retargeting Google Ads

Remarketing has consistently proven to be an effective way of driving conversions and closing potential customers. In fact, according to ABTasty.com, retargetting ads typically have 10x higher click through rate than your average Display ads, and the visitors that come to your website via those ads are 70% more likely to convert.

What is remarketing?

Remarketing in Google Ads is made up of a variety of Search and Display ads across the Google Ads Network. The main difference is the targeting of the ads. Your ads are being seen by people who may have already visited your website, engaged with your ads or taken some other valuable action. Therefore, they are more inclined to respond favorably to your ads.

If your business is eCommerce, or if you are trying to generate leads through your site, remarketing is a useful and efficient strategy to help you convert those hard-earned visitors.

remarketing audiences google ads

Why remarketing is important?

As an increasing amount of digital marketers have turned to remarketing, Google has subsequently improved and fine tuned its offering and remarketing capabilities. These changes have meant remarketing generating a large click share. Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) and customer lists now play a huge part in paid search strategies and have proven very effective also.

These types of engaged audiences are high-value, given that their past interactions with the brand, increase the likelihood of a conversion at a later date. Audiences are not necessarily a one-size-fits-all, and some conversions may happen regardless of whether or not there is a paid search ad served to specific customers.

What do you need to do?

As with all things digital, it is crucial that you test. Results will vary by advertiser, but testing should be done in order to measure the incremental value of these audiences for your business.

This testing can be done by adding in variables such as ad copy, landing pages, bid modifiers, or even shutting ads off completely to specific audiences to gauge the traffic and conversion losses. This can, however, be a risky strategy, so we would only encourage you to do this, if you are in a comfortable position in relation to your targets, Return On Investment and any other KPIs you may have set for your business.

Also, measure audience performance against the brand’s KPIs to see if they align, or are significantly higher or lower.

Pay attention to your funnel

Don’t forget, the point at which the visitor has dropped off tells you whether they are cool, warm or hot in terms of lead rating. This means that you may want to vary your ads depending on your visitor’s actions. For example, if a customer has simply viewed a product (in this case, a red jumper) on your site, you might retarget them with a Display ad that shows the same jumper and perhaps other similar products. However, if somebody has Added To Cart and then left the site, you may retarget them with a message along the lines of “look what you’ve left behind”, or create a sense of urgency by putting a time limit on the price.

It is important to segment your remarketing audience for this reason. Personalising the customer touch points where possible will help your remarketing efforts and ultimately, will lead to a higher conversion rate.

In conclusion, remarketing audiences should play a huge part in your PPC strategy. Remember, you have done the hard part by getting them to your site in the first place, so remarketing to those visitors and closing those sales is an efficient way to drive your revenue. List creation, targeting and personalisation based on what stage of the funnel your visitor has reached, are all incredibly effective ways to improve your overall Return On Investment, so don’t delay. Start incorporating remarketing into your PPC strategy as soon as possible.

If you would like to talk to us on how to effectively set up or even improve your remarketing efforts, contact our PPC experts here at WebResults today.

Google Country Specific Fees

Last week, Google announced that it is introducing extra charges, also known as country-specific fees, for advertisers in the UK, Turkey and Austria. These charges are effective from the 1st of November 2020.

But why? And what does this mean for advertisers in these countries? We’ve delved into it for you, so read on and learn what these fees could mean for your business or your clients.

How much are the country-specific fees?

Google has said it will introduce the following:

• Ads served in Turkey: a 5% Regulatory Operating Cost added to your invoice or statement
• Ads served in Austria: a 5% Austria Digital Services Tax Fee added to your invoice or statement
• Ads served in the United Kingdom: a 2% UK Digital Services Tax Fee added to your invoice or statement

Why are these being introduced?

In Turkey, the Government have introduced tighter controls around data processing, permission and international data transfers since 2016, similar to the EU’s GDPR ruling. However, since 2016, these regulations have become increasingly difficult to comply with, and as a result, Google has announced it will be opening a Turkish office.

In the UK and Austria, the introduction of the Digital Services Tax means that advertisers will be charged an extra 2% and 5% respectively on their invoices.

The UK’s DST has been in the works for a couple of years and was announced in March. The tax is aimed at collecting revenues from digital companies with at least £500 million in global revenue and £25 million in U.K. revenue, such as Google, Amazon, Facebook. Unfortunately, it is the advertisers who will feel the pinch.

How will the Google country-specific fees affect advertisers?

These additional costs will not affect the CPC advertisers pay or anything related to any bids in the Google Ads auction. The extra charge will be listed on each invoice.

For example, if you are a UK advertiser who spent £1,000 on clicks for the month, your DST fee from Google would be 2% of that, which is £20. That would make your final invoice (exclusive of VAT) £1,020.

What is the best way to handle this moving forward?

Factoring this into your advertising budget will be crucial, so make sure you make the adjustment in time for the November launch. As this is a percentage charge, it is wise to make the estimate based on the upper range of your monthly account spend.

To create or edit a budget, you will need an Admin, Standard, or billing-only access to the paying manager account and the manager account needs to be linked to the payments profile.

Again, all charges will be listed on your monthly invoice, so make sure to check in on your billing documents to ensure the spend is within your allocated budget.

If you are a company based in or partly-based in the above countries and have questions relating to Google’s country-specific fees, feel free to contact us here at WebResults via email or contact form to discuss this further.

Enterprise Ireland Online Retail Scheme

What is the Enterprise Ireland Online Retail Scheme?

The Enterprise Ireland Online Retail Scheme is a grant to businesses that meet the specified criteria to help them develop or enhance their online trading capabilities.

The grant covers 80% of the costs of the proposed activity. So for example, if your proposed activities are quoted as costing €12,500, Enterprise Ireland will cover €10,000 (which is the minimum cost and grant allowed. The maximum grant is €40,000).

So what does this mean for your business?

It means that, from as little as €2,500 investment, your business can enter into the world of eCommerce and online marketing. Activities carried out by WebResults that would be covered by the grant include:

Research:

This includes analysing your current and potential online presence and opportunities. We will explore your market and learn about your brand, target audience, products or services and more. We will also present you with options in terms of the tools, applications and platforms you can use to drive your business forward. This will help you make informed decision in regards to how you want to proceed.

Strategy development:

  • Development of a written digital strategy and a roadmap for implementation including resource and business process considerations
  • Identifying how the company’s value proposition should be demonstrated online, what aspects should be emphasised and how best to present this
  • Ensuring that your business’ online presence is being fully utilised / optimised to fulfil its overall potential, supporting the overall business strategy
  • Consideration of omni-channel offering (including marketplaces and social media)

Implementation:

  • Optimising the company’s online presence to ensure domestic and international visibility (e.g. web enhancement and localisation, associated business process enhancements, search engine optimisation etc.)
  • Enhancing related “back end” systems (e.g. product presentation, supply chain management, systems integration to improve consumer experience etc.)

How can WebResults help you?

We have been involved in the world of digital marketing for over 20 years. In that time, we have learned what methods, tools and channels work and more importantly, what does not. Put our expertise to work for your business. If you want to survive and thrive during this COVID-19 crisis, talk to us today about your application. Call us or fill out our callback form and we will reach out to you.

Bord Bia Marketing Support Package

Bord Bia has announced it has released a Marketing Support Package to 250 client companies to the value of over €2million.

This Marketing Support Package has been awarded in an effort to support Irish companies experiencing difficulties in the wake of COVID-19. Eligible businesses included food, drink and horticulture (edible and amenity) producers, who are client companies of Bord Bia, with a turnover greater than €100,000 and less than €25m in 2019.

“Our goal is to ensure that the Irish food and drinks industry has ready access to every support Bord Bia can provide in order to navigate the change brought about by this crisis,” said Tara McCarthy, CEO of Bord Bia, at the openin of the grant application process.

The Marketing Support Package will cover 70% of approved expenditure for these companies, up to a specified limit and up until December 2020. The awarded companies went through an application process and have already been notified. The Marketing Support Package covers activities such as:

  • Website design
  • Development of E-Sales/Marketing and On-Line activities
  • Purchase of published reports and market information
  • Marketing consultancy costs
  • Design and origination of POS material
  • Design of packaging, labels and brochures
  • Quality Consultancy
  • Quality Training and Audit Costs
  • Nutritional analysis
  • Market research visit
  • Participation at trade fairs and exhibitions and related costs
  • In store tastings

If your business has been awarded a grant and you are looking at the best ways to maximise your Marketing Support Package, talk to our Digital Marketing experts here at WebResults. Call us for a no-obligation chat, or fill out our contact form and we will call at a time convenient to you.

Don’t let the grant go to waste and make your money work for you.

Full Press Release available at bordbia.ie.

webresults digital mentor programme

Over the last 15+ years, we have designed and redesigned our Digital Mentor Programme to meet the ever-changing needs of businesses. 

The Digital Mentor Programme is plan of action that consists of four pillars:

  • Support
  • Structure
  • Accountability
  • Results 

WebResults works with your business to devise a relevant digital marketing strategy based on your business objectives and market. We then identify KPIs that are aligned with the results you want to see from your business’ marketing activities. We work with staff within your business to execute the digital marketing tasks, with agreed timelines and build the roadmap to achieve success.

webresults online coaching

 

How long does the Digital Mentor Programme last?

The Digital Mentor Programme runs for a minimum of 6 months, though many of our clients are still with us after several years. You stay as long as you are getting results and learning.  It involves setting out clear daily/weekly tasks and having phone or email support as you work through these tasks. We then schedule regular calls to track progress, monitor performance, set out tasks and next steps ensuring progression for the individual and growth for the organisation.

How does it work?

The programme commences with a fact-finding session over the phone where we set out to understand your business objectives and your team’s goals. We look at your existing profile on the web, establish what needs to be done in order to achieve your objectives and set out an action plan and roadmap to ensure we see success within the given time frame. We then go through this with you in detail and agree realistic timelines with you.

 

Our programme management system ensures you have full visibility on all tasks and time spent by both us at WebResults and your team, and it is always clear what tasks remain outstanding and what is completed, including the time each task took. It ensures that the time is being best spent on where you can get the best results. The latest versions of all shared files and information are also stored in this same system, providing easy access to all materials all the time.  

What areas will I focus on?

The programme focuses mainly on SEO, social media marketing and analytics, but is adapted to use the activities that are most relevant and important to achieve your digital marketing business objectives and your market. Google Ads is not included as part of the programme, ask us about our Google Ads Management services if you would like more info.

Digital Mentor Programme

This structured, measurable and transparent programme brings the digital marketing skills and expertise your business needs, in-house, to deliver ROI and the best results in your marketplace.

 

The Covid-19 pandemic presents huge challenges for many businesses, not just to drive revenue but also to manage teams remotely. The digital mentor programme is adapted to enable your business to build your profile, drive new leads or sales where your best revenue potential exists, using a proven structure. We have over 20 years business experience and digital marketing experience and will help you rethink your digital marketing strategy and put the most effective measures in place for your business to survive and thrive. Talk to us today and give your business a kick start through our Digital Mentor Programme.

Google Ad Extensions

Google has pledged to support its SME advertising community worldwide by distributing $340m of Google Ads credits in the coming weeks.

The credits will be given to those who set up their Google Ads account on or before the 1st of January 2019. The search giant said:

“Small and medium-sized businesses are the backbone of our communities. They represent about 90 percent of all businesses and more than half of employment worldwide, according to the World Bank. COVID-19 has posed a particular challenge to these businesses, who may be facing closures and declining revenue even as they find ways to support and protect their employees. Through ad credits, we hope to alleviate some of the cost to stay in touch with their customers.”  Read more here.

Ad accounts who are eligible for Google Ads credits will receive a notification within their dashboard, and the credits will remain valid for the rest of 2020.

If you have an Google Ad account that has been sitting there gathering dust, or you feel you could be getting more out of your current ads, or you want to maximise your free Google Ads credits, contact WebResults today. A no-obligation chat with us costs nothing, and we will review your existing account for free too.

Simply call us or contact us via our contact form and we will be happy to help.

Working From Home Drive Sales

Working remotely as a result of Covid-19? Use focused digital marketing activities to drive sales and combat slumping revenue.

You may find yourself working remotely and feel restricted in terms of how to combat slumping revenue and sales and whether your job or livelihood will remain intact. 

One huge positive is the fact we are living in a world where we can work, communicate and sell online.

Consider the following ways to boost your businesses profile, sales and conversions (such as contact form completions, brochure requests, call back requests) through digital activities.

Working From Home Drive Sales

Build Your Brand Awareness

Before focusing on driving your sales, establish your business as a trusted seller/service provider in its space.

This does not just mean investing in paid ads on Google and social media. It requires you to ensure that your website is adhering to SEO best practices. It means you need to create relevant compelling content and distribute it frequently, whether that’s videos, blog posts, images, podcasts or whatever formats your customers like to consume media. It means spending time daily “social listening” to understand your potential customers’ issues, motivations & behaviours and jumping in on that conversation in an authentic way.

Having the best website in the world with the best UX is rendered null and void if nobody knows who you are. There are a range of digital tools & activities to help build brand awareness online. Invest the time and you will reap the rewards.

Email Marketing

Email has consistently proven itself to be the highest returning channel of digital marketing. A 2019 study by the DMA found that for every $1 spent on email marketing (eg. lead generation, email automation platform subscription etc.), there was an average return of $42.

On top of the massive potential for return, email marketing allows you to exert the most control. You are responsible for generating the high quality leads (in a GDPR-compliant way). This means you can build relationships with those leads. You communicate directly with your customers and can inform them of sales, discounts or some behind-the-scenes stories. You are not at the mercy of algorithms and you will always own that email list.

If you connect your email marketing automation platform (eg. Mailchimp) with your CRM and/or eCommerce platform, this means you can segment your list and send customers highly relevant content/discounts based on their purchase behaviour. This is vital to keeping your email list engaged and will lead to a lower Cost Per Acquisition too.

Email Marketing Drive Sales

Search Ads

Search ads capture your customers at a different stage in the buying process. The first of which is the “awareness” stage, the importance of which we have already discussed.

Next up is the “consideration” stage, and this is where search ads really shine. If a customer has taken to Google to search for a specific product or service, this means they have moved on to the consideration stage. Search ads will allow you to firstly appear at or near the top of the search results page. Secondly, search ads allow you to drive highly relevant traffic to highly relevant landing pages. Finally, if your website is fast, your landing pages relevant and your UX in good order, this will dramatically increase your chances of a website visitor converting there and then.

As search ads are usually charged on a Cost Per Click model, with clear adcopy, you will only pay for traffic that is interested in your product or service.

Google Shopping

If your business sells physical products online, Google Shopping will drive intent based shoppers.

Google Shopping ads now drive 76.4% of retail search ad spend, generating 85.3% of all clicks on Adwords or Google Shopping campaign ads. Long story short, you need Google Shopping if you’re an eCommerce business.

The integration of Google Shopping and your website/eComm platform is often what puts businesses off venturing into this territory, but many of these platforms provide out-of-the-box integrations. You can also hire an agency or developer to take care of this for you and to ensure that your data feed is optimised. However you decide to approach it, Google Shopping is well worth implementing.

Try a range of channels

When it comes to online shopping, it typically takes 3-5 “touchpoints” for a visitor to convert. Therefore, it is important to identify who your customers are, where they spend their time online and direct your time, money and efforts there.

Analytics and insights are crucial to be able to gauge where you are getting the most return, so you should be digging into these at least twice a week. Look at what pages have the lowest bounce rate/highest time on page, and where your traffic is coming from. Check the demographic info and also the interest category and in-market reports, all of which are available on Google Analytics and most analytics packages. Knowledge is your competitive advantage, so gather as much of it as you can and use it to build a profile of your customers.

Remember, technology can and will help you prevail in this time of uncertainty, particularly when it comes to marketing and sales. Capitalise on the resources available, and you will continue to prosper. 

If you need a helping hand along the way, contact Webresults and let us help you bring your business to the next level. Call us or fill in our contact form today.

 

Web Analytics can be defined as the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimising Web usage. In essence, it is all the information gathered from your website, to be used as a basis for future optimisation. 

Web analytics tracks so many different types of website data and analysing these will help you to make informed decisions on website design and optimization, and ultimately maximises your return on investment (ROI). 

Some of these are:

Page Views: Called ‘hits’ or impressions a lot of the time. This metric will show you the amount of times your site has been viewed within a certain timeframe.

Entry and Exit Page: This will show you what page a visitor landed on and what page they left your site from. It is a good metric to look at as it may help you understand why people are leaving your site.

Bounce Rates: This is the percentage of ‘single-page’ sessions, which refers to the amount of people that visited your site but left without interacting with it.

Locations: This shows where the users are viewing your site from. It can be very useful for marketing and strategic purposes.

Device usage: This shows whether a user is viewing your site on a desktop or mobile device. Again, this can be very useful for marketing purposes, and can also indicate whether your site is mobile friendly, which is critical to modern-day internet businesses and websites.

Organic vs. Paid Sessions: This metric will show you how users got to your site, whether they clicked one of your ads or just simply found you through the Google search. This is important in terms of developing your channels and identifying where you are getting the most return.

Search Queries: This shows what people are words people are searching that bring them to your site, it is very useful when adding keywords or negative keywords. 

Users by gender or age: These metrics are both very useful for marketing as it will help you design your ads appropriately.

 

Web analytics takes out any guessing you may have done in the past and shows you exactly who is visiting your site, what they do when they are there and how they ultimately got there. Keeping track of your web analytic is so important to stay relevant and on top of your respected sector. 

 

As you are probably aware, Google love to keep us on our toes! It is important to keep on top of these changes in order to make sure you are getting maximum from Google. Here are 4 trends that we believe will become more prominent in 2020.

 

  1. Much more Automation in Google Ads

Having computers do the work for you sounds great, doesn’t it? While this may be true to some degree, PPC advertisers need to be careful about how far they go with this. This will be the year that we need to meet AI head on and use it to drive ourselves forward. If not, your business could fall behind and end up playing catch-up.

 

Google Ads has been encouraging advertisers to let them take the reigns on their campaigns. This is helpful to a certain degree. What you have to remember is that Google want as many clicks as possible, because at the end of the day, it’s how they make their money. So, what we advise is to not give them complete control. Create your own Google Ads custom rules to optimise bids, budgets, marketing lists, etc. and that way, you can use automation to ensure you get the best value for money.

 

  1. Optimisation score now includes Display campaigns

Starting in December of last year, Google Ads have expanded their optimisation score to include Display campaigns, as well as Search and Shopping campaigns. It works in the exact same way as previously with scores ranging from 0% to 100%. An optimisation score of 100% means your campaign is running to its full potential.

This change ties into the increased volume automation in Google Ads and, as said before, it can be incredibly helpful for advertisers but only when used correctly. Don’t get sucked into thinking everything Google recommends is for your benefit. Remember, Google wants to make money too.

  1. Improved Audience Targeting/Segmentation

Audience targeting or segmenting refers to the ability to choose who exactly sees your ads depending on their location, age, sex, buying habits, clicking habits and a whole range of other factors. With the help of ever-improving AI, Google Ads is making this a lot more efficient and therefore, they have made it a lot easier for PPC advertisers to target exactly who they want.

In 2020, Google Ads will continue to grow their machine learning which will help us create highly personalised ad campaigns and improve your target market strategies.

 

  1. Rising CPCs (Cost-Per-Click)

One negative trend that we expect to see for 2020 is an increase in CPC.  Google has 5.6 billion searches per day, and this number is only growing. Thus, using Google Ads as your main marketing tool is essential. SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are becoming more competitive and organic searches becoming harder to find. This means that big corporations will simply increase their spending on keywords and therefore, drive up the average CPC for everyone else.

 

Google’s forever changing trends can be a bit daunting to get your head around. If you find yourself stuck, confused or overwhelemd, maybe it’s time to think about outsourcing to an agency. If you choose the right one, we guarantee you will see an increase in productivity and ultimately an increase in ROI.

If you are interested in talking to WebResults about your Google Ads account, call or email us today for a free account review and find out what we can do for you.

SEO SEM Searches

We are often asked by clients, “If I am already paying for ads, why should I bother with SEO?”. It’s a fair question, as is the reverse; If you are ranking very strongly in organic search results, is it really worth paying for Ads?

However, investing in both SEO and PPC advertising (also known as SEM) simultaneously can dramatically increase your business’ revenue, traffic and conversions.

First of all, it is important to highlight the differences between organic search (SEO) and paid search (SEM/PPC).

Google Ads and SEO services

SEO/Organic Search:

Search Engine Optimisation is all about the long-term health of your digital presence and strategy. If you follow SEO best practices, your site is more likely to appear in organic (unpaid) searches.

SEO is the foundation of good SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and when you have them harmonising perfectly, you will drive high-quality traffic and leads as well as improve your site’s conversion rates. SEO incorporates everything from using keywords throughout your site to the User Experience and performance of your site on mobile.

Once you have an SEO-friendly site and sponsored ads that are using the right keywords, you have a better chance of showing up at the top of paid searches. But you need to have your SEO in place in order for Google to see you as a credible website.

SEM/Paid Search:

One of the biggest strengths of SEM is that it can deliver success and growth quickly. If your website/business is reasonably new, you can prioritise your paid search efforts first, as it can take a while for SEO rankings to become established. However, do not ignore your SEO during this process. Think of SEM as a platform to launch your search efforts, and SEO as a way of maintaining a strong and healthy digital presence.

It is important to note that having PPC ads running does not do anything for your site’s SEO. However, by improving your SEO, you can make your PPC costs more efficient.

How Do SEO And SEM Work Together?

In very simple terms, if your organic rankings are strong and your paid efforts are optimised, you will dominate Google’s SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

For example, if your business sells hammers as its main product, prioritise hammers (and associated terms such as “claw hammers”, “mallets” etc.) in your keyword strategy, both in an organic and paid context. What that means is, make sure your site pages are built with your priority keywords in mind. This includes everything from your page content to your alt, image and meta tags, captions, URLs, etc. This will improve your organic search results.

But what’s the point in appearing twice on a search engine page?

Paid search ads help you recover any missed opportunities. A study by Google found that when search ads for a keyword were paused, approximately 89% of traffic generated by these ads were not replaced by the organic rankings. That means that, even if your site is ticking all of the SEO boxes in terms of keywords, it’s very possible that you will be missing valuable traffic and thus, potential customers.

By relying on PPC, you’re recovering clicks and interest from searchers that you might have otherwise missed. Even if you aren’t ranking #1 naturally, PPC can help you draw in traffic from those looking for your products or services, often at a small cost.

Remember, by the time a person is conducting a search on a product, they have more than likely reached the “intent” stage and are asking to be converted. That is why search marketing is so important and so valuable.

Conclusion

While SEM can help deliver fast results, SEO is imperative to building and maintaining a successful digital marketing strategy for your business.

By following SEO best practices, you will not only enhance your chances of ranking organically in search engine results (thus driving free clicks to your site), but it will also lend your site credibility in the eyes of Google (which is the primary search engine used by approximately 81% of the entire web population). This means you will see higher levels of valuable traffic on your site and thus, bring your business to the next level.

Are you interested in Google Ads, SEM or SEO services? Contact us today at info@webresults.ie and talk to our team.