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 Your Company Rebranding? Follow These 11 Tips to Update Your Google Ads
By Matthew Sison | Sep 24, 2019

Rebranding is an undertaking, especially if you’re changing company names and/or website addresses. Matthew Sison recently rebranded from Logojoy to Looka and shares lessons his company learned from the process, including:
1. Decide to update your existing search campaigns or create new ones
2. Ensure conversion tracking is in place on your new site
3. Make sure your account is fully optimized.
4. Avoid any major changes to your search account
5. Make a list of all the places you’ll need to update your brand name
6. Test your new site’s landing page conversion rate
7. Prepare your branded search campaigns
8. Create additional sitelink extensions that drive to a dedicated landing page explaining the rebrand
9. Update your existing campaign’s ad copy, ad extensions, and landing pages
10. Check that your branded search campaigns and additional ad extensions have gone live
11. Monitor results closely and make adjustments as necessary
Optimizing Your Feed-Based Ad Campaigns
By Andrew Todd | Sep 25th, 2019

Optimizing for feed automation is now a crucial aspect of maximizing performance on search marketing programs when using Shopping ads campaigns and other dynamic ad formats. Once common optimization issues have been resolved, Andrew Todd recommends implementing the 80/20 rule:
- 20 percent: Break out item ID product groups for your highest-performing products.
- 60 percent: Use broader groupings like brand, category, and custom labels.
- 20 percent: Build an “All products” or “Auto campaign” to use as a catch-all or for exploratory purposes
Conversion Value: What It Means & Why It’s Crucial to Your Business
By Brett McHale | Sep 25, 2019

‘Conversions’ mean different things at different points in a campaign, and not all conversions are created equally. Brett McHale introduces the concept of determining and assigning ‘conversion value’ to your conversions to place the proper weight of importance when reporting and optimizing. He defines conversion value as “a numerical value that you assign to specific conversions in order to represent their impact to your business.” Once your conversion values are set up, you can use the target return on ad spend (ROAS) bid strategy in your campaigns to maximize your conversions. The extra layer of visibility allows you to identify keywords, ad groups, and campaigns that show either a high or low return on investment. McHale covers how to set up conversion values, how to optimize, and when to use them.
Small accounts and Responsive Search Ads – Adopt or not?
By Amalia Fowler | Sep 25, 2019

Automated text ads, or Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) are here to stay. Larger accounts have the budget to test, but that isn’t a comfortable option for smaller accounts. Is there any merit to smaller accounts using RSAs? Amalia Fowler thinks so, “With small, low volume accounts, part of the appeal of RSAs is being able to test thousands of ad copy combinations in one go.” From her own testing, she found that of the ads that generated conversions, the RSAs were generating more conversions and typically performed better when matched with a conversion-based automated bidding strategy.
Top 10 Reasons Why Your Ads Aren’t Showing in Google
By Andrew Harder | Sep 25, 2019

Even if you think you have everything set up in your Google Ads account and are ready to go, there could be something as small as a single issue keeping your ads from running. Andrew Harder has a 10 point checklist to troubleshoot why your ads aren’t serving. He recommends starting at the beginning and going down the list one by one to find the issue that needs to be resolved, including:
- Campaign/Ad Group Paused
- Disapproved Ads
- Disapproved Keywords
- Negative Keywords
- Low Search Volume
- Keyword Bids Exceed Daily Budget
- Poor Ad Scheduling
- Negative Bid Adjustments
- Billing Information Issue
- Patience
A text ads cheat sheet just in time for your holiday campaigns
By Parinita Rahi, Aurea Astro, Juan Sepulveda | Sep 26, 2019

Microsoft Advertising provides cheat sheets for text ads that you may find handy for your holiday campaigns. The cheat sheet(s) showcase the various types of text ads Microsoft Advertising offers. Each ad offering has its own benefits, and in some cases, you can run multiple kinds of ads from the same account and from the same campaign.
Make the Most of Your Amazon Marketing Strategy
By Peter Phillips | Sep 26, 2019

Businesses selling products need to be doing so on Amazon to survive in today’s marketplace. Peter Phillips shares insight for getting the most out of your Amazon Marketing Strategy, including:
- Optimize your product detail page
- Boost your [Amazon] SEO
- Pay attention to reviews
- Consider advertising
Pinterest Ads: The Basics
By Kamlyn Spivey | Sep 26, 2019

Pinterest is a relatively new advertising platform that you may want to consider trying to diversify your paid advertising efforts. Kamlyn Spivey offers a complete introduction and walkthrough to learning more about advertising on Pinterest. She covers:
- Pinterest Boards
- Campaign Goals
- Audience Options
- Promoted Content
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.