Have you ever searched for something on the web, and then received an advert for something related to it a couple of days later? No, this isn’t a coincidence, it’s an example of behavioural marketing in action.   

How Does Behavioural Marketing Work?

Behavioural marketing is especially valuable as it allows you to target very specific groups of people and turn them into leads. In a world that is full of ads, popups and ways to generate customers, it isn’t always the best idea to run a campaign in the hope that someone might interact with it. 

Instead, behavioural marketing will take into account other aspects of the user’s behaviour, such as their browsing and search history, IP address and cookies. Information on what they are looking at, how long they spent looking at a product or whether they added anything to their basket is all collected and sent to the ad server. This information is then used to generate a clearer picture of who your customer is and what they are really looking for.

Behavioural Marketing vs Contextual Marketing

Where behavioural marketing targets specific users based on their online behaviour, contextual marketing will display an ad alongside content that is deemed to be relevant. An excellent example of this is if you were buying a new guitar, you may see ads at the side of your screen for guitar accessories or music lessons. Machine learning is used to ensure that the ad is relevant to the on-page content to maximise the conversion rate. 

Both behavioural marketing and contextual marketing are valuable forms of advertising as they are both used to put related ads in front of users at the right time. What’s more, they are both highly dynamic and will become better equipped at finding the right customers as they gather more information. Despite these similarities and the end goal being the same, behavioural and contextual marketing are very different in how they choose the right place for an ad. Let’s explore this more:

The key difference between the two is that behavioural marketing will take into account the past behaviour of the user and place an ad in the most effective place. Contextual marketing doesn’t do this and instead places an ad in the location where it thinks the customers might be based on the content they are currently looking at. Both of these marketing methods have pros and cons, although it is often most effective to use a mixture of the two to generate the most conversions.    

The Benefits of Utilising Behavioural Marketing

Behavioural marketing holds a number of different benefits, both for the brand and for the consumer. Firstly, it improves user engagement with your ads by selecting relevant content for specific audience members. By harnessing the power of data, you are able to better understand your customers and their needs, making it easier for you to fulfil them. Personalised ads are far more likely to progress consumers through their buyer’s journey than generic, disruptive ads. This helps to mitigate wasting time, money and resources on general campaigns that aren’t giving you the return on investment you need.

For the consumer, ad targeting greatly improves their experience with adverts. No one wants to see ads for products and services they don’t need – after all, if you were shopping for a new bike, why would you want to see ads for beauty products? By putting the right products in front of people at the right time, they are far more likely to find something that appeals to them. By adopting a behavioural marketing strategy, you will help to improve the efficiency of your consumers. They are far more likely to find products or services that they otherwise may not have been aware of, improving your opportunity to secure new conversions.   

How to Create Your Behavioural Marketing Strategy

Creating a behavioural marketing strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. Generally, there are three main parts to the process; data collection and analysis, audience segmentation and then the application of your results. By understanding these three key areas you can easily design a successful behavioural marketing strategy that will bring in high-quality leads to your brand.

Let’s explore these steps in more detail.

Considerations to Make When Creating Your Behavioural Marketing Strategy

Before we go any further, let’s look at a few key considerations to make when designing your behavioural marketing strategy. When collecting your user’s data, make sure you let them know how you are using it. The process of monitoring a person’s buying habits and behaviour can be quite uncomfortable to some, so make sure to let them know what your intentions are. It’s also worth mentioning that just because you have a wealth of data at your fingertips, it doesn’t mean you should totally disregard the old methods of data collection. Surveys and user feedback are still great ways of better understanding your audience. 

Another important thing to consider is the size of your audience segmentation groups – they should be the right size to maximise the success of your campaigns. Groups that are too big and vague risk not being able to target specific sets of users. Likewise, by segmenting your audience into groups that are too small, your ads will not reach enough people to be successful. Find the right balance and reap the rewards. 

Finally, like any marketing campaign, it’s absolutely crucial that you analyse the results. If your behavioural marketing campaign has been unsuccessful, there may be variables that you need to change to get a better return on your investment.  

Data Collection & Analysis

Data collection is the key to a successful behavioural marketing campaign – the more information you gather, the more precise your ads will be. These days, it’s easier than ever to collect data and we no longer have to rely on long-winded data collection methods that cost both time and money. Data is now collected from various channels that track a user’s unique behaviour, including websites, social media, search history, emails and mobile apps.  

Audience Segmentation

The second step in your behavioural marketing strategy is to begin to sort out which users will go in which group – a process often referred to as audience segmentation. Users will be divided by their behavioural patterns and demographics, allowing you to target specific groups of people with ease. For example, you may want to place an ad for all males who have looked at motor-related content aged between 18-25. Your analysis will be able to sift out all users who do not match these exact criteria, ensuring that your ads or emails are being seen by people most likely to convert. By using a tool such as Google Analytics, you can enhance your ad targeting by focusing on specific groups within your user base. 

Some channels such as Facebook Ads or Linkedin Ads allow you to choose which audience you want to send ads to, meaning a lot of the lengthy work is done for you. All you have to do is pick the behavioural patterns that you want to target and the algorithm will segment your audience accordingly.  

However, it’s important to note that you shouldn’t let the algorithm do all of the work for you. These machine-learning tools are designed to make ad planning and implementation easier, but they are also designed to make the ad network profit too. Believe it or not, sometimes algorithms can get it wrong, but instead of identifying the issue and correcting it, they will continue to haemorrhage through your marketing budget. If you’re planning on using algorithmic ad tools, we recommend checking in and monitoring the results of your campaigns regularly to ensure you get the most out of your investment.

Applying Your Data

The final piece of the puzzle – implementing your data into your campaigns. In this stage, you’ll need to use the data you’ve found and create your truly tailored content, whether that be via Facebook Ads, Email or Google Search Ad. The channel you use is completely down to you, although it’s important to understand your audience and where they search for what you’re offering to maximise success. We’ve listed some of the main channels below: 

Email Retargeting Campaigns

Another popular way to implement behavioural marketing is through marketing retargeting. Essentially, this is a process that focuses on users who have in some way interacted with your brand previously. An example of this would be sending a user an email after they had added something to their basket but hadn’t carried out the purchase. The email may say something along the lines of ‘are you still interested’ to attempt to draw the user back in and convert. You may also want to send an email to a group of people that hadn’t opened an email from you in over three months. This could be an email offering some kind of bonus with the aim of converting them back into an engaged customer. 

The simple fact is that people are busy and don’t always have the time to purchase a product right away. Or, many people shop around to try and find the best deal for them. By implementing marketing retargeting, you are reminding your customers about the services and products that you offer. 

Customised Messaging (Chatbots)

Chatbots are a great way to communicate directly with your customers and determine what they are looking for from your brand. By gathering information about what your users want, you can tailor the content that you send to them in future. Not only this, but it helps your customers find what they want on your channel and ensures a smoother buyer’s journey for them.  

Product Recommendations & Suggestions

Another form of behavioural targeting is product recommendations and suggestions. This simple marketing technique aims to personalise a customer’s experience by showing them products that they are likely to enjoy. The information is again based on their previous purchases, browsing behaviour and demographics. 

Product recommendations are especially beneficial for eCommerce websites that have large catalogues where stock can be easily missed. By suggesting products to your customers at the right time in their buyer’s journey, you are providing a strategy that makes sure they aren’t missing anything on your website.    

PPC Services at Loop Digital

We offer a range of Paid Media services here at Loop Digital, whether that be PPC via Google Ads or Social Media Advertising. We’re experts in getting your business the support it needs to start reaping the rewards of successful ad campaigns.

If you’re interested in finding out more about our PPC services, contact a member of our team today to discuss your business’s requirements. 

The post What is Behavioural Marketing? appeared first on Loop Digital Marketing Ltd.

Increasingly, the vast majority of consumers use search tools to conduct research prior to making purchasing decisions, meaning marketers have had to evolve their advertising approach to capitalise on this change in consumer behaviour. Around 67% of consumers say their online purchasing has increased since the start of the pandemic, making it more crucial for your business to be visible and nail your online ad strategy. 

Now, more than ever, users are overwhelmed with ads and information in search, making it more challenging for brands to break through the noise. With that said, every challenge welcomes a new opportunity! 

Introducing rich media ads, spearheaded by a number of brands looking to innovate their advertising approach to get ahead of the competition. This shift to rich media comes as marketers are looking for stronger performance and better ROI from their paid ads. Discover how with rich media you can enhance your ads and get the recognition your brand deserves.

Understanding Rich Media Ads and Their Benefits

A rich media ad is a type of digital advertising that includes advanced multimedia elements like animation, video and audio to enhance the performance of the ad. The purpose of a rich media ad is to influence more interactions and promote higher engagement from the users that see the content. 

Static ads like text and display have stood the test of time and can still generate results for various businesses. Rich media ads on the other hand strive to amplify the performance of the static ads, achieving optimal results for your brand. 

Rich media adverts empower advertisers and marketers to create impactful ads that provide a much stronger opportunity to drive valuable action from your target audience. 

By leveraging HTML5 technology, rich media ads can include multiple levels of content within the same placement, enabling you to get more bang for your buck. 

Rich Media Ads vs Static Ads

The effectiveness and performance of static banner ads have been in decline over the last few years. Research suggests that 50% of clicks on static banner ads in accidental, with around 4 out of 1000 users taking a valuable action. Once upon a time, banner ads played a significant role in driving a fair amount of traffic as a part of a wider digital marketing approach. 

Even with the addition of modern-day targeting tech, banner ads just don’t hold the power they once used to. 

So what do we do when something doesn’t work as well as it should? We evolve it. Rich media ads intend to make traditional banners more interactive, bringing a breath of fresh air through your ad strategy. Rich media enables you to combine various multimedia content, offering a new, dynamic experience that promotes higher user engagement. 

The advances in tech have been largely responsible for this shift, as it has introduced new ways for advertisers to utilise the power and functionality of smart devices. As users interact with webpages, rich media ads can move along as users scroll, swipe, and move the cursor or click. Paired with their ability to leverage various formats, rich media ads are much more capable of providing a more entertaining and positive user experience, leaving a lasting impression. 

How Rich Media Ads Can Benefit Your Business

Grab The Attention of Your Users

As we’ve alluded to already, one of the many benefits of rich media ads is that they demand attention from your users. Rich media helps you present your content in a way that supports users to retain more information. For people who prefer to digest content visually, a user segment that has seen significant growth, it means they can absorb and recall information more easily.

Why is this important? Well, the average attention span of a user has decreased to just 8.25 secs. Visitors are much more likely to understand the messages of your ad if it is delivered in a video format as opposed to just written content. Without this complementary media, you may find that you’re restricted in the amount of information that can be squeezed into your ad, or that users don’t retain the messaging.

Additionally, visuals are a marketer’s universal language, although we wouldn’t recommend a copy and paste job for a multinational campaign, imagery can help bridge any potential gaps in your messaging.

Increased User Engagement

Looped in with the previous benefit, rich media ads empower you to increase the user engagement of your ads. As the advertising industry has moved forward with the times, marketers have discovered the benefits of utilising interactive advertisements. 

Rich media ads present a better opportunity for your target users to take desired and valuable actions. Including videos, appealing imagery, and graphics you can reduce the click barriers of your ad by adding a sense of familiarity and trust to your ad assets. As marketers, we know that a high-quality visual asset adds to the professionalism of our brands, this applies to your advertising too. 

Create A Better User Experience

In 2022, most consumers are undoubtedly experiencing some degree of ad fatigue, especially when ads disrupt their overall user experience. This increase in ad fatigue shouldn’t be a shock either, being as though the average person encounters around 6,000 to 10,000 ads every single day. So how do we combat this? By offering a better user experience!

Rich media ads help combat ‘banner blindness’ by providing a visual more interesting experience that users can engage with. This is especially true for mobile users who would otherwise be swiping between tabs at a glance. Engaging ad content can help fuel excitement for your brand, as well as the products or services you’re promoting. 

By implementing rich media into your advertising campaigns you can uplift the user experience, driving gains in other important areas too. Fundamentally, your ad shouldn’t force your users to leave the site their on, your content should influence them to want to learn more.

Eclipse Your Competitors

Offering something that is truly unique is a fundamental challenge for all marketers. Rich content can help revitalise your brand perception, this is particularly true for industries where rich media is not widely utilised. 

Being amongst one of the first brands to deploy rich media ads could help differentiate your business from your competition. 

In today’s market, where the competition is particularly high, implementing interactive ads that offer a superior experience to those who share your industry could make the difference between who they decide to purchase with. 

Restriction-Free Creativity

*To a certain extent that is. Rich media ads can be created in a variety of different formats, something we’ve covered in more detail in our next section. Marketers and advertisers alike can enjoy the creative freedom to produce fun and engaging ads that promote their products, services and brand. 

The advanced features within rich media content enable you to diversify your content but bear in mind, that you shouldn’t overwhelm your users. With that said, be sure to utilise your ad placement to the best of your ability.

Unlike traditional static banners, rich media ads are compatible with most modern web technologies, including HTML5, Javascript and Java. 

The Different Types of Rich Media Ads

As mentioned in our previous section, there are a variety of different types of rich media ads to choose from. Below, we’ve broken down each of these formats to help narrow down your choices and support your decision-making. 

Banner Ads

These aren’t just your average banner ads that you see across most of the websites you visit. Banner ads are the most widely used canvas of all of the formats. These ads can appear in either horizontal or vertical layouts, depending on the creative you have chosen for your ads. Banner ads are fairly straightforward to create and a huge number of websites permit their implementation.

These fixed-sized ads can appear on both web pages and mobile apps at a medium-high cost per impression. By incorporating dynamic elements like video, you can enhance the appeal of your advertisements. 

Interstitial Ads

Described by Google as a ‘creative that either floats on top of a page’s content or appears as a fullscreen ad during natural transition points in mobile apps’. Interstitial ads are highly interactive ads that are commonly compiled of imagery, text, video and audio. Think about the last pop-up that appeared when you last used a free-use app. 

These ads can either be locked in a position on a webpage or they can follow the user down a webpage as they scroll, however, this option may impact your ability to track user behaviour. Interstitial ads are mostly full screen which gives the user little room to ‘miss’ your ad. This inability to escape the ad can benefit your business by increasing the ad’s viewability but potentially irritate the end-user. 

To exit the ad, users will be prompted to close the ad, commonly by tapping on an X or click-through to the corresponding website. Getting approval for these ads is tricky as Google has pretty strict guidelines on how they can be implemented without interrupting the user experience.

Expanding Ads

This rich media ad expands beyond its initial dimensions over the top of other page or app content. The ad expansion will occur when a trigger is met, whether that be based upon user behaviour, a click for example, or when the webpage loads. Expanding ads can expand in any direction and shape, with and without fading transitions. 

These ads will expand over content by default, but you can also enable them to push-down content on the page, covered in the next section. 

Pushdown Ads

These ads aren’t exactly the same as expanding ads but they are similar. A pushdown ad is an expanding creative that pushes down the content of a webpage when the creative expands. This normally occurs when a user meets a certain trigger on the page like hovering their mouse over the ad. 

One of the key advantages of using these ads is that they do not obscure the content on the page, meaning users are less likely to be irritated by your ad and increase the potential for genuine interest. 

Multi-Directional Expanding Ads

Multi-Directional Expanding Ads or MDEs, are a type of rich media ad that, you guessed it, expands in multiple directions. The direction of how your ad expands depends on where the ad appears on the page.

Video & VPAID Ads

Video features can be included with all of the ad formats listed above. VPAID however, is a little bit different. VPAID stands for Video Player-Ad Interface Definition, this type of rich media ad content can be displayed in a publisher’s in-stream video player, the go-to for this would be a channel like YouTube. 

Although we’re certain you’re familiar with them already, these ads typically appear, before, after or during video playback. 

Summary

There are various ways your business can advance your ad game. By leveraging rich media in your paid ads strategy your brand can improve your opportunities to build brand awareness, promote engagement and influence conversions. 

Paid Ads & PPC at Loop Digital

Loop Digital is a key player in providing bespoke digital advertising solutions for businesses all across the UK and overseas. Recognised for our commitment to achieving sustainable results and revenue for our clients, we’ve been awarded Google Partner status. For more information, you can learn about our PPC services here or get in touch with a member of our team today. 

The post Why Are Rich Media Ads Important? appeared first on Loop Digital Marketing Ltd.

For newcomers to PPC, the idea of running and managing a search campaign can be quite daunting. Ensuring you’re using your budget in the most efficient way to maximise ROI (Return On Investment) isn’t the simplest thing to do. However, there are many “quick wins” that can be implemented with relatively little experience or PPC knowledge, ensuring your campaigns are working to make you money, and not blowing the budget. Leave behind the set-it and forget-it campaigns and learn how you can incorporate these simple PPC techniques to optimise any Pay-Per-Click campaign.

Why Your Business Needs PPC

Before we jump into our top PPC optimisation tactics, let’s discuss why your business should be utilising paid ads. Over 100 billion searches are made every single day via search engines. Not being visible in these search results means your business will undoubtedly be missing out on these opportunities. Search engine marketing and other forms of pay-per-click advertising can bring great strategic value to your overarching marketing mix.

Whether you choose to go with Microsoft Advertising or Google Ads, both are highly effective at driving quality traffic to your website, boosting your opportunity to secure conversions and sales. You can further enhance these benefits and your success by ensuring your campaigns are optimally set up.

We’ve outlined a number of steps you can take to ensure your campaigns as running as efficiently as possible, generating the strongest possible return for your business.

1. Negative Keywords
2. Competitor Analysis
3. Utilise Responsive Ads
4. Location Targeting
5. Excluding Locations
6. Demographic Targeting
7. Leveraging Keyword Planner
8. Ad Scheduling
9. Ad Rotation
10. Landing Page Optimisation

How Negative Keywords Enhance Your PPC Strategy

1. Negative Keywords

One crucial thing you can’t afford to overlook when optimising your PPC campaigns is:

Including negative keywords in your ads.

This means that you will avoid appearing for searches that you decide are irrelevant to your campaign and website. This enables you to focus on only the keywords that matter to your business. By refining your keyword targeting you can get your ads in front of users who are genuinely interested in what your business has to offer to increase your return on investment.

Google Ads calculates your Ad Rank through a series of different metrics. Factors including:

• Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Impression Share
• Spend
• Conversions
• And Much More

If your ads appear for the wrong searches/keywords, you could be wasting your budget on securing clicks from the wrong audience. This will lead to these users bouncing off of your website and begin to negatively impact your conversion rate.

A good example of this is if you’re targeting the keyword “Windows”, as a business that only sells windows for houses. Obviously, you wouldn’t want to appear for searches surrounding car windows. This would waste your budget, drop your impression share, reduce CTR, and lower the conversion rate. Google will see this and potentially demote your ads to a lower Ad Rank.

2. Competitor Analysis

Need to do some research for your ads campaign? Well then check out your competitors! One thing that we would like to note from the offset is that Google and rival search engines are increasingly making it more challenging to essentially snoop on your competitors. Don’t let this dissuade you though, as with all elements of marketing, analysing what your competitors are doing is often key to finding new opportunities.

Before you have even set up/optimised your campaign, your competitors will have likely gone through and conducted research into what works and what doesn’t. By studying their ads, and the keywords they appear for, you can begin to construct an insight into their PPC strategy.

The deconstruction of their ads and copy could offer your business a unique perspective and new ideas you can incorporate into your own ads. You can analyse your competitor’s headlines, meta-descriptions, and page layout to build stronger ads.

Whilst there isn’t a quick or direct way to see how much your competitor is spending or the key terms they are bidding on, the Auction Insights Report (in Google Ads) can provide an overview of your and other users’ ads performance.

3. Utilise Responsive Ads

Writing text ads is the foundation of all Search campaigns. However, creating responsive ads can help boost the performance of your Ad Groups. By detailing a select number of headlines and descriptions, you will be displaying ads that more closely match searches made by users.

Responsive search ads support you to create ads that can adapt to users’ devices, allowing you to share your message with your prospects irrespective of their device. In addition to this, Google’s algorithm will quickly learn which headlines and descriptions perform the best and will show the optimal combinations to your customers. This also gives you the opportunity to include things such as “Fast Delivery”, “30% Discount”, and other offers that will help encourage people to click on your ads.

In Google Ads, the platform will keep you updated or alert you if issues should a decrease in performance occur, or any other issues that could affect your ability to publish ads for that matter. The key to making your responsive ads work as hard as possible is to provide unique headlines, this will give Google more options to assemble your messages in a way that resonates with your target market.

4. Location Targeting

Essentially location targeting does what it says on the tin, it enables you to target your ads to appear in the geographic locations that you choose, whether that be country, region or radius. Location targeting helps you focus your advertising so that it reaches the right people. Stronger targeting often correlates directly to a stronger return on investment. 

In our modern technological age, it’s unlikely your ads will only be served to your specified location 100% of the time, due to the usage of VPNs and other signals. However, you can trust that it’ll be largely accurate, you can always analyse the performance metrics to ensure that your location settings are supporting you to meet your goals. 

5. Excluding Locations

As we’ve alluded to in our previous point, determining where your ads should or should not be shown is important. It’s just as crucial that your business actually excludes locations from your targeting criteria. Location exclusion will stop your ads from being shown in the locations you specify, as before, this can be drilled down into country, region or radius.

You might be wondering why it’s a good idea to do this, essentially it supports you in getting the most out of your budget. The rationale for this can be split into two sides, the first is it excludes those users who won’t be able to access your goods, whether it be down to distance or shipping logistics. You might also have location restrictions on your promotion campaign that you need to implement.

The other side is predominantly about protecting your budget from the competition in particularly saturated areas. By excluding areas that are known for providing your services or products you avoid advertising to your competitors, saving you additional budget.

6. Demographic Targeting

Advertising for the masses or narrowing down your messaging to those you know are most likely to engage with your brand? We know which one we’re choosing! A fundamental part of any digital marketing campaign is determining your target audience, and better still, your buyer personas. Once this information is defined, you can translate this criterion into your ad campaign settings.

Demographic targeting enables you to reach a specific set of prospects who are likely to be within an age range, gender, parental status or household income. Targeting using demographics also empowers you to exclude people from seeing your ad too. For example, if you’re an ‘older male sportswear’ brand, you may want to exclude women or younger men from seeing the ad.

7. Keyword Planner

There is a wide range of different tools out there that can help you find the right keywords for your campaign. These include:

• SEMRush
• Ahrefs
• Keyword Surfer
• SEO Quake

But when going through all these, you can often forget about using Google Keyword Planner. This tool is designed and built for Google Ads. This free tool can help you discover new keywords that are related to your business and gauge a rough idea of their popularity in search and the costs to target them.

Whilst the tool is good, we recommend combining its usage with other analytical tools as your overall campaign performance will be impacted by a variety of other factors, not just the popularity of a specific key term. With that said, Google Keyword Planner can help you optimise keywords that are right for your campaign.

8. Ad Scheduling

This comes with understanding who your target demographics or buyer personas are. With each demographic and niche, there are particular times in which users are most active online or when they are most likely to be researching your business, products or services. This changes between demographics and niches.

B2B businesses, for example, are likely to be conducting their research for traders or vendors during work hours, whereas B2C consumers are likely to conduct research in the evenings or at weekends. In addition to specifying specific times to run your ads, you can also add bid adjustments for particular days and times too.

By using ad scheduling to target prime times for your demographic, you will focus your budget spend at times when you are most likely to gain clicks and conversions. This will help boost your Ad Rank and boost the position of your ads without paying more.

9. Ad Rotation

Ad rotation settings allow you to decide how often you’d like the ads in your ad groups to be served to users. The ‘optimise’ setting with ad rotation essentially lets Google prioritise and pick your ads based upon what will perform better than other ads within the group. The higher-performing ads will be shown more frequently. 

We would always suggest that within the campaign’s ad rotation you select “Optimise: Prefer best performing ads”. This will ensure that your most effective ads are on display. The goal of the ad is to encourage as many clicks as possible. After that, it is up to the page to convert, so by ensuring that your best performing ads are displayed more often you will ensure you are maximising your opportunity to achieve conversions. 

10. Landing Page Optimisation

So you’ve done all of the steps above, traffic to your website is booming but it looks as though users are arriving on your landing pages and bouncing off. Every marketer’s worst nightmare! Well, this will likely be down to your landing page experience. 

This does fit more of a Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) route. However, when optimising your PPC campaign, you will want to ensure that your landing pages are all optimised to convert your prospects into qualified leads. 

Ensuring that you have features such as calls-to-action (CTA), engaging headlines, visuals and streamlined navigation will influence your users to take the desired action. In addition to improving your conversion rates, a stronger landing page experience will improve the ad scoring of your ads too. Google now analyses the quality of your landing pages, higher scores mean search engines are likely to show your ad more often and to more users. 

PPC Specialists at Loop Digital

At Loop Digital, our industry never sits still, we are consistently looking at ways we can improve and develop our practices to generate the best possible results for all of our client-partners. If you’re looking for support with fine-tuning your Paid Ads or wanting to get started with a new, more efficient digital marketing strategy, get in touch with our team of experts today.

The post 10 Simple Tips to Improve Your PPC Campaigns appeared first on Loop Digital Marketing Ltd.

To unlock the long- and short-term benefits of PPC, we’ve put together this guide on pay-per-click advertising. Keep reading to understand why you should invest in PPC and how to implement PPC correctly.

What Is Pay-Per-Click?

PPC, pay-per-click, is a paid advertising model that drives traffic to your website by paying for your website to appear on search engine results pages (SERPs). Pay-per-click ads are the results you see above the organic search results. 

65% of prospective customers click on PPC ads, which shows the potential of PPC compared to ranking organically. However, this form of paid ads doesn’t only direct traffic to your website, PPC has been shown to generate 17% of on-page conversions.

The right PPC campaign generates high-quality leads and sets them on the path towards a conversion. Because you’re paying for the link on SERPs, you have more control over the user journey your website’s visitors take. This is how, if you can implement the right campaign, you can secure a positive long-term ROI for your business.

How Does PPC Work?

Depending on your industry, your target audience will differ and the key terms you should be targeting will change. Ranking for a search query takes extensive research, SEO skills, and time for you to see results. Using paid advertising, allows your website to rise to the top rankings quickly so you can see an instant increase in traffic.

PPC works by setting a budget, this can be a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual budget. You invest this budget into paid ads on a specific platform such as Google, Facebook, or Twitter. Every time someone clicks on your ad, the cost is taken from your budget. Identifying the right channel to target and writing an ad that inspires actions gives your campaign the best chance of achieving your goals.

The Benefits of Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Generate Instant Results

There are not many things more frustrating in digital marketing than having to wait for results. Generating organic results takes time. There is also no guarantee that your efforts will deliver results, even if you’ve optimised for the right keyword. One of the biggest advantages PPC campaigns have over organic search strategies is timeliness.

Implementing an effective PPC campaign generates instant results. The goal of organic search marketing is to shoot your website to the summit of results pages. After months of hard work, for a competitive search query you may see a rise in rankings, however, paid advertising lands your website at the top of SERPs straight away.

Organic growth is great for increasing brand visibility long term. However, if you want to increase your website’s traffic straight away, PPC is the marketing approach to invest your efforts into. Over time, PPC can also help establish your brand’s presence, so the strategy is effective in the short and long term.

Navigate Algorithm Changes

Unfortunately, almost every marketer knows the feeling of being penalised by Google. When an algorithm change rolls around there is always the chance that your website’s rankings will fall. Regular rankings fluctuations are also part and parcel of organic search marketing. PPC campaigns differ as they’re never affected by Google’s algorithm updates.

Paid advertising ensures your website takes priority in SERPs. Where your competitor’s source of traffic may be affected by ranking fluctuations, a PPC campaign ensures your website is always generating fresh leads. The increase in user activity that an effective PPC campaign generates can also increase your organic rankings over time.

Cost-Effective & High ROI

Many business owners and marketers believe that paid advertising isn’t cost-effective. If organic rankings are free, how can PPC be more cost-effective and deliver a high ROI? Well, one survey from 2020 reported that 74% of businesses said that PPC was a significant driver of sales.

If you’re struggling to increase conversions on your website, consider investing in a PPC campaign for your business. PPC helps you attract prospects who are interested in your product or services by targeting relevant keywords. It also gives you more control over the user journey, so you can help visitors navigate your site towards converting into a customer.

Enhance Brand Recognition

PPC campaigns should target relevant keywords your target audience is searching for. Doing this helps increase your brand awareness, visibility, and recognition. Paid advertising keeps your brand at the forefront of the search terms your target audience is using. 

Paid advertising is not only a tool for search engine marketing. You can pay for ads on social media channels. For this tactic to be effective, you must target the right social platform. If you’re a B2B organisation, LinkedIn will be the correct place to target. While an e-commerce site may pay for ads on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Attract Warm Leads

Targeting the right keywords helps attract warm leads to your website. These are people ready to make a purchase. You can ensure your brand is the first thing potential customers see when they’re researching who to buy from. If you can entice them to click on your ad, then your website can guide them towards making a purchase.

Sometimes specific search queries may be challenging to rank for organically. However, this doesn’t mean they should be ignored. Local search terms can be particularly challenging to rank for but appearing for them may increase conversions. PPC can unlock potential profits by appearing in search engine pages for the keyword leads are using.

The Different Types of PPC

• Search Advertising – Google ads are the main form of search advertising. PPC search ads are the search engine results that appear at the top of the page above all organic results.
• Display Advertising – Another form of Google ads, display advertising can promote your brand across all of Google’s partner websites. You should adapt the campaign to ensure your ads appear on sites that your target audience is visiting.
• Social Advertising – Social media ads let you connect directly with your target customers. A social PPC campaign places your brand on social media channels, allowing you and viewers to interact with the post. 

How To Implement PPC 

1. Identify Your Keywords – For search paid advertising, such as Google ads, you need to appear in SERPs for keywords your target audience is using. Conduct keyword research to establish their search terms and use them as the foundation of your campaign.
2. Establish Your Budget – Like any form of paid digital marketing, you need to establish your budget. Always remember that a higher spend doesn’t mean better results; it’s how you use your budget that will secure results.
3. Fine Tune The Campaign – Once you’ve invested in your target keywords, this is just the beginning. You should monitor the campaign and identify areas for improvement, even if they’re small.

Loop Digital PPC

Generate traffic and increase conversions with a cost-effective PPC campaign today. At Loop Digital, we have extensive experience creating, implementing, and running pay-per-click campaigns. Unlock your business’s potential today, call our team on 01604 806020 or visit our contact page to submit an enquiry.

The post What is Pay-Per-Click & How Your Business Can Benefit appeared first on Loop Digital Marketing Ltd.

But what is social media advertising? And how can you use it to exploit the full potential of social media users to convert with you and your business?

What is Social Media Advertising?

Social media advertising is a form of digital marketing that sees paid content appearing on social media websites or properties. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other social media.

When using social media for advertising, due to the data that is held on the various platforms, you are able to define an audience a lot more effectively through the use of demographic targeting, interest targeting and many more ways to target and define your perfect audience.

Depending on the channel you use, there are a vast variety of ways that you can advertise using social media. For instance, some of the different ad types available are text ads, display ads, video ads, banner ads and much, much more.

Does Social Media Advertising Work Well For Small Businesses?

The short answer is yes, it can work very effectively for a small business.

Social media advertising can be a very cost-effective way to reach a wider target audience. This is because you are able to use a number of defining factors to effectively target the correct audience that you’re looking to reach. This can easily lead to a higher conversion rate from the ads driving traffic to the business’s website.

Social Media Advertising Platforms

Choosing the right social media platform to advertise on is a key factor when working with a limited budget or looking to keep spending low and save where you can. This is because some platforms can be more expensive than others, or you may get more for your money using a certain platform over others.

Facebook Ads Platform (+Instagram)

The Facebook advertising platform does not just include Facebook but also Instagram and a range of smaller Facebook properties. When looking to place advertisements on Facebook you can select to appear across all of their properties, from Facebook mobile to messenger as well as Facebook and Instagram stories and much more. The ad types that are available cover everything from display to video, as well as instant experience ads.

The Facebook platform is currently the largest social media platform that is widely used by people of all ages all over the world. So if you are looking to target a wider detailed audience then the Facebook Advertising platform could be for you.

Twitter Advertising Platform

Twitter as a social media platform is seen to have a more prominent younger demographic so it may be more suited to companies looking to target a younger audience.

Some of the ad types that you can get from Twitter are;

Promoted tweets, where you can promote an already posted tweet to a wider audience.

Promoted accounts, this recommends your Twitter account to users who do not currently follow you.

Promoted trends, which is a 24-hour high-impact takeover of the trends list on Twitter.

LinkedIn Advertising Platform

LinkedIn is a much more business-oriented social media platform that makes its advertising great for B2B (Business To Business) businesses or if you are looking to reach a higher, more professional audience. When using LinkedIn Advertising you can break down your target audience by their salary, job title, and company size. You are even able to target specific companies.

LinkedIn has similar ad options as Facebook, allowing you to deliver single-image ads, carousels, videos, and text ads. But LinkedIn also offers a wider range than the basic formatted ads, they also offer Inmail ads that send individual private messages to your target audience and also lead generation ads which work just like instant experience ads on Facebook.

Youtube Advertising Platform

The Youtube platform alone is seen to be the second biggest search engine directly after Google. This statistic goes to show the power and reach that Youtube has through the number of searches that it receives.

Due to Youtube being a streaming website, the ad types that you can deliver are mainly set as video ads such as Trueview (automatically playing ads), Preroll (in-stream unskippable ads), and Bumper ads (unskippable 6-second ads).

Social Media Advertising Tips

Here are some useful tips for keeping on track with any Social Media Advertisements to ensure you are producing the best-suited ads for your business.

Know your target audience

Knowing the audience that you want to reach and draw into your business is vital because if you target too broad a market you will be essentially paying for people to ignore your ads.

Social media platforms allow you to target an audience very effectively due to the data and information that users hold on their profiles. This then allows advertisers to target more specifically to their desired market through the use of demographics and interests.

Test and Optimise Ads

A great thing about using social media advertising platforms is that you can get instant feedback and results on your ads. This then allows you to get an understanding of successful or poorly performing ads, so you can make appropriate changes and optimisations.

Testing different types of ads can be very effective as it allows you to get an understanding of which type of ads your target audience is more likely to interact with.

Doing this to refine and optimise your ads is known as A/B Testing. This type of testing compares two digital assets, be it a web page, ad or anything else, with varying elements to discover which receives the highest success rate.

Measure and Report on Results

As important as knowing the goals you want to reach at the start of your campaign is, being able to measure and report on the results you are seeing is just as important, if not more so. Doing this lets you know whether you have been successful in reaching your goals, or whether more work is needed.

Measuring your results gives you concrete data on the value that your ads bring to your company. This is key in proving the ROI (Return On Investment) on your ads.

The main social media platforms all offer ads managers which show analytical data of campaigns, ad sets, and singular ads. Using the ads manager of a social media platform allows you to collect all important data with a simple and easily understood view of the data.

Loop Digital Social Media Advertising

At Loop Digital, we help brands across the UK promote their businesses with the power of social media advertising. If you would like to learn more about our social media advertising services and how they can help grow your business, get in touch with our team today.

The post Social Media Advertising 101 appeared first on Loop Digital Marketing Ltd.