How to Improve Your Email Marketing and Say Goodbye to Unsubscribers

Email marketing might sound old school next to social media marketing and video content, however email marketing is as relevant as ever. According to McKinsey, email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter, which is why it isn’t time to step away from this […]

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Why ecommerce sites should use both SEM and SEO for acquisition

It is well-known that in order to get a good return on investment in terms of marketing, online retailers need to be constantly in front of their customers. However, with the rise of online users, it is important these retailers adopt a multichannel approach.

Despite being similar in that SEM and SEO both aim to improve visibility through rankings on search engines, they do have significant differences.

SEM is a pay-per-click (PPC) service, while SEO improves ranking organically and does not involve paying for search results.

However, with Adobe’s recent Q4 Digital Advertising Report explaining that not only are CPCs in decline in Europe, but click-through rates are on the rise, all signs are pointing to a Paid Search orientated strategy.

Are retailers better off investing their money in SEM or their time in SEO? Let’s explore the arguments for each technique.

Why should ecommerce retailers use SEM?

Quick results

With SEM, results can be achieved relatively quickly. Of course, you will be required to make changes in the AdWords interface, however once this has been done, you can see results almost instantly.

With SEO on the other hand, you will need to implement a longer-term strategy and it can take time to reap the rewards of your efforts.

Better conversion rates

According to New Media Campaigns, PPC holds a slight edge in conversion rates as paid search results are 1.5 times more likely to convert click-throughs from the search engine.

Direct control over your visibility

Even with a significant amount of time invested into SEO, there is no guarantee that you will ever appear in the top spots on search results pages. While the same can almost be said for PPC, bidding plays a huge role in paid search campaigns and increasing your budget can take you so far in improving your visibility on search engines.

Few website optimisations

Although good website structure helps to improve your PPC ranking, it is not incremental to do so to achieve good paid search results. SEO on the other hand, requires that your website’s structure and content are optimised to achieve good results

Why use SEO as well as SEM?

While there are many arguments that may convince online retailers to rely on Paid Search, there are also many benefits to using SEO as well as SEM in their multi-channel strategies.

No direct additional costs

Besides your time and effort, SEO allows you to achieve results without any direct additional costs. SEM on the other hand, can obviously require a significant amount of investment, particularly for competitive keywords.

Organic results more likely to be clicked on

According to the same study by New Media Campaigns, organic results are 8.5 times more likely to be clicked on than paid search results!

Improve brand awareness

With organic results more likely to be clicked on, it is a no-brainer to invest in an SEO strategy. However, another added benefit is the possibility to improve brand awareness.

Presuming that you are able to successfully place your ads in paid search results, also appearing in organic results will help to reinforce your message and improve the visibility of your brand. Over time, the more your brand awareness increases, the more likely consumers are to trust your brand name.

A long-term strategy

It will take time and effort to properly optimise your website for search engines, but in the long term it will help bring you continuous website traffic for free.

Of course, you will need to be sure to keep up-to-date with the latest guidelines to ensure that you are not penalised and your efforts don’t end up going down the drain.

As you can see, there are many advantages to both SEO and SEM, however what is important to take away is that they are complementary techniques. Online retailers are generally encouraged to start by adopting both strategies.

For newly-launched businesses, SEM will accelerate brand awareness, as users start to recognise and trust your brand name. As a first step, it is wise to invest more into SEM while your SEO efforts get off the ground. You can then balance your investments once your organic visibility increases.

Mark Haupt is UK Sales Director at Twenga Solutions and a contributor to Search Engine Watch.

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Five competitive advertising strategies to outsmart your competition

It’s often said that competition is good for your business. It pushes you to be your best. Think Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi, Visa vs. MasterCard, Xbox vs. PlayStation, or Apple vs. Microsoft.

Of course, part of the fun of rivalry is stealing customers from your rivals. You can do that with the help of advertising!

Today you’ll learn five brilliant competitive advertising strategies you can use to get in front of your competitors’ customers and (with a little work) turn them into YOUR customers instead. *Evil laughter*

1. Target Facebook users whose interests include your competitors

Facebook Ads doesn’t offer keyword targeting for your ads and you can’t specifically target people who have liked your competitors’ pages. However, Facebook offers something called interest-based targeting.

On Facebook, interests range from extremely broad (e.g., business or entrepreneurship) to very specific. In this case, your competitor’s name is the specific interest you want to target, because Facebook allows you to choose to target people based on, among other things, brands and products they like.

Type in your competitor’s website URL. Or, if that doesn’t work, you can type in your competitor’s brand name or try a few keyword combinations to figure out best option for reaching their target audience – which is now your target audience!

2. Disrupt your competitors’ videos with YouTube ads

Recently I was on YouTube searching for an AT&T ad. Before I could watch the ad I was looking for, I had to sit through another ad – I know, that’s modern life. But the genius part was that this ad wasn’t for AT&T, but for its competitor, Sprint.

In this ad Sprint explained why it is a better provider than AT&T and highlighted an offer to switch carriers, before I could even see the ad for the brand I had searched for.

To execute this competitive advertising strategy for your own campaigns, create the most watchable TrueView ad you can, adding in how much you’re willing to spend.

There are many targeting options to choose from (e.g., demographics, interests, keywords, remarketing). But today we’re feeling competitive!

You want to target your video ads so that whenever someone searches for the YouTube videos of your competitor that they’ll see your ad first. If you play it right, they might not even watch your competitor’s video!

3. Use your competitors’ emails against them with Gmail Ads

Another brilliantly sneaky competitive advertising tactic you should start using now is targeting people who have recently shown interest in the things your competition sells.

With Gmail Ads (those ads that appear at the top of the Promotions tab of users’ personal email accounts), you can do keyword targeting on your competitors’ brand terms.

As you read this, people who are in the market for your competitor’s products are getting emails from your competitors – and those emails mention your competitors’ brand terms.

For example, if you were competing with Sephora, you could target its brand name as part of a Gmail ad campaign so that every time a Sephora newsletter arrives in someone’s Gmail inbox, your brand ends up in its inbox as well. Obviously, your email should tell Sephora subscribers all about your great competing site and product and why they should check your out.

So if you want to try to steal some sales, target the trademarks of your competitors. Make sure you use an email subject line that will have users clicking your Gmail Ads in droves.

Use only the best-performing subject lines, the ones with the highest open rates – your unicorns. As an added bonus, because these people are already in the market for a competing solution, it’s likely that more people will click on your ads, which reduces your costs.

4. Reach your competitors’ audiences through the Google Display Network

Google has some great display ad technology. But if you want to beat up on your competition, you need to use Google’s custom affinity audience feature.

Affinity audiences let you target a predefined audience, one that should be more receptive to seeing your ads.

To make this work brilliantly, and avoid wasting your ad budget, you’ll want to target the home page of your competitor. AdWords will then figure out the brand trademarks and the behavior of the people who visit and are interested in that domain name (or search for content on related topics).

Let’s use MailChimp as an example: MailChimp is a publication that’s geared toward businesses doing email marketing. So if I’m running a similar business geared toward email marketers,MailChimp visitors would form the basis of our “ideal customer” we want to reach with our own display ads.

This will start the process of getting the right people familiar with your brand and the products or service you provide. And hopefully, with the right message, you’ll start stealing business away from your competitors and experiencing breakout growth.

5. Download & target your competitors’ Twitter followers

There are tools that allow you to download a list of every Twitter follower for any account, such as BirdSong Analytics. You can use these to download a list of all your competitor’s Twitter followers. Costs generally start around $35 and go up the more followers the account has.

Once you have your report, you can use those Twitter handles to create a list that you’ll then upload to Twitter Ads. Make sure to select the option to “add tailored audiences.” Uploading the list will take about 3 hours to process.

You can then create ads to get your business in front of the Twitter users who are already following your competitors and are likely in the market to buy or switch to a similar product or service. Genius, right?

After setting your budget comes the real fun. It’s time to get creative and compose your tweet copy. Important note: Twitter’s “advice” for ad success is kind of a disgrace, so please read my article on How to run a successful Twitter Lead generation campaign.

Don’t let your competitors have all the fun!

Remember, all these competitive ad strategies are putting your business in front of users who are interested in your competitors, which means they’re much more likely to be in the market for your product/service. You just have to show them that what you offer is better than what your competitors do!

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Launching a New Site? This SEO Checklist Will Tip The Balance In Your Favour

I’ve divided our checklist into four main areas – Profitability, Measurement, Content and Links. Profitability Here I’m going to show you how to make sure you optimise the site in a way that will give you a return on your investment. Choosing the keywords with which your potential customers will […]

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Google AdWords launches new features for mobile ads and maps

Google has introduced new tools and features to AdWords to specifically address the consumer shift towards mobile.

The changes and additions have been announced at today’s Google Performance Summit, and include expanded description lines, responsive display ads to fit different devices and formats, more customized bidding options, and pilot features for Google Maps which allow advertisers to introduce more information about their businesses.

Of the trillions of searches made on Google every year, more than half now happen on a mobile phone. Google has also found that more than half of all web traffic comes from smartphones and tablets.

What has been announced? Here’s a glimpse of some of the announcements made at today’s Google Performance Summit.

1. Expanded text ads for a mobile-first world

In February, Google removed right-hand side ads on desktop to improve consistency across devices. In line with that move, Google has optimized its offerings around the screen sizes of the most popular smartphones.

Later this year, prominent headlines in AdWords will increase from one 25-character header, to two 30-character headers, giving advertisers more room to explain their products and services before the consumer clicks on the link.

The description line will also increase from two 35-character description lines to one consolidated 80-character description line.

Currently, if a manually entered display URL does not match final and landing page URLs, they are disapproved. Under the change, domains will automatically be extracted from the final URL to ensure accuracy and the URL path can be customized.

Google says these upgrades will be especially relevant for advertisers wanting to reach the “on-the-go mobile consumer” who wants to know exactly what products and services are available before tapping into a website.

Based on early testing, some advertisers have reported increases in click-through rates of up to 20% compared to current text ads, says Sridhar Ramaswamy, senior vice president, ads and commerce, Google.

2. Responsive display ads

Consumers on mobile are now engaging with content from mobile sites, from apps and from video. But for marketers, there is an ongoing challenge to create ads to fit across all these device sizes and formats.

Google’s new tool – responsive ads for display – are designed to help advertisers develop ads to counter the diverse content, shapes, and sizes across the more than two million publisher sites and apps on the Google Display Network (GDN).

It’s an important move because advertisers no longer have to resize display ads depending on the site or device they showed up on. Headlines, a description, an image, and a URL will be enough for Google to now automatically design the responsive ads.

Google says the new tool allows advertisers to access new native inventory to engage consumers with ads that match the look and feel of the content they are already browsing.

It is also extending the reach of GDN remarketing campaigns by giving marketers access to cross-exchange inventory to reach more websites and apps around the world.

3. Bidding for a mobile-first world

AdWords will soon allow advertisers to set individual bid adjustments for each device type (mobile, desktop and tablet). Previously, the process was more manual with each device embedded into ad campaigns through Google’s Enhanced Campaigns tool.

Now, advertisers will be able to “anchor” a base keyword bid to the device most valuable to a business and then set bid adjustments for each of the other devices. Bids can be adjusted up to +900%.

4. Connecting online and offline with mobile

Particularly relevant for marketers is Google’s findings that location-related mobile searches are growing 50% faster than all other mobile searches. The platform says nearly one third of all mobile searches made on Google are today related to location.

“It’s clear that consumers are moving seamlessly between online and offline experiences. So it’s important to help marketers think this way too,” says Ramaswamy.

The search platform is introducing new local search ads across Google.com and Google Maps to reach consumers as they search for physical business locations.

For example, when using location extensions, advertisers will be able to prominently showcase their business locations when consumers search for things like “shoe store” or “car repair near me.” In this example, “Smog Check.”

This is in a testing phase, and currently not a permanent change.

Google Maps

New features on Google Maps will also allow businesses to develop more branded, customized experiences in two ways.

1. Google is experimenting with a variety of ad formats on Maps to make it easier for users to find businesses around them. For example, a Map user could see promoted pins for nearby coffee shops or gas stations along their driving route. Here’s an example of the new promoted pins:

2. Local businesses can now include more detail about their businesses such as special offers or product offerings. Here is what the new business page will look like:

These latest offerings from Google AdWords reinforce the need for all businesses to understand the importance of mobile. Consumers have already made this shift, and businesses are now playing catch up.

“As consumers live their lives online and blur the lines between online and offline, it’s more important than ever to build business for mobile,” says Ramaswamy.

*Featured image courtesy of Google AdWords

*Featured image courtesy of Google AdWords

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Tie your web, and mobile properties together in Search Console, plus three more recent changes

Since writing our comprehensive and barn-stormingly popular complete guide to Search Console a couple of weeks ago, Google has since released a few updates to make webmasters lives a darn sight easier.

We’ll discuss a few of these later in the article, but first let’s reveal the news that Google Search Console now lets you tie all your managed multi-platform sites together and track the combined visibility in search.

Search Console just launched a way to tie your sites together; something wanted by lots of people! https://t.co/FskytBdeyL

— John Mueller (@JohnMu) May 23, 2016

This feature is called ‘Property sets’ and will be found in the Search Analytics section of Search Console.

From the post on the Webmaster Central blog:

“[Property sets] lets you combine multiple properties (both apps and sites) into a single group to monitor the overall clicks and impressions in search within a single report.”

So all those separate platforms you operate for one single brand – websites, mobile sites, apps – you’ll be able to treat as a single entity if you wish. You can even add HTTP or HTTPS versions of the same site and combine multiple apps.

All you need to do is

1. Create a property set
2. Add the properties you’re interested in
3. The data will start being collected within a few days

This aggregated data from across all properties will be found in the Search Analytics section and you’ll be able to check everything from clicks, to impressions to CTR, as you would normally with single properties.

The roll-out will take place in the next couple of days.

This follows a few new recent features announced for Search Console:

Deeper integration of Search Console in Google Analytics

Google introduced the ability to display Search Console metrics alongside Google Analytics metrics, in the same reports earlier this month.

The new Search Console tab combines the data from both Search Console and Google Analytics, into one report. Previously you’ve only been able to see these in isolation.

As Google says, “By combining data from both sources at the landing page level, we’re able to show you a full range of Acquisition, Behavior and Conversion metrics for your organic search traffic.”

Search Analytics now has an AMP filter

As I reported last week, Google has just started rolling out an accelerated mobile pages filter in the ‘Search Analytics’ report.

Just head to the ‘Search Appearance’ option on the top filter selection and you’ll be able to see any queries that brought mobile searchers to your AMP content.

Google has also introduced ‘Rich Cards’ markup

And finally (for now) Google is also rolling out a new search result format, based on its rich snippets, that use schema.org structured markup to display results in a more visually engaging format, called Rich Cards…

You’ll only be able to markup recipe and movie review posts with Rich Cards, they will initially appear in mobile search results in English for google.com and there is already a Rich Card report set up in your Search Console…

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Five SEM trends ecommerce retailers should expect for the rest of 2016

With the advertising industry becoming more and more competitive each year, many online advertisers are now using search marketing to supplement their organic search results as a way to stand out from the crowd.

Although it comes at a price, this form of marketing can provide relevant, high-quality traffic and help with brand exposure, two qualities of many which can be highly beneficial for online retailers.

Despite paid search marketing becoming an increasingly popular choice amongst retailers for increasing customer acquisition rates, it can be very profitable. Just earlier this year, Adobe announced the results from its latest Digital Advertising Report, stating that while CPCs in North America were stable with a 0% increase, costs actually decreased in Europe and Asia Pacific with a 4% decline YoY in 2015.

What’s more, click-through rates are also improving for paid search, with CTRs increasing by 14% in Europe in 2015. Not only does this show that advertisers are significantly improving the quality of their campaigns, but also that consumers are responding to the ads that they are seeing.

This goes to show that this is the right time for online retailers to invest in SEM if they have not done so already. However, the web changing constantly and new developments arriving daily, what will retailers need to keep their eye on if they are to stay in the game for the rest of the year?

1. Mobile to become increasingly important

The increase in mobile use is changing paid search drastically. In 2015, Google announced that in 10 countries more than half of all searches are now on mobile devices than on computers. What’s more, Adobe went even further stating that mobile search spend (smartphone + tablet) is approaching 38% of total ad spend (up 22% YoY), and phone-based CPCs cost 24% less than on desktop.

If ecommerce retailers are to respond to consumers’ expectations and offer them an excellent buying experience on mobile devices, it is necessary for them to have a mobile optimised version of their site, or risk losing impatient and frustrated users.

2. Adapting strategies to voice recognition

The increasing importance of mobile is also set to have an impact on technologies such as voice search. As terms entered through voice search can be very different to those entered through a keyboard, it is possible that all websites will have to review their content strategy and ensure that it reflects these new “natural language” searches.

3. More importance placed on Google Shopping

In February 2016, Google announced its decision to favour paid shopping ads over AdWords text ads in the right-hand side of SERPs. With this move, the search engine is placing an increasing amount of importance on Google Shopping, which is rapidly pushing PLAs to be the ad format of choice for online retailers.

4. The power of targeting: from keywords to audiences

The way advertisers used data changed drastically last year. While Facebook and Twitter perfected their custom and tailored audience features, Google announced its Customer Match targeting. Such technology is confirming a significant trend for PPC: users are becoming so accustomed to personalisation that they are now expecting it. For advertisers, this means that creating truly targeted campaigns should be a priority to engage customers.

5.    Campaign automation

With consumer behaviour changing constantly and variable factors such as the weather influencing how users shop, campaign automation is a trend that many ecommerce advertisers should be adopting in the coming year to maximise the profitability of their ads.

Automated solutions will allow campaign managers to adapt their advertising to individual platforms (AdWords, Google Shopping, Facebook etc), which will save them a considerable amount of time that can be spent working on campaign objectives or perfecting their multi-channel strategy, for example.

Mark Haupt is UK Sales Director at Twenga Solutions and a contributor to Search Engine Watch.

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How To Secretly Bookmark Posts On Facebook

how to hide likes comments from friends?

Is there any way to control the privacy settings on “likes” and comments I make on facebook so it does not go into all…

Posted by Peter Schramm on Saturday, May 9, 2015

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Google launches Firebase Analytics for mobile apps

Google has launched Firebase Analytics, a new analytics solution for mobile apps, at this year’s I/O 2016 developer conference. 

Firebase was acquired by Google in late 2014 and helps developers build apps for Androids, iOS and the Web. Current features include Realtime Database, User Authentication and Hosting.

However, based on app developer feedback, Firebase is adding more tools to help developers improve app quality and the acquisition and engagement of app users. It is also introducing new monetization tools.

Firebase Analytics

These new tools are all tied together by Firebase Analytics. The analytics platform is free and unlike Google Analytics, it is designed specifically for mobile apps.

That means instead of focusing on page views, impressions or sessions, developers can see what users are doing inside the app, how paid advertising campaigns are performing with cross-network attribution and where users are coming from.

All this can be viewed from a single dashboard.

Audiences

A feature called Audiences allows developers to define groups of users with common attributes. Once defined, these groups can be accessed from other Firebase features. We will come back to Audiences in a bit.

Crash Reporting

Developers will now be able to better understand why an app crashes using Firebase Crash Reporting. This is a set of actionable reports developers can use to diagnose and fix problems on both iOS and Android apps.

The tool is connected to Audiences in Firebase Analytics and will let developers see if users on a particular device, in a specific geography, or in any other custom segment are experiencing elevated crash rates.

Cloud Test Lab, (announced at Google I/O 2015), is now Firebase Test Lab for Android. Test Lab lets developers find problems in their apps before their users do by facilitating automatic and customized app testing on real devices hosted in Google data centers.

Notifications and Dynamic Links

Firebase wants to help developers grow and re-engage app user bases with the following features:

• Firebase Notifications is a user interface (UI) built on top of the Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) APIs. It allows notifications to be delivered to users without writing a line of code.
• Firebase Dynamic Links makes URLs more powerful in two ways. Firstly, links persist across the app install process so users are taken to the right place when they first open the app. Secondly, the destination of a link can be changed based on run-time conditions, such as the type of browser or device. This can be applied to web, email, social media, and physical promotions for insight into growth channels.
• Firebase Invites allows users to share referral codes or content via SMS or email to their networks. The idea here is to turn customers into advocates.
• Firebase App Indexing (formerly Google App Indexing), brings new and existing users to an app from Google searches. If the app is already installed, users can launch it directly from the search results. New users have the option to click a link to install the app.
• AdWords, Google’s advertising platform for user acquisition and engagement, has been integrated into Firebase. That means Firebase can now track AdWords app installs and report lifetime value to the Firebase Analytics dashboard. There are a number of cool things that can be done here. Among them, the Firebase Audiences tool can be used in AdWords to re-engage specific groups of users and in-app events can be defined as conversions in AdWords.

Storage

Google’s cloud-to-device push messaging service Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) is being integrated into Firebase’ s backend and has been renamed as Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM).

FCM is a free service with unlimited usage and supports messaging on iOS, Android and the Web. James Tamplin, product manager, Firebase, says FCM has been optimized for reliability and battery-efficiency. (It currently sends 170 billion messages per day to two billion devices.)

In response to requests to be able to better store and download images, videos and large files, Firebase has launched Firebase Storage. This feature is powered by Google Cloud Storage.

Firebase Remote Config gives developers instantly updatable variables that they can use to customize apps in real time. Features can be enabled or disabled without having to publish a new version and can be customized for different audiences.

Backend products Firebase Realtime Database, Firebase Hosting and Firebase Authentication have been updated.

Monetization

AdMob has been integrated into Firebase. This tool lets developers choose ad formats, including native ads.

Finally, Firebase has a new home: firebase.google.com.

Here’s a short video explaining some of the new features:

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New Image, Video and Web Tools: Adobe Spark Helps You Create Stunning Visual Content

How to Create Video Content that Will Grow Your Business

Remember when YouTube was used to fill the lulls in your work day, offering endless videos of cats doing hilarious things? Well, video has taken a more serious turn and has been tipped for the top by a Cisco report, which states that by 2019 ‘video will account for 80% […]

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SEM too competitive? Here are three alternatives for building your customer base

One of the biggest pain points of many small to mid size businesses in digital marketing is the fact that they have to compete against larger, more well-established brands who can afford to throw large budgets into digital marketing and pay higher CPCs to stay at the top of the SERP.

For those with smaller budgets who are trying to maximize efficiency in a competitive landscape, being able to pay for these higher CPCs in paid search just isn’t really an option.

So how can one still capture and convert users while be as efficient as possible in doing so?

We all know that social and display don’t have the same level of high intent as paid search – but it’s important not to completely discredit them.

Although users may not necessarily be actively searching for your product or service, there are a couple of ways you can still get your ad in front of extremely relevant audiences that will have a high chance of converting – while also avoiding the aggressively high CPCs you’ll see in search.

Below are the three ‘next best’ avenues to choose when paid search isn’t an option:

1) Google Display Network: display select keywords

Display select keywords is a targeting type that uses Google’s algorithm and predictive conversion models to show your ad based on a customer’s purchase intent, your keyword selection, and when your customers are likely to convert.

This targeting type is one of the GDN’s most low-risk prospective targeting types. The best strategy to test and launch on DSK is to use your top 15-20 keywords.

This list can be based on your SEO keyword data or on any past SEM campaigns; if you have no prior digital marketing data to use, then select the most relevant terms that show high intent to your product/service.

2) Facebook: lookalike audiences

What better way to get in front of the right audiences then to use a social platform that has thousands of different data points on a user’s behavior, interests, likes, demographics, etc.?

Facebook’s lookalike targeting technology is extremely robust and will use its data and algorithm to get in front of audiences extremely similar to your customer base.

However, to really make sure you are as successful as can be with launching on lookalike audiences, you need to smartly segment your customer base into tight-knit audiences and then create lookalikes off of those who matter the most to you or who tend to bring in the most revenue for your company.

For example, rather than providing Facebook with your entire list of customers, select your highest-lifetime value (LTV) customers as a base to create a lookalike audience.

3) Facebook: competitor targeting

So the unfortunate thing about having high competition in your service/industry is that you get stuck with high and perhaps unaffordable CPCs in SEM.

Now it’s time to look at the glass half full – this means you can make the most of your competition by targeting users in Facebook who ‘like’ your competitors.

This is a good way to introduce your brand and offering to users who already shop for or use what you have to offer with another company. By showcasing your various unique value props and perhaps more competitive offering, you can get in front of these highly relevant audiences and convert into becoming your customers.

And even if they don’t convert, but they’re interested enough to click on your site just to learn more about your company, you’ll be able to retarget them later to convince them why your product/service/offering is better!

Although you may have smaller budgets and tighter efficiency goals than your bigger competitors, using the three recommendations above can help you efficiently capture your target audiences without having to pay the hefty CPCs you may find in SEM.

Good luck!

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Google has banned payday loan PPC ads, but who benefits?

Last week, Google announced a change to its AdWords policy around payday loans, banning ads for products with high APRs and short repayment terms. 

I’ve been talking to a payday loan provider, and we’ll also look at this decision from Google, made seemingly for moral reasons.

According to Google:

“Today we’re sharing an update that will go into effect on July 13, 2016: we’re banning ads for payday loans and some related products from our ads systems. We will no longer allow ads for loans where repayment is due within 60 days of the date of issue.

In the U.S., we are also banning ads for loans with an APR of 36% or higher. When reviewing our policies, research has shown that these loans can result in unaffordable payment and high default rates for users so we will be updating our policies globally to reflect that.”

So has Google done this for moral reasons?

Well, payday loans can certainly be harmful products. Most quote something like 700% APR or above. It will typically cost in the region of £90 to borrow £200 for three months. This is steep, but the longer term loans offered by such sites are worse, while late or missed payment fees can be extortionate.

This move will not necessarily stop payday loans companies bidding on the term, but they will be limited on the types of product they can advertise.

The obvious effect is that this removes a fast path to market for newer payday loan firms who sometimes offer even worse terms than the more well-know brands. If they can’t pay for PPC, they’ll need to work on a longer-term SEO strategy to gain any visibility on Google.

However, Google still allows other products which could be harmful. For example, there are plenty of ads for home electronics which can be paid in instalments, at some very unfavourable terms.

For example, one of the ads above leads to this LG TV, which can be bought for around £1,600 on several sites.

However, with the interest here, customers will end up paying back more than £4,500 (the compulsory insurance adds another £522 to the cost).  This can be just as damaging as a payday loan.

Of course, we also have categories such as gambling. Indeed, gambling terms make up 77 of the top 100 PPC keywords in the UK. Gambling can destroy.

So, it’s an interesting one. Google has chosen to take a moral stand on payday loans, but there are many other legal but potentially harmful products or industries which have no restrictions.

A win for Wonga?

The most obvious effect is that, by removing PPC ads for such products, this benefits the established players in the market, Wonga et al.

No PPC ads means that newer entrants to the market no longer have a quick route to the top of the SERPs, and will find it hard to beat the organic dominance of the established players.

As Will Critchlow puts it:

How many companies would jump at a deal that meant that neither they *nor their competitors* could buy search ads? https://t.co/ZRZ0xPqjgf

— Will Critchlow (@willcritchlow) May 12, 2016

Jonathan Beeston echoes this view:

Searchers will still be able to find payday loans firms through the Organic results. For strong brands listed in a high position, this policy change might be beneficial. Competitors and new entrants won’t be able to buy their way to the top.

Data from SimilarWeb suggests Wonga.com gets 37.5% of its desktop traffic from search, but 99.1% of that is organic. At worst this change will be neutral for Wonga, and quite possibly they’ll do well out of it.

The stats back this argument up. According to data from PI Datametrics, the best performing sites by SEO visibility are Wonga and the more recognisable brands in the sector.

Those paying for PPC ads at the moment seem to be the ones with less organic visibility, none of those listed in the chart above.

For example, the site with the second PPC ad has little or no organic footprint.

So, to answer the question, it looks like a win for Wonga and similar lenders. Though, as Jonathan Beeston pointed out, it may also help fintech startups:

The other winners from this change maybe Fintech startups. Plenty of companies are trying to disrupt the poor credit lending space, such as Lendup and Lending Club. It’s worth noting Lendup has taken investment from Google Ventures. Lending Club received money from Google itself. I’ll let the conspiracy theorists take it from here.

The payday lender’s view

I asked Luke Enock, Director of Online at Satsuma Loans, about Google’s decision.

“We welcome Google’s announcement. It  marks an important watershed for the non-standard consumer lending market as it makes a clear distinction between well-regulated online credit providers like Satsuma, with its stringent affordability checks, transparent pricing and no hidden extra charges on the one hand, and less customer-focused payday lenders on the other.”

Presumably this now benefits those lenders with a better organic search strategy, as well as saving on PPC spend?

“Google aren’t taking these companies out of the SERPs from organic so I can still see these businesses operating in the short term. Unless Google launches a new algorithm update that targets these companies and removes them from the SERPs as well, but I can’t see this happening any time soon. Organic and paid teams really speak to each other.

There is a need for companies like Satsuma Loans to operate, about one in seven people in the UK can’t get loans from banks, so unless Google is suddenly playing God and saying that these people suddenly can’t have any credit to help when an unexpected bill arrives, then they must still allow reputable companies to bid.

Non payday loan companies I am assuming will still be able to bid on the terms – Google haven’t said they won’t accept bid for the term, just payday loan companies won’t be allow to bid them on their network.

So for us PPC will still be a key channel, but just means some of the people we are bidding against drop out – but others will come in.”

In summary

Whatever the reason for Google’s decision, it seems that this move will serve to further establish the more recognisable lenders in this sector. As these are more likely to be regulated than newer entrants, this does have some benefits for consumers.

It also underlines the importance of SEO in competitive markets like this. While PPC has offered a faster route to search visibility for many, those brands which have looked longer-term and put an SEO strategy in place look set to benefit here.

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Everything you always wanted to know about programmatic but were too afraid to ask

One of the biggest challenges to programmatic adoption is that people are afraid of it.

To counter this, marketers should keep the language and definitions simple. This was a key takeaway from a panel of experts discussing programmatic at a recent ClickZ Live digital marketing conference.

“In programmatic we have a tendency to use a lot of jargon, which creates a lot of fear, even within the industry,” said Aswin Regawa, managing director, platforms, OmnicomMediaGroup.

What is programmatic?

Matt Harty, senior vice president, Asia Pacific, The Trade Desk, kicked off the discussion by asking the panel to put forward their elevator pitch when defining programmatic.

“It’s ‘programmable advertising’… You want to target a set audience and until that audience is engaged, you don’t buy the ad placement,” Harty said.

Melvin Goo, general manager, OMD Indonesia added that the essence of programmatic is in its automated ability to buy not sites, but the audience. “It’s about buying the audience when [the ad] is most relevant to them,” Goo said.

The LUMAscape

An important, but complex map of images all marketers should have at their fingertips, is the LUMAscape.

There are different versions of the LUMAscape, here’s one for display:

The LUMAscape is a document (of company logos) showing all the different partners that make up the programmatic ad-buying journey. On one side are the advertisers and on the other are the publishers. In between are all the different businesses that support programmatic buying.

These include the agencies; agency holding companies; agency trading desks; demand side platforms (DSPs); and supporting technologies such as brand safety and viewability. On the supply side are the platforms working closely with the publishers.

It raises an important question. How do marketers navigate the crowded adtech landscape?

“How do you turn this crowded page of logos into partners to work with?” asked Harty.

Each logo has to be relevant to the final business objective, said Regawa.

“You have a lot of people who will collaborate with you, but if the essence of it has no meaning to the end goal – which is reaching consumers and delivering on whatever KPIs have been set – what is the relevance?” Regawa added.

What is the agency’s role, and can they do a better job?

The perception of programmatic isn’t always a positive one. The panel agreed that for marketers, programmatic is a beautiful thing, but for consumers, it can be annoying.

“When I tell people what I do, they say: Oh, you’re that guy that follows me around the whole Internet, and if I go to the bathroom, you follow me in there and serve me up a travel ad,” said Harty. This prompted him to ask the panel: “Can we do a better job? Can we be more subtle?”

Goo said programmatic was still in its infancy, as was the digital industry as a whole. Agencies, marketers and partners should manage retargeting with frequency tapping. “As an industry we have to get it right,” said Goo.

The rise in ad blocking means advertisers need to be even smarter about how they serve ads. “It’s about ensuring high relevancy for the consumer. I want to see what I want to see, and if you can project that, I will absorb that,” said Regawa.

How to use programmatic to target the user with relevancy

Goo said all parties were guilty of not being up to speed on programmatic. The technology is not only cost effective, but gives marketers enormous amounts of data to learn about their consumers.

“Programmatic is really important for speaking to your audience and to continually learn and retarget a lot of people to get better ROI,” said Goo.

Measurement and ROI

Current limitations to programmatic technology mean measurement is still largely action based around cost per mile (CPM), cost per click (CPC) or cost per impression (CPI) models.

The panel agreed that a fundamental shift needed to take place around media measurement.

“We need to stop worrying about the science and worry more about the real people and the real targets we are going after,” said Harty.

He suggested that might involve dropping click through rates (CTR) as a metric completely.

Goo agreed that CTR was not a good benchmark for measurement, and opened up advertisers to robots and fraud.

“What really matters to businesses is sales and growth. What if we start moving into the metric of ‘cost per valuable impression’ or ‘cost per growth’ or ‘cost per market share’,” asked Goo.

First party data and lookalike modeling

Educating clients on the value of sharing first party data (the information a brand or business has collected about their audience) beyond its use for retargeting, was highlighted as a key objective for marketers. Rather than using first party data to intrude and blast existing customers with more ads, marketers can use it to tighten and reduce the amount of media going out.

It can also be used for lookalike modelling. By profiling existing consumers and then cross-matching with the same, gives advertisers a stronger reach to engage new, potential customers or clients.

“We only want to see your data so we can see who has the highest probability to come and convert and become your next customer,” said Harty.

Conclusion

Awareness is playing an integral role to programmatic adoption.

“The whole point of programmatic is it is action based, or it leads the person to a particular action, and once brands get that initial bit of understanding, then they are more keen, and then the actions speak for themselves,” said Goo.

Harty added that programmatic was new to everyone. “How do we communicate or show them that it is just a change in work flow, it’s not a change in anything fundamental. We’ve just finally got the tools now to advertise properly for the first time ever,” he said.

Programmatic is a great tool but can only grow if everyone is confident enough to actually use it, said Regawa.

He said that while investments in programmatic globally were rising, local [Indonesian] adoption was slow.

“That’s because not everyone understands the platform or functionality or what impact it will have on the business. In the ad world, it’s cool. But from my side at least, it’s a constant education of what the tool can do in a very simple marketing purpose, instead of programmatic jargon.”

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Google Ad 4-pack now shown for 23% of all online search topics

Brand new research out today reveals that, since Google AdWords removed its right-hand side ads and brought in an occasional fourth paid ad position for ‘highly commercial’ search terms, this fourth ad appears for nearly one-quarter of all search topics.

It’s been an interesting time for search marketers, with lot of early research indicating various different trends and anomalies for the new look SERP.

The major worry is that paid search advertising will become more competitive and that organic results are getting pushed further and further down the page.

Although one of the surprising developments is that having your ad appear in position 4 may lead to as high CTR as position 1.

Today’s research however highlights the need for paid search teams to align their strategies with customer intent.

As well as the headline stat, BrightEdge has discovered the following important takeaways you need to be aware of:

• Searches indicating purchase intent are six times more likely than all other searches to display this four-pack of ads.
• Searches with discovery intent have a 69% higher click-through-rate (CTR) for the top five search results, as compared to purchase-intent searches.

What does this all mean?

That customer intent is everything, and that the ‘micro-moments’ that you will have heard Google recommending you pay attention to, should be right at the top of your search strategy.

What are micro-moments?

As Chris Lake mentions in his post on how to optimise for near me search, Google says micro-moments are the “critical touch points within today’s consumer journey, and when added together, they ultimately determine how that journey ends.”

Or to put it simply, the

• I-want-to-know moments
• I-want-to-go moments
• I-want-to-buy moments
• I-want-to-do moments

These all have three things in common – immediacy, context and intent.

So going back to the BrightEdge research, Google is creating a pay-to-play battleground where the only winners will be the marketers who align their paid search efforts with customer intent.

According to Google, examples of commercial queries include topics such as “hotels in New York City” and “car insurance”. Other examples are “CRM software” and “energy management systems”. Also note that research from Sirius Decisions indicates that 67% of the B2B buyer’s journey is now done online.

That’s not to say there’s no room for organic search marketing for commercial terms…

How organic and paid search marketers can work together

The key to search marketing is supporting organic efforts with paid advertising, and filling the gaps when on-page SEO and content marketing isn’t enough.

However you must understand that with Google becoming ever savvier about quality, it’s vital you’re creating content that’s trustworthy and relevant.

But as the research points out, “searches with commercial intent on average display a higher number of ads at the top of the page than other searches, click-through-rates are lower for organic search results as compared to those with fewer top-of-the-page ads.”

So again, it’s now much harder for organic results to gain any love on SERPs for commercial search terms.

The key is knowing which commercial terms have organic search results above the fold, so organic and paid search teams can work together in targeting these terms to boost ROI for both paid and organic efforts.

You should also research which pages are currently ranking for these terms and create further webpages that help bolster this presence, by mapping content to exactly what searchers are looking for.

And then for search topics where there are fewer ads displayed, organic search teams should take the lead in creating content that delivers on all points, from relevancy, to quality to user experience, in order to attract and retain customers.

For more on the research, check the full report from BrightEdge.

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Receptional Nominated For Three Digital Awards

Recently we shared the good news that Receptional had been nominated for the European Search Awards 2016. This week we have’ also been nominated for two MOMA Awards and The Drum Search Awards. At the MOMA Awards we will be competing for the best product/service launch on mobile for our […]

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Google Removes Right Hand Side Bar Ads: What Does This Mean For Pay Per Click?

Earlier this year, Google announced changes to the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) to now only show ads at the top and bottom of the search results. The changes will aim to bring the desktop experience closer to the mobile experience, although whether the number of ads shown to mobile […]

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Google Search Console: a complete overview

Facebook Live – Top Tips and Predictions from Mari Smith

Facebook Live is growing in leaps and bounds. Companies that want to be on the leading edge would do well to integrate Facebook Live video into their marketing strategies. Not just content marketing, but also looking ahead into the not too distant future for how you can integrate live video into your social customer care.

Check out this fun highlight reel with several of my recent Facebook Live videos, along with golden nuggets tweeted from my live video keynote panel at Social Media Marketing World 2016 #SMMW16:

Ideas for using Facebook Live

• Weekly show: my friend Scott Monty uses Facebook Live on his profile every Sunday to provide a sneak preview of his weekly social media and tech industry roundup.
• Q&A: You could do regular live Q&A sessions to provide valuable content for your audience, whether on your page or inside specific groups, for example. Our good friend Gary Vaynerchuk regular does #AskGaryVee Facebook Live sessions.
• Breaking news
• How to
• Behind the scenes
• Unboxing
• Product demos
• Customer spotlight
• Meet the staff
• ‘Man on the street’
• ‘Where in the world is…’: I’ve just been traveling and speaking extensively from San Diego, California to Rome, Italy and Scotland, then Las Vegas next week. I love to provide a glimpse of fun sights and landmarks as I travel. Your audience might love to live vicariously through you if you also travel, or even experiencing fun local activities.

If you are extremely uncomfortable being on camera, you might consider identifying someone else on your team/in your company who is a natural on camera. And/or join your local Toastmasters or Speaking Circles to improve your comfort level in front of audiences. Plus, check out my lovely friend Jaeny Baik‘s excellent on-camera training. I’m seeing a big need for on-camera training with the popularity of live video these days!

Facebook Live Tips

• Give your audience advance notice of when you’ll be broadcasting live by publishing a post with details of the day and time you’ll go live. This is optional. You may want to be more spontaneous… for now at least.
• Create a short, compelling title. Consider including an emoji or two. The title is the only part people see in their notifications to decide whether to join you or not.
• Focus on quality from the first frame. Once your Live video is a recording on your wall (and/or you boost the post), you want to draw the viewer in within the first three seconds.
• Use good lighting. Simply positioning yourself by a window can work great. Not glaring sunshine, though, as it’s too harsh. And/or, invest in simple lighting. Take a look at the list of inexpensive gear from my friends at Films About Me.
• Use good audio. People will forgive wobbly/grainy video long before they’ll forgive bad audio. If your sound quality isn’t good (e.g. too far away from your phone, too much ambient noise), for sure invest in a simple microphone for your smartphone. I love the gear my buddy Dave Basulto at iOgrapher offers.
• Stabilize your phone. To create a higher quality video shoot, and save you holding your phone the whole time, check out the variety of awesome cases offered by iOgrapher as well as tripods. (I used this one for my iPhone 6PLUS throughout my recent travels in Rome; tourists kept coming up to me asking where I got it!) You might even consider a gimbal for a super smooth video. My good friend Guy Kawasaki uses this one by Ikan.
• Broadcast for a minimum of five minutes, if possible. Shoot for twenty minutes if you can. Facebook recently tweaked the news feed algorithm to favorLive videos whilst they are broadcasting live.

People spend more than 3x more time watching a Facebook Live video on average compared to a video that’s no longer live. This is because Facebook Live videos are more interesting in the moment than after the fact.  ~Facebook

• Engage with your community while broadcasting. A person’s first name is the sweetest sounding word in their entire vocabulary. Plus, everyone loves to be seen, heard and acknowledged. Give your viewers–and especially your commenters–a shoutout on the Live video.
• Encourage your viewers to tap the Subscribe button so they will be notified each time you go live.

Always edit your Live videos once the broadcast ends

Whenever possible, immediately you finish your Live video, hop on to your desktop computer and edit. This feature seems to keep moving! Currently, it’s under the gray arrow at top right of the post, then click Edit Post. Previously, this would only open up the narrative area. Now, this opens up the full edit video panel.

Important areas to edit include:

Select from one of ten thumbnails, or upload your own custom one. You definitely should choose an appealing thumbnail, even though videos are always autoplay on Facebook desktop or mobile (unless a user has disabled this, but it’s a hard setting to find and most leave it enabled by default).

Add a call to action and a link. Ideally, you’ve also mentioned your call to action verbally whilst broadcasting live.

I’ve actually identified ten areas that you can edit (this is for all your videos on Facebook, whether uploaded natively or recorded Live):

1. Narrative/description
2. Video title
3. Thumbnail
4. Video tags (only visible to you, helps makes your video more ‘discoverable’)
5. Call to action button
6. URL for CTA
7. Link description
8. Captions (upload your own SRT file – automatic captions are coming/available for video ads but likely coming to all video at some point)
9. Advanced = currently just to prohibit embedding
10. Branded content tag (if you have a blue checkmark verified Facebook page, and you are being paid to publish the content/video, you’ll need to use the handshake icon to tag your sponsor.)

#SMMW16 @MariSmith gets it. Put call to actions in your Live video so you can measure actual business results. Buttons. Links. URLs.

— Christopher Penn (@cspenn) April 19, 2016

What is the ROI of Facebook Live?

To maximize your live video efforts, here are the specific steps I recommend:

Start out with strategic intent. 

Always think about what your CTA (call to action) is going to be before going live.

Focus on being warm, personal, authentic, human.

Whether you are B2B or B2C, it’s all P2P: people to people.

Consider storyboarding your content ahead of time so you have a roadmap.

Remember to integrate your video content into your overall marketing strategy and editorial calendar.

Begin with the end in mind.

Think repurpose, repurpose, repurpose!

Download your Facebook Live HD video file.

Use an awesome video tool like Animoto in order to create a highlight reel, such as I’ve done with the video in this post above! Animoto makes it super easy to upload video clips, edit, add still images and text, select a great theme and choose from a wide variety of royalty free music.  

Create a 30 second clip for Twitter.  

Create a 60 second clips for Instagram.

Amplify the reach of your video content with ads (boosted posts) on Facebook and Instagram.

Consider using the audio only for a podcast (or both audio & video podcast!)

Embed your Facebook Live video (video only or include the post) in a blog post.

You might even try having an Admin on your page embed your Facebook Live video on your blog/website while you are broadcasting live. One of my fans asked me this question the other day — about whether people could watch Facebook Live as an embedded post on an external site without being logged into Facebook!

And, each time you end your Facebook Live video, be sure to go in and edit on desktop per the instructions above.      

Facebook Live video predictions

What is the future of Facebook Live?

Here are a few of my best predictions that businesses would do well to keep an eye on:

Multi person Facebook Live — will this be coming? I’m fairly sure it will, at some point! Facebook recently introduced group calling in Messenger. All the company has to do is add group video calling and the technology leap to offer multi-person Live would be next.    

Facebook Live broadcast via desktop — this is a much desired feature, particularly for news anchors to be able to have a better setup than mobile phone sitting on a desk. Even with a tripod, the ability to broadcast Live via desktop–similar to Blab, or Google Hangouts, or any webinar platform–would bring another layer of awesomeness.    

Facebook Live and Messenger integration — companies could offer live video chat support to dramatically improve social customer care.    

FB messenger chat bots + human interaction via live video will be unprecedented for cust service @MariSmith predicting the future #SMMW16 — business.com (@businessdotcom) April 19, 2016

That’s it!

What did I miss? Do you have any questions about optimizing Facebook Live video? What creative uses have you seen of Facebook Live video (or other live video, such as Blab, Periscope, or Google Hangout)? Please share in the comments below, I’d love to hear from you.

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Do bounce rates affect a site’s search engine ranking?

The bounce rate debate continues…

Bounce rates and how they affect a website’s ranking on Google has been discussed, dissected, and dismembered over and over again.

As fully transcribed on this site, a conversation between Rand Fishkin, CEO of Moz, and Andrey Lipattsev, Google’s search quality senior strategist, led to a surprising discussion on click and bounce rates affecting search rankings.

Rand stated that he has recently been running a few experimental tests with various crowds of 500 to a couple thousand people.

Everyone participating was prompted to take out their cellphones, laptops, and digital what-have-yous and perform a specific search. Once the search listing appeared, he had everyone in the crowd click one of the listings at the bottom of the results page and then click away from that site. He then monitored the results over the next few days.

Rand found a whole bunch of inconsistencies. In a little more than half of the experiments, the ranking did change on the search engine results page (SERP), and in a little less than half of the experiments, the rankings did not change.

This begs the question:

Do bounce rates affect a site’s search engine ranking? If so, how much?

Lipattsev believes that for each individual search query in the experiment, the generated interest regarding those specific searches impacts the rankings change rather than just the clicks and bounces.

He said that if a certain topic is gaining a substantial amount of searches and an increase in social media mentions, Google would pay more attention to that rather than a site getting more clicks.

Lipattsev says that it is certainly doable to determine exactly what causes a large rankings jump for an individual listing, but Internet-wide, it is much more difficult.

All this being said, what actually is a bounce rate?

The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a particular site who navigate or “bounce” away after only viewing that individual webpage.

Usually, the term ‘bounce rate’ has a negative connotation associated with it. People think that if a visitor only visits one page and then leaves, it’s bad for business. Their logic isn’t that flawed, either. After all, a high bounce rate would indicate that a site does not have the high-quality, relevant content Google wants out of its top ranked sites.

A great Search Engine Journal article shows nine negative reasons why your website could potentially have a high bounce rate, including poor web design, incorrect keyword selection, improper links, and just bad content. It’s true that these high bounce rates can reflect poorly on a website… sometimes.

So, what gives?

Having a high bounce rate on something like a ‘contact us’ page can actually be a good thing. That’s more of a call-to-action site, where the goal of that particular page is to have the user find the contact information, and then actually contact the business. The visitor got what they came for and then left. Extra navigation around the website doesn’t really mean anything in this case.

Of course, if your site is more content-driven or offers a product or service, then your goal should be to have a higher click-through rate (CTR) and more traffic to each page.

But what about Google?

Does Google know your bounce rate and are they using it to affect rankings? This Search Engine Roundtable article provides the short answer (which is “no”).

Many organizations don’t use Google Analytics, so Google has no way of tracking their bounce rate information. And even with the analytics that they can trace, it’s difficult to determine what they actually mean because every situation is different.

There are many factors that go into determining how long a visitor stays on a particular webpage. If a visitor remains on a site for over 20 minutes, they could be so engaged with your site’s content that they can’t even imagine leaving your wonderful webpage… or… it could mean they fell asleep at the screen because your website was so boring. It’s too difficult to tell.

If you are operating one of those websites that should have a lower bounce rate, these tips on lowering that number should be able to help. Some highlights include making sure each of your pages loads quickly, offers user-friendly navigation, avoids cluttered advertisements, and features quality content!

If bounce rates don’t affect Google’s rankings as much as you thought, you wonder how significant other ranking factors are. Well, Google recently revealed that magical information. They narrowed it down to three top ranking factor used by Google to drive search results:

• Links: strong links and link votes play a major role in search rankings.
• Content: having quality content is more important than ever.
• RankBrain: Google’s AI ranking system.

It’s no shock that links and content matter, but RankBrain is still relatively new. It’s Google’s new algorithm to help determine search results (after factoring in links and content). RankBrain filters more complex searches and converts them into shorter ones, all the while maintaining the complexity of the search, thusly refining the results.

Google’s newest AI technology – and whatever other secret technologies they are working on – may resolve the never-ending debate over bounce rates, but it’s certainly going to be a difficult process.

More research is to come and Andrey believes the challenge to make bounce rate click data a strong and measurable metric is “gameable,” but Google still has a long way to go.

“If we solve it, good for us,” Andrey said, “but we’re not there yet.”

There is no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to SEO and all its intricacies. The greatest answer to any SEO question is always “it depends.”

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Five ways to slash ad spend and achieve results right now

You know what’s great about PPC? Even when your account is in the dumps, you can make small changes that can have a big impact on its performance and your ad spend.

And sometimes all it takes is a little bit of creativity.

So in the spirit of making small steps to improve your PPC, and building on my tips from last month, I’m going to share with you five ways you can get creative to save ad spend (and even make some money through more targeted advertising) in your PPC account.

The usual

Most PPC professionals know the usual ways to cut wasted ad spend, and hopefully you’re doing the following on a regular basis:

• Managing your negative keywords (in my PPC operations guide, I recommend this be a monthly task for most)
• Managing and excluding irrelevant sites from your Google Display Network campaigns (daily is good here for most)
• Filtering out non-converting and/or sky-high cost-per-acquisition keywords, ad groups and campaigns

But, have you thought about things like:

• Excluding countries from remarketing campaigns?
• Tiered bidding?
• Ad delivery options?
• Ad scheduling?
• Testing ad positions?

These things can help you manage ad spend even more. Let’s look at those closer now.

1) Country exclusions in remarketing

Sometimes when you set up a remarketing campaign, even though you’re just targeting the US, you’ll often see traffic from other countries and it’s because they’ve been to your US website.

One of our client’s remarketing campaigns had a ton of traffic from countries outside of the US and Canada, but they’re not actually doing business in other countries, so we just excluded those.

By excluding countries outside of the U.S. and Canada, we were able to shave off a pretty penny.

2) Tiered bidding

Tiered bidding is one of those things that PPC pros usually have either a strong preference for, or don’t do at all. At my agency, we typically always do tiered bidding, but most of the accounts we inherit haven’t.

The gist of it is this (and here’s a good article on the nitty-gritty details): you can use multiple match types to bid on the same keywords to help control budget.

Say you use three match types: exact, phrase and broad. The idea of using tiered bidding is that you spend more money on the terms that are highly relevant. In turn, AdWords is going to give more play to the keyword type you’re willing to spend more on.

The exact match should be very targeted, whereas broad match will likely bring in some irrelevant terms. That’s why you’re going to bid lower on broad and higher on exact match, like the following example:

• Exact match $1
• Phrase match $0.75
• Broad match $0.50

If you’re looking at ways to save money and focus on the more targeted traffic, you might consider this tiered bidding plan to get you there.

3) Standard ad delivery

Ad delivery options determine how quickly you want the ad platform to use your budget each day. With AdWords, there are two settings, standard and accelerated:

• Standard delivery (the default option) tries to show your ads throughout the entire day to make sure that you don’t spend your whole budget in the morning and cause your ads to stop showing for the rest of the day.
• Accelerated delivery tries to show your ads more quickly until your budget is reached. With this option, your ads can stop showing early in the day if your budget is spent.

At my agency, we almost always start with accelerated ad delivery with the goal of maximizing our chances of ad impressions while the demand is there.

On a few occasions, though, we’ve stepped out of our comfort zone to try standard delivery, and it can work well to save ad dollars—especially when you have a highly competitive space with a lot of search volume throughout the day.

4) Ad scheduling

Speaking of ad delivery, ad scheduling gets into the days and hours that an ad can show, and can help you boost conversions in a pinch.

At my agency, our go-to strategy is to deliver ads on all days at all hours (which happens to be the default setting in AdWords).

Normally with this setting, you’ll see things naturally slow down when the demand is not there. Going with the default setting tackles what happens when the outliers are looking for your services or products after hours.

For example, one of our B2B PPC clients can spend $1,000 a day Monday through Friday, and as low as $100 per day on the weekends. And they do get some leads that trickle in on Saturdays and Sundays, so why not grab those low CPA leads when possible?

Recognizing that sometimes you’ve got to tighten the belt even more, it’s simple to pause ads on weekends or during the late night and early morning hours with ad scheduling.

5) Ad position

Google officially changed the way desktop ads display in the search results in February 2016. No longer in the right-hand side bar, ads now display above and below the organic listings (up to seven ads with three being the average for the top area).

If you’re trying to save a little cash, don’t be afraid to test by targeting a lower position on the page – like Position 4, even if that means you’re at the bottom of the page.

Early results show that Position 4 still gets play, and early tests that my agency has been performing show ad spend is way down for Position 4, but revenue is holding steady.

On the mobile side, we used to always vie for Position 1 (or else you might as well not have been on the page at all), but lately, we’ve been seeing three ads show up before the organic listings on a mobile device, so you can play with your ad position there as well, and possibly save some dollars.

Get creative

Sometimes, saving on ad spend and bringing in more targeted conversions is all about creativity and being willing to test.

Ultimately it’s about using the knowledge of the business and your understanding (or the help files!) of the features available to you to come up with a system to reduce ad spend while bringing in more targeted buyers.

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Three research-driven PPC tips for the automotive industry

If you’re an automaker or car dealer, 2016 should be a good year for sales.

Intensive research conducted by my data scientist colleagues at Bing Ads shows that digital media, especially search, will be the perfect place to capture the attention of prospective petrol-heads as they venture out on their car-buying journey.

What’s driving solid car sales?

Well, interest rates as well as fuel rates are low while the consumer index, according to an IBISWorld industry report, remains high. As a result – additional disposable income and improved credit scores – demand for cars is also likely to increase. In fact, auto sales are forecast to grow through 2020, with growth peaking in 2018.

So what can car manufacturers and dealers do to ensure they make the most of this opportune time?

Here are three solid tips, to help you accelerate towards some meaningful digital connections with potential auto-shoppers:

Look to the younger audience for hybrid, electric or diesel vehicles

If you’re a green car manufacturer, make sure you’re appealing to the millennials. “The Harris Poll” from Harris Interactive revealed that 57% of US millennials (18-37) would consider a traditional hybrid for their next lease or purchase. Compare that with just 43% of Baby Boomers willing to do the same.

There is one drawback – the higher price points is seen as a deterrent. Research from J.D. Power revealed that almost one in four buyers of gas-powered vehicles avoided the hybrid model due to cost.

Take action:

• Customize your creative to appeal to the younger generation, focusing on advances in technology and positive environmental impact.
• Add bid modifiers to your search campaigns based on age group, bidding up for the age ranges most likely to purchase a green vehicle.
• Alleviate cost concerns through your creative.
  • Use ad copy to highlight discounts and offers – six in 10 car shoppers are influenced by promotions according to a RadiumOne study.
  • On your landing pages, share additional financial incentives they may receive such as government subsidies or lifetime fuel savings.

Use the fact that brand loyalty is scarce to your advantage

According to a Facebook study, only two in five shoppers have an early brand preference – in fact very few shoppers are exposed to digital ads early in the purchase process. This means there is a ripe opportunity to build brand and model awareness.

Microsoft’s internal data shows that consumers considered an average of 9.8 makes and 11.4 models prior to making their purchase decision.

PPC can be vital in this process since most shoppers will conduct their research online before visiting a dealership, according to Accenture.

Take action:

• Bing’s Remarketing in paid search or Google’s RLSA ads are your friends here.
  • Bid on competitive terms
  • Consider bidding even on luxury vehicles to account for aspirational searches

Use ad copy that’s proven to work

Digital ads are the most influential type of ad during the car-shopping process – more so than TV or print according to a study of U.S. car shoppers by G/O Digital. Yet the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) reports that only 36% of auto marketers in the U.S. use paid search advertising.

With a quarter of car buyers reporting via a study by Nationwide that they find shopping for a car to be as stressful as preparing taxes or buying a home, effective ad copy can make a big difference.

When we think of ad copy, don’t limit yourself just to words. Car-buying is a visual process, with four in 10 searches being for images of cars. Microsoft’s internal data shows that 45% of consumers viewed more than 36.7 car images on a search engine.

Mobile devices mustn’t be ignored either. According to research by SessionM, seven in 10 smartphone users use their mobile device when shopping for a vehicle.

Here’s how the usage breaks down:

Take action:

• Add image extensions to your ad to grab searcher attention and showcase latest or most popular models.

• Take advantage of new ad formats such as Google’s auto-specific ads or Bing Ads’ new video extensions for mobile devices (currently in beta).

• Use words that work. Here are the top five ad combinations across devices:

• Don’t forget the Sitelink extensions. These are a fantastic and underused opportunity to simplify the car buying process. Microsoft data shows that Sitelink extensions can result in a 13% improvement in Click through Rate (CTR), with Enhanced Sitelinks having a 22% average higher CTR.

These data-driven tips PPC tips for the auto industry compiled by data scientists from Bing Ads are sure to help you on your road to an extra-profitable 2016. Digital media, especially search, is the perfect place to insert your brand right at the start of the car-buyer research phase.

By the smart use of visual cues, demographic targeting and by paying attention to what ad copy resonates best, you’ll be well on the way to an empty car lot by the end of the year!

Feeling inspired? Share your favorite tips and ideas in the comments below.

Purna Virji is Senior Bing Ads Client Development and Training Manager at Microsoft and a contributor to Search Engine Watch.

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