If you took a sneak peek into thousands of apartment websites’ analytics accounts you might find that they tell a similar story. Most of their website traffic is coming from Google. Google is arguably the most important marketing channel for apartment marketers today, but it’s also one of the most difficult to compete in.
Are you getting the most out of your search engine marketing campaign? Compare the following concepts to what you are currently practicing to see if you are maximizing your budget.
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Do you use Google Shopping to sell your products or do you think your business is too small to compete with larger businesses that have bigger budgets? With careful planning and execution, using Product Listing Ads within Google Shopping can be a very effective digital advertising platform. Here are four strategies for your smaller e-commerce business to find success.
What makes you unique? Why would someone buy from you? Your uniqueness adds value and will make your ads stand out to online shoppers. Focus your campaigns on new, niche, or unknown brands – different products that aren’t sold by big box retailers or Amazon. This exclusivity helps separate you from your competition. Selling unique products means there’s less competition to appear in Google Shopping for relevant searches.
Segmenting your campaigns correctly will help you deliver ads to the most relevant, ready-to-buy audiences. Focus on capturing high-converting traffic by making sure your ads appear to high-conversion queries. By segmenting your campaigns into the type of queries that receive high, medium and low conversion rates you can set bid amounts that correlate to the user’s intent. Bid more for high-converting queries and less for generic searches.
Target location to make sure your ads are reaching shoppers who are most likely to purchase your products. Are consumers in certain areas more likely to be interested in what you are selling? Depending on what your goals are, you can bid higher for your ads to show in very specific areas. If you sell gas fireplaces with all the bells and whistles, you may decide to bid more for ads shown in high-income areas with colder climates where buyers have a budget for your custom fireplaces.
Most consumers who click on a Product Listing Ad are usually close to making a purchase decision. Pairing your ads with RLSA (remarketing lists for search ads) allows you to bid more for ads that will be shown to people who have already visited your site or made a previous purchase. Consumers who have existing knowledge of your business are more likely to make a purchase.
The key to making a sale is delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. We can help you create and execute a multi-faceted advertising campaign that puts your products in front of interested buyers. Contact us today!
Pay-per-click (PPC) ads allow you to create highly targeted advertising campaigns in an effort to reach your most valuable customers online. These paid search ads get your message in front of the right customers at the very top of search engine results pages.
When a potential customer enters a search query and your ad appears, it may be the first time they see or hear about your brand. Make a great first impression by crafting ad copy that introduces your offer to a customer, but also compels them to visit your website. Capturing their attention, enticing them with your offer, and providing them with the necessary steps to convert all begins with your ad copy. By following these six tried-and-true tactics, you can write great copy that compels your audience to click:
Need help creating and implementing your PPC campaign? Contact us today and we’ll help you deliver your compelling message to your target audience.
Search advertising has long been used as a direct-response marketing strategy, but a new study from Google reveals it could be helpful in branding as well.
Throughout 2013, Google and Ipsos MediaCT conducted 61 search experiments to measure the impact of search ads on brand awareness. They measured both top-of-mind awareness and unaided brand awareness even when the consumer doesn’t click on the ad.
Overall, Google found that there was a positive impact on unaided brand awareness and top of mind awareness.
This can add an interesting twist to your search campaigns. Rather than focusing solely on direct-response campaigns, you can include a search campaign for branding as well. This can help drive your direct-response campaigns by improving your mindshare of customers.
To learn more about getting your own search campaign up and running, contact us today.
A couple of years ago, Google debuted a new product called Google Cars. Dealerships everywhere were curious and apprehensive about the new product. There was talk about Google gaining too much power in how consumers would search for cars, and a few dealers were skeptical it would work.
Now, after a couple years, we’ve been able to determine that Google Cars was not a success. Consumers didn’t use the tool nearly as much as was anticipated, and dealers received mixed results from the leads generated by the program.
The failure of a company Google’s size at creating a tool to connect with car shoppers shows that it’s harder to sell cars online than everyone thinks. It’s not about “doing digital;” it’s about doing digital right.
If you’re trying to connect with car shoppers in search engines, you can do it two ways: a traditional PPC program, or a dynamic, inventory-specific program like Search Liners.
Search Liners aggregates your inventory and creates individual search ads for each car on your lot. That way, when a consumer does a search for a specific car you have, the PPC for that specific model will display and when they click it will drive them right to the VDP for that specific car.
Just because Google Cars didn’t work out doesn’t mean it’s impossible to connect with car shoppers on search engines – you just have to do it right.
Over the past week or so since Yahoo announced they were buying Tumblr, many panned the idea, dismissing it as an aging tech giant’s feeble attempt to stay relevant to younger audiences. What the buy really means is that Yahoo is going all-in on display advertising.
Let’s not forget that Marissa Mayer was a top executive at Google, basically the biggest Internet success story ever. She has seen first-hand the data behind all of Google’s products – including its search and display networks.
People think of search advertising as the de-facto form of Internet advertising, but the truth is display advertising is equally as effective, and helps you capture your customers at a different point in the funnel.
In a recent Wordstream study on search versus display advertising, they found that average CPAs (cost per action) on Google display networks are often lower than Google search CPAs.
Display ads have gotten better and better over the years with advancements like retargeting, contextual targeting and search retargeting. Plus, with certain CPCs on search becoming outrageously expensive (some top $50), display advertising is becoming more attractive because of its lower barrier to entry.
Some think that Yahoo paid too much for Tumblr. I think that Tumblr gives Yahoo a new avenue to pursue a younger audience, and gives it more display inventory for ad serving.
Plus, with the leaps and bounds made in display advertising, it helps Yahoo diversify beyond the search results.
If you’re doing a PPC (pay per click) campaign for your business, chances are you are focusing mostly on specific keywords to bring new traffic to your site. This is important, but you shouldn’t forget about buying branded search terms to protect your brand name from
The problem arises when a company doesn’t buy its brand name and a competitor successfully brand jacks it for an extended period of time. The reason this is an issue is because when a competitor gets clicks with their search ad, Google sees them as the most relevant option. So even if a company starts buying its own name, they have an uphill battle until Google realizes they are the rightful owner of the brand term.
Thankfully, it’s easy to combat this. If you manage
Don’t lose your brand name to brand jackers! Bite the bullet and buy your brand name. Trust us, it’s worth it.
Tablets are becoming more and more commonplace both in work and at home, and they are now the ultimate companion device for consumers as they watch TV.
In a new report from Flurry Analytics, tablet users are shown to use their tablets throughout the day, but during the primetime hours the usage spikes.
What does this mean? It means tablet users are using their devices as they watch TV. They’re searching, networking and playing games. Their high engagement during the primetime TV hours means that you have an additional way to get their attention instead of just TV commercials.
Imagine you run a primetime TV spot at 7:30 p.m. on a local news channel. An interested customer sees your ad, grabs their tablet and looks you up online. You have two opportunities to grab them while they are searching for your business.
The first is with a search targeting campaign. Also known as paid search, search targeting puts your ad at the top of search engines. This gives you the chance to reach people as they look up your business.
The second is with Retargeting. Retargeting displays ads to people after they visit your website, allowing you to remarket your business to them. So if the interested tablet user searches and finds your website, but leaves without taking action, you can still reach out to them through a Retargeting campaign.
Tablet users have high primetime engagement, and tend to be older and more affluent than other demographics. It’s time to target tablet users with search and display ads.
The third portion of the campaign was the mobile website. Since the rate of mobile Internet adoption is expected to pass desktop Internet useage in two years, it was almost essential to offer a mobile interface for Boeing Classic. The mobile page featured links to the Boeing Classic Facebook page, directions to the golf course, a schedule of events, and an embedded Twitter widget programmed to grab tweets about the Boeing Classic. The mobile site also featured a tee times page that we updated daily so tournament-goers could see when their favorite players were teeing off.
Overall, the campaign was a huge success. We brought more than 1,000 people to the Boeing Classic website, and delivered more than half a million ad impressions to Boeing Classic’s target demographic. Our ads were displayed on thousands of websites, spanning more than 50 ad networks. These results echo what we see with our clients every day. Boeing Classic wanted a far-reaching display campaign, and we delivered.
This is just one example of how our clients use our products to attract more people to their site. Go to our website to learn more about starting your own digital marketing program.
