AdWords Extends Timeline for Transition to Expanded Text Ads

Google knew they were making news when they announced Expanded Text Ads at their annual performance summit in May. The standard ad format of 25/35/35 characters had been the norm since AdWords was introduced in 2000. The change to the SERP with ETAs is a BIG one (quite literally – ETAs are 50% larger than the traditional ad format) and may be the largest change to AdWords in 16 years!

Just two months later, Google released Expanded Text Ads to all advertisers with the forewarning that advertisers would only have three months to transition all their ads to the new expanded ad format, as AdWords would no longer support the creation of new standard text ads after October 26.

deadline for creating expanded text ads

The short transition timeline was stressful to small and large advertisers alike, many of whom realized that the October 26 deadline would mean adjusting to an unfamiliar new ad format right during the middle of their holiday seasons in November and December. Gratefully, Google seemed to be sensitive to SEMs’ concerns when they announced yesterday that they’d be allowing advertisers three more months to create standard text ads before retiring the standard ad format on January 31, 2017.

On the official AdWords blog, Google reports:

“To make sure you have ample time to test and iterate your expanded text ads for the holidays, we are giving advertisers more time to upgrade your creatives. You now have until January 31, 2017, to make the transition to expanded text ads (instead of the original date of October 26, 2016). This means starting on January 31, 2017, you’ll no longer be able to create or edit standard text ads.”

This means that advertisers rushing to meet the original deadline in six weeks can take a quick breath of relief and make sure they’re creating their best ads for their holiday season.

So I Can Wait Until January to Create Expanded Text Ads?

Absolutely not! We still recommend that you create Expanded Text Ads now. We’ve seen countless clients have early success with this new ad format, with some advertisers seeing their CTR DOUBLE after transitioning to Expanded Text Ads!

expanded text ads data

But not all advertisers have had success with expanded text ads on their first try – some saw their CTRs or conversion rates drop after creating their first expanded text ads! It really depends how you use the extra space. Smart advertisers will take the extra three months to test creative new expanded text ads and discover the new best practices for expanded text ads. After testing your expanded text ads alongside your other ads, advertisers will be confident that when they’re forced to only create expanded text ads in January, they’ll be ready with their best paid search ad copy.

The delayed timeline should also help Bing Ads advertisers make the transition to Bing’s expanded text ads later this year. Bing Ads is currently testing their expanded text ad format in pilot but doesn’t expect all advertisers to have access to the new ad format until this December. This means that advertisers will have more time to test what works well on Google and import their best performing expanded text ads over to Bing when they’re ready.

expanded text ads timeline

Google has given advertisers 16 years to perfect their traditional ad format, but that era is quickly coming to an end. We may have gotten three more months with our old text ads, but the future is clear – Expanded Text Ads are coming and they’re here to stay.

Data Sources

Data is based on a sample size of 11 accounts (WordStream clients) using Expanded Text Ads on the Google Search Network in June 2016.

About the author:

Mark is a Senior Data Scientist at WordStream with a background in SEM, SEO, and Statistical Modeling. He was named the 14th Most Influential PPC Expert of 2016 by PPC Hero. You can follow him on TwitterLinkedIn, and Google +.

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Mobile Advertising Statistics & Trends [Infographic]

Guess what! It’s the year of Mobile! Again!

This year, it’s the year of mobile payments, mobile recruiting, mobile advertising. The first hand-held mobile phone was sold thirty-one years ago for $4k; it was fourteen inches long. As our cell phones have shrunk in size and price, they’ve grown in value.

I am 100x more attached to my smartphone than I was two years ago—four years ago, I had just invested in my first smartphone. Instead of just being a handy tag-along to communicate, it is now my #1 resource for everything from social media, to Pokémon Go, shopping, finding an apartment, and diagnosing any mystery illnesses (thanks, WebMD!).

In search, SERPs have been advancing efforts to incorporate mobile-friendly ads. Mobile search spending is expected to increase by 62% over the next 3 years (Tweet This)! The Google changes this year include the loss of right-side ads on desktop (making every SERP look more like the mobile SERP), the introduction of huge Expanded Text Ads on every device and the return of device-level bid adjustments. At WordStream, we’re constantly reminding clients to make sure their websites are mobile friendly—or at the very least, their PPC landing pages are. (And if they aren’t, to avoid mobile landing pages altogether.)

Mobile drove more than half of the total paid search clicks this past Thanksgiving and Black Friday, and mobile conversion rates are constantly improving.With a smaller screen, different ad formats, voice search, and other variables at play, it’s much easier to fail on mobile. If you’re concerned about how you measure up, new features in our AdWords Performance Grader make it an even more valuable as a source of free competitive intelligence, especially for small and medium-sized businesses who are learning how to win in mobile PPC.

If you’re still not buying into the importance of mobile, we have an infographic from Invesp full of mobile advertising stats and trends to prove it! Don’t underestimate the power of your beloved iPhone and prepare yourself for even more ads targeted to your 6.5’’ screen.   

Mobile Advertising Statistics

 

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How To Build a Shed Even If You’ve Zero Woodworking Experience!

So far this year, we’ve seen the rise of many new audience targeting trends that are helping businesses reach out to their target buyers and more effectively market their products and services.

From persona targeting to remarketing ads and many other new trends already spreading like wildfire, it’s no wonder paid search advertising continues to be the buzzword for businesses looking to tap into the world’s largest market – the Internet.

PPC trends annual PPC budget by spend 

But here’s the brutal truth about paid search marketing:

There are WAY too many marketers and businesses that just follow the conventional wisdom readily available on the Internet.

If only it were that easy…

If you’re serious about paid search advertising, you’ll need to be embrace the trends of tomorrow to stay ahead in the game. That’s why we decided to hand-pick a list of seven PPC trends of tomorrow to help you stay ahead of the curve in 2016 and beyond.

So, let’s begin, shall we?

Trend #1: Google Adwords Re-Enables Mobile-Base Bidding

In a recent development, Google announced a significant change in order to ensure greater control for users over device-level bidding in AdWords. With its recent announcement, Google has made it clear that tablet bidding is back, and that base bids will now apply to mobile with bid modifiers set for desktop and/or tablet.

 PPC trends mobile bid adjustments

This means that now businesses and marketers will be able to anchor their base keyword to the devices relevant to their business. They can then easily set bid adjustments for other devices. In addition, marketers will now be able to adjust bids up to +900%, which has been increased from +300%. 

It’s important to understand that device bidding will apply to ALL campaign types. This is true even when keyword targeting is not being used, as in Shopping campaigns, for example.

Mobile and tablet usage is finally outpacing desktop usage (after years of speculation and hand-wringing), and this realization is pushing a lot of marketers and businesses to change the way they conceptualize and create ads for their target audiences.

Trend #2: Responsive Ads to Be Featured in the Display Network

In another recent development, Google announced the introduction of new, responsive ads for display. This means that you can now go for dynamic, responsive ads that will automatically resize and adjust to match the look and feel of the content your target audience is browsing.

 PPC trends responsive ad formats

Image via PPCNI

Built dynamically by Google, these responsive ads automatically fit available ad spaces on the Google Display Network. All you need to do is to provide a marketing image, a short headline, a long headline, a description, and an optional name and custom logo design. That’s it! Google will do all the hard work for you.

Trend #3: More Characters for Text Search Ads on All Devices 

Google recently launched Expanded Text Ads, a new formatting option that offers advertisers more room for ad copy. Essentially, Expanded Text Ads effectively double the size of PPC ads on AdWords, meaning that advertisers have more opportunities to entice prospects with their ads.

PPC trends text ad character limits 

Image via PPC Hero

Not so long ago, Google raised eyebrows by removing text ads from the right hand side of the SERPs. Now that these ads aren’t there anymore, Google can now streamline its text ad formats across both mobile and desktop.

Soon, advertisers will be able to use two 30-character headlines as against the present 25-character headline. In addition, the updates mean that advertisers now have access to an 80-character limit for description copy instead of the earlier two 35-character lines.

And that’s not all! The display URLs will automatically pull the landing page domain, but advertisers will be able to name up to two directory paths — neither of which has to be a real navigational path — to provide description about the landing page content.

Trend #4: Shopping Feed Update Will Impact PPC Campaigns

On May 25, 2016, Google announced vital updates to its Shopping Products Feed Specification. These updates meant changes to the information that Google requires from advertisers in order to run Shopping ads.

 PPC trends Google Shopping campaigns

Now, Unit Pricing will be available for all markets and categories in a bid to ensure consistency in the displayed prices. Color and Size values will now be compulsory to ensure a better, more consistent shopping experience for users.

The minimum image size requirements for non-apparel products will be increased from 32 x 32 to 100 x 100 pixels to be able to support new ad formats better. The minimum image size for apparel images will remain 250 x 250 pixels.

The maximum feed file size will also be increased from 1 GB to 4 GB. This means going forward, you’ll be able to use larger, high-quality images (file size as large as 800 x 800 pixels or larger) to ensure better performance. This is sure to be a winning trend that will help you ensure that your ads feature the most accurate prices, specifications, and availability information – and plenty of gorgeous, high-resolution imagery! 

Trend #5: Video Ad Campaigns will Rule the Roost

Here’s another 2015 trend on the list that looks to be going strong in 2016. Video ads have become increasingly popular among marketers and businesses. With Google and Facebook focusing more on video ads, it’s no wonder why video ads have become very much a part of the mainstream advertising medium.

 PPC trends effectiveness of online video

Image via Marketing Land

Today, ever-so-connected and ever-so-busy users often like to watch more than read. Therefore, presenting your ads in video format can get you more eyes and more clicks compared to plain old text ads.

Contrary to common misconception, creating video ad campaigns can be economical. You don’t need any special technical skills to actually run video adverts (though you’ll still need at least a rudimentary understanding of video production techniques and the equipment to do it, if you plan on producing your own video ads) and you can easily manage it through AdWords. It was a major win for us last year and will be again this year and beyond.

Trend #6: Interactive Advertising Will Be the New Normal

Today’s consumers are smarter than ever. They look for – and essentially demand – to experience the products and services from brands before they spend money on it, and Google seems to be serious about making it possible for its app users.

 PPC trends interactive ads

Image via Media Post

Did you know that 1 in 4 apps listed on Google’s Play Store have never been used? This realization is pushing Google to use its virtual machines on its cloud platform to enable users to use an app for at least 60 seconds before downloading it. This will help users decide if they actually want to download the app or not. Great for users, not so great for the developers of the millions of mediocre apps out there.

This is arguably the most audacious of our 2016 PPC trend predictions. Soon, advertisers will help users experience their products before they actually purchase them. This implies that more and more advertisers will utilize interactive ads to showcase their products to their prospects and consumers.

This also means we’ll soon see more and more interactive ads that will allow users to experience products before spending their hard-earned cash on them.

Trend #7: RLSA Will Steal the Limelight

Though launched officially in 2013, RLSA (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads) have not yet been fully explored by many marketers yet. However, we’re confident that many marketers will reap the benefits from RLSA once they realize the potential returns that RLSA offers.

 PPC trends RLSA concept illustration

RLSA gets you access to an extensive list of search ads where you can select ads for products and services similar to yours. You can then modify search ads, bids, and keywords.

It also helps you review the returning visitor data right from your AdWords dashboard to analyze your users’ behavior. This information will provide greater insights into and control over your paid search budget.

For example, if you know that your returning visitors are converting at a higher cost-per-acquisition against first-time visitors, you can easily lower the bid on your search ads for this audience. On the other hand, if you find that your returning visitors are converting at a lower cost, you can increase bids for them.

About the Author

Nancy Kapoor is a blogger and digital marketing expert at Design Hill, the world’s fastest-growing crowdsourcing platform for custom web and graphic design. Nancy has spent more than seven years working in SEO, email marketing, paid marketing, affiliate marketing, digital marketing, blogging, and content marketing.

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The Complete, Digestible Guide to AdWords Budgets

Budgeting is a chore. Always. Whether you’re pinching pennies to pay rent for an overpriced studio overlooking a dingy alley, or paving the road to internet moguldom, or both, simultaneously, it drives the average red blooded American up the wall.

There are ways to mitigate the insanity. There is, however, no way to completely avoid budgeting properly without hamstringing yourself down the road. This is especially true in AdWords, where every single click represents either business growth or your hard earned cash becoming kindling.

Unfortunately, resources that take an all-encompassing approach to PPC budgeting are scant. There’s no free app. No extreme couponing. You just have to figure it out.

adwords budgets

To help you learn proper AdWords budgeting strategy from the ground up, we’ve put together the following guide. It’s broken into 3 easy-to-digest sections:

  1. Determining your initial AdWords budget
  2. Allocating spend across campaign types
  3. Introducing new campaigns

Does your hatred for the necessary extend past budgeting and into reading? Fret not. We’ve distilled each section into a handful of tweet-length bullets.

Part 1: Determining your initial AdWords budget

You’ve forked over your credit card information and funded your account. You’ve just downloaded AdWords Editor (hopefully steam hasn’t started spewing from your machine yet). Now what?

You need to determine how much money you want to spend in your first quarter. Month. Week. Day. Hour. No. Your first click.

There are four key questions you need to ask yourself when determining your initial AdWords budget:

  1. How does AdWords fit into my current marketing strategy?
  2. What (and where) are my competitors spending?
  3. How much are the CPCs (costs per click) for the keywords I’m bidding on?
  4. Which KPI (key performance indicator) matters most to me?

Once answered, you’ll be ready to dive into campaign types, optimization, and eventually, expansion. With that in mind, let’s jump into those questions.

How does AdWords fit into my current marketing strategy?

If your business is a staple of the local community or has a well-established online presence (you’re a thought leader driving organic traffic to your site with great SEO and even better content), there’s a good chance leads will show up at your doorstep ready to buy. Conversely, a fledgling business with its finger on the pulse of its target audience can achieve something similar through a rabid social following. Other than time and the salaries of whomever spearheads these efforts, this organic traffic is “free.”

how to determine adwords budgets

Consider also the other marketing channels you employ in an effort to grow your business. Billboards. Ephemera. Purchased leads. Radio spots. Bench ads. Commercials. Events. Branded urinal cakes?

List out each marketing channel you use and riddle me this: Is the goal of your AdWords account to support existing efforts (to give people a way to use the giveaway code) or supplant them?

What (and where) are my competitors spending?

Google your company’s name. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Now, what do you see at the top of the SERP?

If you’re not new to AdWords, the answer better be “my optimized-to-the-gills branded ad.” If you’re a neophyte, a betting man would wager the screen’s packed with your competitors.

Outside of your branded keywords, you can use a tool like the Keyword Planner or SEMRush (I wouldn’t pay any mind to the qualitative information available, but the keyword lists and sample ads can be valuable) to get an idea of where your competitors are spending their AdWords budgets.

Armed with this information, you can develop strategies to unseat their ads from the SERP, and find (cheaper) keywords nobody was smart enough to bid on before you came along.

How high are the CPCs for the keywords I’m bidding on?

Those tools I just touched on? Bust ‘em out again.

The most rudimentary way to determine a budget is to consider the cost of the keywords you’re bidding on. Should this be the only information you use to establish a budget? Absolutely not. But it’s a nice starting point.

using keyword planner for adwords budgeting

Go to the AdWords Keyword Planner and enter one of your landing pages into the interface on the left. Adjust the remaining parameters accordingly (industry, location, terms to avoid, etc.) and prepare to scroll through pages of prospective keywords along with their relative popularity and advertiser competition.

Now try the same thing with the page that corresponds to each of the products or services you offer. This will no doubt uncover undervalued search terms for you to bid on. Ideally, you want to seek out as many high-traffic, low-competition terms (that also convey commercial intent) as you possibly can. That’s your sweet spot.

adwords budget allocation tips

We’ll get more in depth on this in a little while, but it boils down to this: Keywords that indicate urgency or familiarity are more likely to convert than ones that don’t. A branded keyword conveys more intent than a competitor keyword. “Limo from Logan to Nashua midnight” is a heck of a lot more urgent (and therefore valuable) than “limo service,” even if the search volume is significantly lower.

Which KPIs (key performance indicators) matter most to me?

We’ve saved the most important question for last. A KPI is a measurable value that lets a business or individual gauge performance. Not every business cares about the same thing.

For some, CPA is the be-all-end-all. I cannot tell you how many kickoff calls begin with a cost per acquisition plucked from thin air. If you’re sure this is the KPI for your business, set a goal grounded in logic. If something more concrete is your style, you can figure out how many conversions (RIP converted clicks) tracked through AdWords it takes on-average to result in a bona fide client and determine your actual CPA. You can also leverage your existing CPA from other channels, make that your goal for paid search, and ratchet up or down accordingly once you’ve got more account data to work from.

There are many other KPIs businesses use as barometers for successful AdWords campaigns. If you’re unsure of which is best for your business, here are some resources on performance indicators to get you started:

***

Once you’ve answered these four key questions take a look at your findings. To determine your ideal budget, you’re going to want to think about the KPI(s) that you’re going to judge performance on and the number of sales or leads you’re looking to garner from AdWords. Look at the other marketing channels you’re using and try to apply any relevant goals you’ve established as your AdWords starting point. Finally, consider the cost of keywords you’re likely to bid on by examining the ones your competitors have already chosen (and the ones they haven’t).

TL;DR

  • Use data from existing marketing efforts to inform your AdWords account structure and budget.
  • Leverage competitor analysis and keyword research to reduce your learning curve and hit the ground running.
  • Determine your budget by establishing the KPIs that are most important to your business and working backwards from the figures that represent profitability.

Part 2: Allocating spend across search campaigns

Generally speaking, each of your AdWords search campaigns is going to fall into one the following five categories: research, branded, competitor, high intent, and top performers. Each of these designations is malleable; a few are downright fluid.

Logic dictates that the majority of your budget should be funneled to your top-performing keywords, but what to do with the rest?

Research-stage/top-of-funnel keywords

More often than not, someone new to paid search is going to build campaigns targeting top of funnel terms. An entrepreneurial yet woefully under-informed personal injury lawyer, for example, will bid on “personal injury lawyer.” Makes sense, right?

budgeting for expensive keywords

Unfortunately, in most industries these types of keywords cost an arm and a leg. For the term above, Google recommends a bid of just over $97. And that’s per click. Yikes. Obviously I chose this keyword to make a point. Is your vertical rife with sky-high CPCs? Maybe. But the biggest issue with these kinds of keywords isn’t even cost: it’s intent.

To illustrate, let’s pretend we’re a scrappy upstart in the highly competitive business card industry. Take a look at these search terms:

top of funnel keyword budget

Obviously “business cards” has the most average monthly searches. But consider the searchers themselves: Wantrepreneurs who’ll never complete an order. The occasional tween in Cincinnati or Fayetteville working on a project. At a suggested $8.75 per click, I’ll pass. I’d rather spend that $8 on search queries that convey intent (like “buy business cards” or the slightly pricier but more commercial “order business cards”).

Now, this isn’t to say that top of funnel keywords are all overpriced or useless. They’re a great way to build awareness and add prospects to your remarketing lists, but if you bid on them, do so intelligently. Spend $1.33 per click on a query like “free business cards” and remarket the heck out of your prospects. When the time comes for them to take their startup from a Panera Bread to a three floor operation in an iconic Boston landmark, guess who’ll be in the back of their mind?

Branded keywords

For some incomprehensible reason the use of branded terms is often contested. That’s poppycock.

Even though your website should be the first thing that show up in the organic results when someone searches for your business, there’s a big old chunk of real estate above the organic listings that your competitors are welcome to claim, if you don’t.

Here’s a real-life example. Earlier this week, after watching the Panthers and Broncos play the first game of NFL season (somewhere in Alabama Harvey Updyke is smiling after all those hits Cam Newton took) I decided I was going to win a big pile of internet money playing daily fantasy football. I searched for DraftKings (whose ads were inescapable in Boston last year) and clicked the first thing I saw:

branded keyword budget

I was shocked to be greeted by something other than a garish Hulk-green typeface. So shocked, in fact, that I gave DraftKings some free advice:

budget advice

If my testimonial isn’t enough to convince you, consider this. Competitors are forced to pay a premium to bid on your brand, but the CPCs you’ll see for the same terms will be considerably cheaper. Your domain and landing page copy will be hyper-relevant to the keywords, resulting in maxed out Quality Scores and lower costs.

In short, while branded terms should by no means be the only ones you’re bidding on, allocating spend to ensure SERP domination is a must.

Competitor keywords

Remember everything I said about branded terms? When it comes to bidding on your competitors the opposite holds true. Just as you did with the top-of-funnel terms, you’re going to want to leverage research and common sense to ensure you’re not blowing budget on search queries that will never convert.

adwords budget tips

One crucial mistake advertisers make when they start advertising on competitors is bidding on the wrong competitors. As a rule of thumb, when choosing competitors to bid on, make sure you’re choosing companies that you are actually competing against. Choose competitors who you feel you have a competitive advantage over, whether it be better prices, bigger supply, or whatever. In other words: don’t be like fantasydraft.com

High-intent keywords

If top of the funnel terms are a (costly) wild goose chase, high-intent keywords are golden eggs dropped into your lap.

High-intent keywords come in two flavors: “buy now” and “product.” You’re going to want to ensure the biggest slice of your search budget is being used to bid on keywords that fall into one of these categories (bonus points if you can unearth search terms that live somewhere in between).

“Buy now” keywords are those which, broadly speaking, indicate that a prospect is ready to pull the trigger on your product or service. They’ve done their research (or been referred by a trusted confidant) and now it’s time to buy. Typically, “buy now” keywords are comprised of top of the funnel terms appended with words like:

  • Buy
  • Discount(s)
  • Deal(s)
  • Coupon(s)
  • Free shipping

To illustrate the difference between research and intent-to purchase, take a look at the keyword “candle” followed by buy-now iterations (why candles, you might be wondering? In the time it’s taken to write and edit this guide I’ve burned through an entire warm tobacco pipe scented candle: the lengths I go to for you people):

commercial intent keywords

Now, we’ll address the obvious first: search volume for “candles” is exponentially greater than that of the other keywords combined. But the other keywords show more intent to buy.

It goes without saying, but be sure to address the specific modifier you’re bidding on in your ad copy: if you’re shilling gluten-free soy-based cardamom-scented candles and bidding on “coupons for candles,” use an expanded text ad or employ ad extensions to convey the quality and offer a coupon code in your ad itself.

Product/service keywords include:

  • Branded searches (obviously)
  • Specific products or services (“iPhone 6”, “roof repair” etc.)
  • Product categories (“summer dresses”, “insect repellant”, “beach accessories” etc.)
  • Affordable
  • Best
  • Cheapest
  • Comparison
  • Review
  • Top

This is a much broader category, and not every sort of product keyword is going to become a top-converting term for your business. That being said, the only way to figure out what doesn’t work is to test everything in as calculated a way as you possibly can. If something breaks the bank, pause it. If something converts at a CPA well below the account average, you’ve got a top converter on your hands.

Top Performers

Once you’ve been running your AdWords account for at least 30 days, you’ll have an idea of which keywords are worth your money and which aren’t. The middling terms—ones that your ads show for consistently but never seem to earn clicks—represent opportunity. Focus you efforts on writing great ad copy for these keywords. Make changes to your landing page. Triple-check your ad extensions. If, after a few weeks you’re still not seeing any clicks (or worse, you’re seeing clicks but no conversions), put ‘em on the chopping block.

By moving your top performing keywords into their own campaign(s) you afford yourself more control over how much of your budget is spent on keywords that have, historically, done well. The advantage? No longer is the single converting keyword in an ad group lumped in with twelve other terms that do nothing but syphon your budget away.

A word of warning, though: by moving a keyword out of its original ad group, you lose. Since in the scenario I’m describing above the account is relatively new, it makes more sense to move underperforming keywords into new campaigns.

***

So, the million-dollar question: how do we actually split up the budget among these different campaigns?

If we were to visualize search campaign budget breakdown, it’d look something like this:

breaking down your adwords budget by campaign

The numbers you see in the pie chart above are completely superfluous, but the relative distribution of spend between campaign types is certainly not.

As you can see, the majority of your budget should be spent on the keywords that have the greatest chance of converting. The exception is branded. While branded keywords represent intent (read: familiarity), they’ve got a low ceiling and don’t necessarily represent “net-new” customers. So while it’s important to dominate your competition when it comes to your branded terms, by virtue of comparatively low volume and maxed out quality scores (thanks to inimitable relevance), your budget should be most heavily concentrated on those “buy now” and product-centric high-intent keywords.

And remember: these categories are fluid. High-intent keywords should be your top performers, but in some instances that isn’t the case. I’ve seen accounts where a competitor’s brand name had better conversion volume and CPA than any other keyword bid on. Every niche, every account, is different. When in doubt, pay close attention to the wealth of data available to you and adjust accordingly.

TL;DR

  • Focus the majority of your budget on high-intent keywords (including branded terms).
  • Top-of-funnel keywords can eat a hole in your wallet: there are better (cheaper) ways to reach a wide audience.
  • Adjust budget allocation on a weekly basis to ensure maximum ROI.

Part 3: Budgeting For Everything Else AdWords Has To Offer

Search is the backbone of most AdWords accounts, but the platform gives advertisers a few other options, too: display and remarketing (usually through display, though remarketing on search can also be effective). Of course, there’s also shopping, but that’s a post unto itself.

Depending on your vertical, these alternatives can complement or completely replace traditional search advertising. Either way, they can drastically impact the way you spend money on AdWords. Let’s take a closer look.

Display

The clicks are cheaper than they are on traditional search, but with the significant drop off in direct conversions, is the Google Display Network really worth it?

The short answer is yes. A thousand times yes.

google display budget

Remember our old pal intent? Well, when you use the GDN, the people seeing your ads don’t really have much of it. Display is closer to traditional advertising (think billboards) than search, with the added benefits of better targeting and on-demand analytics.

Outside of remarketing, the Display Network has three main functions—brand awareness, showcasing your product, and helping a lengthy sales process along—and puts a plethora of targeting options at your disposal. There’s got to be a catch, right?

The lack of conversions directly attributable to the GDN can make it hard to justify, especially for small businesses with limited budgets. That being said, there are ways to dip your toes in display without lighting money on fire.

allocation budget for display network

When I work with clients looking to give Display a go, I recommend they start with managed placements or In-Market audiences. Without going into too much detail, this gives you the ability to show banner creative on specific websites or to people whose browsing history indicates that their interests align with what you offer.

If you have success here, check out some of these other strategies and grow your Display budget to create the perfect complementary network strategy.

Remarketing

Let me begin with the following: if you run an ecommerce business and dynamic remarketing (remarketing ads that show site visitors the product or products they actually looked at on your website) isn’t set up,  take the rest of your day to follow this guide. Future you will thank me from atop a pile of greenbacks.

Really though. Remarketing is an essential component of AdWords. Every business in every vertical can gain from its use.

An easy way to determine your initial remarketing budget is to calculate the percentage of conversions that come from returning site visitors and then allocate that same percentage of your spend to remarketing. Too abstract? Let’s look at an example.

Say your online candle store garnered 1,000 clicks last week and sold 100 of the finest non-GMO, wood-wick artisan candles last week on AdWords, and 10 of them were purchased by returning visitors. Assigning 10% of your search budget to remarketing gives you the chance to bring the 900 non-converters back to your website.

Some account managers are opposed to remarketing because it means you’re paying to bring the same person to your site multiple times. But isn’t that better than said person never converting, or worse still, buying something from your competitor? Plus, repeat visitors are actually more likely to convert!

why spend budget on remarketing

TL;DR

  • Remarketing (especially dynamic remarketing) is not optional: maximize your budget by convincing more visitors to convert.
  • Let the Display Network do your top-of-funnel dirty work so your search budget can be saved for more qualified prospects.

A final word: Expanding to other platforms

At long last, your AdWords budgeting bootcamp has drawn to a close!

You’ve determined your starting point. You’ve carefully allocated bread to your search campaigns and begun growing your budget to encompass everything AdWords has to offer. Index finger cramp? Rub some dirt on it. You’re killing it, but you’re not finished.

Outside of perpetual optimization—necessary if you want to maximize your paid search budget—there are other platforms you can expand your efforts to. While Bing Ads is the logical next step, you might find that Facebook advertising (lead ads, anyone?) or LinkedIn (but probably Facebook) provides excellent bang for your buck as well.

What are you waiting for?

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7 Things I Still Hate About LinkedIn Ads

Like a lot of marketers, I find LinkedIn Ads frustrating. The thing is, by making just a few needed improvements, both LinkedIn itself and advertisers could greatly benefit.

For LinkedIn, advertising could be bringing in much more than a meager $181 million in revenues, as it did during the second quarter of 2016. Compare that to the advertising revenues of Google ($19 billion) and Facebook ($6 billion) during the same quarter.

linkedin ads revenue 2016

For advertisers, better LinkedIn ads would offer some pretty obvious benefits. It would give brands and businesses another platform to reach LinkedIn’s 450 million professionals (although only a quarter of those users are reportedly active every month).

Win, win. Right?

That’s what led me to write LinkedIn Ads Review: 8 Things I Hate About LinkedIn Ads about 18 months ago.

Then, in May 2015, the nice people at LinkedIn invited me to their headquarters to talk ads.

Larry Kim LinkedIn Ads office visit tweet

Luckily, there was no ambush! Actually, it was an awesome experience. I spoke with their brilliant product managers about some great things that they were thinking about.

So here we are, 18 months later, and my core question remains the same: if advertising isn’t a priority for LinkedIn, why should advertisers care about LinkedIn?

Have things improved in the last year and a half? Has LinkedIn, which was acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion, gotten its advertising act together?

Spoiler alert: not yet. LinkedIn has made some much-needed progress, but has a ton of deficiencies and remains a mediocre ad network.

Let’s count down the seven things I still hate about LinkedIn ads.

7. No Video!

Why can’t we upload videos to LinkedIn? It’s kind of insane.

Video advertising is one of the most effective ways to bias people.

Numerous studies have shown that video improves brand recall and affinity, helps with lead generation, and increases engagement (e.g., shares, CTR).

problems with linkedin ads

6. Still No Remarketing!

Remarketing has been around for more than six years. But my concern about LinkedIn Ads remains unchanged since last time:

“You can buy remarketing ads on Twitter, Facebook, on the Google Display Network, at YouTube, and even for Google Search – but you can’t get it on LinkedIn.”

Remarketing is still not there. After LinkedIn announced the retirement of Lead Accelerator, there was some talk that remarketing ads were coming “soon”. We heard that LinkedIn would roll some elements of Lead Accelerator into the self-service platform.

Well, we’re still waiting. You don’t get points for “soon.”

no remarketing in linkedin

5. Still No Custom Lists!

LinkedIn still doesn’t have anything comparable to Facebook’s Custom Audiences or Twitter’s Tailored Audiences.

Seriously?

Meanwhile, the power of custom audiences on other platforms is actually getting stronger. Google now has Customer Match. And on Facebook you can overlay custom audiences with specific attributes, interests and demographics.

4. Still No Lead Gen Ad Formats!

I can’t even begin to understand how a network for business professionals doesn’t offer advertisers a way to capture leads. You’ll have much more success doing lead generation on Twitter or using Lead Generation Ads on Facebook.

Yet here we are. Still nothing to see here from LinkedIn Ads.

linkedin ads for lead gen

3. Pricing Is Still Bad!

Last time I took LinkedIn to task for failing to try to deliver the best value to advertisers.

Well, it’s gotten worse since then for advertisers. Prices have gone up substantially. Look at these CPC prices – $8 bids?!

high cpc on linkedin ads

Yes, on LinkedIn Ads you’re stuck with relatively static pricing.

2. Ad Quality Still Doesn’t Matter!

A true Quality Score system is missing from LinkedIn Ads.

There’s no reward for running unicorn ad campaigns on LinkedIn, even though Google, Facebook, and Twitter all dramatically reward advertisers for making the effort to create high-quality ads. Facebook and AdWords show advertisers the relevancy scores in their accounts to enable them to make optimizations.

On the flip side, the absence of a Quality Score on LinkedIn means there’s no penalty for having the worst, most boring donkey ad possible.

Some other platforms won’t show an ad if the engagement is too low. On LinkedIn, you can run terrible ads forever – even if it takes 20,000 impressions to generate a single click.

It also means my LinkedIn strategy is much different. I create lower funnel, high friction ads. For example:

linkedin ad example

This is kind of like asking to get married on the first date! But if you’re going to pay $8 per click, you might as well ask people to take the action you really want them to take!

It’s a big ask. I would never do this on other display/social ad platforms. Rather, I’d do content promotion with the goal of remarketing to people who engage. But, again, there’s still no remarketing on LinkedIn.

1. Account Promotion Still Doesn’t Exist!

Organic visibility on LinkedIn is remarkably good compared to Facebook. Unfortunately there’s no “Follower” ad campaign type. Last time I compared the lack of account promotion as trying to do social media with both arms tied behind your back. 

“If you use [LinkedIn] ads to promote your Company Page, you have to just cross your fingers and hope that once they click through to your Page, they choose to follow it.”

Pardon my French, but…

joe biden malarkey

If you want an ad format that will increase the number of people following your company page on LinkedIn, look elsewhere. You still won’t find this on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Ads: Any Improvements?

OK, we’ve beaten up LinkedIn pretty good, but it’s only because we love them and want them to improve their advertising product.

LinkedIn has made two significant improvements:

  • LinkedIn Ads now offers conversion tracking. The lack of conversion tracking was so annoying. While this addition is indeed great news, the bad news is that basically all you can see is how bad your ad performance is.

I do this because I love LinkedIn. I really do!

linkedin ads suck

I’m just underwhelmed by their self-service ads. Advertising accounts for just 20 percent of LinkedIn’s revenues – that means they’re missing out on a huge opportunity.

LinkedIn is still absolutely essential, not just for individual professionals seeking exposure and new opportunities, but for companies seeking to maintain a strong organic presence, too. LinkedIn gets a lot of stuff right (such as LinkedIn Pulse, the platform’s excellent content recommendation engine), and I still think it’s an awesome service with many compelling features. (I shared some great tips for upping your content game on LinkedIn here.) Unfortunately, not enough has changed in the self-service platform over the past 18 months when compared to advances in other popular ad platforms. Hopefully, LinkedIn will soon recognize its full advertising potential and learn from Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and give us advertisers a fantastic self-service ads platform.

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