Yes, there will always be those that do dismiss text or display ads while searching the display network as they are not necessarily actively searching for the product that is being remarketed to them; but that is where remarketing is clever. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad so if they are simply not interested then it is no risk to the business. Also, remarketing provides a great way of recapturing those that have already booked through cross-selling to similar products that they might be interested in or special offers and exclusive deals.

How can you make use of remarketing?

As I mentioned previously, remarketing can also be used to retarget those that have already purchased from your website with similar products or special offers that are likely to entice them back to purchase again. This is also a very effective way of remarketing as it is based on their previous interactions with your site and if you know exactly what else they might be interested in then here is the perfect opportunity to show them.

Another benefit of remarketing is brand visibility. People who have already interacted with your website will continue to see your ads as they surf sites within the content network. This can also result in greater conversion rates of up to 75% greater, providing you can present them with the right offer or product.

How to implement remarketing

Remarketing is very easy to implement into your Adwords account. If you want to remarket to those that enter your site but do not purchase then you can simply use your existing conversion tracking code to measure the number of people who have booked. You then need access your audiences tab to create and add a new piece of code to the entry pages that you use for paid search such as the homepage, product pages etc. This will then allow you to measure everyone who has entered your site. Once you have over 500 cookie ID’s added to your lists you can create a custom combination which will capture everyone that entered your site minus those that booked which will leave you with the Cookie ID’s for those that did not book.

If you then create a remarketing campaign you can add the custom combination as an audience to target on the display network with relevant text or display ads that will help in recapturing lost customers. We have found display ads to be most effective for remarketing as text ads can often get lost within the mass of content on the display network, while display ads can be created to replicate the theme, colour scheme, unique selling points and products offered on the site.

How to take remarketing to the next level

Remarketing can also be used in many other ways to capture those that have entered your site on a specific page or exited at a specific page including those who abandoned during the checkout or order summary pages. We can already learn a lot about the bounce rate of such pages and work to improve the landing pages based on the percentage of people that are being lost at such pages. However, for the majority of advertisers, those that abandon very near to completing the purchase process are simply lost prospects. It is definitely worth working to improve your checkout process, ensuring that you tell your customer exactly what they need to do to complete the process and make any delivery options very clear. Remarketing can then capture these people again which an increased chance that they might complete the purchase process this time based on the fact that you have minimised your bounce rates from the page that they exited.

So I would definitely suggest that you trial remarketing. Get a minimum of 500 cookie ID’s tagged and away you go. See exactly how many people you can bring back to your site through clever display ads and cross-selling and see just how much you can increase your conversion rate!

Why use Google Remarketing? is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

The majority of PPC advertisers will have noticed quite a substantial increase in CPC’s over the past few years and according to Econsultancy, “competition drove up CPC’s by 22%” while the average order values only increased 2%. While this may seem like a massive problem, there are ways of working with an increase in cost and a good strong strategy is one of them. In fact, a strategy is the answer.

When working in such a competitive marketplace, where a new competitor can jump in at any moment, advertisers need to consider exactly what they plan to do if their costs do increase and paid search becomes less effective. The answer isn’t just to stop competing as that would be giving in to your rivals and sending your hard earned traffic their way. Instead, here at WMpS, we would strongly advise that you put together a strategy that accounts for every possible factor that may change the way things work for you including seasonal trends, competitor offerings, bidding rules and landing page changes.

Having a keyword and creative strategy

If you do find that certain keywords are no longer viable to run, pause them and find new niches in your market. Don’t just give up on your instant traffic and potential on Google – instead focus on the keywords that really do bring in your goals or even try different search engines where the CPC’s could potentially be cheaper and the competition lower.

It’s also worth considering combining your PPC and natural search efforts. The ultimate strategy uses a balance of PPC and SEO, whereby if you have built your natural search ranking on a set of keywords, perhaps you could focus your paid search efforts on keywords where you don’t rank as high naturally.

Don’t just chuck all of your keywords in top position and expect a good return on your investment. Top position will generate great visibility and brand recognition but it often catches those that are not yet ready to buy. Try sitting in a lower position and seeing if that works for you as often people need over 7 exposures to a brand or product before they make their final purchase decision.

Be intelligent when choosing your keywords. Don’t just go for the high traffic keywords, test using longer tail phrases where the visitor is likely to buy sooner and competition is less fierce.

Although Google has stated that testing creative’s works well in helping to determine which of your ads is most effective, we have to look at what competitors are doing. People often remember and recognise the ad that they clicked on and rotating ads might prevent people from returning to your ad. Initial testing is vital but once you have the creative that works, try sticking with it and seeing if your conversions increase or even if the percentage of people booking sooner increases.

Review your competition, analyse what they tend to do in their ads and whatever you do, don’t copy it. Make your creatives distinguished from others in the same auction will entice visitors and increase the chance that a visitor will remember your ad if they return to search to find you, the company with the edge in your market.

Working your website into your strategy

A high converting website is also critical for an effective PPC campaign. If your competitors have optimised their sites and outbid you, take a look at why they might be able to afford a higher position. Finding seasonal occasions such as Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day is great for developing a list of focused keywords where there could potentially be less competition but where people might be closer to making their purchase. So make sure that your strategy includes holidays and seasonal occasions to get the best return for your investment.

It is also worth considering that landing page quality and relevance is vital to your quality score and having high quality scores is vital when trying to cut costs or at least manage your costs more effectively. Making sure that your quality scores are as high a possible will ensure that you are not paying too much or that you can justify sitting in your desired position for each keyword.

So remember, PPC is not just a game of ‘set it and forget it’. Having a functional and achievable strategy will ensure that while the average internet user becomes increasingly savvy, the increase in ad spend on Google warrants your return.

The importance of having a PPC strategy is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

This is the second time in a month that advertisers have experienced technical issues within the Adwords system.

“After the recent Quality Score bug and shake out things stabilized for my account for a few weeks. But today once again something is going down. My whole average QS across my entire account is taking a pounding today. Is anyone else experiencing this?” One forum poster questioned.

According to Google, the bug was apparently only a cosmetic reporting issue and did not directly affect ad serving which is great news for those that sat tight and made no bid changes.

“We don’t believe it to be a new issue, but are looking into [the situation],” the spokesman said. “In the meantime, we’re telling our advertisers to continue to focus on core metrics like [click through rate] and net [cost per click]. It’s also worth noting that the holidays can be a time of much change as advertisers optimize their campaigns for the shopping season.”

Luckily we read the Google Support Forum and manually checked our ads to confirm that they were maintaining their optimum positions so we were aware of the issue before we made any major bid changes. We knew that without any click through rate, landing page or ad relevancy changes, there was no reason for quality scores to have dropped so dramatically on such high performing keywords. We sat tight and did not panic while Google sorted out the issue and luckily all quality scores have returned to their previous levels. However, the question on our minds here at WMpS is what happens to those advertisers that did panic and increased their bids to match the massive first page bid estimates that Google provided them with?

Threads have become littered with advertisers who have raised their bids unknowingly, in turn forcing other advertisers to raise their bids to maintain their previous position. What we are left with is a mass bidding war where Google ultimately take in more revenue! For those that are left with soaring costs while their quality scores have returned to normal, I would highly recommend dropping your bids back to what they were previously to avoid higher than usual costs and the risk of affecting impressions and click through rates.

Although most advertisers have stated that their quality scores are at the usual level again, Google has yet to make a proper statement explaining exactly what has happened and how they are going to tackle this issue in the future to prevent it from happening again. Surely Google could have helped many out by being transparent and preventing what I can only imagine is thousands of people either pausing their account completely or increasing their bids unnecessarily.

Hopefully Google will put the systems in place that will make advertisers aware when there is a cosmetic issue within their account; rather than the advertisers panicking and then realising a few days later when digging through forums that there was no in fact need to increase their bids.

The Quality Score Nosedive! is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

Well, my initial reaction was also one of concern. Would people who initially intended to type in a long tail keyword now only type part of their query instead and make cpc’s, demand and competitiveness soar on head keywords? Would the increase in impressions generate a lower CTR and therefore lower quality scores? And lastly, would this all occur at the expense of the long tail keywords? At the end of the day, Google has killed two birds with one stone – making it quicker and easier for its users to find what they are looking for as well as benefiting from increased bids on competitive head keywords and therefore more revenue.

As soon as I heard about Google Instant, I cracked on with monitoring keywords that I thought could be affected by users finding what they wanted earlier in their search. Looking at daily trends and search query report over the past few weeks would enable me to analyse any possible threat that Instant may have on my PPC campaigns.

Has Google Instant affected PPC?

On the day of Google Instant’s launch and the day after, we did see an increase in impressions. I did predict in my last post The big speculation revealed – Google Instant that this may happen as novice Google users could potentially stop searching mid-search through curiosity over what the new Google is and unknowingly count as an impression for advertisers. Although this did mildly affect click through rates for a day or two, we saw no change in clicks, position or conversions.

As impressions have now evened back out to an average, I thought it was time to share with you my finding from search query reports and keyword data. After running a search query report for the week before and the few days after launch, I can see no difference in the way people are searching; probably due to the fact that Google suggested terms to users way before Instant Search was launched. This could also be due to the people searching being at a stage in the buying cycle where they know that it is a good idea to refine their search as much as possible and use longer search queries to find what they want easier. Perhaps Instant hasn’t really changed the way people search unless they are researching and not sure what they are looking to buy or find? Or perhaps users are getting wise to the fact that Google’s dynamic results may not be entirely relevant to their search unless they enter their full intended query?

With lots of businesses putting their time and effort into ranking for head keywords, it could well be that these are the keywords that will start to suffer as advertisers up their bids to try and secure a higher position on a wider range of head keywords. As long tail keywords are generally less competitive and therefore easier and cheaper to get a top position on, I would definitely suggest not dropping the long-tail. As Google suggests terms for users to click on, many of these terms are highly relevant long-tail versions of their initial search query, so in no way do I think that Google Instant will bring death to the long-tail!

So, as far as I can see, the impact has been minimal but I will continue to monitor impressions, click through rates, quality scores and the use of long tail/head keywords like a hawk.

How advertisers can use Instant Search to up their game

Despite the majority of marketers mainly having concerns over Google Instant, some savvy advertisers can see huge benefits behind the change.

Google is essentially presenting us with a keyword research tool showing us niches in the market that we could capture. Argos for example are bidding on the term ‘telev’ as they know that Google predicts that people searching for ‘telev…’ will be looking for televisions. If the searcher was to stop their search on telev and press search, the results shown would not be for televisions but for ‘telev’ instead. By bidding on the term ‘telev’, Argos will be paying very little for a keyword that could capture potential sales even quicker than Google predicts. I would suggest that all advertisers run through a list of their top performing keywords and start typing each search query into Google until the keyword is showing in the suggested searches to see what new keywords you could add.

To summarise, I definitely don’t think Google Instant is to be feared. Google are constantly changing their algorithm’s and as with people using Google to search, we just have to adapt to monitoring and optimising new strategies in order to make the most from what Google is telling us.

In the mean time, keep your eye out for further updates on our findings and feel free to share your thoughts below!

Google Instant’s effects on PPC is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

What were the rules before?

Up until recently the trademark policy of Google protected brands from competitors, affiliates and any other advertiser bidding to list their ad when consumers searched for a trademarked brand term. For example, a search for ‘Louis Vuitton shoes’ returns a full page of natural search results, ranging from the official website to shopping comparison sites and affiliates. However, the right hand side of the page is noticeably bare; only two sponsored listings appear and neither of them mentions Louis Vuitton in the copy of their ad. It is likely that these ads only got shown because they have high bids on the keyword ‘shoes’ or used black hat techniques such as a misspelt ‘Louis Vouitton’ or similar in their keyword list.

Google’s current policy restricts advertisers from using terms that are trademarked by a brand in their ad copy unless they have the agreement of said brand prior to bidding. This stops anyone that the brand doesn’t want from using their trademark and gaining traffic from it.

What’s changed and why?

As of 14^th September this year Google will relax their policy, allowing anyone to place trademarked brand terms in their paid search adverts. This means that anyone reselling the product, selling items related to the product or providing reviews or other information on specific brands will be able to advertise, and use relevant keywords in their PPC campaigns.

Google has stated that their change of heart is for the benefit of consumers. Searchers that are typing in specific brand keywords will now have the choice of plentiful listings both from natural and paid for rankings. This means lesser known review sites and aggregate shopping sites may have lore of a presence.

However, another reason why Google may be making this change is to increase their revenue from paid search advertising. By allowing more advertisers to bid on brand terms they will benefit from both increased volume of bids and higher bids as competition for places increases.

What impact will it have?

The news has however caused an outcry from advertisers and agencies who believe the relaxed rules will cause PPC prices to rise considerably as everyone tries to get their ad on the first page of listings for popular brand terms. High bids will be necessary, especially for those companies that aren’t 100% relevant to the keyword, as they attempt to overcome their lower quality score.

The change will also mean that brands who partner with affiliates to sell their products may now face competition from these same affiliates in the paid search listings. Where previously the two could work together, pulling traffic from different search terms, they may now appear in the same places, competing for traffic. This begs the question as to whether brand advertisers will start to stipulate that affiliates don’t bid on brand terms and whether black hat affiliates or indeed competitors’ affiliates will swoop in and take advantage of this new advertising space.

Bidding on Brand Terms – Google’s PPC U-Turn is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

Adwords ad sitelinks is a new targeting feature in Adwords that is very easy to incorporate into your existing campaigns. You simply go to your campaign settings and under the ad extensions section you will see ‘show additional links to my site within my ad’. You need to click on this and enter the link text that you want to appear under your existing creative and its destination URL. It currently lets us display up to 4 extra links that searchers may click on, all within the same ad.

Google has released figures that confirm that using ad sitelinks can improve your click through rate by over 30% and can significantly boost conversion rates too. Here we have my findings of the good and bad points about the sitelinks.

After searching Google for many terms, you will notice that numerous companies are taking advantage of the ad sitelinks. Hilton and RNIB have broadened their visibility and provided searchers with easy access to subcategories on their sites, perhaps sections that have been proved to work well for them.

Many advertisers find sitelinks ideal to point users to special offers, subcategories and seasonal promotions that they have on their website.

Was it a success?

Overall, adding the ad sitelinks to my client’s creatives worked very well. Not only does it allow us to provide more relevant options to a user, encouraging them to click, it also increases the overall value of ads with greater visibility and search results dominance.

Our tests have shown that the click through rate of the ad sitelinks on a campaign with a usual average CTR of 3-4% was just above 13% when ad sitelinks were added to the ads. We have also seen an increase in conversions on the campaign by up to 30%.

Are sitelinks worth using?

Sitelinks greatly increase the chances of a user clicking on your ad, because when they see your sitelinks, they become fully aware that you have what they are looking for. This is definitely a very useful tool for creating rich and much more targeted ads that also improve the value of your brand. Searchers to like to have variety when searching, and knowing that it will take as little as one click on your ad to find them exactly what they want has the potential to greatly increase conversion rate too.

Not only do ad sitelinks have the potential to increase your click through rate and conversion rate, they subsequently improve quality score and therefore reduce your average cost per click.

Many marketers struggle to get across their desired message with the adwords ad text character limits. Ad sitelinks give you the ability to advertise multiple goals in one advert and get across every little detail necessary.

As users find ads with sitelinks more reputable, they also encourage users to complete your desired action before they have even landed on your homepage and had to use search facilities. Ultimately, ad sitelinks relay trust to searchers, driving them deeper into the conversion funnel.

What have Google missed out?

Although we have had great success with using the Google ad sitelinks, there remains to be some elements that are frustratingly missing.

Many marketers have complained that ad sitelinks can only be applied at campaign level. In my opinion, Adwords accounts should be structured so that each product or theme has its own campaign.  That way, settings can be altered to suit the product and campaign. Maybe this isn’t the most convenient way of reporting, but it allows you to have complete control of each campaign’s settings and adapt the settings for each product. It will prove useful and the hard work will pay off when you get the chance to utilise additions like the sitelinks. Although I cannot see this happening any time in the near future, users are still hoping that Google apply more granularity to changes like this in future so the advertiser has more control.

People have also said ad sitelinks are a way of Google controlling how marketers manage and structure their accounts. In my opinion, that is a very unfair statement as Google are actually doing us a favour and creating ways of improving our click through rates without increasing our bids. It also allows the advertiser to choose the additional links that they want to appear.

Another element of the sitelinks that is proving annoying in the world of marketing is the level of statistics that Google provides us with. At present, the ad sitelinks cannot be tracked down to a level of conversions through the Adwords interface. In order to track conversions, Analytics tags need to be applied to the end of each URL.

Ad sitelinks will not work well for all advertisers unless monitored and tested carefully. You cannot simply switch them on and leave them. If you choose to do this, you may see an increase in cost with no direct correlation to sales increase. Landing pages need to be carefully considered too. If you simply choose a landing page because it ‘looks nice,’ you may find that your click through rates increase but your conversions drop off. Each landing page needs to be entirely relevant to the text link and have a clear call to action; encouraging the user to make the relevant steps towards a conversion.

This new targeting feature proves that you don’t necessarily have to outbid competitors within your market to gain the highest position. Quality score is the key to success.

Who would say no to higher click through rates, lower cost per clicks, higher quality scores and overall lower cost per acquisitions?

If you have also tested the ad sitelinks, let us know what you think and whether they have been a success for you too!

Entering the Conversion Funnel with Google Ad Sitelinks is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

• Broad – This is the default option. It will trigger ads for the keywords in any order along with other terms, singular / plural forms synonyms and relevant variations.
• Phrase – These are keywords surrounded by quotation marks. It will trigger ads for your keyword in the chosen order only. Ads will be shown for additional keywords before or after the phrase.
• Exact – These are keywords surrounded by square brackets. It will only trigger ads for the exact keyword only without any additional terms or variations.

A new keyword match type has been rolled out globally by Google after a successful test here in the UK along with Canada. It’s called the broad match modifier. It sits between the broad and phrase match – giving a greater reach than phrase and more control than broad. This is how it works:

• Add a + symbol directly before all terms within your keyword that must appear in the users search query to trigger the ad. A good example would be: +formal +shoes. This keyword will only trigger ads with ‘formal’ and ‘shoes’ inside the users query.

This new match type does give advertisers more control with their targeting. It allows greater reach to relevant user queries without being too restricted with phrase or exact match.

Google Keyword Match Types and Example Usage

Image used courtesy of the Google Inside AdWords Blog

Introducing the Broad Match Modifier is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

Tip 1: The new broad match modifier

The broad match modifier is the latest addition form Google. It is ultimately a different keyword match type that fits between the existing broad and phrase match types. It enables us to either target a wider audience or refine our campaigns if we are currently only using broad match yet provides us with a level of control that is easier to manage.

By simply preceding a word with a +, the system will ensure that either that word or a close variant or misspell has to be in a users search query. If you had the keyword ‘orange dog toy’ and placed it on modified broad match like ‘+orange +dog +toy’, each of the words within the keyword have to appear in the search query. This is a great tool as this would then prevent your ad from showing for irrelevant searches on ‘orange toys’ or ‘toy dog’.

By paring out users who are looking for something entirely irrelevant, the broad match modifier has the potential to double the CTR of a campaign by moving away from broad. It also prevents self competition or cross over between ad groups or campaigns with similar broad keywords, ensuring that the right ad is served at the right time and for the correct search query.

I think that the only negative point about the broad match modifier is that it cannot eliminate the problem of session based broad traffic. However, it can increase the traffic that is stopped by an exact or phrase match without the risk of a broad so it is definitely worth considering as you could potentially be missing out on quality traffic!

Tip 2: Ad extensions

Adwords ad extensions are another fantastic creation that many advertisers fail to utilise. Ad extensions enable us to expand a standard text ad with location, site, product or phone number links. Not only do they provide this additional information to a user but they also increase the overall ad space and make the ad increasingly eye capturing. It can also increase the quality of your traffic as it extends a user’s experience by giving them the chance to find out more about your business or products before they click.

I think the main point to consider when deciding whether to use ad extension or not is that there is no additional cost involved. It will only cost you the same as your standard cost per click for that keyword.

Location extensions – The location ad extensions appear on Google and Google maps. It dynamically matches a text ad with the most relevant address in your account based on a user’s location. This can drastically improve your click through rate as a user can learn exactly where your local branch is or where to find you. The bonus with location ad extensions is that you are not charged for clicks generated from the expanded map window.

Additional sitelinks – Additional sitelinks can include up to 4 additional page links underneath text ads on Google search and search partners. The additional site links will only be displayed when the ad is in top position however this has proved very effective for many advertisers. This extension can also let users know what to expect when they get to your site, improving the quality of your traffic and letting them know what you provide outside of your text ad description limits.

We can also now see this data in a separate tab so that we can analyse which sitelinks have worked for which campaign or product and optimise other campaigns based on these findings.

Product extensions– The additional product links are currently only available in the US. These allow you to link your existing Google merchant centre to adwords in order to highlight products in the search below your ad space. This has also proved very effective for advertisers who want to prequalify their traffic and provide potential customers with an insight of what products are available before they click on ads.

Telephone number extensions – In order to include telephone extensions you must have location extensions enabled too. This displays a telephone number below your ad if the user is using a full internet enabled mobile device such as an iPhone or Android. It is essentially a click to call service that enables users to simply click on your ad and be connected to your business directly. This service is also charged the same as any other click, yet it brings with it the potential to create a direct customer relationship or even the potential to generate a lead over the telephone.

Tip 3: The Conversion optimiser

There are mixed opinions on the conversion optimiser but I personally think that any savvy advertiser should be utilising this tool. My main reason for including this tool in my top 10 tips is that it is ultimately designed to increase conversions and controls your CPA’s for you. Yes, we have to consider that we do not have control over individual CPC’s when using the optimiser but if Google can do this on our behalf based on history of which auctions work best for you, why not give it a go?

Google has stated that on average campaigns achieved a 21% increase in conversions and a 14% decrease in CPA after adopting the conversion optimiser. The system simply creates predictions to decide which auction will benefit you the most in terms of conversions and adjusts the bids automatically so that your money is invested wisely, you don’t have to constantly update bids to maintain positions and most of all the conversions are achieved within your target cost. This is achieved at no extra cost!

The conversion optimiser enables us to choose either a target CPA which will be an average to pay for each conversion or a maximum CPA which the system will not exceed. Without using the conversion optimiser, you could potentially be restricting when your bids are varied at different times of the day. The optimiser decides when your bids need increasing to maintain the optimum position to achieve conversions and will bid more aggressively during this time and vice versa.

Tip 4: Opportunities tab

There has been much discussion about whether the opportunities tab in Adwords is purely a money making scheme for Google or whether advertisers can actually benefit from this. I am still also sitting on the fence with this however I do know that if you use the Opportunities wisely, this can be extremely useful in finding cost effective traffic that could be missing from your account.

Along with the usual Adwords tools such as the keyword tool, placement tool, traffic estimator, conversion tracking, ad diagnostics and the ad preview tool, the Opportunities tab provides us with keyword suggestions and their estimated traffic, average cost per clicks and rates of competition.

You do need to be careful when using this tool as Google does not consider the structure of your account when making suggestions and therefore adding keywords to the suggested ad group could ultimately affect the existing quality score and performance. In my opinion, the best way to use the keyword suggestions is to export the suggestions into excel and then decide for yourself if any of the keywords could be added and where they would need to sit within your account. It is also vital that you consider whether an increase in impressions is what you need or if it would be best to focus on and refine your existing keywords to maximise ROI.

Tip 5: Be trendy – think outside the box and watch your competition!

There are plenty of tools out there that enable us to monitor our competition’s budgets, ads and keywords. Doing so will give you the chance to think outside the box, look at what others are doing and do something different!

Create copy that gives people a reason to click your ad rather than your competitors – don’t be bland – be unique and make sure that your customers have this opinion of you!

Stay competitive and be creative with your ad copy and landing pages. By monitoring your website and ensuring that your ads are of the same feel or theme will let users know what to expect when they click! Don’t limit yourself to boring ads that are the same as your competitors – marketing is about being creative and innovative.

Reviewing your creatives can be a great way to effortlessly increase your CTR. If your ads blend in with everyone else’s, why would a user click yours?

So, there we have part two of our top ten tips to help you on your way with expanding and simultaneously refining your paid search campaigns. There are so many opportunities out there so make sure that you do not miss out on any of them – get ahead in the game and you can make your PPC work!

Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you want to achieve the best from your paid search campaigns or if you are interested in learning more.

Top Ten PPC Tips – part 2 is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

Over the next two weeks, I’ll outline ten top tips to help ensure you are well on your way to managing a successful paid search campaign.  Here are the first five.

Tip 1: Segmenting keywords into relevant ad groups

If you are going to invest time and money into paid search, you first need to structure your account effectively. Keywords need to be carefully planned, as do the ad groups that they will sit in. Ad copy needs to be relevant to the keywords within the ad group and the best way to do this is by segmenting your keywords into themes. For example, ‘Maldives holidays’ and ‘Maldives hotels’ should be in two different ad groups. When you separate your keywords in this manner, you can then cater your ad copy appropriately. Not only does this allow for the ad copy to be highly relevant to the users search query, but also enables you to better track the results of your keyword segmentation.

Each ad group should have no more than 50 keywords in it.  If yours do, you would greatly benefit from a restructure because it could well be having a negative impact on your ad group quality scores.

Tip 2: Creating keyword rich ad copy

The most effective paid search campaigns will have the keywords mentioned in the ad copy as much as possible. This strategy will reassure your potential customers that when they click on your ad you can provide them with exactly what they are looking for. So, if you are using ‘Maldives holidays’ as a keyword, mention ‘Maldives’ and ‘holidays’ as much as possible. Another benefit of this strategy is helping to create a high quality score. If your ad copy is not keyword rich, your quality score will be low so taking the time to create relevant ad copy will mean you will spend less money to maintain the same average position.

Tip 3: Utilising your quality score

I have written about the importance of your quality score previously, and I want to emphasise again how we cannot afford to ignore this! A higher quality score ultimately means that you will pay less for a good position.  This is exactly why many paid search advertisers pay on average 2p per click on their brand name but competitors have to pay more in the region of 20p per click on the same keyword to sit in a lower position.

Keywords with low quality scores should either be deleted if they have no relevance to your ad group or if the traffic is very low for your market. This will prevent the low quality score keywords from dragging down the overall quality score of your ad group.  If keywords have a low quality score but are relevant and do generate high levels of traffic then it is worth considering segmenting these keywords even further and working on the ad copy, campaign settings, positions and landing pages on an individual keyword basis.

Tip 4: Dynamic Keyword Insertion

Dynamic keyword insertion is avoided intentionally by many advertisers due to people misspelling their search queries. If a user types ‘iPod tuch’ into Google instead of ‘iPod touch’ and sees a sponsored link with the title ‘iPod tuch’ this could ultimately deter the user from clicking through mistrust or annoyance.

However, if used correctly, dynamic keyword insertion can produce very good results and quality traffic. Ensure that you only use DKI where appropriate so that it makes your ad copy very relevant for the searcher. If a user searches for ‘Central London hotels’ and your ad copy title says ‘Central London hotels,’ this is going to result in the user being much more likely to click since the result is the exact query of the user.

Tip 5: Make the most of negative keywords

Negative keywords are another core component of a successful PPC campaign that many advertisers fail to benefit from. If you want to increase your click through rate and maximise the chances of conversions, negatives are the way to go. It is great having thousands of impressions, but what if those impressions are your ad being seen by users searching for something that is not at all relevant to what your business offers?

Running regular search query reports will highlight the terms that you need to add to your negative keyword list. Yes, this could reduce the amount of impressions that your account receives but it is generally much more important to know that your traffic is relevant and you are reaching the most appropriate prospects. Adding negatives to your campaigns or ad groups will also help control costs by reducing your cost per clicks and ultimately increasing your ROI.

So, there we have 5 of our top tips to help you on your way with expanding and simultaneously refining your paid search campaigns. Check back next week for 5 more interesting ways to manage your PPC with maximum ROI and effectiveness.

Top Ten PPC Tips – part 1 is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

Here are some interesting statistics about the people on Facebook, their activities, its global reach, the platform and the devices used to access the social network.

• Facebook currently has more than 400,000 million users.
• 50% of users log on to Facebook every single day.
• The average user has 130 friends.
• People all over the world spend more than 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.
• There are over 160 million pages, groups and events that people interact with.
• The average Facebook user creates 70 pieces of content each month
• More than 25 billion web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums etc are shared each month.
• More than 70 translations are available on Facebook.
• There are currently more than 550,000 applications on the Facebook platform.
• More than 250,000 websites have already engaged with Facebook.
• There are more than 100 million users currently accessing Facebook via their mobile devices.
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world behind China and India.

From a marketer’s point of view, I believe that Facebook should be integrated into every marketing strategy as a means of brand awareness, building customer relationships and trust. My first experience on the site was as a user, enabling me to see the potential in using Facebook from a user’s point of view.

What are Facebook Social Ads?

Facebook social ads emerged in November 2007 and have since developed. Thanks to a more ad friendly redesign and a steady increase in traffic, Facebook ads really took off in 2009. Facebook social ads are a way of quickly connecting real customers to your business on the social network that everyone loves.

You can create clear, targeted image or text based ads, driving traffic to either your own website or something on Facebook such as a page or event. Using concise text will speak directly to your targeted audience. Since Facebook is the largest photo sharing website in the world, its users are very image driven.  An attractive appropriate image will capture people’s line of sight when they see your ad on the right hand side of their homepage or profile.

Facebook’s wide range of targeting options is what makes this method of advertising so appealing. You can target audiences by location, age, gender, keywords, education, workplace, relationship status, interests and language. This allows us to refine who sees our ad and ensure that it is as relevant as possible.

If you don’t know who your target audience is, you can identify this through Facebook, targeting the people who are more likely to take advantage of your ads.

Facebook social ads are very similar to Adwords PPC ads. You create your ad based on what you are offering and bid on keywords to get your ad shown in a higher position and more often. You can choose the either pay per click or per 1000 impressions (CPM). The CPC option is very appealing to Facebook advertisers, allowing them to take control of their spend and ensure that their budget is being used only when people have shown an interest and clicked on their ad.

The Benefits of Facebook Social Ads

Facebook is an easy way to make connections between people and their interests. Through displaying your ads at the right time to the people that are already interested in your product, your Facebook social ads will perform much better than on other advertising networks where this level of targetting is not available. Ads that are more relevant and meaningful to a user will not only attract more clicks but will convert more effectively as well.

Not only can Facebook expand a brand’s current online presence, it can also help brands that truly offer something remarkable rise to the surface faster. Instead of random messages from advertisers, social ads are tailored to users and their interests, making it all the more appealing and intriguing. Facebook even goes as far to claim the ads can “enhance a user’s experience, making the platform more bespoke to their interests and what matters to them”. Whilst this may be a claim not supported by users views and personally I dont think ads ever enhance anyones experience, I will settle for the way facebook works by not showing my adverts totally unrelated to my interests and demographic.

As an internet user, engaging with businesses and buying things online are a part of my everyday life. I often find that advertising where I am not expecting it can be overpowering, irrelevant and annoying. On Facebook, providing that ads are highly targeted and used wisely, advertising doesn’t have to interrupt what you are already doing.

Unlike other forms of advertising, the consumer has the power with Facebook. In theory an ad will only be shown if a user has raised their hand to an interest or if they have become a fan of a related page or group.

Potential problems with social ads

The question has been raised as to whether Facebook users are aware of the results of their “social actions”. When you become a fan of a page, nothing tells the user what that means or that Facebook could potentially show you advertisements based on your actions.

For them, this could either be a positive or a negative.  Many users will welcome ads that help them get what they want faster.  But others will see it as a privacy violation; it’s a fine line to walk for advertisers.

The bottom line though is Facebook is a business, whilst it is a great service for most of its users, the company is there to make money. Without using targetting advertising or some other way of bringing in revenue, Facebook would not exist in the long term. Given the choice between no Facebook or seeing ads, personally I cant see many people turning down Facebook.

Managing Facebook Ads

In terms of running an ad campaign with Facebook, the whole process is easy. Not only are social ads very simple to set up, Facebook also has one of the most customer friendly interfaces on a social network. It has a clean, clutter free design that is easy to navigate and understand. Unlike other social networks such as Bebo, Netlog and Myspace, the age range of Facebook users varies greatly, meaning that it is likely you will find your target market on there, however niche they are. The targetting options allow you to get to these people without annoying other users with your ads, saving you time and money.

Once your ad is set up and running, Facebook provides you to access complete demographic data, ad performance, trends and click reports. From this you can learn exactly how to adjust your copy to ensure that you only show what works well based on clicks.

You should optimise your ads for maximum performance.  Enhance your ad with an attractive image that will make people want to click on your ad to find out more – your visual graphic could make or break your ad so choose carefully.  If you use Facebook insights to analyse your performance, you can track and tweak your campaign based on these results.  Narrowing or broadening your targets allows you to refine your campaign.  You can even track activity that happens on your website as a result of someone on Facebook seeing or clicking on your Facebook ad.

These tips will get you well on the way to running a successful Facebook ad campaign.

From an advertiser’s perspective

Overtime, I suspect that facebook users will grow to appreciate the social ads, realising that they are not annoying and irrelevant but instead rather suited to their interests and activities.  I honestly believe most users will find Facebook SocialAds far less invasive than the annoying pop-ups and take-overs for  products that dominated websites in the late 1990’s and 2000′s.

Personally, I liked that Facebook gave me insight into the minds of facebook users, and from this I was able to put together effective marketing strategies.  Since many online businesses seek a quick return for their advertising spend, targeted pay per click programs are ideal.

Facebook ads’ approach to digital advertising represents a good first step towards making online ads in social media useful to the consumer and advertisers.  They are built on friendship, community, and relationships, facilitating connections between ordinary people and products, brands, businesses, and celebrities.

If you aren’t using Facebook ads to their full potential but you’d like to, contact us and we’ll help you out.

Facebook: The Next Generation Marketing Tool is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.