Know your Facebook Ad audience

In order to measure the success of a Facebook Ad, particularly with conversion tracking, you need to know and your audience – their age, sex and geographical location. Advertisers should be targeting a specific or group of interests and by understanding their age and male/female segmentation the campaign will have a better potential CPA (cost per acquisition) and a long life which in turn addresses Ad fatigue length.

Maximise Facebook Ad Shelf Life

Many advertisers will change the look and message of their Facebook Ads and scratch their heads as to why the campaign’s CPA is always on the increase. The problem isn’t one of design, it’s the length of time targeting one audience. Being specific about an audience reduces the effectiveness of your campaign, but it does open up new opportunities to reach an audience who’ve yet to see the Ad. If you’re selling Tennis gear, look at your audiences other interests such as Tennis Magazines, Sports Magazines, Tennis TV shows, Tennis Brands etc.

Facebook Ads are like no other

Traditional search marketing has a wider range of volume and a diversity so suffers less from Ad Fatigue. And the audience behaviour when searching also differs to Facebook because it’s not targeting a person’s specific Facebook interests.

Facebook Ads differ from traditional PPC marketing because they target interests and not keywords or phrases. To be effective with your Facebook Ad campaigns you need to understand both the interests/audiences that are out there, and how age, sex and GEO location separates those audiences.

Compare those figures to the UK internet advertising spend of £200 million in 2002 and you can see how digital ad growth has exploded over the last ten years.

And as digital spend reached a landmark figure, so mobile spend also crossed a significant milestone. Triggered by increased smartphone ownership (64% of the UK population), mobile advertising hit the half billion pound mark with like-for-like growth up by 148% to £525 million in 2012 compared to £203.2 million in 2011.

In just three years, mobile has seen a huge increase and now accounts for 9.7% of all digital advertising spend compared to 1.1% in 2009.

Digital advertising formats

Display advertising across the entire digital landscape, boosted by the increase in video and social media advertising, grew in line with the market at 12.4% on a like-for-like basis to £1.30 billion from £1.14 billion in 2011, representing a 24% share of digital ad spend in 2012.

Video advertising grew 46% to £160.0 million from £109.0 million, accounting for 12% of online and mobile display in 2012; up from 10% in 2011. In the last threeyears video ad spend has increased almost six-fold (471%).

Social media advertising grew 24% to £328.4 million from £265.0 million. In the last three years social media spend has increased almost four-fold (383%).

Online and mobile sponsorship advertising grew 34% to £65.7 million from £49.0 million, accounting for 5% of digital display. In the last threeyears digital sponsorship spend has increased 128%.

Online in-game advertising revenue grew 30% to £23.4 million from £18.0 million in 2011.

Paid-for search marketing increased 14.5% on a like-for-like basis to £3.17 billion from £2.77 billion – representing a 58% share of digital advertising.

Classifieds grew 6.3% like-for-like to £853.8 million from £788.0 million – accounting for 16% of digital ad spend in 2012. Recruitment classifieds showed strong growth of 7.6% from £276.6 million in 2011 to £297.7 million in 2012.

Anna Bartz, Senior Manager at PwC, said:

“Over the past two years, the digital advertising revenue model has also changed from an emphasis on direct response to being more about branding and awareness.”

The top five display advertising sectors in 2012 are completed by:

• Finance (15%)
• Entertainment & media (13%)
• Retail (12%)
• Technology (9%) 

There was a time when SEO was just about including a few keywords in your title and meta description and then advertising on a few web directories in order to get backlinks (and if you’re not even doing that then you’ve a long way to go).

These days SEO includes:

• Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube etc.)
• Analytics
• SEO Tools
• Content marketing
• Open Graph
• Local Search
• Micro data and schema
• Data scraping

The list goes on, and the landscape is constantly shifting so you have to keep up with the changes. If you’re running a successful business (or hoping to) do you have time for modern search engine optimisation demands? The answer is probably not so you need to out-source to the experts.

Let’s say you’re starting out. If you’ve only a small operating budget can you afford to spend big when in your first year of trading? In reality you’re going to be trying to just survive until the next year.

Start-ups dream of immediately outranking other websites who have spent tens of thousands in digital marketing. Imagine trying to compete with an established business who’ve already spent out on three years worth of SEO at £50,000 per year. That’s £150k and you’re trying to displace them from the top with a budget of £5k. It’s not going to happen.

At the early stages you need to make every penny count by ensuring you maximise every possible conversion from each visitor to your website. This means focusing your site toward conversions. SEO won’t do that for you at the beginning. SEO is a long-term commitment that can take months (if not a year or more) to start seeing a return on investment (ROI).

PPC Campaigns

So what’s the solution? Well, consider running PPC campaigns instead. It can lead to quick results but managed badly it can also lead to expensive failures. Either way, you’ll be better placed to know your position in the market and how to go about improving your bottom line.

If you can get a return from PPC then SEO will start to pay dividends in the long term. Use PPC as a test-bed and if you pass then you’ll be better placed for running SEO. If it goes wrong, you can examine the efficiency of your landing pages, offers and products. Once the foundations for your revenue stream are in place then SEO can start to reduce cost per acquisition and increase your profits.

If you’re a newcomer to PPC, or a search marketing expert, we’ve put together a list of the common mistakes people make with pay-per-click landing pages.

Pre-Populated Forms

Somewhere on your site will be a form that you hope potential customers will fill out and send. Tests have shown that people are more likely to input the information you want them to if the fields on your form have been pre-populated.

This basic functionality can have a significant impact on conversion rates. A good example can be seen below from the website golivebutton.com

Look where they look

We all look at what other people are looking at. It’s natural human behaviour typically displayed when there’s been an accident. The same behaviour can apply to images on your landing pages.

Instead of subjects in your images looking directly at the viewer, have them look at the ad copy or branding. People will tend to look where the subject of the image is looking.

In the example above, an eye-tracking heatmap has been applied to highlight where people look. The red areas follow the eyeline of the baby to the creative. So, if your landing page is going to have people in it, make sure they’re looking where you want your customers to be looking.

Blow your own trumpet

What better way to show potential customers how great your company or product is than by having existing customers tell them. Customer testimonials help to build trust between you and prospective customers so include them on your PPC landing page.

Trust Icons

Nothing assures potential customers more than placing a visual assurance that your company is legit and accredited on a landing page. If you place these icons next to a call to action such as a phone number or submit button of a form you’re more likely to achieve a conversion.

Make the most of your headline

Google AdWords quality score comprises many parts including keyword relevance and ad copy so ensure you’re maximising the headline of your landing page. The headline also assures potential customers that they’ve landed on the page they clicked through to and it has the information they were looking for.

One company that has used their landing page headlines to good effect is ratedpeople.com who successfully connect customers with tradesman and service professionals.

One simple call-to-action

A common mistake on many websites is too much information on a landing page. If you expect visitors to carry out numerous tasks the likelihood is they’ll bounce straight off the page and on to a competitors site. Try to focus on one single action and you’re more likely to get the result you want.

The old adage of less is more is true. Pick a simple action and drive your visitor to take that action.

Hopefully the information above and the examples we’ve shown will help you to understand some of the key principles which you can easily apply to your landing pages before launching your Google AdWords campaigns.

• Online directories
• Your own website
• Newspaper adverts
• Offline directories
• Direct mail

A combination of these methods should form a marketing strategy that will build awareness and credibility for your business. The more people hear about you, the more memorable your message and service becomes.

So, you’ve budgeted for advertising across a variety of media and created a message that will draw people to your service. How do you know how your customers found out about you?

How did you hear about me?

The best thing you can do during your first contact with a customer is to ask how they found you. However, don’t always expect to get an accurate answer. In fact, the information they give you will probably be inaccurate. Why?

Firstly, people just don’t remember because they have other things occupying their mind and where they saw your advert may not be a priority. A common fallback to the question:

“Where did you find me?”

is

“Oh, I think it was the phonebook.”

If the customer found you via an online directory they may give a vague description of what the website looked like but not the actual name of the site.

Recent research has identified that over half of people who were asked by a business “where did you find us?” answered that they saw the business promoted on a medium that the company never actually used. For example, a customer may reply they heard about you on the radio when in fact you’ve never advertised on the radio.

Are people liars? No, they just want to be helpful and it may be they spend most of their time listening to the radio.

Another reason for inaccurate feedback is that customers may hear about your business in a variety of ways. If your marketing strategy is good, you should be using more than one medium but a person is not going to list all those different places to you. They may name one place they saw your advert but if they do, more than likely it will be the most recent.

How to identify where your clients are coming from

Online contact with a client

If you advertise your business using an online directory service it should offer you real-time statistics on how many people have visited your listing/profile page. These statistics should also show how many people clicked through to your website (assuming you have one) from your directory listing.

This is an important statistic as it shows your directory listing is doing what it should i.e. clients are seeing your service and looking to find out more by visiting your website. You should back these statistics up using your own analysis via a service such as Google Analytics. This is a free service provided by Google which provides features to allow you to monitor web traffic to your site.

Use a contact a form

If a potential client visits your website and wants to get in touch, you should provide a contact form with options that will indicate how they reached your business.

Using a contact form is an ideal way to gather the information you need e.g.

• Name
• Contact details (phone number, email address)
• Nature of enquiry

The form should also have a selection of options for how the client found your business. The options should include those places you advertise your business plus some general options.

For example:

• Search engine (Google etc.)
• Newspaper advert
• Directory Listing
• Direct mail
• Friend recommendation

NB: If the client says they found you on Google you need to know what they found? Was the search result from your website or a 3rd party who is helping to market your business e.g. Internet Marketing Team. Drilling this right down is crucial to understanding how effectively your marketing budget is working for you.

Direct contact with a client (telephone, face-to-face)

If speaking to people directly, make sure to ask how they found you. If the client is vague, prompt them using the various advertising methods you use. For example:

• “Did you get my mail-shot in the post?”
• “Was it my advert on…(name website)”
• “Did you see my number in…(name directory)?”

It’s important to establish exactly where a client saw your advert because then you’ll begin to see a pattern for which marketing tool is working best. You’re spending money to advertise so you should want to see a return on that investment. If you’re not monitoring it, how will you know?

Keep a record of the responses and review them regularly to see which ones are effective and how you might improve things in the future.

Discounts and promotional offers

Another useful way to get accurate information about how clients are finding your business is to offer special promotions when they mention how they found you.

For instance, if you have a directory listing, you may want to place a note on your profile page to tell potential clients that mentioning they found you on that directory will give them a 10% discount on their first session.

People will jump at the chance to give you that sort of information as they have something to gain.

Client contact: In summary

• Advertise your business so people can find it
• Always establish how a client found your service
• If the client is vague, prompt them with places you advertise to get an answer
• Use an online directory which provides visitor statistics
• Use a statistics service (such as Google Analytics) on your own website
• Monitor your referrals to see which marketing is working best
• If certain advertising isn’t working, find out why
• Offer discounts or promotional offers to clients who mention where they saw your advert

Pay Per Click (PPC) is an advertising technique to market and promote your website by bidding on keywords that will target a group of potential clients who would most likely be searching for a service or product. For example, if you offer a counselling service, then bidding on the keywords ‘counselling service‘ will mean that anyone searching using those terms will see an ad of yours.

You may have seen these advertisements on the right hand side of the Google search results pages (titled ‘ads’) and also two or three at the top of the page. If someone clicks on your ad link, they are taken to your website and you pay Google for the cost of that referral.

Google Resellers

It is possible to manage your own PPC campaign but doing so will require a certain amount of knowledge and time. Running a business, you’re probably unlikely to have either so it makes sense to outsource this to a company who specialise in PPC.

There are a number of reputable companies who can offer this service to you.  However, as with any business opportunity, there are many companies who use questionable selling tactics in order to get your money. These companies will inevitably also charge you over the odds for an inferior service.

Many businesses have been targeted by companies claiming to be Google or associated with Google. These companies, and others, are trying to sell online marketing solutions to businesses and it appears that they seem to be particularly focusing on small business and the health sector.

Stripping back the services they are offering it appears all they are doing is selling the service of setting up and running a pay per click (PPC) campaign. The problem isn’t the services they are selling, just how they are selling it and the prices.

Firstly – Many claim to be phoning from Google but be assured Google do not make any outbound calls to sell their products, they don’t need to.

Secondly – A number of these companies are charging between £150 to £400 set up fee plus monthly fees of around £150. These prices are staggering and totally unnecessary. It doesn’t cost that much to set up and run that type of service.

Google Certified Partners

You may be thinking that setting up a Google ad campaign. or rather finding someone to do it for you, is rather like negotiating a minefield. However, there is a way of ensuring that you’ll receive a professional service and that’s to seek out a Google AdWord Certified Partner.

Google AdWords Certified Partners are online marketing professionals who manage AdWords (PPC) accounts. To achieve this sought after certification and status, companies or individuals have invested time training and using AdWords and they must pass Google exams to demonstrate their in-depth knowledge of AdWords.

When choosing a Google Certified Partner, consider what your advertising needs will be and then try to match them with a professional’s services.

Internet Marketing Team is a Google Certified Partner which means we are well placed to help businesses who want to start up a campaign.

Should you run a PPC campaign?

As we’ve already mentioned, there is nothing wrong with running a PPC marketing campaign, run correctly it can prove to be a good addition to your marketing mix. Just make sure you’re working with a reputable company and you’re getting value for money.

Internet Marketing Team actually run one of the largest PPC campaigns in the UK for the health and therapy sector and are very well placed to help and advise you on this matter.

So our advice is this:

1. Always research the company who is calling you, Google their name and see what pops up. You may be shocked to find websites and blogs with ex-customer feedback telling you to stay clear of them.
2. Ask for a written proposal and outline of what they will do for you and at what cost.
3. Call Internet Marketing Team and ask our advice. We are happy to look at your proposal and give you unbiased feedback.

By now you’ve hopefully got a website up and running (if not, read about why you should have a website) and you’ve spent time crafting good, relevant content for visitors to read.

However, you shouldn’t just let your website become static and that means constantly reviewing your copy and making sure you’re updating it with offers to attract new clients.

Why provide offers on your website

There’s little point having a great website that ticks all the boxes to only then fail when it comes to getting the visitor to respond or get in touch with you. It is vital that you include a way of getting the visitor to contact you and do it immediately. If they don’t, you are risking the chance they will go elsewhere.

Known as a ‘call to action’, you are requesting the visitor to call or email you and a great way to do this is to offer them something special if they do. Discounts or free sessions within a timescale, or as part of a seasonal offer, give your potential client a reason to act as soon as possible.

For example, you could provide offers such as:

• “Get your partner a massage voucher for Valentine’s Day with 10% off”
• “Summer Weight Loss Offer – 3 sessions with 10% off / 1st session Free”
• “Summer Fit package / gift 20% off”
• “Christmas Discount Voucher”
• “First 20 responses to this advert receive 20% discount”

Remember also that people search for goods and services which are relevant to a particular time of year such as Christmas or New Year.

For example, someone could be looking to lose weight, get fit or quit smoking as part of a New Year resolution so by providing discounts and offers in January you can increase exposure for your business and hopefully bookings.

In these tough economic times, the public are always on the look-out for vouchers and discounts so make sure you’re keeping up to date with your offers and not falling behind the competition.

Mistakes with Geo-Targeting

Off the bat, the common errors by the experts are:

• Targeting the wrong county in a campaign
• Targeting the whole of the UK rather than one city
• Forgetting to set up local geo-targeting at all

With the introduction of Enhanced Campaigns with bidding modification by location, geo-targeting isn’t an easy process. You can mistakenly spend hundreds by running a campaign country-wide with broad industry keywords when you should have been targeting just one city.

Avoid these pitfalls by mapping out your campaign structure first. Then check your Enhanced Campaign has both campaign level settings and location adjustment level. Double check the work of any new employees and once live, check again using your online interface to spot any anomalies before your spending gets out of control.

Mistakes with keywords

Match types, dynamic keyword insertion, and of course the biggie – spelling. There are many factors to consider when setting keywords and you can easily trip up. Your campaign spend can rocket if you’ve set your keywords incorrectly.

Check your keyword ideas through a keyword tool to first spot any words in a list which are irrelevant. Be extra cautious with Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) by using a spreadsheet to spot bad matches when seen in context of the ad.

Send your list to the client for approval to avoid any embarrassment. Better to have them spot an errant keyword before you start spending their money on it.

Mistakes with Conversion & Tracking

• Failure to check conversion codes in AdWords
• Forgetting to check display tests
• Paying for clicks to 404s
• Wrongly installed tracking code

These technical slip-ups affect even the experienced PPC experts which is why accurate conversion tracking is so important. Schedule in regular conversion audits to make sure you’re tracking the right things and keep on top of your URLs to make sure they’re still live and not hitting the dreaded 404 page.

Conclusion

Mistakes will happen, but implementing strict checks and scheduled audits will help toward catching errors early and will go a long way to reducing losses as well as keeping your client or boss happy.

PPC is no different, and even the pros mess it up sometimes. So what are the biggest mistakes made in PPC?

Mistakes with budget

It’s easy to put an extra zero on your campaign budget and set it to go live without double-checking. Imagine setting your budget at £5,000 per day when you should have entered £500 per day. That one simple typo has just cost you a ton of money.

Avoid making budget mistakes by allocating a member of your team to double-check entries.

Mistakes with bidding

If you asked every PPC manager what mistake they’ve made a least once you can bet it was to do with bidding on keywords. You’ve inputted £30 for two keywords when you meant to put £0.30 or the other way round. A simple decimal point and before you know it you’ve racked up thousands.

While you won’t be able to avoid these mistakes completely, by using an offline editor you can check your work before it goes live. And don’t forget to check your campaigns the following day so you can spot any problems before your budget has gone completely off the chart!

Mistakes with Network Targeting

If you’re a novice then don’t expect Google to be sympathetic with your campaigns. Google’s default settings will override best practices in PPC such as separating search and content and proper geo-targeting for ‘All Countries and Languages’ and ‘All Networks’.

Avoid these mistakes by ensuring new employees are trained in PPC settings best practice and check on their campaign settings before going live. Once live, check the settings again. Set up a network and campaign report to your email the day after the campaign goes live.

Conclusion

Even experienced PPC managers get it wrong, but a few simple procedures and protocols for every member of your team will help towards avoiding costly mistakes.