Call-Only Ads – 5 Reasons Why They Should Be Part of Your PPC Strategy

She might be a little young, but she will never know what it’s like to not have a smartphone. The mobile landscape continues to expand and grow. Google statistics show:

• 79 percent of smartphone owners use their devices to shop.
• 82 percent of mobile shoppers are using search to help determine what they are going to shop for. Mobile users are mobile shoppers, and it’s all the more important to have your paid search ads front and center.
• 70 percent of people searching on mobile will call a business directly from the search results.

Last month, AdWords announced a new ad format for phones with call-only campaigns. This is an "upgrade" from the call extensions that we have been using. While call extensions are an effective way to promote your business number in an ad, call-only campaigns have taken it a step further. And it’s specifically targeted for businesses whose focus is phone calls. But – even if part of your business relies partially on phone calls as opposed to clicks, it’s a strategy that you should seriously consider putting into your marketing mix.

And it’s easy to set up. When you create a campaign in the Settings tab, you simply select the Call-Only option:

And I know what you are thinking – but now I have to create more campaigns to support another new AdWords feature. Do I really need this? And what’s the advantage over call extensions? Why should I change over?

Here are five compelling reasons to migrate to this new feature:

1. Phone Number Is at the Top of the Ad

Unlike call extensions, the phone number is the first thing you see in the ad – and with the word "Call" incorporated. This ad format on a mobile device is more likely to get the user to take an action. It’s also highly visible with bigger font size and blue text:

2. Prominent Call Button

The call button is readily displayed next to the ad. This enables an immediate call to action for the user – they are one click away from contacting you, and you are one click away from a potential sale.

3. A Click = Phone Call

With call-only ads, a click is directly translated into a phone call. Instead of someone clicking on an ad and going to your site, you put the potential buy directly to someone they can talk to. Therefore, it’s crucial to maximize the value of each call. You can bid based on what the value of the call is for your business. For example, you can set a bid based on the ROAS for the call.

4. Direct Line to Your Business

Think of call-only ads as a direct hotline straight into your business. Ensure that when someone calls in, your call support team is well versed in the ad copy that is being used, so they understand what people are looking for when they call in. This is important because people are not relying on your website – they are relying on the person in your call center. What you are saying in your ad is the reason someone is calling in – so be sure that you have the right answers.

5. Ability to Create More Targeted Ads

It’s important to develop a strategy with call-only ads. Because the call to action is going to be the call itself, you are not focused on messaging that is promoting a call to action. This is very different from when you are generally writing ad copy, so it requires a different focus. Ensure your ad lets people know that they can reach you directly, and that they are not going to a website. Use messaging such as "speak to a rep today," "call for free estimate," or "talk with a consultant."

Call-only ads are a great way to promote your business by targeting your mobile customers. Have you started incorporating call-only ads? Would love to hear from you.

Want to keep up with the latest news from AdWords? Google now has a features section that shows all of the new stuff from AdWords, and it’s broken down by month. The features section can link to blog posts about a new feature, or link you to the Help or Policy Center if the update is related to changes with AdWords.

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Google Is Changing the Close Variant Matching Option in AdWords

Currently, advertisers have the option to include or exclude close variant matching to exact and phrase match keywords in Google AdWords, but starting in late September, that’s going to change. On August 14th,Google announced that they will be applying close variant matching to all exact and phrase match keywords, removing the option to opt-out.

So what does this mean? It means your ads may show up for any variation of a user’s search query including misspellings, singular/plural forms, acronyms, stemmings, abbreviations and accents. For example, when close variant matching is on, your ads may show up for the following search queries around “cleaning equipment”.

• Clening equpment
• Cleaning equipments
• Cleaning equip
• Clean equipment

If you currently have this option turned off, your ads only appear when a user searches exactly for “cleaning equipment.”

While I agree this change will help eliminate the efforts of building extensive keyword lists, I don’t think taking this away from advertisers is completely necessary. The time they are saving by not adding dozens of keywords, is now time they need to spend building negative keyword lists. Since this feature is on by default in AdWords, most accounts won’t be affected by this change. But for those advertisers who have close variant matching turned off, starting in September, they’ll need to adjust their accounts accordingly by adding those specific close variant terms as negatives to each ad group or campaign.

According to Google, at least 7% of search queries have misspellings and by making this option universal, advertisers won’t be missing out on those valuable opportunities.

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Google Extends Nearby In-Store Product Listing Ads to Desktops

Retailers with products that are only available in stores are now able to promote those goods to desktop users with Google's local Product Listing Ads. That's according to VentureBeat.

Previously, retailers had the ability to promote those in-store-only items solely on mobile devices, reports say. In other words, Google is now allowing retailers to promote in-store products across all devices, regardless of whether the products are available online as well.

In October, Google announced local availability for Product Listing Ads on desktop and smartphones, saying consumers searching for products would be able to see Product Listing Ads for local stores and local storefronts where they could browse inventory.

According to VentureBeat, a Google spokesperson said, "Based on positive feedback, we're now enabling retailers to show store-exclusive products on desktop - a feature so far limited to mobile. In addition, we're also expanding local inventory ads internationally, beginning with [the] U.K., France, Germany, Japan, and Australia."

A Google rep did not respond to a request for further comment from SEW.

According to the blog post that initially announced the local features, local availability for Product Listing Ads and the local storefront are based on a local product feed managed through the Google Merchant Center, which "allows retailers to provide users with up-to-date, item-level price and availability information for each physical store."

Google said retailers pay for clicks on the Product Listing Ad to the local storefront on a cost-per-click basis, while clicks and interactions on the local storefront are free. Retailers can also see separate local click performance, Google added.

"These local features help retailers leverage the scale of Google Shopping to market items sold in their physical stores," Google said.

The Product Listing Ads extension was first reported by Bloomberg in an interview with Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google's senior vice president of ads and commerce.

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10 Tips for Optimal AdWords Campaign Settings

Campaign settings are pretty basic, but many times we overlook a basic thing and wonder why things aren’t going as smoothly as we anticipated. Here’s a quick rundown of his idea of the basics:

1. Focus on one network at a time: don’t include search and display together.
2. Always include the search partner network when starting a new AdWords campaign.
3. Target the languages the demographic in your location targeting speak.
4. Use specific areas within the area you want to target.
5. Stick to manual CPC bidding and potentially enhanced bidding.
6. Ensure your ads show every time users search for your keywords.
7. Apply ad scheduling that fits your business objectives.
8. Rotate your ads so you can make a cost-benefit analysis including ALL important metrics — not just one.
9. Work smart and let Google worry about misspellings, plurals, and close variants.
10. The optimal campaign settings are determined by your goals and circumstances.

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Google Creates Shopping Campaigns "Upgrade Tool" for AdWords Advertisers

Google wants to motivate advertisers to make the switch from Product Listing Ads (PLAs) to Shopping campaigns and has released an upgrade tool to "help you upgrade in a matter of clicks," it says in a blog post.

In April, Google AdWords announced it would do away with regular PLA campaigns by the end of August in favor of these Shopping campaigns, which it said are a new way to manage PLAs and offer more features than PLA campaigns alone. Those features include a bid simulator, additional options for campaign creation, and the ability to create multiple ad groups.

The AdWords help files detail how to use the tool:

With the Shopping campaign upgrade tool, you select the regular Product Listing Ads campaign you want to upgrade, and AdWords will try to create a new Shopping campaign for you based on that campaign. During this process, you choose the status you want to set for your existing campaign and your new Shopping campaign, once it’s created. You can find a link to the upgrade tool from the Settings tab of any regular Product Listing Ads campaign that hasn’t already been submitted using the tool.

Google notes not all campaigns are compatible with the tool. For example, if advertisers use AdWords labels or groupings in their product targeting or inventory filters, they’ll need to upgrade the data feed with custom labels before using the tool.

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17 Keys to Success in Social PPC

If you haven't jumped on the social PPC bandwagon yet, it's time you gave it some serious thought. While social PPC won't replace Google AdWords any time soon, it's become an effective source of incremental leads and sales for savvy businesses.

What follows are 17 keys to running successful social PPC campaigns. The first four apply to all social PPC, then we'll talk about keys to success for each major social PPC engine.

Social PPC Keys to Success

1. Identify Your Target Audience

In search, the target audience is "anyone who searches using my keywords." In social, much more thought must be put into the people and personas you'd like to reach. Are they consumers? Business owners? Teenagers? What do they like to do? Where do they work, shop, play?

Defining your audience is critical to success in social PPC.

2. Identify the Marketing Challenge That Paid Social Solves

Think about why you want to use paid social in the first place. Are you active organically in social media, but need a larger or more engaged audience? Are you struggling to reach a B2B audience because consumers also search on your keywords? Do you need awareness of your product, service, or company?

All of these can be great reasons to use paid social – the key is to think about what problem social PPC will solve for you.

3. Define Your Paid Social Strategy and Objectives

If you've done the first two steps, this will be easy.

If your audience is B2B decision makers, and your objective is lead generation, then you'll want to define your strategy and objectives as such. If your goal is audience growth, build that in to your strategy.

Mapping strategy out ahead of time sets you up for good results.

4. Segment Your Audience Based on How You'll be Posting

This is an overlooked and yet important part of social PPC setup.

It isn't unusual for advertisers to have multiple segments within their target audience. You might have different types of businesses that you want to reach, or you may be targeting both men and women, for example.

Look at your current social posts to see what audience they're intended to reach – and then set up your social PPC campaigns accordingly.

LinkedIn Keys to Success

5. Carefully Identify Your Target Companies and Job Levels

LinkedIn's targeting options are great for targeting individuals at specific companies and job levels; it's especially effective for B2B. But think carefully about how you want to target.

Do you want narrow targeting with specific job titles and companies, or do you want to cast a wider net and focus on categories rather than specifics?

Be especially careful about seniority targeting. If you need to reach decision-makers, you'll probably want to exclude entry level people. But be aware that the higher level you target, the higher your minimum CPC will be.

6. Be Ready to Pay $5+ Per Click

Speaking of minimum CPCs, LinkedIn's CPCs run much higher than other social PPC channels. The results are often worth it, but be prepared to pay $5 or more per click and optimize accordingly.

7. Use Sponsored Updates if Possible

LinkedIn Ads have two types of campaigns: sponsored ads and sponsored updates. In my experience, sponsored updates perform much better than sponsored ads. Sponsored updates show in a user's news feed, giving you premium placement.

If you're actively posting updates to LinkedIn, use sponsored updates whenever possible.

8. Segment Your Audience Based on How You'll be Posting

Think about how you'll be posting, and segment your audience accordingly. The LinkedIn user interface isn't very user-friendly, so it's more efficient to set up segmented campaigns at the outset.

Twitter Keys to Success

9. Carefully Identify Your Target Accounts or Keywords

Twitter Ads often feel familiar to those used to Google AdWords and Bing Ads, because you cantarget using keywords. You can also target individual user accounts. It's important to decide which option makes sense for you.

If you want to reach consumers, for example, make sure the keywords or accounts you target are focused on consumer content.

10. Use Images and Hashtags With Caution

It's important to note that Twitter Ads are a pay-per-engagement, not pay-per-click, program. You pay for anything that can be clicked (links, @ handles, hashtags, and images), as well as for each reply, follow, and retweet.

Twitter Ads are great for driving engagement and leads, but be aware that you'll pay for much more than just clicks to your website.

11. Test Lead Generation Cards

Twitter lead generation cards enable advertisers to create a virtual "card" that attaches to a tweet. Users can take an action with one click, without leaving Twitter. The options for lead gen cards are nearly endless, and in my experience they perform very well.

12. Segment Your Audience Based on How You'll be Posting

You'll notice that segmentation is a theme here, because it's important. The Twitter Ads interface isn't much better than LinkedIn's, so it's easiest to think about targeting up front.

Facebook Keys to Success

13. Have at Least 1,000 Users in Your Custom Audience

Much has been said about Facebook custom audiences. They're a powerful way to reach specific users on Facebook.

Having a big enough audience is key to a successful campaign, though. We recently ran a test with about 150 users in a custom audience, and we got very few impressions and clicks. Hitting the minimum number of users is really important.

14. Use Sponsored Posts in Newsfeed When Possible

Similar to LinkedIn, Facebook offers both right-rail and sponsored post ads. Facebook has become so large that I'm not sure anyone looks at the right rail ads anymore – and they don't even show at all on most mobile devices. Make the most of your advertising efforts by using sponsored posts whenever possible.

15. Relentlessly Test Images

It's common advice for Facebook ads, and with good reason. The image is what really attracts the attention to your ad – the actual copy is almost irrelevant if you have a good image.

Aggressively test images to learn which ones work best.

16. Use Lookalike Segments

An added bonus of using custom audiences is the ability to build lookalike audiences. A lookalike audience is a larger audience that Facebook builds of users similar to your custom audience. You can further customize the lookalike audience with exclusions.

If you aren't getting the results you expected from custom audiences, try using a lookalike audience.

17. Use Custom Audiences to Build Lookalike Segments

I've heard from a number of people that they create custom audiences not for ad targeting, but for the sole purpose of creating lookalike audiences. This is a creative way to have both specific and broad reach.

Conclusion

Social PPC is becoming an important part of the online marketing toolbox. Use these tips the next time you launch a paid social campaign.

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AdWords gets dynamic, Yahoo gets Flurry and more

AdWords, Yahoo, and don’t forget Google.

Let’s finish up the week with a couple of quick hits.

AdWords is adding deep linking, dynamic sitelinks to search ads. The links are automatically generated and added to the bottom of your existing ad based on searcher behavior.

For example:

When people use Google to search for used cars, they may perform multiple searches and click on several search results before scheduling a test drive on a dealer’s site. While searching, they might see an ad for Joe’s Used Cars with a dynamic sitelink for the test drive page on Joe’s website, based on the customer’s current search activity.

Nice way to get a relevant call to action without any additional effort on your part. (Other than a website with a variety of actionable content pages.)

 Yahoo!

Earlier this week, Yahoo declared their intentions to court mobile ad exchange network Flurry.

Our agreement to acquire Flurry is a meaningful step for the company and reinforces Yahoo’s commitment to building and supporting useful, inspiring and beautiful mobile applications and monetization solutions.

Here’s what Flurry is bringing to the marriage:

Over 170,000 developers are using the Flurry platform for analytics, ad monetization and traffic acquisition. Together, they have over 540,000 applications on our platform. That number has been constantly increasing since 2008 and it is showing no signs of stopping.

Yahoo is bringing around $200 million, which seems a little light. We’ll see how it goes.

91,000 people now have the right to be forgotten

Back in May, Google began accepting removal requests as part of the whole “right to be forgotten” rule. They received requests from 91,000 individuals covering 328,000 URLs. Wall Street Journal reports that Google has since processed a little more than 50% of the requests.

Not all requests are getting processed. 30% of requests were rejected and Google asked for clarification on another 12%. That still leaves quite a few mentions that are going to be stricken from the record.

I’m not surprised so many people want their past cleaned up. I am surprised that the majority of claims are legit. I’m also surprised that we haven’t seen more protests from people who think the internet shouldn’t be censored.

That’s it for me. Have a great weekend. I’ll see you back here on Monday.

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Retailers Outspend Luxury Brands on Luxury Keywords in Paid Search [Report]

In the battle for luxury shoppers, top retailers in 2013 outspent top luxury brands on Google AdWords paid search ads in four of five categories: apparel, beauty and cosmetics, shoes, and watches, according to a new AdGooroo report.

Handbags was the only category in which luxury brands outspent retailers.

Below is a breakdown of the investment in U.S. paid search spending for luxury apparel.

In 2013 alone, five of the top personal luxury brands spent nearly $22 million on paid search in Google AdWords. This didn't include the money invested in mobile search or Product Listing Ads.

Let's look at some additional findings.

The Biggest Luxury Apparel Spenders

Which brands are investing the most in paid search for luxury apparel? Below you'll find the top 10 brands by spend. Louis Vuitton claimed first place with $1.3 million, which is more than double the next brand on the list.

Retailers aren't far behind in their ad spend. In fact, many retailers spent more than the luxury apparel brands themselves on PPC. You'll notice that six of the top 10 retailers by spend are department stores.

Luxury Beauty & Cosmetics

For their 2013 report, AdGooroo collected data on 810 luxury beauty and cosmetic keywords. There is a significant gap in spend between the top brands and retailers and those that came in at the end of the top 10.

Luxury Footwear Brands & Retailers

The ads spend for luxury shoes is significantly less than that of luxury apparel and luxury beauty and cosmetics. Here are the top 10 brands and retailers by ad spend:

Luxury Handbags

Chanel, the top brand by spend in the handbag category spent $816,000 in 2013 while the brand in tenth place (Burberry) spent only $53,000. The gap was not so significant between retailers with Neiman Marcus spending $480,000 in position number one and The Luxury Closet spending $135,000 for 2013.

Luxury Watches

It's no surprise that Rolex came in number one in Paid Search by spend with $149,000. The next brand (Cartier) spent $50,000 less on paid search. Below you'll find the breakdown by brand and retailers for the top ten by spend in each category.

What Are Advertisers Getting for their Investment?

Based on the significant investment that advertisers are making in paid search, it is essential that we understand what their impression share is off of that budget.

• Louis Vuitton's ad spend far surpassed that of any other brand or retailer in luxury apparel. However they only had a 3.45 percent impression share, and was steamrolled by retailers.
• The top retailers by spend in beauty and cosmetics got their money's worth. Amazon came in with nearly 11 percent of share of voice, but brands didn't fair so well in this category.
• Retailers also dominated luxury shoes. Saks Fifth Avenue, which had the top spend for retail, had a 9.87 percent impression share.
• Amazon and Saks Fifth Avenue also dominated handbags, with 6.79 percent and 5.06 percent impression share, respectively.
• Websites that sold luxury watches at a discounted price were winning the war in this category. The top retail spender was authenticwatches.com and they had the highest impression share, 8.72 percent.

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Google opens +Post ads to all (ish) including new Hangout ad option

Modern online marketing is all about blending in so you can stand out. They may sound like mutually exclusive terms but oddly, they’re not.

Google demonstrates this point nicely with their recently released +Post Ads. These adds look like the normal, social media update we’re using to seeing across sites such as Google+ and Facebook.

The fact that the highlighted box is showing up on a non-social media site makes it noticeable in a good way. It’s non-threatening because we recognize it as a friendly form of conversation. The icons in the upper right clearly state that it’s an ad, but it doesn’t feel like one. So we click and it get even less “ad” like.

When the box expands, it becomes a slice from your Google+ page. Viewers can read the comments, add their own comments and interact with the material in the same way they would if they found it inside the walls of Google+. Nifty. And slightly familiar. Feels a little like those Facebook “like” ads that got them in trouble.  The Google +Post ads also show images of the people who interacted with the post and their comments. The difference is, these are actual posts that people responded to publicly – the same posts you’d find if you searched the brand’s profile page. Still, it’s a leap from “I’m okay with people reading my comment” and “I’m okay with you using my comment to sell your product.”

What really makes this concept exciting is that now you can use it when you run a Google+ Hangout. You can run the +Post Ad while the Hangout is live pulling in viewers from all over the web. Prior to the Hangout, the ad can be used to collect RSVPs and after to link people to the replay. That’s smart marketing.

Everything is set up through AdWords with all of the usual switches and dials determining the when, where and how much you’ll pay to display your ad. As of right now, the option is open to anyone with at least 1,000 followers on their page.

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