From the Industry

Paid Search

Google AdSense moves to a first-price auction model: The changes will take effect by the end of 2021.

15 Interview Questions to Ask Your Next Digital Marketer Candidates: If you’re looking to hire a new digital marketer, these questions will help you find the best candidate!

The Top 10 Digital Marketing Certificate Programs to Enroll In: Check out these 10 certificates to improve your digital marketing skills.

Video

How to: Develop an OTT Advertising Strategy for Connected TV Devices: This in-depth post outlines exactly how and why to get started with OTT advertising.

The Fastest Growing Video Advertising Platform Is Now CTV: Even more reason to consider an OTT advertising strategy.

Ecommerce

Top mistakes ecommerce businesses make in their PPC strategies during the build-up to Black Friday/Christmas: As you prepare for the holidays, make sure you’re not making some of these costly mistakes!

Google Ads Promotion Extensions Can Boost Holiday Sales: It’s almost promotion extension season!

Why mobile retail apps are one key to holiday 2021’s winners and losers: With mobile commerce being the fastest-growing ecommerce channel, consumers are expected to use retail apps more than ever before this holiday season.

Paid Social

7 Ways to Combat Rising Facebook CPMs Due to iOS 14: This post couldn’t be more timely.

Maximizing Your Paid and Organic Social Media for Black Friday: This post outlines how to best handle organic, paid and move towards an integrated and hybrid strategy.Linke10 Facebook Ad Metrics Marketers Must Track: Learn how to create custom columns and reports to track what you need.

The Facebook Files: Why this is a big deal, why it isn’t and what’s next: Is Facebook having its “Big Tobacco” moment?

From the Engines

TikTok

Halloween for Brands: All Treats, No Tricks

Microsoft

Holiday countdown checklist: Master the 2021 retail landscape

Build better websites with new Smart Pages features

LinkedIn

How to Align Marketing and Sales From the Top-Down: Lessons From a 6-Time CMO (And Marriage Veteran)

eMarketer’s B2B Advertising Forecast 2021: 6 Key Insights & Revelations

Twitter

Inclusion & Diversity Q3 2021: Our multifaceted approach

Taboola

Get Cookin’: How to Build Thanksgiving Ad Campaigns That Drive Clicks

From the Clix Team

PPC for Small Businesses [Infographic] by Kayla Kurtz

The post Clix Marketing Blog’s #PPC News & Views: Friday, October 15th appeared first on Clix Marketing.

Looking for help with paid search or paid social marketing? We can help! Reach out to sales@clixmarketing.com and let us know about your project!

The post PPC for Small Businesses [INFOGRAPHIC] appeared first on Clix Marketing.

From the Industry

Paid Search

How to Grow & Scale Your YouTube Ads – Prepare for Black Friday & Beyond: Online shopping will continue to be especially important during the holiday season when consumers are busy and looking for convenience. To achieve Black Friday success, your marketing team needs to start warming up consumers’ minds now. Make sure to strategically do this through the medium they prefer, one of those places certainly being YouTube.

The 2021 Guide to Microsoft Advertising (Formerly Bing Ads): It’s easy to write off Microsoft Advertising (f.k.a. Bing Ads) in favor of Google Ads when you’re planning a new ad campaign. But before you say “bye” to Bing, you might want to consider this: while Google is the world’s most widely used search engine, people still make over 12 billion searches with Bing monthly. Currently, Bing Ads reaches 44 million desktop users that Google Ads doesn’t. This tells marketers something crucial: when you ignore Bing Ads, you limit your marketing reach.

Black Friday 2021 – Powerful ecommerce strategies & tactics: Holiday season is already around the corner with Black Friday and Cyber Monday being key holiday shopping days in ecommerce – for both retailers and shoppers alike. This year we can expect a natural shift towards in-store shopping activities again during peak holiday season. All the more reason for online retailers to be extra prepared and take a close look at their marketing strategies.

A Complete Guide to Google Ads Editor: Use the online Google Ads UI and offline Editor together for maximum efficiency. Here’s everything you need to know about Google Ads Editor.

Microsoft Advertising – ETA deprecation, auto-generated remarketing lists and Audience Network updates:Beginning June 30, 2022, responsive search ads (RSAs) will be the only search ad type that can be created or edited in standard search campaigns, Microsoft Advertising announced recently. The announcements also included reporting improvements for Microsoft Audience Ads with view-through conversions, In-market Audiences expansions, an open beta for auto-generated remarketing lists, several Microsoft Audience Network updates and expansions and more.

Paid Social

7 Reasons to Start Using Facebook Conversions API (NOW) + How To Do It: For years, we’ve relied on the Facebook Pixel to understand how our ads are performing and build powerful retargeting audiences. But the power of the Facebook Pixel is dwindling due to iOS 14 privacy features and the certain death of cookies next year. Read on to learn how to future-proof your Facebook advertising strategy.

6 TikTok Tools for Shopping: TikTok is the latest social media platform to focus on ecommerce. TikTok claims its users are 1.7-times more likely to have purchased the products they discover through the app as compared to other social platforms, so here is a list of new shopping tools from TikTok.

How to Use Twitter for Business – A Practical Guide: In this post, you’ll learn how to make Twitter work for your business. Covering the basics to get you set up and more advanced tips to optimize your investment in your Twitter presence.

4 LinkedIn Video Marketing Mistakes and How to Fix Them: In this article, you’ll discover four common mistakes that many marketers make when using video on LinkedIn. Plus, you’ll discover how to avoid making these errors.

200 Facebook Ad Examples To Inspire Your Next Campaign: You know that feeling when you’re ready to start brainstorming for a new Facebook advertising campaign and suddenly you can’t remember any of the best ad examples and inspiration you’ve mentally saved? Never fear…this writer took the time to screenshot and categorize 200 samples for you to bookmark and reference for inspiration!

Reporting/Analytics

The Stages of the Buyer’s Journey and Why They Matter: Companies should consider each stage of the buyer’s journey to capture leads in different phases leading to a purchase. But, what is the buyer’s cycle, and why is each stage so critical to a content strategy? This detailed article provides excellent guidance!

Unnest Your BigQuery Google Analytics 4 Data With Adswerve’s New Open-Source Tool: The team at Adswerve previously shared info about an open-source tool they built that unnests BigQuery (BQ) Google Analytics (GA) 360 data. They developed it for Universal Analytics (UA) and have now announced a similar tool for the next generation of GA, Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

Taking The Headache Out Of Performance Analytics For Agencies: A step by step guide for how to identify, alleviate, and overcome the pain of performance analytics for agencies, and optimize the client reporting process.

From the Engines

Google

A shoppable TV screen with YouTube

Introducing the new Analytics 360

Microsoft

Audience Ads expansion and other key October product updates

Resurgence of the personal computer (PC) as the productivity hub for work and life

LinkedIn

What Influences a B2B Purchase Decision (Infographic)

How to Design Full-Funnel Marketing Experiences on LinkedIn

Instagram

Creating Instagram Videos Just Got Even Easier

Pinterest

New Pinterest shopping features to help people find what they actually love

Spotify

Spotify Audience Network: What’s next for podcast advertisers

Outbrain

Conversion Bid Strategy: Why Automation is Good for Your Business

From the Clix Team

Localogy Recap: Democratization of Video Advertising [Clix Speaker Series] by Kayla Kurtz

Instagram for B2B in 2021 by Andrea Taylor

The post Clix Marketing Blog’s #PPC News & Views: Friday, October 8th appeared first on Clix Marketing.

Why Should B2B Advertisers Advertise on Instagram?

Believe it or not, the largest age group on Instagram right now is actually 25-34 according to Sprout Social! This means that it’s likely that the manager-and-above job roles and decision makers you’re targeting on LinkedIn are also on Instagram!

Instagram surpassed the 1 billion global user mark in 2020! It was in the top 5 most downloaded apps in 2020 (no surprise there).

Over the last year, chances are you have heard of the growing competition between Instagram and TikTok for short-form videos. Instagram recently introduced Reels ads, which shows the platform’s commitment to competing with TikTok. These ads can be up to 30 seconds with the ability to comment, like, view, save and share the Reels ad.

Managing Instagram Ads

Instagram campaigns and ads are easily managed through your Facebook Business Manager and ad account!

If you’re already advertising on Facebook, you can easily begin introducing Instagram placements for those ads as well.

To get started with Instagram placements, all you need is the following:

• An Instagram account that is established in one of these three ways.
• Images and videos that meet the requirements for the Instagram Feed placement or the Instagram Stories placement. Both of these placements require differently sized creative than other placement options.
• Select an ad objective for your campaigns that is compatible with Instagram placements. The table below outlines which of the campaign objectives are eligible to appear through the Instagram app. All objectives are eligible to appear in the Feed and Stories placements and most (except for Store Traffic) can appear in the Explore placement.

Strategies for B2B Instagram Ads

1. Lead Generation & Instant Forms

One of the biggest complaints I hear from B2B clients is that leads are poor quality. Facebook lead generation campaigns will automatically optimize to More Volume to generate the largest number of leads. There are times that generating the most leads you can is useful, but sometimes you are looking for highly qualified and interested users.

Enter: Higher Intent Instant Forms.

To select this form type, select the Higher Intent option in the Form Type section while creating the Instant Form.

This Instant Form type has three features that set it apart:

• Indications that your business will follow up after submission of the form.
• A review screen that allows users to review their information.
• A slide to submit button on the review screen.

According to Facebook, “These extra features often result in more intentional submissions and prevent submissions from those people who are only marginally interested in your product or service. If follow-up or further qualification is required on each lead submitted, using a Higher Intent Instant Form may make more sense for your business.”

It’s important to note that a Higher Intent Instant Form will only be delivered to Facebook Feed and Instagram Feed on mobile devices. This form type does NOT appear on desktop computers.

2. Placement Breakouts

It’s not considered a ‘best practice’ to break out placements in Facebook. But when you’re trying to gather more information about what is and isn’t working, I find it to be worth it.

At the ad set level, select ‘Manual Placements’ and unselect all of the platforms except for Instagram.

I prefer to test the Feed, Explore and Stories placements separately, so I create an ad set for each placement individually. If you have video, you can also test the IGTV placement.

For a true test, read on to the next section to see how to create an A/B test.

3. Testing Content, Retargeting & More

Since Instagram is a different kind of channel than something like LinkedIn, it can be vital to test your content, retargeting and other campaign strategies.

Consider utilizing the A/B test feature for your new strategies.

Within Ads Manager, select the campaign you want to test. Click ‘A/B Test’ in the navigation bar.

Select the variable you want to test. The options are Creative, Placement, Audience or Custom. Click Next to finalize the copy of the campaign.

Once duplicated, you’ll need to make the adjustments to the test campaign.

4. Audience Targeting

When it comes to audiences, here is a couple of suggestions for new audiences to test:

• Lookalike audiences based off of customer and MQL/SQL lists 
• Interest targeting for users interested in the industry I’m advertising for
• Facebook Business page admins
• Interested in upcoming Facebook events
• Users who commute to work

I like to make exclusions as well. Here is a few ideas that might be worth excluding for your next campaign as well:

• Recent converters
• Users connected to your business page already (net-new campaigns only)
• Employees of the company
• Employees at your company

Conclusion

I hope these suggestions are helpful in your journey into Instagram! If you’re interested in bringing in an agency with extensive experience with B2B clients on Instagram (and Facebook), reach out, we’d love to help!

The post Instagram for B2B in 2021 appeared first on Clix Marketing.

Last month’s Localogy event was such a whirlwind! But first things first, it was awesome to be invited to speak and represent the Clix team. However, I did forget how much stamina travel & conference days require so I was a bit drained afterward! Now that I’ve had some time to recuperate, I wanted to share a few takeaways from my session and the others I attended. There was no shortage of sharp folks to learn from out in LA and I hope we’re able to attend again!

Localogy Takeaways

• Fellow agency speakers shared thoughts about the future of our industry and how things may continue to change. While most tend to agree that the industry is becoming more complex, that is providing plenty of space for teams to pick a niche and specialize in a service or vertical to continue differentiating against competing brands. 
• Part of that complexity is also a more diverse advertising landscape, both in where brands can choose to host advertising and how companies are leveraging digital channels to find their target audiences. This also means your customer is up for poaching at a far more frequent basis nowadays. Speakers recommended using all your online means to build staying power as a trusted and reliable brand, for acquisition and retention phases of the customer journey.
• I had a number of conversations with platforms, agencies & direct brands that have been leveraging PPC to help with hiring and talent acquisition. This isn’t a ‘new’ idea because there are full verticals dedicated to employment. But beyond those, my experience hasn’t seen a ton of budget utilized exclusively for this purpose. Turns out that’s happening at a fairly rapid rate in 2021! Think about where you or your clients may be able to put together a campaign or two to help fill open positions or the employment pipeline.
• The final note on that discussion was another important one – challenge yourself to spend at least 20% of your time every week talking about ways to market what isn’t already driving revenue for your business (or your clients’). Incremental growth in known channels or categories is certainly critical. However the last two years have seen creativity in digital marketing thrive. New segments may take time, but if they’re well planned, researched, and executed – the long term lift may be greater than the small gains in existing channels, products, services, etc.

Video Advertising Session Takeaways

• The plethora of video advertising options and channels is beyond vast. Our session’s recommendations included looking first at where your known target audience consumes video content (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc). If you marry that with a clear goal of which segment of your sales pipeline you’re trying to fill with your video campaigns, you can make a fair assessment of the budget necessary to reach and collect the engagements needed to produce a qualified lead or revenue.
• This brought up a need to reaffirm that no marketing segment should be a silo, and video is no different. Each channel offers a somewhat unique demographic or engagement tendency, and thus a video campaign should be built to address a specific purpose (i.e. retargeting non-converters with a new offer during deeper consideration phases).
• We also covered what this means for setting goals for video advertising, because it’s important to keep an eye on the bottom line and where you’re seeing lift across the full customer journey. Metrics like click through rate, conversion rate, new user visits, average order value, customer retention, channel subscribers, followers, and other data points can provide leading and lagging indicators of where any new ad type or segment is ultimately providing revenue – video included!

If you’re interested in learning more about the Clix team’s approach to video advertising, or want to hear additional ideas to continue growing your digital channels – give me a shout! 

Don’t forget to check back here on the blog often for additional upcoming Clix speaking and engagement opportunities! And let us know if you have an event you’d like us to participate in and we would be happy to chat about topics to fit your audience (leave a message in the comments or email us – sales@clixmarketing.com).

The post Localogy Recap: Democratization of Video Advertising [Clix Speakers Series] appeared first on Clix Marketing.

From the Industry

Paid Search

New Changes to Google Ads Keyword Matching: What It Really Means: This post breaks down what the latest keyword match type updates means.

5 ways shopping behaviour is changing in the UK: If you’re a shopping advertiser who is running in the UK, make sure to check out this article.

Spotify Ads | How Music and Big Data Can Win You Customers: If you’re considering Spotify as a potential channel, hop in with this guide.

Data-Driven Attribution as the New Default in Google Ads: What You Need to Know: Google’s recent announcement means that the default attribution model for all new conversion actions in Google Ads from last-click to data-driven attribution.

Google is Phasing Out Expanded Text Ads: How to Take Action Now: Yet another change coming from Google that advertisers need to be on top of.

New Google Ads Budget Report Tracks Daily Campaign Spend: Stay on top of budgets by utilizing this report.

How Retailers Can Win the 2021 Shopping Season: Adapt your digital marketing strategies for the 2021 holiday season!

From the Engines

Facebook

Update to Our Pre-Campaign Estimates

Find New Customers With Boosted Posts That Drive to WhatsApp

Google

The future of attribution is data-driven

New ways to find shopping inspiration on Google

Microsoft

Announcing the Microsoft Advertising Partner Sweepstakes!

Optimize now for the changing holiday retail landscape in 2021

TikTok

New branding solutions to measure the value and impact of TikTok

From the Clix Team

Getting Started with Google’s Video Action Campaigns

The post Clix Marketing Blog’s #PPC News & Views: Friday, October 1 appeared first on Clix Marketing.

Think again. YouTube’s Video Action campaigns (formerly TrueView for Action) offer a solution that combines both video and demand generation goals. You can incorporate a CTA button into the video, allowing users to click at any point while watching to visit your landing page or open a lead form.

In this article, I’ll cover how to create a Video Action campaign, along with some tips for optimal performance.

Setting Up a Video Action Campaign

First of all, note that YouTube campaigns are all set up from within Google Ads. From the Campaigns screen in your Google Ads account, click the blue “plus” symbol and select “New Campaign” from the options that appear.

Next, you’ll see several options for campaign goals. You need to select “Leads” in order to enable the Video Action campaign type. You should now see options for various campaign types appear below; select “Video” here.

Now, you’ll see a setup screen where you can name your campaign and adjust various settings. Here are a few factors to be aware of in relation to Video Action campaigns:

• Available bid strategies are Target CPA and Maximize Conversions.
• You can set either a daily budget or a campaign total budget.
• As of the time of writing, you could still opt out of ads showing on “video partner” sites on the Display Network (in addition to YouTube). However, based on a message in the interface, Google will be removing the ability to opt out of partner placements soon for video conversion campaigns.
• You can include sitelinks, which can potentially appear beneath the video and main CTA.

Establishing Your Targeting 

After choosing your campaign settings, you can create an ad group and set up targeting. Note that the interface currently allows you to choose between standard (skippable in-stream) ad groups and responsive ad groups, which incorporate both Video Discovery ads, which appear in YouTube search and as suggested videos, and in-stream ads, which play before or during existing YouTube videos. However, the standard ad groups will be going away soon, and the only remaining option will be for responsive ad groups.

Targeting options include the following:

• Demographics: Age, gender, parental status, household income
• Custom audiences: Based on search activity, downloaded apps
• Remarketing audiences: Based on website visitors or built from uploaded customer match lists
• Similar audiences: Individuals with similar characteristics to those in your remarketing lists
• Affinity audiences: Based on interests related to what people browse in their online activity
• Detailed demographics: Additional demographic info such as marital status, homeownership status, education level, company size, and industry
• Contextual: Targeting based on keywords, topics, or placements (individual URLs, YouTube videos, or YouTube channels)

Note that audience-level bid adjustments aren’t an option in video campaigns. You can, however, exclude audiences if wanted.

Creating a Video Ad

Once you’ve gotten your campaign settings and targeting for your first ad group in place, you can now create your first video ad. You’ll need to upload your video to YouTube as either public or unlisted. Paste the YouTube link in and populate the text fields with the details for your ad.

You’ll need the following info:

• Final URL: The landing page where you want people to be taken when they click the video CTA
• Display URL: The URL path(s) you’d like to appear after your domain name (15 characters each)
• Call-to-action: A brief CTA that will appear within a clickable button (10 characters)
• Headline: A brief heading that will appear above or alongside the button in an in-stream placement (15 characters)
• Long headline: The headline that will appear in the video discovery format (90 characters)
• Description: The copy that will appear below the headline in the video discovery format (70 characters)
• Companion banner (optional): A 300×60 image that will appear alongside the ad when served in an in-stream placement

Lights, Camera, Action!

Now that you’ve seen an overview of the steps to set up a Video Action campaign, start thinking about how you can test video for your clients. Don’t let a lack of a high-end production budget deter you from trying it out; I’ve seen well-narrated smartphone videos outperform high-end motion graphics. Ideally, you should compare performance of multiple videos and also incorporate view-based retargeting to continue to reach people who have engaged with specific videos. So, identify (or film) some videos you can use, and start testing!

The post Getting Started with Google’s Video Action Campaigns appeared first on Clix Marketing.

From the Industry

Paid Search

How to Create YouTube In-Stream Ads: Want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive sales? Have you considered running pre-roll ads on YouTube? In this article, you’ll find out how to create and launch TrueView in-stream YouTube video ads and optimize your ads for best results.

Now is the best time to stitch your search marketing loopholes before 2022: With the home stretch of 2021 right around the corner, now is the best time to stitch up those holes in your search marketing for 2022. Here are four tips for cleaning up your SEO and paid media marketing.

How to Set Up Your Google Analytics 4 for Success: Google Analytics 4 will eventually be our only GA platform option so it’s important to set it up properly. This post can show you how.

4 PPC Automation Tools You Should Be Using: Digital marketing can sometimes be very monotonous – spending hours adjusting bids, updating ads, or gathering data for reporting. But it’s 2021 and the industry as a whole has made incredible strides in automating a lot of the menial tasks that can make this career frustrating and sometimes just downright boring. This article offers four free solutions any digital marketer can try!

How Lead Tracking Can Improve Google Ads ROI: Anybody can track conversions. Smart marketers track leads. Why is this lead identification information important? Because it’s not enough to know that someone called your business. A conversion is not necessarily a lead, which is why it’s a bad idea to base your marketing decisions on conversions alone. Read this article, which explains how leads are different from conversions.

Google Ads – Phrase and broad match keywords that are identical to a query are now preferred: A phrase match or broad match keyword that is identical to a query is now always preferred as long as it is eligible to match, Google announced on Thursday. In addition, the company has provided new details on how keyword matching works when a search is identical to a given keyword as well as when a search is not identical to any of an advertiser’s keywords. And, Google has also revealed that BERT’s language understanding capabilities are now being used to understand the intent of queries and match them to keywords.

How to Sell on Amazon – Fees, Prime, Listings & More: Amazon can be a wonderful but complex place to sell. Learn the 4 different ways you can sell and everything you need to get started here.

Paid Social

Twitter Tests New Social Commerce Capabilities with Shopping Card and Shop Module Rollouts: It seems nearly all social media platforms are offering some level of social commerce capabilities, from Facebook and Instagram, to Pinterest and TikTok. Twitter is working hard to catch up after nixing their “Buy” button back in 2017, and has announced a host of new features that will help it establish a bigger presence in the growing social shopping marketplace.

Facebook Has New Ways to Generate Leads & Connect With Customers: Facebook is rolling out new free and paid business tools designed to help businesses find new customers and connect with them in more ways. In addition, the platform announced new features coming next year that are currently in testing. Check out this overview of all the new and upcoming Facebook updates for businesses.

How to Plan a Facebook Ad Campaign for the Holidays: Are you planning to use Facebook ads to promote your products or services this holiday season? Looking for a reliable process to ensure your campaigns succeed? In this article, you’ll discover five key steps to get the best possible results from your Facebook ad campaigns during peak holiday sales periods.

Ultimate LinkedIn Ads Guide 2021 – Types, Examples, Costs: How can your business leverage LinkedIn ads to lock in leads and generate increased revenue? This guide covers everything you need to know including ad audiences, formats, costs, best practices, and more.

From the Engines

Google

Helping travelers discover new things to do

Giving users more transparency into their Google ad experience

Magic in the making: The 4 pillars of great creative

Bring performance and privacy together with Server-Side Tagging

Microsoft

Show your brand values: Marketing with Purpose Business Attributes

Facebook

Navigating Change and Improving Performance and Measurement

TikTok

Understanding attention on TikTok: Ads drive strong brand impact across view durations

Snapchat

10 Ways to Increase E-Commerce Sales This Holiday Season

From the Clix Team

Using Google Ads’ Insights Tab by Bethany Bey

How To Set Up Google Analytics 4 Using Google Tag Manager by Tim Jensen

Tips for an Effective Localized PPC Strategy by Brittany Sager

The post Clix Marketing Blog’s #PPC News & Views: Friday, September 24th appeared first on Clix Marketing.

Localized PPC, or geo-targeting, is simply a strategy used to target people in a specific area. This will allow you to get in front of the right people and present them with a meaningful ad. This is particularly important if you are operating within some tight budget constraints. For a local business, navigating the busy traffic of the SERP can be a challenge. Here are some helpful tips for creating your local paid search strategy.

Start With A Solid Structure

The way you structure your keywords in your Search campaigns is very important.  If you don’t properly segment things out, you won’t be able to tailor your ad copy to the search as easily.  Decide how you want to target your audience: do you need to target by the city? Zip code? By a radius around your locations? Once you have the areas you want to target, you can begin your structure. 

One of my previous clients managed a slew of apartment buildings and had PPC accounts for each building. We would bid on generic terms like “apartments near me” or even just “apartments.”  It wouldn’t make much sense to leave a broad term like this open to the entire US. It was doubtful someone in Seattle would want an ad for my apartment on the east coast. The broader the keyword, the tighter our targeting was. For a generic keyword like “apartments”, we kept our targeting within a specific radius of the actual apartment complex. For more specific keywords, like the actual apartment complex’s name, we opened up our targeting to include a larger area. We applied a similar approach to searches like “apartments in New York.”

Struggling with keyword selection and don’t know where to start? Head to your search terms! This will help give you some insight into how your audience is finding you. Do they include city, town, zip code, county, near me, or neighborhood in their search? If so, that sounds like a perfect ad group opportunity along with tailored ad copy.

Leverage Extensions & Dynamic Features

Another necessary tactic within Google Ads is utilizing extensions. Location extensions can help users find your business. As long as you have Google My Business set up, you can run these extensions. These can be particularly useful if you have a brick-and-mortar store and you want to increase foot traffic. 

Call extensions are another one to use if you want to display your number directly on your ad. The best part is that Google will dynamically create a number so you can track these calls within the platform too!

Another feature to help you get hyper-local is dynamic location insertion which allows you to customize your ad copy to your user’s locations. This can help save some time creating location-specific ad copy. The options include city, state, and country which can be inserted into your headlines or descriptions. One client of mine in the education space likes to use this technique to tailor ad copy for applicants from out of state. We use ad copy that calls out “Now Accepting Students from {state} to increase enrollments in specific programs.

Get Hyper-Local

Level up from local targeting to hyper-local targeting. Another former client of mine managed storage units. To gain more foot traffic, we did some research and compiled a list of neighborhoods in the area to increase the relevancy of our keywords. Instead of only using “storage units in {city}”, we were able to use “storage units near {neighborhood}.” We also created ad groups for keywords like “storage units near me” and made sure to have radius targeting around each of the units’ locations. Because we had our keywords segmented by neighborhood, we were able to tailor our ad copy to call out the area as well. The more tailored your ad copy is, the higher the CTR. 

Another way to utilize a hyper-local strategy is to include relevant information to the area. This means you need someone on board who is an expert in the area. Let’s say you sell furniture and your business is located in a college town where there is a massive move-in during the month of August.  Here is an example of an ad that calls out the event called “Welcome Week.”

It is the little details like this that can set you apart from the rest of the ads in the SERP.

Another feature we have at our disposal is Google local campaigns. According to Google, these are designed to help businesses provide customers with information and help streamline the process for you to promote your business and your offline business goals. 

Try Something New

Don’t be afraid to test new things; your competition likely is! One of my favorite new tests for a local strategy, outside of Search, is Waze. This platform allows you to advertise your business on their map. Waze is starting to grow and is geared toward smaller businesses. 

Whether you are a local business or a larger brand, you can benefit from a local strategy. Like every new idea, you have to start testing to discover what works best! 

Have you been testing any local tactics that have you excited or have produced stellar results? Let us know!

The post Tips for an Effective Localized PPC Strategy appeared first on Clix Marketing.

The Insights page makes it easy for advertisers to explore data and emerging trends based on their industry. For example, let’s say you own a clothing store. The Insights page can show you that US search interest in dresses in trending higher this year compared to last year.

You can then act on these trends by creating a campaign specifically for Dresses if it doesn’t exist, or if it does you can increase budgets and bid more aggressively on these terms.

Insights are curated for your business based on your account performance and searches across Google for the products and services you show ads for. Insights update daily, and you can check back frequently for new insights that may appear.

Let’s take a look at how you can access the Insights page in your Google Ads account.

A Closer Look at the Insights Page

You can navigate to the Insights page from the left-hand menu in your account. Insights will be listed as an option near the top of the menu.

Once you are on the Insights page, you’ll see both current and upcoming trends for the products and services that are relevant to your business.

There are two main types of insights: search trends and demand forecasts. Search trends help you to understand the search interest for products and services relevant to your business. You can use search trends to respond to shifts in search demand by identifying potential growth opportunities for your business.

Demand forecasts help you to understand predicted upcoming search interest for products and services relevant to your business, helping you to prepare to capture additional demand.

You can also deep dive into each trend to understand the searches that are on the rise, and the locations where demand is growing fastest. To do this, click on “View Trend Details” in the lower right hand corner of each chart.

By viewing the details of the increase in Dress related searches, I can see the specific search terms that have increased in volume.

While searches like “met gala looks” might not be relevant to my business, other terms like sundresses or long sleeve dress might be products I sell and I can make sure these keywords are active in my account with competitive bids. This can also help me find potential negative keywords to add to my account so I don’t waste ad spend on non relevant, popular searches.

The Trend Details page also shows a much more visual chart of the auction insights data for your campaigns.

Instead of just a data table, you can view charts based on the metric and campaign of your choice. This way, you can see who your top competitors are as well as any changes in performance between them.

If you aren’t already using the Insights page in your account, I recommend checking it out so you can start uncovering some of the data trends for your business as well as using these insights to help guide your advertising decisions.

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