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They say that the game of chess takes an hour to learn and a lifetime to master. The same goes for keyword bid optimization.
If you have any kind of PPC advertising strategy in place, it’s likely you have the basics down. You probably have figured out how much money you can spend and determined the CPC range that falls within your budget. You’ve probably identified ads, ad groups, and keywords. You’re probably focusing your campaign on ROI and are adjusting your bids accordingly. You probably have decided between manual and automated bidding, and know whether you’re going to channel your efforts on clicks, impressions, or conversions. You might even have a well-thought-out and structured AdWords campaign.
That said, digital advertising is fundamentally different than it was just a few years ago, incorporating image recognition, voice search, augmented reality, and chat messaging - all of which represent a new direction for the industry, and a myriad of new data that you could potentially leverage to your advantage.
And while you may have a great start in the process, there are likely a host of underrated, yet profitable, ways to conduct bid optimization of keywords that you could be overlooking. While seemingly insignificant, each missed keyword or inaccurate bid represents money left at the table. Over time, that could add up to copious opportunities -- and thousands to hundreds of thousands of ad dollars -- that are irrevocably lost.
Like anything else, understanding the nuances of bid optimization takes time, effort, and a lot of trial and error. In the interest of accelerating the learning curve a bit, here are a few ways you can refine and nuance your bidding process to fully leverage all of the available data to your greatest advantage, maximize your ROI, and truly get the most out of every PPC advertising dollar spent.
When making a bid, it’s often tempting to cast your net wide when targeting search queries, with the expectation that only a small percentage of those consumers, directed through retargeting and other multi-touch attribution points, will actually reach the point of purchase. However, you also risk bidding on search queries that are in close alignment with top-of-funnel marketing activities that may be several steps removed from the moment of sale.
With this in mind, it’s also good to remember that not all keywords are created equal -- some keywords indicate that the buyer is doing some reconnaissance while other keyword queries actually signify that the buyer has intentions to purchase an item. For example, a series of keywords such as “Donna Karen summer dresses size 8” indicates that the consumer may be further along in their buyer journey than someone entering “summer dresses,” and thus, may be closer to making a purchase. Subsequently, marketers can increase the percentage of actual conversions by identifying specific keywords that clearly demonstrate intent -- with the confidence to know that they will likely result in conversions.
To that end, it’s sometimes more strategic to bid on specific long-tail keywords. While they have lower search volume and subsequently less competition, they can also be tightly targeted and ultimately more effective. For example, “shoes” may have millions of searches a month, with stringent competition and a hefty price per click. ”Mens trail-running shoes” may get fewer searches but might cost significantly less per click, while also better honing in on your target audience. Among other things, long-tail bidding allows you to better focus your ad copy and create more relevant headlines, which in turn helps increase your CTR and quality score that can ultimately lower the cost of your bid.
As marketers, we frequently find ourselves in the position of halfway expecting the inevitable fire drill. And with good reason -- with countless variables ranging from technical difficulties, like a malfunctioning cookie, to user behavior aberrations, they can result in costly campaigns or outright failure to reach a key audience.
However, implementing intelligent machine learning technologies can detect those anomalies early on in the bidding process -- before they evolve into costly mistakes or miscalculations. An AI engine with the ability to identify and remediate a multitude of disaster scenarios as well as make decisions based on all possible outcomes can eliminate a lot of potential roadblocks that range from simple efficiency bottlenecks to detecting major threats to your PPC strategy that could have dire ramifications for your budget or bottom line.
It’s no secret that the more specific the data, the more definitively you can articulate its value to your organization. Thus, learning to accurately navigate and analyze granular data is critical to the success of any campaign.
For one, numerous marketing systems are not necessarily accustomed to identifying trends, relying instead on pre-trained algorithms. Granular data offers a distinct, strategic advantage, enabling companies to uncover opportunities that are unique to their specific customer bases and marketing goals. Rather than using a bid management platform to execute how a campaign should perform, marketers can develop a more opportunistic approach.
Organizations that implement a paid channel advertising platform offering highly granular data, such as geo-location info for customers seeking products near them, as well as multi-channel revenue integration to map new users to their customer funnel, will be able to identify and hone in on the most likely of customers, leading to higher conversions and a significant lift in revenue.
No one can envision all of the possibilities, both good and bad, that will affect their campaign. What may sound like a reasonable bid, may in fact be exorbitantly overpriced and detract from ROI. Similarly, what may sound reasonable might cost you clicks and conversions. And without possessing informed insight around all the various outcomes, advertisers have little to no time to adequately adjust their campaign strategy.
A bid simulator will provide the answers to an almost endless array of “what if” scenarios. Want to know if you would get more impressions by raising your bid? Or fewer impressions if you lowered it? How much do you have to increase your bid to significantly impact your conversion rate?
In addition, a bid simulator can provide handy estimates of the clicks, impressions, conversion value and cost that would have resulted with any given proposed bid. It could also display the same estimates based on a campaign-wide bid, or increase or decrease your campaign-level bid by a certain percentage. In short, it’s an easy way to take the guesswork out of bidding and avoid any sloppy, uninformed, or otherwise unnecessary mistakes.
It might be surprising but a number of PPC advertisers are either inadequately tracking conversions or aren’t doing so at all. But you can’t improve upon what you can’t measure. And if you aren’t adequately measuring your conversions, tasks like bid optimization will be imprecise at best, and will ultimately suffer because you’ll fail to identify the parts of your campaign that are successful. Thus, to ensure that optimization efforts are truly effective, it’s imperative to leverage a conversion tracking tool that allows you to obtain conversion code and track patterns around metrics for future optimization efforts.
Along the same lines, you can also designate values for various conversions -- a critical feature if you have multiple offers on your site. For example, this would allow you to assign one value for a product that was purchased and another value for gated lead gen content download. Among other things, this will enable you to achieve greater insights into the number of conversions sourced to a campaign, while also providing a deeper understanding of buying trends and the business value of those conversions.
At its core, Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) allows the keyword that triggered the ad placed somewhere in the headline, description, or anywhere else within the ad text.
This technique reflects the user’s actual search query in the ad itself, which makes it an especially effective means of bolstering website traffic. For one, your ads will gain relevancy, as they’re now directly relevant to the item being searched. And you’ll likely benefit from higher click-through rates -- simply because users are more likely to click on ads that have direct bearing on their interests and searches.
Like anything worthwhile, keyword bidding can be a daunting endeavor. Having a solid keyword strategy in place is a great start -- but it’s just a start. As you progress, your campaign strategy will likely adjust as you encounter unanticipated variables and roadblocks along the way.
Bid optimization will give you a financial leg up when encountering unexpected challenges down the road. While it might seem cumbersome and overwhelming, keeping your eyes open for opportunities to optimize at every turn could result in cost savings of thousands to tens of thousands on bids and customer acquisition, all of which add to your bottom line at the end of the quarter or year, while allowing you to realize even more value out your PPC advertising campaign.
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To learn more about how you can realize extra value out your PPC advertising campaigns, connect with our digital media experts today.
For years, when it came to PPC, Google was effectively the only game in town. Sure, there were other ad networks, but none with Google’s massive reach. Amazon is a relative newcomer to the PPC advertising arena, but the company has made huge advances quite quickly. Last year, the Amazon advertising business passed the $1 billion mark between Seller Central Ads and Amazon Marketing Services (AMS).
As an advertiser, which of these options is now the better choice for your PPC marketing budget? The truth is that you should explore and continue to use both. Each one has benefits for specific products and circumstances. Choosing the right one at the right time can mean better results for your business and a better return on every PPC advertising dollar that you spend.
Google offers a few different advertising opportunities. These include search ads that appear along with organic listings in Google's search results, display and text ads on third-party websites, and Google Shopping, which appears as a tab in search results for people who are looking for specific products to purchase.
Amazon advertising, by contrast, are those that appear on Amazon listings. When a user types a keyword into Amazon's search box, they are served organic results as well as Sponsored listings and Headline Search Ads. Amazon ads can also appear on specific product pages as Amazon display or product ads. For instance, if you go to Amazon and look at a product page for a specific bathing suit, you will also see suggested products below or beside the listing.
On the surface, Amazon advertising and Google ads do have a lot in common. They both operate on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. You will need to set budgets and watch them carefully to ensure that your advertising is well-optimized. Ad displays on both networks are triggered by keywords, which means that you need to carefully research what terms prospects use when they are seeking products like yours. Both are displayed before organic listings. Both are organized by ad groups and optimized for conversions.
Yet, despite the similarities, each of these ad networks has fundamental differences that will govern when you use them as part of a campaign. Google's ads can take your prospect directly to your website, while Amazon's take you only to your product page on Amazon. Unlike Google ads, Amazon ads do not retarget based on behavioral information from search, so you lose the ability to make a different, or better, impression on a potential buyer. In addition, Amazon ads are not available to every type of seller, rendering the decision between the two platforms moot for many digital marketers.
That said, if you are in a position to use both Amazon and Google, it's a great idea to keep them both in your repertoire. The key is using each one to its best effect and choosing the right strategy for each. Below are a few of the situations that will determine which network is best for your environment.
Buyers, particularly those who are shopping for high ticket items, go through a series of phases before making a choice to purchase. The metaphor of the sales funnel captures this process. It starts with product awareness, then goes through the interest development, the consideration of other market options, and, finally, making a purchase.
It can take seven to 12 touches before someone is ready to make a purchase. AdWords makes it easier to catch people at each phase of their journey -- from the time they’re first aware of the product to the time they’re ready to purchase -- and create marketing content geared toward their specific needs at every phase. You can create an ad that leads to a product comparison landing page, or one that leads to a free report on the problem your prospect is facing and how your product can be the answer to their dilemma.
The bigger a commitment for a product, the more nurturing you will need to be in order for your lead to convert. Targeting and retargeting someone through a series of AdWords ads as they progress can help you ensure that you are the one who finally convinces and converts them.
Winner: Google ads.
On the other end of the spectrum are people who have considered a purchase and are ready to buy, or those who will buy on a whim when they see a product that suits their needs. Amazon's targeting is all about that final conversion, making it the ideal place to put your ads for last-minute purchases.
With Amazon ads, you are dealing with people who are already looking to purchase. You are either promoting directly on Amazon through Sponsored Products or you are showing people ads for items for which they have already searched elsewhere. A quality display ad in either of these places can be the key to making someone decide to purchase the product that they have been considering.
Winner: Amazon advertising.
If you are looking at pay-per-click (PPC) for the first time, Google's interface can be dizzying. There are numerous options available, each with the goal of honing your technique to give you the best return on your money. However, those who are new or inexperienced may find that it can be difficult to use this platform to their best advantage.
Amazon's interface is far simpler to navigate. There are far fewer options to master, as well as far less competition on this newer, more specialized network than on Google, which has had decades to mature. If you are new to PPC and want to learn the ropes without risking too much of your budget, Amazon can be a great place to get started.
The good news is that much of what you will learn will transfer well to AdWords when you are ready to dive in. Both platforms use match types as well as positive and negative keywords. Both use a bidding system to allow you to decide how much you wish to spend per click on your ad. By starting with the simpler platform, you can get the basics down and gradually move on to the more complex filtering that will serve you well once you feel ready to graduate to Google ads.
Winner: Amazon advertising.
Say you are a company that offers high-end bluetooth speakers. This is a market where names like Bose and Sonos command large portions of the market. If you are going to get traction, you need to win people who might otherwise go straight for the big names and convince them to buy from you instead. So, wouldn't it make sense to capture the audience that searches for those names when they are looking for speakers?
When you advertise on Google, though, you have to be careful about using a competitor's product name among your keywords. You risk poor Quality Scores because their brand name is considered of low relevance to your product. A low Quality Score means that your ads will cost far more per click or will not be seen at all.
On Amazon, by contrast, you are able to target not just generic keywords that refer to bluetooth speakers, but also specific brand names and models. Amazon's quality scores do not take into account the same range of factors as Google's. On Amazon, you are competing purely on conversions. So, if adding a competitor's name to your keyword list causes prospects to visit your listings instead, you can gain conversions and increase your ranking on the site.
If you are able to advertise your products through Amazon's ads, you’ll definitely have an advantage when it comes to positioning your product and taking market share.
Winner: Amazon advertising.
If you are looking to sell something new to a consumer audience, you may not be ready to launch a full website. However, selling and promoting your product on Amazon can be a great move -- over half of all online shopping trips begin on Amazon, more than 300 million people use the site, and it is estimated that 80 million Americans are Amazon Prime members.
Listing on Amazon and then promoting your item through Amazon ads can be a great way to see whether there is an audience out there for your new product. All it takes are great photos (a minimum of 1000 by 1000 pixels for zooming), a clear and compelling headline and a tightly-worded product description and you are in front of one of the largest available audiences of qualified buyers.
Even if you are selling products in brick and mortar locations or your own website, it makes sense these days to be on Amazon as well. A huge number of people go only to Amazon when they are making a purchase online. Listing on Amazon allows you to get access to this audience and borrow the trust associated with Amazon's name.
Winner: Amazon ads.
As soon as someone buys your product on Amazon, the interaction ends. They may return when they need to buy a product like yours again, but there is no ongoing relationship.
In some niches, it makes far more sense for the seller to create an ongoing relationship that continues between purchases. Google ads allow you to target people with whom you wish to create a sustained buyer/seller relationship. Where Amazon just allows the marketing of a single product, Google allows you to advertise in a way that enables you to get website traffic, information in exchange for gated content or sign-ups for a newsletter.
An ongoing relationship can be a powerful thing for your company's revenue over months and years. It’s well established that it takes more money and effort to convert a new customer as opposed to retaining an old one. Retention is far easier when you have a way to keep your business near the top of your customers' minds.
For example, take a company that offers dog food, toys and treats. Through Amazon ads, the company can get a single purchase from a qualified prospect. The customer may or may not be back when they wish to purchase again. However, if this company wished to create an ongoing relationship and win many purchases throughout the year, they could launch a Google ad to sign up for a free newsletter, instead of spending on an ad for one product. This newsletter, which could be delivered weekly or monthly, could contain advice about pet care, pictures of client pets, ads for new products and maybe discount codes for future purchases.
While this is not a strategy for every product or every campaign, it is one that is far more possible with the flexibility of Google ads than with ads on Amazon.
Winner: Google ads.
Amazon ads have a high conversion rate and can get you plenty of profits. However, traffic from these clicks never leaves Amazon's domain. If you are building visitors to your website, this is largely a dead end. You would have to depend on someone Googling your product name or encountering you through organic surfing at some later time.
Google ads allow you to send people wherever you want to send them. If you have many products and services to sell, your own dedicated website remains the best way to create and maintain that audience.
Build traffic by sending people to specific products or to the front of your site to show a wide selection. Suggesting other products of yours below listings featured in your ads gives you opportunities for upselling and cross-selling as well. You can send people to one listing, but also give them the opportunity to see related products that may make a good additional purchase or a good purchase in place of the original product they considered.
Winner: Google ads.
Do you have a supply line that allows you to make or purchase your product for less than your competition? Are you working on a strategy that involves making up through volume what you might lose on your net profit on every sale? Amazon ads can be a great tool for winning conversions.
On Amazon, price is one of the first things that your prospects will see. It appears in bold at the bottom of every ad. If you are in a position to offer a better price than your competition, Amazon can be the best place to be.
Amazon offers an additional advantage in the listing itself by allowing you to set a range of price points for different product variables. You have the option, for instance, of offering different prices on specific colors, models, sizes, and more. If you only offer a significantly lower price on one model, you can still benefit by competing on price in your Amazon ads.
Winner: Amazon advertising.
Amazon's devices, which include the Echo and the Echo dot, occupy at least 8.2 million homes at last count. By contrast, Google Home is now in about half a million houses. Amazon reports that people who use their devices increase their spending on Amazon by about 10 percent. Google added purchasing options to its devices last year, but are still playing catch-up against Alexa and Amazon.
If you have the type of product that is eligible to be sold through an Amazon device, improving your visibility on the platform can pay off.
Winner: Amazon advertising.
The most important thing to consider when deciding between spending on Amazon or Google is what you want to accomplish. Using the right product at the right time allows you to leverage the benefits of each. Both Amazon and Google ads have extraordinary value to offer digital marketers. Take time to learn about both and develop campaigns and strategies tailored to each platform. Over time, you will find that you are able to extract the most value out of these powerful advertising platforms to give you a better return on your PPC marketing investment.
PPC advertising, when managed well, can be one of the most cost-effective tools for reaching your audience. For one, it’s hugely scalable, allowing businesses with budgets ranging from under $100 to tens of thousands of dollars to put their ads in front of qualified audiences. It also gives you an excellent level of control over who sees your ad and what you pay for that exposure.
However, with all of the advantages PPC advertising provides, it is easy to allow budgets to bloat out of control. And often, PPC advertisers worry about whether they are getting enough for their money. The fears are often well-founded -- it’s estimated that 25 cents out of every dollar spent on PPC advertising are wasted because of poorly managed campaigns. While it can be upsetting to learn that you are spending money on clicks that are not benefiting your brand, the good news is that every change you make that your competitors miss puts you ahead. By carefully going over this list and correcting any errors, you can reduce valueless clicks, ensure that the right people see your ad, and that qualified prospects are enticed to click and buy.
By either not targeting, or leaving every campaign wide open, you’ll likely be left with a lot of wasted impressions and clicks. Each campaign should be carefully targeted to the people who are most likely to convert. Google Ads allows you to do a very high level of filtering so that you are putting every PPC ad directly in front of the right people.
However, targeting does not end by creating a campaign on your advertising network. The ad copy and your landing page should also be customized for this audience, as most people are more likely to respond to a message that speaks directly to them. By using the same language as your targeted audience, while focusing on their specific wants and needs, your PPC ads can more effective, which in turn, means a better ROI.
Clicks that send prospects to your homepage are wasted clicks. Why? Your homepage typically has too many choices for prospects and none of them are clearly marked. Instead, a specially-created landing page should be made or updated for every campaign.
These landing pages should have just the right information that your prospects need to make a decision. The design should be clear, with limited copy and a compelling call to action. By upping your quality here, you can get ahead of the competition.
Test different landing page designs and content to see which combinations work best with various audiences. Experiment with the call to action (CTA) placement both above and below the fold. Try different wording. Over time, you'll hone the correct message for each audience and make your ads work harder for you.
The keywords that you think best describe your product or service may not be the ones that your prospects are most likely to search for. To get yourself in front of the eyes of people who are ready to buy, you need to be able to think more like them.
How do you identify the right keywords? This will take some research into your historical performance. Look at ones with high click-through rates, Quality Scores, and conversions. Look at your Search Terms Reports in Adwords to find new keywords to add to your program. If you have a keyword that is getting three or four times as many clicks as other ones, it could make sense to create a specific ad targeted to that keyword. It could be that specific keyword captures what people are most likely to want when they come to your site. By creating an ad that focuses tightly on a high-performing keyword, you are more likely to create ads and landing pages that address what your current and prospective clients are looking for.
Do you typically include price in your ads? Testing the performance of different price points can help you get a much better return on your investment. While many sellers are hesitant to drop profits by dropping prices, it is a strategy that could pay off well in the long term. For example, if you drop a sale price by $2 per unit, but double your conversions as a result, in the end, you will get a far better ROI.
Do people respond better to $20 or to $19.99? How about the difference between price points over $20 and those under? Don't necessarily assume that cheaper is always going to perform better. In some cases, consumers will decide that the higher priced item is naturally better quality. By playing with your prices, you can see which price point works best psychologically with your audience.
And don't just limit your testing to pricing. You can also test the performance of dollar discounts versus percentage discounts. A $4 discount on a $20 product is the same as a 20% discount, but each will have a different impact on your clientele.
While many of the suggestions here are more labor intensive, this one can save you both time and money. Platforms that offer automated rules make it possible to automatically adjust your campaigns based on criteria you set up in advance. You can even automatically run A/B tests. Think of it as cruise control for your PPC advertising. You can schedule ads in advance, adjust bids, pause low-performing keywords or ads and control your overall budget. Automated rules are especially helpful for those times when you may not react as quickly to changes, such as overnight or during long weekends when you are away.
By setting some of these tasks on autopilot, you can ensure that changes are made as soon as the system notices that they are needed, instead of manually adjusting when you have time to get back into the account. Pausing an ad that gets a lot of clicks but few conversions, for instance, can help increase your conversion rate for your PPC advertising as a whole.
Many PPC advertisers do not monitor this metric as closely as they should. Your impression share is the number of impressions your ads receive, divided by the estimated number of impressions for which your ads were eligible. If you are missing out on a large number of impressions, it is a sign that something is out of whack. Maybe your budget is not appropriate for the keywords you are competing on. Or, you have issues with a rank that is not what it should be. Google Ads can tell you what you need to do to get your marketing back on track. Make adjustments to increase your impression share and to get your ads in front of the right audience.
This report does a lot of your measuring for you. It will tell you, at a glance, which changes you or another team member made that caused your metrics to either improve or fall off. Looking at these can make it easier to tell what is helping your ROI and what is hurting.
When you identify a change that hurts your return, make a note to put that strategy on the back burner. But, when you discover one that gives you an improvement, figure out what elements can be transferred to other ads and other campaigns. Over time, you can identify the very best practices to consistently get better performance on your PPC ads.
Negative keywords are integral to a PPC advertising campaign with a high ROI. However, some advertisers do not bother to build out this list and use it to its full potential. Adding negative keywords helps you keep your ads out of view of people who are not likely to convert to customers.
Just as keywords define what your campaign is about, negative keywords help you exclude the things that it isn't. For instance, if you run a sushi restaurant, "best sushi" would be relevant while "best sushi recipes" would not.
Finding the best negative keywords for your campaign involves the same process as finding positive ones. When doing keyword research, carefully look at the suggested related keywords in results. Those that do not apply to your business can be safely excluded. Some advertisers also eliminate keywords that are likely to lead to clicks but yield few conversions. For instance, "free" is a commonly chosen negative keyword because many advertisers believe that people looking for free advice or services are unlikely to pull out their wallets when it comes time to purchase.
You only have so many characters in a PPC ad. On Google's text ads in search, your limit is currently 30 characters for each of three headlines, 90 for each of two descriptions, and 15 for each path. Make them all count.
Is there a shorter, punchier word that can be used? Do you need every article and conjunction? Play with your text until it is perfectly optimized for impact.
One of the keys to well-optimized ads is to make they are as action-oriented as possible. Ask questions. Suggest actions. Tap into emotions. The more direct you are and the more on-target your ads, the more likely you are to win clicks and conversions.
When we are pursuing organic traffic, we're counseled to get as high up in the rankings as we can. However, going for the top spot all the time may not be the best use of your PPC advertising money. Different spots on the page may give you different results and make it more likely that you are going to catch a customer's eye and win their business.
The top ad spot may not be the one that has the best conversions for you and your brand. Try altering your bid so that you come in at number 3 or 5, then watch your conversions. If you find that a lower bid actually gives you a better conversion rate, you have a double win. Not only are you getting better conversions; you will be able to lower your spending per click, leading to a significant improvement in your ROI over time.
Your call to action is the most important copy in both your ad and landing page. And both need calls to action that are clear, concise and actionable. Decide what you want your prospect to do, then ask them to do it.
Customize each CTA for every ad. Using the same wording that everyone else uses can cause bored consumers' eyes to glide right over your ads without making an impression. However, if you have a CTA that is a little different from the norm, you may compel someone who normally ignores ads into reading and responding to yours.
Be innovative while always staying within the rules. For instance, you might not be able to say "click," but you can ask for other actions. "Call now," "buy" and " sign up today" are all offers that can compel your reader to take the action you want. If you have a lot of mobile users, you can even use "tap now," which is both a permitted phrase and a more accurate description of what you want the readers to do when they see your ad.
Google, Apple, and creators of other browsers have been steadily moving toward building a more secure internet. And future precautions include warning visitors when they come to a site with an expired SSL certificate or one that is potentially insecure.
Desktop users are used to navigating past these notices -- they'll typically close them and go on their way, particularly when they are dealing with a familiar site. However, on mobile devices, these warnings are imposing, often taking up the entire page.
When someone comes across this kind of warning while they are surfing, they may decide that they are not willing to continue to the page. Sometimes it is because they are worried about the harm the page might cause their system. Other times, especially on mobile, it is because they are unable to close the pop-up to see the full page. In either circumstance, their actions will leave you with a wasted click.
Thus, updating your security can result in a dramatic change. In one case study, one small tweak resulted in a 400% increase in conversions without any additional changes.
It might seem counterintuitive, but sometimes you can get better results by forgetting everything that you know. When we all pursue best practices, such as proper headline capitalization or action-oriented CTAs, all of our ads can start to look the same. Temporarily abandoning the rules can help you stand out.
As an example, try removing all punctuation and capitalization from an ad. Try going for a more wordy, but less detailed description. Look at other things that you regularly do and then try doing something else.
While often a different way of doing something is simply wrong, other times, it's just different. And different might be what you need to stand out from the digital noise that defines the current online landscape.
If you are nervous about this approach, try doing it with a small budget for a short period of time. You can even A/B test this technique against a more conventional ad that uses the same keywords and budget. In some cases, you will find that the rules are there for a reason and that your rule-breaking ad does not get you the results you want. However, in others, you might find that a rule-breaker is just what you need to shake up your strategy and improve your PPC advertising ROI.
Every action that you take toward a better-managed PPC advertising campaign is an action that gives you an edge over your competition. If you are running tightly managed PPC campaigns while they do the minimum or worse, you can easily spend less on the same advertising exposure while getting better results. What has worked in the past may not be the same strategy that will work in the future, and the business that adjusts is the one that will thrive. Over time, this will mean a better return on every click and a chance to make every penny in each advertising campaign work harder for you.
Like any industry, digital marketing comes with its own set of policies and best practices aimed at helping customers create value, streamlining processes, and enabling them to execute a more effective online marketing strategy.
But what are the drivers behind those practices? What are some of the elements they share that make them effective?
Leveraging insights garnered from our own industry experts, we took a look at some of the practices and protocols that have led to the best results for digital marketing campaigns, while also examining how those practices have changed over time.
Among other things, that means knowing your company, your industry, your competition, your customer and your products and services. Many companies either lack this fundamental data or focus on simply pumping out copious information without context, so knowing whether that information has value for your customers is critical to the overall success of your campaign and digital marketing strategy in general. Deep knowledge of the market, industry and digital trends will help you focus and refine your message and better target your audience, while positioning you as an industry thought leader, equipped with the foresight to take your campaign to the next level.
As many marketing executives can attest, the return on investment for your marketing budget can be difficult to prove - in general, around 60 percent of small businesses have difficulty proving the value of their social media marketing efforts. That said, marketers who can prove the ROI resulting from their decisions are 1.6 times more likely to see a budget increase. Though it might take some systemic changes to your analysis processes, tracking and calculating the ROI of your digital marketing activities can deliver stronger results by shining a light on what works best for your business, while providing tangible proof to your superiors that your efforts are contributing to the bottom line and creating value for the organization.
Nobody likes rambling, long-winded jokes that fall flat at the punchline. Your digital marketing strategy should take the same approach. It’s likely not surprising that these days, the average person has around an 8-second attention span. That means your marketing message needs to grab the viewer's attention immediately while also packing a lot of insightful and relevant information in a very short span of time.
It might sound simple, but because many aspects of digital marketing are complex and easily misunderstood, many businesses simply toss money at marketing challenges rather than taking the time to truly understand what those challenges are and how to change their outcomes for the better. Thus, it's often difficult for business executives to improve their results, gain insight into where their strategy is lacking or why their current approaches aren’t effective. By having a solid grasp of the forces that drive the results, you can develop a better plan to take advantage of success metrics or improve areas where the results are poor.
Not that long ago, a business tried to broaden itself to reach as many prospective customers as possible. Today, that means reaching somewhere in the area of 1.8 billion people who are expected to do business online. With a population of potential customers that large, it's vital to shift that focus from reaching as many customers as possible to reaching the right customers. By focusing your digital marketing on the most profitable customer demographic for your business, you'll see better profitability with less work.
Analytics are often implemented to help improve machine learning and attain insightful information about industry trends, your activities and your website. However, those statistics are only as good as the data you provide. Getting bad data because you have a conversion pixel in the wrong location can skew your projections, analysis and insights, while also causing you to misinterpret the information and pour more money into an aspect of your marketing that isn't as profitable as you think it is.
Your website visits, Facebook likes and conversions are only part of the picture. To fully understand how to optimize the process of moving prospects to sales, you need to take the time and have the tools in place to follow your leads through the entire customer journey - from initial contact to after-sale follow up. Avid attention throughout the entire process is critical - especially for real-time analysis and pivoting in response to unanticipated challenges. If, for example, you find that you're losing half of your leads at a particular point in the process, you then have the ability to change the course at that point to see if you can improve the outcomes from that part of the funnel on.
When you're spending an exorbitant amount of your marketing time on your blog, analytics and social media sites, it can be easy to forget to update your website regularly. However, while you might get significant traffic to your website from your other activities, it might not be from sales. Take the time to regularly review your website and update it to provide a better overall user experience and information that is up to date with your company's current activities and offerings.
Sure, you know that almost everyone has a smartphone, but does that really impact your business' bottom line? In short, absolutely! In 2015, Google announced that mobile searches had passed traditional desktop searches for the first time, and that change has accelerated over the past few years. Thus, it’s imperative that mobile is strongly considered when devising your marketing plans and strategy, including ensuring that both the content you create and your website are mobile-friendly, in order to retain visitors and improve the overall customer experience.
Among the changes that digitization and disruption have brought to the market is the need for businesses to remain agile in their operations, including marketing. The market is shifting faster than ever before and your business needs to be able to move quickly to meet that challenge. Make sure that your marketing plan allows flexibility so that you can respond quickly to these changes and take advantage of changing market conditions the way that newer businesses like Airbnb, Uber and other market disruptors have done.
It's easy to simply turn on a conversation bot and pre-plan your social media posts for the next month, but that doesn't mean you should ignore your social media in the meantime. When a customer has an issue and tries to resolve it via social media, your company could look impervious to the needs of its customers if the post is ignored. Check all your social media accounts on a daily basis to make sure that any prospective smoldering PR fires don't turn into a blaze. Taking the time to provide personalized attention to your customers could make the difference between a customer who is thrilled with the service they received and one who will leave terrible reviews.
With the sharp rise of people asking Google, Siri and Alexa for information, you need to make sure that your information is available in a way that Google, Apple and Amazon AIs can find, as well as understand and deliver to new prospects. Keep the information in short segments - for example, a five minute podcast discussing industry issues on a daily or weekly basis that people can listen to while getting dressed for work, sitting at their kids’ soccer practice or making dinner. This ultimately will allow you to grow your business without a lot of extra work and expense.
Everyone wants a renowned thought leader in their industry to talk about their products, services or business. But beyond that, influencer marketing can have a strong impact on your company's reach in the digital world. In an environment where millions of updates, tweets and blog posts are published every minute, consumers are turning to influencers to get a vetted perspective on the best possible products, brands and services. By using an influencer to push your product, you're not only getting their followers to notice you, you're getting their stamp of approval on your product, which goes a long way to improving customer trust and increasing brand loyalty.
Though people have shorter attention spans these days, longer pieces of content are still ranking highest among Google searches simply because they provide depth of information that shorter pieces can’t. How do you decide whether to use short-form or long-form content? The simple answer is that you don't. Use a combination of both, from an every-character-counts tweet to a free, gated ebook aimed at generating leads. By varying content length and style, you can reach your customers at every point in their daily life, whether they’re taking a few seconds to catch up on Twitter or settling down for a few hours' of reading time.
By maintaining a solid grasp of the current best practices, while understanding why they are important, you'll be able to better focus your digital marketing efforts and budget where they'll have the biggest impact in your company. What’s more, you’ll also be able to track progress and make better digital marketing decisions by having more insight into the drivers behind these changes.
Digital marketing is affected by seasonal trends; there are many advantages – and a few disadvantages – to following seasonal advertising trends. It’s important to understand why seasonality matters and how to manage your digital marketing accordingly in order to make seasonal marketing work for you.
Seasonal marketing can be a lot of fun. It provides an opportunity to get creative with your digital advertising and messaging. Don’t be afraid to depart from the norm and do something different to stand out! Whether you're advertising based on the seasons themselves, or specific (well-known or more esoteric) holidays, following seasonal trends can produce great results. Yet is it really the most effective way to market your agency, brand, or product? We explore further below.
Depending on performance, some seasonal ads may be recycled year-over-year. Make small tweaks to the messaging to A/B test year-over-year if needed; see what resonates with your audience and ditch the rest. Recirculating or repurposing winning ads is a cost-effective way to remain competitive.
There are a number of ways to make seasonal advertising trends work for you:
Plan ahead. Marketing efforts should start a few weeks before the season or holiday actually hits. Materials and media need to be ready to launch just as consumers begin to make their own plans and preparations.
Managing multiple media assets can be challenging — especially when you're making an effort to keep up with seasonal advertising trends. Basis' technology platform centralizes, organizes, and automates digital media across programmatic, direct, search, and social channels. We empower agencies to control their digital business, optimize advertising intelligence, and drive team performance by advocating for the thoughtful integration of digital buying. Contact us today to learn more.
These days, Americans spend more than half of their waking hours consuming media across a variety of connected screens. That’s a lot of screen-time—and it’s created a multitude of challenges behind the scenes. Many marketers are struggling to effectively reach consumers who are connected to an average of 4 or more devices a day. How can marketers acknowledge the significance of understanding their consumers’ journey across multiple screens, and seek to craft media and marketing plans that reflect those behaviors?
This webinar spotlights the notable rise of cross-screen behaviors and how cross-device technologies can help advertisers take important steps to better connect with their audiences.
At its core, the idea behind automated bidding is a simple one: it's a process designed to take all of the heavy lifting and guesswork out of the equation within the context of your online advertising campaigns, allowing you to use real data and actionable insight to achieve specific goals for your brand in easier ways than ever before. In essence, it's an opportunity for you to work "smarter, not harder" — crafting the right strategy to meet your needs that lets you focus less on bidding and more on actually making a connection with the people you were trying to reach in the first place.
For years, online marketers have been using it as an opportunity to generate higher levels of return on investment with far less work required than ever before. But it also represents something far more powerful and important. It's confirmation of the fact that, in this day and age, with the technology we now have available to us, there is absolutely no reason to manage your advertising bidding manually any longer. Any benefits you think you're gaining in terms of control are at the sacrifice of insight and expertise, not to manage a process that creates more time for you to focus on all of the qualities of your campaign that matter most of all in the eyes of your consumers.
All told, the rise of automated bidding is a fascinating story, indeed — and taking a moment to appreciate how far we've come can easily help shed light on where we might be going, together.
The story of automated bidding, in general, begins in the early 2000s, back during the dawn of what would eventually become known as pay-per-click (PPC advertising). As advertisers moved into the digital world and onto the Internet in droves, many ad platforms (like Google Ads) needed advertisers to actually set a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) that they were comfortable with. This quickly proved to be a lot easier said than done.
For starters, maximum CPC isn't necessarily the top priority of a digital marketer -- they're (correctly) focused on things like visibility, conversions, sales, leads, etc. These are all tangible goals that weren't as directly related to CPC as they needed to be, and were more appropriate to gauge against something like cost-per-acquisition (CPA) or even return on advertising spend (ROAS).
CPC was important, yes — but it was only one small part of a much larger story. Yet at the same time, advertisers needed to essentially find a way to convert all of their short and long-term business goals through this one particular lens — essentially bringing together what they were trying to accomplish with the information they needed to find a kind of "Happy Medium" or middle ground.
Even advertisers who liked manual bidding usually agree that while they were able to make this system work, it was hardly the best possible use of their time.
Beyond this was the fact that, over time, services like Google Ads themselves grew more complicated. Things got particularly tricky during the mobile revolution, when advertisers suddenly had access to huge volumes of new data that were unavailable a few short years ago. Which types of device, geographic locations, and demographics impacted nearly every level of their campaign, yet they still had to funnel everything through one particular (and limited) lens.
This is where automated bidding quickly proved its value, not only in terms of how it could help the average marketer save a great deal of time, but also with regards to how it could help people with more advanced and important goals in far easier ways as well.
But at the same time, it's important to acknowledge that automated bidding itself is not necessarily a silver bullet. It's not a magic wave of the hand that will instantly allow you to achieve all of your goals and send your return on investment into the stratosphere. It's ultimately a tool, the same as anything else. It is possible to misuse a tool or fail to tap into its potential if you're still not quite sure what you're doing.
There are different types of automated bidding strategies, for example, that are designed to be used in entirely different ways. All of them require you to consider a few core factors.
As stated, an automated bid strategy is one that automatically sets bid values for ads on the advertiser’s behalf, based on the overall likelihood that the ad in question will result in either a click or conversion. Different types of strategies can be created based on exactly what it is you're trying to accomplish, such as increasing your visibility in search results on engines like Google, increasing clicks, increasing conversions, increasing the value of those conversions, and much more.
In a conversion-based automated bid strategy, for example, unique bids will be set for each auction based on all analytical data present at the time. So different bids may be made depending on where the specific ad is being shown, what type of device a user will be seeing it on, what type of browser they're using, or even the time of day. All of this directly impacts that ad's ability to achieve your goal, which in turn affects the bid, which then ties directly back into the amount you're expected to pay in the first place.
As opposed to the alternative of manual CPC bidding, you don't actually need to manually update your bids to take into consideration specific ad groups or even unique keywords. Absolutely everything happens on your behalf, based on the strategy in place and the specifics that you've decided at the outset of the campaign.
Not only does this often involve a campaign that is far more cost-effective and easier to run, but one that also performs better than you would be able to achieve on your own as well.
There are a number of other automated bidding strategies that you can choose to use depending on your current campaign goals. These include but are certainly not limited to the following:
These are the seven strategies that are currently available in Google's own advertising platform. They've gone by a number of different names in the past, but the core objectives at the heart of them all have remained the same. You can always come up with your own strategies to get more specific and customized with your efforts, of course -- but for a lot of people, especially those who are just getting into automated bidding for the first time, picking one of these existing strategies is the perfect foundation to build from moving forward.
However, Google Ads automated bidding capabilities are only the tip of the iceberg. There are a number of amazing platforms now that can put automated bidding on steroids and can fundamentally transform your SEM and PPC campaigns into revenue-generating machines.
With predictive advertising platforms, you can not only automatically generate 8.2 million combinations of bid adjustments for each keyword, but also set the platform to maximize profit or revenue capacity.
As you begin to research this topic in greater detail, you'll be immediately greeted by two terms: standard bid strategies and portfolio bid strategies.
A standard bid strategy is one that was only ever designed to be applied to a single campaign. Even if you're running multiple campaigns using the same standard target strategy, they're still all going to be treated as individuals. Decisions will be made within the context of those silos and one campaign won't affect another in any appreciable way.
Generally speaking, standard bid strategies are ideal for situations where that lack-of-crossover isn't a disadvantage, but an asset. If you're running a branded and non-branded campaign, for example, you don't necessarily want those two to mix. You've likely got very different goals and you're trying to hit very different targets. When you use a standard strategy, the difference between what you actually paid and what you were willing to pay won't be re-allocated from the branded campaign to the non-branded campaign and vice versa.
A portfolio strategy, by and large, is the opposite of that. With this type of strategy, multiple campaigns that are all sharing the same goal are treated less as individuals and more as a larger unit - or in other words, as a portfolio. The major advantage of this is that if you've got three campaigns that are performing well and one that is performing poorly, those successful campaigns can help subsidize a bit of the loss you're taking on the less successful one. Oftentimes this can be a great way to drive more conversions and it's a benefit that you don't really have when using a standard strategy.
You would definitely want to use a portfolio strategy if you were using multiple campaigns to sell different but similar items within the context of the same end goal. If you were setting up individual campaigns for PRODUCT A and PRODUCT B, but both A and B were made from basically the same materials, performed similar functions and you were targeting very similar groups of people, it's likely a good idea to let them share data and work together instead of separately.
If PRODUCT A was a sophisticated new type of flashlight and PRODUCT B was a new mobile phone, on the other hand, these two products couldn't be more different and a standard strategy would ultimately be the way to go.
Having said that, there are still a number of important considerations you need to make to help guarantee that your automated bidding efforts get off on the right foot.
One of the most important things to understand is that you should really avoid making any frequent changes to automated bid campaigns if you can help it. Remember that the bidding algorithm is actually responding to a huge volume of information and every change you make to the campaign means that the algorithm needs to "learn" everything all over again. This takes time and can absolutely affect your performance in the short-term.
If you're going to be making any type of optimizations at all, proceed with caution and only do what is absolutely necessary. Most people agree that it will take about a week for your campaign to stabilize after that, so make sure that every move counts.
Likewise, you should always be sure to take advantage of the reporting tools that platforms like Google put at your fingertips. Not only can you rest easy knowing that your bidding is taken care of, but you can also view reams of historical data to help make more thoughtful and informed decisions moving forward.
Google's reporting tools involve bid strategy statuses, for example, that let you see exactly what is going on with your campaigns at any given moment. You can set up alerts and notifications that will instantly clue you in on issues with conversion tracking that you may be experiencing and provide actionable steps on how to fix them.
You can even use Google's own bid simulators to try to gain insight into the number of conversions an ad MIGHT have gotten had you set different targets at the outset. Along the same lines are campaign drafts and experiments, which are intended to let you test how automated bidding will fare against whatever manual bidding method you're currently using. You can even use this to help you pick out a strategy and make more informed decisions in the future.
These tools are available to you right from your user account. It would be an absolute shame not to take full advantage of them whenever possible.
Over the last two decades, digital advertising as a concept and as a platform has gone through one incredible transformation after another. There was a day where ads on the Internet were actually something of a novelty, if you can remember back that far. Flash forward to today and not only did digital ad spend come in at $83 billion in 2017 according to one study, but it's also predicted to reach a massive $129 billion by as soon as 2021.
Despite all that, one thing remains unchanged: Google still holds the largest share of total digital ad spend in the United States, coming in at an incredible 38.6%. This is with good reason, too — for every $1 a brand spends on Google Ads (formerly AdWords), they can typically expect to make an average of $2 in revenue as a result. To that end, digital advertising has long proven itself to be more than just another marketing opportunity. It's become one of the dominant forms of communication on the planet, connecting businesses with their customers in new and innovative ways with each passing day.
Unless, of course, you're still setting your bids manually.
When it comes to the idea of manually bidding on each and every term, manual bidding is very much one of those things where the old saying "just because you CAN do it doesn't mean you SHOULD" applies. Technology itself has evolved over the years to make our lives faster, more efficient and more convenient than ever in a practically limitless number of ways. This can and absolutely should extend to the world of online advertising — provided you're willing to allow it, that is.
Make absolutely no mistake about it: if you're still working with manual bidding in the modern era, you're not only doing things the hard way — you're also doing them the wrong way.
In an era where competition is more fierce than ever and margins are getting thinner and thinner all the time, this is absolutely one mistake that you, your brand and your customers cannot afford to make.
Website redesigns often require reconstructing at least part of a site from scratch, which can send search engine marketers back to square one. If the redesign project is not completed correctly and critical steps are missed, a website redesign has the potential to send a website into a tailspin. Even when a website redesign is done well, most redesigned sites see a minimum of a seven-to-10% drop in traffic. When done wrong, “redesigned” sites can see traffic plummet. What’s more, it can take weeks or months for the site to regain its lost traffic.
Given this, if you’re a search engine marketer in charge of a site that’s going to be redesigned, you need a plan for surviving the website redesign. The following steps will help minimize any negative impact that the project might have on your SEM efforts, and ensure your hard-earned SEM accomplishments aren’t lost during or after the redesign.
Your first step in preparing for the website redesign should be to gather a team of people who can assist with the work required. Unless you run a one-person microsite, there’s too much work for one person to manage. Even if your sole responsibility is SEM, you’ll quickly be overwhelmed with all that there is to do and coordinate.
The people on your team should fill a number of roles. There should be a:
You may also want to bring on IT staff, social media marketer or peripheral people.
Of course, the size of your team will depend on how large your site and its support staff is. Large sites may have a different person assume each of these roles, while small sites might have individuals simultaneously assuming several roles.
Recruiting team members isn’t difficult, as everyone you need will already be working in these roles. Gathering a team is about being intentional and setting up a meeting with all the people who are involved so that everyone can understand each other’s needs and be on the same page. If you don’t get people together, SEM can easily be overlooked in the midst of everything else and your concerns may be unacknowledged, ignored or neglected.
Once everyone is together, you’ll want to create a plan that has three distinct phases: pre-launch, launch and post-launch.
While there’s a lot of technical work to do before launching the newly rebuilt website, search engine marketing concerns are fairly simple. The focus is primarily on making sure the site’s organic search rankings are affected as little as possible during the initial launch of the new site. To this end, there’s some on-site SEO work to do and a few PPC campaigns to set up.
Start by getting a new sitemap of the current site so you know exactly what will need to be done for on-site SEO. Rather than using an older sitemap, fetch a new one using a crawling tool like ScreamingFrog or DeepCrawl. Both tools (and others) will generate a sitemap and show you some items that are relevant to on-site SEO.
With a freshly generated sitemap in hand, carefully review it with your webmaster and SEO specialist. Discuss how the site’s architecture will be changing and what alterations must be made to the sitemap in light of the new architecture.
Make sure someone is given the specific responsibility of updating the sitemap before launching the new site. Having an accurate sitemap in place for the new site will be essential for SEO, since search engines can only rank pages if they’re able to crawl sites accurately.
Assuming the site architecture is changing, some on-page elements will need to be changed in order to maximize on-page relevance. The content creator will likely do most of the actual work, but the SEO specialist ought to be consulted.
Exactly what needs to be changed will depend on how much the architecture of your site is changing. You may need to adjust pages’:
As you work through each page, team members may notice changes that can be made to improve the user experience or increase conversion rates. Work with the project lead to determine what changes should be made before launch and which ones can wait until after launch. The leader might not want to delay launching for changes that’ll only have a small impact or that take too long to implement.
The most important part of this step is to make sure all page elements are updated before launching the new site. You’ll want search engines to be able to easily determine what pages are about from the first day that the new site launches.
One of the most important aspects of pre-launch preparation is addressing dead links. This is a matter of both SEO and user experience. Links pass link equity and help search engines determine pages’ topics, and no users like landing on dead pages.
Use the same crawling tool you previously ran a sitemap with to find 404 pages that may have dead links pointing to them. Then, confirm that these are 404s in Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools.
There are a few ways to address any dead pages you find. You can:
It’s often worth spending a little time manually fixing the major links that point to a dead page, but the less important links offer a much lower return on the time invested. Therefore, you might want to focus on a few major links and create a redirect that’ll be sufficient for any lesser ones.
Link changes and redirects certainly should be taken care of before launch so that referral traffic coming from external links can find the new site and on-site visitors aren’t frustrated with a bunch of dead pages. Dead links don’t look good on new sites.
Even with your team’s best efforts, there’ll likely be at least a temporary drop in the site’s organic rankings. Search engines will need a little time to crawl all the pages and discover all the links, and redirects don’t pass on all of their link equity.
Per Moz’s reporting back in the days of PageRank, Google eventually determined that redirects from HTTP to HTTPS would pass on all of their link equity. Redirects that aren’t to adopt the HTTPS protocol, however, lose about 15% of their link equity. Although PageRank is no longer a ranking factor, there’s no sign that Google stopped treating redirects’ link equity in this way.
Running additional PPC campaigns while the new site becomes established is an easy way to compensate for potential drops in organic rankings. Find out what organic search terms generate are most important to your site’s organic traffic, and then ask the PPC marketer to create campaigns around those terms. The paid advertisements will ensure your site’s still visible in searches until the organic rankings recover.
These campaigns shouldn’t be started until the new site launches, but they should be created and ready to go. Don’t worry about split-testing and refining them too much, since they’ll hopefully only be used for a short time.
At the time of launch, most of the immediate responsibilities will fall to the team members who actually did the website redesign. There’s not a lot of immediate SEM work to do, but you may be needed for some crisis management.
The best way team members who aren’t directly involved with the technical aspects of the new site can help with the site’s launch is by simply keeping their schedules free and minds open.
Anything can go awry on the day of launching, and even well-planned launches sometimes experience difficulties. Should a problem arise, developers may need all hands on deck to help address the issue. People can only help if they’re free of other obligations.
Helping with launch issues may involve any type of work, which is why being flexible is essential at this point in time. There’s a chance that you and other team members will be asked to do something not related to SEM or the other roles listed above. That might involve searching for dead links, checking specific snippets of code or just getting developers lunch while they work continuously on a problem.
Whatever is asked, now is the time to help and not protest that something’s beyond your responsibilities. Pitch in however you can, and your efforts will be appreciated and remembered. Assisting so issues are promptly resolved will also let you return to SEM work sooner.
The one SEM item that should be taken care of at this time is launching those PPC campaigns that were previously set up. This should require little more than re-checking bidding parameters and actually starting the campaigns.
When setting bids for these campaigns, bid high to make sure your ads will appear alongside search results. This is one of the few times in PPC marketing when return on investment isn’t the primary objective. Instead, keeping your site visible should be pursued as the main goal—even if that means over-spending on ads temporarily. If you need a lot of extra funds to sustain these campaigns, talk to your project lead about boosting your PPC budget this one time.
You can ask the PPC marketer to keep an eye on these campaigns during launch, but they shouldn’t require close monitoring. As long as you’ve set bids appropriately, the campaigns should be fine on their own for a little while. There’s no sense in micromanaging them since they’ll soon be ended, and not micromanaging lets the PPC marketer be free to help with other issues should they arise.
You might want to ask the social media manager to increase posting activity shortly after launch. Extra posts can help compensate for a temporary loss in search traffic, and social activity can help SEO.
Increasing social activity should be done cautiously and only after the initial launch, though. The tactic can backfire if there are any issues with the new site, as increasing traffic will only increase the number of aggravated users.
After the immediate activity of the launch is over, the post-launch phase becomes one of checks and steady SEM growth.
Soon after the new site is live, check to make sure all redirects are functioning properly and there aren't any dead pages that were missed. The easiest way to do this is by using your chosen crawling tool to create a sitemap of the new site.
Any 404 errors that are found should be redirected. If there’s no new content for them, the redirects should be made permanent. If there is content intended for them, use redirects until the content is uploaded so that the user experience isn’t impacted as much.
In the days, weeks and months following the site’s launch, carefully monitor all forms of search traffic. Watch organic traffic and paid traffic, as well as what search traffic is going to any secondary platforms like a Facebook page or external blog. If the new site has subdomains, watch for variations in the number of visitors each one sees.
Watching your site’s search traffic will help gauge how SEO and PPC campaigns are going, and it’ll alert you to any SEM emergencies that may arise. If there’s a sudden drop in traffic, it’s probably not due to a search engine update. In the period after a new site launch, drops are more likely to be caused by issues with the site or its SEM campaigns.
As you see SEO efforts grow organic traffic back to pre-launch levels, slowly decrease the temporary PPC campaigns that were set up. There’s no reason to run these short-term campaigns once the new site’s pages are ranking for the targeted terms.
How quickly you can reduce these campaigns depends on how well SEO goes and whether you’ve created a bidding war with your elevated budget. If competitors have increased their bids to match yours during this time, don’t cancel the campaigns all at once. Instead, lower your bids or reduce the number of ads you bid on slowly as the new site’s pages climb up the organic rankings.
If you do want to continue running campaigns for any of the terms, work with the PPC marketer to design campaigns that are better researched and have gone through more extensive testing. When transitioning from a temrporary to a sustained campaign, it makes sense to invest more resources in maximizing the ROI.
Going forward, continue to watch what organic traffic is being generated. Look not only at the amount of traffic, but also check what terms are bringing in visitors.
With a new site, there’s a good chance that you’ll see new search terms bringing in visitors. Some of these terms might be worth creating PPC campaigns for. An analysis of the costs-per-click for these terms will show whether you should also run paid ads for any of them.
Since these are long-term campaigns, you will want to carefully optimize the ads for maximum ROI.
As soon as you get word that your website will be redesigned, be proactive. Take action by gathering a team and developing a plan for keeping SEM in tact during the website redesign.
Get everyone to:
If you do all of this, your site’s search engine marketing should emerge from the redesign with strength. You won’t lose all of the hard work that you’ve already put into organic and paid campaigns. Nor will you lose the traffic those campaigns generate.