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.
Looker Studio reporting: 6 do’s and don’ts for search marketers
By Christine Askew | Jul 18, 2023 | Search Engine Land
Christine Askew discusses how to improve Looker Studio reporting for clients, providing key learnings from a presentation by Greg Gifford. The first tip advises against entering data manually into a text box and suggests setting up data sources to pull data instantly. Next, provide metrics with comparisons to help clients understand trends easily. The article then highlights the significance of choosing metrics that tell the whole story, rather than relying on assumptions. It recommends providing an executive summary, work completed, and next steps to deliver meaningful insights to clients. Finally, aligne key performance indicators (KPIs) with client goals and presenting visual representations of KPI progress to demonstrate value effectively.
Google Ads Improves Brand Settings
By Matthew Umbro | Jul 19, 2023 | Practical Ecommerce
Google Ads has introduced new settings to enhance brand safety and reporting. The first setting, brand restrictions, allows advertisers to show ads only when their brand or sub-brand is included in the user query, eliminating non-brand queries. Advertisers can create up to 10 brand lists for this feature. However, when using brand restrictions, Google automatically applies broad match keywords, which may require testing for optimal results. The second setting, brand exclusions, enables advertisers to exclude their own brands or other brands from Performance Max campaigns, helping them isolate non-brand performance. While brand exclusions offer control, some advertisers prefer to include brands in Performance Max to gain visibility for lesser-known names and access unique inventory.
Microsoft’s Performance Max is now in open beta
By Nicola Agius | Jul 19, 2023 | Search Engine Land
Microsoft’s Performance Max has entered open beta, allowing select marketers to access its full inventory and serve ads across its network. This new feature aims to simplify marketers’ workloads, giving them more time to focus on creativity and reach untapped audiences. The five-step process to create a campaign includes setting up Microsoft conversion tracking, determining budget and bid strategy, enabling final URL expansion, adding assets like text and images, and using audience signals for predictive targeting. Microsoft plans to continue building on more features, such as API support, Microsoft Advertising Editor support, expanded reporting, and a smart shopping campaign upgrade tool, before bringing Performance Max to general availability.
Google Ads for Lead Generation: 10 Practical Strategies That Really Work
By Alessandro Colarossi | Jul 21, 2023 | WordStream
Alessandro Colarossi discusses strategies for using Google Ads to generate more leads for businesses. He highlights the importance of knowing the target audience and conducting research to create detailed buyer personas. Utilizing the right keywords and crafting compelling ad copy are crucial for successful lead generation campaigns. Colarossi emphasizes the significance of optimizing landing pages, using ad extensions, and continuously testing and optimizing ads for better performance. Furthermore, he explains how to implement conversion tracking and remarketing in Google Ads to measure campaign effectiveness and re-engage users who have previously interacted with the website.
Top AI tips and prompts to supercharge your content marketing
By Victoria Shepherd | Jul 24, 2023 | Search Engine Land
Victoria Shepherd explores how AI-powered prompts can boost content marketing efforts. She suggests using AI prompts to generate compelling content ideas, and recommends defining clear content marketing goals before using them. Shepherd advises leveraging AI-powered platforms to access advanced language models for better results. She emphasizes crafting thought-provoking questions and generating unique perspectives using AI prompts to create engaging and valuable content. Additionally, the article offers tips for iterating, refining, and engaging in dialogue with AI to achieve the desired content outcomes. Overall, AI-powered content generation can push boundaries and enhance creativity in content marketing strategies.
9 High-Intent Audiences That Boost Conversions on Facebook and Instagram
By Anna Sonnenberg | Jul 24, 2023 | Social Media Examiner
Anna Sonnenberg discusses nine high-intent audience types that can be targeted with Facebook and Instagram ads to improve lead generation and conversion rates. She emphasizes the importance of aligning campaign objectives with audience intent to ensure successful ad campaigns. The suggested high-intent audiences include people with specific life events or digital activities, engagement with Facebook and Instagram videos, messaging interactions, attendance at events, interactions with lead forms, engagement with Facebook and Instagram shops or catalogs, website visitors, first-party customer lists, and offline activity. By targeting these high-intent audiences, businesses can achieve better results and increase return on investment (ROI) for their ad campaigns.
Google Encourages Performance Max Upgrade For DSA And GDA
By Kristi Hines | Jul 25, 2023 | Search Engine Journal
Google has introduced voluntary upgrades to Performance Max for Dynamic Search (DSA) and Google Display (GDA) advertisers, allowing greater customization and control over campaign performance. The AI-driven platform uses keywordless AI technology to optimize campaigns and match consumer intent better through automatically created assets. Advertisers who have upgraded have seen an average increase of 15% – 20% in conversions, and the new features include preventing ads from showing on certain brand-related traffic, inventory-aware ad serving to avoid out-of-stock pages, and simplified audience strategies. The self-upgrade process is recommended to improve results and ROAS.
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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