Tag Archive for: PPC

Money Saving Tips For Your Limited AdWords Budget

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Some companies can afford to just throw money at their online marketing campaigns and get results, but if you run a small business with an equally small advertising budget, you’ll want to look into these tips from Business2Community.

1. Google Search

Surprisingly, they suggest those with a limited budget limiting their options to search only. While it is likely the most efficient platform, I would argue that, depending on your business, you could yield great results with other options as well. But, it is a great place to start and if your budget is extremely limited, maybe also a great place to stop.

2. Keywords

You get a high conversion rate at a low cost-per-click. Keywords are a huge money saver and hone in on the users who are most likely to be looking for you. Also, be sure to learn about “long tail keywords” to get the most out of your ads.

3. Geotargeting

Chances are, if you have a small business and limited budget, you are only interested in those consumers living in your area. Use Google’s tools to only show ads to those in your vicinity. You can set parameters by city, zip code or even a mile radius around your physical address.

4. Day Parting

This one requires some legwork on your part. Check into your campaigns and find out when the peak hours are for conversions. You can then choose to either turn ads off during down times, or turn ads off during some of these peak hours when costs are at their highest. Either way, it is an opportunity to save some coin.

I do not endorse turning off ads simply because your business is closed for the day, however. Many consumers do conduct searches outside of normal business hours, which means you could be missing out on a large part of the market.

5. Device Targeting

The main reason to use this tool is to ensure ads ideal for mobile devices are shown only on mobile devices, while ads ideal for laptops, or not ideal for mobile, are only shown to laptops and tablets.

 

 

 

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Twitter Ads Not A Viable Platform Yet

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It was only a matter of time before Twitter unveiled an advertising platform to its users. So far, however, the results have been extremely underwhelming.

At the present, your Twitter ad campaign will be run like a poorly run AdWords campaign. This is due to the fact that there just aren’t enough tools and metrics made available to run it properly. Twitter can’t tell you who exactly saw your ad or who exactly converted because of it. Instead, you get the total number of impressions and how many new followers you have because of the ad. And, perhaps they didn’t think this all the way through, but you also get to see exactly how much money the ad cost you right next to the embarrassing lack of metrics.

The rumor is that Twitter ads has already advanced past this early stage and some of the big money marketers are getting to experience that next level first and there’s no doubt that Twitter will improve its advertising platform until it is on par with Facebook. For now, however, there’s no reason to spend any of your budget on Twitter ads.

Jason Yormak did start a campaign with Twitter ads. You can see his results at Business2Community.

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Now Use AdWords Express To Promote Your Google+ Page

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There’s been an interesting development with Google’s AdWords Express, which is marketed as a headache-free alternative for small businesses. Recently, Google announced that you could use the ads Google sets up for you with your budget in AdWords Express to drive users to your Google+ page. However, Google+ itself is an ad-free zone and you are unable to even set parameters so only Google+ users will be shown the ads.

For small businesses with no website, this could still be a valuable tool to create some sort of web presence. Google had been offering AdWords Express users with no site of their own the ability to create a free site, but with the included option of using a company’s Google+ page, that may be a thing of the past.

However, there are also some obvious glitches in this AdWords Express, Google+ relationship. For one, Google is essentially allocating your AdWords budget to promote Google+. Read more about the sketchy side of this deal in Greg Finn’s article at Marketing Land.

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AdWords Most Important Changes of 2012

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2012 saw Google make a number of important changes and updates to AdWords. I’ve touched on most of these here, but for a nice summarized rundown you can head the iNeedHits blog.

These changes are all ways to improve your online marketing strategy and increase your audience. Plus, the article keeps it short and sweet so you won’t have to invest too much of your time.

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A Closer Look At AdWords Express

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Google launched AdWords Express more than a year ago as a simple, no frills alternative for small business owners. Nearly all the bells and whistles have been taken out so users need only set a monthly budget and create an ad, then let Google automate the rest of the process.

Recently, Google has been pushing hard for more business owners to use AdWords Express and has even been offering free ad credits for signing up, as I mentioned last week.

Business2Community has a more in-depth article about the getting started with AdWords Express if you’re interested. But while a dumbed down version of AdWords seems like a time-saver, it also is robbing you of potential value from your online advertising. Without the ability to tweak and track your ads, you are putting a lot of faith in Google to run your campaigns properly. Sure, that saves you from putting time and money into your advertising budget, but it could also cost you sales and conversions.

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Properly Evaluating Ad Channel Performance

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It’s easy to get caught taking metrics at face value and not really interpreting what they mean. Benny Blum, for Search Engine Land, makes a valuable point about how time affects how you value your channels’ performances. You have to be wary of making changes too soon and effectively destroying what would have eventually been a great platform.

Obviously, there are difficult choices to make about where to allocate your ad budget across options like PPC, email, social media and organic search. However, if you looking at your click and conversion rates over an optimal amount of time, you might be overreacting to perceived underperformance.

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How You Can Get Free AdWords Credits

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Google is offering up to two months of free advertising, or up to a $250 total value, for signing up for AdWords Express before December 16th. Most likely, you’ve received emails, possibly many, informing you of the promotion but it might be worth looking into for small business owners.

Find out more from Peter Kafka’s article at All Things D.

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Target By Location with Bing Ads

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Bing Ads has been fervently working to become a realistic competitor and alternative to AdWords. Recently, they debuted their own location targeting tool, similar to one AdWords trotted out last month.

Just like AdWords, Bing users can now target only those in specific geographic locations or only those visiting specific websites.

So far, Bing has simply been trying to keep up with AdWords innovations, but they obviously are attempting to become a real competitor to Google.

Head over to CMS Wire for the details on the Bing Ads location targeting tool.

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App Center Could Soon Allow Ads

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Facebook recently made it possible for users to search specifically in its App Center. You can search by an app’s title or by generic keyword. Josh Constine of TechCrunch suggests that this could open the door for ads within the App Center.

Though there is currently no results page, just a drop down menu after a search, Facebook could easily add sponsored results similar to what Google has already been doing with AdWords. Ads for apps related to the user’s search could appear at the top of the current drop down format, or as full-on entries in a results page.

App Center is not only set-up for ads to easily be included, but it also already has the audience. After only 2 months of operation, it boasted more than 150-million monthly users and that number was up to 220-million at the beginning of October.

App Center has “qualified leads, ample traffic, a model proven by Google, and a huge base of developers/advertisers”. All that’s left is to actually make the ads a reality. 

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Adwords Will Soon ‘Optimize for Conversions’ By Default

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Adwords is making some dramatic changes once again. In October, Google brought back the ‘Rotate Indefinitely’ option for campaigns even though they didn’t recommend the option themselves. Now, Google will be making campaigns not set to ‘rotate indefinitely’ default to ‘optimize for conversions’.

As posted to the iNeedHits blog, Google estimates the change will increase conversions by 5-percent across the board. With the ‘optimize for conversions’ option, Google will dynamically change bids from advertisers to run ads with the greatest chance of creating a conversion.

Users who prefer to ‘optimize’ manually can do so by using the ‘Conversion Optimizer’ and ‘Enhanced CPC’ tools, which can track advertising bids likely to lead to conversion and ensure ads with high chances of conversion are being shown the most without an increse in budget.

Google will make the change the week of November 12th. This means that you’ll need to do your homework before then to make sure your campaigns aren’t automatically switched to something you don’t want.

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