Just as with search, when we talk about PPC advertising, we almost naturally shift the majority of our attention to Google and their AdWords advertising platform. It makes sense on the surface, Google receives a significantly higher volume of search than other engines and even higher CTRs. But, some marketing analysts are beginning to believe it may be more effective to put an emphasis on Bing ads, especially if you are advertising for a small business.
Pricing Engine, a small business marketing platform, has found that Bing ads are “more efficient” than AdWords, as they become a lower cost source of leads for small businesses.
As Search Engine Land reported, Pricing Engine examined their own data from hundreds of accounts, and they found that CTRs were indeed marginally higher on Google, but CPCs were significantly higher. As such, it seems that you actually get more for your dollar with Bing ads.
Big brands will still favor the higher volume of searches on Google, but smaller businesses don’t require the same kind of scale. Investing in marketing with a better return per cost may pay off in the long run.
00Maxhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngMax2013-10-28 15:58:322020-08-08 22:23:16Could Bing Ads Be Better For Small Businesses?
Google made some changes to how you can design display ads to help ease the challenges advertisers and SEM agencies have been complaining about for what seems like forever. Today they rolled-out Ready Image Ads within AdWords, which aims to make it easier to create ads for multiple sizes that look good across all devices. The tool is currently Google’s best attempt to solve this issue and they hope to get more AdWords advertisers to run display campaigns, according to Ginny Marvin.
The tool works by simply entering a URL from your website. From there, the Ready Image Ads tool automatically pulls images from your site to create various ads in various IAB standard sizes. These ads are also HTML5, making them compatible for viewing on mobile and desktop devices alike.
Ready Ads can also be used to create dynamic ads, engagement ads (including hover-to-play and lightbox ads), video ads, and general purpose ads from a variety of templates. View Google’s introduction video for Ready Ads below:
Pinterest may only be the fourth most popular social media platform out there, but it may become a significant part of your online marketing strategy in the near future. Last Thursday, Pinterest CEO and co-founder Ben Silbermann announced the company is beginning testing promoted pins, their version of paid advertising.
The site is primarily popular with females, but it is well loved by social media marketers because its users have shown time and time again that they are more willing to purchase than the demographics using any other social media platform. Facebook may have over eight times the traffic of Pinterest, but they aren’t purchasing at anywhere close to the same rate of the Pinners. However, in the almost four years since its creation, Pinterest has never included any paid advertising.
Silbermann discussed the decision to finally venture into paid advertising in a post titled “Planning for the Future” on the Pinterest blog. He also lays out a clear idea of exactly what this monetization will look like. They haven’t established all of the details, but Silbermann does say ads will be:
Tasteful –No flashy banners or pop-up ads
Transparent – Pinterest will “always let you know if someone paid for what you see.”
Relevant – Pinterest is aiming to ensure the ads you’re seeing are relevant to the content you are actually looking for.
Improved based on feedback – The company plans to take user feedback into heavy consideration while rolling out paid advertising, as well as working to improve the experience.
The first promoted pins are being tested in search results and category feeds. If you search for “Halloween” you might get promoted pins for costumes.
Pinterest definitely isn’t leaping into the advertising options, but they are beginning a change which could be very lucrative for enterprising social media marketers in relevant fields.
Startup companies have a lot to take care of just to get going. You have to deal with staffing your company, outreach, paperwork, testing, financing, and a thousand different things with little time. It is either sink or sail, and success relies on managing a multitude of problems.
It helps that most successful entrepreneurs are experts in their own field, and usually have at least a little bit of online business savvy. But, chances are they aren’t exactly well-versed in search engine optimization. While some of these startups might defer to a professional SEO resource or marketing team, it isn’t always required.
Getting even the most basic SEO considerations taken care of early on may seem superfluous, but SEO can take quite a while to grow. Starting early means you will start seeing the dividends later.
The most basic considerations of SEO simply ensure that searchers can find your business’s name and website fairly easily. Of course, a more comprehensive SEO plan extends that to ensuring you outrank your competitors and improve your larger web visibility, but that can be achieved after you’ve gotten yourself set up with just a little extra work.
Ashley Kemper from Search Engine Land put together a checklist for startups to get the most important SEO considerations taken care of early. Her list is a little more extensive than others you might find, but you’ll see much better rewards down the line by following her suggestions, and you’ll understand what you are actually doing much more.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-09-10 12:12:082013-09-10 12:12:08Why Should Startups Set Up Their SEO Early?
Every business with an online brand presence fears the day they run into a social media crisis. It could be anything, and there are plenty of recent examples. Taco Bell had an employee caught licking food, some companies have been hacked (not “hacked”, Chipotle), and sometimes drama that should be resolved within the company spills onto social media, such as the Amy’s Bakery freak out not too long ago.
While most brands with solid social media presences most likely have steps or employee guidelines to prevent problems like some of these, it is impossible to be fully prepared for a social media crisis. You can’t prevent hacking or service outages. But, as the business owner or social media manager, it is your job to manage the crisis and steer the ship out of the storm. If you do it well, you may even end up attracting some new clients. If you fail, your entire company can go up in flames.
As the VP of marketing for Nextiva, Yaniv Masjedi has some experience dealing with catastrophes both online and off, and he says the most important thing you can do is have a plan. “Every business should have a minute-by-minute strategy for how it will deal with a service shut down or public relations disaster.”
You need to know who will be handling the social media, how they will have access, and what the messaging across platforms is. Will you have a team responding to social media, or will it just be you manning the ship until everything dies down?
Masjedi published a step-by-step guide on the Huffington Post to help with handling these huge messes and preventing any extra damage once your social media has gone into full alert. You will have to be on your best game and be patient and understand with customers even when they are being rude or inappropriate, and you have to have a clear united message that doesn’t seem like a stock response, but an established response to whatever situation has arisen.
Before you ever run into these problems however, sit down and go over the guide and make sure you know how your company will respond in crisis. You can’t be prepared for everything, but you’ll be much better off knowing how you will approach any problems.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-08-09 15:22:322013-08-09 15:22:32How Will You Handle a Social Media Crisis?
We all have busy days where we seem to be running from the minute we get up, but as PPC managers, we can’t just ignore our campaigns for a day. There are many aspects of a campaign that have to be tweaked and worked with on a daily basis. Wouldn’t it be great if you could manage to take care of all the most important PPC tasks in 10 minutes? According to Melissa Mackey from Search Engine Watch, you can.
Of course, no good PPC manager is doing just 10 minutes of work a day, but on those days when work is piled up and you’re forced to squeeze it in, her “10-minute PPC workday” might just be able to help you keep all your basis covered.
It all starts with checking the stats on your top KPI. If conversions are your KPI, look at both your total conversions and cost per conversion. If you’re already doing this daily, you’ll be able to notice any anomalies immediately. Once you’ve spotted the outliers, you’ll spend the next nine minutes focusing on them.
The best step on fixing outliers is to pause the worse performers. Any ad group or keyword that has cost quite a bit but isn’t performing can be paused. You can re-enable it later when you have more time to focus in on the problem.
Next, you’ll want to check out your underperforming keywords. Whether they simply aren’t earning back the cost or maybe they just aren’t leading to conversions, you’ll want to see what keywords are dragging you down. The fastest method is to use in-line search query reports in Google to check the details of the keyword in question and create negative keywords directly in seconds.
Once that is over, we can move on to the positive things: top performing ad groups and keywords. Start with your best-performing ad groups (generating the most conversions at the lowest cost) and up the bids. Then, use AdWords editor to make any bulk bid increases on the best keywords. Keep it short, but tackle the most important and best few performers.
You will want to move on to quickly checking out your ad copy tests to see if you have any obvious winners, and try to replicate it by pasting it into your ad group a few times. The last couple minutes of actual work will be devoted to positive keyword research by running a quick search query report for your best performing keywords. Sort by conversions, and then add the best queries as positive keywords.
Once all is said and done, you’ll want to make notes for the next day. If you’ve kept yourself limited to 10 minutes, you’ll have noticed many issues you weren’t able to deal with at the moment, and you will probably have some questions to address. Jot down some quick notes while everything is fresh so that you’ll be able to tackle it all properly tomorrow.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-07-25 14:08:512020-08-08 21:57:44Is There Such Thing As a 10 Minute PPC Workday?
We see banners everywhere, especially in advertising. Whether they’re online, printed on cloth and draped across an entrance, or splashed across a billboard, banner ads all have the same core principles.
Some of the entries are a little obvious like “grab attention” but they go the extra mile (or pixel if you enjoy the same type of lame humor I do) by explaining shock or surprise isn’t the real way to grab attention. Making viewers want to interact is the real trick to getting someone’s full attention.
Some of the other seemingly obvious suggestions shouldn’t need to be said, but so clearly are needed in the current marketing environment. There are only so words you can fit on a banner before it becomes illegible, and complex fonts make that word limit somewhere between one and five words. If someone can’t tell you what your ad said with just a one to two second glance, you’re trying to squeeze too much in.
Seriously, clarity is so important their list includes it three times with the entries “Message Clarity” and “Succinctness” and I don’t fault them for it. Keep your banner short. I’ve seen far too many ads at the top of my screen and running along the tops of subway cars absolute packed with words in a variety of fonts and all they ever do is hurt my eyes. Viewers remember the short and sweet.
There is obviously more to banner design than keeping it simple, but it opens up the big question addressed by many more of Onextrapixel’s list; “how do I convey a memorable message with so little?” If you can find an answer to that question, you are already well on your way to a great banner.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-04-17 12:06:362013-04-17 12:06:36The Alphabetical Guide To Great Banner Design
Years ago, all a local business had to do was build a lot of links and their business would show up on the first results page. SERPs have gotten much more competitive in that time, and Google has introduced a strict local algorithm, so now local SEO has become a unique sector that is often more difficult to implement than almost any other online marketing strategy.
You can always hire a company to take care of all of your SEO needs, but if you have a tight budget and are willing to get your hands dirty, there are steps you can take to try to get onto the coveted first page of local results, called the 7 Pack. You’ll recognize the 7 Pack as the listing of businesses directly under the map of the area. Search Engine Journal set out a five step plan to improve your local business rankings.
The first step is checking to see if your target keywords actually trigger the local algorithm. Usually simply including key phrase combinations such as the city and most important keyword should connect with the local search results, but sometimes this doesn’t work. If that is the case, then it would seem your SEO strategy should be less localized as Google doesn’t register your service as part of its local algorithm.
One of this biggest tricks for local businesses is knowing where to establish your company online. Google’s algorithm always gives preference to businesses located within the city limits searched for, often called the “centroid” bias. This means Google will rank businesses located closer to the heart of the city higher than those on the outskirts if all other factors are equal.
For businesses located in suburbs or just outside of city limits this is poses a big question. Most want to capitalize on the bigger market from the closest city than the small market in their local town, but trying to rank in a metropolitan area when you aren’t physically established within that boundary is a incredibly difficult task. You have to decide if you want to fight to get into the rankings for the city, and possibly only achieving the second or third page on the local listings, or you can aim to corner the market in your town and rank first every time for a smaller audience.
Deciding that move usually requires determining how competitive your niche is, and even businesses already well situated in a metropolitan market will be rewarded for investigating. The quickest way to find out how competitive your market is starts ith taking the #1 ranking in the 7 Pack and copying all of their information exactly as it is displayed in the search bar with quotation marks. This gives you an approximate estimate as to how many directories and citations you will need to outrank the top listing in the 7 Pack. You can do the same for the lowest ranking. Your results obviously have to outdo the lowest ranked business in the 7 Pack to overtake it, so exploring will give you an idea just how tall the SEO mountain you have to climb is.
Once you’ve done your research you can actually begin working on your local SEO, but the process will be much easier thanks to informed decisions only possible through understanding your local online market. Search Engine Journals last two steps can get you going on improving your local site’s ranking but nothing happens overnight. Local SEO is competitive and time consuming, but without it you are falling behind the times.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.png00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-04-11 13:47:142013-04-11 13:47:143 Steps to Take Before You Start Your Local SEO Strategy
It can be hard to notice, but Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) are constantly changing. Sometimes it is a result of new algorithms or updates to Penguin or Panda, but often it is a result of Google’s non-stop tweaking of their formula. If you weren’t consistently studying and analyzing SERPs, you probably haven’t even noticed.
SearchMetrics does just that type of analyzing of SERPs, and they just released their study of last years result pages, and there are some interesting points for all search marketers wanting to know what Google is favoring in their results. The highlights of the study, as pointed out by Search Engine Journal, are:
A small decline in video integration
A significant increase in image integration
A sharp decline in shopping
A large increase in news integration
The decline in video integration is one of the most surprising, as I’ve heard more than one analyst predict video will be one of the most popular mediums for content marketing this year. If they’re predictions are true, video makers will have stiff competition getting their content onto the SERPs.
Similarly, eCommerce pages are on the rise, and the data suggests business owners should be considering paying into the Google Shopping network to have their products seen by more people.
On the other hand, the big increase in news shows big opportunities for content creators reporting on events and doing news worthy journalism.
SearchMetrics made an infographic to go along with the release of their study, which you can view below or here.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-04-01 12:04:142013-04-01 12:04:14What Showed Up On SERPs Last Year? [Infographic]
Analytics is one of the most ignored aspects of web marketing, despite the fact that everyone is concerned with their site’s statistics. Tons of SEOs check their statistics even daily, but almost everyone relies on either a set of analytics tools or the generic settings in Google Analytics rather than looking deeper, and using more focused methods like Custom Reporting.
Relying on the generic settings in Google Analytics has two downsides. One, obviously, is the lack of focus and clarity that comes with not personally directing what statistics you are watching, and how you are gathering that data. The other is that Google Analytics changes just as often as every other part of Google, and if you aren’t holding the reins, your results will probably shift, making your data inaccurate.
If you want to take on custom reporting for your analytics, you will have a better idea of how you are performing, and what aspects of your site need work. Greg Habermann suggests starting your custom reports by looking at five recent changes to Google Analytics that you can take advantage of. All you have to do is take the initiative.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-03-14 10:43:492013-03-14 10:43:49Take Charge of Your Analytics
