Are you worried your Google Ads aren’t working because they don’t show up when you do a search for your main keywords on Google? Read on to find out why this isn’t a good way to check whether your ads are working and how it could actually damage your campaign.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an auction system with all of the bidding happening in real time. Hence carrying out one search isn’t an accurate way of determining whether your search terms are working – you would need to check over a larger period of time such as a week or month. Other advertisers will be bidding on the same keywords, so a search carried out at different times might have very different results.
The problem is, if you keep searching for your ad and not clicking on it you are inadvertently sending out signals to Google. Google search is very sophisticated and is tailored to the user who is carrying out the search. Therefore if you’ve searched for your ad in the past and not clicked on it (which is the action you would normally want people to take once they’ve searched for your keywords), this is sending information to Google that the ad isn’t relevant to you. You are hence much more likely to see competitor ads, especially if you have clicked on them before!
You could also end up damaging your own campaign if you repeatedly check your ads in this way. By sending messages to Google that your ad isn’t relevant to the search terms you’ve typed in you could actually lower your Quality Score and cause your cost-per-click to go up!
The best action to take if you want to know how your ads are performing is to ask the team responsible for your campaigns to provide a regular report, showing how your campaign is working over a longer period than a single search. If you do want to search regularly to see if your ads are working in real time you should use the ad preview tool within Google Ads. You can set parameters such as location and then see what ads would show at that moment in a real search. Since it’s a search simulator it isn’t actually serving ads so won’t take your search history into account.
We hope you found this blog post useful, for help or advice on Google Ads get in touch.
If your business activities are quieter or on pause due to coronavirus, now might be a good time to take stock of your website and digital marketing activities ready for when you’re fully operational. Here are some tips to help you review, update and optimise your current marketing channels.
Improve Organic Reach with Keyword Analysis and SEO
Make your web pages more visible to search engines and help them appear higher up in the organic search results by improving your SEO. Alongside well planned website text, getting meta title & descriptions right is important in getting those all important click-throughs to your website.
Firstly, carry out some keyword analysis. Use Google’s keyword planner to find out which keywords are most relevant to your business and which are searched for the most. You can then use this information to review and update your website content (making sure copy is still readable and flows well) and the meta data fields and alt text on your site. It might be that the keyword analysis has informed you that there could be new pages to introduce too.
For example, if you’re a fitness coach, analysis on keyword planner would show that as well as ‘fitness coach’ the keywords ‘fitness trainer’ and ‘workout coach’ would also be worth including on your website and in meta data. If you need to flex your offering to take account of changing customer behaviour due to coronavirus, you might also decide that the keyword ‘virtual fitness coach’ and similar are worth including if you have the capacity to offer virtual sessions.
Tip: If your website has a lot of pages and you’re not sure where to start, you could check in Analytics for your most visited pages. Head to Behaviour – Site Content – Landing Pages and then All Pages.
Promote key products with Google Ads
If you’re not currently running Google Ads it might be worth considering setting up a campaign to promote your key products or services and increase web visitors and customers. Make sure you pay attention to locations, ad text, keywords and negative keywords. If you’re an ecommerce business not yet on Google Shopping that would be worth considering as well – great for online retailers. If you need help get in touch.
If you’re running Google Ads already, review & update your Ad text and negative keywords and check your settings, keywords, bids and search queries. This will help you get the best ROI for your ad spend.
Tip: It could be worth introducing new Google Ads campaigns which focus on your most searched for products and services, which could have changed due to coronavirus.
If you would like a Google Ads audit to see whether you could get a better return, or if your business could get a boost from some paid Google advertising, we’re here to help. We offer Google Ads Audits to give you expert help on how to improve your campaigns. Many campaigns we see aren’t optimised to their full potential and we’ve helped many clients save money and improve their reach and sales.
Review Social Media Ads
Social media ads are useful to businesses in a number of ways. Unlike Google Ads, which appear in the search engine if someone searches for keywords relating to the ad, social media ads show to people who may potentially be interested in your product or service.
For example, an accountant may have Google Ads running which appear when someone in their target area searches for ‘accountant’. They may then complement these ads and increase exposure for their business by setting up Facebook Ads which appear to people in their local area who are small business owners who might be interested in an accountant.
If you already have social media ads set up, now could be a good time to review and update them. Make sure images, ad text, landing pages and location targeting is reviewed to make sure it’s relevant to the current situation and customer needs.
Review your email marketing strategy
Do you regularly send out email marketing updates to your followers? Although people now communicate frequently on social media, email marketing still remains a very effective way of keeping in touch with customers, increasing website visits and making sales. The chances are, your customer needs have changed dramatically due to coronavirus and you might need to flex your offering accordingly. Think about your likely customer needs and desires over the coming months and develop an email marketing strategy accordingly.
We hope you’ve found these tips useful. For help with any aspect of digital marketing or SEO, get in touch.
It’s the start of a new year and a great time to re-evaluate your current marketing strategy. To help you in your planning, in this blog post we cover some of the main social media trends for 2020 and suggest how your business can adapt to them. Social media changes fast, so to make sure your business thrives in 2020 you need to stay ahead of the game!
1. Strike a balance between public and private engagement
Private messaging is on the rise and more and more people are shifting their time and focus to private channels such as Messenger and Whatsapp. Instagram has launched Threads, a camera-first messaging app, and LinkedIn is rolling out its new Teamates feature.
However, this doesn’t mean that the future is purely private social, so hang onto your Facebook page! The rise of private behaviors like messaging has not diminished the importance of public social media feeds, which remain a critical space for brand discovery and customer acquisition.
The key for brands is creating a seamless experience across both worlds, while balancing automation and human connection to build deeper customer relationships at scale. When it comes to private channels you can automate the easy stuff, taking advantage of messaging bots, but make sure you don’t lose the human touch.
2. Employers take centre stage in a divided world
Pessimism among consumers is growing with the rise of populism, divisive politics, and global mistrust of traditional institutions. As our world becomes increasingly divided, employees are looking to their organisations to make things right.
Progressive organisations should take advantage of this new role, building strong internal cultures, amplifying their company purpose with employee and customer advocacy, and putting to work the inextricable link between employee and customer experience.
Don’t underestimate the strength of employee advocates – they can help amplify bold sentiments and goodwill from your organisation. Try creating staff ambassadors on social media, and develop a positive social media culture within your organisation.
3. TikTok shakes up the status quo
Have you heard of TikTok? This social media app had explosive growth last year and is shaking up the social media landscape. Users share short, addictive video clips, reshaping how music is both made and marketed.
The question is, as with all new social media platforms, will it last? Whilst the platform may or may not last, it is certainly bringing valuable insight into the future of social culture, content, and collaboration. In response, Instagram has released Reels, allowing Instagram users to set 15-second video clips to music, share them as Stories, and potentially see them go viral on the new Top Reels section of the Explore tab.
It is only really worth investing time and resources into TikTok as a brand if you are aiming at the youth market. Aside from that, it’s worth noting the trend of short, authentic, raw and fun video as you develop your social media strategy for 2020.
4. Social marketing and performance marketing collide
Brand building has long been the primary use case for businesses on social media, but with the continuing decline of organic reach and increasing demand for return on investment, there’s been a rise in social performance marketing (using social ads to achieve a specific conversion such as a sale, lead, or click). Social marketers must expand the scope of their skill sets to fulfill the dual brand requirements of community building and performance marketing.
Successful organisations need to balance both driving short-term conversions and creating long-term strategies to build brand equity, customer happiness, and differentiation. Take a full funnel approach when it comes to social advertising campaigns – remember that ads aren’t just for performance marketing, they can also be just as effective for brand awareness. Don’t try to do too much with one ad either – use smart, targeted ads to move customers along the purchase path.
5. The social proof gap closes
ROI and measurement will continue to be persistent challenges this year despite attribution models now being built into social ad platforms. Successful organisations need to unite social data with other data for a holistic view (e.g. with Google Analytics data and CRM data) and don’t just look at social data in isolation.
They also need to have an integrated customer engagement approach between social media and other digital and traditional channels leads (e.g integrating a social ad strategy with email marketing, PR activities and advocacy programs).
Smart organisations should invest in both skills and tools to understand social ROI. Simply owning clever software won’t help your organisation understand the value of social media, you need to either have the skills internally to integrate and analyse the data that is meaningful to you, or to work with a skilled partner company.
We hope you found this blog post on social media trends useful. For help with social media and digital marketing campaigns for your business in 2020 get in touch.
Much of the information and stats in this blog post is based on Hootsuite’s recent live webinars on social media trends in 2020 and Hootsuite’s blog on social media trends.
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