So, you’ve defined your marketing strategy. You’ve decided what you’re trying to achieve and what user actions are important to you. What’s next? This is the part where you can start delving deeper into your advertising options to create a structure for your campaign.
For the second part of this mini-series, we’ll be focussing on the research stages of campaign planning, starting with where your ads appear and what format your ads will be. Keyword planning is also vital to the early stages of a campaign build, as well as reviewing targeting settings to ensure you’re presenting your ads to the right location and audience.
WHERE SHOULD YOUR ADS APPEAR?
The two main platforms for PPC advertising are Google AdWords and Bing Ads. You may consider choosing either/or both platforms, but it’s important to consider what they have to offer before creating your campaign.
AdWords generally has a larger reach, and therefore will provide high search volume overall. On the other hand higher ad positioning and lower CPC may be gained when using Bing Ads. Whether you’re a small business with stricter budgets and goals, or a well-established business looking to compete on a larger scale, there are benefits to advertising on both AdWords and Bing Ads.
Both allow you to create text, product-listing and app-install ads, with AdWords providing video and in-app mobile ad formats too. Both platforms show ads on their associated sites and search partner websites, meaning there’s huge opportunity to expand your reach to the masses.
WHAT AD FORMAT WILL YOU USE?
One of the first things you’ll want to look at is what format you want your ads to be. Whether you want to write text ads, use visuals in display ads and video, or promote a product with a shopping ad, there are many ways you can advertise depending on what your goals are, so here are a few points to consider.
Expanded Text Ads
- Target the user when they are actively searching for your service/product. When a customer’s search term matches your keyword it will trigger an ad that’s perfectly tailored to that search.
- Keyword insertion allows you to make your ads more relevant to the users search query. It works by dynamically updating ad text to include keywords that match the user’s search term.
- Use ad extensions at no extra cost. Sitelinks, promotion and call extensions are just a few of the options available to increase information given on your ad.
Display Ads
- Increase your brand awareness. The Google Display Network (GDN) provides websites for ad placement where you can gain huge impression volumes at an overall lower cost.
- Use remarketing as a great way to remind the customer of your product/service after they’ve already visited your site.
- Target specific audiences based on their interests. The GDN allows you to choose more specifically where your ads will appear and to what type of audience.
Shopping Ads
- Shopping ads allow you to include an image, title, price and business name in your ad. You don’t need to create individual ads for each product as all this information is taken from the Merchant Centre.
- Gain more qualified leads. Users are more informed before they click through to your site after seeing your product ad.
- These ads are great for e-commerce websites, who want to display their range of products to potential customers.
Video Ads
- Target customers on YouTube and other video partner sites.
- TrueView in-stream videos allow your ad to run before/during another video but you only pay if a viewer watches/interacts with it so a win-win for both you and the customer.
- Increase awareness whilst reaching more customers with Bumper Ads. These use videos 6 seconds or shorter before another video to send a short, memorable message.
KEYWORD PLANNING
The next step is to start finding keywords to use within your ad groups. To do this, it is beneficial to carry out research beforehand to ensure you’re including the most relevant keywords as well as gaining insight on estimated bids.
KEYWORD PLANNER
- Find similar groups of keywords by searching with keywords, landing pages or categories
- Get search volumes, trends and bid estimates for a more in-depth understanding of keywords
- Google will also display Ad Group and Keyword ideas based on keywords
SEMrush
- Similarly to the keyword planner you can see search volumes of organic and paid traffic as well as estimated bid amounts etc. of keywords, helping develop your keyword list.
- Gain insight to what other competitors’ ads look like by searching for particular keywords
DISPLAY PLANNER
- Search for placement locations for your ads based on topics. Additional filters can be added such as ad size and format.
- Gain potential cookie & impression volumes for your campaign
- Get performance forecasts by searching for keywords, placements or interests.
The research stage is imperative to the set-up of any campaign. Gaining an insight before you create your campaign ensures you are prepared and helps make more informed decisions early on. Researching before implementation will help you fulfil your marketing objective by ensuring you’re targeting your ads to the right people and on the right platform.
The next stage of campaign planning is the implementation stages, where research findings and ideas are drawn together to start building out your campaign. Make sure you’re keeping up to date with our blog, as we will be covering this on the next part of our mini-series.
If you feel you need help or advice on your own PPC campaign planning, we would love to hear from you. Contact us for a free PPC review and consultation with one of our PPC Experts.
Why Is The Landing Page So Important?
A landing page is the first thing the user will see after clicking your ad, and that first impression is crucial in determining what action they’ll take next. That’s why it’s so important to have a good landing page experience, to ensure you are making the most of the traffic on your site.
Not only do users experience the page, but Google rates your landing pages based on factors such as organisation and relation to the user’s search. This is a factor which directly affects your Quality Score and ultimately your Cost-Per-Click and ad rank, which is why it’s imperative to get it right!
5 top tips for a great landing page:
- Ensure your ads match the page content. As a best practice, Google recommend that “your landing page is directly relevant to your ad text and keyword” in order to maintain relevancy throughout the user’s journey from search to site.
- Ensure landing page content is short but sweet. Depending what your marketing goals are, it’s important to deliver a concise message to the user to avoid losing them. Clear headlines and content paired with easy-to-use conversion points will help keep the user’s attention and improve your chances of them converting.
- Make sure you have a good page speed. Users may abandon your website if a page loads slowly, resulting in lost conversion opportunities and wasted spend.
- Try to use subpages rather than your homepage. Home pages can often have lots of messages and call-to-actions, making them fairly generic. Using subpages that relate to your ads will ensure you’re directing users to much more relevant landing pages.
- Ensure your landing page is mobile friendly. With over half of web traffic coming from mobile, it’s essential that you have a website that caters for these devices, making it easier for them to convert.
The landing page experience plays a key part in how your ads perform. Mobile-friendly sites with good speed and easy-to-use forms etc. are more likely to benefit you in the long run.
Don’t hesitate in making improvements to your account. Contact us today for a free PPC review with one of our experts.
Written by Anna Wood, PPC Analyst at Circus PPC Agency
PPC for Last Minute Holiday Deals
With summer arriving and ‘last minute holiday’ searches rising, now’s the time to start thinking about your PPC strategy.
Most businesses, regardless of industry, will be subject to some level of holiday seasonality, so it is important to consider steps for preparation to ensure you capture the market at the right time.
Data from the past 5 years shows the search term ‘last minute holidays’ increases from April and peaks in late July/early August (Google Trends). If left until July/August to start implementing changes, you may have already missed the market.
Here are our top tips for your PPC strategy:
1. Don’t forget to cover all areas of the purchase funnel
Using a combination of both head and long-tail keywords will help connect with customers across all stages of the buying process; many people at the top of the funnel know they want a holiday but may not have chosen a destination yet, so it is important to bear this in mind when adding keywords.
2. Choose your keywords carefully to drive traffic
Adding high-volume keywords will increase the chances of your ad being seen but ensure that you set your bids and budgets appropriately and optimise frequently.
Here are some of the most popular search terms surrounding ‘last minute holidays’ from Google’s Keyword Planner.
| Keyword | Avg. Monthly Searches |
| last minute holidays | 301,000 |
| last minute holiday deals | 49,500 |
| late holiday deals | 22,200 |
| cheap last minute holidays | 22,200 |
| late deal holidays | 22,200 |
| last minute holidays uk | 22,200 |
| lastminute holidays | 18,100 |
| last minute breaks | 9,900 |
| late holidays | 5,400 |
| holidays last minute | 2,900 |
3. Avoid using ‘last click’ on the attribution model
It’s easy to only credit the final click or step a customer makes when purchasing, but it’s also important to remember the journey they have been on to get there. Last minute holidays often require lots of research before buying and this can mean multiple touch points. Credit those touch points appropriately so that you don’t risk turning off keywords that were effective during those valuable early stages of the research cycle!
4. Remarketing
Customers are not always going to book during the first visit. Remarketing can be a great way to keep your brand in the minds of those still deciding. Reconnecting with these customers can increase brand recall and potentially lead to more bookings.
5. Set up call tracking to record offline sales
Telephone calls can sometimes be the main or only method for a customer to book a holiday, so call tracking is a useful way to effectively record performance. Using Google Website Call Forwarding is a simple method with no additional costs involved. There are also other third party solutions that you can pay for, such as Infinity and Response Tap, if you need something more sophisticated.
6. Keep your ads specific to the ‘last minute’ theme
Including your USPs and using ad copy relevant to your keywords will reinforce the message you are sending to the user. Be sure to use the best landing pages to reflect late holiday deals in order to help improve your quality score and provide the best experience for the user.
7. Use ad extensions to provide more information
Sitelinks, Callouts and Structured Snippets will not only make your ad bigger and more likely to be noticed but also give you the opportunity to detail other specific information surrounding late holiday deals, such as destinations, prices, ATOL protection, etc.
Don’t wait until the last minute to start making changes to your account! Acting early will enable you to engage with a wider range of last minute holiday shoppers. Hope this has given you some ideas as to how you can prepare. Please get in touch if you would like help devising a late holiday PPC strategy.
For more information on how we helped a travel business increase leads by 99% whilst decreasing cost-per-lead by 29%, please read our Shanti Travel Case Study.
Written by Anna Wood, PPC Analyst at Circus PPC Agency