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.
Is PPC Competitor Bidding Right for You?
By Tim Jensen | Sep 11, 2019
Is competitor bidding inherently unethical? Jason Fried, the founder of Basecamp, began the debate earlier this month with an ad and tweet calling out the practice as cowardly. Curating a list of brand name keyword variants from your competitors can help to cover the user intent you want to focus upon. Bidding on your competitors can also help you narrow in on users researching purchase when you’re trying to build your brand. Consumers will ultimately purchase based on their interaction with your brand at the end of the day.
Short reprieve: Google gives accelerated ad delivery an extension
By Ginny Marvin | Sep 12, 2019
The accelerated ad delivery option in Google Ads will be available until October 7th, extended from October 1st. Accounts will automatically be changed over to standard delivery. Google says its bidding systems can better predict the optimal time to serve your ads throughout the day. If you want to have your entire daily budget spent, consider using their maximize conversions, conversion value, or clicks smart bidding strategies for campaigns that had been set to accelerated delivery.
8 Must-Have Elements for an Impressive Startup Landing Page
By Margot Whitney | Sep 12, 2019
Some startups have boring, confusing, and messy landing pages. To avoid falling in that trap, startups looking to create compelling and high-converting landing pages need to include these 8 must-have elements:
1. A visual hook
2. A clear, motivational message
3. An emotional appeal
4. Short, sweet, and sensical copy
5. Trust signals
6. A “How It Works” section
7. A consistent brand design
8. An intriguing special offer
4 Things That May Surprise You About Automated PPC Bidding
By Frederick Vallaeys | Sep 12, 2019
Google’s push for letting machine learning handle automated bidding is clear. But just because your bids are automated, that does not mean that your PPC is automated! Frederick Vallaeys shares 4 aspects of automated bidding that advertisers find surprising:
1. You Can Lose a Huge Impression Share (IS) with Automated Bids
2. Bad Targets Are Just as Bad as Bad Bids
3. Changing Bid Aggressiveness Works Differently for tCPA & tROAS
4. Having One Target ROAS Is Not Enough
A script to create a Google Ads Experiments dashboard
By Frederick Vallaeys | Sep 12, 2019
Experimentation and testing is such a critical part of a PPC advertiser’s job, from testing different bid strategies to testing new ad formats like RSAs, to testing new ways to structure an account. Frederick Vallaeys shares a script that generates a dashboard with a comprehensive view of experiments across My Client Center. The script makes it easier for advertisers to stay on top of the experiments they’re doing.
Google Ads App Now Displays Campaign Optimization Scores
By Matt Southern | Sep 13, 2019
The Google Ads App has added support for campaign optimization scores. Advertisers can now review their optimization score as well as apply recommended changes immediately using the mobile app.
[Hero Academy Video] Overview of Frequency Capping
By Jamie Newton | Sep 13, 2019
Jamie Newton explains, “Ad frequency is the number of times your advertisement appears in front of a user in a given day, week, or month. Depending on what is being advertised, where in the sales funnel, or business lifecycle this product or service is will determine how many times your ad should show up. This is important because advertisers do not want their ad to appear too frequently, which would cause ad fatigue. Or, if your ads are not appearing often enough, this can lead to wasted placements and a weaker level of awareness. Frequency capping is a way to manage how many times your ads appear in front of an individual.” The article links to a video walkthrough for frequency capping provided by Ryan Opal.
10 Ways to Spend Less Time in Google Ads
By Michelle Morgan | Sep 16, 2019
Google Ads can be an overwhelming place to visit, especially if you are running ads part-time or as part of your own business. You can spend a lot of extra time in there if you don’t have a focused game plan. Michelle Morgan suggests these tips for spending less time in Google Ads:
- Set automated rules
- Write scripts
- Use bidding strategies
- Try automated ad copy
- Create negative keyword lists
- Create placement exclusions lists
- Save columns
- Save filters
- Schedule automated reports
- Build dashboards
Marketing Experiments: Leading the Way to Transformative Marketing
By Tom Affinito | Sep 16, 2019
Marketing experiments can help marketing organizations find ways to go big without risking too much. Experiments can help inform game-changing decisions for businesses. Tom Affinito explains, “Marketing experiments can not only help you figure out which things to try but also provides a safe haven for out-of-the-box thinking—where transformative marketing ideas come from—to flourish.” He identifies these key areas for marketing experimentation to flourish:
- Validating and calibrating data-driven decision making
- Identifying and tuning the data sets required for a given decision
- Testing new ideas, with a fail-fast / fail small approach when ideas don’t work out
Here’s a script to spice up your Facebook demographics reporting
By Daniel Gilbert | Sep 16, 2019
Daniel Gilbert shares a script that pulls a Facebook demographic report and generates a pyramid chart for age/gender performance analysis. This script is for social marketers looking to spice up their demographics data reports. The script will automatically format your data into a ready-made pyramid graph.
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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