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.
Your Content Probably Isn’t Unique (And That’s Okay)
By Becky Zieber | Nov 26, 2019

With the immense amount of content being published to blogs and uploaded to YouTube every day, the chance your content is unique is almost impossible. But what is unique is your brand voice and how you make the content attractive. If you create quality content consistently that features your unique brand voice, you will create content your audience wants to consume.
Progressive Web App: Why E-commerce Merchants Should Adopt It
By Kunal Khullar | Nov 27, 2019

“Progressive Web Apps are highly responsive web apps designed for mobile platforms and can prove to be a great alternative to the ever-expanding number of native applications. PWAs allow for push notifications and sync with your personal details to render quality services, much like any iOS or Android app,” explains Kunal Khullar. He highlights its benefits for e-commerce businesses with case studies and discusses how you can implement this technology for your own e-commerce website.
Back to basics: Understanding your paid search metrics
By Jacob Baadsgaard | Nov 27, 2019

An important feature of PPC is the ability to track everything that happens. But are you focusing on the right metrics? Jacob Baadsgaard reviews which metrics are important and how you should be tracking your data. He also examines what type of traffic you’re getting, if your conversions match your website and landing page, and what your sales tell you.
Holiday Gift Guide: 19 Smart Gifts for Digital Marketers (Including Yourself)
By Kristi Kellogg | Nov 29, 2019

If you’re in the digital marketing space, chances are you have a few digital marketing folks on your holiday shopping list this year. Kristi Kellogg has collected some smart gift ideas that they, and probably yourself, would love to receive this time of year.
How to manage search terms in the new match type world
By Ginny Marvin | Dec 2, 2019

Paid search marketers have had to adjust their keyword management strategies in response to the changes to close variants in Google Ads. Ginny Marvin reviews information shared by Brad Geddes at SMX East. He identifies three primary challenges: the control that phrase match once offered is gone; Google often ignores its own hierarchy rules, resulting in duplicate queries; and there are often poor intent matches.
The Top 5 Google Display Network Features Released in 2019
By Joe Martinez | Dec 2, 2019

Joe Martinez reviews new features released in 2019 that will be sure to make optimizing your Display Network campaigns a lot easier. He covers:
1. Campaign-level conversion tracking
2. Combinations report
3. Updated placement reporting
4. Video assets
5. Parallel tracking
Are You Making Any of These Local PPC Mistakes?
By Pam Neely | Dec 2, 2019

Do you really know what your client wants out of their local PPC campaigns? You should be well aware of their goals and build a campaign around accomplishing their goals. Pam Neely dives into common areas local PPC makes mistakes, including:
1. Not understanding your audience.
2. Focusing on metrics that don’t really matter.
3. Not making decisions based on statistically significant data.
4. Seeing the data you have only from a PPC performance point of view, instead of in the context of actually driving revenue.
5. Not leveraging tools that can save time.
6. Not managing your budget carefully enough to get all the way to the end of the month.
7. Not using geofencing.
5 audiences you should exclude from your PPC campaigns
By Tim Jensen | Dec 2, 2019

“As you build an audience strategy, identifying the people you don’t want to target is just as important as finding the people you do want to reach. Negative audiences help reduce wasted spend, ensure people see the right messaging at the right stage of the funnel, and prevent weary shoppers from being retargeted with products too many times,” writes Tim Jensen. He recommends that you should consider excluding these audiences from some or all of your PPC campaigns:
- Job seekers
- Current customers
- Support seekers
- Past converters
- Retargeting audiences in non-retargeting campaigns
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.