The Newbie friendly guide to Bing and Google Ads
Pay per click advertising. You heard the phrase before but just couldn’t get around to learning what it is.
Your marketer friends can’t stop raving about it; you, on the other hand, feel like you’ve missed an entire generation of marketing trends.
Here’s the fun part: pay per click advertising isn’t a trend; it has been here for quite a long time, and it will only grow bigger in the future.
So what is it?
PPC or pay per click advertising is a form of promotion in which you pay ONLY when a potential customer clicks your ad. With PPC, you’re not paying for loading an ad or any other promise.
You’re paying for only the result – a click.
Do you need to pay for advertising?
If you have lots of traffic already and it is growing steadily, then you may not feel the need to pay; you may be right.
Can you build and grow such a site “organically” so that you never have to pay for any clicks? Absolutely you can, and many of the most successful sites do just that.
If you want to know where to learn that, then just click here……
How does PPC work?
PPC campaigns should be a part of your marketing mix if you want to make your products and services reach potential customers who are looking for what you’re offering on the web.
It can be a cost-effective means of getting your site noticed while the other marketing strategies gradually help your site reach its natural ranking potential. In a way, we can say that PPC functions quite like an auction. Advertisers place their bets on phrases or keywords that they believe their target audience would look up on search engines.
When a user types the particular keyword or phrases that match the advertiser’s choice, the PPC ad is displayed on the page.
Search engines differentiate PPC advertisements from organic search results by often placing them under “sponsored links” or “sponsored ads.”
Overall, it’s safe to say that pay per click advertising is beneficial to web users and advertisers alike. Web users quickly find what they are looking for; advertisers get noticed by their target audience and only get charged for actual clicks.
Currently, the two industry-leading PPC platforms are in Google AdWords and Bing Ads. You’ll learn a few tips and tricks on how to optimize campaigns for both.
Google PPC Tips and Tricks
When it comes to online advertising, very few places get better than Google. However, Adwords is a platform that confuses even the most seasoned marketers.
There are so many strategies and opinions on how to run a successful campaign that one may feel lost trying to execute even one.
Don’t worry; keep these tips and tricks in mind to get better results:
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Have a goal set before starting out
There is no point in running an ad campaign unless there is a goal. To find out the real ROI, you must track the final conversion to the very last detail.
The aim should always be to get close to the final step of sale action.
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Set aside 20% of your ad budget to test various keywords
Initially, you’re going to have to do a lot of testing based on assumptions to see how your target market is responding. The goal here is to find out the profitable keywords and scale up the campaigns based on those keywords for maximum profit.
Where do I find those keywords, you may ask? Here is a very quick lesson…..
First, check my article here. There you will discover how to find all the keywords that the top sites are ranking for. One method I showed there is the Google Keyword Planner, which is part of your Adwords account, and is probably the best to use in this particular example.
Second, perform a Google search for the phrase you want to target, e.g. “best drones under $100”.
Third, take the top sites that rank on page 1 and enter the URL and follow the instructions in the article I wrote.
There you will have the top keywords to target.
It may be obvious to some but it is vital to make sure that the URL you put in your ad is the page you want to promote. Don’t target your ad to “best drones under $100” aiming to sell the drones you are reviewing, but the URL or “landing page” is, for example, a page explaining how to fly a drone – a few visitors might have a look around your site but most will just leave.
Putting your money on the wrong phrases or keywords can cost you dearly because PPC ads are in no way cheap so use all the free resources you can get hold of.
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Match ad schedules to peak business hours
When it comes to selling, there is always a right time and a wrong time. You wouldn’t sell coffee to people at midnight and sleeping aids early morning, would you?
A click in the morning might just be as valuable as a click at noon time; the click at night, however, might not yield profitable results.
So, find out the time when you are getting the maximum engagement and restrict your ads to that schedule.
Also, make sure you are fully equipped with all the tools needed to convert your audience into customers.
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Use Expanded Text Ads
ETAs or Expanded Text Ads have proven to be a vast improvement over Google’s old format because of the following features:
- Two headline fields having up to 30 characters each
- An expanded description field of up to 80 characters
- A display URL that shows your original domain
These features have greatly helped advertisers make the most out of their Google Adwords campaign.
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Use assisted conversions
A campaign not examined is not worth spending money on. Take advantage of the assisted conversions in Google analytics to see if Adwords is helping in getting more conversions in the long-term.
Maybe Adwords is helping people discover a product or service, and they’re coming back 30 days later due to an email follow-up or indirect visit.
Bing PPC Tips and Tricks
Bing PPC isn’t much different from Google AdWords despite being an entirely separate platform. Here are the ways you can leverage it to its full potential:
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Create compelling ads
To boost conversion rates, you must make sure that your ads are compelling enough for people to click on them. A combination of excellent visuals and interesting copywriting is the best.
Not only will this get you more clicks, but even better ROI.
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Carefully select your keywords
The advertising game comes down a lot to keyword research. So dig deep and find those keywords that echo with your brand. Ideally, you’d want to pick keywords based on your products and services, location, etc. Not choosing keywords wisely will mean a negative ROI.
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Review the keyword bids frequently
Always remember, keyword bids are never static. You must adjust and monitor your keyword bids as necessary to see optimal results.
The more you get used to the analytics part of Bing Ads, the more you’ll be comfortable in judging the profit potential of your campaigns.
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Mix and match different elements
Experimentation is the key to successful advertising. To find out what works and what doesn’t don’t be afraid to use various combinations of images, text, keywords, etc.
You never know which combination hits off with the audience and makes your campaign soars to new heights.
Beware The Click Bandits
That is a polite name I give to the slime bags, usually an unethical competitor, who will click on your ads knowing that it costs you money every time they do it. I have seen this happen to a client of mine who owned a cleaning business. She couldn’t understand how her budget was being used up so quickly and by using Google Analytics, she found out that almost every visitor stayed on her site a matter of just a few seconds.
Sometimes Google can catch on to this and will penalize the culprit but in this case, apparently one of her competitors, which is a very large company, utilized several employees, friends, etc. to simply click on her ads. A complaint was filed but no proof was available.
Conclusion
While this may not be a definitive guide to Google and Bind Ads, there is enough in this content for you to take the first step with confidence.
Don’t lose hope if your ad sets underperform initially because it takes a lot of testing on both the platforms to find the winning combination.