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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 Consolidates Smart Display & Standard Display Campaign Creation

By Amy Bishop | Sep 15, 2021

Google Ads announced that it will consolidate Smart display and Standard display campaign options. Advertisers will still be able to use manual or automated solutions, but the option will now be available within one campaign type. At the time of campaign creation, advertisers will be able to choose between an automatic or customized experience. This change seems to be similar to that of the recent change in bidding strategies, where the feature functionality still exists, though, the setup process in Google Ads is changing. That said, theoretically, advertisers shouldn’t notice much difference in performance. Existing Smart and Standard display campaigns won’t be affected at this time.

8 Engagement Trigger Ideas to Use In Your Retargeting Campaigns

By Adelina Karpenkova | Sep 15, 2021

If you understand your buyer’s journey, retargeting is a great way to boost conversions. Retargeting allows you to accompany your prospects at every stage of the buyer’s journey and increase customer retention. Adelina Karpenkova discusses these eight engagement trigger ideas that will help you make the most out of every interaction of your prospects and customers with your brand online:

1. Search history triggers
2. On-site behavior triggers
3. Email interaction triggers
4. Paid campaign interaction triggers
5. Cart abandonment
6. Purchase history triggers
7. Retention triggers
8. Upselling triggers

How To Optimize Your Landing Page For Better PPC

By Josh Gallant | Sep 16, 2021

Your PPC ads need a dedicated landing page to align with the user, increase personalization for your audience segments, and increase conversions. “A dedicated landing page for your PPC ads (rather than just a generic homepage) enables you to streamline content and reduce friction along the path to purchase,” explains Josh Gallant. To help you optimize a post-click landing page that delivers better results in your PPC campaign, Gallant covers:

1. How Do Paid Ads Work, Anyway?
2. The Role of PPC in Marketing Strategies
3. Why Your PPC Ad Needs a Dedicated Landing Page
4. A Step-by-Step Guide to Optimizing Your Post-Click Strategy

Google Adds Data Back to Search Terms Report—What’s the Catch?

By Susie Marino | Sep 16, 2021

Google announced it would be adding some new data to the search terms report. Susie Marino discusses what’s improving in the Google Ads search terms report and the trade-off. She also includes comments from the PPC community on what this change means. Lastly, she offers these four tips on how to make the most of the data you have:

1. Take inventory of old searches
2. Start looking through your current searches more regularly
3. Be on the lookout for more info on the Insights page
4. Use Auction Insights and Google Trends for extra help

3 Clever Ways to Target Your Competitors’ Audiences Without Search Ads

By Joe Martinez | Sep 20, 2021

“Using keywords to target other brand names, products, or services is one of the easiest ways to go after competitors in Google Ads. But targeting competitor keywords can get expensive. The good news is, there are more options we have than just the Search Network,” writes Joe Martinez. There are targeting options we can use for other campaign types that also have deep intent. Martinez dives into three ways you can reach your competitors’ audience without targeting their keywords, including:

• Building custom audiences with competitor keywords
• Building custom audiences with competitor URLs
• Targeting YouTube ads on competitor videos

How to Plan a Facebook Ad Campaign for the Holidays

By Laura Moore | Sep 22, 2021

If you’re planning to use Facebook ads to promote your products or services this holiday season and need a reliable process to ensure your campaigns succeed, look no further. Laura Moore provides five key steps to get the best possible results from your Facebook ad campaigns during peak holiday sales periods:

1. Optimize Your Website for Facebook Ads Traffic
2. Create or Update Your Facebook Product Catalog
3. Plan Your Seasonal Facebook Ad Campaigns
4. Test Your Facebook Audiences and Ad Creative
5. Supplement Paid Efforts With Organic Facebook Content

Tips for an Effective Localized PPC Strategy

By Brittany Sager | Sep 22, 2021

A simple strategy used to target people in a specific area is localized PPC, or geo-targeting. This will help get a relevant ad for a local business in front of the right people, especially if the budget is restrained. Brittany Sager shares these tips for creating your local paid search strategy:

• Start With A Solid Structure
• Leverage Extensions & Dynamic Features
• Get Hyper-Local
• Try Something New

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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