Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
A lot has happened in the last few weeks, with Google rolling out the Google Measurement Partners program, announcing new cross device Google analytics reports, building a better news experience on YouTube, and putting machine learning into the hands of every advertiser, but there is more.
Google Ads can either take your money like a slot machine in Vegas after your luck runs out, or catapult your business‘s profitability like a snowmaker dressing a ski slope. This article offers six Google Ads tips that come from a CEO at a debt relief company, who is Adwords Certified and Adwords obsessed, and who watched his business grow by 300% over the last 36 months.
Over the past couple of years, Google has been shifting away from text ads on the Google Display Network for a more visual ad unit: Responsive Ads.
These units contain both a text and image component and serve almost as a bridge between the text and banner ad types. If you haven’t seen responsive text ads before, here are a few examples of what they can look like.
Text Ads used to find a large amount of inventory, but they were easy for users to overlook since there was no visual component drawing their eye. Many text ads blended seamlessly into the background of websites. Google’s shift to Responsive Ads has helped increase click through rates (CTRs) for Google Display Network ads, an improvement arguably good for advertisers and Google alike.
How Do Responsive Display Ads Perform?
Here is a small example of the performance I’m seeing for each ad unit in my accounts.
Impressions are higher as Google is increasingly preferring to use Responsive Ads to fill inventory, but on top of that, CTR for these Responsive Ads is higher than both other ad units.
Responsive Ads have also made the Google Display Network more accessible to a greater amount of advertisers. Standard banner ads have been a part of the Google Display Network for quite a while, but not all advertisers are able to take advantage of these ad slots.
There are nearly 20 standard sizes for banner ad units on the GDN, each requiring a design team to tweak, resize, and customize the visuals to make sure they look right.
Many teams simply don’t have the bandwidth to create a full suite of banner ads, not to mention regularly creating multiple sets for proper ongoing message and creative testing.
More often than not, advertisers will opt to focus on the top 5 banner sizes, causing lots of inventory to go unused on the GDN.
Enter Responsive Ads.
These ad units allow advertisers to fill every space on the Google Display Network. This includes Native, Text, and Banner ad spaces. They do this by (surprise!) being responsive to the space and showing one of many text and visual combinations available. What this means for us advertisers is that there are many things Google is doing in real time that will affect the way our ads appear:
Images will be scaled to fit into each ad unit.
Text combinations will be chosen based on available space.
Some text will be truncated in limited areas.
So knowing these things, it’s important we set ourselves up for success with any of the choices Google makes. Below are some best practices to keep in mind with images, text, and message choices while constructing Responsive Ads.
1.) Optimize for Image Scaling
Responsive Ads allow advertisers to upload a couple images with ads in a square and landscape format. This can be really great if you have images that aren’t easily cropped.
The big caveat: Although the image upload process shows the images relatively large on the screen, not all resulting ad units will have large images. Meaning, the images you upload can get scaled down to fit into the appropriate space.
We’re running ads for a luxury travel agency that plans amazing trips all across the globe. One of their more popular trips are safaris, so we’ve been running Responsive Ads to generate more interest.
When choosing our images, we leaned on their expertise and found that zebras are a customer favorite, so we decided to use zebras in the ads. We reviewed a number of images and came up with a couple that showed two different versions of zebras:
The first shows a group of zebras with a safari van in the background. Couldn’t be more spot on for what we’re advertising. The second image only shows a couple of zebras up close.
Which image do you think we used?
If you said image 2, you’re correct!
When both of these images are large, the first has a much better representation of what we’re selling, but the image of only zebras can also be eye-catching enough to those interested in zebras, even if the image isn’t perfectly on the nose for safaris.
When we scale these images down, the first becomes much harder to understand what’s going on. There are black and white stripes, and maybe a car and a tree, the ground is orange for some reason, but it’s really hard to tell what’s going on in a quick glance. In the scaled down version, the image on the right is the clear winner since it’s still clear that we’re looking at zebras.
When choosing images, think about how they look at full scale, but also how they would look if scaled down. If the images get too muddy when scaled down, you may be losing out on the impact an accompanying image can have.
2.) No Size Is Optional
Some creative sections will say they’re optional, but treat them as required. This will ensure all resulting ad variants will have the best possible representation in any space they fill.
If all else fails, use the same image, but utilize the crop tool that allows you to make a landscape image square, or vice versa.
3.) Be Flexible with Your Logo Where You Can
Brands love their logos. They’re sacred. I get that.
But for recognition on the GDN, the benefit of making small adjustments to ensure a logo is recognized can be worth the sacrifice.
The logo image uploads are the same as the image components: square and landscape. The problem is that some logos are designed to always be landscape or square and scaling can be your worst enemy here.
If you have a logo that is only square or landscape, consider adjusting to make it fit a bit better in the space, or do away with part of it to make it work better. Don’t be afraid to use only the icon portion of your logo if you need to for the square portion or shift alignment to make things fit better.
Let’s look at an example of Spotify. They have a logo that is designed for landscape with the icon on the left and the word “Spotify” to the right.
But this doesn’t fit well in the square image section of the logo for Responsive Ads. If you try and use this image in that space, it simply doesn’t fit.
At this point, you might reach out to your designer to get a square version of your logo. More often than not, the first answer a designer will give is to simply add whitespace to the top and bottom of the image to make it a square.
While this might look OK in the editor, don’t forget about the scaling effect we talked about earlier. This will likely look fine on larger ad formats, but on smaller ones it will be difficult to read.
At this point, it’s best to try and make other adjustments to get your logo in the ad in the best way possible.
For Spotify, they already have a version of their logo where they’ve adjusted to put the word “Spotify” under the icon what will work just fine for the square version.
Or they could go with just the icon by itself.
Because when the logos are scaled down to the same size, it’s easier to see and read the two we adjusted.
Although your brand managers might not like it, if you’re planning to run Responsive Ads, it’s worth it to spend some time adjusting your logo to fit both the square and landscape space without losing the feel of your brand.
4.) Be Aware of Text Combinations
In the Responsive Ads format, we’re given a number of text fields to work with.
Short Headline: 25 Characters
Long Headline: 90 Characters
Description: 90 Characters
Business Name: 25 Characters
This is much more text space than we’ve been given in the past, but it’s important to know that not all text will show up together. Furthermore, it’s important to know which text fields can and will be shown together so we can make the most of the ad impression we’re given.
Headlines will never be shown together.
This means headlines can simply be different versions of the same message. They’ll never be shown together so we don’t have to worry about repeating ourselves in the headlines.
Descriptions can be shown with either Short or Long Headlines.
This indicates descriptions can always be a further explanation of the headline. The description will never be shown without a headline, so we’ll never miss out on context. It also can be shown with either short or long headlines, so make sure you’re not repeating copy from the headlines in the description.
Sometimes headlines will show without the descriptions.
Given this fact, it can be beneficial to craft headlines that an all-encompassing of a message or are enticing enough to get a user to click through to learn more without the aid of the description. For me, this means that I’ll try to include a call to action in my long headlines if possible.
Both Long Headline and Description can end in ellipses if they don’t fit the space.
Since these text fields can be truncated, it’s important to front-load messaging. Make sure users will get all information at the front of the text so nothing is missed if the end is cut off.
Once we know the text field combinations, it’s much easier to craft copy that’s informative, consistent, and non-repetitive.
5.) Check & Share Previews
Although Responsive Ads are created in real time and there are nearly 1 billion combinations of a single ad that could be created, we do get a small glimpse into what these ads might look like with previews.
During the build process, there are a series of sections that will show us what our ads might look like in the wild. But these are mostly limited to square versions and one mobile-friendly view.
The best place to view the potential final products is actually after the ad has been created. When in the Google Ads interface, you can click on the ad itself, and it will bring up a Preview box. Within that box, there’s a link. This is where the real magic happens.
This link opens up a whole new window with many more previews of the potential ad combinations for Native, Image, and Text placement.
Granted, this isn’t nearly a comprehensive list of the combinations that can be created, but this is much better than what we’ve been given to this point. Better yet, this link is sharable so other members of the team (designers, client contacts, bosses, brand managers, etc.) can see the potential ad units and give any feedback.
6.) Be Cautious of Brand Safety and Regulations
After all of this, Responsive Ads simply aren’t right for all companies. And that’s OK.
From a brand safety perspective, it’s sometimes unacceptable for a company to not know what all combinations of images and text are going to show up. They would rather control all aspects of the ads from start to finish, which means banner ads are going to be the best way forward for them on the Google Display Network.
Another common issue with Responsive Ads deals with regulations. Some industries require advertisers to disclose legal information directly in their ads, which for Responsive Ads would mean they would likely have to use nearly all text and image space to cover those legal requirements without getting to the actual advertisement itself.
Keep these regulations in mind when looking through the combinations of text fields and images. If you’re able to cover your bases, then you’re all set. If not, this might not be the ad unit for you.
Closing thoughts
And there you have it! Responsive Ads on the GDN don’t require a physics degree, but there are certainly some steps you can take to step up your game without too much effort. Choose images and text wisely, understand how they’ll play together, and make sure you’ve covered your regulatory bases before jumping in.
Have you been running Responsive Ads on the GDN? What has been your experience? Have you had any issues with the best practices mentioned above?
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Sometimes it feels like social listening is a sacred knowledge available only to a few chosen brands – that’s how little we hear of companies using it. Of course, in reality, social listening is quite the opposite of a secret: it’s used by many, but, here’s the deal: it’s not used to its full potential.
Let’s start from the beginning in case you know absolutely nothing of this social listening business. Despite being a product of all the fancy techy concepts out there (big data, machine learning, etc.), it does not require a ridiculous budget or programming skills. Really, just an understanding, a tool, and some creativity.
What is social listening?
Understanding how social listening works is crucial – and quite easy. Social listening is the process of monitoring social media and the rest of the web for your brand mentions so you can understand how people are talking about your brand and your offerings.
A social listening/monitoring tool takes keywords of your choice (these are usually the name of your brand, your industry, your CEO, or something similar) and searches social media and the Web for these keywords. Social media includes social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc.) as well as blogs and forums. The Web includes everything else on the Internet. Not every tool covers everything there is, but the best, not necessarily the most expensive ones, do.
Via Sprout Social
Now on to creativity. While many companies use social listening these days, their primary goal is often customer service. Let me be clear: social listening is a life-saver for customer service. In no way am I suggesting that it’s not one of the best uses of a social listening tool. Social listening finds people that have not used a Twitter handle or any other method that lets the brand know something is wrong; it lets social media managers prevent social media crises by showing the growth of negative mentions; it makes it easier to reply to people from different platforms from a single dashboard.
However, this is not the full use of a social listening tool. And, let’s be fair, it’s not a very creative one. It’s straightforward, it’s what companies buy social listening tools for, and it doesn’t give you much of a competitive advantage among your rivals. Customer service is rapidly becoming a norm rather than a way to stand out.
Now, lead generation is something different. And so is, weirdly enough, brand awareness. And the mysterious “beyond” part of the title. The thing is, companies go on social media for goals other than customer service. They hope to find new clients, to market products in new ways, to make the famous social word-of-mouth work for them. Social media listening is the single best tool for that. Let’s turn the creative mode on and find out how exactly it can work for us.
1. Find prospects and surprise them with an offer
The whole idea of this strategy is to find your potential customers online and offer them an incentive to use your product or service. This approach has a personal feel to it and is public at the same time. On the one hand, you’re talking to one person in particular. Surely, you are repeating the tactic with a number of people, but it’s still not a broadcasting ad that feels impersonal no matter how much effort you put in it.
On the other hand, you’re talking to your prospect in public. That means all his or her followers could see what’s happening. They might get interested and check out your product straight away, or they might simply notice the brand name and its connection to their friend. In both cases, brand awareness is being built.
How does this process work? You come up with your industry keywords or keywords that indicate the event you’re interested in. Let me give you an example. The Keg Steakhouse monitors keywords such as “winning” and “won”, “steak dinner”, “birthday”, “anniversary” in their location so that they can offer the relevant people a discount for their services. People often don’t expect anything like that from a brand: they are surprised and delighted and decide to check the place out. Also, as mentioned before, all their followers (or some of them anyway) get a good reason to look at the brand.
The same steakhouse employs the following idea: they carry out a social media contest, like so many of companies do, but, when it’s already done and the winners are announced, they continue to monitor people’s conversations about the contest. They then give out a couple of other prizes for people that have been discussing the brand online. They say it’s a small effort that produces the best brand advocates. People feel surprised and grateful, and they continue to promote the brand years later.
2. Find competitors’ at-risk customers and steal them
That might be the best lead generation tactic that has ever existed in the digital world. Let’s face it: not every one of your competitor’s customers are satisfied with their product. The bigger your competitor is, the bigger number of vocally unhappy customers exist on the Internet. Now it’s just the matter of finding these poor people and saving them from their bad experience. Or just letting them know about your brand and pointing out why they’d have a much better experience using it.
If they’ve mentioned a specific problem, make sure to explain why your product can serve them better. If not, go through ways your product might be better/cheaper/more suitable for them.
The process works through social media listening, obviously. Monitor the brand of your competitor(s) and keywords with negative connotations that might be associated with their product or service, e.g. “terrible”, “bad”, “awful”, “broken”, “struggling with”, “problem”. You don’t have to find all possible word combinations: if your competitor is a big one, enough leads will come from the most obvious keywords. If your competitor is rather small, you’ll be able to look through mentions marked as “negative” ones within the social media listening app and react to those.
3. Find prospects that are looking for you
According to Brand24, each month, there are 14,000 online searches that start with “can anyone recommend?” and 30,000 searches for “where can I buy?”
How brands don’t jump at these opportunities is a mystery to me. Searching for these and other queries in your location, if your business is tied to a location, and replying to them from either your business account as a sales rep or from your personal one as a regular user, will bring you the warmest leads possible.
Replies can include a simple mention of your brand or an explanation or even a personal story of why it’s a good fit. You can also avoid the urge to promote your product straight away and instead ask more about what the author’s needs are and requirements, and hit them with an option that fits best. Personal approach is as powerful as it has always been.
Another good way of finding interested and brand-indecisive prospects is to look for strings such as “alternative to X” with X being your competitor or a specific product that is or even was similar to yours. For example, when Apple stopped selling iPods for 80gb, I was looking for exactly that – an alternative to Apple iPod Classic. It was not technically a competitor to music players anymore, however, a rather predictable void in the hearts of consumers aching to be filled. Your reply when finding consumers that search essentially for your product would be to show them that this product exists and maybe offer an incentive to get one.
4. Find micro-influencers – the magicians of social media
By now, every marketer knows the absolute power of online influencers. It’s a truly exciting phenomenon to begin with: anyone with access to the Internet can become influential with no money or power required. Just YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit… This person gains trust and authority in a particular field and then moves on to advertising brands that they truly like. They are seen as the experts in their field, so they strive to know about new brands, niche brands, all relevant brands to be able to provide their followers with the most up-to-date information.
Influencers are usually open to collaboration with marketers, trying out and reviewing their products, and advertising the product if it’s good enough. And we all know the power of native advertising.
While some influencers went so far as to make thousands (the chosen ones even millions) on their social media activity, the majority, as you might expect, did not. Many became micro-influencers in that they influence opinions of their followers in their specific fields. They might have a few thousand followers as opposed to millions of them, but they are loyal and curious followers.
Now the quest, of course, is to find the online micro-influencers in your own industry. This is where social listening comes in. If you’re monitoring industry keywords, most tools will show you a list of influencers for your industry. If you’re monitoring your brand, you’ll get a list of influencers who have already mentioned your brand – these are people to contact straight away and discuss the future you might have together.
Listen up
If you approach social listening creatively you can build brand awareness, generate interested leads, increase word-of-mouth, and ultimately gain loads of new customers from social media directly and indirectly. And the easiest way to start with implicit marketing is go to social media where every idea has a potential to go viral or at least gain visibility, the line between friends, marketers, and followers is vague, and people talk about absolutely everything. All you really have to do is find relevant conversations and join them.
About the author
Alina Gorbatch is an experienced web marketing specialist and content writer at Awario. Follow @BlondeAlina on Twitter.
Industry conferences are a great place to learn, network, and hang out with like-minded people. Nowadays there are so many conferences all over the world that people want to attend, but for some folks, the idea of attending an International conference can be a bit intimidating. How does one plan well for an International conference? Find out with these tips from the SEMrush speaking team.
Some kids dream about hitting a 480-foot tater over the Green Monster. Other kids dream about triumphantly sticking the stars and stripes into the surface of Mars. Pretty standard stuff.
And then there’s the kids on the fringe of society. The ones whose harrowing, hawkish stares tell you it’s a good idea to cross to the other side of the street. You know the ones.
What do they dream about? Being named the Best Topic-Specific Blog in the annual Content Marketing Awards, of course.
That’s right—out of all the blogs that focus on one topic alone (there have to be some great ones about logic puzzles), the WordStream blog has come out on top in 2018. As you can imagine, we’re pretty thrilled.
What are the Content Marketing Awards?
In 2004, the Content Marketing Institute launched the Content Marketing Awards to “recognize and award the best content marketing projects, agencies, and marketers in the industry each year.” As of now, there are 92 categories across three groups: Strategy, Distribution, and Editorial.
Any agency, company, organization, or institution that’s involved in the production of content marketing—print or digital—can enter the awards, provided that the selected material was created during the previous calendar year. Entries from all countries are welcome.
You can learn more in this handy video from the CMA website:
So, why did you guys win?
Kind of a rude question, but okay.
Look—this blog isn’t here purely for a good time. You think we’re driven to work every day—to crank out post after post about pay-per-click advertising—by artistic ambition? You think we write about banner ads because it makes us feel closer to God? Nope.
We’re here because we want to provide value to small businesses. We’re here because we understand that not everyone has the time or the desire to become an online advertising expert. The world of search marketing is constantly changing (Google changes its ranking algorithms literally every day), and SMB owners often can’t afford to keep up themselves.
So, we write blogs. To be more precise, we provide accessible, data-backed insights into the lawless madhouse that is online advertising.
Of course, the blog wouldn’t win any awards without the blood, sweat, tears, and strained eyeballs of its most dedicated contributors: people like Allen Finn, Elisa Gabbert, Gordon Donnelly, Margot da Cunha, and Mark Irvine. Teamwork does, in fact, make the dream work.
A huge thank you to the people at CMI for recognizing us! And of course, thanks to our readers and customers. We wouldn’t be here without you.
In response to a recent slew of negative press, Facebook has responded by releasing advertising features that aim to put transparency at the forefront of their processes. For marketers and advertisers, this means that a wealth of data has been made public. Learn how to use this to your benefit through a variety of creative ways.