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.
7 Out-of-the-Box PPC Advertising Ideas You Should Try Now
By Lisa Raehsler | Sep 5, 2019
“Regardless of your business or goals, there are several out-of-the-box ideas for targeting and ads that can be applied to your advertising plan if you think more creatively about how to apply them,” states Lisa Raehsler. She adds creative ideas for:
- Google & Microsoft Ads Sitelinks
- Countdown Ad Customizer Timer
- Twitter Follower Campaigns
- Amazon’s Demand Side Platform (DSP)
- Price Extensions
- Custom Intent Audiences in Search
- Microsoft Ads Local Inventory Ads
How To Use Google Ads Conversion Action Sets
By Bethany Bey | Sep 5, 2019
What if different campaigns within your Google Ads account drive different conversions? You can create conversion action groups to use for reporting and bid optimization. By setting up Conversion Action Sets, you can create a set of conversion actions that you can use in campaign settings to select which conversions to optimize for and count in the “Conversions” column at the campaign level. Bethany Bey shows us how to set up Conversion Action Sets and assign them to campaigns.
Google Ads announce more changes to match types – Challenges and opportunities
By Victoria Spall | Sep 5, 2019
Google Ads has recently announced that it now allows ads to be served for queries that it understands to share the same meaning on broad modified and phrase match keywords. What does that mean for smaller budgets and niches that need to rely on specific keywords? Vicotria Spall covers some challenges and opportunities this new era may bring:
Challenges
1. Spend may increase
2. Impressions may be wasted on irrelevant search terms
3. Irrelevant terms/keywords would need to be revisited and reviewed
4. More time will need to be spent on analyzing search term reports and building negative keyword lists
5. Building ad groups with single keywords just got a lot more difficult
Opportunities
1. May reveal new keywords that were not previously targeted which actually convert
2. Will save time creating granular ad groups
3. Top tips and advice from PPC managers
6 Ecommerce Digital Marketing Tips for More Online Sales
By Conor Bond | Sep 5, 2019
With the busy holiday season just around the corner, now is the time to start thinking about what digital marketing levers you can pull in your e-commerce strategy to get the most out of your campaigns. Conor Bond shares these tips for driving more online sales across your e-commerce funnel:
1. Reach in-market shoppers with Google Shopping ads
2. Remarket to with display ads
3. Turn likes into sales with Shopping on Instagram
4. Instill trust with customer reviews
5. Up your cross-selling game with pop-ups
6. Win new customers with referral marketing
How to connect with Gen Z throughout the Purchase Cycle
By Julie Wojtowicz | Sep 6, 2019
With over 90 million generation members in the US (over two billion worldwide), Gen Z is a force for advertisers to reckon with as they are approaching adulthood and buying power. Julie Wojtowicz explains how to engage Gen Z with your brand’s purchase cycles. She recommends connecting the pre-purchase stage with storyliving, where the brand tells their story about what they stand for, rather than what they are selling. Connecting during the purchase is a blend of on- and offline activity as Gen Z prefers to research online and buy in-store. Connection after purchase can be made using gamification.
The Great Brand Keyword Debate: What You Need To Consider
By Matt Umbro | Sep 6, 2019
Jason Fried, the Co-founder, and CEO of Basecamp, recently expressed his contempt for brands that bid on competitor’s brand keywords following his Google Ad campaign claiming Google is holding them for ransom. This has caused waves in the PPC community, bringing to light some issues surrounding brand keyword bidding. Matt Umbro raises some important points to consider before deciding to bid on either yours or your competitor’s brand keywords. Bidding on your own brand keywords allows you to control the messaging and content that searchers are directed towards. Bidding on competitor brand keywords comes with higher CPCs.
5 Ways Content Marketing Can Help Your PPC Performance
By Kristopher Jones | Sep 6, 2019
Kristopher Jones shares how you can use quality content marketing to improve your PPC performance, and vise versa. He explains that PPC ads can get you fast traffic, bias people towards your brand, deliver an awesome landing page experience and finding content ideas from PPC keyword data. He provides these actionable steps:
1. Promote Your Great Content with Facebook Ads
2. Write Irresistibly Clickable Headlines
3. Think Mobile-First
4. Craft Killer CTAs to Convert More Visitors
Google Smart Bidding Updates You Don’t Want to Miss
By Andrea Taylor | Sep 9, 2019
Andrea Taylor discusses updates with Google’s Smart Bidding features you may have missed. Maximize Conversion Value aims to maximize the value of your campaign within your specified budget. Conversion Tracking requires that you track transaction-specific conversion values. Seasonality Adjustments for Smart Bidding are for short term adjustments in intervals of 1-7 days for promotions or sales.
How to Identify Your True Web Audience
By Josh McCoy | Sep 9, 2019
Do you really know your true web audience? Josh McCoy states “What we should be doing is gaining an understanding of our customer demographics by traffic channel as well as the performance of advertising by demographic segment.” To truly know your web audience, you will have to monitor your web analytics profiles as well as social advertising platforms. McCoy walks us through what data we should be looking at in Google Analytics and various social platforms to gather a better picture of who our web audience is and is not.
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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