SEMrush blog
How to Find Marketing Insights Using Audience Overlap
Learn to understand Audience Overlap and find marketing insights for strategic business solutions. Monitor your competitors, evaluate your partners and reach new markets.
SEMrush blog
Text Analysis for Online Marketers
Textual data are everywhere; social media posts, keywords, URLs, page titles and more. They also come with a lot of numbers that describe them. How we can extract meaning from text data on a large scale? What techniques can we use to quickly figure out important topics, users, or maybe products, in a set of textual data?This is a tutorial that uses data science techniques to solve these questions.
Internet Marketing Blog by WordStream
7 Reasons Google Ads and Facebook Ads Make the Perfect Pair
This post was co-written by Gordon Donnelly and Kristina Simonson.
With Valentine’s Day approaching, you’re likely finding yourself in one of two camps. You’re in the heart-shaped-box-of-chocolates camp or the solo-pint-of-ice-cream camp. The late-night-Casablanca-for-two camp or the gently-sobbing-Narcos-binge camp. You’re getting gnocchi in an old Italian neighborhood or you’re getting thrown out of a Buffalo Wild Wings. There’s nothing wrong with either. It’s just the nature of the thing.
Ditto for digital ads. Every advertiser has their favorite. And among viable channels, Google and Facebook are the perennial big players. But whether you’re Team Google or Team Facebook, if you live and die by your favorites, and you don’t get the two platforms to work together, you run the risk of creating a funnel that’s stunted, neglected, and hemorrhages leads.
The wholesome union of Google Ads and Facebook Ads is one we here at WordStream can get behind. Our in-house lead-gen savant Kristina Simonson and I are even hosting an in-depth webinar on February 13 to talk about the seven reasons Google Ads and Facebook Ads make the perfect pair. Today, we’re going to give you a sneak peak at what those seven reasons are and why they’re vital to any holistic marketing strategy.
#1: Maximize reach & brand awareness
Using Facebook Ads
Due to the Reach and Brand Awareness campaign types, cost per thousand impressions (CPM) bidding and optimization, and myriad placement options (including Instagram), Facebook gives advertisers unparalleled ability to drive brand awareness – and, in doing so, fill the top of their funnels with net-new prospects.
Advertisers can use Facebook to drive ad delivery to prospects who will not only see their brands for the first time, but actually remember their brands. Establishing ad recall is vital when establishing relationships with prospects; and establishing relationships is a vital part of ultimately driving conversions.
Using Google Ads
Google Ads offers a wide range of campaign types and placements to help you expand your reach to gain brand awareness. Depending on your marketing goal, you have a range of campaign types to choose from: Search, Display, Video, Discovery, Shopping, and Universal App. Each campaign type and placement ensures that you have the opportunity to capture reach and brand awareness where it makes sense for your business; whether that’s tied to an active search, an in-market audience, or a related YouTube video.
#2: Leverage audiences to engage prospects of all intent types
Using Facebook Ads
Facebook is a bit like the Display Network. Users browsing on these networks don’t have the same level of commercial intent as users browsing on the Search Network, because they’re not actively searching for the solution your business offers. Now, that does not mean Facebook is worse for engaging prospects; it simply means that the prospects you engage on Facebook will have a different level of intent than the prospects you engage on Google. Both are important, and, in fact, you can use Custom and Lookalike Audiences in Facebook Ads to build a large, cost-effective prospect pool that you can either convert directly from the platform or remarket to in Google Ads.
Using Google Ads
You’ve heard it from us before, and we’ll continue to say it: Audiences on Google are becoming more and more crucial for your Google Ads strategy, particularly on the Search Network. Gone are the days of only targeting audiences through keywords and topics on the Display Network. Now, you have extensive options to strictly target or observe new and existing audiences across your Google Ads campaigns. You can leverage these audiences to tailor your offer, message, and bid to optimize your return on ad spend.
#3: Slide prospects smoothly through your funnel
Using Facebook Ads
Facebook provides an excellent opportunity for advertisers to capture new prospects and move existing leads through your marketing funnel. Starting with the campaign objective, advertisers have the opportunity to go after each step of the traditional marketing funnel: awareness, consideration, and conversion. You can take this cross-funnel strategy to the next level by pairing the right account structure, audience targeting, and campaign settings to each of your funnel stages.
Using Google Ads
Not only does Google offer an extensive reach for advertisers, but it also gives advertisers the opportunity to drive traffic, convert leads, and close new business. You can mirror your marketing funnel through the different campaign types that Google has to offer. Here’s an example to consider:
First, build out an in-market audience to drive brand awareness at a low CPM via YouTube. Next, build out a remarketing list of video viewers and remarket them through a Display campaign with a top of the funnel offer. Now, you can build out an audience for the converters who come through this campaign and remarket to them again with a product-centric offer. While these campaigns are running, you can add your audiences as observation in your relevant search campaigns. This way, you can bid more aggressively and understand the relationship across campaign types and through the search network for that audience.
Now, with three different tactics, your campaigns have achieved reach, awareness, engagement, and conversions. You’ve effectively moved potential prospects from the top of your funnel to the bottom. That’s just one example of how you can leverage Google as a cross-funnel channel to reach your marketing goals.
#4: Generate leads in quantity and quality
Using Facebook Ads
Facebook gives you the ability to convert a lot of leads for a relatively low cost. Facebook converts at a significantly higher rate than Google (9.21% compared to just 3.75%), and Facebook lead ads in particular give lead gen advertisers the ability to convert leads at an even higher rate. An internal review of our customer data here at WordStream showed a 12.54% conversion rate; this compared to just 10.47% when using Conversion campaigns to send prospects to a landing page to fill out a form. Therein lies the feature that makes Facebook lead ads so effective—when your prospect engages with the ad, a lead form opens up within the Facebook app. Thus, your prospect doesn’t need to navigate to a new browser window and wait for a new page to load before submitting his information. Facebook lead ads are a highly valuable lead gen tool.
Using Google Ads
Not much can beat the quality that comes with search intent. If a prospect is searching, it means they are actively looking for an answer or help with their query. This makes them a better prospect for your business to engage than a more passive prospect. However, with the high quality comes a higher price. The search network typically comes at a higher CPA than a typical Facebook or a Display campaign does on Google. Therefore, you can balance your ad spend through a range of campaign types on Google to bring in the top-notch quality while reaching your quantitative goals.
A person searching for SAT tutors is far more inclined to click than the casual targeted user.
#5: Align Your Brand
Using Facebook Ads
Facebook and Instagram are perfect places to showcase the most visually poignant sides of your brand. Story ads in particular give you the ability to reach prospects in the format in which they are probably most comfortable consuming content: full-screen, vertical, and on their mobile devices. If you’re choosing to use Facebook to optimize for brand awareness or reach, and then using Google to convert prospects later on (when they’re toward the bottom of the funnel), Facebook is the perfect place to set the tone with compelling visual assets that you can then call back to with consistent messaging in your search ads.
Using Google Ads
Brand alignment can make or break your prospect’s experience. If you are reaching them across the Google networks with inconsistent messaging, creative, or brand value, you can risk driving confusion and losing trust with the prospect. Therefore, it’s crucial to employ your cross-funnel strategy with ads that deliver a consistent message and stick to your brand guidelines. This way, you can deliver an experience that impresses and delights prospects at each and every touchpoint.
#6: Adapt your strategy with insights
Using Facebook Ads
It’s crucial that you are constantly testing to gather new insights for your advertising strategy on Facebook. Thankfully, Facebook makes testing easy and scalable by offering split testing and test & learn. From audiences, placements, campaign settings, creative, and messaging, your account can benefit from trying new things and applying these learnings.
Using Google Ads
There are endless possibilities when it comes to testing in Google Ads. To take out the guessing, you can use campaign experiments or ad variations to easily set up and track your tests. For example, we rely on campaign experiments to prove out account changes that hold the greatest risk, such as bid strategy. Then, we can take the results of this experiment to consider our bid strategies across our account and understand which campaigns would benefit from the same results.
#7: Reach your advertising goals & KPIs
Using Facebook Ads
Not only does Facebook drive lower CPMs than Google, so you’re paying less per thousand impressions, but it also drives lower CPCs ($1.72 compared to $2.69 on the Search Network). Still, the comparison here is not exactly apples to apples: because clicks are inherently more qualified on the Search Network than they are on Facebook, advertisers should be more willing to pay a premium for clicks on Search. Depending upon your objective, then, Facebook is the perfect place to focus on driving inexpensive clicks to build audiences for remarketing and nurture. That will ultimately allow you to generate a lower bottom line CPA and a higher bottom line CVR (Conversion Rate).
Using Google Ads
No matter what your advertising goal is, Google is a channel that you can’t miss out on. With over 40,000 search queries processed each second, users are constantly taking to Google to digest content, answer their questions, and make purchase decisions. The first step towards your advertising goals is being present during your potential prospects touch points across the Google networks. And once you know how Google Ads works, and how to optimize your performance, the opportunities to adjust your strategies to reach your KPIs are endless.
Don’t miss the live discussion!
That about does it! But again—this is just the tip of the iceberg. Don’t forget to register for the live webinar on Feb. 13, where Kristina and I will be giving each of these seven reasons way more air time, way more visualization, and way more love. We’ll also give you a crystal-clear understanding of not just the strengths of each platform, but how using Facebook and Google together will allow you to achieve each of these strategies with full force and effectiveness.
Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
SearchCap: Local SEO survey, Moz domain authority and GOOG earnings
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Survey: Local SEO an ‘artisanal’ discipline dominated by small agencies
Roughly 53 percent of firms doing local SEO have 10 or fewer clients.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
3 types of silos killing your marketing team
Live Webinar: Wednesday, February 6, at 1:00 PM ET (10:00 AM PT)
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Internet Marketing Blog by WordStream
Google Ads Account Takeover? What You Need to Know
Late last week, Google Ads emailed a group of advertisers to notify them that their accounts will be taken over by “experts” unless they opt-out of the free service within seven business days.
Aaron Levy (@bigalittlea) of Elite SEM broke the story via Twitter early Thursday morning, and it was quickly picked up by Search Engine Journal. Here’s what that email looked like:
According to the email these Google Ads users received, failure to opt-out will enable Google’s in-house account managers to restructure your ad groups, modify your keywords, adjust your bids, update your ad copy, and more. (They do assure recipients that their budgets won’t increase.) A spokesperson from Google has said that these emails are part of a new pilot program.
According to WordStream’s Mark Irvine, another Google representative has confirmed that the email was sent only to Google Ads users whose accounts aren’t linked to MCCs—meaning those that aren’t currently managed by an agency.
If you got one of these emails, you might be unsure as to what it means and how to proceed. Basically, unless you take action, Google may become the PPC agency you didn’t ask for.
What This Means for You
Google has put the ball in your court. As of now, allowing their team to have access to your Google Ads account is the default option. If you don’t want other people making changes to your campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads, you have to explicitly let Google know.
Our take? You should opt out of Google’s in-house management service.
It’s not that Google’s account managers don’t know the ins and outs of PPC. They do. But, at the end of the day, nobody knows your business like you do. And this service would likely rely heavily on automation. Automation can only go so far, and it doesn’t work in every use case.
Recently, Google broadened exact match keywords to match with semi-close variants such as synonyms and paraphrases. This essentially amounted to changing your keyword match types. For one advertiser who targets the exact match keyword [leather handbags], Google began serving their ads to users who searched “cheap purse.” Those … aren’t the same thing.
Dynamic ad extensions enable Google to automatically add extensions like sitelinks to your text ads. Considering sitelinks provide the opportunity to direct prospects to conversion-focused landing pages that depend on context, relinquishing control over them is seldom a good idea.
Those who leverage automated bid strategies allow Google to algorithmically determine how their spend is allocated across their ad groups and campaigns. Take the strategy known as Maximize Conversions, for example. Basically, you set a daily budget for the campaign you’re automating and tell Google to allocate it such that you drive as many conversions as possible. Unsurprisingly, as long as this automated strategy is in place, Google will spend every cent within your daily campaign budget—regardless of how well the campaign is performing.
Although automation can save you lots of time and, in aggregate, is usually worthwhile, there are always exceptions to the rule, which is why it’s important to maintain manual control of your account.
Here’s the bottom line: Successful management of a PPC account requires a genuine, comprehensive understanding of what the business does, the industry in which it operates, and the customer base the business serves.
What Comes Next?
If you don’t opt out, you may start seeing changes in your Google Ads account as early as next week.
If you do want to opt out, go back to the email from Google Ads. At the end of the second paragraph, you’ll see the words “opt out” with a hyperlink. Click through and follow Google’s instructions from there.
In the meantime, do what’s best for your business!
P.S. If you’re crunched for time and need help managing your Google Ads account efficiently without handing the reins to Google, here are a few resources:
What Works & What Doesn’t Work When Automating Ad Copy & Keywords
Which Google Ads Network Is Right for Me? A Pocket Guide
3 Ways to Finally Get Started With Google Ads Scripts
You Saw My Ad WHERE?! Mastering Google Display Placements
The Definitive Guide to Negative Keywords in 2018
SEMrush blog
How to Leverage Natural Syndication Networks to Earn More Links
Not all placements are considered equal. If you had the choice of sending a pitch and earning a placement or sending a pitch and earning 20 placements, which would you choose? Learn how to take advantage of natural publisher syndication networks can mean the difference between generating less than a handful of links or hundreds of press mentions for your content.
SEMrush blog
Google News Digest: New Publishing Platform, Smart Campaigns, New G Suite Pricing and More
With the new year now well underway, Google is rolling out a fresh stream of updates for search users, advertisers, and website owners. Its more notable updates include a new publishing platform for local news (“Newspack“), a new pricing strategy for G-Suite Basic and Business Editions, and the integration of AdWords Express campaigns into the Google Ads platform.
Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
SearchCap: Voice input for Google mobile web search, paying for search analytics tools, more
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.