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.
How To Build And Optimize a Google Shopping Campaign
By Tom Whatley | May 7, 2019
If you’re looking to generate search traffic to your product pages and convert new customers with a positive ROI, Tom Whatley recommends using Google Shopping campaigns as a channel. Google Shopping campaigns cost less than other PPC campaigns, and they’re qualifying leads by showing them the products they want by letting prospects essentially window shop on the web. Whatley outlines exactly what you need to do to build and optimize a Google Shopping campaign:
1. Create A Google Merchant Center Account
2. Set Your Tax And Shipping Rules
3. Gather All Your Product Information
4. Create Your Product List and Feed It To Google
5. Connect Your Google Ads Account
6. Set Up Conversions To Track Sales
Keyword Research Still Needs the Human Touch
By Robert Brady | May 8, 2019
AI and machine learning tools are only as good as the programming inside them, which leaves room for some bias. Robert Brady uses an example that shows how the Keyword Planner is not always able to pick up on subtle semantics that can make a world of difference to your keywords and target audience. He makes a strong argument for needing to apply a human touch to the AI tools we use.
All the Sophisticated Marketer content you need – all in one place
By Alex Rynne | May 9, 2019
LinkedIn is announcing the launch of the Sophisticated Marketer Hub for marketers who understand the value of both fundamental marketing principles and new tactics and techniques. If you visit the Hub, you will find resources to download for:
- The fully updated Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn, including new targeting capabilities and creative formats like Video and Carousel Ads
- Guides to thought leadership, content marketing, and global content marketing
- Crash courses in metrics and analytics, ABM and more
- Immersive Sophisticated Marketer Sessions, with video guides, cheat sheets and examples of best practice in reaching and engaging audiences
- Every issue of The Sophisticated Marketer Quarterly, packed with fresh perspectives on marketing from rock stars, authors, neuroscientists and more
- The Sophisticated Marketer’s Book of Wisdom and full Podcast series
Google Ads Reports Can Now Be Downloaded in Sheets – Pros & Cons
By Frederick Vallaeys | May 9, 2019
Google Ads has made reports capable of being downloaded into Google Sheets. Frederick Vallaeys shares the pros and cons associated with this new feature. Pros included the ability to schedule reports, adding the reports automatically to the Reports section of Google Ads or a specific location in Google Drive, extra columns ensure your workflow won’t break during the bulk upload phase, and ability to filter downloaded data. The cons are limited sharing with people who already have permissions for the Google Ads account, you cannot use scheduling to update an existing spreadsheet with fresh data because the report URL changes every time, and you can only put one type of report in every Sheet. The good news is, this leaves open room for using scripts!
How to Set Up a Display Campaign: an Interactive Checklist
By Julia Olennikova | May 9, 2019
Julia Olennikova shares a must-have checklist from SEMrush for setting up a Google Ads Display Campaign. The checklist is interactive–you begin by choosing the primary goal of the campaign and SEMrush will generate an actionable how-to guide to help you at every stage. You will be able to see step by step how to do everything from choosing the right audiences to fine-tuning the landing pages. You can then check-off the completed tasks to track your progress and see how many steps are left to completion. Pretty cool!
Improving Your PPC Performance with User Personas
By Susan Wenograd | May 10, 2019
Susan Wenograd explores why personas are underutilized in PPC. She finds that personas are necessary to understand and apply to build a build relationship higher in the funnel, so you aren’t over-relying on search to save the day. She recommends creating an audience in Google Analytics to use in Ads, or a custom audience in Facebook Ads off the UTM tagging from higher cost sources like Linkedin so you can message them elsewhere. You can then track and observe their behavior and tailor ad copy and ad content that speaks to them.
Ad Copy Must-Haves That Make or Break a PPC Campaign
By Dan Slagen | May 10, 2019
If you’re looking to up your ad copy game, Dan Slagen shares the ad copy elements that will make your PPC campaigns a success. He suggests that you offer value that is relevant to your audience, an offer that sets you apart, and a proposition that has a strong call to action that moves them to take action now.
Advanced Remarketing Tips from PPC Pros
By Andrea Taylor | May 13, 2019
Clix Marketing shares advanced remarketing tips from their favorite PPC folks! Michelle Morgan likes to use CRM lists to move users to later stages of the lead gen funnel or upselling. Joe Martinez recommends creating your remarketing lists based off of user interactions and events instead of page visits. Kristin Palmer likes RLSA using broad match and/or shorter tail keywords to capture visitors who have been to your site who are back in the search market. Tim Jensen recommends using remarketing for exclusions to make sure irrelevant people aren’t seeing your ads. And Andrea Taylor’s favorite tactic is cross-channel remarketing.
Google Launches a New Performance Planner for Google Ads
By Matt Southern | May 13, 2019
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-launches-a-new-performance-planner-for-google-ads/307441/#close
Google Ads has announced a new Performance Planner tool that will help with planning ad spend. Google is saying that advertisers can expect up to 43% more conversions, on average. The Performance Planner tool will focus on driving incremental conversions by identifying the best spend amounts for your campaigns. The new tool can also make projections based on other adjustments, such as different spend levels and CPAs, and users can zoom out and get a campaign-level view of their accounts. While this is a planner, you will still need to download and utilize in Google Ads Manager.
Amazon Introduces Negative Keywords to Sponsored Brand Ads
By Tanner Schroeder | May 14, 2019
Amazon has added negative keywords to Sponsored Brand ads for both Seller Central advertisers and Amazon Advertising advertisers. With the addition of the negative keywords, if there are similar searches you don’t want your ads showing for, the negatives can help in avoiding those searches.
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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