Imagine being able to take the best of the shopping experiences found in Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram, and then creating a spectacular mashup that resonates with consumers and encourages them to make purchases with a quick click. In essence, that’s what Google Images has done.

Where once items were displayed in isolation, they now are placed and photographed in the environment in which you would use them. Rather than look at a picture of a cup or plate against a bland, white background, you can see the place setting as it would be used: on a table. It’s a more authentic and engaging way to market products and services.

Shoppers can view multiple ads with different place settings ranging from informal to formal. The ad helps them visualize the product in their own home. With shoppable ads in Google Images, it’s all about the experience.

Shoppable ads

Shoppers turn to images first, and pictures sell products. With shoppable ads, advertisers can create a staged scenario that features several products in a single picture. The picture should suggest a lifestyle that the consumer would find appealing, and as he or she scrolls across the image, the prices appear on any of the items being offered for sale.

For now, shoppable ads are in testing mode with furniture retailers and art dealers who provide a picture of a room staged with their products. Imagine taking shoppable ads a step further.

Advertisers will be able to sell a complete experience by promoting a scenario. On a beach stands a colorful umbrella, and next to it, a few folding chairs. The children are tossing a beach ball, and a surfer is riding in to shore. As the shopper scrolls over each image in the picture, a brand and price appear. The result is a richer experience that is more likely to result in a sale.

Shoppable ads in Google Images allow consumers to identify, save and collect the images on boards they can refer to later. Suddenly, furnishing a room or even an entire home has never been easier because everything you need is right there, curated in the shoppable ads.

Showcase shopping ads

Some advertisers want to take the shopping experience to the next level, and for them, Google has created showcase ads. These ads offer multi-image formats that create a series of thumbnails you can enlarge and view full screen. The idea is to funnel sponsored content to interested consumers, encouraging them to become paying customers. The video format offers a richer context and more immersive experience for previewing a product. Through sponsorship, these showcase ads appear at the top of product keyword searches.

Shopping insights

Merging shoppable ads with Google Images makes sense. We’ve known for a long time that a picture is worth a thousand words, so it’s logical that pictures make the sale. Consumers are more likely to make a purchase after seeing an item rather than reading or hearing about it.
Most shoppers in the United States turn first to Google when making a purchase. You’ve done it, too. Now you can be there waiting for them with an immersive experience they’ll love.

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Business Services

At a cost per click (CPC) of over $58, “business services” is by far the most expensive AdWords keyword in 2017. There’s heavy competition for this keyword, but with a successful campaign and an appropriate price point, it could be worthwhile for your business to pay that high price tag.

Casino

Online casinos aren’t legal everywhere, but their popularity is growing rapidly in many parts of the world. At a CPC of more than $55, it’s clear that “casino” is a keyword that primarily high rollers can compete for.

Lawyer

With a CPC of nearly $55, “lawyer” is a pricey keyword. If you offer legal counsel, it may be better for your budget to compete for lower-priced keywords that are more pertinent to your firm’s specialization.

Insurance

From health insurance to auto insurance to homeowners insurance, protecting yourself and your property is a hot topic. At a CPC of over $48, “insurance” is an expensive Google AdWords keyword and one that can be tricky to compete for, especially if your profit margin is slim.

Degree

As universities vie with each other to advertise their online degree programs, it becomes increasingly difficult to capture that search traffic organically. At a CPC of over $47, however, “degree” isn’t necessarily easy to design a PPC campaign around, either.

Whether you’re dealing with expensive or affordable keywords, you need an AdWords campaign strategy that works for your business. Find out how Exults’ search services can drive traffic to your website and put your brand in the spotlight.

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When using AdWords, one adjustable setting is how often your ad rotates. Utilizing the right ad rotation helps display your ads to your target audience and eventually give you a profitable ROI. In the past, there have been four options to choose how often your ad will rotate, and it’s not always easy to choose which route is best for your goals. Starting in late September, Google is simplifying ad rotation to two settings: “optimize” and “rotate indefinitely.”

What’s the difference?

Optimize

Using machine learning technology, Google can identify and connect keywords, search terms, the type of device used to search and where the user makes a search entry. It takes puzzle pieces and puts them together to connect users with ads that are expected to perform better than others. By using optimized ad rotation with three or more ads per ad group, you can expect a better ad performance with more clicks and impressions. This can be done through Smart Bidding.

Rotating Indefinitely

If you prefer to control your ads with a more personalized touch, the “Rotate Indefinitely” option is best for you. It is the easiest way to give your ads equal preference and test specific ad strategies. Google’s most significant modification is that it is now only offered indefinitely, whereas before it could be modified.

“We don’t expect any drastic effects from this change and recommend using the optimize setting unless you have a specific A/B test where you want to control the duration and equal impression amounts. In most cases, allowing Google to test and show the best performers more quickly will be in the best interest of both the client and Google,” said Mike Nucci, a search specialist at Exults.

Unsure which Ad rotation strategy is best for your company’s digital marketing campaign? Feel free to call us and ask which route is best for you or request a quote online today.

The post Attention: AdWords Setting Updates appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

Create Additional Ad Groups

Some keywords are more valuable than others. If you have hundreds of keywords in one ad group, you could drive up your cost-per-click (CPC) and quickly go over budget. Breaking up your campaigns into dozens of ad groups will lower your CPC while giving you more visibility into what works with your campaign and what doesn’t.

Limit When and Where Your Ads Are Shown

Another way to save money is to narrow when and where your ads are shown. If you’re a local business, you really only need to display ads within 10 or 20 miles of your operation. Furthermore, limiting the hours that your ads are shown to when you’re open can increase the number of store visitors and calls you receive.

Add Negative Keywords

When you track what keywords get clicks and drive traffic to your website, look for words that have high bounce rates and low conversion rates. While you might like getting clicks, the customers aren’t converting, which means the marketing isn’t effective. By setting negative keywords, you can improve the quality of traffic to your website and increase your ROI.

Ad Extensions and Call Outs

Google allows brands to add four additional ad extensions (or links to other pages) and four call-outs describing your brand. This allows customers to learn more about what you have to offer while you take up more space in the search rankings. Would you rather have one link for users to click on or five?

If you want to take your Adwords campaign to the next level, work with the best. Check out Exults for your paid search, social, and website needs.

The post 4 Tips on Making the Most Out of Your AdWords Campaign appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

With that being said, here is some sage advice to keep in mind when you’re going through the process of selecting an agency:

1. If you’re just starting out on AdWords, insist on your own dedicated account. We’ve come across the scenario several times in which inexperienced account managers (and sometimes even agencies) build out all of their clients’ campaigns into one account. This strategy is a problem for a few reasons.

Quality Score and cost per click

Quality score is kind of an elusive metric on AdWords. Your account structure, match type ratio, ad copy, relevancy score, and website are all taken into account to generate your quality score. You’re also bumped up against all of the other accounts on AdWords bidding on the same keywords you are. If your campaign is being blended with campaigns targeting different kinds of products and/or services all across the AdWords network in the same account, it makes sense that your quality score can be impacted by all of the other campaigns in the same account. Because Quality score determine your ad rank and your average cost per click, this is definitely something to pay attention to.

Campaign data

If your AdWords campaign is being added to a mass account, the only thing you can take with you if you decide your agency isn’t working for you is the campaign shell. After paying for valuable data like search queries, engagement metrics, and auction insights, it’s a waste to lose it all because you want to change agencies. If you had your own account, you own the data and can simply revoke the agency’s access.

Transparency

It’s pretty common for agencies to bill clients a set monthly rate that is supposed to go towards buying clicks on AdWords. If your campaign is set up in a blended account and you’re not paying Google directly (see tip #4), there isn’t a system of checks and balances in place to ensure you’re actually buying the number of clicks you think you are.

2. Make sure you own everything.

If you’re hiring an agency to build you an AdWords account, make sure your contract states that should you part ways, you can take everything they developed on your behalf with you. This should include any display creative and tracking accounts (like Google Analytics). If you’re already paying them to build it, you should be able to take it with you.

3. Make sure you have access to everything.

Another clause you should add to your contract is that an authorized representative from your team should be granted full administrative access to every account created on your behalf. Access = power, and this rings true for AdWords accounts, too.

4. Insist on paying the ad network (Google, Facebook, Bing, etc.) directly for all ad spend.

We’ve seen agencies billing clients for AdWords fees and pocketing unknown amounts as “agency fee” with no accountability. This also ties in directly with making sure you have a dedicated AdWords account AND access to it. You should always be able to see how much of your marketing spend went to Google directly, and how much of it went to the agency managing your account.

5. NO ONE gets discounted clicks on Google.

Can we squash this myth once and for all? Click costs are click costs- no one gets a discount. You can reduce your average cost per click with well-structured campaigns, ad groups with very closely-related keywords, keyword rich ad copy, and a good landing page.

6. Clearly define success metrics that matter to your business.

Never let an agency determine what they should be measuring as a conversion point. The point of marketing should be to generate business. The true problem with soft goals being tracked as conversion points in AdWords is that you’re not getting a true read on your most valuable keywords. Conversion tracking should be reserved for critical level actions so your bid strategy, budget allocation, geo-targeting, and ad schedule can all be optimized based on real business.

So what should you be measuring in terms of conversions? Here are a few examples of what we’ve seen in AdWords accounts:

Add to cart

What we saw: Add to cart tracked as conversion

What it should be: successful checkout

On an eCommerce site, while it’s great to understand how many visitors are adding products to their cart, the real success metric here is how many of them are actually completing a purchase. While every business will have different metrics they like to track, eCommerce is pretty cut and dry: only a successful purchase makes you money.

View of contact page

What we saw: Someone visiting the contact us page tracked as conversion

What it should be: a completed form submission

While we understand the theory (someone viewed the page to get your phone number or address), it’s not entirely sound. Ultimately, a true measure of success is a completed form submission with contact details for a lead. If there were a tracking number in place, the call could also be considered a conversion point.

Visited several pages

What we saw: Visitor that looked at more than 2 pages tracked as conversion

What it should be: Call, form submission, time on site

A visitor that is looking at a few pages on your website isn’t very valuable. In fact, we’ve seen that visitors that are past the research phase and ready to buy are only looking at one or two pages before taking action.

Ultimately, the agency you select to manage your AdWords campaigns is a big factor in the performance of your account. If you haven’t considered letting an agency take over your online marketing, you should know that a professionally managed campaign can drastically improve your ROI making up for any agency fee incurred. With an agency in your corner, you can either reduce your online marketing spend, or get better returns on your existing budget.

Did you know that Exults offers free AdWords account audits? We can evaluate your account for missed opportunities and budget leaks. Contact us today and we’d be happy to take a look!

The post In the Process of Hiring an Agency? Read This First. appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

1. Automated bidding

In general, allowing automated rules in an account is an invitation to waste budget by leaving decision making up to a computer. There are cases where automatic bidding is helpful, but we always recommend close supervision. For example, enabling the Enhanced CPC option allows Google to increase the bid you set by up to 40%.

2. Match types

There are four match types available in AdWords. Broad match is the default match type within the interface, so we see several accounts that are set exclusively to broad match. Because this strategy hands over most of the control to Google’s matching algorithms to determine what’s relevant, we like to set strict boundaries. This includes bid restrictions and isolating broad match keywords.

3. Negative keywords

Adding negative keywords to an account helps to improve performance almost instantly. We often see accounts with negative keywords either missing or set to the incorrect match type. There are also several levels of negative keywords including Ad Group level, Campaign level, and List level. It’s important to know which to use and for what purpose.

4. Search intent

Search intent is (arguably) the most important aspect of an AdWords account. Understanding the differences in the end goals of what people are searching for will impact your bottom dollar. Most people research products and services online before they make a buying decision. Some of this research can include initial searches to determine if they can do it themselves or find an inexpensive alternative. By reaching a searcher after they have completed their research and are ready to make a purchasing decision, you avoid paying for wasted clicks.

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