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Short Summary

• Understand Google Ads fundamentals and best practices for successful campaigns.
• Leverage ad extensions, Responsive Search Ads, SMART objectives & persuasive ad copy to create effective ads.
• Optimize performance with analytics tracking & A/B testing while utilizing negative keywords and a data strategy.

Understanding Google Ads

Google is the most popular search engine. Ads is a powerful pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform, enabling businesses of all sizes to reach their target audience effectively and efficiently. But to truly harness the power of the Google Ads platform, it is essential to comprehend its fundamentals, from campaign types to ad targeting. 

Grasping these concepts and implementing Google Analytics. Ads best practices, as well as utilizing valuable Google ads tips, will not only help you adjust to ever-changing marketing conditions but also unlock the full potential of your campaigns.

Understanding the basics of Google Ads is the first step to success. Knowing how to create campaigns.

Google Ads campaign types

Google search results. Ads offer a variety of campaign types to cater to your unique business needs, including Google Ads search campaigns, as well as:

• Keyword-targeted campaigns
• Display ad campaigns
• Google Shopping Ad Campaigns
• App Ad Campaigns
• Performance Max campaigns

Selecting the right campaign type is crucial, as it determines the search pages your ads appear on and, in turn, the audiences you reach.

Conducting keyword research to identify the most relevant terms for your brand is vital for all campaign types. Equally important is organizing ad groups, which consist of related keywords, affiliated ads, and a landing page. 

By choosing the right campaign type and optimizing ad groups, you can ensure your ads resonate with your target audience and drive better results.

The importance of ad targeting

Effective ad targeting is the crux of successful Google Ads campaigns. It ensures that your ads are displayed to the right audience and includes relevant keywords to maximize their impact. Selecting the appropriate audience and employing pertinent keywords are essential for driving conversions.

Broad match keywords, for instance, can help display your ads to the right audience, even if they don’t type in the exact keyword you specified. Additionally, utilizing features like Affinity and Custom segment targeting allows you to hone in on users based on their interests, visited URLs, and used apps. By incorporating phrase match into your strategy, you can further refine your targeting efforts.

By embracing ad targeting best practices, you’ll refine your campaigns, generate more qualified traffic, and ultimately improve your return on ad spend.

Creating Effective Ad Campaigns

Create an effective Google search engine. Ads campaigns require a strategic approach, from setting specific objectives to crafting compelling ad copy. In this section, we’ll delve into the art of setting SMART objectives and writing persuasive ad copy that resonates with your target audience, ultimately improving your campaign performance.

SMART objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals that you can achieve.

Setting SMART objectives

SMART objectives are a goal-setting framework that stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

They help individuals and businesses effectively create, track, and achieve their desired outcomes. Establishing SMART goals for your Google Ads campaigns is vital to ensuring success.

For instance, consider goals like:

• increasing website traffic by 10% in the next three months
• boosting conversions by 20% in the next six months
• reducing cost per click by 15% in the next month

By setting clear and measurable objectives, you’ll be better equipped to track your campaign performance and make data-driven decisions to optimize your ads.

Crafting compelling ad copy

Crafting compelling ad copy is pivotal to capturing your audience’s attention and driving conversions. A successful advertisement copy should:

• Prioritize benefits over features
• Incorporate emotional triggers
• Feature a clear call-to-action
• Be concise and accessible
• Provide realistic expectations

Responsive search ads (RSAs) are a powerful tool to optimize your ad copy. With RSAs, you can create multiple headline and description options, allowing Google’s machine-learning algorithms to generate personalized ads for searchers. 

By following RSA best practices, such as adding at least one responsive search ad per ad group and using popular content from your expanded text ads, you can increase ad strength and drive up to 9% more clicks and conversions.

Optimizing Landing Pages for Google Ads

A well-optimized landing page is key to delivering a seamless user experience and driving higher conversion rates. In this section, we’ll explore the significance of aligning landing page content with ad copy and improving landing page design for a better user experience. Ultimately, this will lead to better campaign performance.

When creating a landing page, it is important to ensure that the content is relevant.

Aligning landing page content with ad copy

Ensuring a seamless user experience starts with aligning your landing page content with your ad copy. By using similar language, emphasizing key benefits, and maintaining a consistent tone across the page, you can meet users’ expectations when they click on your ad, resulting in an improved experience and more conversions.

To effectively match your landing page content with your ad copy, always consider the intent of the user. Make sure your landing page addresses their needs, provides valuable information, and offers a clear solution to their problem. By aligning your content, you’ll not only create a cohesive user journey but also drive better results for your Google Ads campaigns.

Improving landing page design and usability

An aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly landing page is crucial for keeping your audience engaged and driving conversions. A successful design should feature:

• Clear calls-to-action
• Visually appealing imagery
• Easy navigation
• A minimalist layout that presents information in a non-intrusive fashion

Incorporating the following elements can enhance your landing page design:

• Compelling headlines
• Testimonials
• Case studies
• Focusing on a single conversion goal

By optimizing your landing page design and usability, you’ll create a more enjoyable experience for your users, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates and better campaign performance.

Leveraging Ad Extensions and Responsive Search Ads

Ad extensions and responsive search ads are powerful tools that can significantly improve your Google Ads campaign performance. In this section, we’ll dive into the different types of ad extensions and how to maximize the potential of responsive search ads to boost your campaign results.

Ad extensions are additional pieces of information that can be added to your ad, such as a phone number.

Types of ad extensions

Ad extensions are additional pieces of information that can be added to your Google Ads campaigns, providing users with more reasons to engage with your ads. Google. Ads offer a variety of ad extensions, including:

• Action Extensions
• App Extensions
• Call Extensions
• Callout Extensions
• Filter Link Extensions
• Flyer Extensions
• Lead Form Extensions
• Location Extensions
• Price Extensions
• Structured Snippet Extensions

Each extension serves a unique purpose, from adding a call-to-action button with Action Extensions to providing business location details with Location Extensions. By choosing the right ad extensions for your campaigns, you can make your ads more attractive to users, ultimately driving higher click-through rates and conversions.

Maximizing the potential of responsive search ads

Responsive search ads (RSAs) offer a dynamic and personalized ad experience with more variations and testing options than traditional search ads. By crafting compelling ad copy and experimenting with different ad variations, you can optimize your RSAs for better performance and outcomes.

Some RSA best practices include using countdown customizers and location insertion to target customers in specific locations, as well as incorporating smart bidding and broad-match keywords in campaigns with responsive search ads. By maximizing the potential of RSAs, you can drive up to 20% more conversions for the same cost per action, resulting in a more efficient and effective Google Ads campaign.

Analyzing and Improving Google Ads Performance

To continuously improve your Google Ads campaigns, it’s crucial to track key metrics and utilize data-driven optimization techniques. In this section, we’ll discuss how to use Google Analytics to monitor important metrics and implement A/B testing to fine-tune your ads for better results.

Google Analytics can be used to track key metrics such as click-through rate (CTR).

Tracking key metrics with Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful tool for measuring the success of your Google Ads campaigns. By monitoring essential metrics such as:

• Traffic sources
• Bounce rate
• Conversion rate
• Average session duration
• The ratio of new to returning visitors

You can gain valuable insights into your campaign performance.

Connecting your Google Analytics account to your Google Ads campaigns enables you to:

• Track, analyze, and report on interactions between channels and campaigns in one convenient location
• Identify areas for improvement within your campaigns, such as optimizing ad copy, targeting, and landing pages
• Pinpoint negative keywords and adjust your account structure

This integration provides valuable insights and helps you make data-driven decisions to optimize your advertising efforts.

A/B testing for ad optimization

A/B testing is a powerful methodology for comparing two versions of a webpage or app to determine which performs better. In the context of Google Ads, A/B testing helps you compare different ad variations and identify the most effective ad copy, design, and targeting options.

To set up an A/B test, define the objective of the test, create the variations to be tested, configure the test, execute the test, and evaluate the results. When interpreting A/B test results, consider factors such as sample size, test duration, and statistical significance, as well as the context of the test and the potential influence of external factors.

By leveraging A/B testing, you can optimize your ad campaigns and drive better results.

Negative Keywords and Account Structure

Effective Google search engine. Ads management relies on the strategic use of negative keywords and a well-structured account. In this section, we’ll explore how to utilize negative keywords effectively and organize your campaigns and ads for better Google Ads performance.

Negative keywords are words or phrases that you add to your campaigns to prevent your ads from showing.

Utilizing negative keywords effectively

Negative keywords are terms that can be added to your campaigns to prevent your ads from appearing in irrelevant search engine results pages (SERPs). By excluding terms that are not relevant to your product or service, you can improve your ad targeting and drive more qualified traffic to your website.

One strategy for bolstering your negative keyword list is to add all keywords that have not produced any conversions. By refining your keyword list, you can ensure that your ads are displayed to the most relevant audience, ultimately improving your campaign performance and return on ad spend.

Organizing campaigns and ad groups

The structure of your Google Ads account plays a significant role in the efficient management of:

• ad copy
• targeting
• scheduling
• other aspects of your campaigns

A well-structured account enables you to optimize performance and make data-driven decisions to improve your ad campaigns.

Organize campaigns and specific ad groups for optimal performance, customize them to meet your objectives, and configure them with relevant keywords, ad copy, and targeting settings. By structuring your account effectively, you’ll be better equipped to manage your campaigns, analyze performance, and make informed decisions to enhance your Google Ads results.

Advanced Google Ads Strategies

In the ever-evolving world of Google Ads, staying ahead of the curve requires embracing advanced strategies like automation and machine learning, as well as building a first-party data strategy.

In this section, we’ll explore how to leverage these strategies to gain a competitive edge and maximize your Google Ads success.

Embracing automation and machine learning

As Google rapidly transitions to machine learning, advertisers are faced with fewer targeting options and less data for each new campaign type, including video ads. Embracing automation and machine learning features in Google Ads can save time and improve campaign performance.

Some automated solutions provided by Google include optimized targeting, audience expansion, and Smart Bidding. By leveraging these features and experimenting with new bidding strategies, you can adapt to the changing landscape and continuously optimize your campaigns for better results.

Building a first-party data strategy

With the shift towards a privacy-first approach and the decreasing availability of third-party data, a robust first-party data strategy is crucial for remaining competitive in the world of Google Ads. Sources of customer data for a first-party data strategy can include Customer Relationship Management software, lead generation forms, and other advertising channels used in your marketing strategy.

By collecting and analyzing first-party data, you can gain invaluable insights into your target audience’s behavior, preferences, and needs. This information can be instrumental in enhancing your ad targeting, improving campaign performance, and ultimately driving higher conversions and revenue for your business.

Chart Your Course to Google Ads Mastery

In conclusion, the world of Google Ads is constantly evolving, and staying ahead requires vigilance, adaptability, and a strategic approach. By following the best practices outlined in this comprehensive guide, embracing advanced strategies like automation and machine learning, and building a robust first-party data strategy, you’ll be well-equipped to dominate the world of Google Ads in 2023 and beyond.

Together with Romain Berg, the experts in digital marketing, let us help you navigate this ever-changing landscape and achieve remarkable success with your Google Ad campaigns. Take the first step towards excellence – schedule your free strategy call today!

When it comes to generating traffic and boosting sales, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing are two of the most effective strategies you can implement.

The main focus of SEO is driving organic traffic to your website. On the other hand, PPC advertising focuses on displaying paid ads on search engine results pages (SERPs). 

(Learn more about these when you book your free SEO or PPC strategy call today!)

Each strategy has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. For instance, SEO typically demands a lesser investment compared to PPC, but the trade-off is the time it takes to manifest results. Conversely, the impact of a PPC campaign can be observed within hours! 

So, which strategy is better for your business? 

In this SEO vs. PPC comparison guide, we cover everything you need to know about both tactics, from their pros and cons to how they compare in terms of ROI and which one you should choose.

Let’s jump right into it.

Overview of SEO

Search engine optimization is the process of improving your digital footprint so that it matches the standards of search engines and the needs of consumers.

Investing in SEO increases your chances of getting discovered by your target audience when they make a search query that’s relevant to the product or service you provide. 

Four Main SEO Categories

On-page SEO

This refers to the strategic optimization of individual website elements to enhance their visibility and ranking on search engines. These elements include title tags (which define a webpage’s title), URL structures (making them easily readable and relevant), meta descriptions (which provide a brief overview of the webpage content), images (optimizing file size and alt attributes), and internal linking (creating logical connections between different pages on your site). All these efforts improve the relevancy and comprehensibility of your content for search engines, boosting your site’s search visibility.

Off-page SEO

This encompasses all external activities that boost your website’s traffic and reputation. It’s the process of earning credibility and authority from other reputable websites and platforms. Key strategies include backlinking (acquiring links from other websites pointing back to your site), brand signaling (increasing brand awareness and mentions across the web), and encouraging positive online reviews. These efforts increase your site’s reputation, which search engines consider when ranking your site.

Technical SEO

This area of SEO focuses on improving the technical aspects of a website that contribute to its ability to be crawled and indexed by search engines. This includes practices like sitemap submission (providing a map of your site structure to search engines), ensuring mobile-friendliness (optimizing your website for mobile devices), and speed optimization (reducing loading time). These efforts ensure your website is accessible, quick, and easy for search engine bots to crawl, improving your site’s visibility in search results.

Local SEO

This SEO strategy is vital for businesses that have a physical location or serve a specific geographical area. It involves optimizing your website to appear in regional search results, thereby reaching local customers. Strategies may include optimizing for local keywords, claiming and optimizing your Google My Business listing, collecting and managing local customer reviews, and implementing schema markup for local SEO. These efforts increase your visibility in local search results, helping you attract and connect with local customers.

Why Use SEO?

There are many reasons why SEO is a prominent marketing channel. For starters, SEO is all about driving organic traffic; nowadays, 53% of all website traffic is organic. On the other hand, paid traffic accounts for only 15%.

Further, unlike most other digital marketing channels, SEO is sustainable. With a paid campaign, traffic ends the moment the campaign ends. With good SEO, however, you’ll always garner traffic.

Pros of SEO

75% of digital marketers believe that SEO is an extremely effective inbound marketing strategy, and it’s not hard to see why when you consider the following factors:

1. SEO Is Cost-Effective

SEO is one of the most cost-effective forms of digital marketing. Even though SEO services require an investment, delegating your SEO needs is typically less expensive compared to conducting an extensive PPC campaign.

With PPC advertising, you pay for every click your website gets. With SEO, on the other hand, you don’t have to pay to gain visibility. You just need to create high-quality content that ranks. 

2. Builds Brand Authority

Most people view high-ranking websites as credible and trustworthy. Good SEO can help you rank higher on the SERPs, which will translate to greater credibility and domain authority.  

The higher your domain authority, the more backlinks you’re going to get from other trusted domains, creating a snowball effect that will result in exponential growth.  

3. Long-Lasting Results

The staying power of SEO is more potent than that of PPC. Once you’ve secured high rankings on Google, you’ll continue attracting consistent search traffic.

This isn’t the case with PPC, though. The moment you shut down your PPC campaign is the moment your traffic dies. So, when it comes to sustainability, SEO is the clear winner.  

4. Targets Different Funnel Stages

There are four stages to a typical sales funnel: awareness, interest, desire, and action. Content-wise, a visitor’s needs in the awareness stage are different from those of a visitor looking to take action.

The great thing about SEO is that it enables you to meet different segments of your target audience exactly where they are via different types of content. So, SEO is perfect for supplementing all four stages of your funnel.

Cons of SEO

SEO brings a lot of benefits to the table, but it needs to improve in quite a few aspects when compared to PPC. Consider the following disadvantages before spending your marketing dollars on SEO:

1. SEO Takes Time

The most notable drawback with SEO, as opposed to PPC, is that it’s a long-term game. A study by Ahrefs shows that 78% of high-ranking web pages are more than a year old.

It can take several weeks or even months before you start seeing significant results with SEO. So, if your window for making an impact via marketing is short, SEO alone won’t cut it.

Learn more about the timeline of SEO results.

2. Algorithms Change Rapidly

Google’s algorithms experience both minor and major changes over time. So, if you’re looking to stay on top of your SEO game, you’ll have to monitor and adapt to algorithm changes.

This entails optimizing your website and content on a regular basis. For instance, you might need to update old or outdated content. You should also get rid of expired links.

3. The Competition Is Fierce

The competition can be extremely fierce depending on your niche and your target keywords. After all, you’re not the only one trying to secure high SERP rankings.  

Beating the competition requires a lot of experience and know-how, which can be hard to acquire while trying to run a business. In this case, outsourcing your SEO needs may be your best bet.

Overview of PPC

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a specific type of online marketing, particularly within the realm of search engine marketing (SEM), where advertisers pay a fee for each click on their ads.

The most prevalent type of PPC ads is search ads, typically facilitated through Google’s advertising platform, as highlighted by Investopedia. These involve advertisers paying Google each time their ad is clicked. Additionally, there are social media ads where platforms such as Facebook and Instagram charge for clicks, as outlined by Social Media Examiner.

One of the main strengths of PPC, as highlighted by Search Engine Land, is its precision targeting. This ensures that the people you’re attracting are not just interested in your product or service but are also ready to engage.

The PPC model also offers extensive customizability, allowing advertisers to focus on specific demographics based on geographical location, interests, age, and more.

Furthermore, PPC’s flexibility, as highlighted by Forbes, extends to promoting specific deals or products, which is particularly beneficial for small businesses that may not have the resources to continually update their websites with new sales and promotions.

However, it’s crucial to understand that PPC, unlike SEO, does not contribute to your organic search rankings. Instead, it puts your ads directly in front of potential customers at the very moment they’re searching for a product or service that you offer.

Pros of PPC

Did you know that 65% of small to mid-sized businesses have run a PPC campaign? This can be attributed to the following benefits of the PPC model:

1. PPC Is Fast-Acting

The PPC model is much faster than the SEO model. With SEO, it can take months for you to see notable results. With PPC, you’ll notice an increase in sales in a short period of time.  

That’s not to mention that PPC is easier to master and scale than SEO. Don’t get us wrong; it’s still hard, as there are a lot of things that can go wrong. It’s just less complex than SEO.

2. Laser-Focused Targeting

The PPC model allows you to be as specific as you want with your audience targeting. You can target potential customers based on age group, marital status, interests, and more.

This granular approach to audience targeting makes PPC advertising extremely cost-effective, as it puts you on the radar of people who are actively searching for a product or service like yours.

3. High Visibility

Though a PPC advertising campaign won’t improve your organic search rankings, it will position your ads on the first search engine results page, above organic rankings.

Once your PPC campaign ends, your ads will no longer sit above organic rankings. Also, note that Google makes it quite obvious to users when the top results are paid ads.

4. Measurable and Testable

There are many traffic, conversion, and revenue-focused PPC key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can use to measure the efficiency of your campaign and the return on investment (ROI) it’s generating.

What’s more, the PPC model allows for quick experimentation. You can run A/B tests on your PPC ads to figure out which variations garner better results.

Cons of PPC

Despite offering quick results and outstanding audience targeting, the PPC model isn’t without its faults. Below are some factors to consider before investing in PPC advertising:

1. Understanding the Cost Dynamics of PPC and SEO

When weighing the costs of PPC and SEO, it’s crucial to understand that PPC advertising, while highly effective, can become a significant expenditure over time. Unlike SEO, which involves upfront investment primarily around content creation and website optimization, PPC operates on a cost-per-click (CPC) model.

With PPC, every click on your ad incurs a charge. The average CPC for search ads can hover around $2, but this figure is by no means a maximum. In industries where competition for keywords and ad placements is fierce, the CPC of a PPC campaign can skyrocket, reaching heights of $30-$40 per click.

For a small to mid-sized business operating on a tight budget, maintaining a PPC campaign at such costs can quickly become unsustainable. Conversely, once the initial investments are made, SEO can continue to drive traffic over time without the need for constant financial input.

However, it’s essential to remember that each has its unique advantages, and the best strategy often involves a balanced combination of both PPC and SEO.

2. Clicks Don’t Equal Sales

A PPC campaign can help drive a lot of traffic to your website in a short period of time. That doesn’t mean every click will convert, though. Your product or service must provide value to convert clicks into sales.

On top of that, your website needs to be well-designed, user-friendly, and trustworthy. Your sales copies need to be on point, and you need to display testimonials and take reviews seriously.

3. You Must Keep Paying

While SEO is a long-term game that ensures a consistent flow of organic traffic for a long time, PPC advertising is reliant on your budget and offers short-term wins.

The moment your budget dries up is the moment your PPC wins will come to an end. That’s not to mention that you might lose some money in the beginning while trying to optimize your ads.

SEO vs. PPC: Which Strategy Is Better?

Having read the pros and cons of SEO and PPC, you’re probably wondering which strategy is best suited for your business. Unfortunately, there isn’t a straightforward answer here.

Both SEO and PPC are effective sources of traffic, and we champion using the two together. That said, there are situations in which one strategy may offer better results than the other.

When to Use SEO

Here are some situations in which SEO may be better than PPC:

1. Establishing High Authority

If your goal is to become a credible source of information within a particular niche, a well-designed SEO strategy that’s centered around high-quality content is the way to go.

Increasing website authority is all about sustainable traffic generation, and the best way to sustainably generate traffic to your website is through effective search engine optimization.

2. Creating TOFU Content

If you’re currently creating top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) content or targeting informational keywords that aim to educate, there’s no point in running PPC ads at this stage.

TOFU/informational content doesn’t convert very well, so the return on your investment will be low if you decide to invest in PPC ads. In this case, SEO is the better option.

3. Attracting Consistent Traffic

Though getting to the first results page on Google can take a lot of time and effort, once you get there, you can expect long-term benefits such as sustained traffic and high domain authority.

A smart SEO campaign is the only way to climb your way up the SERPs ladder and increase your organic traffic. Running PPC ads won’t affect your organic rankings and traffic.

4. Running on a Low Budget

If your goal is to improve your brand awareness but you don’t have the budget to run paid ads, creating high-value content and sticking to a smart SEO strategy is your best option.

This is especially the case if you’re a small to mid-sized business trying to make it in a hyper-competitive industry where the cost per click of PPC ads is really high.

When to Use PPC

Here are some situations in which PPC may be better than SEO:

1. Seeking Immediate Results

As we’ve mentioned earlier, the PPC model delivers results much faster than the SEO model. As soon as your PPC campaign is approved, you should start noticing more traffic within hours or even minutes!

With that in mind, if your window for making an impact is short, opt for PPC. Note also that it works nicely with squeeze pages, seasonal promotions, product launches, and event-focused marketing.

2. Highly Targeted Traffic

If you’re looking to narrow down potential customers based on demographic data such as age group, interests, education, gender, income bracket, and marital status, invest in PPC advertising.

Keep in mind that the PPC model isn’t limited to search ads. You can run paid social media ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram as well, which can widen your reach significantly.

3. Promoting Commercial Content

If your site isn’t content-rich or designed with SEO in mind, chances are you’re trying to promote product pages, landing pages, and other types of commercial content.

The thing about commercial content is that it doesn’t garner a lot of backlinks and doesn’t rank high on the SERPs. PPC advertising can help your commercial content garner more visibility.

4. Maximizing Visibility

If you’re trying to get your name out there and increase your brand awareness, PPC advertising can be of great help. After all, it will help situate you above organic rankings on the SERPs.

Keep in mind, however, that the messaging of PPC campaigns can become stale and lose its effectiveness after a while. So, you’ll need to constantly refresh elements such as images, copy, and headlines to maximize ad potential.

Strategize Your SEO and PPC

It’s safe to say that SEO and PPC are both effective in their own right. Choosing one strategy over the other boils down to your business situation and needs.

If you’re looking for quick results and high visibility, PPC is your best bet. On the other hand, if you’re looking to increase your authority and garner consistent organic traffic, SEO is the ultimate strategy.

If you have the resources, we recommend combining SEO and PPC to get the best of both worlds. You can use PPC to get your name out there and increase brand awareness.

Then, you can utilize SEO to increase your organic traffic. And as your organic traffic continues to grow, you can gradually reduce your use of PPC advertising.

Need help with your marketing strategy? Book your free strategy call today.

Being one of the biggest social media platforms, you can find almost anything you search for on Facebook. It offers many features, from photo and video sharing to advertising services. 

Advertising on Facebook is becoming the norm for many existing and starting firms. The service is easy to use, affordable, and, with the proper planning, can take your ad game to the next level.

However, considering the gravity of legal services, is Facebook advertising for lawyers an appropriate investment or a waste of time?

We’ll give you a detailed answer in this post. If you want to know more, please contact Romain Berg to schedule a free strategy call.

Is Facebook Advertising Worth It for Lawyers?

According to Statista, Facebook has over 2.9 billion active users as of 2023. In 2022, Facebook managed to generate $116 billion in total, 97.5% of which came from ads. That’s over $113 billion in revenue from ads alone.

So, it’s safe to say that the advertising game on Facebook works. The question is, as a lawyer, will it work for you? 

The short answer is yes. Facebook may be generally used for entertainment, but business advertising on the platform still significantly impacts many individuals and businesses as long as it is executed correctly.

Facebook advertising goes beyond simply paying for your ad to run. There are numerous aspects that we will delve into more deeply. But first, let’s understand the types and formats of Facebook ads that you can use.

Facebook Ads: How Do They Look?

To date, there are two formats of Facebook ads. The first format shows you the ad on the right side of the screen as you scroll down your homepage. These ads have the benefit of being fixed in place for some time, but your eyes occasionally miss them.

In the other format, the ad appears inside your feed with the word “sponsored” written next to it. Typically, it’s a page or a business that you don’t follow, but the owner paid for the ad to reach you among the target audience. 

Both ad formats can come in many types, and lawyers can utilize almost all of them in their campaigns:

1. Boosted Posts

Boosting a post is an easy method to drive traffic toward your page. You select a particular post on your page and then pay an amount of money for that post to appear to people who are not following that page. 

The simplicity of this method makes it one of the most popular forms of ads on Facebook, as it can help you expand your following much faster.

2. Photo and Video Ads

It’s much easier to catch people’s attention with photos and videos than with written text. 

Since you can make your media appear directly on people’s newsfeeds, you can use this option to direct awareness toward your legal services.

3. Event Ads

Event ads appear on people’s feeds as an invitation to participate in certain affairs and occasions. They’re usually accompanied by a CTA (call to action) button like “Learn More” and “Call Now.”

As a lawyer, you can use these ads to call attention to an event you’re preparing for.

4. Offer Ads

Offer ads work similarly to event ads regarding the CTA aspect. The difference is that instead of promoting an event, you’re offering people service with offers (e.g., a limited-time discount). 

You can also use offer ads to expand your list of clients. 

5. Retargeting Ads

People who interacted with your posts but did not complete the conversion will be subjected to retargeting ads. 

Anyone who may be interested in the legal services you have to offer will have clicked on one or two of your ads. The Facebook algorithm would pick that up, and you’ll have the option to retarget these people with new ads. 

The Benefits of Facebook Advertising for Lawyers

Now that you understand the types of ads, how can they allow you to provide your legal services to more clients?

1. Target Audience

With millions of people using Facebook every day, you don’t want to waste your money and time targeting the wrong audience. A well-made campaign will mean nothing to a 9-year-old child, even if it keeps popping up in his feed.

To make the most out of your budget, Facebook allows you to choose your target audience based on their activities, like pages they like, ads they click on, and related legal topics they view. 

The whole process is powered by the Facebook algorithm, which is why you’ll suddenly get increased ads about a product or service you are interested in. In this case, your Facebook ads are highly likely to reach people who may need legal assistance.

2. Mobile Users Optimization

Did you know that the average American spends around seven hours a day looking at a screen? Almost half of those hours are spent in front of the phone screen. Despite that, countless websites are still not optimized for a seamless user experience through the phone. 

On the other hand, Facebook isn’t just optimized for the phone but also has its dedicated, fully-fledged mobile application. 

This allows your ad to clearly show up on the screen, with all the important details, like CTAs, clearly visible. 

3. Dedicated Business Suite

Using Meta Business Suite, a dedicated application for Facebook ads, you can track, customize, and follow up with your ads as needed. 

As a lawyer, you need to understand which of your ad campaigns are driving enough traffic and which aren’t performing as they should be.

Through this feature, you can assess the elements that made a certain ad successful and save some money by taking down or halting underperforming ads. 

The business suite also acts as a separate chat platform you can use to respond to whoever directly messages your page. You can earn great credibility if you quickly respond to queries, and the notifications from the suite can help you do just that. 

Also, the suite allows you to manage your Instagram page, if you have one, and link it to your Facebook page. 

4. Gradual Billing

Facebook provides some of the most flexible billing procedures. Thanks to Facebook’s gradual billing feature, new lawyers or firms who are just starting do not need to worry about huge marketing costs.

The platform requires you to charge credit to your account, which you can use as you please to run your ads. 

Facebook will then deduct a specific amount of that credit (more on that soon) every 24 hours and a smaller amount every time someone interacts with your ad or messages your page. 

The major advantage here is that the second you decide to stop funding your ad, the deduction from your balance stops, giving you a quick exit before you lose your funds. 

How Can a Lawyer Effectively Use Facebook Advertising?

Here’s how you, as a lawyer, gain the most from Facebook ads:

1. Take Your Time Planning

Selecting the correct audience can mean the difference between a successful ad and a waste of money. 

• Target the Proper Age Group: As a lawyer, you should start by selecting the appropriate age group for your audience. Minimize introducing your ads to people in their early teens and below, as they’re unlikely to be interested in your legal services. Instead, aim for 18 and higher.
• Target Your Local Area First: It is a good idea to keep your exposure to your locality and its surrounding areas. Being known locally is a good cornerstone to rely on once you’re trying to expand.

Facebook can either automate the process for you or ask you to choose a circle within a certain radius for your ads to reach. 

2. Advertise Long Enough

There’s a concept in advertising known as “repetition advertising.” People tend to subconsciously believe that a certain establishment is credible if they see repeated ads coming from it.

You might have noticed how shady websites/ads show up once or twice in your feed and then completely disappear. On the other hand, quality services keep showing up again and again.

Credibility is of utmost importance for people who provide legal services like lawyers. This is why you should keep showing your ad to the same group of “correct” audience even if you don’t receive much success at first.

You should also aim for a minimum of four days per campaign. Facebook itself will hint at how ads that last more than four days are more successful. 

3. Understand How Billing Works

Earlier, we mentioned credit deduction but didn’t discuss the details. Putting aside the interactive cost, which is the credit deduction whenever someone clicks on your ad or messages you, Facebook will charge you on a daily basis.

This charge will depend on your ad’s reach, duration, and frequency of appearance to the target market. You do want your ad to reach a lot of people, but you also don’t want to overspend. So, if you’re just starting, you might want to take this gradually.

Starting with $1 a day can be a decent way to get your content out there without disrupting your budget. As you start to get some feedback, you can gradually increase that amount until it becomes suitable to your current service requirements.

4. Use More Than One Ad Campaign

Many people invest all their time and money into one post/ad at a time. This isn’t a bad strategy by any means, but you can generate a lot more traffic by having at least three ads running at the same time. 

Keep in mind that the point here isn’t to have three successful campaigns at the same time. While this could happen, it’s uncommon in the beginning. You’re doing this to track each of these campaigns and see which one is gaining more traction using the business suite.

That way, you can pinpoint the strategies/ideas you’ve used in that particular campaign and utilize them again for future ads. 

As such, you should have different-looking campaigns when you run more than one simultaneously.

For example, you can include pictures in one and feature a video in another. You will need a different approach in the three campaigns to pinpoint what your audience likes, especially in law-related ads where getting a good hook is essential. 

5. Include a CTA

Failing to include a CTA is one of the most common mistakes people make when they advertise on Facebook.

In a world where people are always looking for the easy way out, having a button to click instead of manually going through your page to utilize your services can make a huge difference.

Facebook allows you to use a “button” on your ads. This button could lead your audience to your Messenger, home page, Whatsapp, Instagram, email, and much more.

Always include a CTA to make it easier for your audience to reach you. 

6. Be Creative

The playground for legal advertising is a tough one. Some lawyers choose a humorous, laid-back style in their ads, while others opt for professionally made ones.

Both paths have their audience. You can choose to do either or come up with your own idea. What’s important is that you pick a theme and stick to it. 

7. Have a Catchphrase

What’s going on here? We’re lawyers with respectable careers and not some vendors trying to upsell. Why use a catchphrase?

While the word “catchphrase” often relates to phrases like “Better Call Saul,” you can always come up with a more sensible tagline that still catches people’s attention.

Having a brand phrase is a fantastic way to have people subconsciously connect your brand with a specific line. Find a phrase that is related to your legal service, and include it in your ads to have people connect your service with that phrase.  

Amplify Your Legal Practice

Facebook advertising for lawyers can be a fantastic way to shed some light on your services and get noticed. As a lawyer, you can utilize Facebook’s business suite with all its tools to your advantage.

Just make sure to target the correct people in the proper circle around you. Keep the ads running to utilize repetition benefits, always include a CTA, and continue monitoring the progress of your ads to catch any room for improvement. 

Please check out our blog for more information on digital marketing, and then schedule your free strategy call to get started.

Over 63% of small businesses claim they need more time and resources to concentrate on their marketing efforts, according to a Semrush survey from 2021. Around 59.8% say they need help with small marketing budgets.

Though most business owners understand the importance of digital marketing, it takes time to create a comprehensive strategy, especially one that includes PPC.

Pay-per-click advertising has a higher learning curve and requires an upfront investment than other methods. But that investment isn’t as high as most people think.

With an optimized PPC campaign, small businesses can reach their goals even on a smaller budget. The Romain Berg PPC specialists can help you create highly targeted paid campaigns designed to increase your ROI. Reach out today and find out more.

This article will review some of the unique benefits PPC brings to small businesses and offer ten tips on maximizing your ROI in paid advertising.

PPC for Small Business: What Are the Benefits?

Budget constraints make most small business owners apprehensive about adopting new marketing initiatives like PPC.

But overcoming this hesitation could mean your business will enjoy some unique advantages that only paid advertising can bring:

Smart Budget Spending

PPC advertising platforms allow you to spend your budget wisely. As long as you can optimize your campaigns, you can spend your budget only when the ads convert.

The cost of PPC depends on the specific industry your business falls into. 

The average cost-per-click (CPC) in Google Ads is $6.40 on the Search Network and $0.81 on the Display Network for consumer services. But for e-commerce businesses, the cost drops to $1.16 and $0.45, respectively.

Even if your industry is in a more expensive CPC category, the potential ROI makes the investment worth it since you’re only paying for the results your ads will bring. 

Reaching the Right Audience

With organic marketing efforts such as SEO or social media, you need more control over who encounters your products and services because of limited targeting capabilities. 

This is why small businesses often take longer to see great results from their organic marketing efforts.

PPC moves things along and allows you to target potential customers based on unique characteristics that match your current ones. You can even deliver ads at the right moment when the customer is most likely to convert.

The process is accelerated, so the potential results become visible sooner. A well-optimized campaign can start increasing your sales from day one.

Fulfillment of Various Business Goals

PPC isn’t just designed to bring in more sales. You can set up campaigns to support all your business needs, such as:

• Increasing brand awareness and recognition
• Attracting more leads
• Improving brand or product consideration
• Reducing abandoned carts
• Increasing the number of repeat sales, etc.

Platforms such as Google Ads ask you to choose a specific goal when setting up a campaign. Based on this goal, they will deliver your ads to that section of your target audience that is most likely to convert.

Removal of Dependency on Search Engine Algorithms

If you’re currently running an SEO strategy to bring more organic traffic to your site, your results will depend on whether Google or other search engines decide to change their algorithms.

Since SEO changes take around six months to take visible effect, there’s a strong possibility that an algorithm update can happen, which will require you to tweak your strategy again.

With PPC campaigns, any changes in the algorithm won’t affect ad delivery. Your campaigns will still reach the top of the search results.

Rich and Essential Customer Data

These tools can reveal a lot of insights into your potential customers, their behavior, whether they like your products and services, and even the time of day they’re most likely to convert.

Running paid ads can help you gather essential customer data you can use to improve your overall marketing efforts.

10 PPC Tips for Small Businesses to Maximize Your ROI

PPC advertising can seem overwhelming at first. But with these ten strategies, you can optimize your campaigns to improve your ROI:

1. Establish Your Goals

Choosing the right campaign goal ticks two major boxes for your PPC efforts:

• It ensures you spend your campaign budget wisely
• It optimizes your ad delivery

You can run a Google ad to get more traffic to your website. The system will charge you for every click your ad got, meaning the number of times a search engine user wanted to visit your site.

By choosing website traffic as a goal, Google delivers the campaign to the user most likely to click on the ad. It’ll help target individuals with the right user intent.

Consider the difference if, for instance, you wanted more traffic but chose the “brand awareness” goal. In this case, you’re paying for each impression the ad got, meaning the number of times people laid eyes on your ad.

But seeing an ad doesn’t mean they’ll click on it. As a result, you’d be exhausting your budget without getting the results you want.

Choosing the right goal is one of the most important steps small businesses need to take before setting up their PPC ads. 

2. Choose the Right Keywords

Keywords are the foundation of a good PPC campaign, especially those ads that run on search engines. They tell the PPC system when to deliver an ad by matching your keyword with the potential customer’s search terms.

To find these terms, you can use Google’s Keyword Planner or other similar tools to tap into the most popular search terms related to your business. You can also look for your Google Analytics account data to see what search terms bring you organic traffic.

Choosing the right keywords is rather tricky since there isn’t a golden rule. 

While you should never use keywords that have a very low search volume, you shouldn’t choose only words with a high search volume either. The second option is very costly because high-volume keywords have a lot of bidding competition.

Here are some tips to help you build your keyword list:

• Put yourself in your customer’s shoes to identify the terms they’d use to search for your business
• Include variations and synonyms in your list
• Add terms related to your products or services
• Try to find high-volume and low-competition terms
• Find keywords to match each user intent (transactional, informational, and navigational)

3. Add Negative Keywords

Negative keywords tell the PPC system when you don’t want your ads to trigger. They’re a safety net that ensures you’re spending your budget correctly and not attracting the wrong potential customers. 

For example, if you’re selling “premium cat food,” and your products are on the higher end price-wise, you’re not interested in people searching for “affordable” or “cheap” cat food. 

Adding these two negative keywords tells Google not to trigger your ads when these search terms are used, ensuring that you reach only your intended audience.

4. Choose Your Audience

Keywords aren’t the only way to deliver your PPC ads.

You can also consider who your ideal customer is and set up a few characteristics that Google or other PPC systems should take into consideration.

Google provides the following options for audience targeting:

• Affinity – target people based on what they like, their habits, and their interests
• Detailed demographics – deliver ads based on user location, age, gender, and other long-term life facts
• Life events – select a major milestone in a person’s life, such as a wedding anniversary, to deliver specific offers.
• In-market – reach users based on their intent.
• Data segments – use your customer data to deliver ads to people who’ve interacted with your site, are your current shoppers, or are similar to your existing customer data
• Custom segment – reach new people based on relevant apps, keywords, or websites.

Choose your audience based on the products and services you’re selling, your campaign goals, and any customer data you already have.

5. Localize Your PPC Ads

Small businesses with a limited marketing budget can prioritize their PPC efforts for specific locations.

This can either be the area where you are located or the cities where a large portion of your current buyers reside if you run an online small business. 

You can reach a larger number of people without geo-targeting, but a bigger audience doesn’t always translate into more conversions.

Targeting your ads to specific cities or even neighborhoods allows you to address the specific needs of these potential customers, and your ads become much more compelling.

As your business grows, you can widen your reach and target more locations.

6. Choose the Right Time

Running ads on a 24/7 basis isn’t always efficient. You can maximize your ROI by scheduling your ads to match the time of day when potential customers are most likely to convert. 

For example, if you’re offering baby products and want to target parents, you could get better results when you deliver the ads in the evening. During the day, the parents might not have the time to check out your offers and make a purchase, but they could do it after the kids are put to bed.

Identify the days when you’re converting the most and the time of day by reviewing your analytics and sales logs, then schedule your ads to match them.

7. Add a Clear Call to Action

A call to action or CTA tells people what you want them to do. It also prepares them for what to expect.

If an ad says “Sign up now,” potential customers expect a different process than if they see “Download now.” The right call to action further sorts potential buyers to ensure only the most relevant ones reach your page.

Compelling CTAs help people understand what to do next and can even be an encouragement to act now, not later.

8. Focus on Your Best Features

If you need to know what your first campaign should be, bring out your best sellers to maximize the potential results.

Top-selling products that already attract the interest of your existing customers could be a great way for new people to get to know your business and what it can offer. The same applies to your top services.

If you’re just getting started, then focus on your primary need, which at this point is most likely increasing brand awareness.

9. Control Your Spending

Google Ads and other PPC systems allow you to decide how much money a campaign should cost. 

For small businesses, it’s best to calculate a daily budget for each ad or campaign you run. The optimization techniques you employ influence how your ad is spent, but you’ll only pay the daily limit you set up. 

Start with a smaller budget than you’re comfortable spending, even if the campaign will deliver impressive results later. Since you’re just getting started, some slip-ups are understandable.

Google recommends setting up at least a $10–$50 daily budget. Going lower might affect your performance.

10. Track Your Results

Even PPC experts need to monitor campaigns to improve their performance constantly.

You can make adjustments in real-time to correct mistakes or improve how your ads perform. But you can only do that if you monitor their stats closely.

You can check in with them daily to ensure everything runs smoothly, such as an ad not triggering in 24 hours. But to reach any relevant conclusions, your ads will need more time to run so that you can review results weekly.

Consider Working With an Expert

Small businesses have a lot on their plates, and PPC might not fit into your daily responsibilities. 

Working with a PPC agency could prove more beneficial, as you’re eliminating the need to learn how to use PPC systems and optimize your campaigns. 

Outsourcing your PPC needs is a way to build cost-effective campaigns that convert from day one. The amount of time you have, your staff, or any other resources will be fine with your results.

Romain Berg’s PPC experts can support a small business’ PPC efforts and create campaigns that deliver reliable and fast results. 

Schedule a 30-minute call with the industry’s top PPC experts, who can help you run campaigns that help you reach your goals.

In today’s digital age, businesses are always on the lookout for ways to boost their online presence and draw in more customers. 

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are popular advertising strategies frequently used interchangeably. Although they may appear similar at first glance, there are a few differences between them that can have a significant impact on your marketing efforts. 

To end your confusion, we’ve decided to gather all of the nuances and distinctions of both strategies. Continue reading our PPC vs. SEM comparison to learn which is better suited to your business objectives and some tactics on how to use them effectively.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing – Briefly Explained

When you Google something, the first websites that come up are labeled as ads. Well, those are regarded as PPC advertisements. It comes as no surprise that PPC marketing helps businesses elevate brand awareness by 80%!

Pay-Per-Click marketing, or PPC for short, is a form of paid online advertising. It’s what causes the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) to prioritize your product/content when a relevant keyword is entered. In exchange, you’ll be charged a fee each time someone clicks on your ad.

PPC ads aren’t limited to search engines like Google or Bing; they can also be used on social media platforms and websites. Plus, they come in a variety of formats, such as videos, images, text, or a combination of any of these. 

The trick here is to know how to target the right audience and tailor ads that appeal to them without exceeding your budget. Get your free strategy call now to have one of our specialized digital marketers put you on the right track.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – Briefly Explained

Moving on to Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which is a broader strategy for increasing SERP visibility. To be more specific, SEM encompasses both paid and non-paid digital marketing strategies that help businesses increase traffic to their websites. 

For example, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a non-paid SEM strategy. It primarily depends on organically driving visitors through tactics such as proper content formatting and using relevant keywords. On the other hand, PPC is one of the paid SEM approaches.

PPC vs. SEM: Distinctions Revealed

By now, you have a general idea of what distinguishes SEM from PPC. That is, PPC advertising is a key player in SEM’s paid strategies. Now, let’s go over the three major differences between them in detail:

Scope and Cost

Since PPC is a subset of SEM, its scope of use is relatively limited. It has the specific purpose of creating paid advertising campaigns. The tactics used to ensure a successful campaign aren’t as diverse as those found in SEM, but that doesn’t make them any less effective. 

When you choose PPC, you must set a budget for the fee charged for the number of clicks on your ad. As a result, some companies use it as a short-term marketing strategy to cut costs. 

That said, well-rounded PPC campaigns can have a high Return on Investment (ROI), making them worthwhile. 

Moving on to the SEM side, you’ll find countless strategies to improve your ranking and visibility. Some require payment, while others are completely free. Consequently, SEM offers both temporary and long-term advertising solutions for businesses.

Ad Placement 

You’ll have more control over where your ad appears with PPC marketing. This form of paid advertising even allows ads for websites with low domain ratings to rank.

The criteria for your ad positioning will vary depending on the advertising platform. Sometimes ad placements are done automatically, and other times filters are available to select the desired placement.

But generally, when using PPC, marketers typically place bids to compete on specific spots on platforms.

For example, if you want your ad to appear first in SERPs, you must pay the highest fee available. If you want to spend less money, other options allow you to place your ad before organic results or on the first page.

Using organic SEM strategies gives you less control over the visibility of your ad. It’s determined by search engine algorithms and users’ search behavior. Yet, by optimizing your content and website, you can boost your chances of ranking in the SERPs without spending a dime.

Results Display Time

Going with the PPC approach translates to faster results. After taking your time crafting the campaigns, you’ll be able to launch them in no time. This means you can expect brand awareness and website traffic to rise relatively quickly. 

In contrast, ranking on Google’s first page can take anywhere from three to six months if you use SEO, a non-paid SEM strategy. That’s assuming your website is well-optimized and contains high-quality content; otherwise, it could take much longer.

3 Tips to Unlock the Power of PPC Marketing

Many businesses are utilizing PPC advertising because of its favorable outcomes. While there are several tactics for ensuring a successful campaign, there are three you should always keep in mind:

1. Set Goals and Monitor Progress

Setting objectives and tracking results are the groundwork for any fruitful PPC campaign. If you skip this step, you’ll almost certainly waste a lot of time, money, and effort. 

When you begin designing your ads, you must decide what you want to achieve from them. Each response will direct you to a different type of PPC ad. 

Assume you want people who show interest in your website to return, whether for increased site traffic or lead generation. In this case, you should use remarketing ads; they place cookies on visitors’ browsers using a special tracking code, allowing you to show them ads in the future.

As is often said, what gets measured gets managed, which is certainly true for PPC strategy. Always keep track of how your ads are performing according to your goals. That way, you’ll know what’s a hit and what’s a miss, so you can adjust your bids to save money on unsuccessful ads. Google Analytics is a widely used free tool that can help you with this.

2. Relate to Your Niche

When creating your ad sets, make sure to include different groups of keywords relevant to your niche. You should ensure your target audience has already searched for these keywords for your ad to appear to potential leads. 

Most importantly, you must understand the intent behind searching for these keywords. This will allow you to personalize your ads and thus increase click-throughs. 

As a side note, in digital marketing, the intent is classified into four types: navigational, informational, commercial, and transactional.

Let’s say you discovered that light strings are one of the most frequently searched keywords. Creating an ad for users who want to know how to hang them (informational) isn’t the same as making one for users who want to buy them (commercial or transactional).

3. Optimize the Landing Page

Landing pages, believe it or not, are a make-or-break factor in PPC ads. They’re the pages visitors are directed to when they click on your ad. 

Usually, people who see a simple web design, relevant content to what they were promised, and other enticing elements are more likely to convert into lead customers. On the flip side, if they see a poorly designed page crammed with visuals and irrelevant content, they’ll most probably leave.

3 SEM Techniques to Boost Your Online Presence

In the realm of SEM, there are three simple yet powerful strategies for increasing your online visibility:

1. Find Low-Competition Keywords

After digging out keywords your target audience searches for, identify those with little competition; you can do this manually or with AI tools. If you use them to create high-quality advertisements or content, you’ll have a great chance of ranking on SERPs. 

2. Develop Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are one of the top three elements influencing a website’s ranking on Google’s first page. They’re the embedded links on websites that, when clicked, take you to another website. The more websites link to your content, the more credible it appears to search engines. 

Therefore, you should focus on creating content that’s useful and worthy of being linked to. You should also monitor your competitors’ backlinks for any gaps you can fill. Semrush is an excellent tool for conducting this analysis.

3. Post Content Frequently

Even if you’re selling a product or service, having a blog section will help your SEM significantly. 

Constantly supply your website with new, valuable content, as that’ll help boost your rankings. Besides, providing a comprehensive guide that answers your audience’s questions will improve your website’s authority.

Think of HubSpot, which offers several software tools while also providing its audience with informative blog posts, newsletters, podcasts, and so on.

Wrapping Up

You’re now up to date on all the fundamentals as well as the differences between PPC and SEM strategies!

PPC advertising is a go-to for any business wanting to see positive results quickly. If time isn’t an issue and spending money on ads is, you can turn to SEM non-paid strategies. Contact us now, and we’ll help you make the most of both directions.

Unlike organic content marketing, PPC campaigns provide quick instant results when done right. 

That said, it isn’t wise to take a laissez-faire approach to paid advertising. You’re spending real money and risk blowing a hole through your advertising budget without results if you don’t optimize and manage your campaign properly. 

PPC tools can help your paid campaign efforts by providing valuable data and metrics that help steer your efforts toward profitability. This article reveals the best ones available in 2023. 

With over a decade of experience in digital marketing, Romain Berg is an agency that produces results. We’re digital marketing and SEO experts, so you can count on us to make recommendations that will help your campaign management and optimization efforts.

What Is PPC?

PPC is a digital advertising payment model, short for pay-per-click and also known as paid search. PPC advertising works because an advertiser (you) pays a fee each time an internet user clicks on one of its ads. 

There are several types of PPC ads, and each type is suitable for a different marketing channel. The most common ones include text (e.g., sponsored links), video, and images (e.g., animated gifs, banner ads, and display ads in different dimensions). You can commonly find PPC ads on web pages, and search engine results pages, and social media feeds.

When you hear a digital marketer or advertiser talk about PPC, they’re most likely referring to a campaign that’s destined for a search engine results page (SERP). This form of PPC advertising is the most prevalent, and it involves bidding for a keyword so that your ad appears at the top of SERPs as a sponsored link when someone enters the keyword into a search bar. 

Naturally, targeting an audience is crucial when leveraging paid advertising campaigns. This guide goes into more depth on PPC campaigns and audience targeting.

How PPC Tools Can Help You

When done right, a PPC campaign can result in an impressive ROI. However, considering that thousands of internet users can click on an ad, you’d be right to assume that PPC advertising can get expensive. The above is especially true if you target the wrong users. 

PPC tools help advertisers manage their campaigns in several ways, including:

• Providing tools for keyword research and audience targeting
• Providing insightful analytics that helps with decision-making
• Sending automatic alerts about current campaigns
• Optimizing a campaign’s performance
• Producing shareable, aesthetically-pleasing reports
• Analyzing competitors’ PPC campaigns

Incidentally, the above are some factors to consider when choosing a PPC tool for your campaign.

Are you considering PPC marketing for your e-commerce venture? This article shows how PPC and e-commerce make a dynamic duo.

The Top PPC Tools in 2023

The PPC tools listed below offer the best features for managing and optimizing your online ad campaigns.

1. Google Ads

Google has the largest market share in the search engine industry, so it makes sense that its Google Ads platform is one of the top PPC tools for optimizing and managing ad campaigns. 

This all-in-one tool includes features for creating campaigns, monitoring performance, analyzing results, and more. 

In addition, it includes a Keyword Planner tool that lets you investigate and target keywords your audience uses when searching for products or services like yours. You can bid on the keywords you find and rank at the top of Google’s search engine results page.

Google Ads is free. However, you must sign up for a Google account to access the platform.

2. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an industry-standard analysis tool for PPC campaigns. Like its sister product, Google AdWords, the software is free, and you can access it with a Google account.

When you connect your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, the former tool provides deeper insights into the PPC campaign you’re running on the latter. You can view metrics like the number of impressions your ads have generated, the number of clicks, the cost-per-click, the session duration for each visitor that clicks through to your website or ad, bounce rate, etcetera. 

If you want to make data-backed decisions that can maximize the chances of receiving a better return on your investment, Google Analytics should be in your PPC-campaign-arsenal. It’s free.

3. SpyFu

SpyFu helps you optimize your campaigns in a peculiar way, i.e., by letting you spy on your competitors. This PPC tool provides insights into your competitors’ ads, revealing data like the keywords they’re currently bidding on and their estimated monthly ad budget.

In addition, SpyFu lets you peer back in time through a competitor’s ad history. This feature is excellent because you can incorporate the insights you find into your future campaigns and mirror your competitors’ successes.

SpyFu has three plans: Basic ($39/month), Professional ($79/month), or Team ($139/month).

4. PPC Entourage

PPC Entourage is for Amazon-focused e-commerce businesses. This PPC tool helps businesses optimize their Amazon ads by providing comprehensive analytics for e-commerce KPIs. In addition, it offers a bulk engine that lets you manage multiple campaigns simultaneously, eliminating the need for spreadsheets.

You get access to data that prevents ad spend waste while helping you make informed decisions quicker and with greater confidence. Its Margins Profit Maximizer reveals hidden costs that eat into your profits and provides insight into your sales, particularly how taxes, ad spending, product returns, and merchant fees impact them.

As of April 2023, PPC Entourage currently charges monthly subscription fees as a percentage of your monthly ad spend. For example, if you spend $4,100 a month on Amazon ads, PPC Entourage will charge you 2.9% of the amount ($118.90) per month.

5. Optmyzr

Optmyzr is a platform that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning when optimizing ad campaigns for Google and Bing.

You can use this PPC tool to set safeguards that prevent waste and automate bids on display ad networks. It also excels at helping you monitor your ad account’s performance through alerts for pre-set KPIs and budgets.

In addition, Optmyzr’s PPC Insights feature reveals a treasure trove of information hidden in your PPC data. You can analyze Google Shipping data, see ad spend projections, and more.

As of April 2023, Optmyzr starts at $228 monthly (depending on your monthly ad spend). 

6. AdEspresso

AdEspresso is a PPC tool for three major advertising platforms: Google, Facebook, and Instagram. It provides features for A/B testing and campaign optimization and lets you create all your campaigns from a single digital hub. As such, you don’t have to switch from one ad manager to another when optimizing your campaigns.

Its analytics tools are impressive. They provide a full picture of your campaign over time, revealing the KPIs you need to track. The team behind the software wanted their tool to be user-friendly, so the dashboard displays all the information in an easy-to-read format. 

Meanwhile, its All Ads feature makes editing ads you’ve already published straightforward. If multiple ads feature the same error, you can make the changes simultaneously using its bulk updates feature.

AdEspresso currently has three plans: Starter ($49/month), Plus ($99/month), and Enterprise ($259/month).

7. Adalysis

Adalysis helps businesses automate their paid search ads for Google and Bing. The software provides over 40 tools for PPC campaign optimization, monitoring, and analysis while letting you pace your ad spending using budget alerts.

Thanks to its features for campaign creation, you can create hundreds of campaigns in under a minute. The tool will extract the data from your uploaded files, ensuring you create campaigns in record time. 

In addition, Adalysis provides automatic audit checks that spot issues in your campaigns, ads, keywords, search terms, ad extensions, placements, and landing pages. And it produces interactive reports that provide insight into your campaign’s performance.

Adalysis has plans that start at $99/month. The price is payable and corresponds to your monthly ad spend (e.g., $99/month for ad spending up to $50k).

8. SEMRush

SEMRush is a tool for SEO. Not only is it excellent for optimizing your organic marketing content, but it also provides some excellent features geared toward PPC marketing. You can use it to do everything from keyword research to competitor analysis, and it shines at helping you perform the latter task.

If you want to learn about your competitors’ ad creatives and estimated PPC budgets, SEMRush can provide that data. The tool provides a window into your competitors’ campaigns, letting you model yours against the most successful ones. Also, you can use it to benchmark your PPC costs, ensuring you don’t overspend.

SEMRush is also helpful in performing keyword research. Also, you can analyze Google Shopping campaigns.

Currently, SEMRush has three tiers: Pro ($119.95/month), Guru ($229.95/month), and Business ($449.95/month).

9. Opteo

Opteo provides a suite of tools for Google Ads management. This intelligent software provides recommendations for performance improvements, freeing up time you’d otherwise spend poring over performance data. In addition, you can easily implement the improvements you agree with. Opteo will push them live to Google Ads.

You can easily diagnose and rectify performance issues with this tool. Its segments feature lets you pinpoint your worst and best-performing segments within an account, providing insights into possible budget adjustments, marketing angles, etc.

Opteo integrates with the popular messaging app Slack. Combined with its Alerts feature, you can receive alerts about ad spend (e.g., when you’ve overspent), performance records, and more directly into a Slack channel of your choice.

You can subscribe to four Opteo tiers: Basic ($99/month), Professional ($199/month), Agency ($399/month), and Enterprise ($799/month).

10. MarketingCloudFX

MarketingCloudFX is a full-suite marketing tool with PPC campaign management and optimization features. It provides insightful data that lets you make informed decisions to drive revenue and increase your bottom line.

The software’s ad technology provides data on website visitors, campaign analytics, calls, and so on. Additionally, you can use MarketingCloudFX to learn about your target audience and tailor your campaigns to meet their needs better.

MarketingCloudFX has three tiers of its standard monthly license: Foundation ($875/month), Pro ($1,375/month), and Enterprise ($5,975/month).

11. Ad Badger

Ad Badger is another PPC tool aimed at Amazon sellers. It helps prevent wasted ad spend while providing features that help you manage, monitor, and automate your Amazon PPC campaign. In addition, the tool boasts user-friendliness that eliminates the need for previous PPC knowledge.

One of Ad Badger’s key features is its bidding algorithm that provides “profit-boosting bid optimization at the click of a button.” This technology analyzes your conversion data and makes micro bid adjustments so you can hit your advertising cost of sales (ACOS) targets. 

Similarly impressive is the tool’s negative keywords feature, which parses your ad campaign over a six-month period and roots out all inefficient keywords in it. The tool adds them to a negative keywords list, and it’s all completely automated. Unlock your demo here to learn about its price.

Outsource Your PPC Campaign Management to Romain Berg’s Team of Experts

Searching for a PPC tool to help manage your campaign is all well and good, but PPC campaign management is merely one facet of your business. When time isn’t your friend, and you have a packed schedule, you should consider outsourcing the management of your campaign to a team of experts. 

Romain Berg can help.

Our team of experts has decades of experience using PPC tools to manage campaigns for clients of all sizes. We know the best tools for the job, use a data-driven approach, and apply the best strategies to drive conversions and clicks.

Contact us today, and we’ll use our expertise to ensure your PPC campaign produces tangible and profitable results.

Marketing in this day and age has become more sophisticated thanks to technological developments through the years. They paved the way for marketing experts to better understand their target audience and their needs.

This reason is also why most people have not heard of the rule of 7 before.

However, despite being an old concept, it still rings true in today’s digital marketing landscape.

In this post, we’ll discuss what this rule is and how you can apply it in your overall marketing plan. 

If you need help creating a digital marketing plan for your business, contact us at Romain Berg. We will help change the way you engage your customers that deliver results, not hype. 

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What Is the Rule of 7?

The rule of seven is an old marketing rule developed by Dr. Jeffrey Lant. It suggests that the general public must be exposed to something a minimum of seven times before they buy it.

The idea is to make potential customers aware or familiar with your brand, social media posts, and other marketing messages. The more familiar your brand is, the more likely they are to purchase from you in the future.

An example of when the rule of 7 is at play is when a customer sees an advertisement on TV. They may only remember the brand after they see it for at least the seventh time.

Is the Rule of 7 Still Relevant To Your Marketing Message?

The rule of 7 dates back to a time before analytics and data were made available to marketing experts.

Case in point, “7” is an arbitrary number. It could take somebody more than seven times the exposure before they become your customers. 

Nowadays, you can use different data gathering tools to pinpoint how many and exactly which touchpoints turn people into clients.

Nonetheless, the principles behind the rule of seven apply to any marketing strategy because of one fundamental concept: trust.

You’ll gain the trust of potential customers more effectively with longer and more frequent interactions. That’s provided you leave a customer experience that’s consistent with your brand, of course.

How to Craft a Marketing Strategy Revolving Around This Marketing Rule

To implement the rule of seven in your marketing plan, you must create various touchpoints in your sales funnel. Engage your target people with the creation of powerful marketing materials that address the different stages of your sales funnel.

Below are multiple platforms where you can promote your content to your target market:

• SEO – Research for keywords to target and optimize content with by following the best on-page SEO practices.
• Email Marketing – Build an email list and send them emails for higher response and conversion rates.
• Social Media – Engage with your followers on social media by sharing updates about your business or replying to their messages.
• Display Personalized Ads – Make your business appear on social media and other websites through paid ads.

Use any of the above that fit in your strategy. You can observe the rule of seven and get more eyeballs to your business!

Below are the different touchpoints we can create for each stage as part of your marketing efforts:

Top of the Funnel (Awareness and Interest)

Some of the people in this funnel don’t know who you are and that your business even exists. Others may have heard of you but haven’t given you a second look yet.

Therefore, you must make yourself known to them by creating thought leadership content pieces.

Content marketing starts with publishing informational intent posts and videos on your website. You can explain difficult topics in an easy-to-understand way or show a step-by-step process to readers.

Either way, these should showcase your expertise in the industry, and the articles should provide immense value to readers.

One of the best channels to promote ToFu content is SEO. By ranking on top of Google for informational intent keywords, you can make your business easier to find. You can also share your content on social media to help you generate followers.

Middle of the Funnel (Consideration and Intent)

People in the MoFu stage have a legitimate interest in purchasing from your business. They have read your articles and are familiar with what your business does. They need more information on how your business can meet their needs.

Content creation works in this stage as well. However, you must target commercial intent and branded keywords for your articles and videos this time around. 

At this stage, consider providing solutions to their problems with your product or service at the forefront. The ideal is to put your business as the missing piece to their puzzle.

You can invite people to join your webinar, where you or a host will showcase how your product works. This helps the prospective buyer make an informed decision based on what they’ll see.

To help you promote your assets in this stage, you can share them via your email list. The fact that people subscribed to your list means they’re interested in what you have to offer. Educate them about your business by sharing resources. You’ll be one step closer to turning a potential customer into an actual one!

Bottom of the Funnel (Evaluation and Purchase)

In the final step, people like what they see from you and are very close to making a purchase. They just need a gentle nudge to pay up so they can get their hands on your product or service.

In this case, you must create landing pages geared towards successfully turning your prospect into a customer. 

These pages are not just about writing convincing copy that will eventually get them to turn. You also need to worry about its design. If you’re not a designer, it’s best to get professional help to build and optimize these pages.

Getting landing pages to rank on search engines is difficult due to the competition. Bid for paid ads like Google Adsense to appear on top of search results and on websites serving ads. You can also show up on social media feeds using Facebook Ads. 

As the name suggests, you have to dedicate a budget for your ad campaigns to turn in a profit. The challenge now is converting visitors into customers from your landing pages so you can get ROI from your efforts.

Conclusion

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As you can see, the rule of 7 is alive and well in today’s marketing world. However, instead of promoting your business as loudly and frequently as possible, the approach is different this time around.

Using analytics to gather data, you can generate audience insights, measure ad performance, and measure content performance more effectively. 

From here, you can improve your strategy and launch a brand new one in the hopes of getting better results.

Take a more measured and analytical approach to the rule of 7. You’ll get more eyeballs to your business and turn them into satisfied customers!

At Romain Berg we are well-versed with the different marketing tactics that can produce better traffic and conversions for your business. Reach out to us if you have any questions!

There’s more to Pay Per Click (PPC) than meets the eye.

“PPC is one of the trickiest parts of eCommerce for any business owner,” says Craig Rhode, our Director of Digital Strategy. 

“Not understanding the how, what, or where to spend your ad money can cost you a lot of wasted spend without any results.”

If you’re still on the fence about whether to commit to this marketing strategy, you’ve come to the right place.

In this post, we’ll shed light on what PPC brings to the table and why you should run a campaign for your eCommerce business. Whether you wish to do this with your team or hire PPC specialists to do the job for you, it’s important to know your business’s options for growing your business utilizing PPC for eCommerce.

1. Boost Brand Awareness

For new online stores, it’s hard to get in front of your target audience, especially when the majority of them already customers of your competitors.

In this case, it doesn’t matter if you have a great product in tow – you simply cannot compete against other eCommerce brands on a level playing field.

This is where paid search comes into play to help tip the scales in your favor.

Doing keyword research and bidding for terms where your ad copy will appear on the top of Google searches is a winning strategy.  

By playing your hand well with your PPC strategies, you can immediately make a splash in the eCommerce market and potentially fast-track your way to the level of your top competitors, if not higher!

2. Complements SEO Strategy

Unlike PPC ads, SEO takes a while to take effect. You won’t appear on the first page of SERPs for quite some time. And that’s only if you optimized your content and have built authority with your site.

Did you know? Only 22% of pages that appear on the first page were published within a year. (Source: Ahrefs) 

On the upside, SEO is much more sustainable than eCommerce PPC campaigns in the long run. To keep driving traffic to your site via PPC, you must constantly spend for your ad groups to appear on search. 

With SEO, all you must do is monitor the search rankings of your pages without spending a dime. Granted, you’ll need to tweak the page to constantly work your way up to the top of organic search. But you don’t have to spend money every time to appear on search engines.

That isn’t to say that one is better than the other. On the contrary, SEO needs PPC and vice versa to generate the most traffic and awareness to your eCommerce business. 

Paid ads allow you to quickly get noticed by your target audience, while SEO enables you to build a site that will rank on SERPs even without the need for PPC – it’s a win-win!

3. Create Highly Targeted Campaigns

Traditional marketing relies on display ads and billboards, hoping that your audience happens to notice your ad and become a customer. Online marketing allows you to target those exact people so only they can see your ads.

Normally, ads serve different purposes, from driving more traffic to one’s site to increase brand awareness, which we covered above.

But as an eCommerce brand, you’ll need to generate more customers from the ads you run. 

In this case, creating shopping campaigns is the way to go. 

This type of ad shows information about your product (name, price, seller) before you click on the page. You can see these ads on select commercial intent keywords, or you can hop onto Google Shopping to see product ads related to your search query.

With these ads, people who click on your product know its details and are much more likely to purchase it.

Ad retargeting is another method that lets you leverage PPC. You can set up a campaign that leaves a cookie on the browsers of people who clicked on a link to your site. They will then keep seeing your ads on different sites.

Why will prospects keep seeing your ads? Because they visited your site in the first place. This informs ad networks that people are interested in your site. As a result, they will keep seeing your ads until they clear their browser cookies.

It all goes back to precise targeting. eCommerce PPC allows you to market directly to your audience without the risk of targeting people who have no interest in your brand.

4. Maximize Budget

The beauty of Pay Per Click is in the name – you only pay for the number of clicks your ads received.

As part of researching keywords to bid on Google AdWords, you must know how much each click costs for that search term. Not all keywords cost the same – some are more expensive because they have higher search volume and more precise search intent, among other factors.

You can see the approximate cost of a keyword using Google Keyword Planner.

The range of costs helps you decide which keywords to bid on that fit your budget. You can take on expensive keywords but keep in mind that you’ll only have a few clicks before your budget runs out. Whereas bidding for moderately priced keywords allows you to show your ads and convert even more people.

The delicate balance of budget and keyword allows you to properly strategize on how you should approach your PPC campaigns so you can make the most out of your return of investment.

5. Data-Driven and Scalable

Once you’ve concluded your ad campaign, you need to delve deep into the results to gain insights into your PPC performance.

Learn which keyword and ad copy generated the most clicks on SERPs. From here, determine why they received the most clicks and replicate the process once again on your upcoming campaign.

At the same time, determine which aspects of your PPC strategy didn’t work. You can tweak the tactics of your strategy and run them again one more time, hoping for better results. Or you can just scrap those that failed and double down on the tactics that worked.

As you can see, PPC helps you build upon the previous campaign by creating better-performing ones using the data provided by tools like Google AdWords. By diligently working to improve your PPC for eCommerce, you can keep generating more revenue for your business!

Invest in PPC for eCommerce

With the growing number of online stores popping up in today’s world on top of established ones, you must use any opportunity to gain an advantage over your competitors. 

And with the reasons mentioned, it’s a no-brainer to run Bing ads and Google ads for your eCommerce business.

It’s just a matter of getting PPC experts to help you navigate through the murky waters of keyword research, bidding, and ad copywriting to maximize your results. You don’t want to set aside a budget for a campaign that won’t generate results.

Ultimately, you want your PPC to work, and that only happens if you have an experienced person spearheading the operations.

“Even though it’s an extra cost, a true PPC professional should be able to find the right niche, audience, and targeting to double your investment,” says Craig. And at Romain Berg, we agree wholeheartedly!

If you have questions about this post or want to learn more about running the best campaign using PPC for eCommerce, leave us a message and we’ll get back to you shortly.

The burgeoning costs of marketing amidst the pandemic era have taken their toll on smaller businesses. It’s hard to generate sales because customers aren’t roaming around the streets looking for things to buy nowadays. But it’s possible to promote your business with revenue coming in through Nextdoor Ads.

“The coming changes to how people consume advertising is making it tough for local businesses to find effective ad inventory. Newspapers, local TV, and radio don’t provide the same reach and yet continue to charge the same amount.” Craig Rhode, the Director of Digital Strategy at Romain Berg, says.

“It’s important for local businesses to grow their sphere of influence. NextDoor allows local businesses to promote to a hyper-local group that may not be on Facebook. As a business, this is important to embrace because you’re reaching out to new people, but also improving the reach of people who might be on Facebook but not active.”

You can always find affordable advertising services ready to take your call. But if you’re looking for a hands-on approach to your local marketing strategy, Nextdoor may have the solution to this problem. It is a solid advertising option for cash-strapped local businesses. 

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Let’s Talk About Nextdoor Ads

Nextdoor is a local social network platform designed for neighbors who want to connect with other people nearby or within the same zip code. They can share hobbies, announce community news and events, and engage in buying and selling, among other ideas. 

It is thought to help neighbors become an even more tightly knit community than ever before. There are two reasons why this is possible on Nextdoor. 

First, people need to confirm and verify their identity from their email addresses before signing up for the platform. You do not have to hide behind the shroud of anonymity and force people to engage as their true selves.

Another reason is that political discourse and hostility are highly discouraged from the platform. It even has a Kindness Reminder feature that requests users to edit their aggressive and confrontational posts, allowing users to focus on discussing topics related to connecting with nearby users in a positive manner.

The reasons stated above should also encourage businesses that advertising on Nextdoor Ads is the way to go. 

“Nextdoor is very comparable to Facebook but will be a bit more expensive. That extra cost is worth it because of the benefits of the hyper-targeting NextDoor provides for businesses. It’s verified users that work, play, and live in the area. That type of data is always going to be worth the extra cost.” says Rhode.

This unique social platform allows users to directly connect with real people nearby who are ready to hear what you have to offer. Therefore, whether you’re a friendly real estate agent or a humble mom-and-pop shop owner, Nextdoor helps give your business that extra boost.

How to Use Nextdoor to Attract More Customers

The first step is signing up for a business account to get hold of features to promote your local shop to neighbors. Local businesses can set up their business page on Nextdoor Ads at no cost to them. 

Next, you need to furnish your profile by adding your logo, contact information, business categories, and more. Filling these out will help make your business much more legit and authentic in the eyes of your neighbors.

From here, they will be able to use the platform’s Nextdoor Ad Center, where you can run Neighborhood Sponsorships to help grow your business.

Next are the directions to follow from the advertising program.

Run local Ads

The local deal you’ll be running will be shown all over the website to people within your set ZIP codes. You can promote your available discounts and promos for your business. Set the duration of the campaign to last from 7 to 30 days.

Using local Ads is a way to make a splash in the community by introducing your business at lowered prices. It helps people get a good deal and informs your neighbors about your goods and services.

To create an ad, you must enter a unique 120 character description of the deal. You also need to add a link to your website and a unique redeem code (if applicable).

Finally, you must select the audience of your ad by choosing the right neighborhood or postal code.

Before publishing the ad, you need to settle a one-time payment with Nextdoor Ads. The average cost of a local ad hovers around $75.

Check out the Nextdoor case study about how Siete Foods used sponsored posts targeted for users’ zip codes close to retailers selling their products.

Posts messages

All pages on Nextdoor run by small businesses can publish two posts in a month to promote their products or services, share special offers, and others.

Aside from the goal of converting ad views into sales, the advertising program helps you spread the word about your business. You don’t always have to market your business to turn your neighbors into customers. With just the right business post, you can help build awareness of what your business is about.

Communicate with customers

For business profiles, business account holders such as yourself send a message to neighbors in two ways.

The first is when neighbors have left a comment on your post. You can directly reply to their comment to keep the conversation going.

The next is through direct message. You can either send a DM straight to one of your neighbors or reply to their DM to you.

As far as gaining customers is concerned, how you respond to them could determine how far your local business will go. Take the opportunity to build positive relationships with each of them and avoid engaging in any digital hostility.

Launch polls

A poll is an excellent way to gain insights from neighborhoods regarding your business. Instead of coming up with ideas from thin air, you can take your finger to the pulse of the community to get actual answers. 

You can take heed of what the majority decides on and build your business from there.

Below are examples of poll questions you may want to run on Nextdoor Ads:

• Suggestions on what they would like to see on your business profile
• Ideas for ways on how they can best interact with your business
• How frequently do they want to see posts coming from you
• How do they want news and updates delivered to them
• Ask a question with a yes or a no response

There will be more questions you can run polls for that are specific to your business. But these ideas above should help inspire you to come up with even better ones later.

Gather feedback

From their free business profiles, you can gather reviews and recommendations from users, which you can leverage as social proof for your business. Rather than telling people how great your business is, it’s even better for your satisfied customers to share their story with your brand. This way, the feedback comes from someone not related to your business and happens to enjoy what you have to offer.

At the same time, Nextdoor reviews hold more weight compared to ratings from other sites where people can create positive reviews under the guise of fake profiles.

To collect user reviews, click on Your Reputation from the left-side menu of your dashboard. From here, you can copy a link to a page in your profile where people can leave a review about your business. 

Use the link to collect customer feedback. You can share a link on social media, blast it to your email list, or place its link on your website. The goal here is to get as much feedback as possible to help increase your credibility. The more reviews you receive, the more social proof your business can show. 

Ideally, you want all feedback to be positive. However, if you receive negative reviews, take it in stride, ask the person how you can help make their experience much better.

Where You Can Turn For Information as You Navigate Nextdoor

When marketing your business gets tough, you need to take matters into your own hands. Among the platforms out there as of late, Nextdoor Ads offers you the best and most reasonable chance of making an indelible impression with real people looking for real businesses.

If you need help with running local ads and managing your business profile on the platform, reach out to us today.

Today, we’ll break down the meaning of both terms and how you can leverage each element to increase your online traffic and conversions. 

Romain Berg is a comprehensive digital marketing firm dedicated to producing results for our clients, not hype.

What is E-commerce PPC?

PPC stands for Pay Per Click and is a type of internet marketing where advertisers pay a fee whenever their ads are clicked. E-commerce refers to the activities of the buying and selling of services and goods on the Internet. 

Some popular E-commerce services are Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. Romain Berg is proud to be a Shopify and WooCommerce partner. 

If you’ve Googled anything from raincoats to wedding chapels online, you’ve seen a Search Engine Results Page (SERP.)

Google PPC ads show up on SERPs with some variation.

There are three types of shopping ads that you can use for your PPC Campaign:

Product Shopping ads: these ads let you include basic information about your product. You can expect to see an image, item name, price, and your business name all in one ad. 

You can streamline the ad creation process by forgoing the need for you to create unique ads for every item you sell because this information comes from product data you provide in your Google Merchant Center account. 

Google Merchant Center is a free and simple way to store and organize all of your product information and make it available to potential customers. It is a must-have component of any PPC campaign.

To enhance Product Shopping ads, consider including any relevant special offers or sales, showing promising product ratings and your Google Customer Reviews. These added components may drive your audience to click your ad and boost your PPC Campaign. 

Showcase Shopping Ads: These ads show relevant products that you select to represent your brand or business based on keywords users search for. Showcase Shopping Ads allow you to advertise multiple products at once, effortlessly. Give your audience the “big picture” about what your company is all about by showing off the products that most represent your business.

Local inventory ads: These ads show available inventory from your local brick and mortar store. These ads are great for bringing your online customers in-store, your in-store customers online and allow you to measure the effectiveness your online ads have on your storefront foot traffic.

Google uses responsive ads for PPC advertising. Responsive ads use assets provided by you to create ads that can be displayed where they fit. So, sometimes Google will generate small text ads or use a large picture. Responsive ads allow your information to display in many places throughout the Display Network.

Targeting Audiences

While you want your PPC advertising campaign to have a broad reach, you also want it to have a specific reach. Essentially, you want your ads to be shown everywhere your target audience virtually visits.

Your audience will be a group of people with specific demographics, habits, lifestyles, and interests. For example, if your product is a straw water filter, your audience might include avid travelers or outdoorsmen. There are many different types of audiences you can learn more about here.

Google will determine your ideal audience using an algorithm and boost the performance of your ad campaign.

Why should I consider PPC?

Random ads online or in real life successfully blanket a swath of your potential customers. Creating awareness is always going to be the first step in creating new traffic for your e-commerce site. 

Using PPC enables you to laser-focus your advertising on people actively searching for the items or services you sell. This type of awareness is the key to making your brand a true industry leader in your niche.  

You can select and bid on words or phrases, and if you’re the highest bidder, your ad will get priority listing in the PPC ad space on the SERP. 

If a customer clicks your product page link, you’ll pay for that click in the amount you bid on the keyword.

For E-commerce businesses, it’s crucial to get your products in front of a searching audience consistently. Employing a carefully planned PPC strategy can help you increase your visibility at the precise moment your ideal customer prepares to purchase a product.

Here are several other reasons to rely on PPC advertising to increase your E-commerce businesses:

• You pay only when someone clicks your ad.
• You can begin getting sales quickly with a well-written, concise, relevant ad.
• Add look-a-like audiences to hyper-target your customers. Targeting similar audiences lets you show ads to people who share certain characteristics with people on your existing remarketing list.
• You can choose your ad-run schedule, down to the hour and minute of each day.
• You can track who clicks your ad and how well it converts browsers to buyers (which means you can regularly micro-tweak your ads for the most ROI)
• You can create ads that serve various objectives, from new customer browsing to inviting viewers to revisit their abandoned shopping carts.

Improve your chances to win PPC keyword auctions

Winning at PPC is not solely about spending the most money during AdWords auctions. The maximum amount you’re willing to pay combines with several other factors to determine your position in the PPC ad screen space.

When you ensure the following, you increase your chances for a high-ranking PPC ad:

• Choose your long-tail and short keywords with precision (Google will rank your ad for relevance. Your product descriptions and meta tags must be on point and concise)
• Create a targeted landing page for the products, items, or services you are trying to sell with your PPC campaign. Creating a targeted landing page will make it much easier to track how effective your PPC campaign is using Goals in Google Analytics.
• Optimize the user experience on your website and landing page with quality imagery, outstanding content, and fast loading speeds. (One way to do this is to make sure all your image file sizes are uniformly compact.)

Google (and similar search platforms) will also rank the anticipated Click Thru Rate (CTR) of your ad and show you how likely users are to click your ad.

Getting started with E-commerce PPC Management

Seeing the efficacy of a well-thought-out PPC strategy isn’t hard. Getting started with a PPC campaign that enables speedy click rate increases takes more thought. Here’s what we recommend.

1. Create a Google Ads account: You don’t have to restrict your PPC strategy to one platform, but we suggest choosing one on which to practice and then widening your reach from there.

2. Get organized: you’ll group your ads into campaigns that house ad groups. If you lead a smaller company, you may run one campaign with one or two ad groups at a time. 

If you’re more established or have hundreds of products and several buyer personas to target, you may run more campaigns with larger ad groups simultaneously. An ad group is a series of ads targeted toward the same type of buyer. It can work to your advantage to use the same keyword on an entire ad group.

3. Choose the most effective keywords: if you sell raincoats, you certainly could use “raincoat” as a PPC keyword. With such a broad keyword, you’ll notice that you will have a lot of competition, however. And getting ranked high in the PPC scroll could be expensive and elusive with such a broad match.

Selecting a long-tail keyword (a precise phrase your ideal customer might use when hitting the search engines) can get you closer to a sale with each click. Why? Because consumers who’ve done their homework search with more detail and intent when they close in on a purchase. 

Instead of simply using “raincoat,” a relevant long-tail keyword might be “navy blue knee-length Gore-Tex raincoat under $200.” You’ll have to do a little more audience research to mine for these long-tail keywords, but the work generally pays off with a higher conversion rate for that keyword. You’ll notice it’s a matter of balancing your keyword selection between broad matches.

4. Create engaging ads that pull focus and inform effectively: winning a mention from Google with the right keywords is only part of the PPC marketing battle. Your ad must engage your customer to click it, after all. Use relevant, concise language to describe your products, quality images, and captivating, branded messages. Clearly depict the problems your product solves in your meta tags as well.

5. Ensure you have a landing page: having a landing page for your PPC campaign is a must. An excellent landing page will guide whoever clicked on your ad to reach the end-goal of your advertising campaign. Whether that means signing up for a free-trial, purchasing a specific product, or joining a mailing list, a landing page will help get you the conversions you want. Whatever your goal, a landing page will help boost your campaign’s effectiveness by guiding customers exactly where you want them to go.

6. Add video content: consider expanding your PPC E-commerce reach by using video content. You can use PPC video ads on YouTube or the Google Display Network. These ads can be in-stream and can be skippable or non-skippable.

You may also use out-stream video ads, and these are shown on partner sites while being viewed on a tablet or mobile. Outstream video ads are clickable, making them simple, interactive, and engaging. Video ads are an excellent addition to most PPC E-commerce campaigns and are suitable for advertising beginners or seasoned vets.

Outsource your E-commerce PPC to the experts at Romain Berg

While learning how to create workable PPC campaigns is wise for any business leader, you likely have a long list of to-do items each day, week, and month. 

When your busy schedule doesn’t allow you to launch results-driven PPC campaigns and PPC management services, it’s time to outsource this vital piece of your growth.

Our team of PPC experts at Romain Berg has decades of combined expertise in creating PPC strategies that increase your clicks and conversions expediently. Fill out our contact form today, and we’ll be in touch to strategize and implement your next E-commerce PPC campaign. 

We’re data-driven, and our PPC services work to get you the results you want, no hype included.

Fill out our contact form today, and we’ll be in touch to partner with you on a customized, winning E-commerce PPC strategy and implementation.