Tag Archive for: Google

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.

improve visitor quality google ads

Google Ads, if set up correctly and aligned with your business objectives, can have a huge impact in terms of driving revenue for your business.

The key to success with Google Ads is to ensure you are getting the right kind of visitor/potential customer onto your website. To achieve this involves  research, careful planning and knowledge of Google Ads functionality and your target demographic. The foundation of a successful Google Ads is setting up the right structure in terms of Campaigns and AdGroups. The biggest mistake you can make is launching into setting up campaigns without thoroughly considering your objectives, your audience and your strategy.

The following six key points will help you improve the quality of clicks and visitors you’re getting via your Google Ads.

Identify the relevant search terms for your business and use suitable match types

Think of search terms that are most relevant to your business and industry. Consider how your potential customers are searching for your product.

Keywords and match types are key to ensuring you are bringing the right audience to your website and spending your budget efficiently. The natural impulse is to use keywords that bring in the highest number of clicks. However, with Google Ads, it’s about quality and not quantity.

Then test each keyword by asking yourself if it could be related to an unrelated business. If it could, then try and quality it more so that its only bringing in relevant clicks for your business.

If you are selling running shoes online, rather than just targeting ‘running shoes’, you may target exact keyword phrases terms like ‘buy running shoes online’. Or for a local business, it may be worth creating a separate campaign for “Near Me” searchers e.g. If you offer locksmith services you might benefit from using terms like; locksmiths near me’,locksmiths nearby’, ‘closest locksmiths’ and ‘local locksmiths’. 

Advertisers are not always clear on the impact of keyword match types. Google Ads allows you to designate each keyword/key phrase as broad match, broad match with modifier, phrase match, and exact match. Broad match will always bring in the highest number of clicks because it gives license to Google to interpret your keywords in many different search queries. Exact match is the opposite. It ensures that Google only shows an ad if an exact key phrase is queried.

Maximising your Google Ads campaigns relies on striking the right balance between match types, relying mostly on phrase and exact matches with a sprinkling of broad modified match terms. Be clear on the possible outcome of using each of the different match types and the impact they have in relation to displaying your ads. See examples of match types below:

Set out the structure of your campaigns

When setting up your campaigns and ad groups initially, take the time to break out your ad groups in detail. There are numerous different strategies you can use.

When you choose a strategy, understand the “why” behind it and monitor it closely, particularly during the initial “learning” stages.

One such strategy example you can use is SKAGS (Single Keyword AdGroups). With SKAGS, each search term you are targeting goes into its own ad group with different match types, e.g. modified broad match, exact match and phrase match (you wouldn’t generally use ‘broad match’ here).

SKAGS allow you to deliver relevant ads to those who are searching for your product or service, through the search terms you are targeting, resulting in lower cost per click and higher click through rates and thus improved visitor quality, all of which impact your advertising costs and results.

Constantly manage your negative keywords

Negative Keywords Visitor Quality

Each time you go into your Google Ads account, check out the search queries that generate clicks. If the clicks are not relevant, it means you are getting the wrong type of visitor to your website, and paying for the privilege of it. It’s important to:

  1. Identify why these irrelevant clicks came in. Do you need to modify your keyword match types to avoid further irrelevant clicks? Or do the additional impressions you get outweigh the negative clicks. E.g. will changing the match type of the term that allows these negatives in, block other clicks that are relevant?
  2. Add the term as a negative in all match types that are relevant. Yes, you say this is an obvious step. However, many businesses are not aware of the importance of adding the relevant match types as negatives. Match types don’t behave exactly the same as negatives, as they do as part of the search campaigns.

Each match type has a purpose, so be sure to use the match types that achieve what is relevant for your ad group or campaign, or both.

Broad Match Negatives: If you add a negative term as a broad match, it will block out where someone uses both of the terms together. However, negative broad match will not block out ads where someone searches for only one of the terms on its own. e.g. adding ‘Google Ads Agency’ as a negative will prevent searches for “Google Ads” and “Agency” used in the same search term, but it will not prevent clicks for searches where only one word is used with a different work e.g. ‘DIY Google Ads’ or ‘Property Agency’.

Phrase Match Negatives: Exclude your ad for searches that include the exact keyword phrase. If a search includes additional words, the ad won’t show as long as the keywords are included in the search in the same order. If someone searches for only one of the terms in your selected phrase, your ad will still appear. For example, if your negative is “AdWords Agency” and a user searches for DIY AdWords, your ad will still appear. This also means that if additional words are used in the search query, such as ‘AdWords Services Agency’, your ad will still appear as ‘AdWords’ and ‘Agency’ are not next to each other in the search query.

Exact Match Negatives: This adds the exact terms, without extra words. Your ad may still show for searches that include the keyword phrase with additional words. When using exact match negatives, it will only block that exact term. So adding [Google Ads Agency] as a negative does not block ‘Google Ads Agency Ireland’ or ‘Google Ads Agencies’. Close variants (any misspelling, singular or plural form, acronym, stemmings, abbreviations of the keyword) do not apply for negative keywords.

Maximise use of Bid Adjustments to customise to your audiences

Google Ads bid adjustments use manually set percentage changes, in order to increase or decrease the weight of your maximum cost per click bid amounts. The result is more control over when, where and to whom your ads are shown to. and better targeting of segments based on their likelihood of converting. With Bid Adjustment, you get greater flexibility, within the same campaign. Previously, in order to achieve this, you would have to set up individual ad groups for each segment. For example, if you know that people who live in Dublin are more likely to convert than those living in Cork, you can set negative bid adjustments for the Cork in relevant campaigns. This means that Cork will get impressions/clicks at a certain (lower in this case) bid level, thus prioritising impressions/clicks for Dublin and improving your overall visitor quality.

Use All Ad Extensions Available

google ads extensions

Ad extensions are a very powerful way of delivering a personalised ad to each user. These customised ads often deliver higher click-through rates, improve quality score and simply make your ad more prominent on search results. Use every Ad Extension available and relevant to your campaign.

It’s important to customise at ad group level, where it makes sense to do so. Rather than setting up a few top level extensions, make them specific to your ad groups and you will find they will perform far better. From text message extensions, which allow Google searchers to send you a text, to structured snippets to app downloads, there are now a great range of options to use to promote the important aspects of your business to highly targeted potential customers, and offer them a range of ways to get in touch with you, depending on what suits them (and you) best. 

Utilise Your Remarketing

Remarketing is a PPC strategy that targets people who have already visited your website and/or bought from your website. By it’s very nature, it is guaranteed to bring good quality visitors to your website through Google Ads.

In Google Ads, there are four types of remarketing. Standard Remarketing shows your static image ads to people who’ve previously visited your website via the display network. Dynamic Remarketing shows dynamic image ads for specific products and services that a visitor has previously looked at. For example, if you’re looking at a stainless steel crockpot on Amazon, Jeff Bezos can use dynamic remarketing to create an ad using the exact same model on a display ad on your favourite blog. To use dynamic remarketing you must also have a Google Merchant Centre account. Remarketing lists for Search Ads (RLSA) re-targets people who’ve visited your site and the subsequently search for a relevant term. You might target people who have already visited your website, for search terms that are more generic or broad, as you know they are relevant targets.

An outline of your typical re-marketing campaign.

Video Remarketing re-targets people who have watched your YouTube videos. You can also use YouTube ads to remarket to people who visited your site.

While businesses managing their own campaigns are familiar with the areas discussed, often Ads management isn’t an ongoing priority, resulting in campaigns not being structured to meet business objectives and poor quality visitors, thus leading to a poor Return On Investment. Functionality is often applied without understanding how best to use it for the campaigns in question.

As Google Ads becomes more automated, agencies will show their true value by ensuring business objectives are being addressed through campaign set up, structure and ongoing management and through strong communication with businesses on their markets and business objectives. If you are currently managing your own campaigns and would like a Google Ads audie to see how you are doing, please get in touch with us at WebResults.

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.