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 Choose the RIGHT Keywords to Optimize For
By Corey Morris | Nov 20, 2019

Keyword research is always necessary to save you time, money, and energy ranking for the right keywords. Corey Morris shares some tips for choosing the right keywords to optimize for out of the gate. He recommends:
1. Identify Goals
2. Ask Stakeholders
3. Analyze Competitors
4. Perform Keyword Research
5. Identify Topics
6. Ensure Topical Relevance & Alignment
7. Review the SERPs
8. Monitor Performance
5 Marketing Strategies Top Marketers Are Using Right Now
By Eva Gutierrez | Nov 21, 2019

What tried-and-tested strategies are top marketers using right now to increase brand awareness, grow their lists and followers, and get conversions? Eva Gutierrez shares five strategies being used right now that you can use, including:
- They’re using pre-sell articles to increase conversions
- They’re utilizing campaign budget optimization
- They implement the YouTube Ads Grid
- They’re splintering content
- They’re using tracking pixels
A New Customer Decision Journey: Embracing & Fueling the Flywheel
By Christi Olson | Nov 21, 2019

Marketers have been using the traditional AIDA marketing model since the 1800s (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action). That model is a funnel, with a lot of energy loss from the top as you move to the bottom. What if marketers were able to conserve some of the energy lost by using a flywheel model instead? What if that energy could be redirected back into the purchase journey for real results, and what if customer energy could be harnessed and added to the equation? Factors to consider in the flywheel model:
- Customer-centricity
- Search and social
- Data and AI
6 Steps to Add Customer Journey Mapping to Your Marketing Strategy
By Connie Benton | Nov 21, 2019

Understanding how your customers decide to purchase your products is essential to getting your messaging to resonate with your audience. That requires being able to map your customer journey to your marketing strategy. Connie Benton brokes down this process into six steps that take place in two parts: gathering the data and then incorporating your findings. The six steps include:
1. Create a user persona
2. Find key decision steps
3. Find the touchpoints
4. Segment the audience
5. Find the right platform
6. Identify the right message for each audience
Google Ads to Provide More Data on the Performance of Smart Bidding
By Matt Southern | Nov 22, 2019

Google Ads will be providing advertisers with more transparency into the performance of smart bidding strategies. Advertisers can now view the top bidding signals that are driving the success of their ad campaign in the bid strategy report. Top bidding signals may include, but are not limited to:
- Device type
- Location
- Day of week
- Time of day
- Keywords
How to Recover Average Ad Position using Non-Linear Bayes and Weighted Ensembles
By Antoine Rigaut | Nov 25, 2019

Antoine Rigaut explains, “how to make an analysts’ work easier during the transition away from average position by building a predictive algorithm of average position from other Search auction share metrics – some recently introduced by Google, through an approach we would describe as an ensemble of Bayesian Hierarchical models.” He covers Bayesian Hierarchical Models and Ensemble Modeling, as well as how to put them into action.
Copy Testing: Why It’s Necessary & How to Make It Work
By Brad Smith | Nov 25, 2019

Online advertising is expensive, and it’s only going up from here. So how do you stand out from the competition? You need to be testing your ad copy. Most people think of A/B split testing here, but Brad Smith recommends copy testing. He defines copy testing as “a form of market research that determines the likelihood of an advertisement’s success through consumer feedback.” Copy testing can be automated using crowdsourcing to see which copy performs before launching a campaign. Copy testing gives you both concrete quantitative data and qualitative data—insight from people like your prospective customers.
Hero Conf London 2019 Speaker Recap: Milka Kramer
By Lara Lowery | Nov 25, 2019

Milka Kramer from Microsoft Advertising walked Hero Conf London listeners through how successful businesses marry technology to market to their customers and influence their decision journey. Particularly, the struggle most marketers are having integrating AI technologies into their marketing. Some key highlights of her presentation include:
- Unify the data in the cloud
- Ensure high quality of data
- Consolidate 1st & 3rd party data
- Predict audience intent
- Boost engagement and performance with AI
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.