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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.

How marketers can best optimize their Google Shopping ads

By Corey Patterson | Feb 3, 2022 | Search Engine Land

Despite Google Shopping being an excellent commerce platform, few marketers take the time to optimize their ads. If marketers follow Google’s guidelines and create ads that satisfy searchers’ needs, they will have a greater chance of success with their ads, just like organic and paid search campaigns. At SMX Next, Anastasia Sorokina and Basheer Bergus showed how brands can improve their customers’ shopping experiences by discussing these five ways to optimize their Google Shopping ads:

1. Use highly relevant phrases in shopping ad titles and descriptions
2. Choose high-quality, optimized images for your feeds
3. Ensure required attributes are in place
4. Add additional attributes to stand out from competitors
5. Prepare for future digital commerce trends

Google Ads for eCommerce: How to Make Your Website Conversion-Ready

By Kasim Aslam | Feb 4, 2022 | DigitalMarketer

You’ve taken the critical first steps to ensure your business is set up for Google Ads success by creating a solid brand, setting up reasonable budget and time expectations, and you have a unique selling proposition. But before you get your ads up and running, you need to make sure your website is conversion-ready. Kasim Aslam details the various factors that should be considered before investing money and time in Google Ads campaigns:

1. Website CRO Best Practices
2. Product Preparation
3. Media (Images and Video)
4. Lifestyle Images
5. Robust Titles and Descriptions
6. Live Chat

6 Ways To Conduct an In-Depth Competitive Audit in 2022

By Peter Bray | Feb 7, 2022 | Hero Conf

“A methodological competitive audit strategy can help you understand what data you need to collect and how you can leverage it to optimize your business model. Then, with a thought-out plan of action, you can cut time and cost while improving the efficiency of your operations,” explains Peter Bray. To help you track your competitors, understand their approach, and figure out what your brand might be missing out on, Bray discusses six ways to conduct a competitive audit, including:

1. Perform A Competitor SWOT Analysis
2. Gauge Your Competitors’ Current Offers And Pricing
3. Assess The Technology Your Competitors’ Leverage
4. Examine Your Rivals’ Customer Experiences 
5. Determine The Market Positioning Of Your Competition
6. Review Performance And Social Media Feedback

4 ways to boost your paid search performance

By Melissa Liu | Feb 8, 2022 | Search Engine Land

Paid search marketers are swimming in a sea of data. “Take a deep dive and unlock insights for the various factors such as timing, your target audience, and become that ad copy master,” writes Melissa Liu. She discusses these four ways you can boost your paid search performance:

1. Ad copy relevancy: how to scream the right message
2. People: Decoding audience behavior
3. Timing: It’s everything in PPC
4. Measurement: Please do it correctly

How to Prepare for Facebook Audience Targeting Changes

By Anna Sonnenberg | Feb 8, 2022 | SocialMedia Examiner

Make sure your campaigns are ready for Meta’s announced audience targeting changes. As Anna Sonnenberg explains, “… it’s in your best interest to monitor Meta’s audience targeting updates closely. The platform has suggested that in 2022, it may give users more options for controlling the ads they see so you may need to continue experimenting with ways to reach your target audience successfully.” She recommends these nine alternative options to consider in your strategy:

1. Detailed Targeting Expansion
2. Broad Targeting
3. Engagement-Based Custom Audiences
4. Shopping-Based Custom Audiences
5. Ad-Based Custom Audiences
6. Customer List-Based Custom Audiences
7. Website and App-Based Custom Audiences
8. Lookalike Audiences
9. Dynamic Formats and Creative

19 PPC Influencers You Need to Follow in 2022 (& Their Best Advice)

By Susie Marino | Feb 9, 2022 | WordStream

The PPC grind can get lonely at times, but you don’t have to go at it alone. Susie Marino has put together a guide of PPC influencers that you can follow and reach out to with questions, discuss updates, share ideas, and continue your learning on social media. For each influencer, she has provided:

• Who they are
• What their specific areas of expertise are
• Where to find them on social
• A sneak peek at their expertise

Tips for an Effective Competitor Landing Page Analysis

By Jordan Bishop | Feb 9, 2022 | Hero Conf

Knowing your competition’s strategy will help you optimize your own campaign and avoid costly mistakes. When analyzing your competitors’ landing pages, you’re looking for clues about what’s working well for them and what’s not. Jordan Bishop provides six tips that will help you focus on what’s important, including:

1. Don’t just copy your competitors.
2. Use Google Ads’ auction report to make a quick list of competitors and their landing pages.
3. Take advantage of Facebook’s Page Transparency feature.
4. Don’t click on the ad – use a spying tool to view competing landing pages instead.
5. Know what to look for in your competitor’s landing pages
6. Look for and analyze A/B Tests

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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