Atomic Media

B2B audience targeting: Meta Ads as an alternative to LinkedIn

Wednesday, April 10th, 2024

What if you could get your ads in front of your ideal customers for a fraction of the price?

LinkedIn Ads is well known for its high costs compared to other platforms.

Still, there’s a way to target a similar B2B audience on Meta, where advertising costs are significantly lower.

But this assumes two things are true:

• You have the fundamentals in place: a great offer and landing page backed by audience research, simple campaign structure, strong creative and conversion tracking. In other words, you approach advertising as a marketer rather than a media buyer.
• You’re willing to make the trade-off for cheaper acquisition costs. While you won’t have the precision targeting of LinkedIn, just because your target audience is browsing Instagram doesn’t mean they stop being who they are professionally. You may not be catering to them in that same environment, but they still have those needs and will pay attention to something interesting enough.

If the cost of advertising on LinkedIn is prohibitive or you can’t meet the minimum requirements for some of the targeting settings – and you meet these two criteria above – then you might want to consider this play.

What creative works best for B2B lead gen on Meta?

I find that you really don’t need to complicate creative since simple banner ads work well in B2B. Maybe it’s because business consumers often seek something that’ll help them advance or work more easily.

It’s different when you’re trying to get somebody to book a dentist appointment or learn about an insurance plan, where you need to convince them to make a call.

But in B2B, you’re selling something that will make somebody’s life easier without friction. It takes an investment on their part, but B2B audiences are open to that.

You can use videos as you do with B2C lead gen and ecommerce, but going after high-production values isn’t necessary.

It’s more about putting the right message in front of the right consumer. They’re on a different platform, but they’re still your target audience. And if you speak to them, they’ll take action.

Depending on the type of person you’re trying to reach, you can keep it as simple as having the right messaging.

We have an agency client that sells home organization products, so we try to reach contractors, developers, interior designers and other professionals. I sometimes find that even a good iPhone photo of the product with the right messaging will work better than a studio shot.

Dig deeper: Meta advertising: 5 best practices for 2024

Why B2B lead gen on Meta is easier than you think

Particularly for B2B lead gen, you likely have assets that can be repurposed quickly by resizing and making a few modifications.

Think about what’s important to the person you’re selling to and how your product will make their life easier. Try to speak to that in the creative and copy of the ad.

If this sounds like a core B2B marketing strategy, that’s because it is. It’s foundational work that successful B2B brands do before they ramp up ad spend.

Can I run B2B ads on Meta with a smaller budget?

If you’re considering this strategy because you have a smaller budget, I encourage you to consider dynamic creative: one ad unit with several ads and you let the system mix and match instead of making multiple standalone ads. I find this often works better.

Audience targeting on Meta: Options and framework

With ecommerce and B2C lead gen, we tend to do a lot of broad targeting. I find more success in B2B when we use customer lists and create lookalikes to target, as well as when using Meta’s interests and detailed targeting.

We just launched a campaign for a client selling playground equipment, so we’re targeting people who work in municipalities and schools. Similar to LinkedIn, though not as detailed or granular, Meta has the option to target people based on:

• Where they work.
• What their role is.
• Which industry they’re in.

So it’s just a matter of combing through that and building enough of an audience. We prefer not to make multiple ad sets for each one and instead stack them up into one large audience, which we find works well and brings in quality leads.

You will likely get more junk leads than if you were selling on LinkedIn. But overall, it’s still cheaper to do this on Meta, even after factoring in that difference.

We’re also running ads for a company that rents large office machinery with monthly service, toner, etc. With this, we’re targeting people who work in nursing homes or as office administrators, so it’s based on their role or the type of company they work in.

But we’re also looking at interests that could be related.

Is there an industry publication that people in that line of work tend to subscribe to? If so, you set that publication’s company as an interest.

At its core, targeting professional audiences on Meta is really just about customer lookalikes, lead list lookalikes, interests and profession-based targeting.

My audience targeting guidelines

Here are some additional guidelines I follow when running B2B lead gen campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. Your mileage may vary, so test as needed.

• If you’re a regional business, you’ll want to layer in specific locations.
• I prefer not to use embedded lead forms because they tend to return more junk leads. We typically send traffic to a dedicated landing page and try very hard to get that page to convert well by speaking in a language similar to the ad creative itself.
• If you are going to utilize embedded forms, add questions to add friction to the form and qualify potential leads.
• Ensure that all your ads have UTM parameters included in the landing page URL so that when a lead comes in, you know which campaign and ad it came from.
• Feed that lead data back into HubSpot, SalesForce or whatever CRM you use so that you can see where you’re getting the most valuable leads that turn into sales.
• Consider adding to your audience selection website visitors that did not convert already, or video viewers and page engagers. This way you can target anyone who showed enough interest to engage with your media but not enough to convert.

New ways to target B2B audiences on Meta

Until now, everything I’ve shared has been from the lens of using standard conversion campaigns with a lead focus.

Now, you can also use tailored campaigns with lead objectives, which is like Advantage+ shopping for lead generation. It strips away a little bit of traditional advertiser control, but it’s worth testing – especially with larger budgets.

You can also create a campaign with a call objective if you don’t want to form submissions as your primary conversions.

If you do things by phone, use this with a call tracking number so that the CTA leads to a call, and you can monitor where your inquiries come from. The system will also track this and optimize for the best calls if you feed it the right data.

Meta has also been pushing Advantage+ audiences, which basically borrows from Google’s Performance Max in that they become audience suggestions (signals).

The system will use this as a base, but it will go beyond and find whoever it believes is the target consumer for what you’re selling.

Test before you divest

I understand the skepticism around using Meta Ads for B2B lead generation advertising.

Still, the principle behind my advice remains the same: People browsing LinkedIn don’t stop being (insert profession here) when they start browsing Facebook or Instagram.

As with everything ads-related, I advise you to try things out for yourself before writing them off.

If you don’t have a dedicated budget for experiments, use a small portion of your allocated budget just to get your feet wet. You may not achieve statistical significance, but you’ll likely see whether there’s something worth exploring further.

Psychologically speaking, you may even stand a better chance of getting them to pay attention on a platform where their guard doesn’t have to be up due to the prevalence of low-quality offers and products.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Google updates Merchant Center product data specifications

Wednesday, April 10th, 2024

Google’s product data specification requirements guarantee that all product data submitted to the Merchant Center is formatted correctly to optimize success for both Shopping ads and organic Shopping listings.

Each year, the search giant updates these specifications in a bid to try and improve shopping on its platform. The updates for 2024 have now been announced – and below is a summary of all the changes you should be aware of.

Changes effective immediately

The following changes came into effect on April 9, 2024:

New product data specification attributes for AI-Generated content in Shopping ads and free listings: Google introduced new attributes that now require merchants to disclose text content created using generative AI. Moving forward, you will need to use the structured title [structured_title] attribute and the structured description [structured_description] attribute when using AI-generated titles and descriptions in your product data.

New loyalty program [loyalty_program]: You can now use the loyalty program [loyalty_program] attribute to set up member prices and loyalty points in the U.S. and Japan. Adding the attribute helps Google to accurately represent the benefits of your loyalty program (as configured on Merchant Center) across Google properties.

New minimum price [auto_pricing_min_price] attribute: You can now use the minimum price [auto_pricing_min_price] attribute to set the lowest or minimum advertised price (MAP) to which a product’s price can be reduced. Google uses this information for features such as sale price suggestions, automated discounts, and dynamic promotions.

Updated guidance on installment [installment]- based offers: Google is updating its guidance regarding the usage of the installment attribute. An offer that utilizes this attribute will be considered as one where the product can be purchased by paying the full price upfront using the price attribute or in installments. With this update, Google is expanding the installment attribute by introducing a new downpayment sub-attribute to specify if the product requires a partial upfront payment. Previously, such down payments had to be provided using the price attribute.

Additionally, Google is adding a credit type [credit_type] sub-attribute to the installment [installment] attribute specifically for Vehicle ads. This is to allow specifying whether the type of installment credit is lease [lease] or finance [finance].

New free shipping threshold [free_shipping_threshold] attribute: Marketers in all countries can now use the free shipping threshold [free_shipping_threshold] attribute to indicate the minimum order value above which shipping is free.

Updated guidance on the inclusion of government-imposed fees in the shipping [shipping] attributes: Google is updating its guidance around the usage of the shipping attribute. Don’t include government-imposed fees such as import duties, recycling fees, copyright fees, or state-specific retail delivery fees in the shipping cost.

Changes starting on July 31

Expanding the list of countries where shipping cost is required: Google is expanding the list of countries where shipping cost is required and enforced to additional countries. Offers without shipping costs will now be disapproved in these countries:

• India
• New Zealand

Changes starting on September 1

Pickup method [pickup_method] will be optional for Local Inventory Ads: Google is simplifying inventory handling for LIA merchants that use the pickup today or pickup later features by making pickup method [pickup_method] optional. Pickup method [pickup_method] will no longer be required to enable pickup for your offers. Learn more about the LIA inventory feed specification.

Removing energy_efficiency_class attributes: Google is deprecating the energy efficiency attributes in favor of the certification attribute certification [certification] which was launched in 2023.

Removing the use of the price [price] attribute for down payments when used in combination with the installment [installment] attribute: Google is removing support for providing downpayment using the price [price] attribute after September 1.

Why we care. Following Merchant Center guidelines, including the updates mentioned, ensures your product listings are eligible to show in search results. New attributes like loyalty programs could incentivize customers to return, while the free shipping threshold might encourage them to spend more, ultimately boosting your ROI.

Deep dive. Read Google’s announcement in full for more information.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

How to maximize your local business’ Google Maps presence

Wednesday, April 10th, 2024

If you’re an advertiser with a brick-and-mortar presence, it’s more important than ever to claim and advertise your business on Google Maps.

However, cracking the code on how to serve and control Google Maps ads may feel like a moving target over the last few months. With changes to Performance Max goals, Google Business Profile (GBP) guidelines and how folks search for places, a lot is happening within Maps.

Still, you can successfully commandeer your business’ Maps presence by optimizing your GBP listing, leveraging location assets and using Performance Max for store or travel goals.

Do businesses really need to target Maps specifically? 

Yes. The way users search for businesses, paired with Google’s shift to highlight Maps placements within search results, makes it imperative to have a separate Google Maps strategy.

Having sitelinks driving to your “Store Locator” page and bidding on “near me” keywords is no longer enough to get in front of your customers during their search.

The future of the search engine results page (SERP), especially as Performance Max continues to dominate Google’s engineering resources, will continue changing as the shift into an AI-forward search results page runs full steam ahead.

This year’s upcoming Google Marketing Live is expected to announce further shifts in AI, which may include how prevalent Maps are in the user journey.

In the latest version of Google, Maps results are showing above any ads in the Search Generative Experience (SGE) view. As we know, this is expected to remain standard as the SERP evolves.

Businesses must claim their storefronts within Google Business Profile to get in front of users in the most organic formats and promote them within Google Ads to see real success.

Creating and optimizing your Business Profile and data feeds

Creating and optimizing your Business Profile is the first step to establishing a footprint on Google Maps.

Maintaining up-to-date store hours, phone numbers and important business information are all massive variables in a customer’s decision-making journey.

Contact information for the business, a link to the website and sourcing/replying to reviews are also key to winning your customers’ attention (and conversions).

For hotels, restaurants or any business with multiple locations, make sure your Data Feed is up to date. Add accurate pictures, menus or other helpful visuals as applicable.

What campaign types should run?

Once your store’s information is ready to be advertised, it’s time to determine which campaign type is best for your business. This will be a combination of Search and Performance Max campaigns (with either Store or Travel goals as your optimization type).

Campaigns should be structured by KPI, like all other campaign types, and not split by location unless there are different goals by store/city or need to have location groups at the campaign level if necessary.

Campaign settings and location targeting

As you set up your campaigns, make sure your location targeting is set to capture where your customers are or may be searching from.

Location exclusions will be an important part of your setup if there are countries/cities you do not have a presence in or do not want to prioritize.

If you do not include or exclude any locations during the initial build, make sure to check your Location reports (Reports > New Report > most specific location) to identify any areas to focus on by increasing budget or potentially excluding from your campaign.

Location and business assets 

Set up location assets correctly before moving into anything else. These are eligible to serve across Google Search, Search Partners, Display Network and YouTube.

Creating location assets will depend on whether or not you own the locations directly, and you can find more information about how to set them up on Google’s Support pages.

Verifying your phone number and enabling call reporting are critical to the success of your location assets so you can gauge performance.

Location assets should be added at the campaign level as an ad extension within your Google Ads account if there are regional KPIs to hit; otherwise, they can be added at the account level to ensure they are applied to every campaign.

In addition to location assets, make sure your business name and logo assets are up to date and applied at the account level. These will help boost your quality score and build brand recognition with your customer base.

Maximizing your local business’ visibility on Google Maps

Claiming and promoting your business on Google Maps significantly boosts local visibility and will attract more customers to your storefronts. Following the steps above, you can quickly and effectively leverage Google Maps to grow your business.

As Google continues to embrace AI, expect more Maps-first results in the SERP and additional features in Google Ads to make the process quicker and easier for advertisers to run ads on Maps.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

7 ways to use generative AI in PPC

Tuesday, April 9th, 2024

Google leads AI advertising with machine learning integrated across ad campaigns and types. Even with manual workarounds, results tend to suffer without the help of AI-driven algorithms. 

Without AI assistance for PPC bidding and creative decisions, your conversion rate will typically be lower than that of competitors who use machine learning to their advantage.

AI is changing how ad campaigns function and SERPs look with Google’s rollout of Search Generative Experience. Below are tips for mastering the art of generative AI to keep your company or PPC clients ahead of the curve.

Best practices for using generative AI

As important as AI is, human and machine-based decisions require a careful balance. Relinquishing control to AI can set your campaigns down a path of irrelevant search queries and low-quality traffic.

Succeeding with automation starts with human guidance. As a marketer, you must ensure alignment between campaigns, brand guidelines and goals when tapping into machine learning efficiencies.

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Microsoft Co-Pilot are great places to get preliminary ideas for marketing campaigns, but they require guardrails.

Never use AI for the final product

Recently, I was hiring for open positions on my team. In the application process, I included the question: 

• “What is the most interesting thing about you that’s not on your resume?”

No less than 20 times, my recruiting team weeded out applicants with the same response (with slight variations each time):

• “The most interesting thing about me that’s not on my resume is my passion for astrophotography. I love capturing the beauty of the night sky and sharing it with others, as it allows me to combine my love for photography and fascination with the universe.”

While using generative AI for ideas or starting points can be a great time-saver, these tools produce the same results for everyone. In advertising, your brand must stand out from your competition.

Ensure that copy, content and designs undergo a rigorous human review process to avoid appearing generic. Never use AI to replicate copyrighted content. You don’t want your brand to land on a list of AI fails.

Use detailed prompts

Receiving useful output from generative AI requires detailed prompts. AI is only as powerful as the information you feed it and prompts may take a few iterations to get right.

Watch the evolution of the prompts below to see how each improves to get closer to platform-ready ad copy.

This looks more like a landing page or email copy than a search copy:

This copy is generic and the CTA doesn’t align with my campaign:

The results are improving, but I need more iterations to maximize the number of headlines and descriptions in responsive search ads to fully utilize AI potential:

These headlines don’t meet Google’s character length requirements:

This copy is missing ad group keywords, which will lead to poor ad strength:

The repeated CTAs and exclamation points are redundant and unnecessary. There isn’t enough variety for the copy to relate to a user:

Finally, after providing the system with more details, it produces platform-ready copy.

The final step is reviewing the copy carefully and reworking as needed to include the brand name in headlines and align brand messaging before building the ads in Google Ads:

Here are some other details you might include in prompts to customize the results further:

• Link to landing page.
• Company or brand details (name, industry, etc.).
• Audience details (job titles, company size, demographic info, etc.).
• Brand tone of voice.

Dig deeper: ChatGPT for PPC marketers: 15 strategic prompts to use today

7 ways to use generative AI in search advertising

Keeping in mind the need for detailed prompts, here are seven ways to use generative AI tools in search advertising:

1. Copywriting

Take the example above for using AI to write ad copy and apply it to landing pages. This sample prompt mentions the audience, product and offer.

From here, a human can edit the copy to include more keywords and eliminate words and phrases that don’t align with brand messaging.

2. Keyword research

While Google Keyword Planner is a great resource for keyword research and search volume forecasting, the terms it produces may be irrelevant to your brand due to lack of context.

To account for these discrepancies, perform research in multiple ways to ensure keyword-to-audience alignment. In this example, the prompt provides the topic and a related competitor landing page.

3. Building an account structure

Starting a new account from scratch or planning an account restructure? This prompt details the brand’s industry, goal and focus topics, along with additional campaigns the structure should include.

This is a good starting point to lay out campaigns and ad groups before filling in the keywords. ChatGPT gets bonus points for providing keyword ideas.

4. Content creation 

Your content must stand out in a sea of messaging and creatives, as the competition for audience attention is higher than ever.

This prompt details audience job titles, company size and industry. It also mentions the campaign’s theme (tax season), which presents unique challenges for this audience.

Consider listing audience pain points, challenges, likes and dislikes to improve your AI tool’s output.

5. Language translation

Always have a human native speaker of the language review your AI tool’s translation output.

Although AI is a great time-saver in this instance, the system does not have the context for the verbiage. As a result, the translation may not align with your intended meaning.

6. Audience research

Survey-based audience research tools like MRI-Simmons offer the best way to leverage real audience insights. However, generative AI can assist with getting to know your audience better.

While other tools like Sparktoro or Resonate may outline further details about these channels, AI output can create a media plan for budget allocation.

This prompt asks about pain points the target audience encounters in their job. It helps align messaging to these issues for improved relevancy and CTR.

7. Display placements

Get to know your audience further with a prompt designed to find where they spend time. Then, you can focus your GDN investment on industry-specific sites.

Using generative AI in PPC

Generative AI is a game-changing tool that saves time. But remember not to rely on it for the final product. Always work alongside machine learning to guide it toward better results for your brand’s performance.

Dig deeper: Elevate your PPC with ChatGPT: The art of asking disconfirming questions

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

LinkedIn’s most effective posting strategies unveiled by new study

Tuesday, April 9th, 2024

LinkedIn content has been analyzed to identify posting best practices that lead to the highest success rates.

A new study conducted by Socialinsider reviewed posts shared by active accounts between January 2022 and December 2023 to determine which content generates the most shares, impressions, and engagement.

Key findings. After thorough investigation, researchers concluded that brands and marketers should consider the following to enhance their performance on LinkedIn:

• Opt for multi-image posts for maximum engagement. 
• Prioritize video content to increase the likelihood of your posts being shared on LinkedIn.
• Interact with your audience via polls to increase impressions.
• Keep your captions short and pair them with multiple images to boost engagement.
• Encouraging employees to strategically create and manage their own personal profiles can significantly enhance the company’s message on LinkedIn.
• Brands should utilize LinkedIn page analytics to understand their audience better and tailor content to different audience segments.

Engagement. Overall, LinkedIn engagement is increasing – in fact, it’s up 44% year-on-year. However, it’s important to note that brands are also posting more frequently on the platform compared to before, which is believed to be influenced by the shift away from X.

Why we care. Use the conclusions of this investigation to improve your LinkedIn strategy. While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, using the findings from this study can help you make data-led decisions about the type of content you post.

Multi-image posts. Researchers found that multi-image posts typically receive the highest engagement on LinkedIn, followed by document posts, images, and video. Although carousel posts were phased out by the platform last year, you can still implement a similar strategy by sharing a PDF with each slide featuring a different image.

Video posts. Researchers also discovered that video posts tend to generate the highest average number of shares on LinkedIn. This finding might be particularly relevant to businesses prioritizing brand awareness.

Poll posts. Polls have been found to generate the highest impression rate on LinkedIn. Researchers attribute this to people’s inclination to express their opinions on the platform, with polls providing a straightforward method to do so.

External links. The study emphasized that posts containing links to external websites tend to perform poorly on LinkedIn. One strategy that brands, especially publishers, are using to address this challenge is by posting the links in the first comment of their post instead.

Deep dive. Read the Social Insider report in full for more information.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

4 Ways New Data Cloud Features Help You Personalize Ads by Salesforce

Tuesday, April 9th, 2024

What’s next in first-party advertising? Our community came together in December at World Tour New York to learn about the latest marketing innovations and how to reach customers better. Here’s the scoop on our latest releases and updates — and what they can do for your business.

Companies are now prioritizing first-party customer data in their marketing campaigns. However, changes in data privacy laws, not to mention the fast-approaching cookieless future, make it tough for companies to meet these expectations without the right tools to collect and capitalize on that first-party data.

In December, we announced new Data Cloud integrations with Google Display & Video 360 and LinkedIn. These integrations help companies connect their first-party data and execute automated, personalized advertising campaigns.

Let’s take a look at how these innovations will help your advertising efforts.

Don’t follow the pack — be a leader
Read the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Customer Data Platforms. Learn why Gartner named Salesforce a Leader, placing highest in ability to execute and furthest in completeness in vision.

Open the report

What is first-party data advertising?

First-party data advertising uses information collected directly from your company’s customers or users to personalize and target advertising efforts. This valuable data, comprising customer preferences and interactions, enables your business to create highly tailored campaigns, enhancing the relevance of your messaging. 

In contrast to third-party data, customers consent to you using their first-party data, which your company directly manages. This leads to customer trust, as well as compliance with privacy regulations.

By letting your customers tell you exactly who they are and what they want, you unlock more effective retargeting, personalized content creation and an overall improved customer experience.

What our new Data Cloud updates mean for your business

As you explore how first-party data advertising can help your company, we want to make sure we tell you both the what and the why behind these new innovations. So what do these Marketing Cloud updates mean for you? You can improve the way you interact with your customers and your marketing systems, to do things like:

• Personalize at scale: With these new Data Cloud integrations, you can personalize advertising using a complete customer profile that unifies first-party data from customers across marketing, commerce, sales, service, or any touchpoint.  
• Increase efficiency: The new integrations help you deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. You can do this with rapidly updated segment memberships, near real-time data sharing with advertising partners and suppressing users that have already purchased or have open Service Cloud cases.
• Segment and activate quickly: You can now compress the weeks it takes to build out segments with legacy SQL-based tools into minutes. Drag-and-drop and natural language generative AI interfaces help you create, test and build segments quickly. Then you can immediately activate the new integrations with Google Display & Video 360 and LinkedIn alongside your other channels like email, SMS, web, app and connected devices. This results in a more personalized experience for your customer on their preferred channel.
• Build trust with your customers: With these updates, it’s easier to build trust through messages that are more relevant to your customers and compliant with today’s regulations. The new Data Cloud integrations allow you to launch ad campaigns that are more relevant(using first-party data) and efficient, through the power of automation. 

It’s time to redefine the CDP
Dig into use cases that show how to power personalized and connected experiences across your marketing.

Take the next step

What are some new things marketers can do with Data Cloud?

We’ve covered how your business can benefit from these innovations. Now let’s look at some specific ways you can use them to improve your results:

1. Create connected advertising experiences across display, video, TV, audio and other channels with Google Display & Video 360. You can improve customer loyalty with engaging and seamless advertising by using unified customer profiles from Data Cloud. This allows you to deliver personalized ads and campaign measurement across multiple channels. For example, a media brand can increase loyal customers and retain at-risk subscribers by using AI insights to engage audiences in Google Ads campaigns, targeting those who are most likely to upgrade or churn with relevant messages and offers.
2. Target a network of over 1 billion active professionals on LinkedIn based on job title, function, industry and more. You can use first-party data, combined with AI-powered product interest scoring from Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, and product usage data from your own apps to reach more customers. For example, with Data Cloud, a tech company can create an end-to-end program to increase awareness and promote relevant upsell and cross-sell conversion opportunities to grow their sales pipeline.

Greater efficiency, effectiveness, and personalization are top of mind for every business looking to improve their advertising strategy. Capitalizing on trusted first-party data within your advertising is the key to delivering the experiences customers want — and the campaign performance your company needs.

How Data Cloud saves you time and money
Learn how you can make your marketing more efficient by using AI to optimize campaign performance and spend.

Watch the free demo

Originally published on Salesforce.com on January 16, 2024.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

How to implement a full-funnel PPC marketing strategy

Tuesday, April 9th, 2024

A full-funnel PPC marketing strategy is incredibly important.

But do you understand how to implement this strategy in your accounts?

This article will take you step-by-step through the marketing funnel, giving you tactical recommendations on how to keep the marketing funnel in mind when building your PPC strategy and some recommendations on how to measure success.

We’ll use the hot tub industry as an example. I’ll split each section into three parts: 

• Keyword research.
• Ad creation.
• Landing page optimization.

Awareness stage

Top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) campaigns are focused on consumers in the awareness stage, when they haven’t yet entered the market for your product or identified a problem that needs solving. 

Awareness campaigns are meant to do exactly what they say: to make customers aware of your brand so that when they finally enter the market, you have a leg up due to brand recognition. 

A perfect example of this is insurance companies. People don’t need insurance often, but when they do, it sure helps that the Geico gecko is one of the first things you think of.

Keyword research

• Identify keywords that are informational in nature that align with your brand’s offerings and your target audience’s interest.
• Use Google’s Keyword Planner or any other keyword research tool to develop a list of these keywords with a decent search volume.
• A couple of examples of search queries that fall into the awareness phase:
  • “Are hot tubs good for you?”
  • “Are hot tubs worth it?”
  • “How much are hot tubs?”

Ad creation

• Display advertising is a big part of an awareness-based strategy, so it’s important to craft ads that are both visually compelling and effectively show your brand’s value.
• Video ads are another great tool for raising awareness. Use videos to introduce your brand and highlight key features of your products.
• The goal is to entice users to learn more, so use attention-grabbing headlines that are focused on the user’s search for more information.

Landing page optimization

• Design your landing pages so they match your ads’ messaging and visuals. Inconsistent branding and messaging only make the user’s journey confusing.
• Focus your landing pages on providing valuable content that educates the user’s about a specific product or your industry as a whole. Relevant blog posts are a great choice for awareness-based campaigns
• Include clear calls to action (CTAs) to encourage readers to continue down the purchase funnel. CTAs like “download brochure” or “learn more” are great here.

Dig deeper: Guide to PPC top-of-funnel reporting

Consideration stage

Middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) campaigns are focused on consumers in the consideration stage, where they have officially entered the market for a product. Still, they have not found a solution or product that fits their needs. 

Consideration campaigns are meant to give customers the information they need to make a purchase. This could be many different things, like information about the product or service or sales information that could entice the customer to finally purchase.

Keyword research

• Identify keywords related to your products or services that indicate interest by the user. Users in the consideration phase often use keywords like “best” or “review” to help find the best brands and products. 
• Use Google’s Keyword Planner or any other keyword research tool to develop a list of these keywords with a decent search volume.
• A couple of examples of search queries that fall into the awareness phase:
  • “hot tub sales”
  • “Best hot tub brands”
  • “Hot tub store”
  • “Hot tub comparisons”
  • “Jacuzzi hot tub reviews”

Ad creation

• Focus on ad copy that provides valuable information to the consumer while also showing the value of your brand specifically. For hot tub sales, this could include “One year of free service with purchase” and information about the hot tubs.
• Create compelling remarketing ads that keep user’s interested after they’ve interacted with your content.

Landing page optimization

• Design your landing pages so they match your ads’ messaging and visuals. This is consistent across all stages of the funnel. (Branding is important, folks!) 
• Highlight social proof of your business and products, such as reviews, testimonials, case studies, etc. These build brand credibility and are incredibly important in building trust with new customers.
• Include clear CTAs to encourage users to proceed to the bottom of the funnel. CTAs like “Start your Free Trial” or “Subscribe to Our Email List” are perfect for the consideration stage. 

Conversion stage

Bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) campaigns focus on consumers in the conversion stage, where they’ve identified what they want and are ready to purchase. 

Conversion campaigns are designed to get users to convert at that moment. If users don’t convert, the rest of the funnel is pointless, so it’s important to ensure your conversion campaigns run as effectively as possible.

Keyword research

• Identify keywords that are transaction or purchase-based. These tend to be longer-tail keywords and could include the product name, model number or words like “buy.”
• Use Google’s Keyword Planner or any other keyword research tool to develop a list of these keywords with a decent search volume.
• A couple of examples of search queries that fall into the awareness phase:
  • “Buy Jacuzzi hot tub”
  • “Jacuzzi J-LX Smart Tub”
  • “Jacuzzi hot tub store near me”

Ad creation

• Focus on ad copy that uses clear, purchase-oriented CTAs, as well as any promotions you have running currently. “Buy Now” or “Request a Quote” CTAs are great here.
• Dynamic remarketing ads that target people who have added items to cart but haven’t converted can be a great tactic for getting people to finally convert.

Landing page optimization

• Your conversion campaign landing pages should be as streamlined as possible so that no friction prevents the user from converting. Many conversion-based landing pages will even remove the top navigation from the page, so the user can only convert or leave the page.
• Include any promotional elements on the landing page, such as discounts, limited-time offers or free shipping.
• This applies to all landing pages, but ensure that the page load times are fast and that it works well on mobile. Nothing feels worse to a user than slow landing pages.

Measurement tips for your full-funnel PPC strategy

So, now that we have our campaigns set up and optimized for every stage of the funnel, how do we determine whether our campaigns are performing well? 

Here are a few tips for measuring progress and success across the marketing funnel:

Set up conversion tracking

• Ensure that conversion tracking is set up throughout your site so you can track user’s interactions throughout every stage of the funnel. I recommend using Google Tag Manager for all conversion tracking purposes.
• Define and create conversion actions for every stage of the marketing funnel so you can determine success. Here are some example conversions for each stage:
  • Awareness: Blog views, brochure/case study downloads.
  • Consideration: Email list subscriptions, free trial sign-ups.
  • Conversion: Purchases, quote requests.

Analyzing key performance metrics

• Continually monitor your KPIs to see improvement over time. Metrics like click-through rate and conversion rate can help you determine whether your campaigns are reaching a qualified audience or if you need to pivot.
• Within Google Ads, look at your different audience segments to see when and where people interact with your brand the most and focus on those high-quality segments.

Test, test, test!

• PPC is not a set-it-and-forget-it marketing strategy. As marketers, we should always be A/B testing something to see if we can improve our performance. Whether it be ad creating, landing pages, or targeting, there is no shortage of levers to pull to try and improve your campaigns.
• Optimize your campaigns based on the data you’re seeing so that you continue to improve ad targeting and performance over time.

Dig deeper: Setting PPC goals: How to tailor KPIs and metrics for each funnel stage

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Ensuring quality in your SEO services: A checklist

Monday, April 8th, 2024

As an agency, consultant or in-house provider, delivering quality is a top priority.

But what exactly defines a “quality” SEO service?

Is it solely about achieving results? Or are there other important factors to consider?

This checklist outlines key elements to assess and improve the quality of your SEO services. 

Does price impact your service quality?

No, price is not part of how customers would view the quality of your service. However, it can impact their expectations and their perception of the service value. 

Did you know that popular methods for measuring service quality, like SERVQUAL, don’t factor in the price? This means the cost of a service isn’t seen as part of its quality.

So, changing your price won’t necessarily make customers think your service is better. They might see the “value” differently, but that’s a separate topic.

How to deliver quality services to your SEO clients from day one

There’s no one way to define quality. It also gets complicated when we’re discussing a service like SEO vs. a physical product.

It’s easy to spot a quality shirt or shoes, but what does that look like when discussing SEO services?

That’s why I think it’s important to have a checklist that you can adapt to your needs and vision. If you’re part of an agency, you can use it to discuss internally with your team or you can measure how you perform against it if you’re working as a freelancer or a consultant.

The SEO service quality checklist

Score yourself on a scale of 1-10 on each of the following items and see how your total measures up out of 50.

1. Tangibles

In a remote-first world, your documented SEO deliverables are your tangibles.

Pay close attention to details and avoid spelling errors. It’s crucial to maintain proper branding and ensure each deliverable is clear and easy to understand.

If your clients frequently ask for clarifications, then maybe the format you’re using isn’t working.

This also applies if you work in-house. If you put effort into your deliverables, people can see that and appreciate it more. 

A small thing I like to use is tooltips. In Google Sheets, right-click on the cell title and add a description of what the data in this column means. Anyone who hovers with their mouse over the cell can see this additional information and better understand how to use/read the doc.

2. Assurance

Assurance is about how knowledgeable your team is and if they can communicate that to the clients. In other words, do your clients trust your expertise? Working with you gives the clients assurance that they will achieve the desired results. 

Assurance is a feeling based on your and your team’s knowledge and the soft skills needed to communicate and build trust in your expertise and capabilities as a service provider.

So, first and foremost, hire smart people, always upskill and keep learning. SEO is always changing and you should always set time aside for your team to develop. Consider blocking an hour per week for the team to pick up on the latest industry news or SEO tactics.

The second part of assurance is soft skills. You must have good communication skills, patience and tact when communicating with your clients. Learn to explain complex SEO concepts in simple words. 

If people don’t understand your work, they will not appreciate it. They can work with someone with less knowledge and expertise, but because they understand their work, they will perceive the quality of the service as much higher.

Assurance is also important since “business moves at the speed of trust.”

Ask yourself: How much do your clients trust you? And how can you improve that?

Another thing to keep in mind is that providing regular updates and reports and having transparent communication about SEO performance can also enhance assurance and trust.

Many people cannot interpret data reports, so make sure your reports are easy to understand. Use the “Keep-It-Simple-Stupid” concept when designing a report for your clients. 

Once, a client was puzzled by the “rankings change” data. If rankings improve, such as moving from 10th to third place, the rankings change would be “-7.”

However, a negative number is associated with a drop in performance, which is quite the opposite of what the report is about. So make sure your reporting is easy to understand and walk your clients through them and answer any questions.

Dig deeper: How to build and maintain client trust in your agency

3. Reliability

Reliability comes in three parts:

• Meeting agreed-upon deadlines: No one likes to work with a freelancer or an agency that doesn’t deliver on time. That’s one of the biggest concerns, especially when discussing freelancers. This will impact the perceived quality of your service. It still surprises me that some people don’t use project management tools. Make sure you use one that helps you keep everything in one place and track progress and deadlines.
• Delivering on promises made to your clients: For instance, if you tell the client, “Let me check and circle back to you on this,” you must follow through. 
• Implementing SEO strategies and tactics that bring results: I cannot really simplify this here but it’s basically everything you’ve learned in SEO so far.

4. Responsiveness

Replying back to questions and emails in a timely manner is important. I think this may be challenging to balance since some clients are more demanding than others, so you need some tactics to handle this. 

I usually start my day by checking emails, checking it again once or twice during the day and one last time before I wrap up. If something is just a quick reply, I do it right away. Otherwise, I will reply and give the client an estimate of when this will be ready. For such situations, I say things like:

• “Thank you for your email. I will need to check with the team and circle back to you by end-of-day tomorrow.”
• “I will add this request to our plan, it should be ready by early next week, please let me know if you’d like to prioritize this request on the current work-in-progress tasks” [and you can also list the current tasks in-progress].
• I sometimes ask ChatGPT to help with those emails. Here’s one suggestion:
  • “I’ve noted your request and will prioritize it accordingly in our plan. You can expect completion by early next week.” Then, include an update on the progress of current tasks.

Dig deeper: How to build a values-based agency that drives results

5. Empathy

While this may sound weird to include in a checklist for assessing your service quality, I think it’s a great point. In most instances, you may not necessarily work directly with the business owner.

You’re probably working with their internal marketing team, developers and copywriters; those people are usually very busy and have plenty on their plates. Having empathy in this situation means trying to find ways to support them in executing and making their lives easier by adjusting your deliverables to whatever format makes them comfortable.

I found this to be important if you’re working in-house as well. It’s important to take care of the people you are working with. 

When working on the agency side, I would try to help the client’s team with whatever they needed help with. For example, I can request access to their WordPress and update title tags and alt tags myself. 

Another thing I do is try to be resourceful. Try to find low-effort opportunities for them to execute on.

Recently, I wanted to launch a bottom-of-funnel page, but to avoid making requests to the content team, I duplicated the existing PPC page, updated the title tags and pushed it live. This helps with two things:

• Collecting initial data to see if this page is worth investing more effort into and optimizing further or if we should create more of the same type.
• Testing things fast while saving internal resources.

Also, give them ample floor time to speak during meetings. Listen to their concerns and try to resolve anything blocking them.

Your job is not to send recommendations and make requests but to partner with different stakeholders to build trust and long-term business relations.

Assessing and enhancing your SEO service standards

Delivering quality SEO services is essential for building trust, retaining clients and driving sustainable results. This checklist can help you systematically assess and enhance the quality of your SEO offerings.

Remember, quality goes beyond just the end outcomes – it’s about the entire client experience, from tangible deliverables to responsive communication and empathetic partnership. Continuously evaluating your performance against these key criteria will help you stay ahead of the competition and cement your reputation as a provider of exceptional SEO services.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Google explains why Ad Strength is ‘so important’ as it addresses industry concerns

Friday, April 5th, 2024

Some Google advertisers are convinced Ad Strength is a pointless metric that should be ignored.

The diagnostic tool, touted by the search engine as an effective way to assist marketers in creating better ads, has faced harsh criticism, with some labelling it a “waste of time.” What’s more, many marketers have noticed a peculiar trend: campaigns labeled with a “poor” ad strength rating often outperform those with an “excellent” rating.

With the debate intensifying, how much attention should PPC marketers be paying to Ad Strength?

‘Ad strength score doesn’t matter’

Mateja Matić, founder of Dominate Marketing and an expert in online marketing for over a decade, shared his perspective on Ad Strength. Despite Google’s emphasis on it, Matić revealed that he does not prioritize Ad Strength when building campaigns.

Having conducted countless tests, he said that Google’s responsive ads have never outperformed ads that he set up manually. With this in mind, he does not trust Google’s automated recommendations. He wrote on X:

• “If you are new to Google Ads, one of things you need to be aware of is Google’s recommendations are not necessarily the best things for your account. I can tell you from experience that the majority of things they recommend in your account do not work as good as other things you can do to make your ads better.”
• “I don’t believe Ad Strength score means anything. I have ads that are performing extremely well that have a very bad ad strength score. It says ‘poor’ and yet they’re getting a 10-15% conversion rate on actual leads.”

‘Don’t worry about Ad Strength’

Frederick Vallaeys, Co-Founder and CEO of Optmyzr, offered insights on Ad Strength, highlighting that exceptional campaign performance doesn’t always correlate with a high Ad Strength rating. Ad strength primarily reflects general trends rather than the nuances of individual campaigns and audiences, according to Vallaeys. This is why even if a campaign with a low Ad Strength rating performs exceptionally well, Google will not change the score.

Vallaeys emphasized this point in a blog post, advising experienced advertisers to prioritize other metrics over ad strength:

• “If you’re worried that poor Ad Strength means your ad will serve less frequently, rest assured that ad strength does not impact ad rank or quality score. In other words, if your ad strength is poor, it does not mean Google is deprioritizing your ad in the ad auction.”
• “A higher ad strength doesn’t mean a better CTR or a better conversion rate or a better quality score. If you’re new to advertising or don’t know what’s going to work, consider this a piece of advice. But if you’re an experienced advertiser, go ahead and do what you do best. Don’t just be blinded by the ad strength.”

‘Waste of time’

Anthony Higman, CEO of online advertising agency Adsquire, said he experimented with prioritizing Ad Strength when creating campaigns. Despite his efforts, he found that emphasizing ad strength did not result in an increase in quality leads.

Through extensive testing, Higman concluded that he would prefer campaigns with “poor Ad Strength and good leads” over those with increased expenditure and less relevant leads, which he deemed as a “waste of everyone’s time.” Despite his skepticism regarding Ad Strength’s effectiveness in generating quality leads, Higman suspects it may soon become a metric influencing ad rank. He told Search Engine Land.

• “I believe that they will soon make Ad Strength a factor of ad rank. About two months ago a rep who reached out to us said in an email that ‘ad strength’ is a factor of ad rank. I think he slipped up. When I lost it on him and said ‘excuse me but ad strength is not a factor of ad rank’, he backtracked.”
• “Either way, Ad Strength will probably influence ad rank in the future, which is disappointing. We are just praying that they come up with a fix before everyone abandons ship.”

Google responds

When Search Engine Land raised the PPC community’s concerns about the relevance of Ad Strength, Brendon Kraham, Google’s Vice President of Search & Commerce, addressed the issue. He asserted that Ad Strength is “very important” and emphasized its significance as an evaluative criteria that marketers should prioritize. He said:

• “I don’t know where [the idea that Ad Strength is not important] comes from. Ad Strength is at the centre of what we’re trying to do is because creative is going to be incredibly important, and Ad Strength is going to be the mechanism which we use to evaluate that both in Performance Max and channels like search.”

Kraham went on to explain that Ad Strength assesses the breadth and depth of assets within a campaign before assigning a rating. According to Google, this breadth and depth of assets are crucial for reaching users across various channels, including SERPs, video display, and other creative opportunities. Google prioritizes this aspect as it ensures campaigns are well-equipped to engage users effectively across different platforms and formats.

The role of Performance Max

Kraham noted that PMax offers asset generative capabilities that can enhance Ad Strength. He highlighted that advertisers who leverage PMax’s asset generation capabilities during campaign building have a 63% higher chance of achieving a good or excellent Ad Strength score. This indicates the effectiveness of Performance Max in optimizing ad assets and improving campaign performance. He added:

• “Advertisers need to market to the speed consumers to ensure they serve the right ads to the right user at the right time – but many advertisers, large and small, struggle to deliver the breadth and depth of assets needed. If you leverage [PMax’s] generative capabilities, it really does give advertisers the ability to put the right ads in front of the right user at the right time. It can really deliver on the promise of what marketing has been trying to do for quite some time.”

Is PMax the future of Google Ads?

Kraham concluded by emphasizing that AI represents the future of digital advertising, with PMax serving as a prime example of this concept. He highlighted how PMax provides businesses, especially small ones with limited resources, the ability to deliver a broader range and depth of assets, enabling them to keep pace with consumers’ evolving preferences.

In his final remarks, Kraham reiterated the significance of AI-driven solutions like PMax in empowering businesses to thrive in today’s fast-paced digital landscape. He said:

• “Automation is the future, and PMax is the best example of AI in ads because it’s the only campaign type that runs across inventory using AI; both predictive and generative.”
• “We will continue to build in both cases because we need to help marketers reach consumers at the speed at which they’re operating – PMax is the best manifestation of how to do that.”

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Bing Search tests removing cache link

Friday, April 5th, 2024

Microsoft is testing removing the cache link from the Bing search results a couple of months after Google officially removed the cache link from its search results.

Fabrice Canel from Microsoft confirmed this is a Bing test, he wrote, “Yes. Our team continuously experiments and tests various experiences to learn and deliver the best possible customer experience.”

The test. Here is a screenshot showing the cache link, which would be in a little down arrow, is missing from this search result snippet in the Bing Search results:

Here is what it looks like with the cache link:

Fabrice Canel from Microsoft said I was on the “nocache flight,” which means a Bing test for not showing a cache link.

Why we care. Some SEOs have sought out other search engines that have cache links, such as Bing, even though the cache is not a good use for debugging SEO issues, it has become a defacto tool for many SEOs and searchers over the years.

Bing has not officially removed the cache link yet, but it may.

The Wayback Machine is an excellent way to see older versions of specific URLs, and it is free.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing