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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.

Russia-based advertisers can no longer reach global audiences on Google properties and networks

By George Nguyen | Mar 10, 2022 | Search Engine Land

Advertisers based in Russia can not run Google ads targeting Russia-based users or anywhere else in the world. “Google first began imposing ad suspensions on February 27. The initial round of suspensions was aimed at Russian state-owned media outlets. On March 3, the company expanded on the suspension by including all ads serving to users in Russia,” notes George Nguyen. “This cuts off an important channel for brands in Russia, hindering their ability to reach potential customers elsewhere in the world. If other platforms follow Google’s lead, Russia-based businesses may suffer as their audiences shrink.”

Increase Your Click-Through Rates, Steal Impressions from Competitors, and Boost Conversions

By Andreyana Kulina | Mar 14, 2022 | Hero Conf

Increasing click-through rates is essential to any online business that hopes to increase leads, conversions, and sales. In addition, it will be challenging to determine the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns without knowing your click-through rates. A high click-through rate helps the search engines know how important your webpage, ad, and content are to users. Andreyana Kulina dives into recommendations for improving click-through rates, including:

• Understand your Audience
• Improve your Call-To-Action
• Research and Optimize for Keywords
• Optimize your Page URL
• Optimize your Meta Description
• Create Engaging Headlines
• Use Images
• Optimize your Email Marketing Strategy
• Take Advantage of the Competition

Five SEM Mistakes That May Be Limiting Your B2B Lead Gen Campaigns

By Lucia Rodas-Estrada | Mar 14, 2022 | Merkle

It can be expensive and challenging to run paid search campaigns for B2B brands, but it can be highly profitable when done right. Since there is high competition in the B2B space, you should strive to distinguish your brand from the competition and highlight your unique features. There are five common mistakes advertisers make that cause lead gen campaigns to not generate as many leads as they could:

1. Not refreshing content regularly
2. Using repetitive ad copy without a clear call-to-action
3. Focusing on the product instead of the customer
4. Focusing on the wrong metric
5. Thinking one offer fits all

Is your brand marketing truly inclusive?

By Michael Collins | Mar 14, 2022 | ClickZ

“When marketing is inclusive, your brand has a better footing with an even larger audience and creates even stronger ties with your customers. Inclusive marketing considers diversity in all forms— age, appearance, ethnicity, gender identity, language, socio-economic status, religion/spirituality, physical abilities, and neurodiversity—to reach people from all backgrounds and walks of life,” writes Michael Collins. To help you determine if your marketing practices are truly inclusive, Collins wants you to consider asking yourself these four questions:

1. “How well do I know my audience?”
2. “Do I clearly understand all the nuances?”
3. “Am I being authentic?”
4. “Is inclusivity an intrinsic part of my marketing process and my team?”

How to Accurately Track Your Facebook Ad Metrics in 2022

By Anna Sonnenberg | Mar 15, 2022 | SocialMedia Examiner

“The release of the iOS 14 user privacy updates in 2021 made it more difficult to track user behavior on iOS devices and has a significant impact on ad platforms like Facebook. Now Google has announced that over the next two years, it will begin offering improved privacy options for Android users, which will further impact the amount of data Facebook can collect,” writes Anna Sonnenberg. Sonnenberg covers the following steps you can take to set up accurate reporting systems for Facebook ads (using the platform’s newly released best practices as a guide):

1. Verify Your Domains
2. Configure Conversion Events
3. Choose the Right Optimization Event
4. Rethink the Campaign Objective
5. Review the Conversion Window
6. Switch to Broad Targeting
7. Maximize Ad Placements
8. Streamline the Learning Phase
9. Adopt Automation Options
10. Use the Conversions API
11. Account for Delayed Data

3 Creative (& Cheaper) Google Ads Alternatives for Competitor Targeting

By Joe Martinez | Mar 16, 2022 | WordStream

You can target your competitors’ audiences in a cost-effective way; in particular, you can target your competitors on Google Ads without Search and use lower-cost paid social to target competitor audiences. Joe Martinez dives into three Google Ads alternatives for competitor targeting for the following:

1. Reddit communities
2. YouTube search results
3. Retargeting

Google Sunsetting Universal Analytics In 2023

By Matt G. Southern | Mar 16, 2022 | Search Engine Journal

Google is getting ready to sunset Universal Analytics, which was the standard version of Google Analytics before GA4, on July 1, 2023. Google Analytics 4 will be the new go-to solution for monitoring website activity. Google is moving on from Universal Analytics due to its inability to deliver cross-platform insights. Whereas GA4, on the other hand, can measure data across websites and apps. Here are several of the benefits offered by GA4:

• Insights across touchpoints
• Data-driven attribution
• More valuable data
• More actionable data
• Built for enterprise

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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