Advertisers on Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, and Bing can probably attest to the fact that competition has been growing in the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) arena. Each year, more advertisers continue to try their hand at pay-per-click campaigns. Furthermore, business owners are starting to realize the advantages of paid search exposure.
In today’s world, though, simply knowing a little about the digital landscape is not enough. You need a team of professionals behind your company who not only understand the latest trends, but who are also able to adjust your campaigns based on the market and your performance.
Here is how Blue Sand Group can help your business grow:
1. Choose the advertising platform carefully
This might seem like “putting the cart before the horse”, but you might be surprised how many advertisers choose to run ads on social media sites without establishing a solid presence and strategy.
2. Targeting
When most advertisers think of targeting (at least for keyword-based platforms), they usually think of keywords and match types. In reality, no campaign should go without geo-targeting, day-parting, and device-targeting. These factors help narrow down who your potential customers will be.
3. Landing Pages
A custom landing page with appropriate call-to-action buttons throughout is going to play a greater role in Quality Score – the “secret sauce” behind keyword relevancy. In summary: design landing pages that are both relevant to the targeted keywords and create good experience for users.
4. Search query report (SQR) for negative keywords
Just as important as it is to bid on relevant keywords, it is equally important to prevent your ads from showing for non-relevant searches. We use the search query report to help you identify which keywords can be added to the negative keyword list.
5. Utilize Filters
Often underused by advertisers, filters allow for issues to be identified quickly and can also help in automating regular maintenance tasks. The benefit of filters is that they also eliminate personal bias – if a keyword term, however desirable, is not generating returns, an algorithm will not hesitate to pause it.
6. Go local
A somewhat bizarre hybrid of PPC and local search, Google AdWords Express is a feature currently available through Google Places, which features the business’ location in the map listing using a blue balloon and operates on an automated cost-per-click (CPC) basis.
7. Add ad extensions
If you’re ads are doing well and appearing on the top spots of Google, why not give them the added benefit of taking up even more real estate? Location, sitelinks, click-to-call, and product extensions are all available under the Ad extension tab in AdWords and have been shown in numerous case studies to have a solid click-through-rate (CTR).
8. Install conversion tracking code
If possible, install conversion tracking codes on the sales confirmation page/booking engine to pull that data into Google AdWords. Not only will it help identify profitable keywords, but it will also allow a campaign to activate the Google Conversion Optimizer tool.
