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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.

The Skai 5: Five Consumer Holiday Insights That Can Help Marketers Win the Season

By Skai | Sep 20, 2023 | Skai

The holiday shopping season is described as the pinnacle of retail marketing, requiring extensive planning and strategy. Skai, through its 2023 Holiday Consumer Survey, offers valuable insights into consumer behavior during this period. Notably, the survey finds that the majority of US consumers begin their holiday shopping well before December, with some starting as early as October. Despite economic concerns, a significant portion of respondents plan to spend more during the holidays. Retailer websites, with Amazon leading the pack, are crucial for guiding gift choices. 

Google Ads for lead generation: A 6-step framework for success

By Eoin Deveney | Sep 21, 2023 | Search Engine Land

Eoin Deveney emphasizes the importance of adopting a revenue-driven mindset in lead generation advertising, similar to e-commerce advertisers who focus on investing to generate revenue. He suggests that lead gen advertisers should evolve their strategies to attract better quality and higher value leads. To achieve significant revenue through Google Ads for lead generation, Deveney outlines a six-phase framework:

1. Internal alignment on business goals to ensure everyone is working towards the same objectives.
2. Mapping the lead-to-sale journey to understand how potential customers move from leads to revenue.
3. Choosing points of optimization and assigning values to conversion actions to provide Google with data on lead quality.
4. Using Google’s Smart Bidding to leverage the additional data and optimize bidding strategies.
5. Implementing broad match keyword targeting to increase conversion volume while maintaining efficiency.
6. Diversifying advertising tactics, such as video and display campaigns, to build awareness and consideration.

Google Ads Updates Misrepresentation Policy To Strengthen Standards

By Matt G. Southern | Sep 21, 2023 | Search Engine Journal

Google has updated its Misrepresentation policy to address issues related to the non-fulfillment of products or services due to a lack of qualifications. This update, effective from November 21, 2023, means that such issues will now be governed by the Unacceptable Business Practices policy instead. Violations of this policy may lead to the immediate suspension of Google Ads accounts without prior warning. Advertisers who believe they were wrongly accused of violating the policy can submit an appeal. Both the Misrepresentation policy and the Unacceptable Business Practices policy aim to maintain transparency and trust in advertising by prohibiting deceptive practices, false advertising, and other dishonest tactics. Failure to adhere to these policies can result in ad disapproval, account suspension, or other consequences.

How to increase LTV with PPC

By Rémi Kerhoas | Sep 22, 2023 | Search Engine Land

Rémi Kerhoas focuses on improving customer Lifetime Value (LTV) for PPC marketers through four key levers. He highlights the significance of LTV as a metric for understanding customer value and growth potential. The levers discussed include:

1. Improving Average Order Value (AOV): Rather than reducing prices to boost conversion rates, marketers should focus on increasing AOV. This can be achieved through analyzing historical data to identify sales periods, reviewing media spend with an AOV lens, and considering price increases or product bundling.
2. Enhancing Conversion Rate: PPC marketers should not overlook customer retention and should target existing customers for upselling and cross-selling. This can be done using customer lists and dynamic retargeting campaigns.
3. Reviewing the Customer Journey: Analyzing and optimizing the customer journey can help shorten the purchasing process and improve conversion rates. Marketers should ensure that PPC traffic is directed to the most appropriate landing pages and consider sending visitors further down the funnel.
4. Lowering Costs (Customer Acquisition Costs – CAC): Reducing CAC can enhance LTV. Marketers should review their media mix, measure incrementality, and cut budgets for underperforming channels. Quality Score and Ad Relevance should also be monitored to lower CPC and CAC.

5 PPC Tips For Technology Companies

By Brooke Osmundson | Sep 22, 2023 | Search Engine Journal

Brooke Osmundson discusses the importance of a well-executed PPC program for companies, particularly in the competitive technology industry. She emphasizes that PPC can be more than just a lead generation tool and can support potential buyers throughout their journey. The article provides five key PPC tips for effectively reaching the target audience in the technology sector:

1. Utilize Detailed Demographics in Google Ads to target specific attributes such as company size, industry, and education level.
2. Keep keywords broad when targeting by audience to qualify the target audience and gather more data on user search behavior.
3. Don’t overlook Microsoft Ads, which offers exclusive LinkedIn Profile Targeting features for precise audience targeting.
4. Use Video Ads on YouTube to reach a relevant audience cost-effectively, utilizing detailed demographics and custom segments.
5. Ensure clear and compelling marketing assets that cater to different target personas and address their specific pain points.

5 outdated marketing KPIs to toss and what to reference instead

By Ben Vigneron | Sep 25, 2023 | Search Engine Land

Ben Vigneron discusses the need to shift from traditional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to more advanced metrics for measuring campaign success. He highlights five outdated KPIs and suggests alternatives:

1. Replace “Spend” with “Profit” as the primary goal for campaigns to prioritize efficiency over budget allocation.
2. Instead of relying on platform-provided Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), use CRM-based CPA to assess the quality of lead acquisition, especially in B2B with longer sales cycles.
3. Shift from “Click-based CPA” to “Incrementality-based CPA” to account for the true impact of advertising interactions, incorporating impressions and understanding advertising effects.
4. Replace “Average CPA/Average ROAS” with “Marginal CPA/Marginal ROAS” to focus on the return on each conversion and identify cost-effective customer acquisition strategies.
5. Use “Impression share lost to budget” rather than “Impression share lost to bidding” in search campaigns to balance efficiency and budget control, avoiding overcharging by platforms.

PPC Reporting: Goals, Tips, and Mistakes to Avoid While Creating Great Reports

By Vimal Bharadwaj | Sep 25, 2023 | Optmyzr

Creating effective PPC reports is crucial for maintaining client satisfaction and fostering agency expansion. These reports should go beyond static monthly PDFs and aim to inform and excite clients. To determine specific PPC reporting goals, it’s essential to align them with the account’s success objectives, which can vary from demonstrating ROI improvements to highlighting tactics and strategies employed. Key considerations for PPC reporting goals include summarizing key metrics clearly, showcasing positive ROI, highlighting the agency’s value, monitoring and evaluating PPC performance, and identifying patterns and insights. Building strong PPC reports involves contextualizing data, selecting meaningful metrics, segmenting data by intent, using helpful reporting tools, including visuals for better comprehension, and providing personal insights and recommendations to clients.

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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