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.
8 (Free) PPC Optimization Hacks To Dominate the SERPs in 2019
By Tom Whatley | Apr 3, 2019
To get the most out of your marketing spend, you need to monitor, amend and test your PPC campaigns along the way. While budgeting and time is a major limitation, but if you plan out your funnel and optimize regularly, you will get the best results out of your campaigns. Tom Whatley shares 8 of his PPC optimization hacks, which include:
1. Follow Google’s Key Rules
2. Don’t Be Afraid To Experiment
3. Negative Keywords Are Your Friend
4. Always Test/Switch Up Your Ad Copy
5. Have Ad Groups For Specific Keywords
6. A/B Test New Landing Pages
7. Geotargeting Can Save Your Budget
8. Separate Your Display And Search Traffic
Google Analytics and Google Ads: A Powerful Pairing
By Deepti Illa | Apr 2, 2019
The integration between Google Analytics and Google Ads helps you gain a deeper understanding of the customer journey. Linking the two will help guide insight-driven marketing decisions on ad creative and conversions, optimized bidding, customized messaging, and gain access to machine learning.
Drive customers to immediate action with Action Extensions
By Akshaya Pragadeeshram and Eugene Goldenshteyn | Apr 3, 2019
Bing Ads announces its global availability for Action Extensions. This extension allows you to highlight a clear call-to-action on your text ads to entice customers to immediately click and drive them to your website. Key details include:
- Clicks on Action Extensions will be charged the same cost-per-click (CPC) as clicks on the ad headline.
- Action Extensions can be shown with other ad extensions, including sitelinks.
- Action Extensions can be associated at the account, campaign, or ad group level, where the lowest level takes precedence. There is a limit of 20 associations per level.
- The URL fields are all optional.
The 10 Most Important PPC KPIs You Should Be Tracking
By Chandal Nolasco da Silva | Apr 5, 2019
KPIs are used to determine how successful your PPC campaigns were. While every KPI used needs to be attuned to the goals and desired outcomes of a campaign, these are the top 10 KPIs, in general, you should be using:
1. Clicks
2. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
3. Quality Score
4. Cost Per Click (CPC)
5. Cost Per Conversion/Acquisition (CPA)
6. Conversion Rate (CVR)
7. Impression Share (CPM)
8. Average Position
9. Budget Attainment
10. Lifetime Value
Here’s how to use Google Tag Manager’s new Trigger Groups
By Tim Jensen | Apr 5, 2019
Google has released new features for Google Tag Manager–Trigger Groups. Trigger groups are an impressive step toward allowing marketers to build more complex tracking setups and adds granularity to tracking your campaigns. Trigger Groups allow you to require multiple triggers to activate before a tag fires. Tim Jensen walks us through how to set up the new feature and gives some advice on how to use it, such as tracking shared thank you pages, tracking engaged users, and tracking multiple clicks.
5 PPC Testing Ideas That You Should Try This Year
By Andrea Taylor | Apr 7, 2019
A/B split testing your landing page, ad and audience tests are staples for PPC, but if you’re looking for a few lesser known tests to add to your methods, Andrea Taylor has 5 to share. They include:
1. Test Increasing Brand Awareness with Target Impression Share Bidding
2. Test Competitor Keyword Campaigns
3. Test Dynamic Search Ads
4. Test Broad Match Keywords
5. Test Audience Targeting + Demographic Data
5 Strategies to Improve PPC Lead Quality
By Michelle Morgan | Apr 8, 2019
Lead generation allows for anyone to convert on the initial lead conversion stage, regardless of their actual ability to buy the end product. Therefore, developing strategies that target higher quality leads, at the same time deterring unqualified users, is challenging but necessary. Michelle Morgan argues that lead quality is better than quantity and shares 5 strategies for doing just that, which includes:
1. Target more specific keywords
2. Use qualifying copy in ads
3. Write landing pages for target customers, not all customers
4. Give your form the attention it deserves
5. Leverage back-end data to optimize
Building a Simple Ad Creative Matrix Template
By Jenna Kelly | Apr 8, 2019
Jenna Kelly shares a simple ad creative matrix she uses to plan a strategy for her ad campaigns. Please see the article for the matrix. She recommends approaching ad creative by theme rather than changing a few words here and there.
A Guide To Boosting Google Display Network Performance
By Ben Wood | Apr 8, 2019
SEMrush gives us a deep dive on the Google Display Network and how to boost performance. They cover the common use cases and targeting options for GDN, upper-funnel attribution problems and detail key metrics you should be using to put a business case together for full-funnel GDN investment and measure the success of your display network activity.
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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