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, and that means gathering the top PPC news and innovations from around the web and getting it into your hands. This week is full of great info gearing us up for the holiday shopping season, and more!
Holiday PPC Strategy: 8 Steps to Drive Greater Profit This Year
By Amy Bishop | Nov 5, 2018
Brought to you by yours truly, I’m excited to share 8 steps you need to take to ensure that you’re ready to hit the ground running with your holiday efforts. I break down all the steps needed to make your PPC holiday shopping strategy a smashing success this holiday season. I walk you through where to start, how to plan creative funnels, and I share plenty of tips for building your audience and how to use wishlists. I also discuss how to engage and re-engage, and I cover how you can overcome barriers that may arise. You won’t want to miss this article!
Are Your Ads Holiday Ready? How to Get Your Google Shopping Account Ready for the Holidays
By Pamella Neely | Nov 2, 2018
Here are five Google Shopping best practices you can apply now to get your Google Shopping Account prepared for the holidays. You’ll want to read their advice for optimizing ad titles, using “Shopping Actions,” bidding on mobile, leveraging local searches, and remarketing tips. While not a conclusive list for optimizing your ads, it is the most time efficient approach for the upcoming shopping season.
The impact of ‘close variants’ in exact match types
By Frederick Vallaeys | Oct 31, 2018
Frederick Vallaeys shares 4 ways that his Google Ads Scripts can help restore control for some advertisers. He discusses why he’s seeing mixed results on the new ‘close variants’ in exact match keywords and how some advertisers have been impacted. He builds upon the script he shared last month, so you will now be able to automatically add negative keywords for close variants that aren’t working well. He also includes two variations of similar scripts for automating adding negative keywords and a script for getting high-level match type performance reports.
The New Google Shopping Promotions Setup: What You Need to Know
By Kirk Williams | Oct 31, 2018
There is a new Google Shopping Promotion Setup path in the Google Merchant Center and according to Kirk Williams, “…it looks, frankly amazingly user friendly!” The GMC has been notoriously cumbersome to use, so this is a welcomed change. Kirk walks you through the new set up—how to get Shopping Promotions added to your account and creating a Merchant Promotion. He includes everything you need to know to get started with this new rollout.
Keep your accounts running easily with recurring insertion orders
By Juan Carlos Ousset | Oct 31, 2018
Bing Ads is now allowing you the ability to create a series of insertion orders that automatically renew according to a set frequency with recurring insertion orders. You no longer have to worry about that next IO (insertion order), and you still have the flexibility to manage IOs individually. Their intention is to help facilitate your insertion order management and grant you the peace of mind to keep your accounts running with ease. Instructions for setting up recurring IO’s is also included.
Bing Ads Testing New Competition Tab
By Robert Brady | Nov 1, 2018
Robert Brady shares his experience using the beta test new feature from Bing called the Competition tab. He finds that for experienced Google Ads users, this will look a lot like the auction insights tool. But he cautions that this data is specific to the Bing platform and their advertisers, so you should evaluate it and act on it independently of what you see in Google Ads.
Merkle Q3 2018 Digital Marketing Report Released by Merkel
By Mark Ballard & Andy Taylor | Oct 23, 2018
The Q3 2018 Digital Marketing Report is now available for download from Merkle. The report is filled with updated views of key metrics in channels across the digital marketing spectrum, including paid search, SEO, display advertising, paid social, and more.
Highlights: “While Google search ads achieved steady year-over-year spending growth of 18% in Q3 2018, a closer look at key metrics highlights the growing contrast between trends for traditional Google text ads and those for Google Shopping Ads. Advertiser investment in Shopping grew 33% in the quarter, compared to just 3% growth for text ads.”
Google Ads Introduces “New vs. Returning” Store Visits Segmentation
By Matt Southern | Oct 31, 2018
Google Ad’s new segmentation is designed to help advertisers better understand how many store visits come from first-time customers compared to repeat customers. These insights can inform advertisers how to adjust their marketing strategy to reach their most valuable segment.
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 the holidays approach. 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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