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These days "big data" isn’t just a buzzword — it’s an integral part of the sales and marketing narrative. Data is what creates context, meaning and value for PPC advertising campaigns, while enabling marketers to generate metrics that can be measured against monthly, quarterly and annual goals. Thus, every good marketer knows the potential value of big data and its power to help achieve comprehensive business objectives. But only great marketers will know how to break it down to truly take advantage of the vast array of customer insights it offers. And one of the most important types of data for driving sales and marketing insights is intent data.
According to DemandGen’s 2018 State of B2B Intent Data Report, 35 percent of B2B companies say they plan to start using intent data insights within the next 12 months. Despite it's enormous value, intent data isn’t leveraged as often as you might think, although its use is increasing year after year as more marketers continue to realize its potential. However, few marketers completely understand the wealth of available intent data at their fingertips that can be leveraged for business insights and more intelligent marketing decisions. And as such, even fewer are equipped to harness insights from it that will increase ROI and boost conversions.
We break down how you can make intent data work for you and your campaigns.
At its core, buyer intent data is information about your prospect’s behavior before they even enter your sales funnel. When prospects click on your ad, visit your site, read your blog, or fill out a form, you consider these as signs that they have some degree of purchase intent. But in reality, the process begins before prospects ever interact with your business.
Buyer intent data is information that incorporates what research prospects are conducting online, with a focus on determining interest in certain topic areas. For example, when a consumer reads a news article online, they’re considered interested in that topic. Sales and marketing teams can then use that data to better reach out to prospects and deliver a targeted marketing message. And marketers who know how to harness intent data are in a position to significantly improve conversions and revenue.
Buyer intent data is collected through IP addresses and browser cookies, which can be parsed into two categories: first and third party.
First party intent data is normal engagement data that can be accessed by most marketers. Using your marketing automation platform, it’s possible to collect important information that illustrates a lead’s point in the sales funnel. This includes information like site pages visited, time on page, links clicked and forms filled -- all of which illustrate a prospect’s level of purchase intent.
First party intent data can come from known leads you’re tracking or from anonymous visitors who haven’t filled out a form on your site. Regardless of type, marketers use this information to understand what content and touch points are most important to their sales cycle. You can also use buyer intent data to create lead scoring models to illustrate which of your prospects are ready to buy.
Third Party intent data comes from sources other than your website, such as publisher networks. Most marketers who use third party intent data get it from a data aggregators such as Bomborda, 6sense, or Leadspace. These data aggregators also use IP addresses, tracking cookies and form fills to collect consumer behavior data from places across the web, such as product review sites, popular online magazines and blogs.
They then categorize this data into thousands of distinct topic areas that marketers can choose based on its applicability to their target audience. They then have access to information like the types of articles people are reading, site searches, and content they download, among other behavioral information. While third party intent data is used less frequently among marketers, it contains a lot of potential to drive insights so you can work toward your sales and marketing goals.
Businesses that use a combination of first and third party intent data can drive insights to improve a wide range of initiatives that particularly benefit marketing and sales teams. Specifically, marketers can leverage both internal and external data insights to create more relevant content for their audience. Meanwhile sales teams who understand what certain accounts or prospects are researching beforehand can use this information to help drive them down the sales funnel.
Some common uses for and benefits of intent data include:
It’s well established that intent data is already widely used to improve content marketing and other lead nurturing initiatives. But its benefits for advertising are often overlooked or underutilized. Each action a person takes online is a data point that advertisers can potentially leverage to create a more relevant and precise targeting strategy.
Here are just a few of the many ways advertisers can harness intent data to boost performance:
Long-tail keywords have long been an important asset for search engine marketers to target because of their relevance. Among other things, they’re more descriptive, so they do a better job of implying buyer intent. But traditionally it’s been difficult for advertisers to target long tail keywords because they tend to have a much lower search volume. In order to achieve the same ad visibility as they would with high volume keywords, brands would need to target and optimize for an exponential number of long tail keywords.
That said, automated bidding technologies have become the perfect solution to the problem, so use your third party intent data to understand what kind of long tail keywords your audience is searching for. At the same time, first party intent data is an often overlooked source of relevant information. As such, dig into your own website analytics to find relevant, fresh information for keyword research.
From there, use this information to target keywords and create more relevant ads. Automated bidding makes it possible to target large numbers of long tail keywords and make minute adjustments to improve campaign performance at scale. The right technology will also offer flexibility to help you automate changes based on your preferred PPC benchmarks — revenue, conversions, or other relevant metrics.
Marketers can use intent data to create more relevant ads for their audience, whether they’re known leads or anonymous prospects. Intent data aggregators make it possible to identify qualified leads based on things like device ID and domain, among other factors. You can then use this information to place the right kind of ads on user devices, for example.
Advertising can also benefit from the same automation processes mentioned above. When you use intent data coupled with AI technology, it’s possible to both better understand your audience for targeted advertising and automatically trigger relevant advertising campaigns to reach them.
For example, if your intent data shows an account is researching a specific keyword, you can automatically customize an advertising campaign related to that topic. While it is possible to make these kinds of adjustments manually, automation gives you the benefit of speed and precision, delivering your relevant advertising message before competitors can do the same.
Intent data carries a lot of power to help boost ecommerce performance when leveraged properly.
That said, the ecommerce customer journey isn’t what it used to be. Instead of centralized shopping, consumers are turning to resources across multiple channels and platforms to make the best buying decisions for themselves. And while the journey is fragmented, it’s full of data points that businesses can harness to optimize their strategy. Intent data used with the right technologies can help improve advertisements, retail efficiency, and profits overall.
Intent data has a lot of potential to help improve different areas of marketing. But to take full advantage of it, marketers need to approach it with the right perspective.
Most marketers today already have access and utilize some of their first party intent data. So when they decide to harness third party data, it’s common to start ignoring these internal insights. But information you gain from your own site visitors are just as important and relevant as from other sources. Thus, the key to success in your SEM strategy will be to combine first and third party intent data to drive more informed insights. This will help improve your targeting of individual accounts as well as your overall marketing strategy.
There’s only so much you can do within account based marketing to personalize your targeting strategy. As a template, it already needs to be highly targeted. So focus on using intent data insights to flesh out and better understand your target personas in general. If you focus all your energy on targeting the accounts you can see, then you might miss out on prospects that don’t show up in your data stream.
In the same vein, harnessing intent data isn’t just about targeting low hanging fruit. Sure, it can help you identify new qualified leads that are warm to your products and ready to convert. Giving them the final push across the finish line is an easy way to drive revenue for your business that you attribute back to your intent data insights. But don’t let that be the main focus of strategy.
The last challenge that stops marketers from taking full advantage of intent data is scalability. Yes, it’s possible to use intent data to better understand individual accounts, review the insights, and then make choice marketing decisions by hand. But that’s rarely a scalable strategy.
That’s what makes the applications of intent data to advertising so compelling compared to its other use cases. With the help of automation, it’s possible to create rule-based changes to your advertising initiatives based on intent data insights in real time. Not only can you create more targeted ads, you can also make bid adjustments based on data insights. This can help increase your ad visibility while reducing wasted ad spend in the process.
Ultimately, the keys to getting the most out of intent data insights include:
Tools that use data science and machine learning to automate actions based on deep funnel insights are uniquely positioned to help businesses fully utilize all of the advantages that intent data has to offer.
Of all of the benefits intent data offers to your PPC program, it likely goes without saying that you’ll have access to a host of new opportunities and insights about customer behavior -- all of which you can leverage to create more focused, targeted campaigns that produce higher ROI. Capturing new insights has copious advantages that you likely haven’t even realized -- and many of them will give you a big leg up over competitors.
When used correctly, intent data can open up a wealth of insights into new leads, better personalization, improved content marketing, better lead prioritization and myriad other benefits that will only make your campaigns stronger, more profitable and sustainable going forward. The rewards for accessing intent data are numerous and undeniable. And like a hidden treasure, finding out how to dig them up and keep them at your fingertips so that they can work best for your PPC campaigns will be your next step.
One of the best ways to widen your audience, increase your perceived expertise or generate profits for your business is to advertise on Amazon. The eCommerce giant is is now the third largest advertising platform in terms of ad revenue, placing it squarely behind tech behemoths Google and Facebook. For brands, this development is a powerful signal that they’ll have little room to ignore Amazon as a viable revenue generator going forward. That means brands will need to hone and refine their Amazon ad tactics to stay relevant and competitive.
What will you need to make your Amazon ads stand out? A lot. And chances are strong that you’re doing it all wrong. Most companies who sign up to market products on Amazon soon discover that they don’t know how to create ads, write copy or bid effectively. This is true even for businesses that have large budgets and knowledgeable teams on the case. So, it’s time to fix that.
Before anything else, you’ll need to reevaluate the very foundation of your Amazon ad tactics marketing plan. Among other things, you should be thinking about are the size of your keyword list, the range of your ad types, how to optimize your copy, the in-copy sales words you should be using, and how to analyze your ads. You should also be thinking about how to use Google AdWords outside the Amazon ad tactics marketing platform to drive people to your company's products or services.
And in addition to a thorough understanding of how to effectively leverage Amazon ad tactics in your marketing – as well as AdWords and other useful marketing tools off-platform -- you’ll also need a solid grasp of the mistakes you’re making in your Amazon marketing approach, and how to fix them.
Copywriting is far more difficult than many people assume. Lots of folks can write well. Many others can write decently, while others can string an effective sentence together – enough to impress in the boardroom or breakroom.
But to write well and to create compelling copy are entirely two different things.
Chances are you already have a copywriter or two on staff, but if they're not used to writing Amazon descriptions, it's time for a refresher. The truth is, writing website copy or long-from content optimized for search engines is not the same as writing a good description. Similarly, even if your ad staff knows how to write great PPC creative, that doesn't mean they're well versed in descriptions that sell. In the end, both PPC and SEO have the same goal as Amazon – using words to create an emotional experience and get readers to click – so you should be able to parlay those skills into writing descriptions. This, however, doesn’t happen without practice.
The goal of an Amazon description (and all copy) is simply to move the reader from one line to the next. This is the powerful advice offered by Joseph Sugarman, one of the top copywriters in the world, in his esteemed Adweek Copywriting Handbook, a veritable Bible for the copywriting world.
Among other things, Sugarman offers actionable tips on tweaking words so that they create an emotional experience within the prospective reader -- an experience that takes them from one line to another. It’s the type of experience that creates closeness between you (the copywriter/author) and them (the browser/consumer), one that will eventually lead to moving the reader down the funnel, and eventually, a sale.
If you’re still not sure how to make this happen, that’s okay. Try this formula for writing good descriptions on Amazon, and consider a course on selling ads, such as Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing Formula. And practice, of course.
On a final note regarding your description copy, it’s important you don’t go on too long. Around 500 words is the max for good Amazon description copy. That’s because, even if you manage to pull a prospective reader through that many words, you probably can’t keep them on the page for much longer. Eventually, it’s time to make the sale. Check out that description formula for the best way to do so.
If your company wants to sell products on Amazon, you need to use the right words. Your marketing department ideally has experience writing short, punchy ads, which will translate well to Amazon's restrictive ad environment.
That said, you still need to turn that browser/surfer into a reader. So how do you do that? You use the right keywords in your ad copy.
Again, copy makes a big difference overall, but sometimes all it takes is a single word to hook that person. Some of the most effective include:
Now, don’t feel as though your ad copy has to contain all of these. Choose two or three to use strategically. Also, remember that you have much more space in your description (unlimited, basically), so you can always use them in there.
Most likely you already know that succeeding with ads is a volume game. If you don’t run enough ads, you don’t gather enough data. If you don’t gather enough data, you can’t tell which approaches are working and which aren’t. And if you can’t tell what’s working, you can’t replicate the successes and ditch the failures.
Plainly put, when you run a few ads here and a few there and “hope for the best,” you’re likely crippling yourself. You may as well not try, because your company will not see the bottom-line increases you're looking for, and will not reach the wider audience you need to build your brand.
Here’s what you need to do instead: Make proper use of, all of Amazon’s marketing tools then give your sales a boost by driving external as well as internal traffic to your books.
Amazon has three types of ads:
We explain each of these ads in more depth here, and each has its own set of benefits. Sponsored product ads allow you to create massive keyword lists, then bid on them, targeted up to a thousand in a single ad.
Product display interest and product display product ads, on the other hand, let you add a significant number of categories or products, respectively, so you can always target a wide swath of shopper interests.
Each of these ads has countless different combinations of factors, so it’s important to run enough of them so you can test those factors effectively. Like any other marketing platform, Amazon’s marketing service is impossible to game from the get-go. Your only hope is to run ad after ad, tweaking and adjusting as you go along until you find an approach that works best.
Make sure when you adjust your ads and re-run them that you’re not changing too many variables at once. Any researcher will tell you that you can only change one variable at a time without confusing your results.
One example: If you have a successful ad and want to make it more successful, you should run it again in tandem with ads that adjust the price both up and down, to see if you can maximize your ROI. You could also adjust the copy on the assumption that the keywords are bringing the benefits, to see if you can get even greater sales volumes.
What you should not do is change price, copy, headline, interests, and everything else all at once.
Keep in mind that Amazon ads aren’t the only type. Many people use Facebook and AdWords marketing to drive readers to their Amazon sites, on the assumption that lots of potential readers live on the web and on social but aren't on Amazon regularly. This is absolutely true, and once you’re good at running Amazon ads, you can branch out to those as well. Alternatively, if you're already well-versed in PPC and social ads, you can translate those skills to Amazon.
Either way, focus right now on mastering your Amazon game. You need to use enough ads, enough of a variety of ads, in enough different formations, that you can make serious sales and justify continuing to spend company dollars this way. If you're a publishing company already spending lots of ad dollars on Amazon, prepare for a bit of a hit in your ROI while you figure this out, but don't shy away: As long as you put in the time, Amazon works.
Sponsored product ads depend heavily on using the right keywords. Some people leave it there, though, bidding on 10 great keywords and hoping for the best. The problem is that those 10 words should more accurately be called 10 “really really popular words for which you’ll never win the bid against other, bigger companies.”
Instead of trying to win bids on the most popular keywords, it’s smarter to build huge keyword lists that contain lots of longtail search terms. Naturally, you’ll never be able to come up with so many on your own, which is where Publisher Rocket comes in.
This impressive piece of software costs only about $100 and delivers enormous keyword-scraping power right to your fingertips. It interfaces with Amazon’s search engine to find the most popular words and phrases people are already searching right on Amazon. It will then organize them, categorize them and deliver the relevant data to you when you search for it. To use KDP Rocket effectively, you need only:
You can do all of the above correctly, however, and still not get very far if you don’t know what to make of your ad results. Analysis is imperative, because it tells you what’s working and what isn’t – in other words, where you should spend more money and where you’re simply wasting it.
At the end of the day, though, lots of businesses simply don’t have the bandwidth or headspace to do copious in-depth analysis. Instead, they struggle through half-hearted advertising campaigns, trying and failing to run the numbers in such a way as to come up with meaningful metrics on which to base new campaigns.
Sound familiar? If so, you’re in good company. Many businesses have at some point tried their hand at PPC marketing, only to find they can’t make head nor tail of it. Even large companies with considerable marketing departments struggle to make their ads elicit sustainable ROI.
The problem is twofold: 1) You immediately drown in data, and become so overwhelmed you don’t know how to proceed, and 2) Because you don’t know how to proceed, you often end up just throwing ads at the system and hope something sells. As with most endeavors, this approach rarely works, and the exacting nature of Amazon marketing ads is no exception -- which is why so many people give up altogether.
Creating a sustainable Amazon ad tactics strategy takes a lot of honing and refining, as well as copious trial and error. But few tactics are as effective as powerful ad copy. Whether it’s reaching users with efficient, streamlined descriptions, strong calls to action, or well-placed keywords, your ad content is an extension of your voice that will be key to either connecting with customers or losing an opportunity. By learning to effectively use the right words to amplify your message, you will not only help spark consumer interest but be able to keep it throughout the entire customer journey.
From connected cars and household appliances to what we wear, the Internet of Things (IoT) has fundamentally changed the way we live. These days, it’s expected that connected devices and technologies will unobtrusively, and sometimes stealthily, collect data on our vital functions, what we do, where we go, what we share, what we believe, what we buy, who we know, how we move and even what we eat. It may come as no surprise, then, that the majority of industries and market segments have found and are continuing to find ways to leverage that data to their advantage - into conversions, higher ROI, and ultimately profit.
The advertising industry is no exception. Undoubtedly, IoT has that same predictable but revolutionary impact on advertising as it has had on manufacturing, automotive, and healthcare. For digital marketing and advertising, IoT can clearly help create new customer opportunities. But its potential runs much deeper, providing data and insights into new, unexplored markets and demographics, as well as how businesses research their target markets, the ways they reach them, and how they analyze and assess their efforts.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that refers to how devices can store, analyze and share information over a network without the help of people or other computers - all made possible with a wide variety of devices that have computational and networking capabilities, including mobile phones, wearable and medical devices, vehicles and home appliances.
The Internet of Things - that is, internet-connected - devices essentially serve as sensors that can send data through a network using the internet, Bluetooth, or other connected technologies. Thus they have the ability to collect, send and receive information that people can act on. And that list of devices is almost endless - and continually growing.
A few real-world examples of IoT include:
While connectivity is nothing new, it’s become so ubiquitous that it has created new opportunities for building applications and services. That means, as with regular devices, the host of real world applications for IoT devices open up a plethora of new doors for digital advertising.
IoT has already penetrated a lot of industries - including online advertising. That said, up until now, IoT has often been overlooked by most marketers. But that’s been changing as digital advertisers have started uncovering marketing opportunities around IoT.
For example, Johnnie Walker has a Blue Label bottle with built-in electronic sensors that can tell if the bottle has been opened and where it is in the supply chain. Malibu, another drinks company, takes it a step further, using their “connected” bottles as a digital touchpoint to promote exclusive content.
While these types of IoT applications to advertising are definitely impressive, what’s the practical direction for marketers to follow if they want to start taking advantage of IoT for their business?
The truth is you don’t need to turn your products into IoT devices to benefit. While they might not make it to the front page of TechCrunch, there are actually plenty of real ways marketers can start using IoT for better online advertising.
As previously mentioned, IoT makes it possible to track and access much more data about individuals. When approaching them as consumers, advertisers can consider each data point a touchpoint in the customer journey.
The sheer volume of actionable data that can come from IoT devices is enormous - to the tune of five quintillion bytes of data every day. And the potential applications and uses of IoT data are endless for advertisers that know how to harness it. IoT data can reveal to advertisers who bought a product, where they bought it, and potentially what they did with it after purchase. Among other things, this information can be used for customer relationship management, as well as informing new product development. It can also be used to optimize ad marketing messages while potentially delivering them through new channels.
Specifically, deep funnel insights derived from IoT data can tell businesses who has buying intent for certain products and when. IoT devices themselves can also tell advertisers a lot about the people that use them - someone who wears a fitness watch, for example, could be targeted with advertising for sportswear clothing. Someone who owns an irrigation controller could be targeted with advertising for a garden maintenance service. The possibilities are almost limitless.
Suffice to say, people who carry and regularly use IoT devices are easily differentiated from the crowd - which in turn can generate significant opportunities to better target marketing messages to individuals both online and off. The reason? IoT devices provide important personal details that advertisers can use to better personalize their messages. One of the most basic examples is location-based ads, from data leveraged from users’ mobile phones and other devices.
Google’s local search ads, for example, are already a widely used application of IoT in advertising, making it possible to target specific audiences within certain areas of a country or within a radius of a certain location. When people make local searches using their mobile devices, they’ll be subjected to relevant ads based on their current location. PPC advertisers can then target their ads to specific locations (usually their local store), and even optimize their ads by targeting keywords that illustrate user intent.
But real-time, contextualized personalization doesn’t have to end there. Why not factor in information like time of day, or the person’s physical condition? The possibilities are endless.
The key difference between personalization using IoT devices and other strategies is contextualization. It’s true that marketers don’t need to tap into someone’s fitness monitor to know that they’re health conscious - the fact that they purchased it in the first place could tell them that. Marketers can also tap into third party intent data from publishing networks to learn more about the specific health interests of a lead.
So why rely on devices themselves to collect this information? The answer is better, individualized contextualization. Take these examples:
None of those targeting strategies are possible with even the most advanced prospect research, online or off. But they can be when marketers harness the power of IoT.
How these marketing messages are delivered is another important aspect of the potential for real-time, contextualized personalization. The advertising space changed when it became possible for online advertisers to market to people on their mobile devices instead of just their computers. Now it’s happening again with other IoT devices.
Now, it’s possible for marketing messages to come from the IoT devices themselves. Your washing machine will tell you when you’re out of detergent and add it to your shopping list for you. Your car can suggest a nearby auto center when you’re due for an oil change. Amazon is already taking advantage of this as well, using smart home devices to suggest more of their products to consumers.
IoT has other benefits for advertising, beyond better targeting opportunities. The wealth of data the IoT ecosystem provides also makes it possible to learn more about the impact of your advertising on consumer purchase behavior.
This is especially important for businesses that advertise online to drive conversions offline. Businesses that sell exclusively online can rely heavily on metrics like click-through rate and onsite behavior to measure performance. But businesses that use local search ads (for example) to encourage in-store visits have a serious gap in sales funnel visibility. That’s where IoT can come in.
What if you could deliver an ad to someone’s mobile device, and they go on to use contactless payment when they purchase in your store? This data would make it possible for advertisers to understand important behavior points like:
And it’s not just location-based businesses that can benefit from offline data. Even an e-commerce store will want to better understand when, where, how frequently, and potentially why people choose to make purchases from retail stores instead of online. IoT also makes it possible to know when people research a product offline then ultimately purchase it online - all parts of an advertiser’s sales funnel that have significant blind spots without the help of IoT devices.
Advertising performance today often relies too heavily on online behavior, mostly because they lack a scalable way to monitor performance outside of this digital space. IoT makes it possible to expand the web of understanding beyond this.
As the number and kind of IoT devices continue to grow, so will this web of information. Devices that were previously never connected to the internet (fridges, TVs, thermostats, etc.) are now coming online, providing unique opportunities for different types of businesses to benefit. Advertisers can better track the impact of their TV commercials on online purchase behavior, for example. Or grocery stores can better understand their customers’ shopping needs using information from their smart fridge.
It’s true that the practical applications for advertisers are still being discovered. But interconnectivity is expanding every year. And once a business can track performance of all their marketing touchpoints simultaneously, they’ll have full funnel performance insights to help improve critical components such as advertising messages, targeting strategies, customer retention and customer service, as well as many more benefits at their fingertips.
As discussed earlier, IoT provides an enormous amount of new data that advertisers can use to better understand their complete sales funnel. But this data is only useful if you can follow four key steps:
And it’s all easier said than done. The more data that comes in about your audience, the less likely you’ll have the capacity to handle it. But if you use the right technologies, it’s possible to fully harness the data IoT offers for better strategy optimization.
It’s possible to use machine learning algorithms with big data to generate predictive analytics. Businesses do this all the time with third-party intent data, using these insights to drive automated changes to optimize their advertising campaigns. It’s possible to incorporate IoT data into this strategy as well, seriously impacting the scope of possibilities with predictive analytics.
Predictive analytics use a combination of data mining, statistical modeling, machine learning and artificial intelligence to make predictions about future events. And real-time reporting makes it possible to identify actionable trends in data, allowing marketers to make decisions to optimize their strategies beforehand.
Bid optimization capabilities are a key benefit of this technology for advertisers. By leveraging data insights provided by IoT devices and other big data sources, it’s possible to make small, ongoing PPC bid adjustments to optimize advertising campaigns. And because it’s automated, it will ensure you’re only bidding the necessary amount to get the ad visibility you need and drive the highest ROI. That means not wasting ad spend because you can’t drive the right insights at scale.
These are things that are already possible with IoT data and the right technologies. But the future is bound to bring even more optimization capabilities as both predictive analytics and IoT grow. Consider the possibilities if predictive algorithms could add individual location data to their mix. Then advertisers can automate targeted ads toward individuals at a time and place that’s most relevant to them.
It’s well established that IoT has the potential to make advertising much more intrusive. But given consumer sentiment around ads today, it’s probably not the best way to be utilizing the technology. Nobody wants their Amazon Echo to start blurting out product suggestions based on conversations overheard in their living room.
The real benefit of IoT for advertising is more and higher quality data, enabling advertisers to create granular insights and more relevant and better targeted ads that are more aligned with their customers’ needs. That said, those insights and unique personalization can only be realized if marketers have the time and resources to harness this data to its full potential - which means applying intelligent technologies that have the ability to separate, analyze, and create value from it that can be applied strategically to your short and long-term PPC strategies to maximize ROI, boost profits and create value for your campaigns.
New IoT technologies are constantly generating raw, untapped data that can be leveraged in almost limitless ways. The data is already there. All you have to do is find the right technology to unlock its true potential.
If you’ve glanced at the headlines recently, you likely know that Amazon has far exceeded expectations when it comes to its digital ad business, and is set to be the world's third largest digital advertising platform, according to market research firm eMarketer.
After revising its previous estimates, eMarketer now predicts Amazon will gross $4.61 billion in ad revenues in 2018 -- a vast increase from previous projections that had it $2.89 billion, attributed in part to a spike in growth from a reclassification of revenue. According to eMarketer’s revised estimates, the online retail giant will surpass Verizon Communications Inc.’s Oath and Microsoft Corp, firmly placing it in the No. 3 spot in the world for digital advertising revenue behind Google and Facebook.
That said, it still has a ways to go before reaching the league of either of its archrivals. But while the online retail giant still comprises only about 4.15 percent of total U.S. digital ad revenue, it is experiencing a steadily growing upward trajectory, while Facebook and Google revenues are simultaneously in decline.
That means it will also be actively be taking share from its two major competitors for the foreseeable future. By 2020, eMarketer predicts that Amazon’s growing digital ad business will continue to increase by more than 50 percent annually through 2020, ultimately totaling 7 percent of all US digital ad spending, while Facebook’s and Google’s share will decrease to 20.8 percent and 35.1 percent respectively. While Amazon isn't yet considered a serious threat to the Facebook-Google digital ad duopoly, it appears that the global retailer is nipping at their heels, and is on track to becoming a serious contender in this space.
eMarketer cites strong “organic growth” as one of the most significant reasons for Amazon’s rising digital ad revenues -- which aren’t destined for a slowdown anytime soon. In short, companies are increasingly buying ads on Amazon. And they’re clearly reaching the right audiences.
And over time, merchants will be under increasing pressure to buy up even more advertising space to compete with other merchants, lest they lose visibility in the search results to sponsored listings. As such, Amazon is now taking advantage of this wide open playing field as every merchant on the platform could potentially be an advertising customer as well. Looking ahead, that untapped potential will continue to be a powerful driver for growth in its ad business as merchants look to capitalize on Amazon’s copious search traffic.
So, what can Amazon’s bullish strides in its digital ad business be attributed to? As with almost anything, it turns out, there’s no one simple answer. But its continued digital ad success can be sourced to the right mix of a rapidly evolving digital advertising environment, some astute accounting changes and a clear, holistic understanding of their customers’ buying behaviors and relationship to technology.
It’s Easier Than Ever to Buy Ads on Amazon
It wasn’t that long ago when consumers regularly labeled Amazon’s ad buying process as confusing, frustrating and difficult. That all changed in September, when Amazon announced that all of its ad buying and reporting would fall under the new, fully consolidated umbrella dubbed “Amazon Advertising.”
The comprehensive Amazon Advertising moniker now entails Amazon Marketing Services, Amazon’s suite of CPC ad formats; Amazon Media Group, which sells display advertising on Amazon properties, and Amazon Advertising Platform. In addition, Amazon has recategorized its former Headline Search ads -- a CPC format that serves up multiple products on search result pages -- to Sponsored Brands.
Many of Amazon’s accounting changes reclassify several advertising services from cost-of-sales to revenue, and, according to eMarketer, were the primary drivers for eMarketer’s adjusted projections. But the net-net is that Amazon has streamlined and simplified its entire digital advertising portfolio for its customers, making ads more efficient, accessible and targeted, increasing their value and giving a big boost to advertisers’ ROI.
Users Start - and End -- Their Product Searches on Amazon
Once upon a time, Amazon was a place that would-be consumers landed after extensive and exhaustive product searches. Not so anymore. Now more than ever, users are skipping over Google, which might eventually be perceived as a sort of digital middleman. Instead, they’re going right to the source -- Amazon -- to begin their product journey -- which bodes well for advertisers looking to target specific demographics and other types of dedicated shoppers. And because Amazon is first and foremost an online retailer, consumers are ending that journey there too with a purchase.
Amazon Expanded Its Mobile Advertising Business
With the explosive reliance on smartphones as consumer buying tools, retailers need to be heavily investing in their mobile advertising strategy. This hasn’t been lost on Amazon, which has bulked up its mobile ad business to accommodate an anticipated groundswell of users. Thus, in its report, eMarketer also projects that Amazon will increase its mobile ad revenues 242 percent to $1.61 billion in 2018, which will give it 2.1 percent market share of the mobile ad market. Naturally, its mobile ad play will only serve to build out its expansive digital ad business.
Amazon Offers Increased Consumer Insights
No one can argue that better data means stronger insights -- and that includes Amazon’s. Another reason Amazon is increasingly attractive to advertisers is because it provides access to consumer purchase data. And advertisers looking for insight into the impact of their ad buys on purchases have that information right at their fingertips. Google and Facebook, on the other hand, don’t offer the same type of granular insights. And in an increasingly data-driven environment, advertisers need every ounce of insight to refine their digital advertising strategy, better target their consumers and gain an edge on their competitors -- or risk being left behind.
The Power of Voice
All this growth is great for advertisers. But there’s yet another factor that might contribute to Amazon’s rise in the digital ad space -- voice. It’s no secret that Alexa-powered devices like the Amazon Echo are becoming increasingly common household items, and as such, the eCommerce giant has a strong potential to lead the charge in delivering voice ads to users.
Currently, Alexa directs inquisitive users to products that are well-reviewed on its site, as well as available on Prime. But taking that a step further, Alexa’s “expert” guidance could potentially direct users to well-placed programmatic voice ads, according to a recent report from CB Insights, opening up even more opportunities for advertisers to more acutely target desired audiences.
So, What Does All This Mean For PPC?
Ultimately, Amazon’s steady upward growth trajectory opens up a host of new opportunities for PPC advertisers. The biggest reason? PPC advertising isn’t just about targeting more consumers or bigger audiences -- although that often contributes to the success of a campaign. But at the end of the day, it’s about optimizing marketing efforts to target the right consumers -- the ones that will not only click, but convert.
And if there’s anything that Amazon can do well, it’s gathering dedicated audiences. In general, people don’t go to Amazon just to surf or browse. Many -- perhaps the majority -- go to the site with a mission. They basically know what they want, without perhaps knowing the right brand, style, size or color that would specifically suit their tastes. Thus, Amazon turns up an array of products that it deems are a close fit to the users’ description. As more users leverage organic search to narrow down their choices, their attention will be increasingly drawn to paid search opportunities as well. What’s more, Amazon is paying attention to the way today’s consumers shop, and is doubling down on creating new and unique channels through which advertisers can reach those highly targeted -- yet untapped -- audiences.
Amazon’s comprehensive advertising business and means of gathering the right audiences aligns well with the principles of PPC that include increased efficiency and ROI. With a streamlined organization, as well new platforms, technologies, and data insights with which to keenly vector in on both advertisers and buyers, the online retail giant will likely be making noticeable dents in this space in the near future.
And PPC advertisers will be watching its path with interest.
The promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) includes minimizing tasks people are required to do. What if companies could communicate with customers (and prospective customers) in a way that brought value to both their organization and audience(s)?
From chatbots to digital assistants—conversational interfaces have evolved significantly over the years and will continue to do so well into the future. This webinar discusses this evolution to help you learn more about the following:
Sometimes you have to look far and wide for tools and resources that you need for your PPC campaigns to be successful and profitable. Other times, what you need to be successful can be found right at your fingertips. Such is the case when you use both your own inventory and lead capacity to optimize your SEM activities and increase ROI.
The combination of the products you have available, along with the number of leads you can successfully generate and handle are critical data points that can be leveraged to your advantage -- as important indicators regarding the success of your campaign, as well as a foundation from which to make your SEM strategies and campaigns even better.
The majority of businesses use search engine marketing (SEM) to sell products or attract leads to their business. So they use whatever information they have about these things to hone keywords and create targeted ads that drive conversions. But few realize the same information -- lead capacity and inventory -- can be used to develop their PPC ads can also be used to streamline and optimize their SEM program. This article discusses how to do this using two main information sources:
For just about every type of company, both inventory and lead capacity are important for business success. They can also help inform and strategize your SEM program to drive revenue, reduce wasted ad spend, and generate higher ROI. Here are nine creative ways to use inventory and lead capacity information to build a more efficient SEM strategy.
Local Inventory Ads (LIAs) are a special merchant ad type, and one of the easiest ways to start using inventory and lead capacity information for better SEM. They're also very important for businesses that want to drive online-to-offline (O2O) conversions, as they display your products and store information to users who are within close proximity of your stores. When users click on your ad, they aren’t taken back to your landing pages but instead are directed to a Google-hosted storefront.
LIAs use your inventory information to bring your local store online. Shoppers are also assured your store has the items they’re looking for. This helps you deliver the right ad at the right time to shoppers who are likely to convert offline. It also makes it possible to track the effect your search ads have on in-store sales.
Essentially, ad schedule bid adjustments allow you to temporarily increase or reduce bids during certain hours of the day, and are a great tool for businesses that have regular, predictable, day-to-day fluctuations in sales. Ad schedule bid adjustments are also a strategic way to attract more conversions as well as manage advertising investment when your capacity is full.
Here’s how it works -- most PPC advertisers use ad schedule bid adjustments to bid up during times when they normally see high conversion rates from their analytics data. This gives their ads more visibility when people are more likely to convert. But you can also use ad schedule bid adjustments to adapt your investment to your lead capacity needs as well.
Say a local restaurant runs PPC campaigns for their business but finds that on Fridays and Saturdays from 12-2 pm, their seating is almost always completely full. In other words, they don’t need the help of PPC ads to attract business during those hours. What’s more, they could end up paying money for clicks they didn’t need to get enough customers for their capacity limits. To fix this, they can use bid adjustments to reduce their bid (by as much as 100%) during these peak hours. At the same time, they can also increase their bid (by as much as 900%) during times when business is slow.
Anyone running PPC ads for an eCommerce store knows the challenges of keeping pace with it. You have to make sure the ads you display always match your inventory selection, no matter the changes. Google’s Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) are one unique solution to this problem. When you enable your website to serve up DSAs, Google will scan the organic index of your website and create ads for you to display in search results. So whenever you make changes to available products on your site, your DSAs will sync up.
DSAs can help you create a more efficient SEM program by saving time. There’s no need to create separate ads, keyword targeting or bids for each product on your site. They will also automatically update your ads as you make changes to your site pages. What’s more, DSAs can help you capture additional traffic that you wouldn’t normally reach through a keyword-targeted campaign.
Google Maps ads are highly relevant for local businesses, although most don’t fully optimize for this kind of listing. These local search ads appear on Google Maps results when people search for nearby businesses. While there isn't a lot of real estate for ads on Google Maps, most businesses (even enterprise chain companies) aren’t doing everything they can to optimize for these choice spots. Google Maps ads are based on your Google My Business listing. Making changes to this is a big opportunity to improve local search performance, especially since 46% of all searches on Google are local.
The first thing you can do is make sure your storefronts have the most recent call numbers, address and location information. If you have your Merchant Center and Google My Business Accounts linked, it’s also important to keep your local inventory information up-to-date to better optimize for these ad spaces.
If you run a service-based business instead of retail, you can also optimize using time-segmented bidding strategies. For example, a coffee shop can bid higher during high traffic hours in the morning.
Just remember that your Google My Business page is relevant for paid ads as well as organic search. So keeping your inventory updated, highlighting promotions, and time segmentation are worthwhile to optimize for these local listings.
Cost-per-click (CPC) offers a unique opportunity for advertisers to drive ROI because you're not just paying for exposure like traditional advertising. Instead, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad and visits your site. That helps ensure that you’re only paying to target the most relevant leads for your business.
As a result, PPC is set up so that the most relevant keywords for your target audience are often the most expensive. But targeting the most expensive keywords isn’t always the best strategy to maximize ROI. Instead of focusing solely on CPC and subsequent revenue, it’s better to dig deeper to understand how your advertising costs relate to your overall sales cycle. If you can calculate things like cost-per-lead and cost-per-sale, you’ll have a better understanding of the impact that your ad campaigns have on overall ROI. You might find that investing in less expensive keywords will fill your sales pipeline more effectively.
You can target keywords relevant to numerous points in your lead cycle at varying CPCs. Focusing on a wide variety of keywords makes it easier to execute bid adjustments in order to ramp up your PPC strategy and adjust to lead capacity changes within your business. For example, a consulting business with a full appointment schedule for the next two months could reduce investment in bottom-of-the-funnel keywords and increase investment in top-of-the-funnel keywords to start nurturing the next round of leads into future clients.
As mentioned earlier, Local Inventory Ads (LIAs) are a great way to save time and optimize your SEM efforts. Among other things, they leverage inventory feeds to help you create ads for your available product listings.
However, this system does come with issues that can lead to a less-than-optimal advertising strategy. That’s because Google’s understanding of your inventory selection is limited by how often it pulls your data feed. So if a product is listed as “out-of-stock” in your inventory feed when it’s pulled into Merchant Center, Google will continue to assume that’s the case until new data comes in. This is a problem because Google could choose not to display ads for a product until it knows inventory is available.
This might seem like a rare problem with minimal impact, but that’s not necessarily true. Your most popular products are the ones that regularly run out of stock, right? And once you do restock them, your bestsellers are not benefitting from any ad visibility. Meanwhile, your competitors are continuing to sell and earn revenue.
The solution to this problem is to pull your data feed into Merchant Center more frequently than you might think is necessary. As a general rule, it’s a good idea to do this daily to ensure that Google always has the most up-to-date inventory information and that you maximize your advertising opportunity for popular items. Certain types of businesses with rapidly changing inventory might even want to do this more frequently.
In 2017 Google introduced new call bid adjustments in AdWords. The goal was to help advertisers get more out of their click-to-call ads. And it works. Calls convert three times better than web clicks.
Call bid adjustments allow you to control how often the call option appears with your search ads. Since calls are so valuable for sales and conversions, why not show the extension all the time? It turns out that lead capacity, call volume, and sales opportunities can all benefit from call bid adjustments.
Google provides an example: If you’re a travel advertiser, you may see higher order values from calls because it can be easier to cross-sell rental cars, group tours, and other vacation add-ons during a live conversation. Raise your call bid adjustments to show call extensions more frequently and drive more of these high-value call conversions.
But taking advantage of sales opportunities isn’t the only way to benefit from and maximize your investment in ads using call bid adjustments. Say a business runs a call center and also offers an online customer service center. They want to maximize their use of call extensions to drive high-converting call traffic within their capacity limits. For a business like this, it can be worthwhile to adjust call extension bids at times when call volume and phone wait times are high. Their ads will encourage users to visit their online help center instead of calling their overwhelmed customer service representatives. Then when call volume reduces, they can adjust to increase bids so the call option appears more frequently with search ads.
Maximizing your use of call extensions within the limits of your business’ capacity is a great way to increase revenue and decrease costs. In one real-world example, Medical Guardian, a Medical Alert Systems company, found that their phone leads convert 2 times more often than their web leads. Using call bid adjustments, they were able to generate a 20% higher call volume for their business and decreasing the cost to acquire leads by 60%.
As the other points in this post illustrate, there are a lot of ways to use inventory to optimize your SEM campaigns. But businesses that get creative with their data can also optimize their local inventory distribution based on search data insights, making a more effective SEM campaign in the process.
We saw a great case study of this in practice at SMX West 2017. An apparel merchant near a college town was dissatisfied with their poor sales in local stores. They assumed (rightly) that the college-age shoppers that dominate the town preferred to shop online. So they decided to look at their geo data, layering and mining keyword searches localized around specific stores in specific zip codes.
Their hypothesis: Brick-and-mortar outlets in areas with the highest search traffic would sell the most units. By optimizing their inventory in those locations against the bestselling items for college-age students, the store saw a significant (100%+) lift in profits.
Search data can provide a lot of important insights to help businesses with multiple locations optimize their inventory distribution, marketing campaigns, bid strategies, and more. Store location, online product sales by location, search interest, and product interest are just a few examples of the broad data types businesses can use in combination to drive actionable insights, creating a more efficient sales strategy in the process.
There are a lot of factors that can affect a business’ lead capacity, like the speed of the buying cycle, call volume, phone wait times, and appointment availability, among other things. And a highly optimized SEM strategy allows for bid adjustments based on these factors. Why spend money bidding on expensive, high-converting keywords when your sales pipeline is near maximum capacity?
Rather than manually pausing and starting your PPC campaigns based on these factors, it’s better to adjust your bids to ensure you’re consistently meeting but not exceeding your PPC lead goals. This kind of complex bid adjustment strategy is beyond the capabilities of Google Ads’ automation features, but you can use an advanced bid management tool to create unique algorithms catered to your business needs.
The ways in which you can use inventory and lead capacity information to create a better-optimized SEM program are numerous and diverse. Perhaps surprisingly, you already have a lot of the resources readily available and at your disposal. That said, being able to leverage them to truly optimize your SEM program and create the most value for your campaigns takes time, effort and more than a little strategic thinking, as well as some trial and error.
Google Ads offers a variety of features that you can use in complex ways to adapt your campaign strategies to your own business' inventory and lead capacity. However, more advanced tools can help you develop unique automated solutions tailored to your specific business needs, profit, and ROI goals as well as comprehensive marketing vision. Taking the time to figure out which tools and unique strategy works best for you is an investment that will very soon pay for itself. Because creatively leveraging inventory and lead capacity with the goal of more efficient SEM will only serve to boost ROI and make your PPC campaigns that much more profitable, and sustainable, for both your short and long-term business goals.
Imagine you’re in a graveyard at midnight (just work with us here, okay?) The chilling howl of a werewolf echoes in the distance, and a full moon only makes the shadows longer and more sinister. While it seems as though no one is around for miles, you instinctively know that you’re not alone.
You see a dark and shadowy figure emerge from behind a gravestone. Then another. Then another. The hair rises on the back of your neck.
You don’t know what these things are, or what they want, but somehow you have a feeling that they don’t have your best interests at heart. In fact, they would probably tear you apart as soon as look at you. All you know is that you have to keep moving. To survive this, you have to be quick and nimble. You have to anticipate their every move. And then somehow, you have to stay a few steps ahead of them just to live to tell the tale.
Feeling terrified yet? Well, you should be.
Instead of ghosts, ghouls and goblins, these spooky, dark figures are actually competitors, fraudsters and cyber attackers (oh my!)
In order to stay alive and kicking in a cut-throat digital advertising environment, you need to stay on your toes to prevent them from ambushing your campaigns at every turn. And if you let your guard down for a moment? Well, you will likely be vulnerable to all kinds of nefarious surprises. As you traverse this graveyard, you’ve seen what happened to those who came this way before you—and you reeeeeallly don’t want to end up the way they did.
No doubt, the internet is a graveyard full of hidden dangers—to your technology, your identity, your business and marketing efforts. So we’re here to give you a little head’s up to the threats that might pass your way, while helping to arm you for the inevitable fight ahead.
Along the way you might have to combat armies of infected bots and fake (let’s just call them "mostly dead") users. You will have to navigate a labyrinth of haunted ghost sites. You will have to survive hijacks to your ads and your clicks. And you will have to find the courage to uncover those masked URLs.
But we’ve got your back with a Halloween lookbook, “Top 10 Terrifying Ad Fraud Attacks That Will Kill Your Campaigns,” that will alert you to these threats, answer your questions and provide a few pointers that will help you steer clear of these demons and stay profitable throughout this oh-so-spooky season.
Meanwhile, we’re here to equip you with the right tools to keep your digital campaigns safe and protected. Although attackers are constantly sharpening their knives in preparation for their next victim, there are ways you can reduce the chances of falling prey to their frightening schemes.
In addition to providing superior bid-management, granular customer data insights and analysis, and customized campaign management, Basis Technologies provides a platform well-equipped with anti-fraud and security technologies, offering an additional layer of security and protection so ROI stays intact and your campaigns remain as lucrative and profitable as possible.
In short, your tool of choice is Basis. So who ya gonna call?
Wanna share or download this lookbook. Visit our resources center to share this lookbook to your social channels or post on your blog.
To even the most casual observer, it’s obvious we are living in unparalleled and unprecedented political times. And, paradoxically, it is also a time we are experiencing low voter turnout -- especially among younger generations.
In the last mid-term election (2014), only 21% of millennials voted, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. When about 80% of young voters choose not to participate in the election process, I feel there is a responsibility of CEOs and business leaders to do what is necessary to encourage full participation by our employees in exercising their right to vote.
Many of our political leaders today seem more interested in winning at all costs, sowing divisiveness among our citizens, and belittling each other at a time when we need to be working together to solve our large and exacerbating foundational problems. We have witnessed, over the last 50 years, what I consider a catastrophic failure in our political system and leaders. Their lack of leadership and inability to create bi-partisan solutions has left U.S. citizens with unsustainable levels of debt, an archaic and crumbling infrastructure, an ailing public education system, spiraling healthcare and higher education costs, as well as a planet that is getting warmer every year. Even if we worked together today to start solving these problems, it’s not going to be easy. The difficulty level of solving them increases exponentially each year (and each congressional term) that political leaders choose to not work together in creating common sense solutions to these issues.
Sadly, it is the younger generations as well as their children and their grandchildren who are going to bear the brunt and the responsibility, and incur the cost of political mismanagement of the last half century. So, 21% participation isn’t good enough. We have to do better.
At Centro, we enacted a new policy this week where we are making Election Day in the U.S. and Canada a national holiday going forward. For all national election days, our employees are getting a half-day paid time-off so they have the requisite time, space and freedom to vote. In the U.S., our employees will be taking this on November 6, 2018. In Canada, employees will do this on October 21, 2019, for its next election. Our goal is 100% participation of our employees.
Importantly, Centro is not making any references or inferences to our employees on “who” they should vote for or what issues they should vote “for” or “against.” Our company is only asking that each employee votes and that they vote their conscience. They can vote for whomever they feel best represents them and their values. And they should vote for the person they feel will make the best decisions to put our local, state and federal governments on a better, and more positive, track going forward.
Centro is not the only one that has this perspective on civic and corporate duty, and so we are asking, and encouraging, our peer companies in Chicago, in the U.S., in Canada, in media and in technology to join us in making Election Day an official national holiday. The strength of our country and our economy are critical to creating a positive business environment and we need responsible and pragmatic political leadership working together to help us continue to grow and flourish. A great way to show government the power of teamwork is for businesses to unite in giving employees time to vote on Election Day.
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Shawn Riegsecker is founder and CEO of Centro.
Popular digital assistants like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa have taught us that voice technology is dramatically changing the way consumers search for information online. And that holds especially true for Google Voice Search. Instead of wasting hours scrolling on Google’s search pages, voice-activated search enables us to find exactly what we are looking for simply by saying the word.
It’s a trend that is experiencing a rapid upward trajectory. The Wall Street Journal reports that 51 percent of consumers use voice search in their cars, and 39 percent use voice assistants in their homes. These statistics are increasing as consumers become familiar and comfortable with voice search technology for their day-to-day activities.
As Google Voice Search and other voice search capabilities rise in popularity, they’re also becoming important vehicles for businesses that want to improve their pay-per-click performance and reach new consumers. It's now vital for marketers and businesses to optimize their PPC ad campaigns for these types of search engine queries.
This article discusses why it’s important to consider Google Voice Search when developing your pay-per-click ad strategy. It also provides actionable tips for optimizing your PPC ads for Google Voice Search queries.
It’s no secret that digital assistants and voice search technology make our lives easier by enabling more convenient online searches. Users need to simply ask their device a question and they get an answer just a few moments later. People to interact with their devices in a way that’s more natural and less constrained. They use familiar language and a conversational tone to access the information they need.
As such, voice search has become a popular feature for Google search engine users. Google’s CEO reports that 20 percent of the queries on its mobile app and across Android devices are voice searches. Those numbers are continuing to grow, attributed largely to accessibility. People can use Google Voice Search on both their mobile and desktop devices. After the user articulates their search query, they go to the search engine results page. From there, they can click on different links to get the information they need. When considering how voice searches impact your PPC campaigns, it’s important to recognize that though voice queries often return similar results to typed queries, there are a few important differences:
All of these voice search variables can impact your search engine marketing strategy. For example, depending on your target audience, you may aim to reach more mobile users. The more mobile your audience, the more important Google Voice Search is when considering PPC ads and target keywords.
It’s important to note that while there are a range of different voice search technologies, from Amazon’s Alexa to Apple’s Siri, the focus of this particular post is on Google. The reason? If you’re using Google AdWords, then Google Voice Search has the greatest impact on your PPC ad campaigns. That said, you can also apply this information to ads on other search engines like Bing and Yahoo.
Now that you know how Google Voice Search may impact your PPC ad strategy, you’ll need to learn how to optimize your PPC ads for voice search queries. The good news is that if you are currently using SEO and PPC best practices to optimize your campaigns, you may not have too much work to do.
Here are a few tips that will help you get started optimizing your PPC ads for Google Voice Search:
1. Start by taking a look at your existing search term data
Before you begin optimizing your ad campaigns for voice search, it’s important that you look at the data you have on which search terms consumers use to find your brand online. Take a look at your search term report on AdWords to identify which long-tail queries trigger your PPC ad campaigns. Google doesn’t provide a separate report for voice search queries. However, there are ways to find out which queries might come from consumers utilizing voice search.
Once you export the report, filter the data to return search terms beginning with “OK Google.” This allows you to see some of the exact terms leveraged by search engine users when they look for brands like yours through Google Voice Search.
In addition to searching for the phrase, “OK Google,” look for long-tail keywords that are at least five or six words. Because voice search users tend to have more conversational search queries, consumers use longer keyword phrases to find your brand online via voice search. After developing a list of keywords and phrases from your existing search term data, add them to your AdWords campaigns.
2. Launch dedicated question ad campaigns on Google AdWords
As previously mentioned, Google Voice Search queries are typically more conversational than typed queries. This is most likely because consumers who type queries into the search bar recognize that they are interacting with a machine and deliberately use shorter, logical phrasing.
Voice search users, however, tend to use more filler words and conversational questions, as they would when talking to a person. Also, due to the conversational nature of voice search queries, these consumers are more likely to ask a question. For your business, that means you need to develop dedicated question ad campaigns and bid on question-based keywords to drive intent.
Meanwhile, the type of question a search engine user asks can reveal a lot about their degree of intent. For instance, “what,” “who,” and “why” based questions indicate interest, but not necessarily a desire to take action. Questions that begin with “when” and “where” tend to indicate that a user may be more ready to buy.
Going forward, you can consider these nuances when developing a list of target question-based keywords for your campaigns. If you’re trying to reach consumers who are ready to buy, you use different types of question-based keywords than if you are trying to attract consumers who are in the awareness or consideration phases of the buyer’s journey. Target the question-based keywords that make the most sense based on your unique conversion goals.
3. Consider including the top three question keywords in your PPC campaigns
While most voice search users are utilizing long-tail keywords in their queries, it’s important to remember that long-tail search queries often have low traffic volume. Your business should include the top three question keywords or keyword phrases in your sets to capture more voice queries in your ad campaigns.
Use Google AdWords keyword planner to investigate the volume and competition levels for the your target keyword phrases. In addition to lower volume, less competitive keywords, you may want to use question-based keywords that have a higher search volume. This will help ensure that you are expanding your reach on the search engines for voice search users.
Although you want to reach as many voice search users as possible, remember not to let the low traffic volume keep you from using less popular, question-based keywords that are relevant to your PPC ad campaigns. Long-tail question-based keywords are more specific, which helps you increase relevancy in your campaigns. While you might not reach many users, the users that you reach are likely the right fit for your brand.
4. Add negative terms that don’t apply to your product/service
As with typical PPC ad campaigns for typed queries, you need to generate a negative keyword list for Google Voice Search queries. In your search term report, you’ll probably notice queries that are relevant, but not ideal, for your brand. These queries are often terms that don’t apply to your products or services. Therefore, these are terms you don’t want your PPC ads appearing next to in the search engine results. By including these negative keywords, you’ll be able to avoid attracting unqualified traffic.
In addition, you may also want to include keywords that suggest the wrong intent. For instance, to target consumers in the decision phase, use negative keywords to avoid attracting consumers that are starting the buyer’s journey. Because many of these search queries are questions, you also need to include negative question terms in your negative keyword list to avoid attracting consumers who are not the right fit.
In addition to generating a new negative keyword list, you should also revisit existing ones for your legacy PPC ad campaigns. To optimize these lists for voice search, consider removing negative keywords like “near me,” “where do I,” and “how to”. This will help you capture more voice search traffic from users who are phrasing their query as a question.
5. Enable AdWords location extensions
Google AdWords location extensions, which allow your business to display address, phone number, and directions to your physical location next to your PPC ads, is an effective way to make sure that your ads display for mobile searchers who are on the go and ready to buy.
Ultimately, this feature allows your business to show up more often in the “near me” searches. “Near me” searches are critical for reaching local shoppers who are near your location and ready to make a purchase. Given that many mobile searchers are using Google Voice Search, especially when in the car, using this extension can also help you attract more users. Using Google location extensions is especially important for businesses that have multiple locations; it allows users to see where the locations are on the map and choose the store that is most convenient.
6. Customize ad copy to answer search query questions
No matter what type of target audience you address with your PPC ad campaigns, it’s vital to create customized ad copy that is relevant to the search query. Your ad content should provide some context based on the targeted search terms. It should also entice users to click on your link and take the next step toward conversion.
When it comes to Google Voice Search and PPC, consider answering the question-based query in your ad content. For instance, let's say you are targeting the question-based phrase “where can I buy camera equipment near me?”. You should ensure that the ad content clearly answers this question while inviting the user to click to learn more. Naturally, the more relevant and engaging your ad copy, the more likely search engine users will click on your ad.
7. Create relevant and contextual landing pages
If you are serious about your PPC campaigns, you should already be creating relevant and contextual landing pages for ad traffic. Many beginners make the mistake of driving PPC ad traffic back to their home page. However, this doesn’t create an effective gateway to the next step in conversion, as it frequently offers too many options for the consumer. That, in turn, can cause them to navigate away from the page before taking any desired action.
Instead, create PPC landing pages that are optimized for conversion. That is, specific and contextual landing pages guide users to the next step in the buyer’s journey. Among other things, ensure that your landing pages are optimized in the same way your ad copy is. If your ad addresses a question-based keyword, you should discuss the answer to this question in your landing page copy. Similarly, ensure that the offer you are delivering through the landing page relates to the PPC ad content.
Also, because many Google Voice Search users are using mobile devices, ensure that your landing pages are optimized for mobile. That means keeping graphics to a minimum and keeping any copy on the page clear and concise.
8. Claim and update your Google My Business Listing
Since many voice search users are looking for local businesses, it is important that you claim your Google My Business listing and update the information. This helps increase your chances of showing up in Google Voice Search results pertaining to your location and business category.
Claiming and keeping your listing up-to-date helps your PPC ad campaigns and benefits your organic search results. The search engine scans your Google My Business listing to better understand your business category, location, and hours. This information allows Google to deliver more relevant content for local search engine users.
Google Voice Search is a powerful trend that will continue to impact your PPC advertising strategy. As you begin to optimize your PPC campaigns for this tool, keep the following in mind:
When it comes to Google Voice Search and PPC ads, don’t be afraid to experiment. Once you find a strategy that reaches more voice search users, you can adjust your PPC ad strategy based on your results. It might take some trial and error. However, accommodating a fast-growing technology gives you access to new, diverse groups of consumers that will only open new doors -- and revenue opportunities -- for your campaigns.