Aug 31, 2021
Google has announced that it will no longer allow Expanded Text Ads, also known as ETAs, to be created starting June 30, 2022. This announcement comes after having transitioned the default ad creation type in the UI from ETAs to Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) in February. Advertisers had begun to speculate at that time that this move might mark the beginning of the end for ETAs. Google noted that the goal of this change is to ensure that the “right message” always shows by dynamically creating ads at the time-of-auction to respond to specific search queries.
Advertisers will lose some control with the move toward RSAs. Often advertisers use ETAs to test messaging, which they then use to inform RSAs. Best practice recommendations were previously to include at least 2 ETAs and 1 RSA in each ad group. Google is now recommending advertisers have 1 RSA in each ad group. The issue with this is that, because of the nature of RSAs (which are automatically populated, pulling from several headlines and description lines), it does not allow for granular performance breakdowns. This makes it harder for advertisers to know exactly what copy is working versus what isn’t. I often see better performance from ETAs than RSAs so this could certainly have performance implications for advertisers, as well. On a broader scale, unfortunately, this also seems to mark a trend in the lack of control for advertisers.
I would absolutely suggest testing ETAs hard in the next few months while you can still create them. Be sure to add some evergreen ETAs that you can use in the future, as well. You may even want to set up some additional ads so that you can continue testing even after you’re unable to add new ETAs. Advertisers should of course also focus on testing and improving RSAs. Ensure every ad group has an RSA and work to find out which copy lines work best for your organization, just in case ETAs are retired entirely in the future.
How retailers can stand out this holiday season
By Matt Madrigal | Aug 31, 2021
“Consumers are leaning into the blended online and in-store shopping experience, with digital-first behaviors like curbside pickup and buy-online-pick-up-in-store likely to continue as we head into the holidays,” explains Matt Madrigal. To help retailers get the most out of this holiday season, Madrigal recommends:
- Highlight your differentiated fulfillment options
- Showcase your products in more places across Google
- Connect with shoppers in the physical world
- Prepare for the rush using automated formats, planning tools & reports
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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