When it comes to connecting with companies, people want options.
That’s why most businesses have a phone number, even if most marketing, communications, and customer service happens online.
And it’s a wise choice, since reports show click-to-call rates are four times better than online conversion rates.
The question is: Are you taking full advantage of all that phone calls have to offer your business?
As Marketing Land explains, “If your marketing strategy involves driving potential customers to the phone, you could be missing out on important attribution data as well as the best source of first-party customer data.”
Basically, if you’re not tracking calls, you could be missing a key element in your conversion tracking. Here’s how to set up call tracking for your ads, and why you should.
There are various solutions available when it comes to call-tracking options for your business. (Image: Unsplash)
What is call tracking?
Call tracking is the process of gathering information about the phone calls people make to your company. Basic tracking helps you make sure you’re attributing calls to your ads to help optimize campaigns.
More advanced tracking allows you to accrue data that will tell you more about your prospects and customers. This includes their wants, pain points, frequently asked questions, and more.
Phone calls can be a key part of your buyer’s journey. Call tracking serves to help bridge the gap between online and offline touch points, giving you a clearer picture of your prospects and customers.
Know your call-tracking options
There are various solutions available when it comes to call-tracking options for your business. You can choose from a variety of softwares and tiers depending on your budget and needs.
You can include a “Call” CTA on your company’s Google Business Profile as well. (Image: Google)
Tier 1 tracking
The basic, standard level of call tracking is simply to track phone number clicks on your website. This allows you to properly attribute the click to your campaigns. You can set up this level of call tracking through Google Tag Manager.
It will give you some basic data about calls to your existing phone number, such as when someone clicks the phone number on your website via their smartphone to call you.
Tier 2 tracking
The next level involves implementing call tracking into your Google Ads campaigns. At this level, Google will assign you a forwarding phone number. If someone clicks on your ads, the number on your website will route to your Google forwarding number.
This level also offers more sophisticated call data. When you implement Google call tracking through Google Tag Manager, you can set parameters for what counts as a conversion, such as calls only over a certain amount of seconds.
This way, you’re not counting irrelevant phone calls (like accidental clicks, spam clickers, and quickly unqualified leads) as conversions.
Pro tip: While Google call tracking is free, the number you’re assigned won’t necessarily be permanently assigned to you. Further down the line, someone could call that number in search of your business and not be able to reach you.
Tier 3 tracking
If your company has the means to invest in paid call-tracking services, there are a ton of benefits to be found. For one, you’ll be able to purchase a dedicated phone number that won’t be in danger of being changed.
With call-tracking services, you pay for dedicated tracking phone numbers, including a ZIP code that matches your area. In terms of data, you’re able to record phone calls (the caller is given a heads up, of course).
You can go back and listen to how customer service was handled and get more information about the callers. These services also allow you to capture customer contact information in the platforms
Top-tier call tracking can often tell you what caused the person to call, what stage of the buyer’s journey they’re in, and it can even sync with other programs like Google Analytics, Salesforce, or your preferred customer relationship management (CRM) tool.
Pro tip:Think you’ve got tracking covered with your call center? While these centers track things like hold time and client satisfaction, proper call tracking can provide valuable data for marketers that can help optimize and improve campaigns.
With the rise of mobile search, it makes sense that Google call-only campaigns would follow suit. (Image: Unsplash)
How call tracking can improve your marketing
Gathering data is only half the battle. After all, what good is all that data if you don’t take the time to analyze and leverage it?
Call tracking allows you to review calls and pinpoint patterns. What are some common issues customers seem to have? What products or services are they asking about most?
It can also help you make these calls more efficient by allowing you to personalize and tailor the call experience.
This type of tracking can help maximize ROI by painting a more complete picture of what’s driving people to your business.
The future of call tracking
In fall 2020, Google began testing a new Google Business Profile feature dubbed “call history.”
According to Search Engine Land, the feature was “designed to help businesses see and respond to missed calls coming from Google Search and Maps.”
With the rise of mobile search, it makes sense that Google call-only campaigns would follow suit. If you’re a business like a doctor’s office (or if you have a stellar customer service team trained to quickly solve problems), this ad type is worth exploring.
This way, you have the chance to catch someone’s attention and allow them to immediately connect with you, rather than risking them not finding what they’re looking for on your website.
The takeaway
In marketing, the more data you have, the better. If you’re not tracking phone calls on some level, you’re missing out on a key component of your conversion tracking.
It’s the same idea behind tracking forms on your website. You want to track all ways people can contact you.
The result: Improved customer service, better insights into why people aren’t converting via phone, help training employees, and a fuller picture of your buyer persona.
This article has been updated and was originally published in November 2020.
Caroline Cox
Caroline is HawkSEM's content marketing manager. She uses her more than 10 years of professional writing and editing experience to create SEO-friendly articles, educational thought leadership pieces, and savvy social media content to help market leaders create successful digital marketing strategies. She's a fan of seltzer water, print magazines, and huskies.
Questions or comments? Join the conversation here!
Social media is one of the strongest tools for food & beverage brands. Here are 6 tactics for leveraging paid social to enhance your F&B marketing plan....
Customer reviews can boost brand loyalty, credibility, and authenticity. Here are some effective ways to leverage reviews in your marketing initiatives....
Here's what you need to know to create successful content marketing that adds value, educates your audience, and frames you as an industry thought leader....
We like to say that digital marketing is part art, part science.
Sure, there are guidelines, processes, and steps — but without a heavy dose of creativity, your program isn’t likely to rise to the top.
Well-versed paid search marketers know this.
They also know that experimentation, analysis, and optimization are key components to creating a PPC strategy that isn’t just successful, but lasting too.
Behaviors, competitors, and algorithms change fast. To stay on top of your game, you have to catch on before someone else does. Let these PPC optimization strategies guide your paid search efforts for the rest of 2022 and beyond.
1. Explore manual bidding
No matter how stellar your PPC ads are, they won’t achieve proper results without the right bidding strategy. The tactic you choose for your bids depends on your campaign goals.
If you want to achieve the highest number of clicks according to your set budget, you can use the traditional automatic cost-per-click (CPC) bidding system.
However, allowing Google to do the job for you comes with a couple of downsides. One of them is the lack of an easy way to adjust your campaign if it’s not performing properly. Manual bidding can fix this problem.
This hands-on, more customized bidding approach:
Increases ad visibility
Lowers your cost per action (CPA)
Allows you to prioritize keywords that convert better
Switching from automatic to manual bidding is an advanced strategy.
Often, it requires paying close attention to tactics such as:
Focusing on one campaign at a time, since the process can be time-consuming
Lowering your bids for keywords that receive solid impressions but don’t generate sales
Increasing bids for keywords that convert to increase the position of ads containing them and generate more conversions
Choosing the default bid, which is close to the average CPC in your automatic campaigns
Manual bidding is great when you need more control over bids. But this strategy also means more time often goes into making sure you’re bidding the right amount at the right time.
You can streamline this by setting up automated rules to do things like pause poorly performing keywords, raise bids to top of page or first page, raise or lower bids during certain times of day, and more.
Pro tip: When you leverage manual bidding, it’s a good idea to run the manual campaign for a couple of weeks to see if it achieves the goal of lowering CPC and generating sales.
Creating an ad group with people who have already visited your landing pages can be the key to improving your conversion rate. (Image: Unsplash)
2. Take advantage of remarketing
It’s understood that almost no one converts (aka completes a purchase) on their first visit to a website. Does that mean you’re wasting your money on PPC ads?
This process involves using ads to follow potential clients who have clicked your ads or visited your site. Placing your ad in front of them serves as a tasteful reminder of the action they may have wanted to take on your website.
Creating an ad group with people who have already visited your landing pages can be the key to improving your conversion rate.
While recent updates to data and privacy have added some additional hurdles to remarketing, there are still ways to create these types of strategic campaigns with success.
3. Explore Microsoft Ads
Google Ads is the clear leader in the PPC marketing realm. But that doesn’t mean other avenues aren’t worth exploring.
For some companies, using Microsoft Advertising can be just the solution they’ve been waiting for to increase their paid search ROI.
Depending on your industry, there’s often less competition on non-Google search engines and platforms, which means lower CPCs.
But while it’s easy to import a campaign over from Google Ads and let it run its course, you may be missing highly useful tools these platforms have to offer.
For example, Microsoft advertising has:
Action extensions – add call-to-action (CTA) buttons near your ad that link to the landing page of your choice
Review extensions – feature reviews from third-party sites below your ad
LinkedIn targeting – view the reactions of the LinkedIn audience to your ads for further adjustments
Competition insight – see how your visibility compares to your competition, which shows up for the same search queries
While the audience covered by the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook Ads is huge, those who see your ad on those platforms aren’t necessarily in the decision stage of the buyer’s journey.
Amazon audiences, on the other hand, are generally closer to the bottom of the sales funnel. People who visit this shopping giant are likely ready to buy, which increases your chances of conversion tremendously.
Product ads within the search results for selected keywords as promoted relevant results
Brands videos that auto-play while also showing an image, description, and link to the product
Lockscreen ads for e-books
Pro tip:You don’t need to sell your products on Amazon to take advantage of this advertising option.
Core Web Vitals show how good of user experience you should aim to offer your visitors. (Image: Unsplash)
5. Leverage responsive search ads
After first appearing in 2019, Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) quickly grew in popularity. That’s partly because these ads allow you to create 15 headlines and 4 different descriptions for your ad.
Google then tests various combinations of these elements and selects those that perform best depending on factors like:
Keywords searched for
Devices used
Browsing behavior
Responsive ads save time and money on A/B testing while allowing you to reach your target audience faster.
Pro tip: Google is sunsetting expanded text ads, meaning RSAs will be Google’s preferred ad type as of June 2023.
6. Optimize your website
Your PPC campaign results can fall far below expectations if you don’t optimize your website to welcome your target audience once they arrive there.
Recently, Google has begun to factor in Core Web Vitals when determining the ranking of your pages. These vitals include:
Loading performance – The page should load in under 2.5 seconds.
Visual stability – Page elements shouldn’t move when the user is reading the text (it usually happens when a piece of media loads), forcing the visitor to search for their lost place.
Interactivity – The time between the visitor taking action (like clicking a button or tab) and the website responding should be under 100 milliseconds.
Core Web Vitals show how good of a user experience you should aim to offer your visitors. Improving them won’t just improve search engine optimization efforts, but it’ll also help your PPC ad clickers actually convert.
Pro tip: While you’re working on your website, make sure you’re prioritizing landing page optimization, too. When your landing page has content similar to keywords you’re using, it strengthens the relevancy, which Google may reward with a higher Quality Score.
7. Revisit your keywords
When’s the last time you took a long, hard look at your keywords?
There’s never a bad time to consider expanding your current keyword lists, updating your negative keywords, and getting rid of those that are underperforming.
Plus, a few keyword tweaks could bring big benefits. Even actions as minor as adding an adverb, removing a term with low search volume, or seeing which terms your competition is ranking for could bring you that much closer to more clicks and higher ROI.
Pro tip: Consult your user search term reports in Google Analytics (GA) to find new keywords to add that aren’t already in your account, then use Google Keyword Planner for additional research.
8. Check in on your conversion tracking
We highly recommend using GA and a tool like Google Tag Manager (GTM) for conversion tracking.
Why? Let’s say you want to drive more form completions. You can configure your tags in GTM, build your goals in GA, and import those GA goals to Google Ads.
If you have the same goal for multiple channels, e.g. paid social and paid search or SEO and paid search, it streamlines the conversion setup.
You can also configure Google Ads conversion tags directly in GTM. (This bypasses GA, which means you’re only recording Google Ads conversions).
As a bonus, once you link your GA and Google Ads accounts — which you need to do before importing goals — you can also create remarketing audiences in GA and import those into your Google Ads.
Need more help optimizing your PPC campaigns in 2022? Let’s talk.
The takeaway
PPC optimization is an ongoing process.
Add that to the multiple new options and updates happening every year, and it’s nearly impossible to thrive without analyzing regularly so you can keep enhancing your strategies.
At the end of the day, the best PPC ads are clear, consistent, targeted to the right audience, and follow through on what they offer.
This article has been updated and was originally published in July 2020.
Caroline Cox
Caroline is HawkSEM's content marketing manager. She uses her more than 10 years of professional writing and editing experience to create SEO-friendly articles, educational thought leadership pieces, and savvy social media content to help market leaders create successful digital marketing strategies. She's a fan of seltzer water, print magazines, and huskies.
Questions or comments? Join the conversation here!
Social media is one of the strongest tools for food & beverage brands. Here are 6 tactics for leveraging paid social to enhance your F&B marketing plan....
Customer reviews can boost brand loyalty, credibility, and authenticity. Here are some effective ways to leverage reviews in your marketing initiatives....
Here's what you need to know to create successful content marketing that adds value, educates your audience, and frames you as an industry thought leader....
It’s vital to spend your hard-earned digital marketing budget on channels that bring you the best ROI. That’s why knowing the latest Google Ads updates is key.
Here, you’ll find:
Reasons to invest in Google Ads
How the paid search platform works
The latest Google Ads updates
Expert tips for leveraging the platform successfully
No April Fool’s joking here: The best place to launch your digital marketing efforts is where your campaign attracts a massive audience.
According to a 2021 report, Google led the list of the most popular search engines, commanding more than 88% of the American market share.
Paid advertisements often come hyperlinked at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs). Sure, you can work to rank organically for a given search term through SEO strategies — and you should.
But not only can Google Ads get you higher up in search results more quickly via pay-per-click (PPC) ads, but it can also help you stay competitive in your industry.
The benefits of Google Ads
You probably know how Google Ads works: It shows your online advertisement to prospective customers who may be interested in your business.
You place bids on keywords and search terms and secure the top slots of SERPs if you win.
As part of a PPC marketing strategy, you choose the maximum bid amount you wish to pay for each click on your ad. Your placement improves with your bid amount.
Since its inception in 2000 as Google AdWords, Google Ads has undergone many iterations and changes. Here are a few of the latest Google Ads updates that marketers should know about in 2022.
Google Trends allows you to view the topics people are searching online, as well as trending topics and trends over time. (Image: Unsplash)
1. Privacy-minded updates
Privacy has been a hot topic for marketers in the past few years. That’s thanks in part to changes like Apple’s latest iOS update and Google’s Topic’s API, which they introduced to replace the soon-to-be sunset third-party cookies.
With third-party tracking cookies on their way out, enhanced conversion aims to use consented (opt-in) and first-party data to fill in users’ insight gaps, particularly across multiple devices.
Pro tip: Google will be shutting down Universal Analytics (the version before Google Analytics 4) in July 2023, reportedly due to its inability to deliver insights across platforms. Universal Analytics 360 will process data for an additional three months, ending in October 2023.
2. Changes to phrase match and broad match modifier
In early 2021, Google announced that it was “making it easier to reach the right customers on Search” through updates to its phrase match and broad match modifier keyword types.
Now, “broad match modifier” traffic instead falls under the “phrase match” umbrella.
The search engine notes that these changes won’t impact exact match, broad match, and negative keyword match types. They also recommend only using exact, phrase, or broad match when adding new keywords moving forward.
3. The smart-bidding process
Google’s smart bidding aims to make marketing more manageable. The advertiser provides Google Ads with a budget, and Google algorithms get the best conversion value out of it. The intention is to maximize the total ROI of the campaigns.
Google algorithms find the opportunities that you might never spot, even if it’s promoting a low-priced product on your list. This approach is excellent for well-funded PPC campaigns that are already converting at a high rate.
Google’s new smart bidding features aim to help marketers better manage bid strategies and drive more performance, according to experts.
The new features also include top signals for target ROAS and max conversions, new opportunities on the Recommendations page, target impression share simulators, and manager account level seasonality adjustments.
Pro tip:Automation is great, but keep in mind that a “set it and forget it” mindset can only take you so far. The most effective paid search campaigns involve consistent analyzing, testing, and optimizing that can only come from experienced digital marketing pros.
A look at the Google Trends results for “one-piece swimsuit” over a 90-day period. (Image: Google Trends)
4. Google Trends for a dynamic environment
The digital marketing landscape changes rapidly and often, which can affect your business. Google Trends is a fascinating feature that allows you to view the topics people are searching online, as well as trending topics, trends over time, and more.
Google Trends can provide insights into what is popular with your audience, so you can modify your marketing efforts to match their expectations. If they’re searching for a business that offers home delivery, for instance, you can consider adding this service or something similar, like a curbside pickup option.
5. Driving more leads via search ads
With the rise of mobile shopping or m-commerce and more brands moving their operations online than ever before because of the pandemic, the vast majority of shopping happens online.
With that in mind, Google has made it easier for businesses to capture leads through their search ads. Rather than sending users to a landing page, you can serve up a lead form as soon as someone taps the headline of your ad.
To activate this feature, simply go into your campaign and select the setting option. Once the form is submitted, the person can then decide if they want to head to your site or go back to the search engine results page (SERP).
Pro tip:Search Engine Roundtable regularly catalogs the most recent Google algorithm updates. So far in 2022, they’ve highlighted updates on page experience update for desktop, product reviews, and more.
6. Enhanced holiday updates
During the last holiday season, many businesses were able to benefit from a range of e-commerce updates.
Google added the ability to highlight things like fulfillment options and return policies for customers to see right on the SERP. You can also have products appear in free listings that you can easily use by syncing your Shopify, WooCommerce, or GoDaddy store right to Google.
Plus, brands can now use their YouTube videos as a virtual storefront and connect easier with local customers. Social Media Today suggests keeping your Google Business Profile updated to sync properly with these new features.
There are three relevant disapproval messages subject to changes:
“Insufficient original content,” which covers web addresses with “coming soon” or “under construction” notifications
“Destination not accessible,” for addresses the target audience can’t reach based on their location and other limitations
“Destination not working,” which will appear if your address is “HTTP” or returns an error
You can use dark mode in the Google Ads app for a more comfortable, low-light visual experience. (Image: Google Ads Help)
8. Updates to the Google Ads app
There have been some exciting recent additions made to the Google Ads app. Specifically, the Google Ads mobile app for both Android and iOS offer three new features:
More detailed performance insights – They’ve added more context and explanations for insights to illuminate the influences behind each metric. Advertisers can now see better performance insights to get a deeper understanding of how searchers are reacting to campaigns and view how changes affect performance.
Advanced real-time search trends – There’s a new search trends report that will be kept updated to reflect real-time changes in search trends and consumer interests. You can click on search trends relevant to your business to get further details about what exactly users were looking for. Common queries and specific terms will give you an idea of what they hope to find. Then, you can modify your ads to better reach them.
In-app campaign creation – Now, you can create entire search ad campaigns right from your phone. In the Google Ads mobile app, simply touch the “+” sign in the bottom right to add a new campaign. From there, the app will walk you through the typical campaign settings like ad type and location. After your campaign is set up, you’ll be able to manage it right from your phone as well.
The beauty (and sometimes frustration) of Google Ads is that it keeps on evolving. It also gives you new and innovative ways to capture the attention of searchers.
Considering the authority of the search engine, staying on top of the latest Google Ads updates can only mean good things for your PPC program.
This article has been updated and was originally published in May 2020.
Sam Yadegar
Sam Yadegar is the co-founder and CEO of HawkSEM. Starting out as a software engineer, his penchant for solving problems quickly led him to the digital marketing world, where he has been helping clients for over 12 years. He loves doing everything he can to help brands "crush it" through ROI-driven digital marketing programs. He's also a fan of basketball and spending time with his family.
Questions or comments? Join the conversation here!
Social media is one of the strongest tools for food & beverage brands. Here are 6 tactics for leveraging paid social to enhance your F&B marketing plan....
Customer reviews can boost brand loyalty, credibility, and authenticity. Here are some effective ways to leverage reviews in your marketing initiatives....
Here's what you need to know to create successful content marketing that adds value, educates your audience, and frames you as an industry thought leader....
Bing can help you maximize your online reach and capture traffic you might miss with Google.
Here, you’ll find:
The benefits of advertising on both Google and Bing
How the Microsoft Ads platform compares to Google Ads
Tips to create top-quality ads for Bing
How Quality Score plays a role
Many businesses raise an eyebrow when first introduced to the idea of using Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) to attract new customers.
But you might be surprised to learn all that the Bing search engine has to offer.
According to recent Statista data, Bing attracts over one billion users per month worldwide. The numbers continue growing as Microsoft Advertising expands by launching in new markets.
If you want to capture the large batch of users out there who use Bing, it’s necessary to explore Microsoft Ads.
To make your job easier, Microsoft Ads allows you to import Google Ads campaigns seamlessly. (Image: Bing)
Microsoft Advertising vs. Google Ads
Of course, there are plenty of similarities to be found between Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, which show up on the Bing search engine.
They’re both used to push highly relevant ads to users, with the goal of using targeted marketing to help attract more high-quality leads who are more likely to make a purchase. However, there are also a few key differences to keep in mind.
One notable difference is that, while Google Ads has a balanced network of both PPC (or paid search) and display ads, Bing has a much more limited display ad network that’s relegated to Microsoft-owned products including Windows operating systems, Outlook, Microsoft Edge, and Xbox.
You may also find that each platform uses a different language to describe its functions and metrics. For example, Google tends to use cost per acquisition (CPA) along with the cost of conversion, while Microsoft Ads only uses the term CPA.
Other notable differences include:
Ad scheduling – Google Ads uses your time zone to schedule ads, while Microsoft Ads uses the ad viewer’s time zone.
Search partner targeting – Both Google and Microsoft Ads let you place your ads beyond the search engine results page (SERP). However, the way you select partner networks is different. Google gives you a choice to expand to these networks while Bing allows you to target Bing and Yahoo, just search partners, or both.
Close search variants – Google uses close search variants of keywords by default. Microsoft Ads allows this as an option.
Using both platforms can provide a noticeable boost to your marketing campaigns. However, it’s important to know how to use Microsoft Ads properly if you want to make the most of it and effectively supplement your Google Ads campaign.
Next, let’s dig into some best practices that’ll help you create winning ads to attract the ideal Bing searcher.
1. Import high-performing Google Ads campaigns to Microsoft Ads
To make your job easier, Microsoft Advertising allows you to import Google Ads campaigns seamlessly. Simply use the import feature to carry your campaigns over to Microsoft’s ad platform.
While you can test your most successful Google Ads campaigns using Bing, keep in mind things may look and work a little differently when creating ads on Microsoft.
Knowing the subtle differences when importing can help you transition from one platform to the other and use both to your advantage.
Things to check after the import include:
Bids and budgets
Negative keywords
Targeting options
As you make adjustments to your Google Ads campaign, you can apply them to the Microsoft Ads campaign through import.
Keep in mind that things you can’t import include:
Video campaigns (since they’re done through YouTube)
Retargeting lists
Age targeting
Exact location targeting
You can import changes to the Microsoft Ads campaign on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This can cut the time you spend on Microsoft Ad campaign management dramatically.
A smaller budget could take you much farther on Bing than it would with Google. (Image: Bing)
2. Create high-quality copy and images for your ads
You should always optimize your ads for people, not search engines. Keywords are important, but you’re ultimately creating ads to appeal directly to your target audience. With this goal in mind, try to:
Use on-brand colors that attract attention
Highlight product, service, or brand elements through images
Create ads using high-quality images without pixelation
Use images of people without accompanying text or logos
Keep ads clean and simple so you don’t overwhelm the user
Avoid lengthy headlines — stick to concise, easy-to-read phrases
3. Start broad and specify your audience based on results
To pinpoint the ideal audience, it’s a good idea to begin with a broad ad campaign that targets as many users as possible without going over your available budget.
From there, you can begin to narrow down your audience based on the demographics and other traits of users that are likely to click on your ads.
In the process, you can create more valuable ads that target the people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service offerings.
4. Make the most of your budget
Even if you’ve maxed out your Google Ads budget, you can still tailor your budget to help you perform well on Bing.
Thanks largely to the lighter competition you’ll find on Bing, you could discover that a smaller budget takes you much farther on the platform than it would with Google.
You’re also likely to find less expensive costs per acquisition (CPAs) with Microsoft Ads while targeting potentially millions of daily search engine users.
5. Know your target audience on Bing
You might find that your Bing audience is different from your Google audience. If so, you should tailor your campaign audiences accordingly. Bing’s demographic tends to include older users who aren’t as quick to go to Google if Bing is their default search engine.
While you may think this means your audience is potentially less tech-savvy, know that many of these users have accumulated more wealth and are willing to spend more money online than their younger counterparts.
The fact that your audience on Bing is likely different from your Google audience only further emphasizes the importance of using both.
Using a combination of Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads can help you find better paid search success and maximize your business’s overall reach online. (Image: Microsoft Advertising)
6. Make use of the UET tag
Microsoft Ads enables you to set up customized event and conversion actions using Universal Event Tracking (UET). With the help of this tool, you can create custom audiences as people perform certain actions.
For example, you might create an audience that spends a certain amount of time on landing pages or visits only a few other pages before leaving your website after clicking on an ad.
With a better understanding of user behavior through UET tags, you can cater campaigns to specific individuals to improve your campaigns’ overall performance.
7. Keep an eye on your Quality Score
Page or domain authority is a key component of a successful Bing campaign. That’s because it helps gauge the authoritativeness and popularity of a website.
You can use Bing’s Quality Score metric to determine how much influence your website has on the search engine, which can help you determine your ads’ competitiveness.
Heads up: Without any adjustments, you may find that your Quality Score in Microsoft Ads is lower than what you have in Google Ads.
The Quality Score ranges from 1 to 10, with the best score being 10. If you notice that your Quality Score is suffering, try to adjust your ads by:
Conducting more keyword research
Ensuring your published content is well-written, accurate, and updated
Optimizing your landing pages
Checking your ad group targeting
8. Take advantage of in-market audiences
Similar to Google Ads, Microsoft Ads offers marketers an intent-based targeting feature that brings the campaign to conversion-ready audiences. Bing uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create lists of users who have shown interest in purchasing items and services similar to yours.
In-market audiences allow you to reach potential buyers without running complex targeting campaigns. Not only does this feature save money and help increase conversions, but setup is easy.
Microsoft is constantly adding new in-market audience categories, so if your industry isn’t there yet, continue monitoring the updates.
Keep in mind that Microsoft Ads in-market audience categories are different from in-market audiences on Google Ads. Adjust the settings for each one manually so you don’t miss out on some categories by assuming they’re the same.
Don’t forget to add captions to the video to improve its accessibility. (Image: Unsplash)
This feature can be especially useful for marketers who have a robust Facebook Ads campaign going. However, not all elements of the campaign can be imported in full — you still need to adjust some aspects manually.
Pro tip: Before allowing your imported Facebook campaign to appear on the Microsoft Audience Network, you have to preview all assets such as images, logos, and videos.
10. Explore video extensions
Microsoft Ads allows using videos as an extension feature on the search ads. Your video will appear next to your ad on the SERP, making it more appealing and engaging to the viewer.
The extension video has a call-to-action (CTA) button that takes the user to the landing page of your choice. Don’t forget to add captions to the video to improve its accessibility.
The cost per click for clicking on the video is the same as for clicking on an ad, but only for the first click. If the same user clicks to watch the video again, it’s free.
The takeaway
Using a combination of Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads can help you find better paid-search success and maximize your business’s overall reach online.
Leveraging these best practices, taking the time to develop high-quality ad campaigns, and understanding your target audience on Bing can help you craft ads that are highly effective, no matter the search engine.
This post has been updated and was originally published in August 2020.
Caroline Cox
Caroline is HawkSEM's content marketing manager. She uses her more than 10 years of professional writing and editing experience to create SEO-friendly articles, educational thought leadership pieces, and savvy social media content to help market leaders create successful digital marketing strategies. She's a fan of seltzer water, print magazines, and huskies.
Questions or comments? Join the conversation here!
Social media is one of the strongest tools for food & beverage brands. Here are 6 tactics for leveraging paid social to enhance your F&B marketing plan....
Customer reviews can boost brand loyalty, credibility, and authenticity. Here are some effective ways to leverage reviews in your marketing initiatives....
Here's what you need to know to create successful content marketing that adds value, educates your audience, and frames you as an industry thought leader....
When it comes to pay-per-click (PPC) lead generation, the more you invest in your paid search campaigns, the more leads you’re likely to see.
The tricky part is that, in PPC lead generation, quantity doesn’t equal quality.
The good news? With the right approach, you can achieve your lead gen goals, attract the right kinds of leads, and see the campaign ROI you deserve. Here’s how.
Look closely at how your target audience is searching for what you have to offer. (Image: Rawpixel)
PPC leads: quality vs. quantity
“Over the past month, we’ve generated 15,000 leads.” Sounds good, doesn’t it? But if only 100 of them convert, then you’ve got thousands of leads and a very low ROI to show for it.
Leads with a high conversion potential are harder to obtain. To get them, you’ve got to avoid those who:
Window shop without an intent to buy
Click to get a free gift in exchange for contact information (and share fake details)
Click out of boredom or aimless curiosity
Think they’ll get something else due to unclear or misleading ad copy
These reasons and more are why it’s a good idea to conduct lead scoring. This process can tell you how interested each lead is, weed out leads not worth your time, and even provide some insight into how your campaigns are working.
Low-quality leads come with the territory — a certain number of them are basically inevitable. But, as referenced above, it’s possible your ads are drawing the wrong people’s attention.
Even a low-quality lead can gain potential with a well-structured PPC campaign. Let’s look into the most important tips to help you tweak your approach.
1. Create customized landing pages
Your PPC ads are only as effective as their corresponding landing pages. Because of this, each ad should take the potential client to a landing page that provides exactly what your ad promised and inspires them to take that next desired action outlined in the call to action (CTA).
For example, a CTA that says “Get a free e-book” should lead directly to a page where the user can download the content (with or without filling out a short form). If it requires extra clicks, these people are likely to leave the website, upping your bounce rate.
Google may even punish you for leading clients to a different page than you promised in the ad. Search engines consider this practice deceptive and may lower your Quality Score, increasing the ad’s price as a result.
2. Practice target audience segmentation
If you set up your PPC campaigns to target each product or service separately, you may not be getting as many high-quality leads as possible. Look closely at how your target audience is searching for what you have to offer.
From there, you can divide your offering into as many groups as possible. Instead of segmenting by products, you have the option of segmenting by:
Industry
Sub-categories
Features
Benefits
Geographic locations
If, for example, you provide managed IT services in LA, you can segment by:
Benefit: High-quality IT services, quick response managed IT, low-cost managed IT services
Geographical location: Managed IT services in LA, remote managed IT services in LA
When you segment the audience accordingly, you may have an easier time setting up the campaign, using the right keywords, writing ad copy, and creating specific landing pages.
3. Fine-tune your ad copy
The quality of your PPC campaign hinges on your ad copy. Along with writing effective, clear sentences and an actionable CTA, it’s crucial to keep the user’s intent top of mind.
Ask yourself: Which stage of the buyer’s journey is your targeted audience in? For example, if they’re at the awareness stage, leading them to product-oriented pages might not do much good.
Create ad copy aimed at getting their attention through an offer they’ll find valuable. That means knowing your target audience and having a clear ideal client persona in mind throughout the copywriting process.
When writing the text itself, some elements to keep in mind include:
Always address the potential client directly (use “you” and “your”)
Use exact numbers (feature statistics, show product prices, advertise a sale)
Make use of the entire space offered by Google Ads — don’t leave blank space
Show what makes your offer unique
And, of course, A/B test your ad design to see which one resonates most.
There are five main keyword types you can explore for your PPC campaign. (Image: Rawpixel)
4. Focus on your “money” keywords
Keywords are the pillars of your PPC campaign. So, after segmenting your audience, the next step is to dive into the keyword search.
Tools like SpyFu and UberSuggest exist to help you gather a list of relevant keywords while keeping the competition’s efforts in mind. You can arrange your keywords using SEMrush’s PPC Keyword Tool.
The keyword types to explore for your PPC campaign are:
Competitive keywords — High-volume keywords used by many companies in your industry
And don’t forget about negative keywords. You can filter them out by using the Search Term Report and determining which keywords are generating irrelevant clicks.
By putting them on the negative keyword list, you can improve the quality of your leads while cutting campaign costs (win-win!).
5. Track your campaign
Your PPC campaigns need regular fine-tuning to ensure they’re as optimized as possible. Track your efforts to keep a pulse on what needs changing.
You can get an idea of what works and what doesn’t by following the key PPC marketing KPIs.
Impressions: How many times your ads appeared in search results
Clicks: How many times users clicked your ad
Click-through rate (CTR): the percentage of users who clicked the ad (clicks divided by impressions)
Average position: a position in which your ads appeared on the search engine results page
Conversions: how many leads who clicked the ad followed the CTA within a certain window of time
Quality Score: an indicator of your ad, keyword, and landing page relevance to the user
Cost per conversion: how much you spend to obtain a new client
Bounce rate: people who clicked but left without following the CTA
Of course, you want your campaigns to generate qualified, high-quality leads.
With a strategic, thoughtful approach to ad design, keyword search, analytics, and segmentation, you can achieve your conversion goals through PPC lead generation — and see an impressive ROI as a result.
This post has been updated and was originally published in May 2020.
Sam Yadegar
Sam Yadegar is the co-founder and CEO of HawkSEM. Starting out as a software engineer, his penchant for solving problems quickly led him to the digital marketing world, where he has been helping clients for over 12 years. He loves doing everything he can to help brands "crush it" through ROI-driven digital marketing programs. He's also a fan of basketball and spending time with his family.
Questions or comments? Join the conversation here!
Social media is one of the strongest tools for food & beverage brands. Here are 6 tactics for leveraging paid social to enhance your F&B marketing plan....
Customer reviews can boost brand loyalty, credibility, and authenticity. Here are some effective ways to leverage reviews in your marketing initiatives....
Here's what you need to know to create successful content marketing that adds value, educates your audience, and frames you as an industry thought leader....
Let’s dive into what lead scoring is, how it works, and the ways it benefits your digital marketing program.
Here, you’ll find:
What lead scoring is
How it can benefit your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns
Tips to set up lead scoring
How it can improve paid search ROI
For most marketing initiatives, it takes a mix of time and multiple steps to achieve real results.
But it’s also true that the less time it takes to start seeing success, the better and more quickly you can optimize and improve.
That’s where lead scoring comes in. Essentially, lead scoring is the process of grading leads to gauge their potential value for your business by assigning them scores based on a variety of factors.
Think of lead scoring like filters in a dating app — except for potential customers rather than a partner. Why waste time chasing leads that aren’t right for you?
Proper lead scoring allows you to filter your leads, find the best ones with the most potential, and focus your energy where it’s most likely to pay off.
For B2B and lead generation search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns in particular, experienced industry pros will tell you it’s crucial to know the value of the leads being generated. Plus, when you’re dealing with a high volume of leads, manually sorting through them can be time-consuming.
It’s key to be thoughtful about your sales funnel and the actions leads take that qualify them. (Image via Unsplash)
How does lead scoring work?
A lead scoring system assigns values to leads and then ranks them against one another. For this process, you can give scores based on various attributes and actions.
This allows you to focus on leads that will generate the maximum revenue for your business with the least amount of effort — and in less time.
Scoring leads helps you better understand how certain keywords impact your conversions and, ultimately, the success of your PPC campaign overall. It works by assigning points based on actions a prospect takes, such as requesting a consultation or downloading a piece of content.
Once a lead achieves a certain score, they can be considered a “hot lead.” From there, they can be routed to sales to nurture them down the sales funnel.
Simply put by BigCommerce, “the top benefits of companies that use lead scoring are a more measurable return on investment (ROI), an increased conversion rate, and higher sales productivity and effectiveness.”
How do I set up lead scoring?
Getting more than a couple of leads per week? Then it’s probably best to leverage a tool like Google Analytics to help you track keyword conversions.
You or your marketing agency can connect this application to your customer relationship management (CRM) tool or marketing automation platform (MAP). This will allow you to begin scoring leads based on behaviors and actions the new contact or prospect has taken.
As Salesforce explains, improper setup can result in “poor conversion rates and sales funnel dropouts, or customers who stop considering your company for the product or service they want to buy.” That’s why it’s key to be thoughtful about your sales funnel and the actions leads take that qualify them.
Companies with access to a large amount of lead data can explore predictive lead scoring. This process uses algorithms to comb through past customer data and current lead data to find patterns.
Traditional lead scoring can be more subjective, since your team lists the criteria they think are relevant and a point system to rank them. Predictive lead scoring, on the other hand, is data-driven and can find patterns that may otherwise be overlooked.
What factors should be taken into account with lead scoring?
It may be a process of trial and error to figure out the best lead scoring type, model, and metrics for your business. One of the best practices to improve lead quality is to consider different score thresholds for different products or services if you offer a variety.
You also may want to add negative score options to easily disqualify people like existing customers or job-seekers. Generally, good leads will fit three basic criteria.
Main criteria for good or “hot” leads:
Match your target audience or ideal customer persona
Show interest in your product or service
Be qualified to purchase
Furthermore, there are many ways to gauge each criterion.
Ideal customer persona match
Every business should develop a good understanding of their target audience.
To start, find similarities between your current customers and ask them questions about themselves to find trends. This information can help you create your ideal client persona.
Helpful demographic data could include:
Age range
Gender
Location
Marital status
Parental status
Job title
Income
Household size
You may also want to include product or service-specific metrics. For example, a toy company might target parents. However, parents of children in college probably aren’t a good fit.
Interest
A potential customer may signal buyer intent or interest in a number of different ways. Interest indicators might look like:
Multiple site visits
Longer time spent on a page
Scrolling down to the bottom of a page
Visiting multiple pages
Downloading a resource
Contacting your team
Requesting more information
Requesting a demo
Providing their email address
Implementing lead scoring using up-to-date best practices can be an effective way to have your sales and marketing teams working together better and more efficiently. (Image via Unsplash)
Additional lead scoring tips
Get granular
You can get more granular by weighing things like different pages and pieces of content differently. For example, a case study, white paper, or service page may be worth more points than an evergreen guide or your homepage.
Every indicator can be broken down into more specific criteria for more accurate scoring. For example, multiple site visits are good.
However, multiple visits within the same week is clearly a better indicator of serious interest than visiting once a year three years in a row. A lead can be given a higher score the closer together their visits are.
Plus, not all pages are created equally. If someone visits a toy company’s site to read a blog post about early childhood development stages, they may not be showing interest in their products, just that specific topic.
Reading a blog post about the best gift to get a 1-year-old baby, on the other hand, is a great indicator of interest in buying a product. Leads can be scored differently depending on page relevance.
Remember, not all indicators are good
You can also have positive and negative scoring. A perfect example is joining your email list.
Leads on your email list can get points just for joining. However, every email they open can also be worth points with the number of emails opened in a row raising their score even higher. Meanwhile, each lead that doesn’t open an email can earn negative points with each unopened email in a row lowering their score further.
Which emails they open can also help. Using the toy company example again, if a lead only opens emails on tangential topics, like childhood behavior, never opening product-specific emails, that could strongly indicate a lack of purchase interest.
Clearly, scoring actions too broadly — like giving points for page visits without considering the page type, dwell time, and actions on-page — can easily lead to falsely inflated scores.
How does lead scoring create a more ROI-driven PPC strategy?
An ROI-driven PPC strategy is one that has been developed to produce revenue. By being strategic and iterating based on what’s working and what’s not, you can be poised for serious results.
Along with scoring leads, other important elements of launching an ROI-driven PPC strategy include:
Having consistent messaging from ad copy to landing page
Tracking metrics
Does lead scoring make sense for longer sales cycles?
We know that a longer sales cycle means it can take a longer time to see results. Lead scoring is still important for these campaign types because you need to understand each lead’s value along the sales cycle.
This falls under the low-hanging fruit theory of easy wins. By scoring leads, you’ll know which prospects are closer to a sale and which are further away. This info will help you better prioritize where to put your efforts as the cycle moves along.
How often should I revisit my lead scoring metrics?
Scoring leads is a great way to ensure your sales and marketing teams are aligned. With that in mind, it’s a good idea for marketing team members to periodically check in with the sales department to see which types of leads are closing most often.
This will ensure that the lead scoring parameters you have in place are as accurate as possible. You want to have enough time to accrue significant data that you can analyze properly, so aiming to do one of these check-ins a few times a year is usually sufficient.
The takeaway
Forget hot leads falling through the cracks or wasting time following up on unqualified or uninterested prospects.
Implementing lead scoring using up-to-date best practices can be an effective way to have your sales and marketing teams working together better and more efficiently.
While it may take some tweaking to find the exact right method of lead scoring for your business, the time and investment are sure to be worth it once you see more leads becoming closed deals.
This post has been updated and was originally published in August 2014.
Caroline Cox
Caroline is HawkSEM's content marketing manager. She uses her more than 10 years of professional writing and editing experience to create SEO-friendly articles, educational thought leadership pieces, and savvy social media content to help market leaders create successful digital marketing strategies. She's a fan of seltzer water, print magazines, and huskies.
Questions or comments? Join the conversation here!
Social media is one of the strongest tools for food & beverage brands. Here are 6 tactics for leveraging paid social to enhance your F&B marketing plan....
Customer reviews can boost brand loyalty, credibility, and authenticity. Here are some effective ways to leverage reviews in your marketing initiatives....
Here's what you need to know to create successful content marketing that adds value, educates your audience, and frames you as an industry thought leader....
Pay-per-click (PPC) ads are among the most effective marketing tactics to get your business in front of the right people at the right time.
Here, you’ll find:
What PPC marketing is
How to properly manage a PPC campaign
What makes PPC ads successful
The latest PPC stats
Ah, the ever-changing algorithm. Many a marketer wishes they knew the magic words to instantly land them at the top of search engine results. But we all know it’s not that simple.
And that’s too bad, because we also know that approximately three-fourths of users don’t read past the first page of search results. That’s where PPC ads come in.
PPC marketing falls under the search engine marketing umbrella and is also referred to as paid search marketing.
PPC ads are the hyperlinked results at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) above the organic, search engine optimized (SEO) results. They look similar to the organic results, except with a little green box denoting “ad” next to it.
It can help connect you with potential clients through eye-catching copy that provides context and a hyperlink taking them straight to a targeted landing page on your site.
PPC ads look similar to organic search results, except with “Ad” in bolded text next to it.
What is PPC marketing?
Paid search and PPC are a type of online advertising allowing marketers to have their brand’s ads show up in the sponsored results section of a SERP.
And because of the pay-per-click nature of these ads, you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad.
Getting the clicks — that’s the tricky part. To create the most effective PPC campaigns, you want your ads to appear in front of the right audience searching for the right keywords that make sense for your product or service.
From there, you place your bid to say how much you think a click is worth. When your ad shows up and gets clicked on, you’re charged a fee. (The fee can vary greatly depending on industry, competition, keywords, quality score, and more.)
Pro tip: It’s not just about the keywords you want to attract the right people. Choosing negative keywords can prevent unqualified leads from clicking your ads.
PPC vs. paid social ads
Paid social media advertising is a great way to meet your target audience where they are. Plus, it can help you subvert pesky platform algorithms that can keep your content from showing up in feeds.
But unlike PPC ads, you pay a flat rate for the ad space. Rates don’t change depending on impressions or engagement. This can translate into social ads being more expensive than PPC.
PPC vs. display ads
Display ads show up on almost every revenue-generating site across the web. These are the ads you see on the top, side, or bottom of a website you visit, a mobile app you use, or a video you watch.
Display ads are known for their high visibility rates. Ads created via the Google Display Network reportedly reach more than 90% of people on the Internet. Because of their prevalence, display ads often don’t have as high of a click-through rate (CTR) as PPC ads.
Most often, these ad types are used for branding, so you stay top of mind after someone visits your site, in conjunction with your PPC efforts.
What are the components of a PPC ad?
Let’s start with Google PPC ads. These can contain:
1-3 headlines
A display URL
A description up to 90 characters long
Ad extensions
Your display URL can be your site’s homepage or a simple, clean URL that relates to the keywords and ad copy.
Headlines
Recently, Google upped the ante by allowing up to three headlines in a PPC ad, separated by a “|” or pipe symbol. Your headlines are where you have the opportunity to catch someone’s attention and highlight a product or service while being direct about what you offer.
When brainstorming PPC ad headlines, consider elements like:
Including keywords
Highlighting a common problem and/or solution
Getting as close to character limits as possible
Asking questions
Using concise, to-the-point language
Display URL
Your display URL can be your site’s homepage or a simple, clean URL that relates to the keywords and ad copy (such as hawksem.com/ppc). This clean display URL is simply what appears to users within your ad.
Ideally, though, the URL links to a targeted landing page on your site. The landing page should closely match with the look, feel, and verbiage of the ad, with a clearly defined CTA so the person knows what action to take next.
For example, if HawkSEM was creating a PPC ad that offered a free PPC audit, the display URL could be something like hawksem.com/free-ppc-audit. This way the offer is clearly matched with the ad itself.
The link might then route to a more complex URL for tracking purposes, like hawksem.com/ppc-audit/?utm_source=ppc&utm_medium=google-ads&utm_campaign=ppc-audit.
Descriptions
You’ve got a limited number of characters to work with for your PPC ad’s description — 90, to be exact. Make them count!
Your description should speak specifically to your target audience, highlight benefits for them (vs. just talking about how great your offering is), and have a strong call to action (CTA).
Descriptions are most effective when they’re tangible, i.e. offering “25% off” instead of simply saying “we’re the best!” Plus, Google now allows for 2 descriptions, doubling your character count to 180.
Ad extensions
Ad extensions are no-cost additional lines of text that can help improve your CTR by adding more info and context to your ad (as well as more real estate on the SERP). As Google explains, ad extensions can include:
More text
Call buttons
Location info
Pricing info
Additional links to your website
Star ratings
Your extensions aren’t guaranteed to show up with your ad, but if your ranking is high enough and the extension is likely to improve performance, it will.
They feature the “ad” box next to the result, and include a headline, URL, and description. As you can see above, some ads include additional links and descriptions as well.
Shopping ads are more visual, often leading to a higher CTR than plain-text ads.
What are shopping PPC ads?
For e-commerce brands and those who sell products online, shopping ads can be a great way to get someone to “add to cart.” Shopping ads are more visual, often leading to a higher CTR than plain-text ads.
E-commerce search ads are automated based on data you send to the search engines. That’s why it’s crucial to fully optimize the product pages on your website. To set up your product to be included in the results feed, you’ve got to format your product information to be compatible with the Shopping feed’s ad platform.
Once you submit your product data to the search engine in the proper format, you’ll be primed to show up on the SERP’s ad section. The approval process can take 24-72 hours.
Merchant centers for Google and Bing have their own breakdowns to ensure you’re following the proper steps.
What are some PPC marketing stats?
The first PPC ad spaces were reportedly created in 1996 by Planet Oasis and Google as a research project at Stanford University.
Microsoft’s search network Bing attracts 687 million unique desktop searchers a year.
Brand awareness can be increased by up to 80% through Google paid ads.
The paid search market is worth approximately $60 billion in the U.S.
36% of Bing users have household incomes in the top 25%.
Google processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average.
Mobile devices account for about 69% of all Google’s paid ads clicks in the U.S.
What are the benefits of PPC marketing ads?
With PPC marketing ads, you don’t have to fight against the algorithm to show up at the top of a SERP listing. These ads put your business in front people who are searching for something similar to what you have to offer.
Gone are the days of buying ads and crossing your fingers that they’re seen by enough interested people to be worth their price.
By conducting proper keyword research to target your audience and only paying for the clicks you actually get, you have a great chance of turning that click into a conversion.
How does bidding work?
You likely know how auctions work. There’s an item (or, in this case, a rank placement), and different people try to outbid each other to be the one who scores.
That’s how PPC bidding works, more or less. When someone enters a query into their chosen search engine, there’s an auction. The built-in algorithm picks what they determine as the most relevant paid and organic search results, and that’s what the user sees.
It’s up to you to determine the amount you’re willing to pay when someone clicks your ad. Essentially, you’re deciding how much each click is worth. What makes this tricky is that, unlike in a public auction, you don’t know how much your competitors are bidding on each keyword compared to yours.
If another advertiser outbids you, their ad is the one that’ll get shown. If you bid too high, you may get more clicks, but you can also go through your budget in a snap. To find the happy medium, it takes time and attention, whether that means you, a team member, or a digital marketing agency.
Keep an eye on your click volume and the types of clicks you’re getting — are they qualified leads or are they junk? These insights will help you modify both your bidding and your ad content accordingly.
What is a quality score?
Along with your bid, your quality score also factors into your ad ranking. Google decides on your overall quality score (on a scale from 1, which is not great, to 10, which is excellent).
This can be viewed in the keywords section of your Google Ads account. The better your quality score, the more you’ll rise through the ranks of results and the better cost-per-click (CPC) rate you’re likely to get.
Your PPC ad’s ranking at the top of a SERP depends on factors like the keywords you’re bidding on, the competition for those keywords, your bid amount, and your quality score.
What affects an ad’s ranking?
Your PPC marketing ad’s ranking depends on a few factors. These include which keywords you’re bidding on, the amount of competition for those keywords, the amount of your bid, and your quality score.
The formula looks something like this:
The ad ranked below you ———————————- + $0.01 = actual CPC Your quality score
The higher your ranking, the greater your chances are of getting a click — pretty simple. If you want to up your ranking without increasing your spending, make sure your ads are compelling, accurate, and in line with the hyper-focused landing pages connected to them.
You also want to be mindful of who you’re targeting, when you’re targeting them, and where you’re targeting (from region to the search engine itself).
What is PPC lead scoring?
Generating leads is one thing — but knowing the value of the leads being generated is another altogether.
When you know the true value of the leads coming in through lead scoring, you can better prioritize and iterate your PPC marketing strategies. This helps you drive more of the kind of leads you want in the future.
You can determine your lead value by setting up a lead-scoring system that connects your quality leads to the amount spent on each lead.
UTM parameters can be added to landing page URLs that gather info about who is clicking your ads. From there, you can pull this PPC marketing campaign data into your CRM to connect with lifetime value and lead score.
This helps determine which campaigns are driving the best leads and value (and it’s part of ConversionIQ, HawkSEM’s unique approach to marketing). Armed with this info, you can better analyze your PPC campaigns and keywords to maximize your ROI.
Total Revenue Generated / Total Number of Leads = Average Revenue Per Lead
However, this doesn’t paint the whole picture.
There are other factors at play as well, including your average sales cycle length, site traffic, customer relationship management (CRM) data, and lead scoring to determine your high-quality leads.
Ensure you’re properly measuring your PPC ROI by:
Setting up lead scoring
Tracking your leads and conversions properly
Adding in subjective data regarding experiences with the lead
Calculating anticipated ROI before anticipated site traffic
How can you optimize your SEM plan for PPC success?
You can have the best PPC ads around — but if the rest of your online presence is lackluster, you still risk those clicks turning into dead ends instead of closed deals.
Take another look at your search engine marketing (SEM) program. Are you leveraging the right keywords? Have you planned out your ROI goals? Is your site fully optimized?
Being able to answer “yes” to all of these questions will give you and your team the peace of mind that you’re doing all you can when it comes to search engine marketing.
Plenty of companies make the mistake of letting conversion tracking fall by the wayside. Some set it up improperly, and some aren’t tracking this at all. Conversion tracking is crucial for giving you insight into performance while providing you with insightful data about customer actions.
A step-by-step plan for an ROI-driven PPC campaign
Think you’ve got the ROI-driven PPC thing down? Make sure you’re taking all of these steps when crafting your campaign:
Determine your campaign’s goals
Identify, prioritize, and categorize the right keywords for your campaign
Write out your ad copy
Set up your ads within your chosen ad platform
Determine the desired CTA
Make sure your landing pages are targeted, consistent, and optimized
Have proper tracking set up (More than 70% of our PPC audits turn up incorrect or with improper tracking.)
How to find the right PPC agency for you
Whether you’re not seeing the PPC results you want or just don’t have the time and resources to manage it all, partnering with an agency can be hugely beneficial. (OK, so maybe we’re a little biased.)
When you’re vetting out the agencies you potentially want to work with, it’s a good idea to prepare by:
Once you decide which agencies you want to actually connect with in-person or via phone, make sure you get an understanding of their fee structure, company culture, and communication style.
The takeaway
PPC ads have proven to be a way to reach your targeted audience and turn search engine users into customers.
Not only can paid search ads significantly boost your brand awareness, but they can expand your reach, bring you more traffic, and, ultimately, make you more money.
Ready to take your PPC game to the next level? Let’s chat.
This article has been updated and was originally published in November 2019.
Caroline Cox
Caroline is HawkSEM's content marketing manager. She uses her more than 10 years of professional writing and editing experience to create SEO-friendly articles, educational thought leadership pieces, and savvy social media content to help market leaders create successful digital marketing strategies. She's a fan of seltzer water, print magazines, and huskies.
Questions or comments? Join the conversation here!
Social media is one of the strongest tools for food & beverage brands. Here are 6 tactics for leveraging paid social to enhance your F&B marketing plan....
Customer reviews can boost brand loyalty, credibility, and authenticity. Here are some effective ways to leverage reviews in your marketing initiatives....
Here's what you need to know to create successful content marketing that adds value, educates your audience, and frames you as an industry thought leader....
Whether you’ve been doing e-commerce for years or have recently switched to a digital platform amid the pandemic, it’s always good to know what elements make up a successful search engine marketing (SEM) ad.
Traditional search campaigns are powered by keywords. But with e-commerce ads, it’s all about the product feed.
Wondering how to get started with e-commerce campaigns? You’ve come to the right place. Let’s break down what steps to take when creating paid search ads for your e-commerce brand.
How you get your products into GMC to create the feed mostly depends on how many products you have. (Image via Rawpixel)
1. Set up your Google Merchant Center account properly
It should come as no surprise that the right setup is key to creating successful e-commerce ads. But plenty of companies, whether they realize it or not, don’t have their accounts set up properly.
This can lead to improper tracking and unnecessary steps. So, how do you ensure you’re starting off on the right foot?
Link your account via a shared email address
To begin, you need to create a free Google Merchant Center (GMC) account. It’s best to use the same email you use for programs like Google Ads and Google Analytics. That way, your accounts will all be linked together.
From there, you can link your Google Ads account to GMC. It’s also a good idea to install “Ecommerce tracking” in your Google Analytics account for even more insight into performance metrics.
Choose a product data input method
Next, it’s time to get your products into the Google Merchant Center. A few things to consider when determining how to get your product data into GMC are:
Which e-commerce platform will you be leveraging?
How many products will you be uploading?
How many product variations with individual SKUs will you be uploading?
Do you have all the product details organized?
How you get your products into GMC to create the feed mostly depends on how many products you have. If you have a lot of products and are using a popular e-commerce platform such as Shopify or BigCommerce, you should be able to easily integrate this with GMC.
This will help you map your product feed and submit the most updated info to GMC on a regular basis, ensuring your product data is always fresh.
If you’ve got a smaller number of products, you can simply integrate manually via a Google spreadsheet. You can also manually add products one by one if you want to test out the platform first.
Pro tip: If your product list is especially large, Google’s new file processor Centimani might be a great solution for you.
Optimize your Merchant Center settings
There are a lot of things in GMC settings that often get overlooked. One is enabling automatic updates.
Google will crawl your page and find your most updated price and availability if you opt in to get automatic improvements.
This is great if, for example, you run out of stock on a product, because it keeps you from running Google Ads to a page where your products aren’t available. However, if you have your site structured in a way that keeps Google from understanding your pricing, it’s probably best to turn off the automatic price updates.
Once you have everything in GMC, you’ll connect to your Google Ads account. In April 2020, Google announced that they’d run free listings on Google Shopping. This Shopping section is a lot like Amazon in that you can filter by things like price.
This means it’s more important than ever to get your GMC created with your products and prices because you’ll start getting an organic lift from being on the Shopping tab for free. This can be especially helpful for local SEO.
Pro tip:Even if your business doesn’t have the budget for new campaigns, we still recommend going into GMC and setting up a feed, because you’ll be eligible for free listings in the U.S.
2. Stay on top of your product feed
Once your GMC account is set up, don’t fall into a set-it-and-forget-it mindset.
Making sure your product feed is updated is just as crucial as proper setup. (The last thing you want is to have someone click on your ad and see that the item is out of stock or priced higher than advertised, right?)
Once you input products, they’ll remain active for 30 days. After that, those products will expire if you don’t update their info, meaning they won’t be eligible to show potential customers.
You can update your products either by reprocessing your feed or setting up automatic processing on a daily or weekly basis, depending on how often your product inventory changes.
It’s also important to keep your prices updated. A 2021 GMC update increased the scrutiny on prices. Prices listed in your product data, on your landing pages, and at checkout must match. They’ll give you 28 days to resolve the mismatch before suspending your account.
Including prices in your ads can be a highly effective way to get more clicks than your competition. (Image via Rawpixel)
3. Set up your e-commerce ads campaign
It’s pretty easy to get started once you have GMC linked. It’s usually a good idea to start with a standard Shopping campaign.
Smart Shopping is usually best fueled by having a solid foundation of account data. If you’re just getting started, you may want to run a manual cost-per-click (CPC) campaign first, then experiment with Smart Shopping or automated bidding down the road.
Get granular
The #1 way to set yourself up for campaign success is to get granular. That’s because the more specific a product search is, the higher the purchase intent is likely to be.
The more you segment out your products, the more targeted your PPC ads will be. It makes sense: someone searching for a specific brand, style, color, and size of running shoe is probably more motivated to buy than someone just searching with the term “running shoe.”
You can split products into separate campaigns and ad groups that can then be split further into product groups. If you have a small, manageable number of products, you can break everything out by single-product product groups.
An example: Let’s say your core products are sporting goods, but you also sell apparel as 20% of your business. It may be wise to put all of your apparel into a separate campaign to make sure you’re giving most of your budget to your core products.
You can also divide in other ways, like by devices. Simply put a -100% bid adjustment to separate desktop and mobile. For your desktop campaign, you’d put in a -100% bid adjustment on mobile to show only on desktop, and vice versa.
You can separate out traffic based on how specific the search is by setting up campaign priorities and then using negative keywords to separate those searches. Google’s 2021 GMC updates include additional sizing attributes which may be helpful as well.
Pro tip: Google Shopping is unique in that it has a priority system — you can set low, medium, and high priority campaigns. If you have several Shopping campaigns, this system dictates which ones serve an ad first.
Include prices in your ads
Your GMC account isn’t the only place you want to make sure your prices are visible. Including prices in your ads can be a highly effective way to get more clicks than your competition. Not only can this help qualify your traffic to ensure you get the right clicks, but it doesn’t take up a ton of valuable ad real estate.
As HubSpot explains, “This saves your ad spend for those qualified leads who saw your prices, know what to expect, might not be scared away by price, and are much more likely to convert into a sale.”
Even if they don’t end up buying your product or service, you’ll have a higher chance of snagging them through remarketing, since they already know what your pricing looks like.
Google recently added a “Deals” feed to the SERP page. When you’re running a promotion, sale, or have products with a recent price drop, consumers searching for deal- or sales-related listings will see your products.
A look at how GMC reports free clicks (via Google Merchant Center)
Remember to optimize
Without optimizing, your PPC campaign can only go so far. Optimizing will help you better manage your budget by putting more spend where you’re seeing more success.
There are two major KPIs to consider when optimizing a Shopping campaign. If you’re on a manual bidding strategy, pay attention to conversion volume and the result of conversion value over cost. That will calculate a rough idea of your return on ad spend (ROAS).
Many e-commerce companies optimize their bids by starting low, then adjusting accordingly. The more data you gather, the more informed your decisions will be.
After you’ve accrued some data, you can decrease bids on anything under your goal or average. You can also increase bids on items that are producing the most conversion value when compared to ad spend.
With Shopping, you can’t run a traditional experiment within Google Ads, but you can switch over for a time period and compare after a while. Automatic bidding strategies are powered by data, so the longer you run them, the better they should get.
If you’re going to try Smart Shopping, it’s a good idea to pick a mix of high and low performers, then exclude those from your regular Shopping campaign. Don’t simply pick all your low performers from your regular Shopping campaign and put them in Smart Shopping. You want a mix to ensure you’re getting accurate results.
Other ways to optimize include:
Experiment with different ad types (like product listing ads vs. text ads)
Leverage ad extensions to give ads more context
Add pricing to ads for a competitive edge
Test different campaign structures and categories
Pro tip:We don’t recommend running the same products in your traditional and Smart Shopping campaigns. If you do, Smart Shopping will automatically take precedence.
A remarketing email from Uncommon Goods triggered by cart abandonment.
Leverage dynamic remarketing
Ah, yes, remarketing – otherwise known as “those ads that follow you around the internet,” as your friends or family may describe them. But the fact remains that remarketing works, particularly for cart abandoners.
If you’re running Google Ads, you’re already paying for people to get to your website. But, as consumers ourselves, we know not everyone buys the first time they visit a site or product page. That’s where dynamic remarketing comes in.
While remarketing (also called retargeting) can be effective in various industries, it’s particularly useful for e-commerce ads. It can help you land more recurring sales, increase your campaign’s clickthrough rate (CTR), boost your ROI, and more.
Dynamic remarketing is a great way to nurture your funnel. At its core, this method aims to show users specific products they’ve viewed on your site. If they look at running shoes, you then show them that exact pair of shoes as a Shopping ad while they browse other sites on the web.
To set up dynamic remarketing, you generally have to add a bit of code to your site. This is powered by your GMC feed, so you have to make sure your account is set up and working if you want it to be successful.
A lot of people put things in their carts while shopping online, then don’t end up following through with the purchase. You can remarket these products to cart abandoners and, if you have the e-commerce settings set up correctly in Google Analytics, you should already have some audiences available.
Google will allow your products to remain active for 30 days without new product info. (Image via Unsplash)
4. Test your ads consistently
If you want high-performing e-commerce ads, testing repeatedly is an important step.
You can A/B test elements like your imagery, verbiage, call to action (CTA), and more. After all, what works on your paid social media campaign might be a flop when it comes to SEM. See how a flat-lay image of an item on a white background performs against an image of a real-life scenario.
You may think you know what your target audience wants, but the results could end up surprising you.
It makes sense that, when you think of paid search e-commerce ads, you automatically think of Google. And while it’s holding strong in its place as the top global search engine, it’s not the only one worth looking into. If you’re seeing success in Google and topping your impression share, why stop there?
You can easily carry your Shopping campaigns over to Bing, now rebranded to Microsoft Advertising. Along with the Bing search engine, this suite includes Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and other sites.
Bing has a user base that searches nearly 6 billion times a month in total. Depending on your e-commerce product, you could see less competition on Bing than on Google, and a potentially cheaper cost per click (CPC).
If you already have a Microsoft Ads account, it’s easy to get a merchant center account set up right from the ad platform. Microsoft will process this data just like Google. Once it reviews the product data, you can create a Shopping campaign within Microsoft or import a Shopping campaign from Google that’s already working well.
In Microsoft Ads, you can even import on a recurring basis. If you set up a recurring sync, you can optimize in one place and make sure it’s carried over easily, instead of having to manually optimize within each platform. You can even optimize based on the different platform behaviors if that proves advantageous.
Pro tip: Think Amazon Advertising isn’t related to PPC? Think again. Amazon operates as a search engine in many ways, with ad types and structures similar to traditional paid search campaigns.
The takeaway
No matter the size of your brand or number of competitors, you’ve still got to work to make your PPC ads stand out. E-commerce ads can help take your sales to the next level.
By making sure your Google Merchant Center account is set up properly, keeping product info fresh, experimenting to see what works well, and considering leveraging both Google and Microsoft, you’ll be set on the path to more sales and a strong digital marketing strategy that can help your company continue to thrive.
This article has been updated and was originally published in June 2020.
Sam Yadegar
Sam Yadegar is the co-founder and CEO of HawkSEM. Starting out as a software engineer, his penchant for solving problems quickly led him to the digital marketing world, where he has been helping clients for over 12 years. He loves doing everything he can to help brands "crush it" through ROI-driven digital marketing programs. He's also a fan of basketball and spending time with his family.
Questions or comments? Join the conversation here!
Social media is one of the strongest tools for food & beverage brands. Here are 6 tactics for leveraging paid social to enhance your F&B marketing plan....
Customer reviews can boost brand loyalty, credibility, and authenticity. Here are some effective ways to leverage reviews in your marketing initiatives....
Here's what you need to know to create successful content marketing that adds value, educates your audience, and frames you as an industry thought leader....
Got lackluster landing pages? This guide is for you.
If paid search was a basketball team, landing pages just might be the MVPs.
That’s because they do a lot to “carry the team” once your ad has successfully garnered a click. Landing pages are tasked with engaging the viewer, informing them about what you offer, and finally, getting them to take that next desired action.
Sounds simple enough, right? Well, not exactly.
Like much of digital marketing, landing pages are part art, part science. Along with a strategic design and targeted copy, you’ve also got to factor in things like form length, testing, optimization, and more. But don’t let the prospect overwhelm you.
Caroline is HawkSEM's content marketing manager. She uses her more than 10 years of professional writing and editing experience to create SEO-friendly articles, educational thought leadership pieces, and savvy social media content to help market leaders create successful digital marketing strategies. She's a fan of seltzer water, print magazines, and huskies.
Questions or comments? Join the conversation here!
Two of HawkSEM’s experienced marketing pros will break down key tips for creating a well-rounded marketing plan that’ll help you crush your goals, grow your reach, and boost your ROI....
Marketing pros who aren’t new to the game likely know all about the customer journey. It comprises the stages we base our content, campaigns, and plans on: awareness, consideration, and decision. (With delight as the bonus step.) And the customer journey is a crucial element when it comes to acquisition.
Customer acquisition is the process of converting a generated lead into a customer. It’s basically the whole funnel (or journey) combined. At the end of the day, marketing is about attracting new customers, and keeping customer acquisition top of mind is how marketers can make that happen.
While there’s no one way to pinpoint and acquire qualified leads that are sure to become customers, there are a handful of digital marketing strategies you can implement with customer acquisition in mind. Here, we’ve mapped out six of our favorites.
Companies that use paid search for successful customer acquisition know it’s not only about the ad. (Image via Unsplash)
1. Paid search
Also known as pay per click (PPC), paid search is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies when it comes to customer acquisition. That’s because it allows companies to target their specific audience with the right keywords at the right time.
Paid search ads appear at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) on sites like Google and Bing. If someone’s searching for “women’s black cycling shoes,” for example, and you’re an e-commerce brand selling cycling products (including women’s black cycling shoes), you want your targeted ad to be the one they see. The same goes for brands selling other products and services.
The companies that use paid search for successful customer acquisition know it’s not only about the ad, though. Rather, it’s crucial to pair eye-catching, appealing ad copy with an optimized landing page that boasts consistent verbiage, clean design, and a clear call to action (CTA).
2. Search engine optimization (SEO)
Along with a paid search strategy, having a solid SEO strategy helps search engines more easily recognize your website. This helps improve your rankings and, ideally, grow your reach for better customer acquisition.
Proper SEO on your site means having elements including:
Unique title tags on your pages
High-quality content
Internal links and external links (to authoritative sites)
Ensuring your site is optimized for search engines won’t guarantee that you’ll get in the first position (or even on the first page) of the SERPs. The search algorithm that determines the best content for each search query is constantly changing, and the details about how search engines determine the best content to show searchers isn’t always clear.
However, by keeping your site up to date, easy to navigate, and educational for prospects and clients, you can position your brand as a thought leader and your site as a valuable source of information.
3. Social media
When it comes to social media, you’ve got the option to leverage both organic and paid avenues. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that each path can be leveraged in the same way or achieve the same results.
Let’s start with organic social media. The practice of regularly creating social media posts can help spread the word about new business offerings or updates, increase your exposure, and even help you go viral (in a good way, ideally).
While organic social posts likely won’t directly result in customer acquisition, they can aid in brand awareness, content sharing, and allow you to highlight the fun side of your brand.
Paid social, on the other hand, can be a powerful tool if wielded properly. When choosing which platforms to advertise on, you should first consider your target audience and the platforms they use most.
From there, you can take advantage of the audience targeting tools most of these platforms have in place to get your content delivered straight to those who need to see it most.
When done right, remarketing one of the best and most cost-effective ways to get past visitors back to your site. (Image via Unsplash)
4. Remarketing
As we’ve touched on before, remarketing can benefit your business in numerous ways. Not only does it keep you top of mind when someone takes an action like visiting your site, or requesting a consultation or demo, but it allows you to hyper-focus your ads and ups your chances of turning a lead into a conversion.
Remarketing (also called retargeting) works by leveraging display ads to connect your business with people who have already visited your site or mobile app. When done right, it’s one of the best and most cost-effective ways to get past visitors back to your site.
Of course, the most successful retargeting campaigns aren’t one size fits all. A brand-new site visitor shouldn’t be remarketed the same way as a returning visitor.
Data transparency changes and the eventual demise of third-party cookies are going to force some changes in digital marketing, particularly for remarketing ads. But there’s no need to panic: Marketers have adapted to massive changes for decades. And while more solutions will become apparent as the process unfolds, focusing on attracting new prospects is one way to keep your lead pipeline flowing.
Looking for more ways to increase your customer acquisition? Let’s talk.
5. Content marketing
When people hear the phrase “content marketing,” they may automatically think of blogs. And while blogging is a great medium for businesses when it comes to customer acquisition, content can encompass much more.
Examples of valuable content include:
Blog posts
Videos and webinars
Guides and e-books
Infographics
Checklists
Downloadable templates
Product descriptions
Case studies
No matter the content you create, you want to make sure it’s accurate, helpful, and targeted. The more deliverables you create, the more industry topics you can cover, and the more likely you are to be found in organic search results by those seeking what you have to offer.
Pro tip: You can take things a step further by partnering with another brand (with a similar audience but not a competitor) on something like an infographic, webinar, or guest blog. This expands your reach, helps build your professional network, and boosts your brand’s credibility.
Include social share links as well as forwarding options in your email newsletter to make sharing a breeze. (Image via Unsplash)
6. Email newsletters
Email newsletters can be a powerful acquisition channel if you follow a few key strategies. As Campaign Monitor reports, you’re six times more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than from a tweet.
The most successful newsletters:
Include one main CTA
Offer a tactical takeaway (like a pro tip, discount, or statistic)
Feature an attention-grabbing subject line
Have an easy-to-read template
Are optimized for mobile
When you’re looking to build your non-client subscriber list, get creative! You can add exit-intent pop-ups to your site, or include a subscription box in your site’s footer. Offline, you can give people the option to sign up if your brand is posted up in a booth at an industry conference or networking event — a particularly effective strategy if it’s part of a giveaway or contest.
Pro tip:Let your readers help you spread the word! Include social share links as well as forwarding options in your email newsletter to make sharing a breeze. Due to the psychology of social proof, peer-recommended content is more likely to be trusted.
The takeaway
Customers are the bread and butter of any business, and digital marketing is one of the most direct ways to connect with your desired prospects.
By knowing your audience, meeting them where they are, and analyzing the data behind your campaigns, you’ll have the tools you need to not only attract more customers, but keep them loyal and happy as well.
This post has been updated and was originally published in December 2019.
Sam Yadegar
Sam Yadegar is the co-founder and CEO of HawkSEM. Starting out as a software engineer, his penchant for solving problems quickly led him to the digital marketing world, where he has been helping clients for over 12 years. He loves doing everything he can to help brands "crush it" through ROI-driven digital marketing programs. He's also a fan of basketball and spending time with his family.
Questions or comments? Join the conversation here!
Social media is one of the strongest tools for food & beverage brands. Here are 6 tactics for leveraging paid social to enhance your F&B marketing plan....
Customer reviews can boost brand loyalty, credibility, and authenticity. Here are some effective ways to leverage reviews in your marketing initiatives....
Here's what you need to know to create successful content marketing that adds value, educates your audience, and frames you as an industry thought leader....
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
