Looker Studio Reporting Services

Learn where to target your ads, discover where your traffic comes from, and see what isn’t converting. Our SEO and SEM teams at Today’s Business support your marketing campaign with extensive reporting in Google’s Looker/Data Studio.

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See the Impact of Your Brand’s Presence with Full Reporting in Looker Studio

In marketing, whether you’re running an organic search campaign, trying to increase brand awareness through social media, or running ads on multiple platforms, transparent and clear data will affect your bottom line. How much money you spend and how much growth you can achieve can only be measured accurately with regular reporting. 

At Today’s Business, we utilize Looker Studio (formally known as Data Studio) to pool data from all sources and provide comprehensive analysis of where our time and efforts are being spent, and showcase your losses and gains. A regular analysis, usually once or twice per month, is crucial in making choices about where to adjust ads, plan more content for your website, or see how many conversions you miss due to inefficiencies or user-experience issues.

How Our Looker Studio Reporting Works

Reporting is always the final step, just before campaign adjustments or strategy tweaks. It is a product of enough time passing so that our strategies are tested in a way that results are measured either positively or negatively. This is an industry-standard approach to working with data, but not all agencies provide custom reports or have expert-level professionals consolidating and observing your data. So how do you get started with better reporting? It starts like this:

Discovery

Our consultants will sit down with you to understand your campaign goals – what you have been trying to achieve, or what you would like to do as a business. We ask specific questions to learn more about your target audience, your service areas, demographics, products and services, and more. Once we have a better understanding of your brand, we’re about to move on to the next phase.

Planning

Next, we’ll propose a strategy based on the information we collect. In some cases, you may already be running a campaign of your own, and we can work to integrate data from other sources into one place – Looker Studio. Combined with any of our suggested efforts, we can pool data together to give you a more complete picture so that we can adjust actions and develop deeper strategies as time progresses.

Account Set-Up

After the planning phase, we’ll set you up with your own account and client manager. Even if you’re running a small campaign or simply working to integrate your reporting into one place and get recommendations from our team, you’ll always have a dedicated person to turn to whenever you have questions. With your account manager, you’ll also meet regularly to discuss the health and status of your campaign, where we go over what we’ve done, what should change, and all analytics.

Campaign Implementation

Implementation is the execution of our strategies. These efforts may be carried out over months  or the entire year. They include everything from social media marketing, SEO, and SEM to paid advertising, retargeting, and more. We can work to help you organize your leads if you have a CRM, and we can even pull that information into our regular reporting.

Reporting

Finally, as we’ve discussed, we’ll provide you with our reports. Not only do we provide you with a clear outline of what we’ve done, but you can see our upcoming future goals as well. This serves as a good reminder of what to expect in the short term. We’ll sit down and go over your full report in Looker Studio and you’ll touch base with your account manager, organic, social, and paid strategists when applicable, and creative team members.

Get Started with a FREE Consultation

Do you need to streamline your reporting? What about setting new goals and seeing how they stack up against past performance? You need streamlined and expert reporting in Looker Studio.

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Looker Studio Reporting Case Studies and Success Stories

Using Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to Drive Sales in Specialty Food

Starting Point A specialty food e-commerce company, facing multiple internal and external changes, requested the aid of Today’s Business to increase sales in its SEM Camp …

Healthy Meal Service Company Sees Success from Search Engine Marketing

Preface Preparing meals and eating healthy can be challenging. Entrepreneurial food services have taken advantage, offering prepared meals to be delivered straight to you …

How a Decrease in Keyword Spend Yielded Results for a Physician Group

Preface There is often the belief in business that you have to spend money to make money. This is only true if you spend money efficiency. In an industry with razor thin …

Multi-Physician Fertility Practice Sees Success from Search Marketing

Preface Fertility is an issue that affects many people, but is not necessarily something that everyone who is affected is comfortable talking about with others. Often tim …

A Glimpse at a Mortgage Company’s Monthly SEM Success

Preface Advertising is a major factor in the mortgage industry. More so than other areas of business, the mortgage industry is especially reliant in getting the word out …

NJOI: Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Case Study (Apr. ’15 vs. Apr ’16)

Executive Summary: Today’s Business was tasked with improving the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign of client New Jersey Orthopaedic Institute (NJOI). After a full c …

SEM vs. Social Ads: Where Are Your Conversions Coming From?

Executive Summary: When it comes to driving traffic to a website, the primary two online methods are through search and through social. For a nutrition company focusing o …

A Fertility Center : A Digital Marketing Case Study

Executive Summary A Fertility Center hired Today’s Business to provide them with many different digital marketing services. These consisted of SEO & SEM services, web …

View All Case Studies

Schedule Your Looker Studio Consultation Today

Reporting is more than just pulling data in Google Analytics or measuring keywords in tools like SEMrush. Looker Studio is Google’s reporting tool that can incorporate many different data sources into one place and provide valuable insights based on how that information is organized. Our team has worked with hundreds of clients in health systems, transportation, sports, and other industries to improve their overall growth and make more sales, as well as improve revenue, organization, and understanding of what’s happening on their digital front. Get started by contacting us today.

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Let Us Improve Your Digital Marketing Campaign

The services listed below will help boost your digital marketing campaign along with SEO.

Search Engine Marketing

Our SEM services will have you receiving better ROI and a clearer understanding of your brand thanks to our paid advertising.

Search Engine Optimization

Grow organically and set yourself up for success with keyword research, backlinking, in-house content, and more from our SEO team.

Creative Services and Graphic Design

Your brand should stand out (in a good way!). Our design team is here to help you with everything from flyers to Facebook ads.

Web Design and Development

From landing pages to full sites to specialized tools, our in-house dev team is here to help with all-things technical.

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The post Looker (Data Studio) Reporting appeared first on Today's Business.

What are Dynamic Search Ads?

There are customers searching for what you offer on Google. If your website is regularly creating new content or adding new inventory, it can be time-consuming to try to keep your ads relevant. Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) are the easiest way to find customers searching for what you have to offer. Ideal for advertisers with a well-developed website or a large inventory, a Dynamic Search Ad utilizes the content of your website to create a targeted ad consisting of a distinct headline and an applicable landing page. A DSA will show based on Google’s crawl of the content on your website as opposed to the keywords you are targeting. Even if you have the most targeted keywords, it’s likely that you’re not covering every relevant search term that a potential customer searches. Should your business not use Dynamic Search Ads, you may miss out on reaching valuable customers whose unique search queries differ from what your business typically targets.

How a Dynamic Search Ad is Created

Let’s say you are the owner of a prominent deli in New York called Charlie’s New York Deli. If an individual searches Google for “best deli New York,” Google will recognize the titles and keyword phrases on your website relating to being voted the best deli in New York and generate an ad with the headline “Best Deli – New York.” Should the individual choose to click on the ad generated by Google, the user would then be directed to a landing page from your website that Google selected consisting of reviews and accolades that support your business being the best deli in New York.

The Benefits of Dynamic Search Ads

From automatically updating your ads to automatically generating headlines, DSAs are easy to set-up, will save you time, and keep your ads relevant and effective.

Save Time: Dynamic Search Ads do not require keyword research and targeting, which each take a significant amount of time and effort. 

Easy Set-Up: DSA campaigns require you to only create descriptions relating to your business since the ad’s headline is automatically generated by Google.

Automate Updates: Should you make changes to your website, Google automatically accounts for these changes in its Dynamic Search Ads. 

Lower CPCs: Dynamic Search Ads tend to drive more traffic at a cheaper cost than a standard ad. If your business does its part in ensuring that this is high-quality traffic and that potential customers are being directed to appropriate landing pages, your business could benefit from the increased traffic from a DSA campaign.

What You Need to Know Before Creating a DSA Campaign

Targeting: When setting up Dynamic Search Ads, your business needs to consider the structure of your website. Dynamic Search Ads could be targeted using landing pages from your standard ad groups, categories of website content based on themes, or specific pages from your website.

The Importance of Negative Keywords: A DSA campaign could drive a lot of traffic to your website. However, you need to add a group of negative keywords to the campaign and continually add to this list based on search term queries to ensure that the traffic is relevant to your business. 

Loss of Control: By running a DSA campaign, your business loses control over which queries your ads are served to by not utilizing keywords. Your business thus needs to frequently monitor search terms queries that prompt your ad appearing to a Google searcher. Just like with traditional search ads, irrelevant queries can waste your budget quickly.

Getting Started with Dynamic Search Ads

If done correctly, Dynamic Search Ads are great for supplementing text ads of your business. By using a DSA campaign as part of your Google Advertising efforts, you can discover searches that your current keywords do not cover, increase traffic to your website, and portray ads with headlines that are optimally relevant to a user’s search query. 

If you have a large business with a lot of products and landing pages on your website, creating Dynamic Search Ads may be easier than creating manual ads for every product. If these products and inventory are constantly changing, Google is able to regularly crawl your website and display Dynamic Search Ads only for products that are in stock. If you have a smaller business, Dynamic Search Ads may not be necessary on a long-term basis. However, they can still be useful short-term in terms of driving traffic to your site, discovering keywords you may be overlooking, and increasing brand awareness.

If you are looking to drive quality traffic to your website with Dynamic Search Ads, contact us at Today’s Business and we’ll help get you started! 

The post Google Dynamic Search Ads: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Today's Business.

Google has taken a gigantic shift towards competing with Amazon.

Google announced that they are going to roll out free listings on Google’s Shopping search. With the COVID-19 Pandemic, Google is trying to help brick and mortar retailers sell their products online. 

Bill Ready, President of Commerce at Google stated:

“For retailers, this change means free exposure to millions of people who come to Google every day for their shopping needs. For shoppers, it means more products from more stores, discoverable through the Google Shopping tab. For advertisers, this means paid campaigns can now be augmented with free listings. If you’re an existing user of Merchant Center and Shopping ads, you don’t have to do anything to take advantage of the free listings, and for new users of Merchant Center, we’ll continue working to streamline the onboarding process over the coming weeks and months.” 

This is a win for both sellers and consumers. For retailers that already have items in stock and ready to ship are going to see big upsides with this update if they take action. When consumers go to the Shopping tab on Google, they will see ads at the top and bottom of the page (similar to the “All” search tab). The new update will help increase visibility and it is still important to run Google Shopping Ads for products that are competitive online to help stand out amongst the rest. 

PayPal Partnership/Integration 

Google has partnered with PayPal to help users link their accounts in the onboarding process so creating an account runs smoothly. This helps google with the verification process to make sure they have trusted merchants in their system. Google will pull seller information from PayPal to help speed up the process. Google stated that they will be sharing more information about the onboarding process in the next few weeks and even months. 

How To Set Up Free Google Product Listings

For existing users of Merchant Center and Shopping ads, you may already be able to show your products in the free listings if you already set up surfaces across Google. 

1. In order to opt in the program, you will need to sign into the Google Merchant Center and then select “Growth” and then “Manage programs” and then you should be able to select “surfaces across Google.” 
2. The next step would be to create products in your feed. You can do this via a plug in or manually enter the shopping values in a sheet.

For those that are new to Google Merchant Center, you will need to sign up for one. You will need to go through the same process as listed above by selecting the “surfaces across Google” program and then create your product feed. Google is going to be releasing more information about the onboarding process in the upcoming weeks and months. 

Google is currently working on a reporting system where you can see your unpaid clicks from Google’s Shopping. 

Optimize Your Organic Product Listings With Today’s Business 

This new Google Shopping Update allows for increased efforts for SEO strategists and e-commerce marketers as they will be able to now optimize for organic product search. Optimizing organic product search is very important for any retailer’s business as it increases visibility for people that are looking for your products online. If you are a retailer and have inventory saved up, getting your products on Google and optimizing them should be part of your SEO strategy. At Today’s Business, we have the SEO experience and knowledge needed to help implement SEO tactics to boost your business to the next level. Contact us today to discuss different SEO strategies that can help you organically enhance your business impact and gain more customers.

Sources

The post Why Google Shopping Opening Up Free Product Listings is Huge for Retailers and Consumers appeared first on Today's Business.

Starting Point

A specialty food e-commerce company, facing multiple internal and external changes, requested the aid of Today’s Business to increase sales in its SEM Campaign while also reducing its monthly spend. The client has been running Google Ads since 2002! The focus has changed throughout the years, but they never saw substantial increases in sales. The goal was to increase sales for both brand and non-brand campaigns, with an emphasis on new customer acquisition. Conversions for this account were strictly sales. 

To run effective campaigns, Today’s Business looked to optimize and create Standard Search Ads, Display Remarketing, Dynamic Search Ads, and Shopping Ads. A multi-angle approach was viewed as the best opportunity to scale for the best results. The SEM results during Q4 of 2018 were mind-blowing! 

Strategy 

Search Network Only Ads

Search Network only ads appear in Google’s search results when someone searches for terms that are relevant to your ad’s keywords. This strategy is essential for us to maximize our efforts to drive traffic to our website when someone searches for our branded terms. Here we have the ability to set a max CPC for $1 so we can drive traffic to our website at the lowest cost, while still showing up in the top average position. 

• Created a new structure by separating search campaigns into: Brand, Gourmet, and Gift Baskets
• Brand Campaign:
  • Focused our efforts on Brand keywords as well as “brand” + coupon queries.
  • The cost/conversion on mobile was over 50% higher than Computers so we reduced that mobile bid adjustment by 35%
• Gourmet Campaign:
  • Reduced the Mobile bid adjustment by 65% because it had the highest cost/conversion amongst all devices. That resulted in the lowest CPC at $0.81
  • Reduced the Tablet bid adjustment by 20%, which ended up making that device have the lowest cost/conversion at $20.44!
  • We added keywords like “gourmet cheeses” and “gourmet cheese gift” in 3 different keyword match types due to the seasonal spike in searches.
• Gift Basket Campaign:
  • Created 3 Ad Groups: Cheese, Chocolate, and General
  • Over 90% of our conversions were coming from Computers so we decreased Mobile and Tablet bid adjustments by over 50% to maximize our conversions on the best performing device
  • We negative matched multiple keywords like: adult, recipe, and alcohol. They were irrelevant to our product and search term

Results

Search Network

• Branded search generated over a 41X ROAS!
• Branded search on Computers had over 17% Conversion Rate
• Non-Brand Search had a low $1.21 CPC and 4.36% CTR
• Gourmet campaign saw over a 2X ROAS while driving over 2,000 clicks to the website
• Gift Basket campaign didn’t hit a ROAS, but we generated great awareness that helped build the remarketing campaign list over 500 visitors

Strategy 

Dynamic Search Ads

Dynamic Search Ads give the customer looking for your product or service the best experience by helping them find exactly what you offer. DSA’s are essential for advertisers to use when they are working with a well-developed website. DSA’s crawl the website to create ads and keywords highlighted on your website that typically can be missed when creating a standard Search Network only campaign. 

The reason we utilized this strategy is that the client has over 100 different products across multiple categories and keywords for relevant products that could be missed. We were able to focus on three categories and one for overall web pages: Cheese, Meats, and Oils. Throughout the campaign, we adjusted the default max CPC’s so that they all were under $0.50. This enabled us to get the most out of the DSA’s in regards to performance and cost. 

• Reduced CPC’s under $0.50
  • In the Cheese Ad Group, we made the CPC’s $0.25 as it yielded the most conversions as well as clicks in the campaign
• Reduced Mobile bid adjustment by 60% due to having the lowest conversion rate
• Reduced Tablet bid adjustment by 50% because Computers was out performing that device

Results

Dynamic Search Ads

• Newly added campaign strategy targeting hundreds of products and long tail search queries which yielded a 340% ROAS
• Cheese Ad Group generated over 90% of the revenue in the campaign
• Over 50% of the revenue came from the Computer device

Strategy 

Display Network Only (Remarketing)

Display Network only ads are visual ads that show up on websites that have ad space to show the products or services to your audience at the right place at the right time. The most effective Display Network campaign is doing a Remarketing campaign. This allows us to target users dynamically who already visited our page and didn’t make a purchase. The reason we used this strategy is that we understand the purchase behavior of this type of user.

Many new users don’t take action on a website when they first visit if- they are using that time to do research and learn more about what you offer. By running display network remarketing ads, we are bringing the user back to our website when they click on our banner ads on other websites. This reminds the user to not forget about us and finish their checkout process. We don’t want to lose customers who have the intent of buying our products. 

• Reduced Mobile bid adjustment by 70% due to having the lowest cost/conversion out of all the devices
• Reduced Tablet bid adjustment by 45% as it wasn’t getting as much clicks as the other devices and it generated the lowest amount of conversions
• Decreased the CPC’s to $0.30

Results

Display Network Only (Remarketing)

• Newly launched program targeting cart abandoners, buyers, and website visitors, in general, yielded a 290% ROAS
• Generated over 1.5M Impressions
• Drove over 8,000 clicks to the website

Strategy 

Shopping Campaigns

Shopping campaigns help promote your products on Google search engine. In order to do this, you need to create a Google Merchant Center account to send your product feed to your Google Ads account. The reason we utilized this strategy is that we are able to get better-qualified leads for both brand and non-brand searches. By showcasing our products on Google with a solid description, we give the customer the information they need to make an informed purchasing decision. 

• Shopping General: Focused on All Products
  • Increased Computer bid adjustment by 15% as it was yielding the highest return for device
  • Decreased Mobile and Tablet bid adjustments by over 70% due to the low conversion rate
• Shopping Brand
  • Reduced the CPC to be under $0.10 to drive more traffic at a low cost for brand searches
  • Decreased Mobile and Tablet bid adjustments by 30-45% due to Computers having the most conversions and double the conversion rate

Results

Shopping Ads

• Costs reduced by 35%
• Revenue increased by 53%
• Avg. CPC was $0.26
• Campaign spent $32,000 and generated over $127,000 in revenue

Key Takeaways

• Today’s Business took the client in their most profitable month from 3X to 9X!
• In the month of December, Today’s Business generated over $250,000 in sales while spending just over $28,000! That is a 900% ROAS.

About Today’s Business

Today’s Business is a multi-channel digital marketing agency based in New Jersey. We saw great success with a reduced spend because of their effective campaign structure, data driven-approach to incremental campaign improvements, and acute knowledge of the Google Ads platform as a whole. Our Test-Implement-Repeat approach allowed not only for efficiency gains but for substantial gains in the campaign scale. If you would like to learn more about our case study or our services contact us today.

The post Using Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to Drive Sales in Specialty Food appeared first on Today's Business.

YouTube Launches 6-Second Bumper Ads

By: Raj Trivedi, Director of Digital Advertising

6-second Bumper Ads on YouTube allow advertisers to sequence their ads for more effective storytelling. In advertising, we always try to focus on showcasing the pain points and the results of whatever we are promoting, but only having six seconds to accomplish it is a challenge we are excited to take on.

Break down your longer videos into splashy 6-second ads with Bumper Machine — the perfect tool to extend your campaign’s reach. Check out more from #GoogleMarketingLive → https://t.co/i7inE9yJNp pic.twitter.com/jkOlSo22ZD

— YouTube Advertisers (@YTAdvertisers) May 14, 2019

YouTube ads are great for brand awareness for any of our clients in any industry. According to data collected by Google, a series of three bumper ads leaves a much more memorable impression on consumers than one single 30-second ad. If we are able to portray a story with multiple bumper ads, it could be very effective versus just one 30 second ad. I am excited to try to showcase emotion and story in 6 seconds in these types of campaigns and also very interested to see how it impacts brand searches. Long story short (literally!)… You only have six seconds, so use them wisely.

Google & YouTube Join Forces With Discovery Ads

YouTube ad updates didn’t stop at Bumper Ads in this years GML. Discovery ads are a simple and effective way to tap into the power of YouTube, and the best part is, you don’t even need a video!

Video isn’t the only way to advertise on @YouTube: Repurpose your most effective image assets with Discovery Ads. See more from #GoogleMarketingLive here → https://t.co/i7inE9yJNp pic.twitter.com/txKzgsFIVv

— YouTube Advertisers (@YTAdvertisers) May 14, 2019

Discovery was a big theme at GML this year and Google’s new Discovery Ads fell nothing short of that. Discovery Ads are native ads that appear in multiple Google feed environments: YouTube home feed, Discover, and Gmail. These ads will allow businesses to build awareness and connect with consumers by using intent-based targeting, meaning you don’t need to enter a query at that time in order to see the ad.

Our first announcement is out! ‍ Presenting Discovery ads: inspire and engage consumers with rich and relevant creative across the YouTube home feed, the Gmail promotions and social tabs, and the feed in Discover. Hear more at #GoogleMarketingLive → https://t.co/J8PIH9BX7m! pic.twitter.com/38DDfzkSJU

— Google Ads (@GoogleAds) May 14, 2019

A unique way to leverage your top performing content is to utilize the best images from a social campaign you previously saw success in. Simply upload those images and YouTube will optimize your media mix for maximum performance. The YouTube home feed has always been a great place for users to discover new content and creators. And now, it can be a great place for them to discover your brand.

The YouTube Home feed is where every @YouTube user starts their journey. With help from our new tools, your brand can be part of that process too. Check out all the news from #GoogleMarketingLive here → https://t.co/i7inE9yJNp pic.twitter.com/01zMdSUC9Q

— YouTube Advertisers (@YTAdvertisers) May 16, 2019

People often focus so much on purchases and conversions that they often forget about how important brand awareness is. By getting your brand in front of new eyes, you will in turn get the right eyes on the right products, which will then lead to conversions. At the end of the day, brand awareness is the discovery. And once you’ve been discovered, let the shopping begin!

A Redesigned Google Shopping Experience

By: Billy Ash Jr, CDO

Let’s talk shop. Online shoppers expect their shopping experiences to be simple, fast, and intuitive, right? Google has done just that, by making Google Shopping more, well, shoppable.

We just unveiled a redesigned Google Shopping experience at #GoogleMarketingLive. Learn more at #GoogleMarketingLive → https://t.co/J8PIH9klIM pic.twitter.com/uh6nDaBooV

— Google Ads (@GoogleAds) May 14, 2019

The overall search experience has changed drastically, especially over the past 2 years. It is apparent that Google has been making it a priority to keep users on their platform with their introduction of knowledge graphs, quick answers, and other types of rich snippets into their search results pages. Google Shopping is their newest attempt at making Google a one stop shop for all of their users needs. With this update, Google has taken a major step in the e-commerce space to fight back against Amazon, who has been increasing their share of the overall search landscape every year. Google’s ‘buy now’ feature allows the user to add products to their universal shopping cart from all different sites and checkout from their Google account, rather than on each individual website. This is a big trend as we saw Instagram launch their new shop feature around the exact same time. Just like how Netflix changes your homepage based on shows that you’ve watched before, Google will be creating homepages based off your shopping habits and products that you indicate you want to see. With both shipping and pick up in-store options, Google is catering to all types of users who purchase online while also incentivizing businesses to participate as it drives foot traffic to their locations. What is really exciting about this shopping experience and truly differentiates it from Amazon is that it is not just limited to Google Search; they plan on releasing it to YouTube and Google image search later this year.

Sell your products directly on Google is as easy as 1, 2, 3 #GoogleMarketingLive
Sign Up https://t.co/cZvVUKIPvP pic.twitter.com/84wvCzMzze

— Google Ads (@GoogleAds) May 24, 2019

With this new feature, it’s imperative for business owners to ensure that their product feeds are set up correctly and that they are Shopping Actions merchants. Otherwise, they cannot participate in Google Shopping.

Google Adds Images to Paid Search With Gallery Ads

By: Amanda Hatton, Lead Social Media Strategist 

PPC advertisers now have the ability to feature up to eight images in Gallery Ads, Google’s new mobile search ad format. Going hand-in-hand with the updates to Google Shopping and Discovery Ads, it is safe to say that Google has come to accept the simple fact that images drive engagement and conversions. With Gallery Ads, they’re are finally putting that into practice.

Google announces Gallery Ads at #GoogleMarketingLIVE . Available later this year from @GoogleAds @Optmyzr #PPC pic.twitter.com/ttHV68yu2a

— Frederick Vallaeys (@siliconvallaeys) May 14, 2019

As an avid online shopper, I love seeing carousel format ads on my social news feeds. Having a collection of products dynamically curated for me, based on my online activity is a personalized experience that always leaves me wanting to shop and see more. Now, to have the same experience on Google, right at the top of search engine results? You’ve caught my attention.And, the fact that Gallery Ads aren’t strictly for products is a huge game changer. Think about it, wouldn’t you be much more convinced to book a reservation at a restaurant if the standard text ad you would normally see on Google was paired with a carousel of images of the food, drinks, and atmosphere? I would. Reading about something can only get someone so far; but by pairing memorable text with eye catching images, how could any business or brand not see success with this new ad format?

Final Thoughts from the TB Team

With all of these new updates, Google has made it very clear that they are doing everything they can to compete with other advertising and e-commerce giants like Facebook and Amazon. Just as Google is doing its job to keep up, it is our job as marketers to keep up with these updates as well and implement these new best practices into our campaigns. Not only are these updates critical to PPC success, they are achievable by businesses large and small. For example, any business, no matter their size or level of creative expertise, can succeed on YouTube with the ease and simplicity of the machine learning used to create Bumper Ads. We look forward to implementing these new strategies in our SEM campaigns and also providing our clients with an even better ROAS from Google ads.

The post Key Takeaways from Google Marketing Live 2019 appeared first on Today's Business.

Visibility on Google

SEM allows for your website to show up at the top of Google, regardless of where you rank organically. When you invest in PPC, it becomes possible for you to rank above your competitors even if they are ranking higher organically. In a study from Wordstream, it was estimated that around 41% of clicks on searches go to the top 3 paid ads in the search results page.

That’s not just effective for desktop. On mobile searches, paid results are the first visible results because you don’t have to scroll to see them, as you would organic. In 2019, everything is shifting to mobile, which is why it is extremely important to pivot your marketing strategy towards PPC. 

Brand Awareness

Paid search boosts brand awareness. People who would not otherwise see your business at the top of Google are seeing it. If it shows up for multiple searches, they are more likely to click and remember your brand in the long run. Google display campaigns reach 80% of global internet users. Having a solid SEM strategy will ensure that you are capitalizing on the eyes that are already on search ads and making the move towards converting some of them into profitable customers.

There are two components to brand awareness through paid search. You can run location extension ads which means that if you’re not showing up for location searches organically, you can compensate with Google ads. The second component is sitelink extensions. This means that you can drive users to different pages on the website besides the homepage. This is a strategy that has proven to be effective for bringing awareness to a new product or service your business is offering.

Consistent Traffic

One of the key factors in successful digital marketing and PPC is a consistent source of traffic. Traffic not only drives conversions, but it provides valuable insights into your target market.

This increase in users on your website is useful for collecting data about your target audience. The more data that we have on the users that visit your website, the better we can tailor our ads on multiple ad networks. Planning remarketing campaigns based on the data we have about your target market will ensure that you will see more conversions from your campaigns.

Cost Effective

When it comes to SEM, you are paying per click. This means that even if someone sees your ad, but does not click on it you are not charged for that view or impression. This is an extremely cost-effective marketing tactic because you make the most of every dollar that you spend because it is being funneled into every click you receive.

Businesses make $2 in income for every $1 they spend in AdWords, according to Google. SEM is great for really seeing an ROI on your marketing spends.

Here at Today’s Business, we adhere to a manual keyword bidding strategy. This allows you to be in complete control of your bids and how much you want to spend in the most efficient way possible so that your ads can show to the right people on search engines. When it comes to keywords, we make sure that we are bidding on keywords with the highest search volume, the lowest cost per click and the lowest competition.

Keyword Strategy

Utilizing a PPC strategy can work symbiotically with your SEO campaign because it can help you determine the most lucrative keywords in your industry. It can also tell you what your competitors are ranking for.

There are three different keyword match types that we utilize. Broad Match Modifier ensures that regardless of the order that the keywords are typed by the user, it will show up in the search ads. Phrase Match ensures that if the user types additional words before the keyword phrase, it will still show up. Exact Match, just like the name suggests, is when the ad will show up when the exact keyword phrase is typed into the search bar.

SEM (PPC) at Today’s Business

Our approach to search engine marketing is different from any other agency because we base our campaigns solely off of performance and our bidding strategies are perfect for those who want the most cost-effective approach possible. If you’re ready to take your search marketing to the next level, let’s talk!

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Do you know what your digital advertising dollars are really going towards? Chances are, you’re being robbed blind. Many businesses hire “expert” advertising agencies to run their Google Adwords account but fail to know the basic ins-and-outs of the campaigns their agency is running. If the stats you are given aren’t lining up or if you are looking to call your agency out on their failed strategies, read on as I give an inside look at the top four mistakes ad companies make, which cost your business a lot of money. 

1. They are not breaking up your campaigns by branded and unbranded searches

Branded vs non-branded search in terms of Google AdWords is the starting point to find out how your ads are doing. Every single one of your campaigns should be separated by brand vs. non-brand and there should be a clear difference in what the cost per acquisition is for both campaigns.

What is a branded search?

Short and sweet, branded keywords are those that are directly correlated to your business/trademark and no one else’s. Which can include:

• Doctors name, if a multi-physician practice
• Your name plus other words: company name + reviews
• Products or product name

What are non-branded keywords?

A non-branded search does not include your brand name or any part of it. Instead, the user is searching for a specific service or product. It’s important that the non-branded keywords you are bidding on align with your company’s offerings. If not, you will end up wasting money bidding on keywords that you cannot convert on. Examples of non-branded search terms a plastic surgery practice may want to bid on include:

• Plastic surgeon near me
• Tummy tuck near me

Branded vs. Non-Branded Paid Search Campaigns

Now that we know the difference between branded and non-branded searches, let’s dive into why there needs to be a clear line between the two. There is going to be a significant difference between the average cost per click (CPC) of a branded search compared to a non-branded search. Furthermore, someone searching for your brand name is much more likely to convert than someone who is out there prospecting.

To inflate stats, common practice ad agencies will tell you a general cost per acquisition (CPA) for all of the ads running on your Adwords account. At Today’s Business, we try to be as transparent as possible by telling our clients what the CPA is for both their branded and non-branded campaigns. We even take it one step further, breaking down each campaign by ad group so our clients know what keywords are the most valuable to their business.

2. They are not accounting for data discrepancies between Analytics and Adwords

The first thing we look for when starting a campaign that has already been running is how many clicks Google AdWords says you received compared to the number of sessions Google Analytics is telling you Adwords sent you. On average, we see a 10% discrepancy between clicks and sessions, but that number can be higher. We have seen some accounts with discrepancies upwards of 60%. When Google AdWords is telling you that you got 600 clicks and Google Analytics is telling you that you received 200 sessions of those clicks, essentially it means that ¾ of your ad budget is not being tracked properly. Additionally, users may click your ad multiple times, but it only results in one session. Why do these things happen? Because agencies mistakenly do the following:

• Build a landing page and forget to track and implement the Google Analytics codes
• Don’t implement different analytics codes per landing page
• Don’t properly connect your AdWords to Analytics

For example, if you have your own physician site and your own practice site, Google will allow you to connect two different AdWords accounts to one Analytics account (even though you shouldn’t). Just because you technically can do it doesn’t mean you should, and agencies that make this mistake will not be tracking campaigns properly. When things like this happen, you have no real way to tell what your cost per acquisition is, so you are essentially throwing money out the window.

3. They are not setting up Goals in Analytics 

Goals are the most important objective in any advertising campaign, as they allow you to track specific user interactions on your site. When a website visitor performs that action, Google Analytics and/or Adwords records that as a conversion. If you run campaigns without incorporating goals, you will never be able to find your true cost per acquisition.What does this mean? Your stats mean nothing if your goals were not completed.

Without goals, it would be impossible to optimize your page and determine which ad groups are actually working. It’s important to note that budgets are set in the campaign level and within each campaign, you have ad groups that each contain different keywords and ads. If you aren’t able to tell what your cost per acquisition is per ad group, you aren’t going to be able to determine if should pause one campaign and spend more on another.

When running Google AdWords campaigns, be sure you are tracking the following:

• Phone calls
• Contact forms
• Request an appointment
• PDF downloads
• Email subscribers
• E-Commerce sales

4. They are using the wrong keyword match types

When running any SEM campaigns, it’s important to know not only what keywords your agency is targeting but how they are targeting them. This is where match types come into play.

PPC Keyword Match Types

Currently, there are 5 different match types. They are:

• Broad Match
• Broad Match Modifier
• Phrase Match
• Exact Match
• Negative Match

1. Broad Match

A broad match type gives you a ton of opportunity to show up in unrelated keywords. With this match type, you are getting the widest reach and least amount of relevance. For instance, if your agency is bidding on broad match for plastic surgery, it can include:

• In a different state 
• Misspellings
• Synonyms
• What Google thinks is a related search
• Close variations
• Negative keywords

For instance, if you are a plastic surgeon in New York City, by using a broad match type, you could be bidding on plastic surgery in San Diego. Equally as detrimental, a broad match for plastic surgery could be bidding on orthopedic surgery.

2. Broad Match Modifier

The second least relevant keyword type is broad match modifiers. This includes one example keyword with an extra keyword on top of it. This means you will bid on keywords that fall under plastic and surgery. For instance, you may bid on keywords such as ‘what plastics are used during surgery.’

3. Phrase Match

You can set a phrase match by putting it in quotes. This match type will include the exact phrase of your keyword and include any other words in that segment, including negative keywords, as opposed to having plus signs in what plastic is used in surgery, this will only show up in plastic surgery jobs or plastic surgery colleges.

4. Exact Match

Exact match provides the lowest reach but the highest relevance. You are only going to be showing up for the exact keywords that you are putting in brackets. For instance, if you use plastic surgeon, the only additional keyword you would show up for is plastic surgeons.

5. Negative Match

Designating a negative keyword tells Google to never display your ad when a user searches for it. Negative match keywords are often used in conjunction with broad and phrase match types, as it helps better target potential consumers. This can lead to an increase to your ROI when using a broad match strategy.

Summary

If you don’t know the details behind the numbers in your campaigns, the figures that your advertising company is showing you are most likely skewed. Now that you’ve read my insider tips, go out and ask your agency what types of keywords you’re bidding on, what match types you’re using, and what negative keywords you’re using. Furthermore, if you’re running your PPC advertising yourself, ensure you are not making these mistakes. If you have any questions or concerns, leave them in the comments below and we can discuss!

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