Paid search has always been a popular method of advertising on desktop. However studies are finding that up to 30% of advertising methods are targeting mobile. There is no denying that mobile is growing, even to the extent that Google is focusing more on mobile and looking to benefit from mobile, as seen with new Enhanced campaigns.
A wealth of information was shared at the first day of the SMX London conference. From a paid search perspective the speakers shared knowledge and ideas on a wide range of areas pertaining to paid search. Below are some of the most valuable tips and information gathered on day 1.
Paid Search Updates and Tactics
Ann Stanley was the first speaker to talk about paid search, and dived into details pertaining to Enhanced campaigns.
Ann went into detail about the pros and cons of the launch of Enhanced campaigns highlighting specific areas that can be beneficial and other areas that can be a hindrance. While Google has mentioned that automatic changes to Enhanced campaigns will begin on the 22nd July 2013, Ann highlighted that the practices most agencies are seeming to use is to wait until the last possible moment before changing campaigns to Enhanced.
Advertisers are preferring to keep the campaign on the Legacy setting as long as possible in order to limit the risk of unwanted changes that could occur when activating Enhanced campaigns. (more…)
This is a guest post by Yousef Sekander, Director at Rocketmill.
On May 1st, Salesforce will pull the plug on Salesforce for Google Adwords, and thousands of companies who use it will ask two questions. Why did Salesforce do this, and What do I do next?
We’ll make a few educated guesses at why, and also point you towards some solutions that can replace Salesforce for Google Adwords.
Salesforce for Google Adwords is different from every other app, in that it was the only app installed by default with Salesforce. With close to two thousand apps on the app exchange, only Salesforce for Google Adwords came pre-installed. Amazingly, even a few months after new customers were blocked from using it, it was still there for new salesforce instances (though completely unusable).
So why did Salesforce go from pushing this app on every single customer to suddenly retiring it? Their press release certainly doesn’t help, with this vague statement:
“Unmatched pace of innovation is one of the hallmark benefits to salesforce.com customers, and in order to continue to deliver more breakthroughs around Google AdWords, we’re turning to our vibrant ecosystem of partners. We’re focusing our innovation efforts around making the Salesforce CRM you love even better which is why we have decided to retire SFGA. Our AppExchange partners will provide similar offerings with additional capabilities so you can continue to realize success with Google AdWords.”
Theory number 1: It wasn’t worth the support / internal resources. According to Salesforce product managers, only one to two thousand companies were actively using Salesforce for Google Adwords. Considering it was installed by default for everyone, that’s a low, low uptake of +around 1% for active use.
Theory number 2: Salesforce got in a pissing match with Google about something and this was a casualty. Salesforce certainly had a lot more focus on integration with Google Apps in 2008, but this relationship since has cooled, with minimal development to bring the two companies, and their products, together.
There are a lot of solutions out there, ranging from a home-brew DIY solution using open source software, to Marketing Automation companies owned by Oracle. We’ll go through our favourite three at different price points.
Solution for around $100 a month – Daddy Analytics
We’ve taken a look at the solutions that have popped trying to offer a replacement for SFGA. All manage to replace the features of SFGA, and all of them cost somewhere between $50 and $200, depending on your volume of leads or number of users.
The outright winner on features in this price range is Daddy Analytics. As well as replacing Google Adwords, it offers some nifty services based around the IP address, including telling you what company or ISP the Lead came from, what device they were on (can you price your wares higher to Mac users then PC users?), and even their estimated GeoLocation. We were also shown a sneak peak at their beta features coming out shortly, and this one really impressed us – per page tracking for Leads. So you’ll know which pages your prospect went to before and after submitting your web form, and how long they spent on each page. If they spent 3 minutes on the pricing page and then submitted their info, this likely a more qualified prospect.
Solution for around $1000 a month – Hubspot
HubSpot is the winner here, seems to have the highest ‘cool’ factor. Have you seen their Alanis Moriset spoof video? Not only is it funny, it shows the power of inbound marketing, and already has over a hundred thousand views. When that went viral, HubSpot’s incoming leads shot up. HubSpot is not designed as a replacement for SFGA, they are so much more – a marketing automation system that increases your prospects engagement while focusing on your marketing ROI. And HubSpot seems to really ‘get it’, showing a personality that is at once trendy and edgy, while also being focused and professional. Their features are almost too long to list, and their integration with Salesforce leads is robust, as Hubspot use both Salesforce and Hubspot in-house. Salesforce even owns a significant stake in them.
Solution for over $1000 a month – Marketo
Marketo is the market leader, and offers even deeper integration with Salesforce, and more of a full featured offering. You pay for that power, though, with pricing in the range of $2000 to $8000 a month (their pricing can be even higher or lower). Marketo, for example, has far more features around it’s email campaigns, with arguably better better drip-marketing, deliverability reports, and list management.
But the challenge of comparing Marketo to Hubspot is that we quickly move into subjective opinion, rather than a more objective comparison. It’s a bit like Oracle vs Salesforce, or Windows vs Mac. At the end of the day it comes down to what suits you, from the user interface to the company approach. When you’re spending the big bucks for Marketo or Hubspot, you’re going to have to evaluate them and determine yourself, as only you know your exact needs.
What would your solution be?
Earlier this month, I presented at SES London looking at Remarketing with Google AdWords and Google Analytics. Part of my presentation looked at top tips that advertisers should consider and pay attention to when they are running a remarketing campaign to help get the best results.
In this post, I am going to talk through 15 tips and recommendations which you should be able to take away and implement within your remarketing strategies and campaigns.
My slides from SES London are available to view on Slideshare if you want to take a look through the entire presentation in more detail.
This week Google announced a new Adwords update which will presumably have a big impact for the advertisers using Google as their main platform. With the new update Google says managing campaigns should become a lot simpler.
But there is more to it than meets the eye. It could implicate a lot of more work from advertisers to turn back the things Google asked them to do last year and next to that it might not always have the result you would think it has. (more…)
If you are targeting the Nordic market through search engines or social, there is some basics you should know about us and how we think, act and search.
I am a Norwegian myself, working mainly in the Nordic market. But I also work with people from the rest of the world, and I am always surprised how “foreigners” look at us. For instance, I was once asked by an american how I managed to drive a car over there, since all Swedes drive on the left side of the road. There`s two errors in that assumption. I am Norwegian, and Norway is not the capital of Sweden. And we drive on the right side of the road. But this is not the only time I have felt misunderstood. Surfing the web, I feel misunderstood every day. It is time for some inside information about the Nordic consumer. (more…)
This is a guest post by Sri Sharma, managing director at Net Media Planet.
There are so many online publishers competing for every sale this festive period it has never been more important to stand apart from your rivals. There is still time to maximise performance of your e-commerce site this Christmas by improving your Paid Search marketing.
Here are some top tips for your ecommerce site to help you make it a bumper 2012 Christmas! (more…)
Remarketing with Google has become more popular over the past six months and I think this is set to continue into 2013. Once you get the hang of it, it is relatively easy to set up and manage. The benefits I have seen off the back of creating and running remarketing campaigns has been huge. You can get maximum exposure for your brand at such a low cost as you can set it up so you only pay for the clicks, not impressions. Additionally, the Conversion Rate can also be high as the people you are following round are already engaged with your brand and more likely to convert.
When Google first launched remarketing, it was a very clunky to set up but since then they have relaunched the platform and have made it much simpler.
I am not going to go into detail about setting up remarketing in this post as there are some fantastic guides on Google but what I am going to do is give you some examples of lists and audiences that you can build to get the most out of your campaigns.
PPC is changing, at least, that is what Epiphany Search says. They released a new animation and infographic on that matter of which the infographic you can find below. If you want to see the animation, head over to our Facebook Page and tell us what you think of that! (more…)
This the season for search marketers in retail to not sleep, as click volumes begin to rapidly increase and fluctuate throughout the busy festive online shopping season. To ease some of this stress, we at Marin Software have been analysing data from the 2011 festive season to help search marketers prepare campaigns for key dates and fluctuations.
We’ve been looking at spend, CTR, CPC, impression, revenue and mobile click share trends across Q4 2011 to identify key dates for your 2012 Christmas calendar. Off the back of this I wanted to provide nine practical and actionable tips to prepare campaigns for the festive season. So, here goes: (more…)
This is a guest post by Jeffrey Bleijendaal, Manager Search Engines and Display Marketing Ematters.
Keeping Google AdWords ROI positive is extremely important to Google, because having happy advertisers means more ad spend and thus revenue for Google. There are a number of features advertisers can use to keep their budget under control. You can think of ad scheduling, regional targeting and keyword match types. In this article we’ll have a closer look at this last feature; keyword match types.
The keyword match types offer advertisers the possibility to create huge, broad campaigns which drive a lot of impressions and clicks. On the other hand it also makes it possible to keep it small and narrow to only drive impressions and clicks for the most relevant searches. How broad or narrow the campaign eventually will be depends entirely on how the keyword match types are being used. This article will give you a close insight on how to build the desired campaign using these match types. (more…)
Nowadays, simply running an AdWords campaign via the AdWords Interface isn’t enough. We all have so many tools at our disposal but nine times out of ten, people forget the one tool that they should be using when it comes to managing a PPC campaign…. Google Analytics.
In this post, I am going to look at some of the features available to PPC advertisers in the Google Analytics interface and explain how you should be using them when it comes to managing your paid search campaign.
First things first you need to make sure you have linked your AdWords Account with your Google Analytics. If you don’t do this, you are going to be missing out on a wealth of data that is essential to running a successful paid search campaign. If you are unsure of how to link the two accounts together, check out the AdWords Help Desk which will give you step by step instructions.
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