A construction and roofing client came to us seeking help. Read on to find out how we made paid search work for them.
This roofing and construction company had been spending money on paid search advertising for six months. During that time, they only received one lead. They wanted to know what else they could do. They were done with paid search. However, we weren’t convinced. We believe – and see it often – that when paid search marketing is done properly, it can work for nearly any business. So, we weren’t ready to cancel all paid search for them until we had done our due diligence.
Afflecto’s Approach
We proposed a full account review. This way we’d know if there were opportunities for improvement, or if paid search advertising truly would not work for them. After gaining access to their Google Ads account, our team went to work. We did a full account review. Reviewed all campaigns. keywords, account structure, ad copy, and more.
As with many accounts that aren’t performing, we found many opportunities for improvement. These optimizations ranged from reorganizing the campaign structure to implementing negative keywords. We also adjusted their targeting and added important keywords to their account.
The Results
In the first month of our management, the client received 37 leads. Of those, they had 11 appointments convert to sales for a 288% ROAS. We were also surprised that this marketing agency our client was working with did not provide a monthly report. If you are working with a digital agency and do not receive a monthly summary, start asking questions!
Contact Afflecto for Paid Search Assistance
If your paid search isn’t working for you, have our team take a look. We will do a full assessment and suggest optimizations that you can take to your current agency, or have us implement. As a Google Certified Partner we have expertise in all Google Ad products and how to make them work best for our clients. Contact us today!
As you start working through your digital advertising marketing plan there are many choices to help your business drive sales. From what digital tactics to use and what partners to employ. To help guide you through this you will want to ensure you have the right marketing partner on board, Keep reading to find out why it’s important to choose a Google Certified Partner.
What is the Google Partner badge and why does it matter?
What is the Google Partner badge and why does it matter? The Google Partner badge shows that the agency you are working with has the latest Google Ads expertise. Agencies with the badge are certified in AdWords, have demonstrated the ability to manage multiple accounts with large budgets, and are continuously meeting Google’s standards. If standards aren’t met, the badge is revoked. But most importantly, they know how to get the most out of your budget. They know what levers to pull in order to get the results you desire.
Specifically, to be a Google Partner members of our digital media team need to have at least one certification in each product area, and our campaigns must be meeting minimum spend thresholds. Additionally, our campaigns must meet certain performance thresholds, as well as a minimum optimization score. What’s all that meant? Simply put, we know how to spend your advertising dollars effectively and get results. And along the way Google makes us also take tests to prove we know what we are doing.
How do I know if an agency is Google Certified?
How do you know if your agency – or one you are considering – is Google Certified? It’s easy! They will have the Google Partner badge on their website. It’s usually in the footer of a website, or on a page that specifically talks about digital marketing. Helpful tip: be sure it’s the current badge, otherwise their certification might not be up to date.
Current BadgeOld Badge
4 Reasons to Work with a Google Certified Partner
Now you know what to look for to ensure you’re working with a qualified agency, why do you care? Here are four reasons you want to choose a Google Certified Partner when selecting who will run your digital ad campaigns:
1. You can feel confident that you’re working with an expert.
Working with a team that is Google Ads certified – like the one at Afflecto – ensures that you are working with an expert. It also guarantees you have a team in charge of your digital ad spend that is up to date on the latest Google Ads products. With this knowledge, they know how to adapt your campaign to perform better. They also know when new features are launched and how to take advantage of them. In other words, they know how to take care of your advertising investment.
2. Free Promotional Spend from Google
Only Google partners are eligible for high-value offers from Google. And not just any offer – FREE promotional spend. This means that any of our clients are eligible to receive up to $500 in Google Ads credit. We’ve seen this granted more often for our new accounts. But we have had some regular spenders that receive this as well. Want your credit? Well, these promotional offers are currently only available to Google Partners and their clients. And if you’re wondering…there’s no catch. This credit is free money. It’s not a discount coupon. It’s literally a credit so you can get started quicker and see how effective Google Ads can be for your business.
Not working with a Google badged partner? Contact us, we’d love to chat about how we can help you!
3. Access to beta features
Google partners have exclusive access to beta tools you can use in your campaigns. These beta programs are where Google is testing new products and features. Most accounts don’t have access to the new features until they are available to public…unless you work with a Google Partner. Partner with us to get jump on the competition by getting access to these beta features before the general public!
4. They get results.
Google partners consistently drive valuable results for their clients. When you pick a company from the Google Partners list, you can feel confident that you are selecting an agency that knows how to get results. How so? One of the qualification criteria is to be meeting minimum performance guidelines, and optimization scores. And Google reviews this information quarterly to ensure you are still meeting all of the performance requirements.
Partner with Afflecto, a Google Certified Partner, today
Ready to experience a great digital campaign? Contact Afflecto Media Marketing, a Google Certified Partner, today for a free discovery call.
Ready to get started with paid search? Here is a quick and easy beginner’s guide to paid search. Believe it or not, paid search has been around for over 20 years now. It started out as a Yellow Page-style directory in 2000 and has evolved to be a top digital marketing tactic for most businesses. It’s rare to find a business that’s not advertising on Google. Many businesses – especially small and medium sized ones – follow the Google Ad’s quick-start setup when beginning their campaigns. It’s appealing, as it only takes about 30 minutes to setup a campaign. However, most advertisers are left to wonder why they are seeing little to no results.
Though Google makes it easy to set up marketing campaigns and start spending money, it’s not easy to make Google Ads truly successful. There are many considerations and components that go into a successful paid search campaign. We are here to share some of the most important factors to getting started. Follow our step-by-step guide to increase your chances of realizing paid search ad success.
Before starting paid search
First thing, ensure you understand what you want out of your marketing efforts and how you can provide the most seamless user experience. The best way to do this is to ask yourself these questions:
OBJECTIVES
DRIVING TRAFFIC
MEASURING SUCCESS
BUDGET
What are your marketing objectives for your search campaign? Before building and launching a search campaign, be clear on why you are advertising. Are you trying to build awareness, generate leads or drive sales? Keyword targeting will look different for each of these and bid strategies certainly will differ.
Where are you driving traffic? Does your landing page contain relevant content that gives the user what they were searching for? Is there a clear call-to-action (CTA) that aligns with your marketing objectives and goals?
How are you measuring success/goals? Make sure Google Analytics and conversion tracking are implemented to effectively measure KPIs. And determine what KPIs are most important to you. Once you know this, setup goals to track results with Google Analytics.
What’s your budget? Keywords can get expensive depending on the demand (search volume) and how many other advertisers are targeting a particular keyword. It’s important to know your budget range. Having a budget in mind will ensure your keyword list is refined enough to be competitive with bids and maintain a healthy impression share for valuable keywords.
Setting up your Google search advertising
Step One: Keyword Research and Creating Keyword Lists
Always perform keyword research to align targeting with your objectives. This will also help you gain an understanding of how certain keywords will perform and what they will cost. There are many tools to help you formulate a successful keyword list.
Google Keyword Planner is a free tool for keyword ideas and performance forecasts. From your original list of words, this planner will help you identify additional search terms relevant to your ppc campaign.
Google Search Bar is also free and can be very effective as seeing what common search queries auto-populate when you start to search a base keyword.
SEMRush is a paid tool that is used to gather more robust paid search, SEO and competitive data. If you are going to be spending a significant amount of money it’s worth investing in this tool, or one like it.
Step Two: Creating Ad Groups
Once your keyword list is developed, organize keywords into tightly themed categories (ad groups). Ad groups are used to align keywords with specific ad copy and landing pages. Ensure your ad copy and landing pages are hyper-relevant to the keywords on your list. You want your landing page content to align with what the user is searching, specifically, the keywords they are using. To improve your relevancy and quality score be sure to use those keywords in your ad copy as well. Speaking of that…
Step Three: Ad Copy
After organizing your ad groups, write engaging ad copy that addresses (and includes) your specific keywords. Be sure to include important value propositions, promotions and/or any other information that will help you stand out from the competition. Also include a strong CTA. This will ensure the user knows what action to take once they click your ad. Don’t forget to leverage ad extensions to make the most of your ads and include more information about your business. Ad extensions also allow your ads to take up even more real estate on the search engine results page (SERP). This will push others down on the page and help improve your relative click-thru-rate (CTR).
Step Four: Determine campaign break-outs
Campaigns are usually separated by product or service categories. Ad campaigns also may have different budget allocations. Bid strategy is another key factor in determining campaign breakouts. For example, your campaign objective may be awareness. In this case, you’ll want to bid based on target impression share. Another campaign may have a lead generation objective. For this campaign goal you will want to bid based on maximizing conversion bid strategy or target cost-per-acquisition (CPA). You may also choose to separate campaigns based on location. This allows budget to be allocated by location/store. Bottom line? Choosing the correct campaign type is very important for success. Be sure to weigh all approaches to campaign structure and determine what will be the best in helping you achieve your objectives.
Step Five: Bid strategies
Bid strategy is a huge component of any paid search campaign. There are several automated smart bid strategies you can use.. These are often recommended by Google and are an easy way to achieve your campaign objectives. This is a good place to start. You may also choose to do manual bidding. This option gives you more control. Which is should you choose? That depends. The automated, as we mentioned, is a great place to begin. But as your campaign matures you will likely want to test different approaches to see what affects results. This is where ppc advertising can get complicated. That is why it’s so important to have a clear objective going into your planning and execution process. This will help you ensure your campaign structure and bid strategy are working together to achieve your goals most effectively.
Step Six: Monitoring your quality score
As your campaigns start to run, be sure to pay attention to Quality Score. Quality Score is a 1-10 rating that Google gives each keyword based on how well your ad quality compares to other advertisers. A higher quality score means that your ad and landing page are more relevant and useful to someone searching for your keyword when compared to other advertisers. The higher the score the better. The quality score has an enormous influence over the cost and effectiveness of your paid search campaigns. Just as your credit score can affect whether or not you qualify for a loan and how high your interest rate is, Google quality score affects how your PPC ads perform and how much you pay for each click.
Landing page relevancy and experience is a very important factor in quality score. In most cases, if your quality score is low for a keyword then you will also see low conversion rates. This is a useful indicator that you need to work on conversion rate optimizations (CRO). To improve your quality score:
Provide more relevant content to answer questions associated with your keyword.
Update your conversion action experience. Make the path to conversion as simple as possible.
When to expect results
The good news is that search marketing works. And it is one of the strongest tools in your online advertising toolbelt. However, your search campaign will not likely be successful (at least not what you deem successful) right away. It can take up to a month – sometimes three – to start seeing the impact of your Google Adwords efforts. New campaigns typically take three months to ramp up. And up to 12 months to consistently perform at peak levels. Why you ask? Because it takes time for Google to collect enough data to leverage machine learning and effectively reach the optimal audience. Additionally, having a full year of data allows Google (and you) to really understand seasonal trends and behaviors.
We hope this beginner’s guide to paid search provides you with a greater understanding of what goes into a paid search strategy and running successful campaigns. There are many nuances to Google ads campaigns. It takes a lot of TLC to run a successful campaign. That’s why we are here to help. Our team of digital media experts can help you put a plan together to achieve your business goals, recommend budgets, build the foundation for your campaigns and provide ongoing management and optimization, so you can focus on running your business. Schedule a free consultation with our digital media team to learn more about partnering with us.
