Aug 28 2024
Is Value-Based Bidding Your Ticket To Higher Quality Leads? via @sejournal, @adsliaison

For lead gen marketers, we know it’s not just about generating leads; it’s about attracting the right leads – those that are most likely to convert into valuable customers.

Value-based bidding is a strategic approach that allows businesses to focus on optimizing campaigns for conversions that truly matter.

We’ve seen value-based bidding work for online sales and brick-and-mortar businesses as well, but here we’re going to focus on using it for driving higher quality leads.

This is the first of five articles I’ll be sharing weekly to delve in deeper and build on each episode of our new video series on value-based bidding for lead generation.

As you’ll see in this first video below, each is short enough to take in over a quick coffee break.

We’ll start from the beginning and cover what it is and whether value-based bidding could be the right strategy to elevate your lead generation efforts in Google Ads.

The Power Of Quality Leads

Not every customer brings the same value to your business. High-quality leads are more likely to engage with your brand, convert into paying customers, and contribute to long-term business growth.

Value-based bidding is particularly beneficial for businesses that typically need to nurture relationships with customers between an initial online conversion and a final sale.

By focusing on quality leads, you can streamline your sales funnel, improve conversion rates, and ultimately boost your bottom line.

So how can you do that with value-based bidding?

Bidding To Value

Value-based bidding allows you to prioritize specific value goals that align with your business goals.

These goals could encompass sales, revenue, profit margins, or even the lifetime value of a customer.

With this strategy, Google’s AI uses billions of combinations of signals along with your first party data to identify conversions that are most likely to deliver on your defined value objectives.

It then optimizes bids to focus your ad spend on reaching those higher value customers.

The Basic Mechanics Of Value-Based Bidding

Value-based bidding offers two primary pathways to optimize your campaigns by bringing values into Smart Bidding:

VALUE-BASED BIDDING
Maximize conversion value
with a target ROAS Drive as much conversion value at a particular ROI.		 Maximize conversion value
(no ROAS target specified) Get as much value within a set budget.
  • Maximize conversion value: If you’re working with a fixed budget, this option focuses on extracting the maximum lead conversion value from your campaign within the constraints of your budget.
  • Set a ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) target: This option enables you to optimize for conversion value at a specific target ROAS to help ensure your ad spend generates a desired level of return. When you set a ROAS target, the system will optimize to find as much value as possible on average at your target. There are data thresholds to using target ROAS which we will cover later in this series, but this is the preferred strategy when you want to achieve specific ROAS goals and be able to respond dynamically to shifts in demand. Target ROAS is available for single campaigns or a portfolio strategy applied to multiple campaigns.

Value-based bidding will maximize the conversion value based on budget constraints and ROAS targets where applicable, so higher value customers will be prioritized over volume alone.

Keep this in mind when comparing target CPA performance, which optimizes for conversion volume irrespective of value.

While the emphasis will be on attracting high-value customers, it’s important to note that you might still see some medium to low-value customers depending on the dynamics of the ad auction.

When using ROAS targets, the higher your target, the fewer auctions your ads are likely to enter. In other words, ROAS targets are your lever to make your ads more or less likely to enter the auction.

Is Value-Based Bidding The Right Fit For Your Business?

Value-based bidding has seen success across a spectrum of industries, but whether it’s the right fit for you depends on your specific business needs and capabilities.

Before embracing this strategy, you’ll need to address these key questions:

Can You Assign Meaningful Values To Your Conversion Actions?

You are likely already differentiating your customers’ value in some facet, formally or informally.

You’ll need to set a concrete value to each conversion, whether through static proxy values like lead scores or dynamic economic values such as total profit. (We’ll cover proxy values more in the third article in this series.)

Do You Need To Strike A Balance Between Volume And Value Goals?

Bidding to value means your campaigns likely will not generate the same volume of conversions as they would using Maximize conversions with an optional target CPA bid strategy. This strategy is designed to return a higher total value of conversions. Bid simulators can help you to understand this tradeoff.

If you want to maintain a certain level of traffic, use the Smart Bidding bid simulator to help you gauge the optimal ROAS target that will yield your desired volume of leads while maintaining a focus on quality.

Lowering your target ROAS will increase your reach, and raising your target ROAS will decrease reach while seeking out higher value conversions.

Are You Able To Measure And Connect Your Value Data To Google Ads?

Access to accurate and comprehensive value data is a must for implementing value-based bidding effectively. To start, this means having proper site tagging to track conversions.

Feeding the right first-party data values into Google Ads is key to training the system to identify and differentiate predicted customer value for each auction.

If your value objective is sales value, for example, you’ll need to be able to measure and connect that data back to your Google Ads account. We’ll cover how to do that later in this series.

Reaping The Rewards Of Value-Based Bidding

The initial setup of value-based bidding typically requires some effort up front, but don’t let that intimidate you.

You can start with a more basic set up and adopt more sophisticated approaches that have more technical requirements, such as optimizing for margin or lifetime values for example, later if you wish.

Value-based Smart Bidding gives the system the flexibility to set each bid based on the predicted value of the conversion and target higher value conversions. Over time, it learns which users are more likely to be higher value and more profitable, then bids accordingly.

Bidding to find the most valuable customers can deliver incremental revenue uplift and profitability. Businesses that have found success with this strategy report a marked improvement in lead quality.

On average, advertisers that switch their bid strategy from a target CPA to target ROAS can see 14% more conversion value at a similar return on ad spend.1

Beyond The Basics

While we’ve covered the foundational aspects of value-based bidding, we’re just getting started.

In the upcoming articles in this series, we’ll dive deeper into this strategy, including how to identify and leverage the right data and values for your business, and how to share your value information with Google Ads.

By aligning your campaigns with the conversions that truly matter most to your business objectives, you can optimize your ad spend, maximize your return on investment, and achieve sustainable business growth.

Up next week, we’ll talk about figuring out the right data and values.

SOURCE: Google Internal Data, Global, March 2021

More resources: 

Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Aug 19 2024
Enterprise PPC Success Checklist: Setting Your Campaigns Up For Success via @sejournal, @navahf

There’s a lot of well-meaning PPC advice out there. This advice often finds its way to bosses/clients who ask, “Why aren’t we doing ___?”

The problem is most of these studies and data sets are focused around ecommerce. Enterprise accounts (even enterprise ecommerce) will behave differently than their non-enterprise counterparts.

There are a few reasons why there’s a shortage of enterprise advice:

  • Ad networks (particularly Google) tend to focus on ecommerce.
  • It’s easier to build statistically relevant data sets for ecommerce because there’s more data than lead gen.
  • Enterprise brands tend to have a lot of red tape to get through, so it’s harder to share what works.

We’re going to invest a bit of time digging into enterprise PPC, and how to set yourself up for success in your account as well as how to communicate that success to stakeholders.

Like anything in PPC, it’s important to balance this advice with what you know is actually important for your account.

The Checklist

We’ll be diving into each of these in-depth, but if you only have time for a quick skim, here are the main questions to ask yourself:

  • Have I built in enough time to launch the campaign?
  • Do I trust my CRM set-up and my internal processes?
  • How much flexibility do I have with technical implementation?
  • Which channels will meet with creative approval?
  • Did I opt out of all auto-generated content (and should I fight to let some stay)?
  • Are my budget pacing rules in line with my finance team’s expectations?
  • Have I set myself up for all markets I need to serve (national/domestic)?
  • Will I be able to pull reports on metrics my stakeholders are expecting?

Have I Built Enough Time To Launch The Campaign?

Whether you’re building for an enterprise or an SMB (small/medium business), ad platforms take time to stand up. This is due to ad platform verification and learning periods.

As a general rule, you will need to build in at least one to two weeks for account verification. This is required for everyone and is a safety measure to ensure the ad account represents the business it’s going to be promoting.

Ad networks (particularly Google) are fairly strict about double serving (i.e. you can’t have more than one ad account targeting potential traffic). The verification process (done through postcard) is a way to ensure your account is assigned to you and protects you from bad actors setting up another ad account targeting your business.

Beyond verification, you’ll need at least five to seven days minimum for your accounts to clear learning periods. These are for ad networks to understand your account/campaign and make meaningful budget allocation choices. During this time, you may need to use volume or impression share bidding due to the lack of conversions.

We’ll go into conversions in depth later in the post, but there are some pitfalls for brand-new enterprise accounts to avoid:

  • Using any smart (conversion) based bidding until you have at least 60 conversions in a 30 day period.
  • Setting up your account as a “Smart” campaign account (you need to create your account without a campaign).

If you’re adding a campaign to an existing account, you’ll be able to bypass most of these items, however, you still want to make sure you build in time for:

  • Confirming conversion actions are correct.
  • Learning period for new campaigns (still takes five days).
  • Ad approval process (two to three days).

Do I Trust My CRM/Internal Processes?

Ad networks are moving away from offline conversions, which means it’s even more important than ever that your CRMs are able to connect with your ad networks.

enhanced conversionsScreenshot from author, August 2024

Using Enhanced Conversions With CRMs

There’s a lot that can go wrong with CRM set-up and management, and those mistakes can skew lead scoring and reporting. Make sure that you trust how leads are received and tagged before beginning any serious spend.

It’s worth noting that Google (and other ad platforms) can take in the customer value (and lifetime value) of a client. So you’ll want to consider passing that info through as revenue and profit-based bidding tends to lead to better results than just conversions.

CPA for bidding strategies Image from Optmyzr, August 2024
ROAS for different bidding strategyImage from Optmyzr, August 2024

However, the CRM is just one piece of the puzzle. You also need to make sure your internal teams are prepared to handle the new leads and tag them correctly.

Depending on how your team is incented, they may put in dummy data or inaccurate data to stop their co-workers from “taking” their deals

How Much Flexibility Do I Have With Technical Implementation?

One of the most insidious parts of enterprise setup is clearing IT permissions.

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is the easiest/safest way to go through tracking pixels because once you get that installed, you can add any new pixels without needing to touch the site.

However, if you’re not allowed to touch the main site at all, you may need to look at landing page solutions or lead gen/call ads.

Here are the main considerations to be prepared to answer when helping your IT team get on board with implementing entities for you.

  • Privacy compliance requires that users be asked for consent to track. Even if there’s no conversion tracking, there are still cookies to remember preferences. This is needed for everyone, and if they’re going to help you get that set up, it will cause no performance issues to include conversion tracking pixels.
  • Plan to test conversion actions and build in rules around spam leads (excluding “1234567890” as a phone number, “test” in any field, etc.). Additionally, you may need to ask for help configuring revenue tracking in analytics/CRMs. Make sure you ask for exactly what you need and include documentation on why.

In an ideal world, you’d have your IT team set you up with consent mode. However, if you can’t, pushing for GTM is an acceptable compromise.

If your IT teams will budge at all, you may need to opt for auto or smart bidding. This means opting for max clicks or target impression share with a bid cap or manual bidding with bid adjustments.

Which Channels Will Get Creative Approval?

Different channels are going to have different tools for approval.  Google is really useful at allowing for both control and leaning into AI.

And when you lean into AI, you’re able to use brand safety standards. Additionally, there are placement controls so that you can ensure brand alignment. These include:

  • Brand standards for AI.
  • Placement reports for exclusions.
  • Ad previews.

Microsoft also allows full control and allows you to use Copilot to generate images and videos. LinkedIn, by and large, is in full control.

Meta is the one with the most risk for control because it tends to require more automation for performance gains. That said, all brands can avail themselves of more rigid controls.

Finally, there are several visual platforms that allow you to use either influencer, user-generated, or other content for ad placements. When you’re working with humans for videos, it’s on you to ensure that they meet your own brand standards.

So it’s less a question about brand standards in terms of fonts, colors, and design, and more a question of, will you be able to secure the talent for the video you want to produce?

Did I Opt Out Of All Things Auto (& Should I Fight To Keep Some)?

Most ad platforms will, by default, opt you into expansion of placements, expansion of traffic, as well as new creatives. You, as the practitioner, will need to decide which ones to keep, if any.

In most cases, on the enterprise side, none of them will fall under compliance, so you will want to opt out of all of them.

Here Is A List Of The Most Common Pitfalls In Terms Of Automated Settings

  • Automated created assets: Text, image, and video creative that gets created and added to your ads based on ad rank and placement type. Opt out of this in the account settings, as well as in the asset section of your campaign menu.
  • Automatically applied recommendations: These can be useful and should be reviewed. but not applied. Make sure you turn them off in account settings and review them in recommendations.
  • URL expansion in performance max: While this is a reasonable stand-in for Dynamic Search Ads (DSA), it’s important to remember that you won’t have the same level of control. This means your SEO-exclusive pages (blog, sitemap, etc) might get pulled in. Just be sure to leave that unchecked.
  • Setting your bidding to a bidding strategy you don’t intend: Because ad platforms want you to use conversion-based bidding, manual and automatic bidding are hidden in the drop-down menu.

Are My Budget Pacing Rules In Line With Finance’s Expectations?

It’s critical to remember that stated budgets aren’t guarantees of actual spend. Ad platforms will do their best to average out across 30.4 days of your stated daily budget.

All budgets should be able to fit enough interactions in their advertising schedule to get at least one lead/sale on paper. In practice, this translates to my bids not exceeding 10% of the daily budget rule because 10% is a really good conversion rate for non-branded.

However, starting a new campaign and account to lead to even more fluctuation. As a campaign is ramping up, you may have low- or high-spending days. This is normal but might cause finance to worry.

As a general rule, using portfolio bidding strategies is a great way to ensure bid caps and floors for all campaign types. However, if you’re using SA360, you’ll also have access to these for Performance Max campaigns (not available in “regular” Google Ads).

Whether you use portfolio bidding strategies to ensure auction price stability or not, remember that any major change to bidding strategies (including budget, goal, and type) will initiate a learning period. If a campaign is on the newer side, it might not have the conversions to quickly clear this learning period.

As a general rule, it’s a good idea to ask for about 20% more budget than you anticipate needing in the first 90 days of a campaign, which can be utilized for testing or to shore up any fluctuation in new campaigns.

Have I Set Myself Up For All Markets I Intend To Service (International/Domestic)?

Managing multiple markets is always tricky, and if you’re targeting more than just one country, it gets even more complex. Different people search and think in different ways, and if you take the same campaign that worked in one market, it may struggle in another.

Add to this the different costs of living and internet connectivity in different markets, and there’s a lot to think about before getting to translations.

As a general rule, you should not include more than one country per ad account so you can run the schedule based on that country. Additionally, if a market is a growing market, you don’t want that bad data averaging into your thriving markets.

On translating your campaigns: make sure you can service any language you’re translating into. Even though there are great deals to be had on non-English ad buys, the inability to service those customers will turn it into waste.

Make sure you know the different privacy compliance regulations for each market. Any campaigns targeting outside the US will likely need consent mode enabled.

Will I Be Able To Report On The Metrics My Stakeholders Are Expecting?

On a similar note, many are used to thinking of PPC as fast-paced and perfect reporting. This is no longer the case. It’s really important that you set out a framework from the beginning for which metrics your stakeholders will hold you accountable.

If they care about return on ad spend, conversion tracking must be set up correctly. For brands that refuse to allow third-party integrations on their sites, this may cause tracking and reporting issues.

As a general rule, getting buy-in for conversion tracking isn’t as hard as getting CRM/sales data to sync up.

However, if you can clear that hurdle, you’ll be able to report on lead quality as well as average customer value. Without that information, reports will be limited to objective CPA, conversion rate, and ad-specific metrics.

I like getting stakeholders invested in impression share and understanding how much impression share is lost due to rank or budget so they have a clear understanding of what their choices mean for the account.

Finally, try to work with the organic team to link up Search Console so you can share organic reports between teams.

Final Takeaways

Whether you’re setting up campaigns for enterprises or SMBs, there are some core focal areas for every PPC practitioner.

Hopefully, you found this a helpful start on your own enterprise PPC checklist.

More resources: 

Featured Image: PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Aug 13 2024
Conversion Tracking & Reporting For Enterprise Accounts: Avoid Common Pitfalls via @sejournal, @navahf

One of the biggest areas of contention in enterprise PPC advertising is conversion tracking efficacy.

This is in part due to how difficult it is to get approvals, make changes to your sites, and ensure that there’s buy-in to how you will be tracking conversions.

We’re going to dive into how to secure permission to get your conversion tracking set up, as well as how to report on those metrics.

While you will need to adopt this for your business and your needs, it should hopefully provide a very useful framework.

Getting Buy-In From IT

The biggest issue most IT teams will have is lags in performance (site speed).

Google Tag Manager is one of the easiest ways to get tags onto your site.

This is because the install goes in once, and it’s one set of assets that will impact the site. You can then make whatever changes you need.

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However, you need to make sure the events you’re going to track are trackable and that there won’t be any changes once tracking is set up.

For example, if you have an event for a form that registers a conversion when users submit, changing the language to contact us could easily cause a lapse in conversions.

You’ll need to make sure that there is a strong communication line between your IT team, your design team, and of course, your own ideas and strategies.

What Events Will You Track?

A big part of success is which events you designate as primary (influences reporting and bidding) and which ones are secondary.

primary and secondary conversionsScreenshot from Google Tag Manager, July 2024

These can be beginning an application or starting a purchase. While you may decide to keep most events as primary, you do need to make sure that the appropriate values are set.

Additionally, it is very important that you connect your CRM so that you can score your leads and, ultimately, convey the conversion values of true customers.

portfolio bid with bid capScreenshot from Google Tag Manager, July 2024

Ad platforms do best when you’re able to share revenue and profit information versus only relying on a placeholder number. While there is a valid fear around price gauging when an ad platform knows your profit numbers, you can mitigate that with bid floors/caps in portfolio bidding.

If you can’t track conversions for whatever reason, hope is not lost! Auto-bidding and manual can be reasonable solutions.

no conversion biddingScreenshot from Google Tag Manager, July 2024

Reporting Your Success

It’s critical that stakeholders understand (and buy into) the information you’ll be sharing with them. If all they care about is signed customers, you’re not going to show them every single type of conversion action.

You should still track what you need, i.e., segmenting conversion actions and seeing which types happened when.

As a general rule, these metrics are safe to include in reports:

  • Conversions: what you’re tracking and the value of these conversions.
  • Return on ad spend (ROAS).
  • Budget efficiency: percent of the budget going to converting entities.
  • Cost.

Every other metric is nice to have, but on a case-by-case basis.

As you share reports and agree on conversion actions, make sure you have their buy-in for privacy and consent work. This ensures you’ll be able to track effectively, and you’ll also be able to use any contact information secured in future marketing efforts.

Call tracking is going to be a critical step for many. You can use:

  • On-site: dynamic numbers based on anticipated impression and click volume.
  • Off-site: a static number assigned to an action.

When you share reporting information, you will want to ensure calls are scored based on whether they became leads and on their duration.

By default, conversions are considered at 60 seconds. However, in most cases, that will not be adequate. Make sure you’re building in at least two minutes (ideally five minutes) before considering a call a conversion.

The final consideration is how much you will rely on GA4 events vs ad platform conversion. If your team requires the same “sources of truth,” you may want to opt for GA4.

However, you can also collaborate with your SEO teams by building in organic reporting.

organic reportsScreenshot from Google Analytics 4, July 2024

By doing this, you can report on how much budget is needed in paid vs organic due to overlap and potential cannibalization. To access these reports, connect your search console to Google Ads.

User Experience

The final consideration is the user experience when they convert with you. Essentially, how easy is it for them to accidentally convert multiple times or not convert at all (despite believing that they have)? This can skew your numbers and budget allocation.

It’s important to review the conversion path for your customers on multiple devices and multiple operating systems.

For example, when you design on an iOS system, sometimes fonts and colors get skewed when moving to Windows. This can cause a bad user experience and impact the conversion tracking itself.

Another potential hurdle is form-fill confirmation.

If users don’t see a thank you page confirming their appointment and offering the opportunity to add it to their calendar, they may not realize the appointment went through.

Make sure it’s clear that the user accomplished the action you’re trying to get them to take.

Creative Solutions If You Can’t Track Conversions

If you are unable to get your IT team to set up conversion tracking properly, all is not lost. You can still create something approaching tracking, you just will need to do a little bit more manual work.

Use UTMs with tracking parameters to help your CRM system convey that a lead came from the ad platform. Then, you can share that information with the ad platform.

It’s a little bit riskier to rely wholly on analytics because it’s typically best to use a non-ad platform-oriented tracking solution as your source of truth of what value happened.

While you can use analytics, you may get more value out of using your CRM.

Final Takeaways

To sum up, conversion tracking is a critical part of any campaign, especially enterprise.

While your implementation may not be perfect, you can still get a lot of value out of using Google Tag Manager to get the most pixels on and using call tracking rules of engagement to set yourself up for success.

Be sure that you use Auto or manual bidding unless you’re able to connect off-line conversions.

More resources: 

Featured Image: Akarawut/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jul 29 2024
When Search Isn’t Search Anymore, But It Is Still Search via @sejournal, @jonkagan

If you talk to any paid search marketing old-timer (someone with 10+ years of experience) and ask them what has changed within the search industry, they will likely give you a straightforward reply:

Literally everything.

Without dating myself, I can say that when I started in this space, Yahoo was the bigger ad platform than Google, AskJeeves was a standalone platform (and still had Jeeves), AOL was still a standalone ad platform, and there were fewer match types.

More importantly, we relied on keywords and manually written search ads (25-35-35 – if you know this reference, congratulations, you’re old).

Targeting was limited to geography, the search network, and not much else.

Search Is Not Just Search Anymore

Today, the odds are that half your “search” campaigns don’t even have keywords, ads are bigger (and can be AI-generated), the targeting ability is incredible, and the options of what you can do seem infinite.

But at the same time, you have less transparency, and the levers you pull are more directional than definitive (because let’s face it, odds are you aren’t doing much manual CPC bidding anymore).

In addition, the concept of paid search has changed. Where once it was a keyword and text ad-focused association, it has shifted to more of a platform term that even exceeds ads showing on search engines.

Think of it like this:

  • Search marketing in 2005: Yahoo and Google text ads triggered by keywords you bid on. As well as accidentally showing in GDN (back then called the Google Content Network).
  • Search marketing in 2024: Bing (because I refuse to call it Microsoft) and Google text ads triggered by keywords you bid on, as well as:
  • Product feeds showing your catalog in search engines and social media are triggered by behavior or queries you don’t bid on.
  • An “all-in-one” ad unit that optimizes all sorts of ad placements to a single goal (Performance Max).
  • Email ad units that are tied to ad placements on a mobile app feed and video views.
  • Video ads showing for whatever it feels, with some guidance based on behavior.
  • Bidding ads in a social media platform the way you used to bid on search ads 20 years ago, and so on.

The industry and the concept of search marketing over the past 20 years are night and day. In reality, it isn’t so much search marketing but biddable media.

However, it is still powered by a single thing: people searching for things.

Now cue: “But Jon, you just said search marketing isn’t search anymore, so how do people searching for things power the space?”

To which I reply:

“Shut up and listen. If you still run basic search and/or shopping ads, then that is people searching for things. The rest is audience-based targeting, meaning someone took multiple actions on the internet to get themselves categorized into audiences. The vast majority of the time, that behavior is search. The part that goes out the window most often is the recency of them doing that.”

Search Vs. Biddable Media

As the industry evolves, the thought of search marketing becomes a subset of a concept that emerged 10 or so years ago, known as biddable media.

Biddable media is fairly straightforward conceptually: If you are advertising online, on a platform that requires you to enter an auction for your ad to show, then you are doing biddable media.

Search is the function of biddable media for:

  • Triggering of ads in the search engine results page (SERP).
  • Managing non-keyword ads that show in SERP (Performance Max, Shopping, etc).
  • Creating keyword-based audience targets on non-keyword-based ad units (Microsoft Audience Network (MSAN), Google Display Network (GDN), YouTube, Performance Max, Demand Generation, etc.).

Traditional search management is also the lifeblood of strategy and approach to biddable media:

  • Manual bidding.
  • Target cost per acquisition (TCPA)/target return on ad spend (TROAS)/Max Clicks.
  • Bid modification for targets, seasonality, device, etc.

Net-net: Search has started to become an antiquated term. In reality, search is biddable media, which is not just search but a search style of management that is across many more ad units and platforms.

I know; this is as clear as how Jenn Shah of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City made all her money before she got arrested.

What Is The Scope Of “Search” Now?

First, let me comfort all “search” marketers with this: “Your job didn’t go away with this paradigm shift (if it had, it would’ve been 5-10 years ago, and you likely wouldn’t be reading this article).”

But now, those “search” marketers just became much more valuable.

With a little additional learning, they’ve become the Jack/Jane of all trades in the digital marketing space (except for fixed rate managed service buys, which are typically CTV/Streaming or non-programmatic display efforts or affiliate; they don’t fall in this concept).

Their working knowledge of paid search management has become a working knowledge of biddable media.

In a less roundabout way of saying it, your paid search skills are applicable to all forms of paid media that require a strategy and an auction.

So, the scope of your job is more than just Google and Bing search; it also includes managing other media channels, similar to how you would manage paid search.

Biddable Media Formats Using Search Management StrategiesBiddable Media Formats Using Search Management Strategies, screenshots by author, July 2024

How Do We Adapt Our Skill Sets?

Adapting your skill set depends on if it even needs to be adapted.

You may already be adapted to manage other platforms and don’t even realize it. If you’ve been doing any of the following, you’re already most of the way there:

  • Running a Performance Max campaign.
  • Intentionally running a Google GDN, YouTube, or Bing Audience Network campaign (a true standalone campaign with proper ad units).
  • Building and utilizing audience targets and remarketing lists.
  • Deciding a specific bid strategy, setting it up, and adjusting it based on performance (TROAS, Max Conversions, TCPA, CPM, Max Clicks w/ CPC, etc.).
  • A/B testing (landing page, creative, bid strategy).

If you’re doing most or all of the above (or have in the past), stop reading this article; you’re fine; go watch my beloved NY Jets disappoint their fan base by burning through another quarterback.

If you aren’t doing more than half of these, but you are managing paid search, the learning curve isn’t difficult.

Anyone who follows me on X (Twitter) knows I rarely give Google kudos for much of anything. Still, its certification process is incredibly helpful (not so much the certifications themselves, but the tutorials).

Those give you the basics of understanding GDN, Performance Max, Shopping YouTube, Demand Generation (fka Discover), and other elements. You already know paid search, which is the most difficult element to learn.

Then, it is merely applying those skills to other platforms.

Don’t believe me? Here is a handy little equivalency chart:

  • Non-Skippable YouTube targeted to TV that shows on YouTube TV and Google TV = (similar) to CTV placements bought programmatically.
  • GDN/Audience ads = Display placements bought programmatically.
  • Performance Max = (similar) multi-ad unit social placements (i.e., Meta/Linkedin).
  • Google/Bing Shopping = (similar) social shopping placement and retail media placements. (i.e., Roundel/Walmart/Amazon/Pinterest) via a product feed.

Here are also some examples of hands-on management being similar among platforms:

  • Google and Bing search strategies and most assets are the same as each other.
  • YouTube CPM/Non-Skippable bid strategies are the same as CTV efforts on TradeDesk.
  • Google/Bing Max Click bid strategies at the campaign level are the same as optimizing Meta campaigns to Link Clicks or Landing Page Views.
  • Geotargeting in Google (which in my mind is some of the most impressive), can largely be replicated in Meta, GroundTruth, TradeDesk, SimpliFi, and more.
  • Remarketing lists are roughly designed the same way across all platforms (Google Analytics does have a leg up, I will admit), but all it requires is a platform site pixel to be deployed.
  • CRM/Customer Lists can be uploaded to nearly every platform (some restrictions apply in verticals around healthcare, financial services, and a few others).
  • Video creative (the raw file), are interchangeable between Linkedin, YouTube, Meta, Criteo, Bing, and many more.

The similarities go on:

1 Creative Across 3 Platforms (Google, TTD, Meta)1 Creative Across 3 Platforms (Google, TTD, Meta) screenshots by author, July 2024

Not to mention, between A.I. strategies (which is a fancy way of saying “bid rules”) and platform transparency (hey, Performance Max, you can sit this statement out), the management approach between the platforms on the similar ad units is nearly identical.

Not to mention, providing the non-text units are sized correctly, you can frequently utilize creative files across platforms and save yourself (and/or your creative team) some precious time.

Search Beyond Just Search Provides New Insight

My favorite part about multi-channel biddable media is its give-and-take between platforms.

Strong-performing paid search text ads are carried into social ads (RSA ads easily fit into Meta Headline + Primary Text + Description).

Engagement with display based on placement helps me decide where to target my CTV/Video creative. (High CTR on sports websites means I will focus my videos on sports content/games.)

Search Query reports give me a better sense of what people are actually searching for, which I can correlate to in-market audiences for targeting. Observational search audiences and demographics help me shape my audience segments.

The same audience build can be used across platforms, for example this customer list uploadScreenshot from author, July 2024

The same audience build can be used across platforms, for example, this customer list upload.

Your overarching bid management skillset helps you further develop each channel.

Am I Even A Search Marketer Anymore?

Short answer: Yes, you still manage search-based ad units (otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this article).

Long answer: Sort of. But in reality, you’re a multi-purpose digital marketer who, in addition to managing search-based ad placements that they have control over, also has the working skillset to manage programmatic display, programmatic video/CTV, social, digital out-of-home (DOOH), programmatic audio, retail media (excluding affiliate), as well paid search (but don’t get cocky and say SEO, because that is definitely not a transferable skillset in this situation).

The Takeaway

Whether you realize it or not, you’ve become a digital marketing Swiss Army Knife, able to manage multiple media channels (and countless ad types), all because you know paid search.

This means you need to stop thinking that “search” marketing is about keywords triggering text ads and start thinking of it as a “search” skillset that can be deployed anywhere.

It takes a little practice and some getting used to, but it has become one of the most valuable skill sets in paid media.

More resources:

Featured Image: ra2 studio/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jul 24 2024
A Guide To Keyword Prioritization & The Newest Query Matching Controls In Google Ads via @sejournal, @adsliaison

There are often times when more than one keyword (and/or search theme) in your account will be eligible to match for a search term. Yet only one will be selected to compete in each auction.

So, how does Google choose which of your keywords to put forward?

There’s a prioritization framework for that!

We’ve also recently launched several updates to query matching controls, including the new brand inclusions and brand exclusions, to help you steer traffic where you want it.

While the keyword and search theme prioritization framework for query matching isn’t entirely new, it’s evolved in meaningful ways with recent AI advancements.

Now is a good time to dive into the mechanics of keyword prioritization and query matching controls. This will give you a better foundation for organizing your campaigns and ad groups, building keyword lists (positive and negative), selecting keyword match types, and using search themes to drive performance.

We’ll cover various scenarios and what to keep in mind for each prioritization rule – as well as what you need to know about the latest in query matching controls.

Why Keyword Prioritization Matters

Keyword prioritization rules help ensure keyword-to-query relevance to deliver better user experiences and advertiser outcomes.

But another big benefit of keyword prioritization rules is that they help address the reasons why advertisers resorted to using “keyword sculpting” techniques that entailed complex account and bid structures in order to route traffic where they wanted.

Google Ads <span class=

How Keyword Prioritization Works In Google Ads

I think of the four priority levels, or rules, shown above in two batches:

  • Priority rules 1 & 2 apply to scenarios when you have a keyword or search theme that’s identical to the search term or spell-corrected search term.
  • Priority rules 3 & 4 apply to scenarios when you don’t have an identical keyword or search theme and have multiple matches that could enter the auction.

Top Priority: Identical Exact Match Keywords

If you have an eligible exact match keyword that is identical to the search term or spell-corrected search term, that keyword will be prioritized to enter the auction over all other keywords in the account.

This prioritization rule means:

  • The exact match keyword [skydiving license] will match to the identical query “skydiving license”.
  • The identical exact match keyword [skydiving license] will also be prioritized over the same keyword duplicated in phrase or broad match – whether in the same or a different ad group.
  • It will be prioritized over Performance Max for Search text ads.
  • And it will be prioritized over any other relevant phrase or broad match keyword that could otherwise match to the query, such as “skydiving certification” or “skydiving licensing.”
  • Also important to note, if you have the broad match campaign setting enabled, those keywords will be treated as if both a broad match and an exact match version of the keyword were enabled.
If this: Then that:
Identical or spell-corrected exact match keyword to the query. The identical exact match keyword will be prioritized.
Identical or spell-corrected exact match keyword to the query is duplicated in phrase and/or broad match in the account. The identical exact match keyword will be prioritized over the duplicated phrase and/or broad match keywords.
Identical or spell-corrected exact match keyword to the query is duplicated in a Performance Max search theme. The identical exact match keyword will be prioritized over Performance Max, even if there is a duplicate search theme.
The broad match campaign setting is enabled, and an identical keyword to the query. The identical broad match keyword will be treated as an exact match version and will be prioritized.
The broad match campaign setting is enabled and an identical exact match keyword to the query in another campaign. The keyword with the highest Ad Rank will be prioritized.

Keep in mind:

  • Misspelled/spell-corrected search terms are considered “identical,” but plurals or synonyms are not.
    • So [skydoiving license] would be considered identical to [skydiving license], but [skydiving licenses] or [freefall license] would not.
  • The keyword has to be eligible to serve in order to match – this is true across all prioritization rules.
    • For example, if the campaign is limited by budget the keyword won’t always be able to trigger an ad.
    • Or if the targeting doesn’t align, the creatives or landing pages in the ad group are all disapproved, or the keyword has low search volume status, you may see traffic go to other keywords or Performance Max.

2nd Priority: Phrase, Broad Match, Or Search Themes That Are Identical To The Query

Next up, if you don’t have the identical exact match keyword, the system will look to see if there’s a phrase or broad match keyword, or Performance Max search theme that’s identical to the query or spell-corrected query.

This prioritization rule means:

  • A Search keyword that’s identical to the query will be prioritized over Performance Max, regardless of match type – exact (as covered by the first priority), phrase or broad.
    • This is worth reiterating because I often see it misunderstood: If you have an identical Search keyword to the query of any match type, Performance Max will not be considered for selection. With one exception . . .
  • If you have duplicate search themes and phrase or broad match keywords that are identical to the query, priority will be based on Ad Rank.
    • For example, if you have both the search theme and phrase match keyword “skydiving license” and that’s the query, the ad with the highest Ad Rank will be selected for the auction.
    • That’s because Performance Max search themes have the same prioritization as phrase and broad match keywords.
  • If you have the identical search theme to the query in Performance Max but not an identical keyword in Search, the search theme will be prioritized.
If this: Then that:
Identical or spell-corrected Search keyword and not an identical Performance Max search theme. The identical Search keyword will be prioritized over Performance Max, regardless of match type.
Identical or spell-corrected Search keyword + an identical Performance Max search theme. Prioritization will be based on Ad Rank.
Identical or spell-corrected phrase match + broad match Search keywords.
Identical search theme in Performance Max and not an identical Search keyword. The identical Performance Max search theme will be prioritized.

Keep in mind:

  • Misspelled/spell-corrected search terms are considered “identical,” but plurals or synonyms are not. So [skydoiving license] would be considered identical to [skydiving license], but [skydiving licenses] or [freefall license] would not.
  • There is no performance benefit from repeating the same keyword in multiple match types in a campaign.
    • Because the system prioritizes eligible keywords that are identical to the search term, you will have the identical keyword covered with any single match type.
  • Further, there’s a misconception that exact match keywords are “cheaper” than their phrase or broad match types.
    • If the factors are equal (ad, landing page, bid strategy), the cost for the same broad or phrase match keyword to pick up the identical exact match traffic will be equivalent. More on keyword matching options here.
    • If you are using phrase and/or broad match keywords and have duplicate keywords across match types within your ad groups, you can dedupe and remove the redundant keywords in the most restricted match types.
  • We recommend using search themes to fill gaps, rather than duplicate your keywords, in order to help steer the AI in Performance Max. More on search themes here.

Alright, now for the scenarios when you don’t have the identical match to the query in your account, we’re moving on to the next two rules of prioritization . . .

3rd Priority: Relevance (AI-Based Keyword Prioritization)

This is the new(ish) kid on the prioritization block – and the biggest recent advancement in keyword selection for Search campaigns.

AI-based keyword prioritization introduces relevance signals to identify the best keywords from the most relevant ad groups when multiple ad groups are eligible to match to a query.

This prioritization rule means:

  • Relevance is determined by looking at:
    • The meaning of the search term.
    • The meaning of all the keywords in the ad group.
    • The landing pages within the ad group.
  • Keywords with a lower Ad Rank but higher relevance can be selected over keywords with lower relevance.
  • AI-based prioritization currently works on keyword-based Search campaigns only (e.g. it does not work on Dynamic Search Ads).
  • It is used when your keywords aren’t identical to the search term.
If this Then that
Phrase and/or broad match keywords in multiple ad groups are eligible to match to a query. AI prioritization first looks at each ad group as a whole to better understand the creative and intent and selects the most relevant ad group(s) and keyword(s) for the auction.

If more than one keyword/ad group is found to be highly relevant, the one with the highest Ad Rank will be selected.
Multiple phrase and/or broad match keywords in the same ad group are eligible to match to a query.

Keep in mind:

  • A big benefit of AI-based keyword prioritization is that it reduces the need to create granular campaign structures to route traffic manually while still giving you control over which keyword matches to a query using thoughtful ad group theming.
  • To that end, AI-based prioritization only works as well, as it can infer relevance. This is why ad group theming is so important, particularly when using broad match.
  • Grouping your keywords into similar themes with relevant assets and landing pages makes it easier for Google to understand the intent of your keywords and landing pages and select the best match for the intent of the user’s search.

For example: Looking closer at the example outlined in the Help Center, a search for “skydiving certifications near me” could match to the ad groups “Skydiving License” and “Advanced Skydiving Courses.”

Both ad groups have related intent to the query, but the “Skydiving License” ad group has keywords and a landing page specific to licensing. Whereas the “Advanced Skydiving Courses” ad group has keywords and a landing page focused on advanced courses.

Because ‘license’ (included in both the keywords and landing page) + ‘certifications’ (included in the search term) are seen as significantly more related than ‘courses’ + ‘certifications’ to a search for “skydiving certifications,” the “Skydiving License” ad group is selected.

(Having worked on many education and certification campaigns over the years, I particularly appreciate this example!)

4th And Final: Ad Rank

Ad Rank is the final prioritization rule used to determine which keyword (or search theme) in your account will be selected to enter the auction. We’ve already covered some of the scenarios in which Ad Rank is used when the other rule criteria aren’t met.

Ad Rank considers a number of factors, including ad quality components, in real-time with every auction to determine which, if, and where your ads are shown relative to other advertisers. More on Ad Rank here.

This prioritization rule means:

  • If you have the identical keyword to the query repeated in both phrase and broad match, priority will be based on Ad Rank. The ad with the highest Ad Rank will be prioritized.
  • If you have the identical search theme in Performance Max and phrase or broad match keyword in Search, priority will be based on Ad Rank.
  • If there are multiple highly relevant phrase and/or broad match keywords eligible after being considered by AI-based keyword prioritization, Ad Rank is then used to make the final selection to enter the auction.
If this Then that
Duplicated phrase and broad match keywords that are identical to the query or spell-corrected query. Prioritization will be based on Ad Rank.
Identical or spell-corrected keyword + an identical Performance Max search theme to the query or spell-corrected query.
Duplicated phrase and broad match keywords that are identical to the query or spell-corrected query.
AI prioritization finds multiple highly relevant phrase and/or broad match keywords.
The broad match campaign setting is enabled and an identical exact match keyword to the query in another campaign.

Keep in mind:

  • Ad Rank also considers other factors, such as your bid, the expected impact of assets and ad formats (e.g., sitelinks, location assets, etc.), and the context of the person’s search.
  • When you run Performance Max and Search campaigns and don’t have an identical keyword to the search query, the campaign or ad with the highest Ad Rank will be selected.
  • And a quick note on Quality Score: Quality Score is based on historical impressions for identical searches of your keyword, which means the match type you use doesn’t impact Quality Score – nor does changing match types.
    • For example, if all else is equal (bid, ad, etc.), the broad match keyword running shoes and exact match keyword [running shoes] will have the same Quality Score.
    • If your broad match keyword running shoes matches to the search “shoes for running”, that doesn’t factor into Quality Score.

New Controls For Query Matching

In June, we announced several updates for query matching and brand controls. I’ll explain a bit more about each update and answer some of the questions I’ve received about them.

Brand Inclusions For Broad Match Campaigns

This feature (initially called brand restrictions) ensures your ads match only to queries related to your brand name in broad match campaigns.

To use brand inclusions, you’ll need to turn the broad match keywords setting on in your campaign. This will automatically set or change your keywords in the campaign to broad match.

After you create a brand list at the account level, you can apply it to the campaign.

It’s first important to note that there are ongoing, continuous improvements in broad match, and AI advancements are helping to accelerate progress.

For example, in the recent six months, broad match performance improved by 10% for advertisers using Smart Bidding due to AI-powered improvements to quality, relevance, and language understanding1.

And, in addition to using Smart Bidding, there are key controls for steering broad match. We have already touched on the importance of ad group theming, for example.

Brand inclusions is a new control that enables advertisers to use broad match effectively in their branded campaigns.

This means:

  • You can focus traffic only on queries that include your brand while also using the additional signals available to broad match, including landing pages, keywords in your ad group, previous searches, and more.
  • You may also now see recommendations to switch your brand-focused campaigns to broad match and apply brand inclusions.
If this Then that
A search query contains a brand that is applied to your branded campaign with brand inclusions. The query will match to the most relevant broad match brand keyword(s) in your brand campaign.
A search query does not contain a brand that is applied to your branded campaign with brand inclusions. The query will not match to any of the broad match keywords in your branded campaign.
A search query contains a competitor brand that is not applied to your branded campaign with brand inclusions.

Keep in mind:

  • Brands are not the same as keywords. Unlike keywords, brands are treated like individual entities.
  • We use logos, websites, and trademarks to determine the right brand and related products.
  • There’s no need to include misspellings, variants, or versions in other languages in your brand lists.
  • If there is a strong correlation between the query and brand entity, your brand products will be associated with the brand.

Brand Exclusions For Search

Already available for Performance Max, brand exclusions will be rolling out for Search in the coming months.

Brand exclusions offer a streamlined solution to prevent traffic from queries associated with certain brand names and misspellings.

As with brand inclusions, you create brand lists at the account level. Then apply them for exclusion to your Search and/or Performance Max campaigns.

This means:

  • You can exclude matches to searches for competitor brands, for example.
  • Brand exclusions for Search apply to all match types and Dynamic Search Ads.
  • You can also use brand exclusions to prevent matches to other brands mentioned alongside the brand you’ve specified.
    • For example, if you want traffic for “google” but want to avoid comparisons like “google vs samsung phone.”
  • Or you can prevent traffic on sub-brand queries. For example, you may want traffic for “google” but not “google maps.”
  • You will be able to apply brand lists for exclusion to multiple Search and/or Performance Max campaigns.
If this Then that
A search query contains a brand that is applied to your campaign(s) with brand exclusions. The query will not match to any of the keywords in those campaign(s).
A search query does not contain a brand name. The query may match to eligible, relevant keywords in your campaigns.
A search query contains a competitor brand that is not applied to your campaign(s) with brand exclusions. The query may match to eligible, relevant keywords in your campaign(s).

Keep in mind:

  • Brands are not the same as keywords. Unlike keywords, brands are treated like individual entities.
  • We use logos, websites, and trademarks to determine the right brand and related products.
  • There’s no need to include misspellings, variants, or versions in other languages in your brand lists.
  • If there is a strong correlation between the query and brand entity, the brand’s products will be associated with the brand.
  • The simplest variant will typically capture all variants when multiple variants of a brand have at least one common word, such as “Google” and “Google LLC.”
    • For example, “Google” will capture all variants of search queries that include “Google.” You don’t need to add the other variants to your list.
  • However, when multiple variants of a brand don’t have common words, such as “Google”, “YouTube”, and “Alphabet”, you’ll need to create a list that includes all of the variants.
    • Otherwise, the more general brand will often, but not always, capture all traffic related to all brands. (More here.)
  • Brands vs. keywords: You can still add brands as negative keywords, but since negative keywords are limited in that they don’t exclude brand variants, we recommend only using negative keywords for blocking traffic that’s undesired, regardless of performance.

Negative Keywords Block Misspellings

Negative keywords are a valuable control to prevent traffic from unwanted search terms.

And this is a very welcomed update. Negative keywords now prevent matching to misspelled queries. Below are examples of scenarios I’ve been asked about.

This means:

  • Now, instead of having to monitor your search terms or think of possible ways people might misspell your keywords, you just have to enter the correct spelling.
  • Misspellings as negatives won’t block correctly spelled queries, but correct spellings as negatives will block their misspelled queries. See examples below.
  • It will block misspellings but not synonyms, singular or plural versions, and other close variations.
  • You’ll still need to add those if you want to exclude them. (e.g., YT would be a variant of YouTube, and the misspelling would be yiotube.) See examples below.
  • You can likely do some negative keyword list culling to remove misspellings and streamline things in your account.
If this Then that
You add the correctly spelled “loan” as a negative keyword. It will block searches with “lian,” “laon,” etc. because they will be recognized as misspellings of “loan.”
You have the correctly spelled keyword “car loan” and add the misspelling “lian” as a negative. It will not block correctly spelled “loan” queries.

It will block queries such as “car lian.”
You have the keyword “bedding” and add the correctly spelled negative keyword “beds.” You’d still be able to match for “bedding” searches because “beds” is a variant, not a misspelling of “bedding.”
You have the keyword “YouTube” and the search query is “YT”. You’d still be able to match for “YT” searches because beds

Keep in mind:

  • This update applies to campaign-level and account-level keywords. More on negative keywords here.
  • Misspellings will apply to all negative keywords, regardless of match type.
  • Wondering if a word will be considered a misspelling of your keyword? A good way to check is to search on Google to see if it returns “These are results for” the spell-corrected query.

Will Pausing Low Volume Keywords And/or Ad Groups Impact Query Matching And Performance?

Lastly, another recent change raised some questions that I want to touch on.

Earlier this year, we notified advertisers that we would be automatically pausing Search ad groups and keywords that haven’t received an impression within the previous 13 months.

Clutter happens and idle ad groups and keywords that hadn’t been contributing to performance for some time can add up.

We don’t expect pausing ad groups or keywords that haven’t had an impression for more than a year to have a noticeable impact on your Search campaign traffic or to change the traffic mix between your Search and Performance Max campaigns.

You can continue to review and unpause any keywords or ad groups you think are still needed…however, this brings us back to account structure and ad group theming for relevance.

If you think these paused ad groups or keywords should have been matching to queries and generating impressions, consider before simply re-enabling them:

  • Check the keyword status for potential issues.
  • Look at whether these ad groups/keywords will be additive or if other keywords or ad groups are already covering this traffic.
  • Consider expanding the match type of these keywords to capture more queries.
  • Then, take a broader look at your ad groups’ creative theming, keeping the relevance signals that AI-based prioritization looks at in mind, including the other keywords and landing pages in the ad group.

Key Takeaway

Now that you have a deeper understanding of how these keyword prioritization rules and query matching controls work, take a fresh look at your account.

You may find opportunities to reorganize and consolidate your campaigns and focus on making your ad groups more tightly themed.

These efforts will help you streamline your account (e.g., simplify management) while also ensuring you are matching relevant queries with your most relevant ads to drive results.

Notes

1Google Internal Data, Oct 2023 – Mar 2024. Performance refers to conversions/conversion value at constant ROI.

More resources:

Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jul 12 2024
Holistic Search Strategies: Attain Superior Growth & ROI With Organic & Paid Tips via @sejournal, @hethr_campbell

Silos don’t cut it anymore. User journeys are too complex for you to view and track channels separately.

To improve your campaign performance, you need a holistic view of your marketing activities and how they intertwine. This is especially true for organic and paid search strategies. 

You need to be front and center with your ideal customers at multiple touchpoints, including active interactions and passive awareness. An ideal marketing strategy has paid and organic campaigns working in tandem, and it’s becoming harder to succeed without doing both.

If you’re looking to drive quality growth in your own campaigns, iQuanti can help.

Join us live on July 24 as we delve into this intricate relationship between organic and paid search channels. You’ll get actionable insights for measuring success to maximize their combined potential.

You’ll gain a comprehensive, data-driven understanding of how to measure, analyze, and optimize holistic search marketing efforts, ensuring sustainable growth and superior ROI for your business.

You’ll walk away with:

  • Integrated Metrics and KPIs: Learn how to define and track key metrics to capture the performance of your organic and paid search campaigns, so you can make informed strategic decisions that work.
  • Attribution Models: You’ll see firsthand how strong attribution models are crucial to understanding your customers’ journeys, allowing you to identify influential touchpoints and allocate budget effectively for maximum ROI.
  • Optimization Strategies: You’ve gathered data from your campaigns…now what? Take the data and leverage it to further optimize your paid and organic search campaigns, increasing conversions along the way.

Shaubhik Ray, Senior Director of Digital Analytics Solutions at iQuanti is an expert at crafting holistic search strategies to reach more of your ideal audiences at relevant stages in their journeys. Now, he’s ready to share his insights with you.

You’ll walk away equipped with the knowledge and tools necessary to execute a combined organic and paid strategy that improves the performance of each channel.  You’ll gain data-driven insights on how to align a combined strategy with business goals and lead your organization to success.

Sign up now and prepare to maximize the potential of combining your organic and paid campaigns.

At the end of the presentation, you’ll get a chance to ask Shaubhik your burning questions in our live Q&A, so be sure to attend.

And if you can’t make it that day, register here and we’ll send you a recording following the webinar. 

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 28 2024
Google, Bing & Amazon’s 2024 Shopping Ad Changes & How To Navigate Them

Inventory has always played a significant role in the way you sell on Amazon.

Running out of inventory can impact your organic ranking and can impact your advertising strategy.

Besides the potential loss of sales, poor inventory control also impacts the amount of inventory Amazon will allow you to send into the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) program.

Keep reading to learn more about:

  • How your Inventory Performance Index (IPI) score impacts your available storage volume.
  • What the IPI is, and how it’s calculated.
  • Recommended actions for improving your IPI score.
  • Tips for Amazon sellers who are new to Seller Central.

Amazon Limiting Sellers Storage Based On Storage Utilization

Amazon controls your storage capacity limits based on storage utilization and your sales history: 

Total Capacity Limit

This limits the amount of inventory you can restock to Amazon’s FBA warehouses in one shipment and the overall maximum number of units you can store at Amazon.

Accounts that have been active for less than 39 weeks are not subject to these restrictions.

It is important to note that this is only true for those accounts on the Professional Seller Plan.  Those with individual Seller Plans are limited to 15 cubic feet per month.

This limits the maximum cubic feet of storage space you have at Amazon. These limits are reviewed and adjusted monthly.

Any changes you can expect for your storage capacity for the following month will be announced on the third Monday of the month.

Included in your storage usage are the inventory currently stored at Amazon, inventory en route to Amazon, and any shipments that have been prepared but not yet sent to Amazon.

Screenshot of storage capacity monitor on Amazon Seller Central. Screenshot from Amazon Seller Central, February 2024

The Storage Volume is highly impacted by your IPI (Inventory Performance Index).

We will further discuss how your IPI is calculated later in this article.

IPIScreenshot from Amazon Seller Central, February 2024

Sellers who fall below the minimum criteria can have their storage limited. Operating with such limited storage can significantly undermine your sales forecasts.

We will outline the steps you can take to ensure you have sufficient storage for your high-demand season, maximizing your sales on Seller Central.

We’ll also review what you can do if you fall below Amazon’s set criteria.

You can find your limit by going to Seller Central, selecting Inventory, navigating to the Inventory Dashboard, and then selecting Inventory Performance under the dropdown for Inventory.

Screenshot of how to navigate to find your storage capacity on Amazon. Screenshot from Amazon, February 2024

Your IPI score will be near the top of the page.

To reach your storage capacity, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the small gray box labeled Capacity Monitor.

Success on Amazon Means You Have To Manage Your Inventory Levels Proactively

Amazon says that it considers the following criteria for your storage levels:

  • IPI Score and Sales Performance: Higher storage capacities are granted to accounts that consistently achieve a high IPI score.
  • Storage Utilization: In determining storage limits, Amazon considers your current inventory, inbound inventory, and shipments that are prepared but not yet dispatched.
  • Sales Volume: Amazon will also look at sales volume over time.

Improving Your IPI

If you have a low IPI score, know it will take time to improve your score.

IPI is a rolling average. It can take anywhere from 2 to 12 weeks to increase your score on Amazon, so planning ahead of time is essential.

This means if your IPI is below the 400 Amazon requires, you need to start taking aggressive action today.

This article will outline how to avoid having detrimental storage limits, how it happens, and what to do when you’re already below the threshold.

For those interested in Restock Limits, we’ll explore this topic in more detail later in the guide.

What Is The IPI (Inventory Performance Index), And Does It Affect Me?

The IPI will only affect those using Seller Central and FBA warehouses.

It does not affect those using Vendor Central, Kindle Direct Platform, or those selling on Seller Central by Merchant Fulfilling or utilizing Seller Fulfilled Prime for their items.

Inventory Performance Index (IPI)

The Inventory Performance Index (IPI) manages how well you control and manage your inventory at Amazon.

This metric is a 12-week rolling average. It looks at several components over three months.

Four components make up the Inventory Performance Index (IPI):

Excess Inventory

This is the most important metric as it measures where your profitability may take a hit due to storage fees and holding costs for slow-moving FBA inventory.

Excess Inventory percentages help sellers plan when to restock more or remove inventory from FBA.

An item is considered to have excess inventory when it has over 90 days of supply based on the forecasted demand. 

Sell Through Rate

This metric is just how it sounds. The formula that Amazon uses to calculate Sell Through rates is:

(Units Shipped In the Last 90 Days)/(Average Units on Hand Over the Last 90 days)

Stranded Inventory

This provides information on products that aren’t selling due to listing issues.

This occurs when your listing doesn’t meet Amazon guidelines.

In these instances, your products become stranded and unable to move while still incurring FBA storage fees.

In-Stock Inventory

Amazon looks at the percentage of time your products have been in stock during the past 30 days, with additional weight given to items that have sold more units over the past 60 days.

If you maintain a high in-stock inventory, it will result in fewer lost sales.

Four components of the Inventory Performance Index.Screenshot from author, February 2024

It is important to highlight that these components are not weighted equally.

Excess Inventory

Excess Inventory and Sell-Through Rate are the parameters that have the most significant impact on IPI, while Stranded Inventory and Restock Rates can play a minor role in the overall score.

This means you will get more movement focusing solely on the first two components rather than spreading your efforts equally across all four elements.

During the height of the pandemic, Amazon changed the minimum IPI to 500. IT has since reduced the minimum IPI back to 400.

However, Amazon can increase or decrease the minimum IPI desired score at any point in time.

For this reason, we advise our clients to aim for a total IPI of 600.

Your minimum goal should be achieving at least 50 points over the current IPI requirement.

Some product mixes make maintaining a high IPI easier than others. For example, if you are a small brand with many products that move consistently, your IPI will generally tend to be higher.

If you are a seller with a large product mix that changes often, it is the most challenging to manage.

Combatting Capacity Limits

If you’re currently experiencing a capacity limit, Amazon can increase your capacity limit for a specific period of time by submitting a request subject to Amazon’s approval.

It is important to remember that if the storage limit increase request gets approved, your account is subject to paying a “reservation fee” for each cubic foot of capacity requested, and it will get charged at the end of the specified period.

Such fee is subject to a credit depending on your sales achieved during the period (performance credits are earned at $0.15 for every dollar of sales you generate using the additional capacity.)

Another alternative is to continue selling items via merchant fulfillment or using other third-party sellers to move your inventory or send small shipments of your fastest, most profitable inventory to Amazon.

Further down in this article, we will highlight what you can do when your inventory performance is low, you are facing potential inventory limits, or if you’re new to Amazon.

Why Would Amazon Do This?

It seems like it would be counterintuitive for a company that is so focused on having as many products on its platform as possible to limit the amount of inventory you could sell.

However, as more sellers joined the platform and with rising FBA and Prime offers, overcrowding at the warehouses started to become a larger problem for Amazon.

Amazon sellers were attracted to FBA because of the low cost of storage rates. Sellers were using the FBA program as a cheap way to warehouse large amounts of inventory.

At first, Amazon tried to increase storage fees. Adding long-term storage fees dramatically increased the storage cost for merchandise aged over six months.

However, even with those changes, Amazon couldn’t curve the overcrowding and demand in its FBA warehouses.

As a result, it started to introduce storage limits in 2019.

From Amazon’s perspective, it wants to ensure customers have favorable shopping experiences and quickly get the products they want.

This means ensuring that the products most likely to sell are available.

Amazon looks at how you have managed inventory in the past and whether customers are purchasing your products to determine how much space is allocated to you.

The better Amazon feels you are at managing your space at Amazon’s FBA warehouses, the more storage space you will be allowed.

What If My IPI Is Below The Current Threshold?

If your IPI is currently below the threshold or within 50 points of the lowest threshold, these are the actions we recommend.

The first step is to check the current threshold. As of the writing of this article, the current threshold for IPI is 400.

However, here’s the direct link to the policy so you can find the current threshold, as Amazon can change this at any time. You can find the current required IPI in Seller Support under the heading FBA Inventory Storage Limits (login required).

You can review your current IPI score in Seller Central by going to Inventory, Inventory Planning, and then clicking on your IPI score.

IPI score in Seller Central.Screenshot from Amazon Seller Central, February 2024

Even with aggressive tactics, changing the IPI significantly can take 2 to 12 weeks.

Recommended Actions To Improve Inventory Performance Index (IPI)

Excess Inventory – Dump Slow Moving Items

Excess inventory is generally one of the top two reasons your IPI score could be low, since it is the most heavily weighted metric.

The first step to addressing excess inventory is to pull back inventory you don’t expect to sell.

Focus on stock-keeping units (SKUs) that have gone out of fashion or merchandise experiencing a significant demand drop, like seasonal products.

If you don’t expect it to sell within three months, you should pull back the inventory to sell on a different channel by creating a removal order.

You can also start to use the Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) to fulfill your website orders from your Amazon stock.

Sometimes, it makes more sense to discount and/or advertise products to help them sell faster to remove them from your inventory rather than call back inventory from Amazon.

Optimizing a listing that is not moving can also help increase the sell-through rate.

A quick note on having Amazon destroy products – sometimes, the company will liquidate that product instead of destroying it.

If inventory control is an essential factor for your brand, we recommend pulling back the inventory even though it costs more.

While Amazon is great at logistics and moving items through its process, it isn’t great at returning items to sellers.

Often, items arrive damaged or mixed SKUs in multiple boxes, clogging up receiving departments.

If possible, we want to ensure that we’re proactively taking action to avoid pulling back inventory and risk inventory being damaged or unavailable to be sold for a long time.

Sell-Through Rate – Send Fast-Moving Items

Amazon looks at this to identify whether the items you’re selling are things customers want to purchase.

The way that we improve the sell-through rate is to send in small shipments of items that will sell out very quickly.

If you’re currently using LTL or FTL, we recommend that you move to small parcel shipments during this process so that you can send more frequent shipments without going out of stock for long periods.

As you’re restocking items, you want to prioritize those that will move quickly, sending small quantities of items that will sell out as soon as they arrive or shortly after.

This allows your overall sell-through rate to increase dramatically and significantly impact your overall IPI.

It is vital that no matter how fast you think a product will move through, as you send these products in, you’re testing small batches to make sure that things will sell at the pace you anticipate.

Stranded Inventory

Inventory that’s being held in FBA warehouses and not available for sale affects your overall IPI.

Fixing stranded inventory can make a slight difference; however, if you need to move your IPI significantly, this component of the overall metric will only make a slight difference.

It would be best to address stranded inventory weekly or bi-weekly, depending on your general sell-through rate.

In-Stock Inventory

This is probably the most frustrating metric of the IPI because, basically, Amazon is telling you that you can’t restock items because they’re not selling fast enough.

At the same time, it’s trying to encourage you to ensure you stay in stock.

We have found that this metric is very lightly weighted, and you’re better off focusing on the two key metrics of excess inventory and sell-through rate.

There has been some debate about whether deleting previous SKUs can increase this; however, we have not seen that this significantly impacts the total IPI.

General IPI Notes

As you’re working to increase your overall IPI, it is important to remember that it can take several weeks to increase.

The IPI is an average calculated over 12 weeks.

You must give the IPI enough time to move before determining whether your actions are making a difference.

It can be tempting to check your IPI often. However, your IPI score is only recalculated once a week.

If you need to raise your IPI quickly or by a significant amount, you may need to take overly aggressive actions in pruning your inventory and pumping fast-moving items through your account to increase your score to the required amount.

You might have to also bid for a capacity increase.

You should only do this if you have the data to support being able to sell through that higher quantity of items so you do not incur extra charges.

Additional Options To Combat Low IPI and Storage Capacity Issues

Sometimes, this means utilizing third-party sellers to ensure that inventory can be available to customers with a Prime offer.

Some of the brands we work with have focused on selling their fastest-moving SKUs while they improve their overall IPI score and capacity limits.

Then, they utilized third-party sellers to carry their slower-moving items while they worked on increasing their averages.

We have several reliable third-party resellers we refer our clients to if it’s ever an issue.

This means that those accounts saw a faster increase in storage capacity as they were sending in inventory that was selling at a much faster rate and restocking regularly.

If you don’t want to utilize third-party sellers, the alternative is to increase your total number of merchant-fulfilled offerings.

Remember that Merchant Fulfilled offerings generally don’t compete well against FBA offers, so watch your competition to determine feasibility.

While many brands avoid third-party sellers because it may reduce control over their brand, in this instance, it can be an excellent tool to ensure that you don’t lose potential market share to other competing product lines.

Another step you can take is to allocate your FBA warehouse space to items with the highest margin and smallest dimensional size, as they are highly profitable and sell quickly.

Leaving items with lower profitability or moving slower through Merchant Fulfilled (MF).

Tips For New Amazon Sellers

If you’re a new seller coming to Amazon or moving from Vendor Central to Seller Central, start by sending small quantities at first.

You have a grace window of 39 weeks when opening your account.

However, you want to ensure you send in small amounts of inventory. A few cases per product can help you identify the overall sell-through rate.

There is no minimum for sending inventory into Amazon FBA. So, it is possible to test as little as one unit at a time to test products on Amazon.

Sending in small shipments does increase your overall shipping cost and can reduce profitability in the short term.

However, when you’re first investigating the platform, sending in smaller quantities can help you better understand your product’s demand and help avoid additional fees that can be required to call inventory back or pay for storage fees.

Once you have a better idea of your sell-through rate, you can start to increase the total sizes of your inventory.

It is a delicate balance to have enough inventory so that you don’t run out of stock but also that you don’t have excess inventory.

While, in general, you want to aggressively avoid stockouts, the impact of a low IPI score should take priority.

Monitoring Inventory Matters

To succeed on the platform, you must take an active role in your Amazon inventory management.

In prior years, simply avoiding restocks was enough.

However, these new requirements require a greater focus on monitoring your sell-through rate and storage utilization on Amazon.

Prepare now to support your Amazon marketing and sales goals for the coming holiday season.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Piscine26/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 21 2024
7 Ways AI Took My Job [To The Next Level] via @sejournal, @CallRail

With AI-powered call attribution, you can gain valuable insights into which channels are driving the most conversions.

How Call Attribution Works

  • Step 1: Assign – Select unique call tracking numbers to assign to each campaign or listing.
  • Step 2: Track – Potential customers see your ad or listing and call the associated phone number.
  • Step 3: Forward –The calls ring directly into your main business phone, regardless of which number they use.
  • Step 4: Analyze – Because they used one of your tracking numbers, you instantly know which ad or campaign inspired them to call.

With AI-powered call tracking, gone are the days of wondering how your digital marketing efforts are tied to high-value inbound calls.

For agencies, this helps prove the real value of your services and extend the life of your client relationships.

2. AI Can Help You Save Time On Manually Reviewing Calls

Listening to and analyzing phone calls manually can be time-consuming and inefficient for agencies.

However, it’s an important part of understanding the customer experience and sales team performance.

With AI-powered call analysis tools, you get quality, keyword-tagged transcriptions with near-human-level accuracy.

Not only can this technology help you save over 50% of the time spent listening to phone calls, but it can also help you deliver actionable recommendations to clients and drive better results.

Conversation Intelligence, for instance, is trained on over 1.1M hours of voice data and enables real-time analysis for instantaneous results.

This advanced tool provides opportunities for you to improve your strategy through the following granular insights:

  • Spotting disparities in the industry-specific lingo your sales team uses, compared to the lingo your prospects are using to describe their business challenges and goals.
  • Identifying trends or gaps in your service offerings based on what your prospects are asking for.
  • Identifying frequently asked questions and other important topics to address through content marketing.
  • Setting goals for lead qualification — not just the quantity of leads generated for your business.

Conversational AI is perfectly suited to summarize the content of long conversations – however, the call summaries still require a human to read them and determine the main takeaways.

But if you work in a bustling small business, it’s unlikely you’d have the bandwidth for tasks such as call transcription, summaries, keyword spotting, or trend analysis.

Rather than displacing human labor, conversational AI is assisting businesses in taking on tasks that may have been overlooked and leveraging data that would otherwise remain untapped.

3. AI Can Help You Lower Cost Per Lead / Save Money On Tools & Ad Spend

Ever wonder why certain campaigns take off while others fall flat? It’s all in the data!

Even failed campaigns can offer invaluable insights into your client’s audience and messaging.

But if you can’t spot the underperformers quickly enough, you risk wasting your ad budget on ineffective tactics.

The quicker you can identify what’s working and what’s not, the quicker you can pivot and adjust your marketing strategy.

With AI-powered tools, agencies can access instant insights that enable them to reduce wasteful spending and improve overall campaign efficiency.

How To Deliver More Value With AI

  • Make a bigger impact in less time: AI-powered technology creates a force multiplier within your agency, allowing you to make more of an impact with the same level of inputs you’re already using.
  • Unlock actionable insights from call data: AI is revolutionizing the way companies leverage call data by enabling them to gain insights at scale. As a result, businesses can increase their ROI and deliver greater value to their clients by analyzing hundreds of calls efficiently.
  • Foster alignment with data-driven strategies: By analyzing customer conversations with AI, businesses can align their marketing strategy with data-driven recommendations, enhancing overall coherence. Additionally, the ability to create triggers based on specific phrases enables automated analysis and reporting, further streamlining the alignment process.
  • Drive effectiveness with rapid insights: Leveraging Conversation Intelligence enables agencies to deliver better insights faster, increase conversion rates, refine keyword strategies, and develop robust reporting capabilities.

With the right AI-powered tools, you can access the insights you need to ensure maximum ROI for your clients.

4. AI Can Help You Improve Overall Agency Efficiency

Are you spending too much valuable time on tasks that produce minimal results?

Many agencies find themselves bogged down by routine, administrative tasks that don’t contribute much to their bottom line.

But with AI automation, agencies can streamline their operations and redirect their energy towards more strategic endeavors.

From email scheduling and social media posting to data entry and report generation, AI can handle a wide array of tasks with precision and efficiency – giving you time to focus on high-impact activities that drive growth and deliver tangible results.

Ways Your Business Can Benefit From Automation

  1. Automatically transcribe your calls to boost close rates: See how your team is handling difficult objections and ensure that they’re delivering your businessʼ value proposition in an effective manner.
  2. Score calls based on quality and opportunity: Take the time-consuming work out of scoring your calls and determine which campaigns drive the best calls to your business.
  3. Classify calls by your set criteria: Qualify, score, tag, or assign a value to the leads that meet your criteria, automatically.
  4. Automatically redact sensitive information: Protect your customers by removing billing or personal information. Keep your data safe and secure through complete HIPAA compliance.
  5. Monitor your teamsʼ performance: Use Conversation Intelligence as a valuable sales training tool to ensure your team doesn’t miss any key messaging marks.
  6. Know your customersʼ needs: Identify conversation trends in your phone calls and stay privy to evolving customer needs.
  7. Improve your digital marketing strategy: Use AI-powered insights to inform your digital marketing strategy and boost your online presence.

By automating mundane tasks, agencies can optimize workflows, increase productivity, and improve efficiency across the board.

Looking for 5 – 7? Download The Full Guide

Rather than fearing AI, the future belongs to those who embrace it.

By strategically combining human creativity with artificial intelligence, you can unlock capabilities that transcend what either could achieve alone.

Want to discover even more ways to level up your agency with AI?

Get the full guide here.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 13 2024
The Power Of QA: How Not to Ruin Your Campaign…Or Your Day via @sejournal, @jonkagan

When I first got into search marketing (back in 2005), there used to be a Tumblr feed dedicated to poorly set up campaigns that clearly did not have quality assurance (aka QA) checks done.

Dynamic keyword insertion and general broad match were the two fastest ways to end up on that page and one of the quickest ways to ruin your day (possibly even your job or career).

Now, nearly 20 years later, platforms have evolved (or devolved depending on the platform and unit), and the need for proper pre- and post-launch QAs has never been more important.

But with that being said, some operations are still learning the hard way what they did and didn’t remember to check. This goes beyond basic paid search and onto all paid media (search, shopping, PMax, YouTube/video, GDN, and even social and programmatic platforms).

This often leads to competition finding those mistakes (it is a mistake if you don’t QA) and exploiting it for their own gain.

Full transparency: I do it as well. If I find a brand or another agency making a mistake in their work and can exploit it, I absolutely will.

Yes, in the land of digital marketing, especially when it comes to taking down the competition (not as practical to execute, but if possible, so valuable to you), I will wake up and choose violence. Nearly 20 years in digital marketing will do that to a person (especially if six months of the year they have to watch the NY Jets blow it again).

Everyone makes mistakes sometimes in digital marketing, even me. The key is to make sure the person responsible for running the ad campaign knows what is happening, from pre-launch to the live campaign itself.

Let’s delve into some mistakes that have been found, explain how they could’ve been prevented through a standard ongoing QA process, and what you should do in the future to CYA (if you don’t know that acronym, go look it up on Bing).

Some Notable Mistakes

Author Disclaimer: There are literally oodles of different mistakes going on all around us. I will only note the small and large ones I’ve witnessed. For some legal reasons, some brands that were the self-induced victims of these mistakes will be anonymized.

In 2011, I was working for a major holding company ad agency, running media for a credit card company that was trying to sponsor a holiday they created that transpired just after Thanksgiving that encouraged shopping at local, non-large businesses (you can guess who).

My team was short-staffed; Reps for a major search engine with a major video platform (considered the second-largest search engine in the country) offered to assist my team with the video part by running it for us.

We gladly obliged for the help and gave them our targeted keyword and category list for the campaign, and then we gave them the negative keyword and category list. The reps told us they would run it for us, QA it for us, and give us the results.

This was a mistake on our part.

The campaign ran for two weeks, spending around $100,000. But when we got the results from the reps, they were terrible. The video had an incredibly low view rate, a higher-than-normal cost per view, and almost no clicks to the website (we knew it wouldn’t get many, but to get less than 100 from 5+ million impressions was odd).

We got our hands on the data and the settings (it was operated in an account we didn’t initially have access to) and discovered the category target list was missing, the keyword targets had been used as the negative keyword list, and worse, the excluded categories and negative keywords had been used as the targets.

Let’s just say the keywords we pulled from Urban Dictionary around intimacy triggered a concerningly high volume of impressions on a variety of non-brand-safe content.

The rep of that major search engine was informed of the faux pas, and they admitted a minimal prelaunch QA had been done, but not thoroughly – and a post-launch QA was never done.

This resulted in a $150,000 credit (keep in mind we only spent $100,000) back to the credit card company. We never saw or heard from that sales rep again.

In 2019, my agency won some new business for a conglomerate of sports nutrition brands. During the kick-off with the brand, they showed us their YouTube data, which was incredibly impressive in terms of non-skippable video.

We’re talking 45+ second videos, with a view rate exceeding 75% (the industry benchmark was 35%) when they reached the 30-second mark and a cost per view (CPV) of less than $0.04.

They informed us that despite the great metrics, there was little to no evidence of direct or down-funnel sales, and they considered the effort a complete failure. Something didn’t make sense, and they asked me to audit the prior agency’s work.

What I found was concerning.

This brand ran video ads featuring incredibly muscular people wearing next to nothing exercising like they were training for the Hunger Games. The campaign spent around $500,000 over a six-month period.

Upon digging in, I realized there was no content targeting, no age targeting, and absolutely nothing in exclusions.

After writing up an analysis that took an estimated 120 hours to complete, it was determined that 60% of ad spend for these scantily clad adults drinking pre-workout and protein shakes had been shown on children’s content, such as Blues Clues, Coco Melon, Blippi, and any parent’s holy nightmare: Caillou.

The view rate and cost per view were so impressive but generated no sales because the majority of the impressions and views were being served to children ages two to seven.

The prior agency had failed to do a full pre-launch QA, post-launch QA, or even check the data during the flight. This was all taken into consideration, and the brand took the prior agency to court to recover six months of agency fees and media spend (this was settled out of court in the mid-six-figure range).

Ads showed in various YouTube channels focused on nursery rhymes Screenshot from author, April 2024

Don’t show your workout ads to kids!

Also, if you’re doing retargeting of any sort, know where it shows and has negatives!

Remarketing is great when you're prepared for itImage from The San Diego Union-Tribune, April 2024

Remarketing is great when you’re prepared for it. A more recent scenario I ran into (in 2024) is a brand I have never worked with, but after finding the same mistake three times in six weeks, it is time to call it out.

I’m sorry, Darden Foods digital team. I enjoy the breadsticks at Olive Garden, but this is a simple fix that you still haven’t done.

Recently, on a trip home from skiing, my wife saw a sign for Olive Garden and insisted we pull in for lunch, as she hadn’t been to one in 15 years.

We pulled in, ate, and wondered if there was one near our home for future visits. I pulled out my phone at the table (yes, quite rude, but justified), and searched for [Olive Garden Locations], and got this:

Olive Garden in FebruaryScreenshot of search for [Olive Garden], Google, February 2024

Here again, six weeks later. I mean, come on.

I mean come onScreenshot of search for [Olive Garden], Google, March 2024

Here, we have a dynamic location insertion put into a search ad (which is normally a great thing to have when set up correctly).

But during the setup, instead of using {}, they used [].

Therefore, it cannot trigger the location; it only triggers [Location(City)], delivering the consumer a poor user experience and not indicating whether or not a location is nearby.

I repeated this search multiple times over six weeks to realize the advertiser never discovered it. I suspect this was uploaded through a bulk sheet, as a manual insertion into the UI, or even the editor has an obvious callout if it is implemented correctly.

Easily Overlooked Future Mistakes

A very common mistake that can be prevented pre-launch but can easily be caught post-launch is one that has been around essentially since the beginning of the industry and lives in both Google Adwords and Bing Ads (it’ll be a cold day in hell before I ever call them Google Ads and Microsoft) and even in Facebook/Instagram (refusing to call it Meta): default settings.

When you first create search campaigns in Google and Bing, some settings are automatically presented to you in a certain way, and you, as an advertiser, must proactively change them (any seasoned search marketer knows this, so this issue is more common with SMBs).

These default search settings include but are not limited to:

  • Auto-Apply recommendations on (Google and Bing specific).
  • Dynamic extensions on (Google and Bing specific).
  • Advantage+ on (Facebook/Instagram specific).
  • Display Network/Audience Network on (Google and Facebook/Instagram specific, Bing did away with the ability to opt out of their network a couple of years ago).
  • Search Partner/Search Syndication Networks (Google and Bing specific).
  • Mobile app placement (Google Display Network specific).
  • Broad match keywords (Google and Bing specific when you add keywords without a specified match type).
Google is gonna Google to make that bread off those not paying attentionScreenshot from author, April 2024
Google is gonna Google to make that bread off those not paying attention.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Just because you don’t have the ideal or approved assets to put in these places doesn’t mean you won’t be accruing traffic and spend here.

Unless you plan to have them enabled, they need to be changed.

Needless to say, in each of these scenarios, pre-, post, and ongoing QA efforts can prevent some of these catastrophes from happening.

I should note that efforts tied to Performance Max, demand generation, and Advantage+ are a bit harder to QA.

But not QAing them is like telling Jenn Shah of RHOSLC that you trust her customer CRM lists are safe and legitimate.

QA To Save the Day

Now that the fear of digital marketing God is in you, let’s calm you down and discuss how not to have a terrible day with the CMO who has seen your ads live.

This will give them and you more confidence and prevent a conversation more painful than the time I put my head in a snowblower (per editor’s request, a photo of that is not included).

There are 3 phases of a QA plan: pre-launch, post-launch, and ongoing (spoiler, the third phase is ongoing, in perpetuity, but is just part pf your basic optimization strategy).

  • Pre-launch: A standardized checklist that you go through for all settings to make sure elements are set before launch. Includes targeting, exclusions, budgeting, assets, etc.
  • Post-launch: This is very similar to the pre-launch list, but it includes analysis of initial data to look for anything out of place, such as queries you map to, sites you trigger on, networks, disapproved assets, etc. This should be done somewhere between 24 and 72 hours of launch, after accruing data
  • Ongoing: This ties directly to your ongoing optimization but is next to it. Think of it as an ongoing post-launch checklist that is repeated at intervals of once a month. This isn’t a formal optimization document or analysis but an ongoing settings check.

The Takeaway

If you’ve read my articles before, you recognize that this isn’t the first time I’ve written about something like this.

However, I’ve witnessed operations/individuals not follow QA protocols, even the most basic ones. Once a mistake is noticed internally and not rectified, it can go up the chain fast and can be as bad as losing one’s job.

But if the general public catches a mistake and calls you out on it, well, an apology press conference and campaign can cost the operation tens of thousands of dollars.

A simple ongoing checklist for the life of the campaign will save you a lot of pain and suffering later. It is part of any solid optimization strategy, so it’s not like you aren’t already doing it.

If you need inspiration on what one should look like, feel free to reach out to me, and I can get you in the right direction.

More resources:

Featured Image: PKStockphoto/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 1 2024
[PPC] Automation & AI: What Humans Should Be Doing For Success via @sejournal, @CallRail

Paid media’s main job is to increase visibility and drive traffic for your brand.

And as digital marketing evolves, so, too, will your strategy.

In the current state of paid, the main overarching theme is, you guessed it, AI and machine learning.

As paid media platforms get smarter and constantly find ways to infuse AI into campaign workflows and optimizations, marketers must find a way to keep up with the platforms.

The other side of the coin is maintaining user privacy all the while trying to use AI effectively.

So what major changes should you make to your paid media marketing strategy in 2024?

Here are seven changes you should incorporate without a second thought.

Paid Media Marketing In 2024: 7 Changes Marketers Should Make

1. Review & Revise Google Tags

If you rely on Google tags for conversion tracking, this change should not be ignored.

In January 2024, Google made an update to its Consent Mode for its Google tags, which will, for now, affect any marketers who run ads targeted to users in the European Economic Area (EEA).

This update requires marketers to take action by March 2024 in order to keep using ad personalization and remarketing features in Google Ads.

Simply speaking, the Consent Mode will need to be updated to adjust its tracking behavior based on how a user interacts with a website’s consent banner.

The two new parameters introduced to Consent Mode are:

  • ad_user_data: This controls whether user data can be sent to Google for advertising purposes.
  • ad_personalization: This controls whether personalized advertising (remarketing) can be enabled for the user.

As privacy measures continue to become stricter in the United States, it would not be surprising if this becomes required for US advertisers in the somewhat near future.

Keep in mind that in 2024, we’ll have to get comfortable being uncomfortable with imperfect data because of privacy regulations.

2. Make Influencers Part Of Your Marketing Model

Small and large influencers alike are an awesome resource at your fingertips, just as long as your audiences align.

Even brands with a few thousand followers can utilize influencer marketing to make a big difference and gain traction in the market.

Go on a hunt to find the top influencers in your space. Then, figure out the cost per acquisition (CPA) for working with each of them (because you have to court influencers, especially the bigger ones).

From there, you can create a win-win partnership that gets you more leads while the influencer earns income.

Pro Tip: You can use influencer marketing tools to help you in your journey to integrate core influencers into your business model. Some of the most popular include AspireIQ, BuzzSumo, Upfluence, and NeoReach.
Whichever you choose, make sure the influencers you find are big enough to provide real value to your brand — and that you’re paying a CPA that makes sense for your budget and overall goals.

3. Strategic Audience Management On Multiple Platforms

2024 is the year to nail your audience management strategy, both from a holistic perspective and within each encapsulated platform.

That means before building your audiences, you need to understand at a high level who your target customer is.

Further, identify what platforms those types of user-profiles spend their time on.

Once you’ve identified your ideal target customer, then it’s time for the first step in this process:

Building audiences.

From there, you must set up a strategy to target folks within every stage of the funnel – from upper to lower – and decide which networks make the most sense for the different audience cohorts.

Perhaps the most crucial part of this process is analyzing and refreshing your audiences as the year goes on.

You should definitely plan on retargeting and testing new audiences throughout the year.

If you fail to incorporate this part, you run the risk of targeting the wrong sector of people, ultimately throwing money down the proverbial drain.

However, if you retarget and refresh your approach, you’re bound to find a dynamic audience that correlates with your vision.

In the end, audience management alone can be worth its weight in gold.

4. Prepare For Video Content Dominance

You’ve likely heard this phrase before in marketing: content is king.

With a slight tweak for 2024, the new hot phrase should be: video content is king.

Not only is video taking over social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, but it’s also asserting its dominance in YouTube Ads. YouTube Shorts, the platform’s short-form video offering, is booming.

With this new form of video comes a new ad format: vertical video ads.

Not only should marketers focus on video marketing in general – 2024 is the year to get more sophisticated with video strategy.

Marketers should prioritize creating engaging and high-quality video content that’s appropriate for each platform on which it will be delivered.

If the thought of creating video content for multiple platforms scares you, just remember that a little goes a long way.

Start by creating evergreen content about your brand and test those with different lengths.

These can be used and recycled on multiple platforms and can be used for organic and paid video content simultaneously.

Just remember to create a variety so that your users don’t see the same message or content on the same platforms, which can reduce the effectiveness of video marketing.

5. Don’t Sleep On Microsoft Ads

Microsoft Ads continues to enhance its advertising platform year after year.

Not only does it have many of the same coveted features as Google Ads, but it has added features that are unique to the platform.

As a marketing professional, your brand will surely benefit from digging into it more in 2024.

Some of the most notable updates Microsoft Ads launched in the last twelve months include:

  • Video and CTV ads: Microsoft unveiled these new ad types on its platform in September of 2023. Advertisers can choose from online video ads or connected TV ads that are non-skippable while a user is streaming content. This gives advertisers big and small a leg up on what once used to be a very complicated process of buying TV ads.
  • Three new generative AI solutions: Also announced in September 2023, Microsoft came out with three new AI features to help grow and scale. These include Compare & Decide ads, ads for Chat API, and Copilot campaign creation.
  • Data-driven attribution reporting: Gone are the days of last-click measurement! Microsoft Ads enhanced its UET tagging solution and implemented data-driven attributing modeling. It uses machine learning to calculate the actual contributions of each ad interaction.

While Microsoft still holds a lower share of the available search engines, just remember that you’re leaving a whole slew of potential customers behind by not considering this underestimated ad platform.

6. Focus On Optimizing The User Experience

Between a mix of shorter human attention spans and limited marketing budgets, every interaction and website experience counts.

If you find that your pre-sale metrics are favorable – such as high engagement or high CTR – but never result in a sale, you likely don’t have an ad problem. You have a user experience problem.

In 2024, consumers expect more from brands, especially if they’re spending their hard-earned money with that company.

Ask yourself, when was the last time you sat down and went through your website’s checkout process through the lens of a customer?

If you’re not sure where to start on optimizing your website experience for users, here are some ideas to get you started:

  • Use tools like Hot Jar or User Testing to get real-life analytics of how your customers are interacting and what their pain points are.
  • Review the website landscape on desktop and mobile. While this may be a no-brainer, many websites still forget to optimize for mobile!
  • Make sure that any relevant call-to-actions (CTAs) are above the fold – yes, on mobile, too!
  • Check your site speed.

These are items that should continuously be monitored and not a “set and forget,” which unfortunately happens quite a bit.

Optimizing the website user experience can have a positive impact on those paid media campaigns and can make those dollars go further in the future.

7. Use AI Tools To Your Advantage

Let’s face it: Machine learning and AI aren’t going anywhere.

For marketing leaders, 2024 really is the time to lean into its advantages instead of running away from the inevitable advances.

It’s not a question of whether to use AI or not. It’s a matter of how to use AI to your advantage.

While companies are tightening their budgets and scaling back staff, PPC marketers are constantly being asked to do more with less.

This is where AI comes in.

In fact, using AI can strengthen your ROI for paid media campaigns of all kinds (whatever channel you prefer).

Just make sure you don’t sacrifice your brand’s personality for a little efficiency.

One way you can do this is with Google’s generated AI assets (currently in beta). Using its Gemini-powered AI solution, the tool allows for more streamlined campaign creation and generated ad assets, including images, headlines, and descriptions for ads, and more.

Additionally, you’re likely already using one of Google’s Smart Bidding strategies to automate the bidding process.

With a combination of creativity and machine learning, your ads have the potential to go farther than ever before.

Your 2024 Plan Should Not Be Static

If the past year(s) have taught us anything in marketing, it’s to be fluid.

In some cases, tactics that used to be tried and true are now more volatile than ever.

Take advantage of advances in AI to boost your strategic advantage, and keep in mind platforms that you’ve typically shied away from – the time may come to incorporate them into your 2024 strategy.

What changes are you most excited to try this year?

More resources:

Featured Image: Sutthiphong Chandaeng/Shutterstock

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