Category: Google AdWords

May 23rd, 2016

Is Removing Desktop Sidebar Ads a Good Decision by Google?

Earlier this year, Google rolled out a significant change to how search ads are displayed for desktop browsers. The removal of sidebar ads from desktop search results has many advertisers wondering if their AdWords campaigns will be negatively affected moving forward. Here’s what you need to know about what has changed for desktop search ads, how it might impact your PPC results, and what you can do to future-proof your AdWords campaigns.

Streamlining Google Search Ad Results

In short, Google has removed sidebar ads for search. For desktop browsers, the positions above organic search results will be the only ads that will display for searches. The one exception will be PLA (product list ads) boxes, which will still appear on the sidebar of search results. For most searches, Google will continue to limit the results shown to three ads. However, up to four ads can be shown for some “highly commercial” categories. While what exactly “highly commercial” categories includes has not been defined by Google, it seems that categories that tend to have high-cost, competitive keywords, including insurance, law and travel will be included.

Why Did Google Remove Sidebar Ads?

Google is always very responsive to how people use their products, as we saw with the recent introduction of a redesigned AdWords dashboard. But while the AdWords interface update was focused on advertisers, this update seems to be for the benefit of both consumers and advertisers. Matt Lawson, the director of Performance Ads Marketing at Google, explained the logic behind the change in a recent article for Search Engine Land:

“Over time, we’ve found that text ads on the right rail were simply less useful than we’d hoped. In direct terms, users didn’t click on them as much as other ads — and when users don’t click on things, we take that to mean that something wasn’t what they were looking for.”

Sidebar ads (referred to as “right rail” above) on Google search results look and feel more like ads than those that appear in-line with organic search results. By refining how ads are displayed to provide a more “native” advertising experience, it appears that Google wants to keep consumers from feeling like they are being barraged with too many ads while providing a more effective advertising environment for AdWords users.

This change has not been entirely unexpected. Google has been testing variations of how search results are displayed since at least 2001, including adding a fourth ad position above organic search results. With a strong focus on improving usability and implementing Material Design, advertisers and consumers alike should expect to see periodic changes to Google’s interface from time to time.

What Removing Sidebar Ads Means for Your Campaigns

The overall impact of removing sidebar ads is hard to gauge this early on. Advertisers are likely to see a decline in overall impressions since ads will not be served at all on sidebar results anymore. More importantly, Google has essentially throttled supply for a high-demand advertising outlet. As a result, it’s possible that CPC for high-demand keywords may rise significantly. This might be especially relevant for businesses in highly competitive PPC spaces, including law firms and insurance providers.

However, some PPC experts have predicted that with a smaller, more focused offering of ads displayed for any given search, advertisers may see better results overall. If you’re already doing a good job of targeting and serving ads to the right audience, you’ll be rewarded with less competition on-page from other advertisers. That could potentially lead to higher CTR and conversion rates.

The good news is that if you’re already aiming for the top three positions, the change isn’t likely to negatively affect your campaigns significantly — at least not immediately. Since CTRs can decrease significantly for ads in any spot lower than the top three positions, it’s estimated that less than 15% of total click volume on PPC ads will be affected by the change. If your ad position strategy doesn’t involve working towards the top three ad positions, the removal of sidebar ads has made changing your strategy moving forward absolutely critical. Making simple changes such as bumping up your budget for particular keywords and working to improve your Quality Score can help you boost your position.

Future-Proofing Your PPC Campaigns

With this change, as with all others, you’ll want to keep a close eye on your campaign metrics for any sudden changes. Watch your budget, your conversion rate, and your click-through rate carefully. You may find that increased competition will require you to increase your bids for certain campaigns in order to continue serving ads effectively. Alternatively, if you notice that your ads are performing better for certain keywords than others, you may want to focus more resources on those campaigns.

If you start seeing a negative impact on your campaigns, it may be time to revisit your PPC strategy. Webrageous advocates for constantly A/B testing ad copy, placement, and bidding strategy regularly to continually improve campaign performance. Making changes such as implementing extensions or moving more of your budget to call-only campaigns can be effective methods of increasing conversion rate.

Leveraging Webrageous for Better Results in a Competitive Landscape

Working with a PPC consultant with a strong track record of managing high-performing ad campaigns can help you adjust to Google’s new ad display changes. We can prevent this change (and future ones) from tearing down your campaigns. At Webrageous, we specialize in managing campaigns for clients in the legal industry and know how to effectively navigate the highly-competitive legal PPC space.

Webrageous has an experienced team of dedicated PPC managers who oversee multiple accounts. We can leverage our experience managing the changes that Google has introduced to ensure that your campaigns will continue to thrive. Learn more about the results Webrageous delivers our clients to see how we can help you move your PPC strategy to the next level.

Image Source: Picography via Pixabay

April 29th, 2016

How the AdWords Redesign Impacts Your PPC Campaigns

If you’ve been following news about AdWords, you might have heard that Google recently rolled out a whole new look for their AdWords dashboard. But the latest Adwords redesign can mean more than just a slick new interface for you to enjoy. The updated platform might just have a positive impact on your campaigns — if you know how to leverage it. Here’s what you need to know about AdWords new look, and how it will impact your PPC campaign strategy.

What’s New with AdWords?

AdWords Has a Clean, New Look

The first thing you’ll notice about the new interface is how sleek and clean it is. The new AdWords interface is an expression of Material Design, Google’s design language. The principles of Material Design stress the importance of usability. As a result, Google has focused on creating responsive layouts and highly visual designs to help users get the information they want at a glance.

This is a big change from the cluttered, busy interface that AdWords currently has. Since it first launched 15 years ago, AdWords has gathered up a large number of features, and the original interface wasn’t designed for the breadth of features and functionality. These new additions have slowly created a more and more cluttered dashboard. The new AdWords features a stripped down and reorganized layout, with the intent to make it easier for advertisers to find what they need quickly.

It’s Mobile-First and Customer-Focused

So what was the motivation behind the new look? The focus has been to make AdWords a more useful tool for the businesses who rely on it the most. To do so, Google carefully studied how their users were interacting with the existing platform. In an interview with Fast Company, Greg Rosenberg, Head of UX at Google, discussed the customer-focused approach that Google took to redesigning AdWords: “It goes far beyond polls or surveys. It’s literally being at a business with our users, watching them use AdWords for hours on end.”

The dashboard has been redesigned to help advertisers gain faster, more valuable insights into their data. The redesign takes into account how people browse on mobile devices – in browsing sessions that tend to be quick and frequent, rather than longer ones. Finding data on browser location and device will be easier to find and interpret on the new dashboard.

How Will AdWords Redesign Affect My Campaigns?

Your Existing AdWords Campaigns Are Safe

It’s not unusual that when AdWords rolls out an update, it can have drastic effects on campaigns. Fortunately for advertisers, this is largely an interface redesign. There’s no reason to worry that AdWords will have a negative effect on the performance of your campaigns. Additionally, all of the great features and functionality of AdWords won’t change with the redesign. All your favorite AdWords features will still be available. However, how you access them may change slightly.

Making Your Mobile Campaigns Stronger

If the new AdWords has any impact on your campaigns, it will likely be to make your mobile campaigns stronger. The redesign focuses on making the mobile PPC campaigns easier to manage and interpret. If you feel overwhelmed by the existing AdWords experience, or if you want to focus more heavily on your mobile PPC campaigns moving forward, you can look forward to the AdWords redesign making it easier on you in the future.

When Can I Start Using the New AdWords Experience?

Google has already started rolling out the new AdWords experience. However, this rollout is being done on an invitation-only basis for right now, and will probably proceed slowly. While this may have impatient advertisers itching to see the new layout, this slow introduction will benefit all users in the long run. Google has stated that they will focus on gathering feedback on the new design during 2016-2017 to see how their users like the new experience, and what can be improved. By the time the new AdWords experience reaches everyone, we can expect a well-honed version of the new AdWords.

Webrageous for Mobile

The AdWords redesign might just help you gain more insight into your mobile PPC campaigns. But if you’re looking to truly reinvent your mobile PPC strategy, you’ll need to do more than wait for AdWords to catch up with your needs. Webrageous works closely with AdWords representatives to keep our campaign management strategies up to date with the latest. Our experience with managing campaigns and our expertise at maximizing campaign results ensures that we can leverage the latest version of AdWords as effectively as possible for our customers. To learn how we can help you get the most out of your campaigns and the new AdWords interface, contact Webrageous today for a consultation.

Image Source: Google

April 4th, 2016

6 Tips for Improving Call Rates for Google AdWords

Getting potential customers to reach out to your company with a phone call can be a critical step in the sales process. If you’re running call-only ad campaigns or want to boost the number of call conversions you get from your existing PPC campaigns, improving you call rate for your Google AdWords campaigns can be an effective way to persuade your audience to pick up the phone and call your business. Whether you’re already following our best practices for running call-only campaigns, or if you’re just getting started with optimizing your PPC campaigns, these six tips for improving call rate will help take your AdWords campaigns to the next level.

With the shift to mobile it is more critical than ever to optimize for calls. Users don’t like to fill out contact forms on smart phones if they can avoid it. And if you are pushing calls your overall conversion rates will increase. Take a look at some recent results for a personal injury attorney. You will see how calls are driving over 90% of their conversions. Users are presented with the option to fill out a form or call. While the cost per lead will seem high for many people outside of legal advertising these are very good numbers for personal injury advertising.

1. Think Beyond the Ad and Optimize Your Website for Calls

Improving call rate involves more than just adding a phone number to your PPC ads. Your website and landing pages should also be optimized to prompt customers to call you. Conversion rate experts assert that reducing friction to finding information drives higher conversion rates. If improving your call rate is the priority for your marketing efforts, be sure to make it as easy as possible for customers to find your phone number on your website. On our own website, we follow this practice by placing our phone number at the top of our homepage. This makes it easy for new clients to quickly make contact with the Google AdWords experts at Webrageous.

2. Leverage Click-to-Call Ad Extensions

One of the best ways to garner more call conversions is to focus on mobile PPC. Because many mobile PPC users don’t have to switch devices to make a call, mobile is an ideal channel for improving your conversion rate. In particular, the Click-to-Call Ad Extension makes it dead-simple for smartphone users to call your company with a single click. According to Google, adding a call extension to your mobile ads can increase conversions by 6-8% on average. If you’re running mobile PPC ads but aren’t using this valuable extension, you are likely missing out on potential customers.

3. Match Your CTA to Your Call’s Goal

Your language should echo the action you want your audience to take. Using phrases like “call now” or “speak to an expert” in your ad copy gives a clear message about the action you want your viewers to take. In addition to using language that will trigger the right action, your CTA should express the value of the call to the caller. Call conversions can represent a larger commitment on the lead’s part than other conversion types. They require the individual to commit to speaking with your company directly and immediately, rather than at their own pace. Make sure that your CTAs give some context as to what a prospective customer can expect from the call. Are you offering more general information about your business offerings? Or should prospects call only when they’re ready to make a purchase, or to ask for pricing information? Craft your CTA to make sure that your audience will know what they’re in for when they decide to call. That clarity will help convince them that making the call will be worth their time.

4. Know Your Audience’s Schedule

Digging into your audience’s behaviors is an effective method for improving call rate. Be sure to consider the best time to call from the perspective of your customers. To get a sense of your customers’ preferred times for calling, dive into your CTR and conversion data in Google AdWords. You can also use that information to A/B test what times and days your audience is most responsive.

To ensure that your audience truly converts, you need to have someone available to pick up the phone when a potential customer calls. For example, if you see an influx of calls during your office lunch hour because people are calling in on their lunch hour, consider putting someone on phone-answering duty to intercept any potential customers who call during that time.

5. Focus Ad Spend During Optimal Calling Hours

Boosting your PPC call rate is only one part of the campaign equation. Call conversions are inherently more time-sensitive than other forms of PPC conversion. Once you have a good sense of when your audience is most responsive, focus your bidding strategy on serving ads during the “hottest” times of the day and week for your target audience. Scheduling your call-focused campaigns to bid more (or exclusively) during times that you’ll be able to answer calls is key to running a successful campaign without wasting ad spend. You can use AdWords ad scheduling functionality, also known as dayparting, to focus your bids on the hours that you know you’ll be ready to receive calls.

6. Get a Good Look at Click-to-Call Metrics

Do you know which ads are getting you the most calls? Which ones are falling flat? Part of refining your call conversion strategy is keeping a close eye on what works and what doesn’t work. Be sure to take a data-driven approach and make sure that you’re tracking the right metrics to gauge the success of your call-based campaigns. Understanding what information is vital to the success of your campaigns can make or break PPC campaigns. This analytical approach is where PPC management firms like Webrageous can truly make an impact on your campaign. Our PPC experts have extensive experience analyzing AdWords metrics and performance.

Taking Your PPC Call Rate to the Next Level with Webrageous

If you’re aiming for a higher call conversion rate and aren’t seeing results on your own, we can help. Webrageous specializes in optimizing PPC campaigns to give our clients the best possible results for their advertising dollar. Contact us today to learn more about how Webrageous can give your call-based PPC campaigns a boost and help you see real returns from your campaigns.

Header photo credit: Flickr, Steven Lilley

February 25th, 2016

5 Metrics You Should Always Monitor in AdWords

If you’re already running AdWords campaigns, you know that Google makes a huge amount of data accessible to you surrounding the performance of your campaigns. While it can feel overwhelming to wade through a dashboard full of numbers and metrics without purpose, learning to parse your AdWords dashboard effectively can give you a wealth of insight into how your campaigns are running, and what you can do to make them more successful.

Most people don’t have time to sit down and pore over stacks of data, so paying close attention to the right metrics will let you get the information you need to run your campaigns well without wasting valuable time. Here are five of the most important metrics that you should always monitor in AdWords, and how they can help you make your PPC campaigns more successful.

CTR (Click-Through Rate)

Your CTR, or click-through rate, is one of the basic building blocks of AdWords analytics. Because CTR only measures how many clicks your ads receive, it doesn’t paint the complete picture of how your campaigns are performing. However, that doesn’t mean that you should ignore your CTR. While CTR isn’t very useful for determining overall conversions, it is an important indicator for whether your ads are reaching the right audience.

Successful advertisers treat CTR as a litmus test for whether their ad copy is on-point and if they’ve chosen the appropriate keywords. Oftentimes, a drop in CTR can be a sign that it’s time to freshen up your ad copy or rethink their keyword strategy.

Conversion Rate

CTR is a useful metric for knowing whether your ad copy and keyword strategy is up to par, but your conversion rate is an important metric because it tells you what happens after that first click. Whether a conversion means filling out a form on a landing page, making a purchase or calling your business, measuring how many of your viewers “convert” to qualified leads or customers helps you understand the overall success of your PPC efforts. Your conversion rate can tell you how well your advertising campaigns are truly reaching potential customers.

A good conversion rate is proof that your ad spend is leading to real profit, and thus that your investment in PPC advertising is (literally) paying off. If your CTR is high but your conversion rate is low, you may need to consider reviewing your landing page, or examine whether your ads are reaching the right segment of your audience.

CPC (Cost Per Click)

Paying close attention to your CPC, or cost per click, helps you allocate your budget more effectively and ensures that high-cost keywords aren’t eating up your ad spend too quickly. In industries such as insurance and legal, where competitive keywords can be extremely costly, ensuring that your cost per click stays reasonable is an important safeguard against overspending for ad placements.

Managing cost per click can be a fiddly business, as the baseline cost per click can vary dramatically for some keywords depending on the time of day, your Quality Score, and a variety of other factors. Many advertisers opt to have their campaigns managed by PPC management firms like Webrageous or use automated bidding tools in order to maximize their cost per click.

Cost Per Conversion

Just as CTR is a weak metric without the context of your conversion rate, CPC can be much more valuable if it is considered alongside your cost per conversion. Cost per conversion indicates what the cost of acquiring a conversion or new customer is. A healthy cost per conversion should correspond to the overall value that a conversion brings. For example, an online clothing retailer selling $5 pairs of socks would not want to pay $50 per conversion, but for a lawyer that $50 conversion may result in thousands of dollars income in the long run.

Cost per conversion gives you insight into the ultimate value of your PPC campaigns. Just as with conversion rate, examining your cost per conversion can help you understand the real financial benefit that your ad campaigns are bringing to your company.

Quality Score

While Quality Score can feel a little more mysterious than other metrics, it impacts everything from how much you pay for ads to how good their placement is, so it’s a critical metric to monitor in AdWords. The other metrics we’ve discussed have to do with how your audience views and reacts to your ads. Quality Score is an important indicator of what Google’s algorithm thinks of your ads. And since Google is the gatekeeper of ad performance, making sure that your ad copy, keyword strategy and landing pages live up to Google’s standards can help you get the best results for your campaigns.

Whenever you make changes to your campaigns — especially if you make changes to your ads and landing pages, make sure that you double check your Quality Score. Making changes to copy and layout can have a significant impact on your Quality Score, which can ripple through other aspects of your campaigns and bring down performance quality.

Running Data-Driven AdWords Campaigns with Webrageous

PPC is a fast-moving, ever-changing advertising medium. As demand for online advertising continues to rise and the tools used to run campaigns become more sophisticated, being able to monitor and interpret key metrics for your ad performance can have a huge impact on your advertising success. By using metrics to drive your advertising decision-making process, you’ll be able to react to any changes and make PPC decisions based on data, rather than blindly making choices that may or may not improve your campaigns.

Webrageous has been running data-driven PPC campaigns for our clients for years, and we can give you more insight into your AdWords metrics to help you run your advertising campaigns more effectively than ever. Contact us today for more information on running high-performing AdWords campaigns with Webrageous.

February 25th, 2016

Nine Reasons Why We Love AdWords (And You Should, Too!)

If you’re considering PPC advertising for your business, it is more than likely that AdWords will be one of the strongest tools in your arsenal. With over 3 billion queries per day, Google offers a huge potential for serving PPC ads across a wide variety of industries. Google has a strong incentive to make their advertising platform effective and user-friendly, and we consider it one of the best platforms available to PPC professionals. Here are nine reasons we love using Google AdWords for our PPC campaigns, and why should you love AdWords, too.

1. AdWords Ads Have an Engaging Format

Organic search results are limited to a text-heavy format. This means that there aren’t many ways to make your organic search results stand out from the rest. AdWords offers a range of ad formats that are flexible and engaging, from static graphics and photos to videos. Location and call-only extensions also provide compelling information that makes it easier for potential customers to find and contact your business by integrating features like maps and click-to-call buttons into your ads.

2. AdWords Results are Measurable

AdWords gives you measurable results for your ad campaigns. This makes it easy to understand the ROI of your campaigns, and to drill down into the specific successes of various campaigns and keywords. You can focus your efforts on the keywords, formats and audience segments that give you the best results. With organic search, measuring and controlling the conversion rate for those pages can be challenging, if not impossible. AdWords also offers the benefits of easy-to-parse analytics dashboards that are updated daily, giving you an easy way to stay on top of campaign performance.

3. AdWords Give You Budget Flexibility

One of the features that makes AdWords such a powerful tool is its ability to accommodate a range of budgets. You can easily adjust your ad spend to anticipate and react to campaign performance over time, concentrating your ad spend on high-converting keywords or allocating a portion of your budget for more experimental campaigns. You can also utilize flexible bid strategies to automate your bidding strategy to maximize CPC and meet other PPC goals. However you choose to manage your budget, AdWords lets you optimize your campaigns to get the most bang for your budget by offering the ability to control their ad spend on a granular level.

4. Faster Results than SEO

Organic search results can be a challenging field to control. Google’s SEO algorithms are complex and ever changing. Even if you’re doing “everything right” when it comes to SEO, it can take months for your web pages to rank in search results. Google generally approved in about one business day, so you’ll be able to start serving your ads to viewers almost as soon as you start running campaigns.

5. Flexible Time Management

For many of our customers, the goal of PPC campaigns is to drive call-based conversions. As a result, they want to increase the likelihood that people will see their ads during office hours. AdWords gives advertisers control over what time of day their ads are shown. This is especially important for certain industries, such as the legal industry. Additionally, flexible advertising time management can be beneficial for any business or industry by allowing them to target less expensive time slots.

6. Granular Targeting Options

With such a massive pool of browsers using Google around the world, it’s important that advertisers are able to focus their ad campaigns on the viewers that are a good fit for their business. AdWords offers the best targeting options for PPC ads. This ensures that advertisers are more likely to reach their target audience while minimizing the amount of irrelevant users who see their ads. Advertisers can adjust variables such as locations, keywords, placements, and device to pinpoint users that fit their buyer personas more precisely.

7. Remarketing

The benefits of remarketing are measurable. Studies have shown that ad viewers who are engaged in remarketing campaigns are up to 70% more likely to convert. Many advertising outlets offer a single opportunity to capture a prospective customer’s interest. But by leveraging remarketing campaigns, you can put your ads in front of the same viewers again and again. Remarketing with AdWords let you stay connected with your visitors on world’s biggest display advertising network.

8. Time-Saving Campaign Management Tools

Managing PPC campaigns can be a time-intensive endeavor. The platform has a variety of built-in tools to help you manage your campaigns more efficiently. Tools like Keywords planner, Adwords Editor, and the Merchant Center help advertisers tap the full potential of AdWords while saving time and remaining efficient in their campaign management activities.

9. Great Customer Service

For problems large and small, Google has a customer service team at the ready. Their services include a weekday help hotline and a 24/7 online chat line. For advertisers who spend more than $10,000 monthly, Google offers dedicated AdWords representatives to walk you through ad management and advise you on the best way to run your campaigns.

Webrageous and AdWords

AdWords is a powerful platform for running successful PPC campaigns. It can also be a challenging tool to learn to use. To take advantage of the full potential of your AdWords campaign, consider working with Webrageous to managing your PPC campaigns. We have years of experience managing high-performing pay-per-click campaigns. We work closely with our AdWords representatives to ensure that our clients always see the best results possible for their advertising goals. Contact Webrageous today to learn how we can help you harness the power of AdWords and reach your PPC goals.

February 25th, 2016

How to Track Call Conversions from Websites with AdWords

For many businesses, PPC campaigns are designed to drive not just web traffic, but generate calls. Seventy percent of mobile browsers have called a business directly from an ad. When done correctly, taking advantage of this high-converting market segment can have a huge impact on the success of your PPC campaigns.

However, capturing information about these callers can be tricky. Many organizations advertise their business’ phone number in multiple locations. Perhaps the same number that you use for PPC ads also appears on your business cards, on your web page, or in print ads. If you were to simply put your business’ phone number into your ads, your ability to track conversions from your PPC campaigns would be somewhat limited. You wouldn’t be able to differentiate between callers who convert from your PPC ads and those who convert other sources.

Ensuring that you can track your calls as conversions is an important part of managing any campaign for which phone calls are a potential conversion action. Fortunately, Google has call conversions tracking tools at the ready to help you track the performance of your ads with call extensions and call-only campaigns.

How Call Conversion Tracking Works

The mechanism behind call conversions tracking is fairly simple. Advertisers place a snippet of code in their ads, which inserts a Google forwarding number into the ad. This unique number ensures that whether the person viewing the ad clicks on the ad from their mobile device, or copies the number onto their phone, advertisers will be able to trace it back to a specific ad location. While setting up and using these forwarding numbers is free, you’ll be charged your normal CPC rate when someone clicks or calls the number.

This can be an especially powerful tool for advertisers running multiple campaigns. Since you can create multiple forwarding numbers with Google, you’ll be able to easily differentiate between calls coming from different sources, whether those are discrete landing pages or different campaigns. When used in conjunction with target CPA and target ROI flexible bid strategies, you can track the efficacy of various keywords in driving call conversions.

What You Need to Know Before You Start

Before you dive into call conversions tracking, there are a few things you’ll need to know about the limitations of this powerful AdWords feature. While these caveats shouldn’t discourage you from tracking call conversions, they are important to take into consideration from the start.

Call Forwarding Won’t Work Everywhere

One major caveat is that that Google does not support call forwarding numbers in all countries. For most businesses in the United States, Canada and Europe this isn’t necessarily problematic. However, if your business is located outside of North America or Europe, or if you frequently use PPC ads to drive international traffic, your ability to leverage Google forwarding numbers may be limited. Want to learn more? You can find a complete list of supported countries here.

Forwarding Numbers Expire

The unique forwarding numbers created by Google for ad campaigns will expire after 90 days. As a result, any instance where that number has been used must be changed or updated after the numbers expire (fortunately, this can be done dynamically on web pages). Google does not recommend using your call forwarding numbers outside of PPC campaign materials to ensure that they perform effectively.

No Support for No Caller ID

Additionally, Google does not currently support caller ID, so advertisers aren’t able to track or record who calls are coming from automatically. However, AdWords does record the area code of incoming calls, so advertisers won’t be left entirely in the dark as to where their calls are coming from. Another significantly missing feature is call recording, which must be supplemented by a third party provider.

Tips on Optimizing Call Conversions Tracking Performance

Format Phone Numbers Correctly

Putting your forwarding number on a landing page or website? Make sure the number is in HTML text form — rather than as part of a static image — so it can be changed dynamically. Since your forwarding numbers will expire after 90 days, it’s important to format your web pages so that the phone numbers you list can be changed dynamically. Additionally, make sure that your number is formatted exactly the same way across the page if it appears in multiple locations.

Want a deeper look at how you can optimize your page for call conversions tracking? SearchEngineLand has an excellent article on formatting pages that drive call conversions, which is a good starting point for any advertiser just getting into this space.

Test, Test, Test!

Above all else key to getting the most out of your call conversions tracking lies in ensuring that it’s actually working. Make sure that you test out your call forwarding number — both by clicking through from a mobile browser and by typing it into your phone’s keypad. Since call conversions often require tracking prospects across multiple devices or formats, testing the flow of their interaction is a critical step in ensuring that your call-only and call extension-based campaigns perform correctly.

Better AdWords Insights in Webrageous

Whether you’re tracking calls or measuring CTR, leveraging analytics information from AdWords helps advertisers run data-driven PPC campaigns. By relying on data to make decisions about how you should adjust and maintain your ad campaigns, you’ll be able to stretch your ad spend further and gain better results from your ads.

The PPC campaign managers at Webrageous have a wealth of knowledge understanding and interpreting AdWords data and applying it to successful campaigns. We can share our expertise to boost your PPC performance and help you get the most out of your digital ads. Contact Webrageous today for more information about how we can optimize your advertising campaigns and improve your conversion rate.

February 24th, 2016

Conversion Optimizer: Weighing the Pros and Cons

With all the data you can track with Google AdWords, it can be easy to get sidetracked by relatively short-term metrics, such as CPC and CTR. But for most businesses, the ultimate goal of PPC campaigns is leveraging that data to give your ads a high conversion rate. Google’s Conversion Optimizer feature is designed to help advertisers hone in on the metrics that matter in order to optimize the conversion rates of their campaigns, and it can be a very effective tool for improving the performance of your PPC campaigns.

But the Conversion Optimizer isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution that will make all your lead flow woes disappear overnight. Before you put all your faith in this powerful feature, it’s important to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of Conversion Optimizer. Here are some of the pros and cons of using Conversion Optimizer to help you decide what role it might play in your PPC campaigns.

Pros of Conversion Optimizer

Focus on Getting New Business

Google AdWords gives advertisers the option to track two kinds of conversions: conversions, which are simply the total number of conversions for the campaign, and converted clicks, which are unique clicks that lead to a conversion within a 30-day period. Being able to track and optimize for the latter can be a very effective campaign optimization technique. By using the Conversion Optimizer feature to focus on increasing “converted clicks,” advertisers can increase the flow of new prospects and leads coming into their funnel. This is especially important for companies where a steady flow of new business is important, such as in the legal industry.

Optimize Budget for Conversions

For advertisers with a limited budget, Conversion Optimizer can be an effective tool for getting the most conversions for your ad spend. The tool allows you to set either a maximum or target CPA (cost per acquisition), ensuring that your lead flow goals and your budget are well-aligned. Compared to manual bid management techniques, Conversion Optimizer can yield much more cost-effective results for your campaigns, without the extensive time commitment to making manual bid adjustments.

“Smart Management” Without the Expertise

The upside of Conversion Optimizer can be boiled down to a simple benefit: it helps advertisers with limited experience or knowledge of PPC improve their campaigns more effectively. Poorly run campaigns can waste advertising dollars and other resources. Conversion Optimizer provides a relatively easy way to capture more leads and waste less of your budget. Additionally, Conversion Optimizer is a free tool, making it a much more budget-friendly alternative to bid management and PPC management services. However, don’t be fooled into thinking that Conversion Optimizer completely replaces the knowledge of a true PPC expert. There’s no substitute for experience.

Cons of Conversion Optimizer

Less Control Over Campaigns

By its nature, Conversion Optimizer gives you less granular control over your bidding strategy. When you use the tool, you’ll only be able to make bids at the ad group level. Because the feature optimizes your bids automatically, you won’t be able to make keyword level adjustments to your bidding strategy. While this isn’t always a problem, it can spell disaster if your ad groups aren’t well organized.

You’ll also have less transparency into why decisions are being made. Conversion Optimizer makes decisions based on a complex algorithm and doesn’t provide an explanation for why it makes changes when it does. Ultimately, using Conversion Optimizer requires advertisers to have complete trust in Google’s management of their campaigns.

Your Conversion Rate Must Already Be High

Another downside of Conversion Optimizer is that your campaigns already need to be high-performing to use your existing campaigns as a baseline for performance, so you must already be receiving conversions from your campaign for Conversion Optimizer to work. Google recommends at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days to give Conversion Optimizer enough data to work effectively.

Unfortunately, this means that for campaigns with very low existing conversion rates, Conversion Optimizer may not be a viable option until you’ve already invested time and resources in manually improving your conversion rate. Conversion Optimizer won’t magically fix a bad AdWords campaign. If you do plan to use it, try to use it to improve campaigns that are already doing fairly well, but could do better with a little extra push.

Automated Bid Management Won’t Give Innovative Results

One quirk of automated management tools is that they tend to give relatively predictable results. If you use Conversion Optimizer to run your campaigns, AdWords will focus on keywords that seem like a sure thing to make sure that you hit your conversion goals. While this can be a good thing — taking advantage of “low-hanging fruit” is always a solid strategy — it probably won’t give you any interesting insights into how to manage your campaigns. Once again, it’s important to remember that while Conversion Optimizer is a powerful tool, but when it comes to creative problem solving, it can’t beat a human bid manager.

Optimizing Ad Results with Webrageous

Conversion Optimizer can be a highly effective tool for advertisers who are looking to get better results from lackluster campaigns. But the bottom line is that the performance of any automated PPC tool will only be as good as the work you put into it. In many cases, a combination of sophisticated tools like Conversion Optimizer and a solid foundation of PPC knowledge will be the best way to ensure that you get the best possible results from your campaigns.

The nuances of how AdWords functions, and best practices for running high-converting PPC campaigns, change constantly. Busy advertisers often don’t have time to run their campaigns themselves often turn to automation tools to help them manage their campaigns more effectively. Webrageous’ team of PPC experts can guide your digital advertising strategy and help you transform your campaigns into high-converting lead sources. Contact us today to learn how Webrageous can boost your PPC conversions and help you develop a more competitive bidding strategy.

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November 23rd, 2015

How to Optimize a “Limited by Budget” Campaign

Whether you have been running AdWords campaigns for a while or you are new to PPC, there’s a good chance that at some point you’ve seen that bright orange “limited by budget” notification on your AdWords dashboard. But what you might not realize is that you can use these budget notifications to your advantage to keep your PPC campaigns running smoothly. Here’s what you need to know about “limited by budget” campaigns and how you can adjust them to maximize their performance and optimize your ad spend.

What does “Limited by Budget” Mean?

Google AdWords campaigns may receive “limited by budget” designation whenever your budget is lower than Google’s recommended budget daily budget for a given set of keywords. This could mean that your budget is too low to serve your ads at all, or that it is too low to serve your ads more than a few times per day. While it’s easy to assume that Google is simply trying to convince advertisers to spend more money on advertising, these notifications can be a helpful performance indicator for your campaigns. For instance, if you’ve set your budget for a campaign to $200 per day and the CPC for one of the most popular keywords in that campaign is $50, you might be maxing out your budget each day after only four clicks. And unless your conversion rate is incredibly high, you probably won’t see great results from that campaign.

Optimizing Your “Limited By Budget” Campaigns

You can still run successful campaigns that are technically limited by budget. However, using these built-in notifications can be a useful technique in your advertising toolbox. By using “limited by budget” notifications as indicators of campaigns that need may need some tweaking, you can optimize your ad spend and improve your campaigns overall.

In some cases, the quickest and easiest fix for “limited by budget” campaigns is simply to increase your budget allocation for that campaign. However, most of us don’t have an unlimited ad spend, so making the most of our budgets is a priority. Here’s how to optimize your campaigns to ensure you’re getting great results within your existing budget.

Use Metrics to Cultivate Your Keyword Strategy

One of the first things you should do with “limited by budget” campaigns is to investigate why your campaigns are hitting budget limitations. Determine if there are a few keywords that are sucking up most of your budget. Some industries — especially the legal and insurance industries — can have extremely expensive keywords that might be eating up your entire daily budget after just a few clicks.

Once you’ve found the keyword culprits, you can take action to keep them from derailing your PPC campaigns. If they aren’t performing up to par, determine why; are they so expensive that you max out your budget after just a few clicks? Or are you getting plenty of clicks, but for keywords that aren’t relevant enough to your services to lead to a conversion? You may want to adjust your bid or pause keywords that take up a lot of impressions, especially if they aren’t converting well.

Break Budget-Hogging Keywords Out of Campaigns

Sometimes budget limitations are caused by poorly segmented campaigns. High-ticket keywords can bring your business valuable potential customers, but oftentimes they take attention away from cheaper keywords with relatively lower traffic, such as long-tail keywords, that might be just as important for driving a healthy lead flow. Consider creating separate campaigns for these “budget hogs.” This also helps to ensure that your ads also get some airtime for less expensive keywords that may be a better fit for your advertising goals.

Build and Manage Your Negative Keyword List

Building a healthy negative keyword list is another important aspect of optimizing “limited by budget” campaigns. By cultivating a list of keywords that you don’t want to target, you can ensure that when your ads are served, they’re reaching the right audience. Making sure that your ads are a good fit for the viewers that AdWords serves them to can help decrease your average CPC and improve your conversion rate overall.

Be sure to revisit your negative keyword list on a regular basis to make sure that it is comprehensive and accurate. Consumer search behaviors can change over time, so you may need to add or remove negative keywords from your list over time.

Use Ad Scheduling to Stretch Your Budget

Another data set to examine on your “limited by budget” campaigns is when you are maxing out your daily budget. For some high-traffic keywords, you may be hitting your budget limit early in the morning. This may negatively impact your campaign’s efficacy because in some cases PPC ads demonstrate better performance at specific times of the day. Additionally certain times of day may be more competitive, driving up the cost of ads. By scheduling your ads to run during time periods that are less expensive, you can stretch your existing budget further. This can be a useful tactic if you are running call only ad campaigns, especially if you have a specific time range in which you would like prospects to call your business.

Optimizing Your PPC Campaigns with Webrageous

Managing successful PPC campaigns isn’t always a quick and easy process, but it can bring great returns if you can devote time and resources to running your campaigns well. Whether you have limited time or a limited budget, effective, affordable PPC campaigns do not have to be out of reach for your business. Webrageous can help optimize your campaigns to perform well with the budget that you have, and ensure that you’re getting the best results possible from your PPC efforts. Contact us today to learn more about how our experience and expertise can help you reach your PPC advertising goals.

Image Source: Pixabay

October 30th, 2015

How To Use Adwords Ad Extensions To Increase Profitability

Why Are Adwords Ad Extensions So Important?

We know that the more Adwords ad extensions we use with our campaigns the higher or even cheaper an ad’s position can be. If you weren’t aware of this yet, in October of 2013 Adwords adjusted its method of calculating ad rank by adding in ad extensions as a factor. Prior to this change it worked so that ad rank was calculated by max. cost/click times quality score. Now it is calculated by max cpc. times quality score times the quality and usage of ad extensions.

For more info on this. http://adwords.blogspot.com/2013/10/improving-ad-rank.html

Adwords ad extensions are important for reasons other than just getting a better CPC or higher ad rank. Ad extensions increase the real estate you contain the above the fold. The more real estate you hold the higher your chances of getting your ad seen, clicked on and converted through.

What Adwords Ad Extensions Are Available & How To Use Them

Location Extensions:
If you are a local business, location extensions are going to be a critical factor to your campaigns by showing your potential customers that you are in their area and not just a national company trying to get their business. This Adwords ad extension tells people how close you are to them and give them a chance to learn more about your business.

To add Location Extensions, you must have a Google Places account setup under the same email that you use to access your Adwords account. From there just go into the Ad Extensions tab, choose Location Extensions from the dropdown box and click +Location Extension and connect to your Google Places account.

When you have location extensions setup in your campaigns/adgroups, you can go into the dimensions tab, select Distance from the dropdown menu and see how far away from your location your ads are being seen, clicked on or converted from. With this insight you can optimize your ads to show within the distance that works best for your business by increasing/lowering your radius around your location that ads are being targeted to.

Sitelink Extensions
Sitelink extensions give more information to the potential customer about your business and website. If you have multiple categories that are associated to different adgroups or campaigns it is best practice to setup sitelinks that are specific to those adgroups and/or campaigns. This increases your relevance of the adgroup and/or campaign and helps the potential customer understand what variations or choices within that category you have available to them.

Using sitelink descriptions isn’t a bad idea either. This can increase the real estate of your ad above the fold if shown which is always great. These are not always shown and it is dependent on whether Google’s algorithm displays them or not, but it doesn’t ever hurt to have them just in case.

Call Extensions
If phone calls are important to your business then setting up call extensions are a must. This gives a person a chance, if they are on a device able to make calls to click the number or call button and call you right away rather than visit the website and dial the number from there.

With call extensions setup it is important to setup conversion tracking for click to calls from ads so you can see which call conversions came in on specific campaigns, adgroups and keywords. Also with call extensions setup you can go into the dimensions tab and select call details. This will give you insight into where the call came from by area code, the time of the phone call and what day/time the call came in. With this information you can better optimize your advertising by day of the week, time and location to increase your calls and lower your costs per conversion.

App Extensions
If you business has an app in the Google Play store why not market this alongside your other search marketing efforts. You first must connect your Google Play Store Console account with your Adwords account which you can do by clicking on the gear icon in the top right hand corner and then click Linked Accounts. From there just link Google Play. Similar to location extensions, your Google Developer Console (where your app is held) must be the same login as your Google Adwords account.

By marketing an app along with your search ads you can increase engagement with customers or potential customers and build a credibility with your audience. Soon you will see them searching for your brand and not just your products/services which results in a lower cost/click and potentially higher conversion rates.

Review Extensions
Review extensions are great to have but not always able to be used by the regular joe. These extensions are only available to you if there is a third party review of your business or services on a different website. If you have a third party review, it is a good place to use this extension and let your potential customers know how reputable your business is.

Call Out Extensions
These are some of the best extensions to have. You must use a minimum of 2 in your campaigns/adgroups. It allows you to extend the length of your ad copy and highlight important areas of your business. Use call out extensions to say more about your business, services and/or products. Use callouts like you would sitelinks and setup individual sets of call out extensions per ad group and campaign if you can. This will help increase the relevance of your ads. With an increase in relevance comes an increase in quality score and in turn a decrease in cost/click for a specific position you are targeting.

Structured Snippets
This is the newest addition to the ad extension family. Structured Snippets are similar to Callout Extensions but there is a key difference. Adwords tells us that Callout Extensions are used to highlight what makes your business, services, products unique. Structured Snippets are used to highlight a specific aspect of the products/services your offer.

With Structured Snippets you can only choose from the following categories:

Amenities
Brands
Degrees
Destinations
Course Programs
Featured Hotels
Insurance
Neighborhoods
Service Catalogs
Shows
Styles
Types

For an example let’s use an Atlanta based realtor that has an Adwords account and wants to expand his ads for a campaign that focuses on high end real estate. This realtor would set his structured snippets to neighborhoods and for value 1 use Buckhead, value 2 use Ansley, value 3 use Druid Hills. These Structured Snippets can also show at the same time as the Callout Extensions thereby increasing your ad real estate and highlighting key information a person searching for your business’ products/services would want to know more about.

In Conclusion
We can see that using ad extensions correctly not only increases our ad real estate but increases the relevance of our ads to the searches done that show it. This helps us get more conversions by displaying the more in-depth information needed for the question (search query) at hand. When we use these ad extensions in combination with each other we see a lower cost/click to obtain our given position, a possible lower cost/conversion and in turn higher profits for the business.

October 12th, 2015

5 Tips to Supercharge Your Remarketing Campaigns

When used correctly, remarketing can be a powerful tool for advertisers, allowing them to track and engage prospective customers multiple times throughout the buying cycle. According to some advertising experts, consumers are 70% more likely to convert when exposed to remarketing campaigns. However, remarketing campaigns that aren’t well-managed can come across as pushy and may even drive traffic away from your site. Here are a few best practices for remarketing that can help you fine-tune your campaigns to convert more effectively and give you the results you’ve been aiming for.

5 Tips to Supercharge Your Remarketing Campaigns

1. Adjust Frequency Caps

Frequency caps ensure your ads will not be shown to a given users more than a set number of times in a specific timespan. While many consumers have indicated that they don’t mind remarketing ads, people don’t like feeling like they’re being followed around the Internet. Even the best prospects can turn sour if they’re constantly inundated with your ads. Over-serving PPC ads can cause brand overexposure and turn people off of your brand.

Many remarketing experts recommend capping your ad frequency to show ads no more than 2-3 times per day. However, there’s no magic number when it comes to setting a frequency cap, and what works best for you may depend on your specific product and industry. You can play around with your frequency cap until you feel like you’ve hit a sweet spot, although that may take some time and energy. Webrageous can help you manage your remarketing campaigns and hone in on what will what work best for your business.

2. Segment Your Audience

Audience segmentation lets you organize your visitors into categories based on behavior. For example, you may want to segment your audience into those who are first-time visitors and those who have made past purchases. This segmentation allows you to focus on specific groups of users and serve them tailored advertising materials.

A big advantage of segmentation is that you can provide a more personalized brand experience to your prospects. For instance, ecommerce stores can serve ads that offer free shipping to visitors who have abandoned a shopping cart on their site as an incentive to return and finalize their purchase. Additionally, segmentation can give you better insight into how your advertising campaigns are performing over time, by giving you a broader scope of understanding about how people interact with your brand online.

3. Customize and Test Ad Copy

To best leverage your lists of segmented visitors, invest some time in writing better ad copy. Single-touch PPC ad copy tends to be relatively generic because it must appeal to a broad audience and convey as much information as possible in a single interaction. With remarketing campaigns you can take advantage of having multiple points of engagement with a single viewer and provide more personalized, specific copy.

Personalized or not, no one wants to see the same ad copy over and over again, so to use AdWords’ ad rotation settings to help ensure that your ads feel fresh to repeat viewers. You should also write copy for different segments of your audience; if people are looking at specific products, ads that remind them of those products can be an effective conversion tool. A/B testing different versions is a good ad writing practice that will help you get a better sense of what messages resonate the most with your audience, and how to improve your ad campaigns in the future.

4. Set You Ad Spend Wisely

Not every visitor to your site will be a qualified lead. It’s quite common for prospects to view your ads several times before they take action, and depending on your buying cycle it may take months for someone to convert. Furthermore, most ad campaigns generate a percentage of traffic that isn’t a good fit at all– someone might have clicked your ad accidentally, or intentionally left your site after a few seconds when they realized they weren’t interested in your services.

You can optimize your ad spend to focus on visitors who are more likely to convert. For instance, if someone visits your product or services page, they might be closer to conversion than someone who only visited your homepage. You can adjust your ad spend to spend less on site visitors who bounce from your site very quickly, or allocate more of your budget for visitors who visit specific pages that indicate that they may be closer to converting than others.

5. Take Converted Visitors Off Your Remarketing List

If your ads are doing their job well and getting conversions, your next move should be removing customers from your remarketing list. Serving ads to existing customers is a big mistake for several reasons. It can be annoying for your customers. More importantly, it digs into your ad spend by wasting impressions on viewers who have already converted. Fortunately, you can take some steps to prevent this waste of resources.

There are several techniques for removing converted prospects or customers from your remarketing campaigns, from setting a burn pixel to creating a “negative audience” segment in your remarketing audience segments. Whatever approach you take, this ensures that your ad spend is going towards prospects, rather than existing clients, to help you maximize the effectiveness of your advertising dollar.

Optimize Your Remarketing Campaigns with Webrageous to Stay Ahead of the Competition

As advertising technology advances, the ability to track and engage with prospects more effectively over time is becoming an important aspect of optimizing digital advertising efforts. As a result, one in 5 marketers now has a budget for remarketing. If you’re not using remarketing with Google Adwords, you might be not be taking full advantage of your digital advertising capabilities.

Finding the perfect settings for your retargeting campaigns can take some time to nail down. Webrageous can help you manage your campaigns and handle optimization for you, letting you find that sweet spot for remarketing without spending hours or days adjusting your campaigns to get there. Working with our team of PPC specialists lets you spend more time working with customers and less time fiddling with your campaigns to find them. Contact Webrageous today to discuss your remarketing goals and see how we can give your PPC campaigns the boost they need.

Image Source: Pixabay

September 28th, 2015

Best Practices for Running Call Only Ad Campaigns in 2020

With smartphones becoming more and more pervasive in many people’s lives, consumers often look for ways to get in touch with the businesses they’re interested in as quickly as possible. Studies indicate that when given the option to call, up to 70% of searchers on mobile devices will call a business directly from their phone. Earlier this year Google launched the option to run call only PPC campaigns with Adwords. This highly specific ad type provides businesses with a way to encourage direct interactions with customers. If your business’ ultimate objective for your PPC ads is getting prospective customers and clients to call you, then call only ad campaigns can help you connect with customers more effectively. However, these ad types require some special considerations in order to perform at their peak. If you’re considering launching a call only campaign, here’s what you need to know to make sure your PPC performance meets its potential and keeps your phone ringing regularly. One simple tip we’ve discovered recently here at Webrageous where we Google Ads for many large accounts: just turn off search partners and see if your results improve!

The Challenges and Benefits of Call Only Campaigns

Unlike traditional text-based PPC ads, call only ads feature your phone number, a business description and a prominent “call now” button. They’re formatted to work best on mobile devices and are a great option for businesses who value phone calls over website clicks. Call only campaigns can be a great asset to your mobile PPC campaigns — one study by Invoca showed that ads that featured prominent phone numbers had a 250% increase to their average click/call rate.

One highly unfortunate policy is advertisers being charged if someone clicks on the ad but then is presented with the confirmation that they really want to call that advertiser. If the user abandons at this point and never initiates to call the advertiser is still charged! This is grossly unfair in my opinion. Even still, click to call still works great.

Click to call seems to work best when people really want to call and talk to a live person. For example, our personal injury attorneys do extremely well. Imagine you have had a car accident. You don’t want to fill out a contact form on your tiny mobile screen when you are waiting for the police on the side of the highway after someone just rear-ended you. You just want to talk to an attorney. The cost per lead for personal injury attorneys is fabulous with click to call. It wasn’t working quite as well for one of our clients were it’s a much more visual service. Without seeing some types of products or services you just won’t be able to convert callers successfully.

Unfortunately, call only campaigns aren’t always quite the magic bullet they might seem to be. After switching to call only campaigns, you’re likely to notice a higher CPC than you paid with simple text ads. They can also have a lower CTR rate, as they don’t emphasize site visits as much as their traditional alternatives. However, despite these challenges, a well-managed call only PPC campaign can garner great results for your business in ways that count. Follow these best practices for creating call only campaigns that can help you boost your CTR without running your PPC budget into the ground.

Best Practices for Call Only PPC Campaigns that Convert

1. Don’t Rely On Broad Match Keywords

To get the most out of your call only campaigns, you need to be sure that your ads are reaching highly qualified viewers. Broad match keywords can be a great tool for casting a wide advertising net, but they don’t work as well when you want to hone in on your best prospects. Broad match modifier, exact match, and phrase match keywords can bring much better results for call only campaigns. We’ve also found that carefully cultivating a list of negative keywords based on research can help you cut the fat and ensure that your ads aren’t served in the wrong context. As a result, you can be sure that your ads are reaching a qualified audience that is more likely to convert.

2. Run Call Only Ads During Business Hours

If your CTA involves a phone call to your office and you aren’t there to pick up the phone when prospects do call, your ad campaigns will be for nothing. Since call only ads are inherently time-dependent, it’s important that prospects see your ads when you’re ready to speak with them. Adwords lets you select ranges of time when you want your ads to run, so you can make sure that your ads are served during business hours. That way when those calls come in, you’ll ready to answer them. You can also set up call forwarding with Adwords to make sure that callers can reach you easily whether you’re on the go or in the office.

3. Track Call Length at the Keyword Level

We use callrail.com and have had great success tracking at the keyword level to see which keywords generate longer calls. Usually longer calls indicate better quality calls. Here is an example from a weekly report we sent to one of our bankruptcy attorney clients:

4. Include a Targeted CTA

Including a CTA that is tailored to your target objective can help ensure that prospects take action. For call only campaigns, that means crafting action-oriented CTAs that help inspire searchers to call you, such as “Call Now for Free Consultation,” “Free Case Evaluation Call Now,” or “We Are Ready to Help — Call Now.” With a clear CTA you’ll have a better chance of getting great results from your call only campaigns.

5. Improve Your Quality Score

One of the potential downsides of call only campaigns is that they can have a high CPC. As with traditional text ads, you can help keep high CPCs at bay by improving your Quality Score. Unfortunately, since your phone number takes up the headline in call only ads, you can’t optimize by putting a keyword in the headline. However, you can include keywords in your display URL and description. As an added benefit, improving your Quality Score also helps improve your overall CTR, giving you better results for your campaign efforts. There are a variety of other ways to improve your Quality Score — if you’re interested in getting your Quality Score as high as possible, Webrageous’ PPC team can help you find and eliminate weaknesses to help you hit your CTR goals.

6. Aim for the Top 2 Positions

It’s well established that the higher your ads rank, the better they’ll perform. Ads in the first position on Google search results grab up as much as 33% of search traffic, with the performance of each position below that degrading dramatically. This is especially true for mobile ads, where limited screen space means less room to make an impression. With only 1-3 ad spots available for mobile search, we suggest that you make it a priority to get in the top two ad positions. Aim as high as you can and adjust your bids as needed to be in those positions and get more clicks.

6. Get your Settings Right

It should be easier to get the settings right. There are a few curveballs you need to be aware of.

Don’t forget to pause (or not have any) regular ads in a call only campaign. Otherwise the regular ads will show most of the time instead of the call only ads.
In the settings tab make sure the settings look like this:3. Check out your ads tab and make sure things look like this:

Getting the Most Out of Call Only Ad Campaigns

Used correctly, call only PPC campaigns can be a highly effective and profitable tool to add to your advertising arsenal. But without experience, they can be an expensive and time-consuming drain on your resources. Be sure that you’re getting the very best results possible from your call only ad campaigns by letting Webrageous manage them for you. Our team has years of experience managing campaigns with Adwords and can navigate the challenging call-only space for you. Call Webrageous today at 866-720-5172 to see how we can bring you the results you want from your digital advertising campaigns.

September 21st, 2015

Should Ecommerce Merchants Opt for Shopping Ads Over Text Ads?

While many companies use online advertising to promote products and increase sales, ecommerce merchants have the advantage of being able to sell directly to consumers online, adding another dimension to their digital advertising goals. If you’re an ecommerce merchant placing PPC ads via Google Adwords, you might not be taking full advantage of your digital advertising options. If you haven’t considered incorporating shopping ads (PLA) into your Adwords PPC campaigns, it’s time to reconsider your online advertising strategy.

Understanding the Ecommerce PPC Landscape

The two main digital advertising spaces that ecommerce merchants should be concerned with are text ads and shopping ads. You can manage both from your Google Adwords account, but they serve different purposes and are different in some key ways.

Text Ads – Text ads are the conventional text-only PPC ads you see with search marketing advertising campaigns. They include a link to your website or landing page, a few lines of copy, and perhaps a few other perks in the case of mobile ads. Text ads give you more precise, granular control over when your ads show up, but for many industries they can be highly competitive, and they don’t always stand out well in the sea of text people see in their search results.

Shopping Ads – Shopping Ads, also known as product listing ads (PLA), are a type of ad tailored towards online merchants. They include a product image and are driven by products and product categories, rather than keywords. For serious online merchants, this one of the best means of getting your products in front of people who are looking to buy them.

Do Shopping Ads or Text Ads Perform Better?

To get a better sense of how each type of ad performs, we pulled the numbers from one of our long-running campaigns for a client in the ecommerce space. The results are a fairly good representation of how most similarly structured campaigns perform. We found that the CTR was better for text ads, most likely because text ads give advertisers greater control over the keyword matching, so they were more likely to be a good fit with the search terms used by consumers. However, our client saw better conversion rate, conversion cost, and CPC with Shopping Ads compared to text search ads. The bottom line is that shopping ads perform very well for ecommerce.

These results line up with the digital marketing activities of some of the biggest online retailers. Walmart puts over 70% of their digital ad spend into PLAs, and companies like Best Buy, Staples and Overstock.com follow suit with PLA-heavy online advertising budgets. The question is, why are these shopping ads performing so much better than text-based PPC campaigns?

Why Shopping Ads Click for Ecommerce Ad Campaigns

1. Better Brand Recognition with PLA

Shopping ads win out when it comes to leveraging brand name searches. A recent case study for Heal’s furniture showed the benefits of leveraging your branding to get conversions. Heal’s, a well-established furniture brand, spent years sinking their digital ad spend into text ad campaigns that weren’t converting. Heal’s study showed that conversion rates for brand related searches are as much as 26% higher for shopping ads than for text ads. By focusing their advertising efforts on product listing ads, Heal’s was able to leverage their brand name to drive more sales. For merchants looking to leverage branded products to increase sales, PLA is a better option.

2. Spread Your Ad Spend Across the Buying Cycle

As purchasing decisions get more complex and expensive, consumers tend to spend more time researching and reviewing their options before making a decision. Oftentimes text ads land in front of searchers who are still in the early stages of the buying cycle, and who may not be ready to make a purchase yet. Since the people who are served PLAs tend to already be looking to purchase items, rather than just researching them and looking for information, they are a better bet when it comes to actually making a purchase.

3. A Picture’s Worth…

The benefit of the more visually appealing shopping ad format shouldn’t be underestimated. Studies show that people are 40% more likely to engage with visual content than text-only content, leading to a higher conversion rate for visually appealing ads. Another downside of text ads for ecommerce is that merchants have limited character space to describe their product. By providing shoppers with an eye-catching photo of your product, you can boost your descriptive power and compensate for having minimal text space.

Getting the Best Results from Your Ecommerce Ad Campaigns

Don’t start canceling your text ad campaigns quite yet. They’re a powerful, flexible way to reach buyers and still perform well when managed correctly. While many successful retailers are turning to shopping ads, Amazon.com, another huge online retailer, puts all their stock in text ads. Text ads are still a high-performing way to reach customers. Furthermore, if you move a very low volume each month, shopping ads aren’t always a great fit.

However, for many ecommerce merchants, the importance of diversifying your PPC spend with shopping ads can’t be understated. Product listing ads provide a straightforward way for merchants to reach customers, and they can give your ad campaigns a big performance boost. Many large retailers have some level of a mix between the two form of ads in order to take advantage of both spaces.

The strongest solution for a healthy ecommerce PPC strategy is to employ a mix of shopping ads and text ads. Text ads give you more control over your audience, while shopping ads help you hone in on searchers who are ready to make a purchase. Balancing your advertising efforts between the two advertising methods can help you maximize your PPC results. By playing around with your ad spend for both PLA and text-based ads, you can find the right mix of each ad type to get the best overall returns for your advertising dollar.

Building Shopping Ads into Your PPC Strategy with Webrageous

Webrageous has extensive experience managing both PLA shopping and text ad campaigns for clients in a number of industries. If you’re interested in exploring product listing advertising options, we can help you determine whether shopping ads are a good fit for your company, and how you can incorporate them into your existing web advertising campaigns. With Webrageous you can find the right balance between shopping ads and text ads to make sure that your ecommerce business can stay competitive in the digital advertising market. Contact us today to see what our expertise can bring to your PPC campaigns.

Image Source: Pixabay

August 31st, 2015

Savvy Legal Professionals are Choosing Mobile PPC Over Desktop Ads — Here’s Why They’re Making the Right Move

How much was your online ad spend last month? If you’re in the legal industry, it was likely pretty high. Did you see the results you wanted from your campaigns, or were you left with lingering doubts that you might have wasted your ad spend? Digital ad campaigns can be a highly effective method of building an online presence for your law firm and connecting with clients who need your services. But while PPC campaigns can successfully generate business for your firm, they can also be costly and ineffective when they aren’t implemented appropriately. We’ve found that law firms that focus their efforts on mobile ad campaigns can see much better results for their efforts, without breaking the bank.

The Problem with Desktop Ads

If you already have some experience with search advertising, it shouldn’t be any surprise that bidding on legal industry keywords can be expensive. In fact, when it comes to desktop PPC ads, legal industry keywords consistently rank among the most expensive keywords available. This is especially true for desktop advertising. If you thought that you might fare better on Bing, guess again.

The legal industry is a healthy, highly profitable space right now, and many law firms are rushing to build a digital presence and reap the benefits of running a successful PPC ad campaign. But desktop advertising for the legal industry is so competitive that it can be extremely challenging to get the exposure you want at a price point that fits your budget.

Switching to Mobile PPC: A Better Solution for Legal Professionals

The truth is, those big-ticket keywords on desktop ads aren’t necessarily going to be your best bet for getting more business. If you want your ad campaigns to translate to conversions, you need to focus on finding the right audience for your ads. Mobile devices now account for over half of the total browsing time in the U.S., making mobile users a lucrative but still largely untapped market for online advertisers. Because of the aggressive climate of desktop searches, we recommend that our legal industry clients explore mobile search ads as an alternative to traditional desktop campaigns.

Our Clients’ Results: Better Performance for Legal Industry with Mobile Ads

Webrageous has extensive experience managing PPC accounts for law firms, we’ve seen great results with mobile ad campaigns for our clients. If you’re still weighing the merits of desktop vs. mobile ads, here are some of the key takeaways from our legal industry clients’ campaign performance that might change your mind.

1. Mobile Ads Have Better Visibility

We’ve already mentioned that running mobile ad campaigns can help you reach a previously untapped audience of mobile users. But you’re also more likely to score better ad placement with a well-implemented mobile ad campaign. When it comes to ad performance, position matters. Over the past year, the average desktop ad ranking for our clients within the legal profession was 3.2. For mobile ads in the same industry, our average ranking was 1.5.

It’s important to remember that for every position your ads drop, you’ll likely to see a dramatic decrease in CTR. Better ad placement will help you improve your CTR. Since you’re more likely to score those top positions on mobile, you’ll have much more success overall by focusing on mobile ad campaigns.

2. Mobile Ads Convert More Effectively

Mobile ads simply tend to perform better. We’ve seen that mobile ads convert significantly better for our legal industry clients. While our desktop conversion rates generally hover between 2% to 5% — a range that conventional wisdom holds is a respectably successful conversion rate — our mobile ads averaged nearly 25% conversion rate in 2015. Well-designed mobile ads usually include a CTA specific to mobile devices, such as a phone number for users to call. Since users can easily contact your firm without switching devices or leaving their browser window, they’re more likely to actually call you when they see your ad on a mobile platform.

3. Mobile Ads Have a Lower Cost Per Conversion

Perhaps the most compelling argument for mobile advertising is a financial one. Because mobile advertising is a relatively new space, keyword bidding for mobile isn’t nearly as costly as it is for its desktop counterpart. This makes mobile advertising a prime platform for law firms to build an online presence and see the best possible return on their advertising spend.

Because mobile ads tend to have better visibility and a more compelling CTA, you’re much more likely to see positive returns on your ad spend on mobile. Our clients have experienced great ROI with their mobile PPC campaigns. When it comes to stretching the reach of your advertising dollar, mobile PPC is clearly the way to go.

Ready to Get Started with Mobile PPC?

Getting the right exposure can be challenging, especially if you don’t have extensive experience running search ad campaigns. If you’re not seeing the results you need to stay competitive, you may need a PPC overhaul. Webrageous has years of experience helping legal professionals achieve the ROI they want from their online advertising campaigns. No matter what your advertising goals are, we can help you develop a strategy that fits your budget and helps you see better results.

Image Source: Pixabay

June 1st, 2013

Why is Google AdWords the best PPC advertising network for mobiles and tablets?

Google AdWords launched its Enhanced Campaigns which makes them the best PPC advertising network for mobile and tablet advertisements.

Before we delve further into this subject with you we want to see if maybe you are just looking for full service pay per click management? This way you can have an expert by your side every day who can improve the results you see from PPC. If so please fill out our contact form or give us a call or visit our homepage.

As a general idea, Enhanced Campaigns make it possible for PPC advertisers to run a single campaign across all devices: mobiles, tablets and desktops. Desktops and tablets are merged as one controlling device while mobile is set to make adjustments to the base metrics of the campaigns.

Advertisers will now have an easier time managing campaigns as one campaign can already be created to target desktop, tablet and mobile as compared to creating three separate campaigns before. (more…)

May 23rd, 2013

Google AdWords is the best form of PPC Advertising

When it comes to Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign management, Google AdWords is by far the leading product offered in the industry. With a thriving Display Network composed of hundreds of thousands of websites, newspapers and blogs, Google AdWords is the ideal platform for any business interested in exposure and long term online marketing success.

With global search engine market share at 88.2% as of February 2013, Google is a global giant in paid search engine advertising. The company’s AdWords PPC campaign management product is home to hundreds of thousands of advertisers and offers lots of ways to capitalize on fluid market trends.

Users have the capacity to reach an audience anywhere online while getting the support required to drive conversions. The platform offers text, image and video formats to best enable users to communicate their message to potential customers. (more…)

May 22nd, 2013

PPC management company hires another full-time Google AdWords manager

PPC management company, Webrageous, recently made a superb hire of yet another full-time Google AdWords manager.

Man with map

The new marketing expert is already working as part of the expert team of online marketing specialists, managing large budgets for a wide range of loyal clients and benefitting from the incredible long-term job security that Webrageous is able to provide.

Webrageous boasts 100% advertising client retention over the past year, something which many marketing management companies are unable to achieve. The industry naturally lends itself to a high turnover of clients, particularly because a number of marketing management companies promise advertising results that they can’t deliver which leaves advertising clients feeling disappointed and cheated. (more…)

May 21st, 2013

Why Google is better than Bing for PPC advertisers

If you’re thinking about investing in a Google AdWords campaign,, you couldn’t make a better decision for your company. With 67 percent of market share and unmatched capabilities, Google is the clear choice for PPC advertisers.

Sheer popularity is reason enough to opt for Google, especially if you’re starting to use PPC advertisements. Obviously, the more often people see your advertisement, the more well known your business becomes, and the more users who see your advertisement, the more chances you have for sales.

A pay per click campaign with Google AdWords guarantees potential access to a more Internet users than Bing. Google is the default search engine for a lot of browsers and the choice most people make when searching.

If you still need some convincing, read on for the top reasons why Google is better than Bing, and any other search engine, for a pay per click campaign. (more…)

May 20th, 2013

Why you should invest in a PPC mobile campaign ASAP

If you’re an online advertiser, it is a fantastic idea to invest in a PPC mobile campaign. While it is not absolutely necessary, doing so can benefit your company greatly.

Marin software recently released a report stating that mobile devices will drive one third of paid clicks in the US by December 2013. Do you want to potentially increase business by 33.3 percent? Then you should invest in a pay per click mobile campaign.

One of the exciting elements of mobile advertising is that you can show a different set of advertisements and set different bids based on the mobile device you are targeting. Like all Google AdWords campaigns, you can also target by location and time. People use their smartphones constantly, so targeting users on mobile devices is an obvious choice. As smartphones become both cheaper and more advanced, mobile PPC advertising is becoming more important for businesses. (more…)

May 17th, 2013

What are the Main Advantages of Pay Per Click Advertising?

An updated version of this article is available here. What are the main advantages to be had from marketing your business online via pay per click advertising?

1. Anything from a local to global audience at the touch of a button

The first top advantage of pay per click advertising is that worth nothing is the fact that you can easily select the focus and scale of your target audience at the click of a button in your pay per click advertising account.

If you want to focus your online advertising on a small, localized area, within a few square miles of your business or store, you can choose to do so. If you want to advertise your products or services across more than one continent, you can choose to do so thanks to the technical advantages of pay per click advertising.

Being able to geographically target your audience is a huge pay per click advertising advantage, particularly because the boundaries that you set can be changed at any time. There are also lots of other ways to continue targeting your audience, such as their social or cultural preferences which can be gleaned from your audience’s social networking activities for example. (more…)

May 16th, 2013

5 Tips for Creating the Best Image Advertisements

Compared to other forms of advertisements, AdWords’ best image advertisements generates a higher click-through-rate and higher conversion value through their impression rate. After all, people are automatically drawn to images compared to texts. Although it is true that a marketer creating an image advertisement would have to pay a little more for it, the benefits that the best image advertisements can bring to the campaign are more than worth it.

Since an image advertisement will cost a few extra cents, it is best to take note of these 5 tips that will help create the best image advertisements a marketer can make out of a tight budget:

1. Create image advertisements like a movie poster.

It’s not about getting a popular star posing for the advertisement. It’s as simple as using a picture of someone with a pretty face using the product, a happy family enjoying the services, or good-looking peers sharing what the company is offering. Most of the best image advertisements you’ll see bears an image of a person or scene that users can relate with instantly.

In the same way that a movie poster is in tune with its TV trailer and print advertisements, your online AdWords image advertisements should also be aligned with what is advertised offline. Be consistent with your message and branding. If the offline advertisement establishes recall, then this can translate to the image advertisement online.

2. Craft it like a book cover.

The cover of a book usually has a compelling title that urges the reader to turn to the first page of the book. In the case of an image advertisement, a marketer should be witty and keen to use call-to-action phrases that will compel the user to click on the advertisement.

Choose a color scheme compatible with the font color of the texts in the entire image. Think twice before using extremely bright colors that can make reading the text difficult. Try possible color combinations until you get an overall effect that is pleasing to the eye.

3. Play with tools.

Utilize Google AdWords Display Ad Builder. With Display Ad Builder, AdWords image advertisements can be done with images in different sizes keenly put together. Also, there are a lot of templates and animations made available through the Display Ad Builder that a marketer can utilize, allowing you to make some of the best image advertisements that anyone has ever seen.

If you are designing a display image advertisement for desktop browsers, images should be formatted using GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, and SWF, and sizes of all files should be limited to 50KB.

The following sizes are supported:

250×250 for a square advertisement.
468×60 for a banner advertisement
728×90 for a leaderboard
300×250 for an inline rectangle advertisement
120×600 for a skyscraper
160×600 for a wide skyscraper
300×600 for a half-page advertisement

Mobile browsers require different sizes and specs. When designing advertisements for mobile browsers, images formatted in GIF, JPG, JPEG and PNG are the only ones accepted.

The following sizes are supported:

320×50 for a leaderboard advertisement
200×250 for a small square advertisement
250×25 for a square image
300×250 for an inline rectangle image

Be sure to choose the correct device setting for the campaign if the advertisement is meant to show on mobile devices. Otherwise, the quality of the image and the way it is displayed will be compromised.

4. Be Positive about Remarketing.

Remarketing is one feature of paid search marketing where advertisements are only shown to people who have previously visited the advertiser’s website and are currently visiting a page on the Google Display Network.

Remarketing is done through tagging an AdWords code to the entire image advertisement on the website. As soon as the images are tagged with this code, AdWords is prompted to save whoever visited the site to its “Homepage List”. Consequently, when this visitor visits another page in the Google Display Network, the image advertisement will re-appear. An image advertisement tagged with a Remarketing code will surely promote awareness and recall for the campaign.

5. Know the Rules.

In creating the best image advertisements, it is very important to abide by the rules and policies. Google AdWords’ rules on image advertisements are as follows:

The text on the image advertisements must adhere to editorial policy guidelines
A display URL is NOT necessary in an upload image.
Image advertisements are NOT allowed to be rotated or inverted
Image advertisements must be rated family-safe only.
Image advertisements must be clear and readable
NO mock animated features may be included in an image ad

For people interested in creating some of the best image advertisements for their company, they can contact Webrageous Studios. Webrageous is the most dependable paid search management company for people who want the best image advertisements for the Google Display Network.

Jae Brown

19:06 23 May 19

The team at Webrageous was most helpful to me, even though my small ad budget didn't make the right fit for the... company. Nonetheless, they generously shared information on resources and people who could help me. Their suggestions on getting my Google Ads going successfully were needed and welcome. I am so glad I called.read more

KIP LADD

14:51 02 Apr 19

Great honest advice and no nonsense approach. David was terrific at quickly understanding the needs of a small... struggling law practice and helping point us in the right direction. We will definitely look to use the services in the future.read more

Christy McDonald

21:27 07 Jan 19

Webrageous saved our business!! After 2 bad experiences with prior companies who actually hurt our SEO/ranking on... google, we found David & Haley at Webrageous. David is so knowledgeable and Haley was so persistent, we are doing fantastic now after a really tough 2 year period of not being able to figure out what was wrong. I can't say enough about how thrilled we are with Webrageous, and I highly recommend them to anyone who wants more qualified leads and conversions from Adwords!read more

Conrad Quinter

01:47 22 Nov 18

I was looking for some help getting more business to moving company. I searched online saw many seo type blogs. I was... searching something for broad match Vs broad modified and found a great article. I ended up chating with them on there website and they helped me implement some changes into my account and i now have seen a drastic difference in my cost per conversions. Thank you so much you guys rock!read more