A question some people ask who have either had a bad experience or been told by someone who has had a bad experience that it doesn’t work.
Considering many of us have made a career out of managing PPC accounts, why has it not worked for you?
So a better question would be why did PPC not work for you?
There may be many reasons why PPC may not work for you of which some key ones are discussed below.
Who was managing your account?
Many people confuse PPC and SEO as one and the same thing and employ an SEO agency to do their PPC as well. PPC is a specialist field just like SEO is a specialist field. You therefore need an expert in this field to help you. You wouldn’t employ your plumber to do your gardening? Then why employ a predominantly SEO agency to do your PPC?
A lot of web developers also set up PPC accounts for people and expect them to run smoothly. Again I would employ the same rule as above. Just like we wouldn’t try our hand at web development or SEO (no matter how much more money we could make from it) SEO and web development companies need to respect the art of PPC.
I would like to point out here that some SEO agencies and web development agencies do have specialist PPC Experts within their team who do know what they are doing.
The fault also lies with the client here however. Before employing someone within your company you will ask 10’s if not 100’s of questions however the key questions are not always asked when employing a PPC company.
Further to the above 2, unfortunately in some PPC companies, the person working on your account has pretty much no PPC experience and is learning on your account and therefore mistakes have been made on your account. This does happen in some of the larger agencies.
Did you have any KPIs in place?
This is a no brainer. If you have no KPIs in place you really cannot measure the success (or failure) of an account (or anything for that matter). There are 2 key considerations here:
- What is your KPI?
- How can you measure it?
Having worked with a huge variety of clients not every ones KPI is the same (not even close). For example:
Client A:
Client A is a retailer. Any retailers main goal is drive more sales. The KPI for almost all retailers will be ROI (Return on Investment) and Cost of Sale. Even if you drive 1,000’s of sales if the ROI is below the point where you make a profit, you will end up making a loss.
I have come across some clients whose previous agencies ignored ROI altogether and focussed on CPA (cost per acquisition). Whilst this is an important statistic to look at it isn’t the KPI.
How can we measure this easily? Adwords, Bing and Analytics all allow you to measure this easily with some tracking codes in place. This not only allows you to measure your KPI but also allows you to optimise based on your KPI.
Client B:
Client B is an IT company who you can outsource all of your IT needs to. They can typically upsell to their clients on average to £x amount. We therefore need to ensure to run a successful PPC campaign, we need to take £x amount and minus all their internal costs to work out the cost per acquisition target.
This is a much simpler one to measure and can easily be tracked through Adwords.
What you may find however after a month of managing this PPC account is campaign A typically drives sales of £1000 but campaign B and C drive an average customer at the value of £500 only. The strategy therefore needs to be updated to be in line with this.
Did you see any reports?
I have been to see a prospect in the past who (and this I really cannot understand) give their agency a fixed amount of money for their Adwords and the management fee and the agency provides no reports other than a few points of which the gist is we drove x amount of traffic.
Considering this was a retail client, traffic is by no means their main KPI and how can an agency not provide a detailed report or tell the client how much they actually spent on PPC.
A message to all the clients: Please ask for detailed reports from your agency (especially if you are spending quite a bit with them). Your agency should also provide you with access into the Adwords account whether you use this or not.
For some example reports, please do get in touch with us.
Is your website ready for PPC?
Sometimes we do turn clients away from doing PPC. This is mainly due to the website not being ready for PPC traffic. If at this point you start sending PPC traffic to your website, you will be wasting money.
The following are some of the reasons:
- The website needs updating – some people had a website built by their friend who has been using the same template since the year 2000.
- The website has errors
- The website isn’t even complete yet – Yes believe me this has happened.
We also like to be very honest with clients if we cannot make PPC work for them. This may be because:
- The values of the products they sell are too low and with what they would pay, PPC would actually run at a loss.
- The conversion rates on the site are too low. With this we would work with the client and suggest solutions on how this can be fixed. Many times we find this is due to the type of traffic which has been driven in the past but sometimes the website also needs updating.
So enough problems, let’s talk solutions. What needs to be in place before you approach a PPC Agency:
- Your website needs to be complete and ready to receive traffic.
- Your products (if you are an ecommerce company) need to be on your website.
- Your website shouldn’t have any errors (although a good agency will run through your site anyway to give it a once over whilst they are doing the setup).
What else goes wrong?
- No Budget Agreement
This is a big no-no. Always agree budgets. A good agency will approach you to discuss budgets if nothing has been suggested by you. They will look at seasonality and suggest budgets and if you have been live in the past should be able to forecast what you will get for the budget.
- No-one picks up the phone at the agency
- Agency aren’t communicating with us in terms of what they are doing
- Agency don’t come to see us
All 3 of the above points are avoidable with regular weekly or monthly reports and regular meetings. Your agency should lead the way on this. If they aren’t doing this you should push them to try and do this.
Unfortunately when things are not going well some agencies will try and avoid speaking to you although this is the time to increase communication.
So a Summary of what you should expect from your agency:
Pre- going live:
- Quick audit of your website
- Suggestions of budgets with forecasts
- Agreements of what is a KPI and what are stats to be considered whilst optimising
- Ensure all tracking is in place
- Agreements of budgets and KPIs.
Post Going Live:
- Regular reports on where you are with the KPIs
- Regular updates on actions being taken place on the account
- Regular updates of new technology being implemented on the account (by technology here I mean PPC technology, for example: new extensions)
- Open 2 way conversations on how to improve and expand the account moving forward.
- Continual expansion and updates of your account (this should be a no brainer for any agency anyway)
As PPC Experts we strive to deliver the best results for our clients as can be seen in the case studies we have on the website. If you would like us give your account an audit, please do get in touch.
Written by Ahmed Chopdat PPC Director at Circus PPC Agency
How to visualise social media stats in Google Data Studio
Data studio is a great tool that allows marketers to turn data into live, interactive reports and dashboards that are fully customizable and easy to share internally or with the clients.
If you are familiar with this product, you already know that Data Studio provides simple native integrations with other Google products but tends to ignore other advertising platforms such as Facebook or Bing. Luckily, using the Google Sheet connector allows you to add more data sources to your report. To find out how to do this please follow our step-by-step guide below:
Step 1 – Get your data ready in a Google Sheet
Download your Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat stats and add them into a Google Sheet. If you want to automate the data import and get your stats updated on a daily basis, there are a number of Google Sheets add-ons that you can try, Supermetrics being the most popular in the industry.
Step 2 – Follow the steps below to import the file into Data Studio
- Open Data Studio and go to the Data Sources tab
- Click the plus button in the lower-right corner
- Under Connecters choose Google Sheets
- Select the file you created previously
- Click Connect
After you click Connect, Google will show you a list with all the fields imported from your file. Click Create Report and then Add to Report.
Step 3 – Start building your report
At this stage you have to decide what KPIs you want to report on and how you present the data: bar graphs, charts, line graphs and so on.
Data Studio has proved to be a powerful tool and it has definitely changed the way PPC reporting can be done!
If you need help with Data Studio reporting or any other element of PPC advertising, then please contact us for a free, no obligation PPC review and consultation with one of our PPC Experts.
Avoiding Trademarks in Ad Copy
As more brands select Paid Search as an advertising channel we are seeing an increasing rate of ads being either ‘Approved Limited’ or disapproved due to trademark issues in ad copy.
While the ad copy itself adheres to Google’s advertising policy, in many cases the use of a trademarked term in the ad copy results in the ad being disapproved or set to Approved Limited, in which case very few impressions are generated.
Real Life Scenario:
Our client, a used car site connects the UK’s best car dealer networks, selling cars from every major manufacturer going.
We have a number of manufacturers that are proving difficult to advertise because of trademarked terms in the ad copy.
We can apply in writing to the trademark owner to obtain permission to use the trademarked term in our ad copy, this takes time and is not generally welcomed by the trademark owner and usually the use is declined.
We can get around this using clever generic ad copy.
example:
Headline 1: Nearly New INSIGNIA
Headline 2: Nearly New & Ex Demo Vauxhall
Description: Trusted Dealers Is The Safest Place To Buy A Used Vauxhall.
Status: ‘Approval Limited’ as it contains key words in the text; Vauxhall and Insignia.
workaround:
Headline 1: Nearly New & Ex Demo Cars
Headline 2: Search All Leading Brands
Description: Trusted Dealers Is The Safest Place To Buy A Nearly New Or Ex Demo Car.
Status: ‘Approved’ as it does not name any specific brand nor is it ambiguous in its content. Vauxhall is a leading brand. We’re just not naming names.
Although this isn’t a perfect solution, it’s one that you can use whilst trying to obtain trademark approval from any brands presenting you with this issue.
If however (which in many cases) you are unable to obtain this permission then the workaround ad is a brilliant example of what you can do to bypass it.
The same principle applies to any trademark scenario. For instance if you have problems with a brand, let’s say “L’Oréal Mascara”. You could always use “Leading Mascara Brands” to work your way around.
The best way to think about it is to ask yourself, which is best:
- Advertise using generic, but relevant ads and still get traffic?
- Don’t advertise at all and lose business for your client?
Using generic ads can still be relevant and totally unambiguous. If the ads are getting clicks then your target audience are interested.
Don’t just live with it, try and work the problem.
Google Partners: Game On Celebration
Like all Google Partners celebrations the latest Game On Celebration was a party not to be missed by anyone in the industry. With an opportunity to network with the biggest movers and shakers in PPC and some very inspiring talks to start the day; ending with a whole bunch of games and entertainment with food and drinks galore, who could possibly complain?
Circus were honoured to be invited as one of their Premier Google Partners and recognised for achieving key goals over the last year.
In Google’s New Kings Cross Office is where the Google Partners met. The view from the top is quite pleasant.
Following the welcome drinks and snacks and a bit of networking, there was a welcome speech by Caroline Halpin (Head of Google Partners UKI).
Caroline was followed by the keynote speaker Suzanne Claassen (Head of Agency GMS at Google) talking about the agency of the future and how to plan to be the agency of the future. She talked about how one person will envisage what the agency of the future is will not be the same as another. What one person might see as client growth might also be different to another (e.g. client spend growing vs more clients). The goals therefore need to be identified very critically.
There was also an agency panel who talked about what leads to their success. No secrets here but good to be reminded again. They talked about internal client reviews, client communication being key and always put the clients first (all of which we at Circus are proud to say we do quite well).
This was followed by a small handful of awards. The winners of which worked very hard to achieve what they did achieve and a big congratulations to all the Game On awards winners.
This ended the respectable portion of the evening and on to the partying and networking.
Google laid on a bunch of entertainment from under-the-sea virtual reality headsets to mini golf (all 9 holes). There was a live DJ, cocktails, a 3D photo booth and a ball pit to go fishing. Some photos below.
All this accompanied with plenty of food and drinks and networking.
Thanks for inviting us Google and we hope to be there again next year.
If you would like to speak to a Premier Google Partner about your biddable media activity please do get in touch.
Written by Ahmed Chopdat PPC Director at Circus PPC Agency
How The Basics of Ad Copy Still Have An Enormous Effect
Google AdWords ad copy best practices and policy, depending on whether they are followed correctly can be the difference between users not seeing your ads and driving fantastic results for your PPC efforts.
When a user types a search in Google, your ad is the usually first interaction they have with your brand, so it’s important to make sure your ad is as good as can be! Through this article, I will talk through areas that are critical for making the most out of your ad copy.
The Rules Set By Google
Google is all about providing a quality user experience and to ensure that companies advertising through AdWords are up to Google’s standards they must abide by the advertising policies: AdWords Policies
Key points that Google address for their ad policy:
Unclear Content: Your ad copy should focus on your user’s needs, so try to avoid typing anything generic or vague. This is particularly important when your ads are highlighting unique selling points or specific promotions.
Limit Symbols: No unnecessary punctuation, so avoid using symbols such as “*” and “!” more than once. Avoid text talk as well, even if you’re running out of space with the 30 character limit, don’t be tempted to make any short cuts such as using the “@” symbol vs using the word “at”.
Capitalisation: Capitalisation can be beneficial, but don’t get caught out with trying to get your ad to stand out with ALL CAPS as Google won’t publish your ads. When you’re creating ads through AdWords Editor you can choose from 3 options for capitalisation.
- Title Case – Capitalise The First Letter Of Each Word
- Sentence Case – Capitalise the first letter on each line
- Lower Case – no capitalisation
Repetition: This can be a tricky balance as you want to stay relevant though including the keywords you are bidding for in your ad copy and it can be tempting when you are in AdWords editor to include important keywords in Headline 1, Headline 2 and the Description section. But 9 times out of 10, this will be overkill.
Some disciplines of marketing theory can help when you are cultivating your message including the AIDA model, an acronym for 4 words:
- Attention
- Interest
- Desire
- Action
By following the AIDA model, your ad copy should grab your user’s attention in Headline 1. Imagine you are a market trader on the shop floor and want to catch a customer’s attention, keeping communication short and to the point is the goal. However, in Headline 2 your focus should shift to keeping the user’s interest through providing useful information, not repetition. For many marketers, empathy can be very important and a useful skill as it allows you to think about what information will benefit the user.
Examples to include:
- Place where the user is located (particularly if you have location targeting in your campaign)
- Specific promotion/ pricing
- User-centred information or a question to keep engagement
There are countless examples of when companies talk about themselves but don’t actually talk either to the user or about what the user cares about. If you are unsure about what to include, something to think about is using the search terms report in AdWords to guide you in creating ad copy that is relevant to what users are actively searching for.
Writing Style: Although simple, when you are in a hurry and don’t have the time to check every one of your ads for spelling or grammar mistakes there’s an easy fix. Get AdWords Editor up, select the “Tools” tab at the top left of the screen, click “Settings” and then “Download and display”. There’s an option for “Spell check language” which highlights errors for you. In addition, there are helpful tools such as “Grammarly”, other free tools such as “After the Deadline” and “Spellchecker.net” can also be found online.
Free online grammar assists: Online Grammar Checker Tools
Helpful Points from Google: YouTube Helpful Points
Bing Ads Connect Conference 2017 – Key Insights
After the huge success last year Bing have returned with their second annual Northern Bing Ads Connect Conference in Manchester. Having the opportunity to attend, we decided to give you an overview of the most important points that were covered in the talks.
The conference started with an overview of where Bing Ads is now and the opportunities it provides.
Even though it does not come as a surprise, the Bing Network Audience is now bigger than ever with almost 25% market share in the UK.
With over 900 million monthly searches, Bing Ads should be included in every digital marketing plan, especially now when new features will be rolled out:
- Enhanced Audience Targeting that will allow marketers to leverage on their existing data in order to reach their customers more easily and provide a more pleasant search experience
- New Ad Extensions that will now provide more useful information and allow the end users to find what they are looking for a lot faster
- Some really exciting Bing Shopping features that we are not allowed to disclose
After the break, the conference was followed by a Customer Panel Q&A where our very own MD Rick Tobin participated alongside other leading industry figures Elroy Condor from iProspect, Ana Ramires Rocha from RentalCars.com & Phil Twigg from MandM Direct.
They offered their insights into PPC developments in 2016, the growth of the Northern Powerhouse and the future of the PPC landscape. Some exciting things discussed but most notably the growth of voice search and Ai to which we will be discussing more in our future blogs.
The event ended with a little preview of what is coming up next in the industry so keep your eyes peeled as this is a game changer. A little hint below…
The Bing conference is a great experience helping us understand where the future of PPC is heading and what marketers can do in order to adapt to the upcoming consumer and technical changes.
We really do look forward to attending the next one.
If you are interested in advertising on Bing, or would like any further information, please do get in touch with our PPC experts who will be more than happy to help.
Written by Daniel Lupu PPC Analyst at Circus PPC Agency
3 Completely Free Extensions To Up Your PPC Game
Regardless of which browser you use, browser extensions are incredibly useful but often overlooked tools that can help your PPC in a number of ways. Better yet, many useful extensions are available completely free of charge. Here are 3 extensions I like to use to save time and improve the PPC accounts I manage.
Get Your Conversion Tracking Right with Google Tag Assistant
Available for: Chrome
Setting up tags to track account activity in AdWords and Analytics can be confusing at the best of times, especially to those with little experience in web development. Fortunately, Google Tag Assistant is a useful extension that scans your page’s source code for any Google tag. Not only will it tell you if tags are working or not, it will also let you know how to fix them if they aren’t working. Tag Assistant works with Google Analytics, Adwords Conversion Tracking, Google Tag Manager and more.
Save Time with Keyword Wrapper
Available for: Chrome
Manually setting match types for keywords is one of those tedious tasks that every PPC Manager has poured hours into over the course of their working life. Fortunately, with Keyword Wrapper you only need to enter each keyword once and the extension will automatically create a broad modified, phrase and exact version. The tool will even change any text you enter into lower case if it isn’t already. Keyword wrapper is one extremely simple tool that has cumulatively saved me hours of time to focus on other areas of my accounts.
Write Stronger Ad Copy with Grammarly
Available for: Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari
Writing interesting and clear ad copy is vital to nurturing a strong performance through PPC, but can often be one of the toughest tasks. While standard spellcheck is readily available and used, Grammarly adds much more to your ad copy writing arsenal.
- Grammarly scans your text for proper use of more than 250 advanced grammar rules.
- Grammarly checks spelling contextually; meaning that correct spelling in the wrong context, i.e. “the library is over their”, is corrected.
- Grammarly enhanced vocabulary with context-optimised word choice suggestions, giving you a more interesting and varied choice of language.
There are many more extensions that are available to use directly with your internet browser that can help with your day-to-day PPC needs. Here at Circus PPC we make use of a variety of beneficial tools from across the web; and are constantly on the lookout for unique and profitable ways to enhance the PPC campaigns we manage.
Negative Keyword Research
Have a Positive Attitude to Negative Keywords:
One area of PPC that we feel is undervalued and, often overlooked is the use of negative keywords.
Constantly updating your negative keywords should have a positive effect on any of your clients’ PPC account; it will save your client money and help you focus the budget on better traffic.
It’s easy to take the quick route of just adding in the ‘typical’ keywords (“job”, “review”, “forum” etc.).
The more effective approach is to use the Search Terms report, displayed under the Keywords tab.
“Why a Search Terms report?” some may ask. A Search Terms report will show you exactly what people have been searching for that your keywords are matching to.
To make this exercise easier let’s imagine our client has a website selling irons.
The ‘easy’ route to adding negatives would be to add in keywords such as “plug”, “fuse”, “spares”.
Running a Search Terms report may reveal more opportunities for negative keywords:
- Competitor searches (“argos buy iron online”, “john lewis irons”)
- Service/non-product based searches (“ironing service in Huddersfield”, “pay someone to iron my clothes”)
- Query based searches (“what type of water to put in my iron”, “descaling my iron”)
By running a Search Terms report you can do far more than just add negative keywords you simply “think of” and hope for the best.
Another example I came across last week was for one of my clients, an online wine merchant. Someone had searched for “best cheeses for wine in bristol”. Of course, wine and cheese!
The Search Terms report is useful if you are using phrase, broad and BMM keywords.
The important lesson here is that you should use the tools provided. Running regular Search Terms reports will often help you identify opportunities for new negative keywords.
As a rule at Circus, each of us runs a Search Terms report every 2-4 weeks, for each of our clients.
Hate wasted traffic, save your client money, and increase return on ad spend.
PPC Attribution & Attributing your PPC Accurately
Have you ever done a lot of analysis and made changes based on your data only to find the changes you made (Which the stats suggested) actually made the account perform worse than before?
This is something that many people who have been doing PPC will have come across. Analysing data to the nth degree and then finding exactly which keywords to slow down and pause to help improve your ROI, but not accounting for something we now call Attribution.
For people who have been in the industry for a while, they will have come across the phrase “halo effect”. This is essentially what attribution helps you measure accurately.
In this article I will try to cover, how to measure attribution, why PPC is many times treated unfairly if you do not look at attribution data and how to use this data to make more accurate changes within your accounts.
Firstly where do you find Attribution Data?
Attribution data can be found in both Adwords and Analytics. As we have previously covered the Adwords attribution in a previous blog (https://circusppc.com/better-ppc-with-google-attribution-modelling/) we will focus on Analytics attribution in this one. It can be found in analytics under conversions.
Worth noting there is also Multi Channel Funnels in Analytics as well which also gives a lot of insightful data which is covered briefly in this article: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1191180?hl=en and I will try to cover this in more detail in a separate blog in the interest of sticking to one topic in this blog.
You can compare the last click data vs a lot of other options as can be seen below. Last click data is what most people will use at the moment for all of their marketing hence we are comparing vs this. However if you do use a different method then it is worth playing with the different options to better understand your data.
The data I like to always keep an eye on is first interaction as this is when many potential customers will first here about your brand. Time delay, position based and linear are also ones to keep an eye on.
To cover my point regarding the value of PPC, for client x below we can see 1,918 sales from last click but looking at first click this jumps up to 3,154 sales. The sales value also increases by 73.24% from PPC. For Direct this is actually lower on first click by 70% whilst Organic also seems to be undervalued for this client. If we switched off PPC we would likely see a big % of the first click PPC sales disappear as well.
The same principle can be applied at a campaign and keyword level as well. in the below example again we can see 10 campaigns which have all been undervalued and thus any changes in the campaigns will be made based on inaccurate data. It is always worth looking at the whole account in detail on this as certain campaigns may actually be the other way round as well (this is particularly true when you are live on your own brand keywords).
| AdWords Campaign | Last Interaction Conversions | Last Interaction Conversion Value | First Interaction Conversions | First Interaction Conversion Value | % Change in Conversion Value from Last Interaction to First Interaction |
| Campaign 1 | 686 | £96,904.67 | 1,071 | £158,131.20 | 63.18% |
| Campaign 2 | 188 | £43,305.72 | 307 | £76,521.20 | 76.70% |
| Campaign 3 | 111 | £27,055.98 | 173 | £41,336.42 | 52.78% |
| Campaign 4 | 61 | £10,584.84 | 96 | £16,619.44 | 57.01% |
| Campaign 5 | 60 | £16,524.18 | 122 | £37,893.92 | 129.32% |
| Campaign 6 | 57 | £7,618.54 | 80 | £10,993.77 | 44.30% |
| Campaign 7 | 47 | £33,470.58 | 73 | £47,946.47 | 43.25% |
| Campaign 8 | 46 | £8,982.58 | 59 | £11,891.59 | 32.39% |
| Campaign 9 | 45 | £4,479.84 | 63 | £6,415.75 | 43.21% |
| Campaign 10 | 36 | £6,359.57 | 48 | £7,385.63 | 16.13% |
After looking at this data it is always worth deep diving into the keywords as well. Again the same principle applies but a massive help to understand how the different keywords are working and optimise accordingly.
| AdWords Keyword | Last Interaction Conversions | Last Interaction Conversion Value | First Interaction Conversions | First Interaction Conversion Value | % Change in Conversion Value from Last Interaction to First Interaction |
| Keyword 1 | 110 | £23,321.43 | 186 | £40,394.93 | 73.21% |
| Keyword 2 | 97 | £14,360.84 | 168 | £25,063.29 | 74.53% |
| Keyword 3 | 75 | £7,821.88 | 102 | £10,797.50 | 38.04% |
| Keyword 4 | 52 | £6,327.40 | 78 | £11,618.44 | 83.62% |
| Keyword 5 | 44 | £6,531.75 | 67 | £10,211.55 | 56.34% |
| Keyword 6 | 28 | £5,035.20 | 43 | £7,607.71 | 51.09% |
| Keyword 7 | 27 | £7,229.69 | 35 | £9,219.66 | 27.52% |
| Keyword 8 | 25 | £4,787.30 | 39 | £7,562.78 | 57.98% |
| Keyword 9 | 23 | £1,948.75 | 29 | £2,353.80 | 20.79% |
| Keyword 10 | 22 | £4,947.90 | 27 | £6,039.52 | 22.06% |
So the question now is how do we use this data to make accurate changes?
The first thing is to ensure you understand the data and the impact of this data. For every client the strategy will then be different. For retail clients, the first click can be much more valuable than for a client wanting to drive leads only and you may see a smaller %uplift on the first click for this. I like to look at both sets of data together and then make decisions at keyword levels accordingly.
The strategy you use for volume keywords will also be different to long tail keywords. As always when it comes to PPC, testing is key.
Extra tip: 1 extra tip for you. You can look at the data in combination with the device data as well. This particularly helps you understand you’re mobile and tablet data and how valuable this actually may be. Especially if you are always updating your device bids in Adwords.
For further information, or for more help and tips please do get in touch.
Written by Ahmed Chopdat PPC Director at Circus PPC Agency
Mobile Pay-Per-Click in 2017
The influence of mobile has been incredible in recent years and with the number of smartphone users expected to grow to 6.1 Billion by 2020, there is no doubt that mobile will continue to shape every aspect of our lives.
As more than half of the online searches now come from mobile devices, it is extremely important that marketers focus their efforts on delivering value at every touch point in the customer journey to online purchase.
In order to take full advantage of mobile and drive sustainable growth, here at Circus we believe you should focus on the following aspects.
Optimize for a mobile experience from start to finish.
Google suggest that 53% of mobile users will leave your website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. On the same note, it is said that 57% of consumers are not likely to recommend a brand with a bad mobile website and 40% of them will move on to a competitor if they had a bad mobile experience on your website.
If your website is not mobile friendly, we highly recommend that you start looking into this. A great place to start analysing your website and see how you can improve it is:
https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/
Voice Search
Even though voice search has been available for a couple of years on our smartphones, devices like Amazon Echo or Google home will give it another push and eventually change the way in which people are using search engines. In order to engage their audience in a meaningful way at every moment and PPC marketers need to adapt their campaigns for voice search.
Bidding on question based keywords and customizing the ad copy to answer those questions is a great start. There will be a dedicate blog post on this topic, so stay tuned.
Call Extensions & Call Only Campaigns
Call-only campaigns are especially designed for businesses that value phone calls more than any other type of enquiry. This type of campaign is only available on mobile devices that can make phone calls it allows advertisers to reach potential customers by displaying a prominent phone number, business description and a call button.
As 70% of mobile searches result in a phone enquiry directly from the search results it is of crucial importance that you include this type of campaign in your PPC strategy, especially if you or your clients value phone enquiries.
Video
With tech giants like Facebook, Google or Amazon constantly battling and trying to innovate in this market, by the year 2020 over 90% of all internet traffic will be video streaming. With over 1 billion users on YouTube, advertisers can now reach potential customers when they are most engaged.
For more on video advertising see one of our previous blog posts.
Having a mobile strategy in your PPC plan is no longer optional, but of vital importance, so if you need any help with your paid search marketing don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team of specialists.
Written by Daniel Lupu PPC Analyst at Circus PPC Agency