Tag Archive for: Bing Ads

3 SEA Tips To Win Business With Local Search

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The behavior of customers has completely changed making local search relevant and on the map. More and more consumers realize the ease and opportunity of online search and purchase due to restrictions on movement in the pandemic times. Individuals want a tailored search view with results that are relevant to where they are at that very moment. This is where search engine advertising, or SEA, comes into play.

To win over those customers and create conversion opportunities, your location-specific ads must be at the top of the search engine results page; it’s a competitive imperative.

Here are three SEA tips every marketer needs to win local marketing with paid search.

1) Don’t rely on just one search engine

Location targeting — through Google Ads, for example — marks a huge revolution for advertisers and marketers. It enables them to maximize their PPC by targeting ads to specific areas.

Despite this being a very helpful tool, there are still significant blindspots. The data provided by Google Ads and others isn’t as detailed as necessary when it comes to things such as monitor competitor strategies or uncover opportunities that may crop up. Advertisers and marketers need to keep this in mind when gathering data on all different kinds of search engines in order to make their strategies effective and dynamic. For advertisers to juggle national, state, and local demand is almost impossible to accomplish manually or without the right data. Which is why AI is crucial to success when it comes to succeeding in the local search market.

2) Customize your local SEA ads

Ad customization by location is becoming increasingly more popular, and makes you that much more relevant to the customer. For example, 72% of desktop or tablet users and 67% of smartphone users want ads customized to their location. Additionally, 82% of smartphone users search for businesses near them; 90% click on the first set of results they see.

One of the main parts to local search marketing is customizing the ad to each location with messaging and strategy. Follow these five steps from Search Engine Land to creating click-winning location-based ads:

  1. Be there: Know where your products and services are most needed.
  2. Be relevant: Is your ad creative relevant and specific? Are you appearing at the right time?
  3. Be useful: Don’t be generic in your copy and CTAs. Each work must express your services and answer your questions.
  4. Be quick: Any delay in response to market and competitor shifts will set you back, no matter your size.
  5. Be top: Target the most relevant search terms in location. The closer you are to number one the greater the likelihood of a click.

3) Stay relevant with the Google updates

Keeping track of the multitude of updates Google is no easy feat. Google makes every month across its Shopping, PPC and SEO offerings. Difficulty is not the only complication, there is also a real necessity to remain ‘in the know’ about these updates. This is because, as search engine markets continuously show, even one missed update can dramatically and quickly send you spiraling down from position one.

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B2B Marketing: Paid Search Edition

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Effective paid search strategies are difficult to get right. You may have problems with budget, creative content, channel decisions and more. However, one of the biggest problems marketing departments have with the effective search engine advertising is your audience. Paid search is an excellent tool to capture your leads in a fast and efficient way.

An important note on B2B in general is that the sales cycle is generally much longer. It can take up to three to six months or more to see the benefits of your strategy. Be prepared for this and to see PPC return on investment farther down the road than what you would potentially expect for B2C.

At the core of the strategy, a B2B PPC campaign is just like a B2C one. You have campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and so on, just like B2C—but the important note is to keep the market characteristics in mind.

1. Research

For really any B2B PPC situation, you’ll have to dig in and conduct some serious research to run a top-notch B2B campaign. Why, you may ask? Because even though you might understand your market inside and out, applying it to the PPC channel is a different matter, one that’s full of risk areas in terms of targeting.

The important key takeaway is even though you understand your market, be aware that Google and Bing do not. Their platform will try to match you to as many types of keywords as possible. So stay on top of your search query report and keyword research.

2. Keywords

Keyword research are essentially the same for B2B as they are for B2C. One difference, however, is the preponderance of acronym searches in B2B. Whatever your industry, find out what words the customers are using. For example, an acronym such as “GPR” gets four times the search volume of “ground penetrating radar.” It’s all about understanding the search behavior of your potential customers.

When it comes to bidding and CPCs, they can be all over the board, just as in B2C. Without a doubt, though, there’s more room for “loose” bidding when you’re talking about high-dollar items and services. In other words, B2B typically has higher profit margins, so small increases in CPC isn’t really as big of a deal.

3. Tracking & attribution

If you have any experience with B2B, you know that tracking and lead attribution is a very challenging task. Different from an e-commerce B2C strategy, a lead generation strategy will need to be able to collect data from multiple sources and bring it back together to get a clear picture of performance. There are many ways you can track your paid search performance, Onimod Global experts prefer to use the UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) information onto URLs. If you are unsure of how to set this up, first check out Google’s URL Builder Tool as a solid starting point.

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Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Industries Benefiting The Most From Digital Marketing Campaigns

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Although running successful digital marketing campaigns can be beneficial for many industries, there are some in particular where ROI is much more substantial. It’s almost an “adapt or die” scenario for companies within certain industries in an advertising market dominated by digital media. Listed below are a few industries that have substantial returns on investments when it comes to digital marketing efforts.

Health:
The health industry in today’s market is comprised of millions if not billions of dollars. Physicians, dentists, and any other entities involved in the health industry produce significant returns from clientele. The importance of effective search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) strategies to appear on the first page of search results is huge. The ROI is so substantial that there are some health clinics and larger hospitals that allocate millions of dollars to their annual advertising budgets. That alone shows the importance of leads and conversions and why digital efforts need to be emphasized in the health industry.

Food and Restaurant:
The scope of the food and restaurant industry has changed drastically. Businesses are always trying to find new ways to attract consumers to their venues and get customers to feel connected to their brands. Many restaurants have started to prioritize social media advertising as a way to reach target markets and new audiences. According to Toast Inc, “there has been a 20% overall increase in restaurants advertising on social media so far in 2017 compared to historical data.” Therefore, restaurants have started to pick up on the digital advertising trend and those who fail to adapt will suffer in the long run.

Law:
It’s no surprise as to how much money is involved when it comes to the legal industry. The ROI for defense attorneys and law firms is in most cases substantial. However, it was reported by Greentarget in a survey that in 2014 only one in four law firms prioritized their digital marketing plan over other marketing efforts. Although it was three years ago, this statistic is mind boggling due to the high amount of search traffic for law related key words. Essentially, in order to stay on top of competitors in the legal industry, a major online presence is needed and prioritizing digital marketing efforts is a must.

Auto:
Marketing has always played a huge role in the auto industry, but the traditional days of billboards, magazines, and radio ads are diminishing. With the majority of today’s consumers searching online for automobiles, the importance of digital marketing has increased tremendously. eMarketer  stated that “spending on advertising in traditional media by all major auto companies is following a downward trend, while spending on digital advertising is increasing every year. In fact, from 2014 to 2015, it rose almost 22 percent.” In the end, it’s clear that companies within the auto industry will continue to battle it out through digital marketing and continue to find new ways to reach consumers.

In Need Of Digital Solutions?: At Onimod Global some of the clients we serve are in these industries and we know what it takes to deliver positive ROI. If you’re associated with a business seeking improvements with SEO, SEM, Website Development, or any other digital marketing service feel free to reach out to us on our Contact Us page. We look forward to hearing from you!

Why Mobile Matters

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It’s no secret that mobile advertising is taking over in a big way. This transition is quite possibly the single most important trend in digital marketing at this time. So what are you doing to enhance your advertising strategy for mobile users?

A recent Nielsen report shows PC usage down in every demographic, while mobile usage through tablets and smartphones only trend upward. It is clear that users are shifting away from desktops in favor of more convenient mobile devices.

An article by Forbes gives 15 examples of how to lead the way in mobile digital advertising. One of their strategies is to optimize the first 3 seconds of your ad in order to quickly gain the attention of the viewer.

Many consumers are giving less and less consideration to ads, so it is imperative that your message is delivered quickly and clearly. In general, all interactions should be faster. Increasing speed relates directly to increasing convenience, which in turn increases the likelihood of a response from the user.

Another suggestion is to treat mobile as an entirely new practice. It will not benefit you to copy over all of your old tactics and beliefs to the mobile realm. Instead, try to picture it with a fresh mindset.

Do some research, find out what works best. Look over other industry trends, like the ones mentioned in this article of ours: 4 Digital Marketing Trends to Follow, and figure out how you can implement them into your mobile campaign structure. Do not assume that mobile will work in the same way as all other advertising methods.

Also pay attention to changes in digital marketing platforms. Many large advertising platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Bing Ads are constantly trying to innovate and improve their services. Google recently redesigned their AdWords platform for the first time in 8 years. Another Onimod article discusses the 5 Things You Need to Know About the New Google AdWords.

Continue to stay up to date with other platforms by subscribing to their newsletters and webinars. The best way to stay ahead of the competition is to stay informed.

Here at Onimod Global we are regularly reporting on digital marketing related news. Visit our blog to view recent articles, or contact us to subscribe to our email newsletter.

Create the Perfect PPC Campaign in 5 Easy Steps

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1.) Define Key Performance Indicators

Not all KPIs are created equal. When starting an advertising campaign, make sure to clearly state which metrics are most important to you. Do you want to focus on conversations, or reach? Do you want higher click-through-rates, or impressions?

For example, if the client is looking for new leads, you want to focus on conversions. If the campaign is generating a ton of clicks but still isn’t showing many conversions, then there may be an issue with your ad and whether or not it’s truly relevant to users. Lower volumes of clicks that actually produce sales are so much more valuable than massive amounts of clicks and no real results.

2.) Optimize Your Landing Page

Develop a simple, succinct, and foolproof landing page. Lead the user through your landing page effectively by giving them fewer options. Restricting actions such as navigating to a different page or downloading different files makes it clear what the correct actions are.

The best way to do this would be to create a unique landing page for an ad. This will also help you to see how well the ad is performing. Keep the landing page short and sweet with a quick contact form or sign up sheet, and you will significantly lower the risk of confusing the user.

Also make sure that the landing page is as relevant as possible to the ad. This will help to improve both the quality score of the ad, as well as its conversion rate.

3.) Boost Your Quality Score

There are so many simple ways to improve your quality score. Google’s algorithm gives first and foremost preference to the user’s experience. This means that it tries to show only the ads that are the most relevant to that user and their recent search. A better quality score equals better positioning on the results page. Oh, and did I mention that all of this is for free?

Here are a couple quick solutions to enhance your ad’s quality score:

  • Add sitelinks
  • Refine your keyword lists to improve relevance  
  • Optimize the landing page

4.) Focus on What Happens Next

The customer’s experience does not suddenly end once they click on your ad. There is always a next step. Did they fill out a form? Did they look at other pages on the website? Did they leave the website?

Try to dive deeper into how users are engaging with your brand, and what types of responses they are receiving. If they did fill out a form, where did that information go? Is it sitting in a file that no one ever checks on their computer’s desktop? Or is it being utilized and added to the company’s email marketing campaign contacts? It is not enough to simply have the information, it also must be used effectively.

5.) Don’t Stop Improving

Even if your campaign is performing well, it can always be better. Keep refining your keyword lists to make sure that all of the terms are extremely relevant to their ads as well as to potential customers.

Making these types of small changes over a long period of time is a strategy referred to as making “micro-wins” and can be explored further in this article of ours. Micro-wins won’t produce phenomenal results right away, but they certainly will over time.

3 Reasons Why Your Business Should Utilize Location-Based Ads

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1.) The Potential

It’s no secret that the use of mobile devices is skyrocketing. According to a report on SmartInsights, the average individual in the US spends 87 hours each month browsing on a smartphone. With so many consumers engaging with these devices throughout the day, it creates a wealth of opportunity for marketers and retailers.

Another report conducted by Google states that half of consumers visit a physical store immediately after researching the store on their phone. Simply put, if you’re not utilizing location-based ads, you’re missing out on an outrageous amount of potential sales.

 

2.) Consumers Like Customization

There are many technologies that allow the advertiser to target a specific location, such as beacons, geolocation, geofencing, and geotargeting. These many advanced mechanisms create a more familiar and customized experience for the consumer, which is often well-received. Potential customers enjoy seeing ads that are close to their physical location because it saves them the time of weeding out places that are too far away.

Beacons allow a retailer to offer notifications and promotions once customers are inside of their store. The only drawback is that beacons operate through Blutooth, which many users turn off to save on battery life.

Geolocation uses information to determine a user’s location. A consumer’s IP address or GPS location allows this technology to be possible. This is primarily how location-based mobile marketing is achieved.

Geofencing is the creation of a digital parameter or “fence”. Once a user enters the fence, they suddenly become able to receive special promotions or push notifications.

Geotargeting runs along similar lines to geolocation. This technology uses digital information to determine a user’s location, but it can discover more in-depth insights than geolocation. With the user’s permission, geotargeting can access purchase history and unique preferences to customize an advertisement to that user. Loyal customers can easily be rewarded with a special offer, or narrow channels like soon-to-be-mothers in the greater Ft. Lauderdale area can be connected to a nearby retailer.

 

3.) Stop Overspending for Your Ads

Dominant advertising platforms such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook Ads all reward advertisers that create higher quality content. These platforms strive to ensure that consumers are viewing the most relevant ads and search results possible, and that is exactly why they assess the content any user produces.

Adding location extensions to an ad will help to improve this quality score. With a higher quality score the ad will appear more frequently in a higher position for less money. So what’s not to love about location-based mobile advertising?

Google vs Bing: Which Ad Platform is Better?

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When weighing out your options for SEM and how to most effectively spend ad dollar, analyzing the benefits of using Google AdWords and Bing Ads is a great starting point. The common assumption is that Google AdWords dominates, yet utilizing Bing Ads can be very advantageous depending on numerous factors. Let’s evaluate the strengths of each advertising platform.

Google AdWords Strengths

1. Amount of Search Volume: It’s no secret that Google is the king of search engine traffic. Therefore, this means a higher potential for customers, leads, and conversions for whatever you are advertising.
2. Advanced Features: Especially with the recent launch of an upgraded AdWords platform, Google’s program has more advanced features to offer than Bing. Working with optimization, targeting, ad extensions, and management settings Google gives advertisers a much more advanced interface.
3. Easier Talking Point: Because of how known Google and their Adwords platform is, many businesses will quickly jump on the AdWords “bandwagon.” AdWords is more commonly known in the digital advertising world and Bing tends to be overlooked as a result of this.

Bing Ads Strengths

1. Better Value: Advertising on Bing in most cases is about half the cost as Google Adwords. Less people also advertise on Bing’s platform, so the price of keywords is significantly lower. Ultimately, this leads to cheaper conversions and a better use of ad dollar for organizations.
2. Audiences: Although the search volume of Bing isn’t any competition for Google, the quality of clicks tends to be better. In some cases Google AdWords will “eat up” ad dollar through meaningless clicks. If utilized correctly, you would be surprised at how many relevant clicks and conversions can come through Bing.
3. Customer Service: Being an extremely large organization, Google has much more customer service issues to worry about compared to Bing. Not to knock Google’s customer service department but because of Bing’s smaller organizational size, they have a greater ability to spend more time with customer problems and fulfill more specific needs.

Bing Ads Editor: Review Extensions support and other updates

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Bing has announced support for Review Extensions, improvements in audience association creation for your Remarketing in Paid Search campaigns, and better keyword import in their latest Bing Ads Editor release: v11.10.   The changes enhance functionality, add features and alleviate issues within the Bing platform. Read more

Bing Now Powers AOL Search: What Advertisers Need To Know

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The move is now official: Bing has taken over serving search results and ads for AOL from Google. Initially announced in June 2015, the 10-year deal affects all AOL search traffic worldwide and on all devices. Here’s a look at what the move means for those managing Bing Ads campaigns.

First, the Ad distribution section under Ad Group level settings now includes AOL along with Bing and Yahoo.

bing-aol-ad-distribution

You can now also change ad group level network distribution within Bing Ads Editor. Whatever your settings are now, they won’t change, other than the fact that AOL is now included.aol-bing-ads-editor

Bringing AOL into the fold also includes AOL’s syndicated search partners in relevant locations. You’ll have insights into this type of traffic that wasn’t available when AOL ads were served by Google. In the Website URL (Publisher) report, the URLs of AOL owned and operated websites will be shown on separate lines and not consolidated with Bing and Yahoo’s owned and operated websites listed under “Bing and Yahoo! Search Properties Only.” You might not necessarily know that the site is part of the AOL syndication, but you will be able to add individual sites to exclusionlists.

AOL search also now appears as a new value in the Network and Top vs. Other columns in reports (including those run from the Reporting API), such as the Keyword performance report and Campaign performance report, and AOL is listed with Bing and Yahoo syndicated search partners.

AOL traffic now factors into both Bing Ads Campaign and Keyword Planners, as well. For more details, see the Bing Ads blog post on the updates.

 

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H/T: Search Engine Land