Tag Archive for: SEM

5 Google Ads Campaign Tips for 2021

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Is your 2021 resolution to improve your Google Ads campaigns and increase your overall business profitability? As marketers, it’s important to maintain control over our strategies and campaigns. Google’s optimizations are not always in the best interests of our business, they also don’t exactly know the context of our brands. To succeed in the upcoming year, we must try new things and change our strategies and tactics. We have to integrate more data, retain control over automatic Google optimizations and fight against increased competition. 

Here are 5 things to do and focus on in 2021 to improve your Google Ads campaigns. 

1. Have keyword intent. 

Google always favors consistency with campaigns. The more similar performance your keywords have, usually the better the campaign will perform overall. When selecting keywords, user intent should be the top priority around which we group our keywords. 

Users who have searched for the name of your brand are obviously more likely to convert once they make it to your website. So, any keywords relating to your brand should be grouped together since they bring the best CPA and ROAS. Any keywords mentioning “price” or “discount” are strong signals of purchasing intent as well. Phrases including “specifications,” “size” or “warranty” are important to bid on, but CTR and CR are likely to be lower, so you want to reduce your bid. 

If you want to improve results, it’s important to visualize and quantify areas in which you can improve things and find new business. The trick is to structure your account appropriately. This can be a tedious and complicated process, but there are a number of tools that can assist you. 

2. Declutter your campaigns. 

Keeping a close eye on all aspects of your campaigns can seem overwhelming, yet it can be key to success. Any underperforming spend represents the portion of your Google Ads investment that either has a low quality score or isn’t converting enough. To reduce waste spend, it’s important to focus on two Google reports: Quality Score and Search Query Report. This will help you analyze the search terms that trigger your ads and identify where to increase and decrease spend. 

3. Identify and double down on your strengths. 

It’s a common misconception that bidding on new keywords automatically leads to increasing sales. While this is sometimes true, it’s more effective to make sure you have the maximum market share on the keywords that are your most profitable, beyond just branded traffic. 

The best way to ensure you don’t miss out on any opportunity is to monitor your impression share on Google Ad SEPRs. Lost impressions relate to missed opportunities on searches related to the keywords you bid on. Best practice includes focusing on your top 10 campaigns and checking the market shares of your competitors, monitoring closely when you’re not shown and identifying why that might be. 

4. Use high quality creatives. 

Ad copy and visuals obviously play a huge role in your campaigns. Users are exposed to more than 6000 ads daily, so standing out and grabbing attention is essential. The quality of creative weighs up to 80% in the performance of Facebook Ads campaigns and the case is similar for Google Ads. Optimizing ads and creatives includes giving in to statistics. It’s impossible to know for sure which creatives will perform best without testing multiple versions. It’s also important to continuously test ads. Even when you identify a clear winner in one test, create new versions to continue to test to ensure you’re always increasing your ad performance. 

5. Spend smarter, not more. 

Spend should be allocated not only on keywords or placement levels, but user profiles also need to be taken into account. Data is gathered from users’ declarative info, when and where they’re active online, as well as Google Analytics shared data and inferred data from previous search queries. It’s important to take these user profiles into consideration and make bid adjustments to your most valuable audiences and criteria. 

More from Onimod Global 

At Onimod Global we’re experts in all areas of Google Ads. If you’re looking for digital marketing assistance, we can help your business reach its full digital potential. Interested in growing digital presence for your company? Reach out to us here!

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.

4 Steps to Create a Successful Paid Social Campaign

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With the holiday season upon us, eCommerce spend is set to hit new records. With people online shopping now more than ever, reaching out through social should be on the agenda for your brand. 

If you’re looking to refine your approach to paid social ads this season, here are 4 simple tips to create a winning campaign. 

Step 1: Define Your Goals

The first step to any winning campaign is defining your campaign goals, KPIs, parameters, plan and strategy. The easiest way to to do this is by creating a checklist with a variety of questions, such as: 

  • What is your campaign objective? 
  • Why does this matter? What’s your ultimate business goal? 
  • How will you measure success? 
  • What is your budget? 
  • Who is your target audience? 
  • How far through the funnel are they? 
  • What is your ideal audience reach? 
  • Which platforms best reach your target audience? 

Step 2: Design Ads 

When creating your ads, you should be guided by your audience data, social style guide and social listening tools. You should also craft multiple versions of the same ad to avoid creative fatigue. Best practices include designing 3-5 creative options for your ad visuals and writing multiple captions for each. Asking questions in the copy is also a good way to help boost engagement on the ad. 

It’s also important to incorporate different types of ad formats to test what performs best. This includes carousels, stories, video, ect. When doing this it’s important to make sure your creative is within specs and renders properly across all ad formats. 

Lastly, make sure your ad creative and copy are both on-brand and compliment whatever organic content you’re posting at the same time. Also ask for feedback to identify which creative assets are your best. 

Step 3: Build Ad Sets 

To get started on this step, build target audiences and upload your creative assets to your chosen social platforms. 

When building your target audiences you want to create multiple segments such as prospective, lookalike, retargeting, ABM, etc. Here are a few tips for building multiple segments: 

  • To build an audience of prospective customers, use platform offerings. 
  • For lookalike audiences, utilize your company’s first part data. 
  • Create retargeting audiences from your site tracking pixels. 
  • Use platform target parameters to suppress and exclude those you don’t want to reach.

Once you’ve completed these steps be sure to take advantage of custom tracking links to collect data and measure your success. You want to be granular but don’t go too narrow with your targeting.  

You should also be sure to install tracking links and that your conversion tracking pixels are placed correctly on your site. Utilize custom tracking links to collect your data and ultimately measure your success. 

Lastly, bid strategically. Implement automated rules and cost/bid caps to avoid high ad costs. Since there are so many brands running ads during the holiday season, it can be easy for costs to get high. 

Step 4: Launch Campaign

Once you’ve launched your campaign, A/B testing is essential. Learn what resonates better with your audiences and monitor your progress frequently. We recommend running ads for about 1-2 weeks before making any changes. 

Continue to go back and review your goals and KPIs when measuring your success. If there are ads you notice aren’t performing as well, pause them and don’t be afraid to increase spend on the ones that are. 

More from Onimod Global 

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.

5 Key Elements for Local Digital Marketing Success

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Small businesses can face many growth challenges, such as limited resources, budget constraints, competition, staffing challenges, etc. It can be tough to figure out ways to set yourself apart from other businesses and achieving overall success. Executing a full range of local digital marketing techniques can be a game changer for many companies. Local digital marketing helps connect businesses where customers reside and interact. The opportunity to compete and provide outstanding customer service, are reachable through digital marketing strategies. 

We’re going to discuss the 5 key campaign elements that can deliver an effective local marketing strategy for businesses of all sizes. 

1. Manage All Online Listings 

Clean data and accurate listings are essential for overall digital marketing success. Every mention of your business on the internet is a ‘citation.’ You want to make sure all of this information is accurate. Otherwise you run the risk of not being able to be found easily. Even minor discrepancies you might not think of can have an impact on your results. You can prevent discrepancies by claiming every local listing and providing accurate information to search engines and online directories. Specifically Google, Facebook, Yelp, Apple Maps and Bing. 

You should include as much information in your listings as possible, such as product descriptions, services, hours of operation, deals, promotions, accepted payment types, photos, etc. Accurate and consistent data helps drive search engine rankings, making it that much easier for prospects to find your business. 

2. Local SEO 

Local SEO is fairly similar to listing management. Complete, accurate and consistent updates to listings are critical for high search engine rankings. Algorithms continue to drive more relevant results based on user location. Meaning it’s even more crucial to optimize local landing pages with location information. 

You can locally optimize your landing pages by:

  • Localizing title tags to include city and state names.
  • Optimize meta descriptions to include product categories. 
  • Implement localized schema markup for your business name, number and address.
  • Localize URL structures to include street names and product categories. 
  • Include hours, directions and local descriptions in on-page business content. 

3. Reputation Management

It stays true that people trust people. Ratings and reviews have a significant impact on potential buyers. On average, consumers read up to 10 reviews before fully trusting a business. The most effective way to increase your reviews is by simply asking your customers to write them. You can make this easy for them by including a button that offers one-click access to writing a review. It’s common to offer incentives or contests for those that leave reviews, but you have to be careful when doing so. Google and Yelp prohibit businesses from offering money, products or services for writing reviews. It’s important that the reviews are authentic, as consumers can be skeptical. Meaning when a negative review comes through, it should be managed but not deleted. Best practice includes replying to their comment and apologizing that they did not have a positive experience and ask them to contact you privately to resolve any further issues. This way other people see that you’re not ignoring them, but you don’t want to continue the conversation in public. 

4. Paid Search and Social 

In any digital marketing strategy, incorporating paid efforts is essential. This becomes even more important when it comes to local campaigns. Customize your messages based on the location of your ads to become personally relevant to those that will see them. Local search and social can be used to capitalize on regions where business is strongest or become a lever that can supplement marketing in underperforming regions to increase awareness and improve sales. For more tips on successfully taking your paid digital marketing strategy local, click here. 

5. Specialized Landing Pages

Along with customizing ads for certain locations, the landing pages they’re attached to should also be customized and optimized for mobile. Most often, consumers are on the go and looking for local solutions. Local landing pages should be simple yet comprehensive, including your business name, address, phone number, hours, products, services, etc. Effective landing pages have a responsive design with title tags and descriptive schema to send information to search engines. For further tips on creating a high converting landing page, click here. 

More from Onimod Global

Needing some assistance in any area of digital marketing?  Contact us! We are experts in all things digital marketing including SEM, Web Dev, Automation, Analytics, and much more. Learn more about what we do here, or keep up to date with all things digital marketing on our news page. 

Common Facebook Ads Mistakes and How to Fix Them

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The benefits of advertising your business on Facebook are endless. With over a billion active users, cutting edge features, and detailed targeting ability, why wouldn’t you market yourself there? Despite all its advantages, many businesses still struggle to gain qualified leads from Facebook Ads. 

Advertising on Facebook isn’t as easy as everyone believes it to be, but it can be worth it. If you don’t put in proper time and effort into your ads, it could result in the waste of a lot of budget. Here are the most common Facebook Ads mistakes made by marketers and how to fix them. 

Audience Selection is too Narrow or too Broad 

Facebook provides extremely detailed targeting capabilities. Most people believe that the more specific you get with your targeting, the more effective it will be. This, however, could actually be your downfall. When your audience selection is too narrow you risk exhausting the segment too quickly, driving up your cost per click. The other issue that can result from overly-specific targeting is lack of responses. No matter how pin-pointed your audience is, only a small percentage will respond. When it comes to upper funnel advertising, numbers are the most important, and if your audience is too niche, the numbers are not on your side. 

On the other hand if your audience is too broad, you risk serving your ad to people who aren’t interested in your offer. Again, you could drive up the cost per click because of a poor audience-message match, or you risk paying for clicks that won’t convert to leads or customers.

Wrong Bid Strategy 

Oftentimes marketers just go with the default option when it comes to bid strategy. This is fine in some cases, but if the automatic option for lowest cost isn’t delivering results, it might be time to rethink. Here are the the other available bid strategies and what they’re best used for:

  • Bid Cap: Best for when you want to set a max bid across auctions to control cost and reach as many users as possible at that bid. 
  • Cost Cap: Best for when you want to maximize cost-efficiency or you need to keep cost within a specific threshold. 
  • Target Cost: Best for maintaining a consistent cost. 
  • Value Optimization within Min ROAS: Best if ROAS is the primary measure of success and you’re able to pass back transaction values to our platform. 
  • Highest Value: Best for getting the highest ROAS, want to spend full budget and when unsure of min ROAS/bid amount.

Too Large of an Ask 

Facebook users don’t have the same intent as those on search engines. If you’re asking for a large commitment from someone that has just been exposed to your brand for the first time, you’ll likely get poor results. When you’re still at the top of the funnel, you should be focusing on smaller asks, such as newsletter sign-ups, likes, comments, shares, etc. Once they have had more engagement, you can begin pushing larger asks, such as purchases, event sign-ups, etc.

Failing to Test Your Campaigns 

Launching ads on Facebook is easy. Finding a successful strategy, however, is not. The only real way to know what works and what doesn’t is by testing it. This sounds like more work, but Facebook actually makes A/B testing simple. A/B testing lets you change variables, such as your ad creative, audience or placement, to determine which strategy performs best and improve future campaigns. An A/B test lets you quickly compare both strategies to see which one performs best. After choosing which variable you want to test, Facebook divides your budget to equally and randomly split exposure between each version of your creative, audience, or placement. A/B testing can then measure the performance of each strategy on a cost per result basis or cost per conversion lift basis with a holdout. If you don’t test your way to success from the beginning, you may never figure out how to make Facebook Ads work for your business.

Final Thoughts 

The Facebook Ads platform is simple, but getting quality conversions can be difficult, which is why many businesses struggle with it. Luckily, these common issues are easy to resolve. Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to campaign optimization. The best strategy for you ultimately depends on your products, website, customer lifecycle, objectives, and intended user experience. 

At Onimod Global we are experts in SEM and social media marketing. We know which platforms are best for brands, and create visibility for brands where customers are searching, interacting, and ultimately converting. Find out more about we do, or contact us today!

The Keys to Successfully Marketing on Amazon

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Today’s consumers no longer use Amazon just to purchase products. 90% of consumers use Amazon to price check a product, 72% of consumers visit Amazon for product ideas, and 56% of consumers visit Amazon before any other site to start their product search. In 25 years, Amazon has grown exponentially. It sees over 2,000 new sellers every day. If that’s not enough, here are some other remarkable statistics:

Amazon can be very intimidating, but it’s no secret there’s immense revenue opportunity there. To be successful, sellers must create a marketing strategy that attracts users to their product pages, then converting them into customers.

If you’re struggling with, or new to Amazon here are 4 tips to better market and sell your products. 

1. Drive Ratings and Reviews 

Amazon was one of the first companies to put a review system on their site back in 1995. Rating and review sections are now a part of almost all e-commerce sites, and many business/service sites, and are an important factor for online consumers. Good reviews can fuel sales for a few days, but a bad review can impact sales for months. When it comes to selling products on Amazon, reviews are vital. Getting reviews can be tricky, especially authentic and positive ones. On average 90% of negative reviews are unsolicited, while 90% of positive reviews are. You have to find ways to invite people to participate in the discussion, without influencing exactly what they say. There are plenty of “black hat” strategies to acquire a massive amount of reviews and fast, but that can get you into trouble in the long run. There are plenty of other strategies that work and are within internet law guidelines, such as:

 

  • Send follow up emails. After a customer receives a product, send a follow up email to inquire if they would be willing to review the product on the Amazon listing page.
  • Include a note in the package you send your products in. Today, a handwritten note can mean a lot. Including one in your package that thanks the customer for their business and asks for a review is an effective way to get positive responses.
  • Remind people on social media. Remind your followers to review your products on Amazon. You only want to do this every so often because you don’t want to be overbearing or annoying. You don’t need to offer any incentives, just explain why reviews matter and why you’re asking for their help.

 

2. Optimize for Search

To ensure your products are seen by people, your listings need to be optimized for search. When your listings are optimized, your products show up higher in search results. Your goal is to show up as close to the top as possible when your target customer is searching for keywords that relate to your products. Here are some tips to help you optimize your products for search and increase your discoverability. 

  1. Create product titles that read naturally and reflect a handful of relevant keywords. 
  2. Use special characters (like | or — or ,) to make your title more readable.
  3. Place the most relevant, searched-for terms first, in an order that makes sense. 
  4. Take a look at what works for competitors. 

3. Utilize Videos

Videos engage users and can help increase rankings more than any other type of content. Creating videos that promote or educate users about you or your products can help boost Amazon sales. While you can’t post your videos directly to Amazon, you can share them across your social channels and on your site and then link viewers to the product listing. 

4. Be a Reliable Resource 

With hundreds of thousands of competitors on Amazon, you need to find ways to differentiate yourself from them. For this to be accomplished you have to leverage your brand as a reliable resource. There are a variety of ways to do this, but here are 4 steps to get started: 

 

  • Determine the value you can offer to others and start sharing it. Users are always searching for answers. If you have those answers, or any beneficial information, find ways to put that into forms of content that educates people and aligns with the passions or hobbies that they care about. Once you’ve found ways to create that content, set up a blog or news page on your website to share it. If you’re struggling with coming up with topics, start with answering frequently asked questions about your products, services, or industry.
  • Send traffic to your original content. Now that you have this valuable content, you have to work to send traffic to read it. You can do this by running paid ads on social platforms and search engines, targeting keyword opportunities to get the content to rank organically, and just sharing it on social directly. 
  • Capture email addresses and nurture leads. Every user that makes it as far as to read your content is a sales opportunity. Put the tools and automation in place to capture email addresses, and build content-focused email drips that continue educating leads and nurturing them down your funnel. 
  • Always include compelling CTA’s in all content. Make sure all of your content and ads have strong and clear call-to-actions. You never want users to be confused about what you ultimately want them to do. Include buttons, use bright and bold colors, and send those people directly to your product listing and brand page on Amazon. 

 

Conclusion

Amazon can seem like a beast, but with so much revenue potential, it’s not a platform you want to ignore. With the right strategy and supporting tactics, it doesn’t take much to be successful and start capturing consumers. If you find yourself struggling with marketing on Amazon, or any digital platform, you may want to consider outsourcing for your digital marketing needs. At Onimod Global we are experts in everything from SEM, social media marketing, Google shopping advertising, and more. 

Learn more about what we do, take a look at how we’ve helped other brands, and become a client today!

Tips for Creating Effective Display Ads

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According to Google, Display Network sites reach over 90% of internet users worldwide. This presents a great opportunity to gain significant visibility for brands. Display ads have considerable potential, but to be effective they must be created correctly. When a display campaign is executed in the wrong way, marketers put themselves at risk of wasting large amounts of ad dollars. If you’re new to display ads or looking to improve performance, here are 5 tips for creating effective display ads. 

1. Use Rich Media 

Rich media helps engage consumers. This can be done with video, audio, or any element that encourages users to interact with the ad. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is with HTML5 ads. HTML5 ads enable animation, and interactive content, but are also responsive/adaptive, meaning that your design will look good across any browser, OS, or device. These ads can be created easily inside of Google Web Designer. Rich media allows for your ads to stand out and has been proved to grab users’ attention.  EMarketer research shows that brands experience higher levels of engagement (16.2%) using rich media ads compared to static banners.

2. Use Responsive Ads 

Using responsive ads ensures you’re making it as easy as possible for your ads to be shown across the Display Network. Using responsive ads saves you time creating different versions of your ads for different devices. Responsive ads will automatically adjust the size of your ad for different types of devices, such as mobile, tablet and desktops, and can fit in almost any available ad space. They can also be used with dynamic remarketing. This is done by attaching a feed to your campaigns. Responsive ads then show personalized content to users from the feed you control. 

3. Use Clear and Compelling Headlines, Ad Copy, and CTA’s

For best results, your headline should be clear, simple, and describe your offering or brand. Avoid generic or click-bait messaging and using all caps. Your description should be easy to understand and make it clear why it’s worth clicking on. Creating a strong call-to-action is always essential when creating an effective ad. Marketers have to tell users what they should do following clicking on the ad. This can be extremely simple, such as “sign up now” or “request a quote today.” Google gives examples of best and worst practices when it comes to headlines and text. 

Source: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722134?hl=en 

4. Provide a Relevant Landing Page 

One of the biggest mistakes a marketer can make when creating any type of campaign is sending users to their homepage or an irrelevant landing page. If a user goes as far as to click on your ad, you don’t want to send them to a page where they then have to further search for the information they expect to find. Your CTA should take users straight to a page associated with what you ultimately want them to do. For example, if your ad text says “Call us,” be sure to include your business phone number on the landing page. If your ad text says “Limited time offer,” be sure to point people to that promotion on the landing page.

5. Create Multiple Ads per Ad Group

Best practice involves testing out multiple ad variations. Google suggests creating 3 to 4 ads per ad group, trying out different messages and different images to see which perform best with your target audience. With Google Ads it will immediately show which ads are better performing for which group, but it’s best to run the tests long enough to get the most accurate data. 

Conclusion 

Rates per click are generally lower on the Display Network. Which is why to produce high performing display ads, you need to incorporate all of the features above, and then some. Creating successful display campaigns may take some extra work, but the results are worth it. If you need assistance with creating display ads, or in any area of Google Ads, allow Onimod Global to help! We are a trusted Google Partner and specialize in search, mobile, video, display, and shopping advertising. 

Take a look at how we’ve helped other companies, learn more about what we can do for you, and become a client today. 

LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s New Features to Reduce Time Spent on Non-Selling Activities

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LinkedIn rolled out new updates to its Sales Navigator platform that attempt to cut down on the day-to-day administrative tasks to build stronger relationships with customers and prospects, and close more deals. 

The update includes an easier way to tie in CRMS, a better way to package and share content within the platform, and enhancements to search and usage reporting metrics. These features could prove to be extremely valuable to marketers, as they are designed to streamline sales tasks and create more efficient workflow processes for sales teams using LinkedIn for identifying and prospecting new customers. 

New Process for Adding Leads to Salesforce 

The first update eliminates the need to switch back and forth between two platforms when adding contacts to Salesforce accounts. 

“With the click-of-a-button in your Sales Navigator lead page or lead list, you can now write-back publicly available information about your lead into your Salesforce CRM (and soon-to-come for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales) quickly and easily without leaving Sales Navigator.” LinkedIn explained in their update announcement. 

Salesforce also ensures there are no duplicate leads by checking the contacts in your database and flagging any issues, ensuring CRM cleanliness. 

Features to Increase Workflow 

  • Smart Links: Allow you to quickly and easily package and share content within your Sales Navigator workflow, track viewing behavior, and gain insights on who is engaging with your content. 
  • Company Growth Alerts: An alert in Sales Navigator that notifies you if a company on your saved accounts list has added multiple job postings: “Indicating that the company is growing — a signal that there may be new opportunities that the sales organization could pursue.”

Features to Reduce Search Time 

  • Save Account Searches: Once you find an account search that works, you can easily save it and avoid having to repopulate the account queries every time you log into Sales Navigator.  You will be automatically updated any time a new Account meets your search criteria. 
  • Share Lead Searches: Once you identify the perfect lead search query, you can now share that search with other teammates with a Sales Navigator contract.

Greater Customization Capabilities

LinkedIn goes on to say “no one knows what you need more than you.” Because of that they have updated Usage Reporting and Mobile Experience to have more customizable properties. Users can now opt-out of LinkedIn.com activity in their personal Sales Navigator settings — removing any of their own LinkedIn.com activities from metrics like days active, searches performed and profile views in Usage Reporting. Along with these latest updates, Sales Navigator “Team” customers are getting the refreshed usage reporting features announced last quarter that include new navigation, metrics and data filters. Lastly, in addition to making the mobile app available to all product supported languages, users are now able to customize their mobile experience by filtering the alerts they want to receive. 

Final Thoughts 

LinkedIn has been rolling out a number of updates over the past year that have continued to increase its marketing capabilities. It has become a strong contender in the paid social space, and is an extremely valuable tool for many brands. These new features to Sales Navigator help to streamline sales tasks and create more efficient workflow processes for sales teams. 

If you’re new to LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator platform or having difficulties with any paid social, Onimod Global can help. At Onimod Global we’re experts in SEM and social media marketing. We’ve recently been rolling out brand new LinkedIn campaigns for a few of our clients, and have started producing a few results. We understand that LinkedIn is not an appropriate advertising platform for all brands or all campaigns. Having the correct brand positioning is essential, and with our expertise we know exactly where you and your ads need to be. Learn more about what we do, or become a client today! 

Utilizing Google’s Lead Form Extensions

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In late October of 2019 Google confirmed they were rolling out a new lead generation form extension. The goal of the extension is to help more mobile users convert and easily provide their contact information without ever leaving the SERP. “A fast, mobile-optimized experience makes form submission easy and eliminates the extra step of navigating to your mobile site lead form,” as explained by Google. The feature has been slowly rolled out to marketers in BETA over the last few months. 

What Are Google Lead Form Extensions? 

Before making a purchase, customers often want to contact your business to receive more information, but filling out forms can be difficult on mobile. Lead form extensions simplify the form fill process to generate quality leads for your business. They’re designed to attract customers with a strong call-to-action, which can be accessed after filling out the short form without leaving Search. The extension shows beneath your search ad on mobile and tablet devices. Marketers can customize the forms with their own titles, description, and which pieces of information they require from users. This could include:

  • Name 
  • Email 
  • Phone number 
  • Postal code 

If the user is signed into a Google account they’ll reach a form with already pre-populated contact details and can convert immediately. Additionally, marketers can design and upload their own background image for the lead form and customize the message shown after submission. Marketers then have the option to deliver their call-to-action in the form of a website link or direct download. Like all extensions, it may not always show and is more likely to show in top positions. Lastly, you only pay when a user clicks on the extension. 

How to Create a Lead Form Extension:

Once you’re inside a search campaign, visit the “Ads and Extensions” tab located on the left handrail. If your account has access to this beta, clicking on the blue “+” will give you this drop down, with a noted “Lead form extension” offer. When creating your lead form you first design how it will appear beneath your ad. Some of the choices you will be given include: 

 

  • Call-to-action: Google gives the options of Get Quote, Apply Now, Sign Up, Contact Us, Subscribe, Download, Book Now, or Get Offer.
  • Extension text: Here you can provide a 30 character message supplementing your call-to-action. It will appear right below the CTA on the SERP.

Next, you create the form users are directed to after clicking on the extension. Here you chose and provide:

  • The information you want to collect from users 
  • Your business name (30 characters): Shown at the top of the form.
  • A headline (30 characters): Shown immediately below the headline, serving as your primary CTA in the form. 
  • A description (200 characters): The main body of the form, allowing you to provide additional details about your offer. 
  • A link to your company’s privacy policy. 

Following the form you create a submission message. This includes a 200 character description and an optional additional call-to-action. You can then either store the leads in your ad account, or feed them directly to your CRM. It’s important to note that Google only stores your leads for 30 days, so you would have to download them frequently. 

Are Lead Form Extensions Right for Your Campaign?  

Lead form extensions are a great option, but may not be right for every campaign. They do have some limitations and aren’t available for all ad types. If your ad is for adult-oriented content, alcohol-related content, gambling-related content, politics, healthcare, or medicine it is not eligible for lead form extensions. Additionally, lead form extensions will only appear on mobile or tablet devices. If the majority of your traffic and conversions come through desktop, going through the trouble to set up lead form extensions may not be worth it. They also can only be controlled at the campaign level, not the account or ad group level. Only first-party advertisers or third-party agencies with a well-established, direct relationship with the products or services being offered, can use lead form ads. Affiliate networks or lead generation businesses will not be allowed to use the feature. Lastly, usage of the personal information you collect with lead form extensions must comply with Google’s data collection policies and local legal requirements. 

Final Thoughts 

If none of the policies or requirements present an issue with your company or campaign, then there’s no reason to not take advantage of this new feature. Capturing mobile conversions can be difficult, the lead form extension works to make that as easy as possible. At Onimod Global we are experts in SEM and as a Google Partner, we’re trusted by Google to excel with their products. If you need assistance in any area of Google Ads, we’re your team. 

Take a look at how we’ve helped other companies, and learn more about what we can do for you!

 

The Top 3 Signs You Need to Revamp Your Digital Marketing Strategy in 2020

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In the fast-paced, highly competitive space of digital marketing, you never want to find your brand losing traction. While there are a variety of successful digital marketing strategies, it’s rare that it remains unchanged. The new year presents the perfect opportunity to evaluate your current practices, identify problem areas, and make necessary adjustments. 

With 2020 coming up next week, here are the top 3 signs you need to revamp your digital marketing strategy.  

Getting Traffic, But No Conversions

When you’re getting qualified traffic but lacking final sales, you probably need to reconsider your conversion rate optimization (CRO) initiatives. The best way to start this is by tracking on-site behavior. CRO is so valuable because it allows you to identify exactly where the fallout in the sales funnel occurs. Instead of just guessing what needs to be changed, you can now take remediation initiatives that target exactly what needs to be fixed. Areas such as content, page layout, CTA’s, shopping carts, etc should all be tracked and considered. 

Losing Rankings

SEO is vital for success in any digital marketing strategy because of all the other factors it supplements. When SEO starts to decline other key metrics, such as traffic, conversions, and revenue can follow suit. There are many reasons that can cause SEO rankings to fall, but the number one factor is search engine friendliness, or lack of, of your website. Search engines, such as Google and Bing, take into account page load time, structure, security, and usability when deciding how well a site ranks. It’s not uncommon for a site to rank well for years and drop because of a new Google update. With the popularity of mobile usage, sites that lack a responsive design have been falling in rankings. 

Keyword lists and site pages are two other factors taken into account. Keyword lists should be consistently updated to eliminate any low performing or irrelevant phrases. Site pages related to keywords should be updated accordingly as well. For best results, an SEO campaign must be cohesive and continuous. Having a strong, ongoing SEO campaign as a digital marketing strategy objective can be a large contributing factor to overall business success.

Lacking Social Success

Social media has become such a valuable tool for not only generating traffic, but conversions and revenue. Going into 2020, social media is no longer optional when it comes to successful digital marketing strategy. Business owners who have turned their back on social media or thought it wasn’t necessary must start to revisit social channels. Brands can improve their social media presence in a variety of ways. The most effective strategy is by being consistently proactive and responsive. This does mean that someone must always be listening and aware of what’s being said about your company and relevant topics online. Both positive and negative comments should be responded to. Excellent customer service can be demonstrated by addressing negative comments promptly with appropriate solutions. Guest posting, utilizing influencers, and sharing customers’ posts are additional strategies that help increase reach. 

Final Thoughts

The online landscape is constantly changing, which means digital marketing strategies should always follow. Failing to do so could mean missing out on valuable business opportunities. At Onimod Global, we ensure this doesn’t happen. As experts in all areas of digital marketing, from SEO, SEM, social, and more, we develop digital synergy for your company. Digital synergy is all about having visibility in the places your customers need you. Our cross-channel digital marketing campaigns are driven by machine learning analytics and human intelligence, to accomplish just that. 

Learn more about what we do and contact us today to ensure your digital marketing strategy is the best it can be for 2020! 

What You Should be Excluding from Your PPC Campaigns to Utilize Your Ad Budget

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When building PPC campaigns, marketers usually focus on what should be included in targeting attributions. However, campaign exclusions are equally as important. Negative audiences, keywords, and other exclusions help to reduce wasted spend ensure people see the right messaging at the right stage of the funnel, and prevent users from being retargeted with products too many times. With targeting capabilities only getting more advanced, why not take advantage and utilize your budget to its fullest potential? 

Audiences You Should Exclude from PPC Campaigns:

Customer Support Seekers 

Users browsing customer support pages are likely existing customers looking for assistance, not shopping for more products. Nuances may apply depending on the goal of your campaign. For example, if you’re trying to upsell, existing customers looking for support may be a good target audience. If you offer premium support, you can also promote that through remarketing. In general, these are not users you want included in your campaign. You can build retargeting audiences based on URLs associated with the support section of your site to exclude them from your campaigns. 

Job Seekers 

Those looking for open job positions are likely not going to be product or service purchasers. So you don’t want to waste your budget by serving them ads for your latest promotion. Usually you  can identify these people by building a URL-based audience from your site’s career page. If you link to a third-party site for job applications, see if you can pixel that site, or track clicks to that site as a Google Analytics event to then build an audience for exclusion.

Past Converters 

These are not necessarily current customers, but have engaged in a conversion action, such as submitting a contact form or clicked on an ad in the past. Whether or not you target this audience depends on your business goal. If you have a multi-step funnel to work people up to the point of sale, then you would probably want to continue targeting this audience. If that’s the case they should still be put into their own category, as you don’t want to show them the same ad as before. This can be accomplished by tracking who as made it to your ‘Thank You’ page, then excluding that group from your original campaign. 

Current Customers

Whether or not you target this audience depends on your business goal as well. Sometimes you may want to sell current customers on additional features or new products. It’s often valuable to retarget past customers because they may be recurring revenue. Best practice would be to put past purchases into their own segment, see how they perform, and bid accordingly. Otherwise, you can create exclusions by uploading a customer match list of customer emails. If your product requires a login, you can build an audience based on people who have accessed pages that would indicate their status as a paying customer.

Additional Exclusions to Consider:

Your Own Company’s IP Address 

You always hope that your own employees aren’t clicking on your ads, but it can happen. But if even the ad doesn’t get clicked, it can still be wasting budget. Every impression counts. If Google detects your ads being seen, but not engaged, your campaign can be penalized. An impression without a click lowers your CTR, which can lower your quality score. This can then increase CPC, leading to fewer clicks and fewer leads. It’s best to be proactive and just block your company’s IP address completely, avoiding wasted ad dollars. 

Non-Business Hours 

Some may believe running ads 24/7 is how you would capture the most business, but this is not the case. It’s rare for companies to get many conversions between midnight and 6am. If your intake team isn’t capable of handling leads after hours, don’t waste your budget on clicks you can’t convert. It’s best to only run ads during business hours to ensure all calls can be answered and emails can be immediately responded to. 

Mobile Apps 

This is an issue most common among display campaigns. While you want to show your ads for mobile searches, you probably don’t want them getting shown within apps. When ads show up on game apps they’re usually either immediately ignored or clicked accidentally. Both which aren’t favorable. Now imagine what happens when a child is playing on a smartphone or tablet somewhere. Below is a screenshot of just a few placements from ONE account for the few short months a Display Campaign was active: 

Source: WordStream

At a top level look, it seems that your campaign is getting great clicks and impressions. When in reality it’s completely irrelevant traffic and wasted ad dollars. If you’re only getting a few irrelevant placements you can just exclude specific apps, otherwise you can exclude all mobile apps from your campaigns. This might be the best decision, as they can be costly clicks unlikely to convert. 

Finals Thoughts

Developing the right audience targets takes analyzation and constant A/B testing. And if your business is seasonal your audience targets may often change. It’s important to remember what you include and exclude from your campaign all depends on your campaign and business goal. 

More From Onimod Global 

At Onimod Global we’re experts in all areas of digital marketing from SEM and Web Dev to Social Media and Content Marketing.  Take a look at how we’ve helped other companies, and learn more about what we can do for you!