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.
8 Common Reasons Your Google Ads Are Being Disapproved
By Chloe Pascoe | Dec 4, 2019

Google Ads has been tightening up ad policies, and the chance that your ads are disapproved has increased. Frustrating for advertisers, Chloe Pascoe reviews reasons for disapprovals and steps to correct certain situations. She covers:
- Your ad makes mention of copyrighted content
- Your ad has too many exclamation points, or your ad uses symbols not intended for its original purpose
- Your ad says, “click here”.
- Your root domain is different in the display URL and the destination URL
- Your ad contains words that are in all caps
- Your ad is using low-quality images or video
- Your landing page houses prohibited content
- Your landing page is not yet live
7 Tips to Optimize Bidding in LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager
By Seema D. Naik | Dec 5, 2019

If you’re advertising on LinkedIn, you may want to review these tips for optimizing bidding in LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager. Seema Naik recommends:
1. Decide whether you are more interested in budget utilization or cost — or both.
2. Ensure that your automated bidding keeps costs at your preferred level, sometimes by lowering the campaign’s daily budget.
3. Monitor your manual bids.
4. If your campaign is delivering the full daily budget, shade the bid lower.
5. You can also control your costs by expanding your targeting to a broader audience.
6. Take a closer look at your campaign, and pause creatives that are delivering a lower click-through rate (CTR).
7. Estimate future performance by using the LinkedIn forecasting tool.
5 Ways to Outsmart Smart Bidding
By Farah Shalwani | Dec 5th, 2019

Google Ads has heavily implemented machine learning into their bidding strategies over the past few years. “Smart Bidding, in particular, optimizes your bids to maximize conversions, tapping into Google’s vast tank of signals—including user search query, browser, and language settings; location; and a user’s historical behavior to predict the likelihood of a conversion. From there, Smart Bidding increases your bids when a conversion appears more likely,” explains Farah Shalwani. She offers these 5 tips to outsmart Smart Bidding:
- Get the basics right
- Align to your business needs with custom modifiers
- Full-funnel optimization
- Budget allocation
- Leverage technology for better automation
Crafting Brilliant Landing Page Copy That Converts
By Alexandria Nixon | Dec 5, 2019

Ad copy is a key element to moving people through your funnel and converting. You need to make sure your messaging is consistent and engaging through the entire funnel. Alexandria Nixon reviews how ad copy at different locations serves to engage and move your prospects through the funnel. She covers headlines, subheadings, content copy, forms, and calls to action.
B2B Audience Targeting in the Privacy Era (Part One)
By Vincent Pelaske | Dec 6, 2019

With the passing of GDPR and the forthcoming CCPA, brands have backed off on third-party data to invest in their own first-party, consent-first data. Before using any data, it is critical advertisers know where the data is sourced, how the data is sourced and verifies that the data provider is compliant with the local regulatory body. Vincent Pelaske covers precautionary measures advertisers should be considering during this time of data regulation and disruption.
How to Identify the Best Ad Platform for Your PPC Clients
By Brett McHale | Dec 6, 2019

Each PPC client is unique in their business, what they offer, and who their audience is. It’s your responsibility to know which advertising channels will work best for them and correct course if it’s not performing. Brett McHale takes a deep dive into Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn Ads to uncover which approaches work for different client goals.
Why You Might Want to Focus on Brand Awareness Campaigns Over Lead Gen
By Garrett Mehrguth | Dec 8, 2019

For many search marketers, lead generation is a primary focus, with brand awareness or impression ads not getting too much attention. Garrett Mehrguth shares a use case with a client that started using brand awareness ads on LinkedIn versus lead generation ads over a period of time. He concludes that if you have the budget for it, it’s worth allocating ad spend for brand awareness.
Excel For Marketers: Make Your PPC Dashboards Dynamic With Data Validation
By Alaina Thompson | Dec 8, 2019

“A dashboard is dynamic when you can easily change inputs and review the corresponding output,” explains Alaina Thompson. She walks you through how to set up dynamic PPC dashboards with data validation in Excel.
LinkedIn Makes it Easier to Manage Lead Gen Forms
By Bethany Bey | Dec 9, 2019

Bethany Bey reviews some simple changes to LinkedIn’s lead gen forms user interface that make using them so much easier. She covers:
1. Lead Form Date Range
2. Downloading Leads from Multiple Forms
3. Archive Lead Gen Forms
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.