Putting your company’s phone number into the ad copy of a PPC ad has long been a best practice. If you have the space within the ad, why not? It kills two birds with one stone: Not only do you have the potential to get a phone call from a prospective client, it also doesn’t cost you anything since your ad was never clicked!

Sadly, those days are disappearing, but only partially. When logging into your AdWords account any time over the last few weeks, you probably saw this message:

Fear not, true believers! This is just Google’s way of nudging — forcing — you into taking your business’ phone number out of the ad itself and using Google Call Extensions. In their official announcement, they said, “We are making this change to foster a safer, more consistent user experience across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.”

Along with the introduction of Enhanced Campaigns earlier this year, Google seems to be ushering their AdWords users, ready or not, into the world of customized ad delivery based on location and device.

Google does provide complete instructions on how to add call extensions to your account . Call extensions are going to show up on desktop and tablets differently than they will on smartphones and smaller mobile devices.

On desktops and tablets, they’ll look like this:

On smartphones and smaller mobile devices, users will see this:

Aside from having truncated ad copy, the real difference between the two ways your phone number will appear is the appearance of the actual phone number. In the desktop and tablet ad, the phone number is static since you cannot call directly from those devices, at least not without a third party program such as Skype. In the mobile ad, the phone number is taken completely out of the ad and is replaced with a button that will make the call for the customer. On one hand, this is a much easier way to connect to a business, but from Google’s standpoint, it also prevents customers from dialing the number themselves and denying Google the money from the “click” that should have happened.

Do Call Extensions Make Sense for Your Business?

The only other change to consider is with the phone number itself. You have two choices: Either you can have your actual number show up, or Google can auto-populate your ad with a random phone number and give you the ability to track things such as the length of call, and even time-specific conversions.

On one hand, using your own local number in the ad could build trust from potential customers, but you wouldn’t get Google’s call tracking statistics out of it. On the other hand, the Google generated numbers are not guaranteed to be local, but they come with free call tracking, which a lot of small businesses do not have. Whether you use Google’s numbers or your own depends entirely on whether you have call tracking in place and how important having a local phone number display is to you.

If you don’t use phone numbers in any of your PPC ads, this really doesn’t have any effect on you. If you do, it’s not much work to switch over to call extensions using the tutorial linked above. Either way, unlike a lot of the changes made when Enhanced Campaigns came around, Google is actually adding functionality without taking anything away. After how the launch of Enhanced Campaigns went, this is significant and welcome news.

The post Google Adwords New Feature: Call Extensions appeared first on 435 Digital.

Upgrade! Enhanced! These are two of the ultimate trigger words for any search marketer, so if any of you reading this have already clicked on the button to upgrade, even without knowing everything about Enhanced Campaigns, I cannot blame you. I just hope that Enhanced Campaigns are for you. Some accounts will see a lot of benefit from this change. Others may have to deal with being opted into targeting they might not want.

So are Enhanced Campaigns for you? Let’s look at some of the benefits and drawbacks to see whether this upgrade is actually an advantage for you.

The Good

If your PPC account has a different targeting or messaging strategy for multiple devices or geographic locations, you probably have a large number of campaigns in your account. After all, a good search marketer will manage separate campaigns for desktops, mobile phones and tablets if there is a different strategy for each.

Well get ready to clean up all of that. One benefit of Enhanced Campaigns is that you’ll now be able to manage bids across location, time of day, device type and more from a single campaign. For those of us who have accounts with 30-50 different campaigns, this is potentially a huge time saver.

You’ll also be able to show your ads across all devices while being able to designate specific ad text, sitelinks or extensions to show only on specific devices. On top of that, you’ll be able to specify location and time of day. You’ll no longer have to create a brand new campaign for every combination of geo-targeting, device and time of day. Here’s what this will look like (Click to enlarge):

The last major update of Enhanced Campaigns is having additional types of conversions. Now you’ll be able to track conversions such as app downloads and phone calls from smartphones directly within the AdWords interface. Google also mentioned that in the future, store visits could be tracked as well, which would close a giant blind spot in a lot of location-based PPC campaigns.

The Bad

Not everything is sunshine and roses for everyone. The reason you have to opt in to Enhanced Campaigns right now is because it introduces some major changes to your campaigns. These are changes that may not benefit many businesses without mobile-optimized sites.

One of the more significant changes is that tablets and desktops are now considered the same as far as AdWords targeting goes. On the surface this makes sense, with most popular tablets like the iPad and Nexus 7 having desktop browsers as opposed to mobile browsers. However, there are some companies that have found low-cost, high converting traffic on tablets specifically over the last few years, and those tablet-specific campaigns will now have to go out the window. For example, if you have an app that’s designed specifically for tablets, you’ll have to find a way to get that strategy to work with desktop searchers seeing the same ad copy or landing pages. On the flip side of that, you also cannot opt out of targeting tablets. Those of you who have conversions that involve software or whitepaper downloads, which don’t work on tablets, will just have to work around it. Same with those of you who have Flash-heavy sites that don’t display on tablets.

One potential solution would be not targeting iOS or Android operating systems, but Google is doing away with operating system targeting, too.

The Ugly

The worst part of Google’s Enhanced Campaigns is the fact that you cannot technically opt out of targeting mobile devices. Instead of being able to choose whether you want to target mobile phones and adjusting your mobile bids accordingly, all Enhanced Campaigns require targeting mobile devices. Instead of bidding with a dollar amount on mobile traffic, you’ll use a percentage of your desktop bid.

For example, if you bid $3 on a keyword on desktop, but you only want to bid $1.50 for the same keyword on mobile, you’ll have to set the mobile bid at -50%. Technically, you could set all of your mobile bids to “-100%” if you don’t want to target mobile devices, but that seems like a very complicated way to do something that currently exists within Google’s interface.

An unfortunate side effect of forcing all AdWords users to opt into mobile targeting is the fact that mobile click prices will probably rise over the next few months. One reason search marketers love mobile PPC is because for the most part, mobile traffic is less expensive since there isn’t as much competition. Now that more people are going to be present in the mobile auction, whether they like it or not, prices will shift because of the increased competition. This is good for Google. This is bad for you.

So How Does This Affect Me?

If you have three or more campaigns that are cloned versions of your desktop campaigns, one for each targeting segment you do, Enhanced Campaigns are a godsend. It’s going to streamline your setup process and cut down on the day-to-day upkeep that goes into supporting all of those campaigns.

If you’re not doing any mobile targeting, you will need to start soon. (See other reasons your business needs a mobile-optimized site.) Yes, there are ways to avoid having to pay for mobile traffic, as I explained above. But that might not last too much longer. The future of paid search is here, and we’re all along for the ride, even if we aren’t ready quite yet.

The post Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly appeared first on 435 Digital.

“What is CPC?”
Answer: Cost Per Click

“How do I figure out an ROAS?”
Answer: Calculate your Return on Advertising Spending by dividing revenue from an ad by the cost of that ad.

“Why on Earth do I need to call my CPA to read this report?”
Answer: Cost Per Action is another way to manage online advertising. This kind of CPA won’t call you back.

CTR: One of the Most Important Metrics

I would like to take a closer look at one of the most important metrics in every single paid search account: “Click through rate”—or CTR, as you may have heard it. On the surface, CTR is just like playing Temple Run. It’s easy to understand on a surface level. Yet things get a lot more complicated if you want to get advanced with it. Also, crocodiles are involved.

The basics of CTR are simple. You take the number of clicks during a specific time period, divide it by the number of impressions received over that same time period, and BAM! You have your CTR. One hundred clicks coming from 1,000 impressions? You have yourself a cool 10.00% CTR. Your job is done. Pack it up, time to go home, right?

Well, yes, and no.

Technically, yes, that 10.00% conversion rate is impressive if you look at just the overall number alone…but is that really what’s going on? A closer look at your account may show that 60% of the clicks you received are from brand-name terms, which should always have a high click through rate. Let’s say that those 60 clicks have a click through rate of 30%. That would mean that the non-brand terms in your account would have a click through rate of just 5.00%. Now a 5.00% CTR in most verticals is really strong, but it’s nowhere near the 10.00% you thought you had going for you in this completely made up scenario that I’ve presented. It’s just a cautionary tale about calculating CTR and how you can’t just take the overall account number at face value. Here’s a visual of what that scenario would look like:

Like I said, the brand numbers for CTR are strong, but those are expected to be strong. Seeing that all non brand terms have half the CTR as the overall account means that some work can be done to bring that number higher.

However, the same can be said of the opposite. If you have an abysmally low CTR (something below 0.10%), there’s a good chance that you’re opted into Google’s Display Network. The Display Network is a good source of cheap traffic, but it’s very low conversion AND very low CTR. Just as a refresher, any of your campaigns that are opted into Google’s Display Network will serve ads on the sidebar or the bottom of related articles across the web. In other words, your ads will show up thousands of times a month in front of people who aren’t searching for your company or services, therefore, the Display Network traffic always has extremely low click through rates. CTR for Display Network traffic is usually around 0.01% to 0.03%It’s important to separate Display Network traffic from regular search traffic. More times than not, you’ll see that a 0.02% overall CTR actually has a CTR of 3.00% – 4.00% for search engine traffic. In paid search, you never miss out on a chance to show what an awesome job you’re actually doing.

For example, take a look at this screenshot. Click through rate is the percentage on the far right:

According to this, the overall click through rate for the account is a dismal 1.87%. However, if you look at the click through rate from Google Search alone, it’s a much stronger 11.78%. It’s only the Display Network and its massive amount of impressions (over 6 times that of traditional Search) that artificially drags the overall CTR down. For reporting purposes, I would peg the CTR for this account at 11.78% and completely leave out Display Network traffic. That’s the only way to calculate your true CTR.

The moral of the story is this: don’t just take the overall CTR of your account and call it a day. Yes, it’s still a nice number to measure, but it’s not 100% of the story. Dive a little deeper, even to the keyword level, and figure out what’s going on in your account. It can be a good way to pinpoint what ad copy is and is not working.

As for how crocodiles are involved…well they could be anywhere, right? Just keep an eye out. We’ll all be better off that way.

The post PPC Terminology: Click Through Rate appeared first on 435 Digital.

As a young crusader for all that is right and just, I was ready to throw my hat in against the tyranny of Facebook and all of the evil practices they’ve seemed to be involved in over the past year or so. A few months back, word got out that if you have a Facebook page for your company, only 16-18% of your fans were seeing the updates you put up. Predictably, outrage ensued. Community managers and online marketers shouted “If someone chooses to be a fan of my page, who is Facebook to decide when they do and do not see our updates?” from the rooftops. And for a while, I was one of them.

Things got even stickier with Facebook’s rollout of Promoted Posts. For as little as $5 per post, you can show your page’s updates to most/all of your fans, not just the usual 18%. This really set my Spider Sense off, especially because at the time all this was happening, Facebook’s new IPO was struggling, mostly because investors were concerned about the relatively low amount of revenue Facebook was generating through advertising when compared to their stock price.

It seemed like the plan of a second-rate James Bond villain:

Step 1: Facebook restricts the number of fans that see each update
Step 2: Facebook offers a solution that allows advertisers to reach those restricted fans…for a price
Step 3: PROFIT

I COULD NOT LET THIS STAND. For weeks, I read articles and bookmarked links, forming a scathing argument in my head. Facebook was going to be exposed, and I was going to be the one to do it.

That vigor and determination lasted all the way until I sat down this morning and thought about it from a distance. I realized that I, like many others, was just looking to rail against a straw man that I had mostly formed in my head for the sole purpose of tearing down. I had created my own machine to rage against.

Is Facebook restricting the number of fans your messaging reaches? Absolutely.

My advice? Deal with it. Let it motivate you. See that what they’re doing really isn’t that bad. Work around it. Let Facebook’s restrictions be your Apollo Creed from Rocky III, a former adversary that will push you to be the best you can.

1. Facebook Is Only Doing What Your Fans Are Already Doing

Last month, FastCompany published an article about how Facebook fans are already hiding your posts at an alarming rate. This is mostly because either the content fans are seeing isn’t relevant or it’s being presented in the wrong way. That’s why Facebook fanbases shouldn’t be judged on quantity alone. Rather than trying to get to 10,000 fans of any kind, connecting with 3,000 fans that are actual fans and not liking you just for promotional reasons will show much more return in the long run.

2. Make Your Updates More Interesting

Unless you want to wander down the expensive road of Promoted Posts (which do have their own time and place), you just have to accept that your Facebook posts are only going to reach about 20% of your audience on a good day. So how do you work around this? Make sure that you’re giving your fans something good enough to seek you out. Just because a fan doesn’t see your post in their news feed doesn’t mean that you’ve dropped off the face of the Earth. If you’ve got engaging and interesting content on a regular basis, the 80% of your fans that don’t see your posts in their news feed will still seek out your Facebook page to check for updates. You know how there are those friends you have on Facebook that always have something entertaining to say and you check their page daily to make sure you didn’t miss anything? Try to be like that friend, but offer deals and promotions instead of funny cat pictures.

3. Reaching 18% Of Your Audience Isn’t Bad

Let’s say that there’s a marketing avenue where fans of your product say “Yes, I would like you to contact me and let me know what you’re up to from time to time. You have my permission.” Let’s say that you would only reach about 18% of that audience with each update. Sounds pretty bad, right? Sounds just like the Facebook situation I’ve been describing that everyone is up in arms about, right?

Well it is. But I was actually talking about email marketing, where an 18% open rate is actually pretty good. So why is everyone so mad at Facebook for duplicating the same results?

The bottom line is that you have to make your messaging better and the quality of your fans better. In an ideal world, each of your Facebook updates would be inscribed on a gold plaque and hand delivered to each of your fans. But we’re not in that world. And guess what? If you’re spending time lamenting not being able to reach over 80% of your fanbase’s news feed, your competitors are thinking of new and innovative ways to work around that, because everyone is in the same boat.

Be like Rocky. Let Facebook be your master motivator. Just keep the pictures of you and Facebook Apollo Creed running shirtless down the beach to yourself.

The post Let Facebook’s Restrictions Motivate You To Improve appeared first on 435 Digital.

However, Halloween can’t be completely ignored in the land of paid search. It’s a pretty important milestone marking only 2 months until your 2013 PPC plan goes into effect. If you’re in the process of ironing out the details, excellent. If you have yet to start…please do so immediately. Skip trick-or-treating tonight if you have to. Trust me, the world will keep spinning tomorrow without seeing your Gangnam Style costume.

The most important facet of PPC to factor into your 2013 plans is mobile. A lot of businesses might not put much budget or thought into mobile, or ignore it completely. This is very dangerous. According to Google’s estimates, mobile search traffic will surpass desktop search traffic some time in April of next year. If you’re not ready for mobile traffic, you may be losing half your audience.

Obviously the most important step is making sure you have somewhere to put that mobile traffic. If your website or form submission/purchase path is a complicated mess on a mobile phone, you need to fix this ASAP. Even if you don’t plan on running mobile PPC ads, users can still find your site on a mobile phone through either SEO or your Facebook page. it’s not up to you anymore how you want people to find you. We’re at the point where they’re going to dictate the terms of seeking you out in their own way.

If you’re not ready for that, you won’t need to dress up as a dinosaur for Halloween. You’ll already be one.

The post BOOst Your Mobile Paid Search In 2013 appeared first on 435 Digital.

There’s no question that when it comes to their search engine Bing, Microsoft can use all the positive attention it can get.

Launched in 2009, Bing was supposed to take the search world by storm. Labeling itself a “decision engine”, Microsoft was hoping to upend Google as the hip, go-to search engine for a younger demographic. It suggested detailed “You may also like…” alternate searches! It let you share to Facebook! It…had awesome graphics and pictures on the homepage?

So what happened? While it’s hard to say that Bing flopped, it definitely stumbled out of the gate. It was the Zune to Google’s iPod, the Betamax to Google’s VHS. Sure, it worked…but why would you switch over to it when a superior product that you’ve been using for years wasn’t broken?

Trying to put all subsequent versions of Bing (and its predecessors MSN Search and the awful Windows Live Search) in its rearview, Microsoft has revamped Bing and is currently pushing out a huge marketing effort to garner attention, again targeting a younger crowd.

Bing vs Google in a blind results test? Literally losing the shirt off your back? In California, Google’s own back yard? All of these things pale in comparison to the fact that Microsoft is claiming that, in their blind test, they’re beating Google’s results almost 2:1.

I don’t doubt this is true. But I also don’t think it’s a fair fight.

Microsoft has set up a webpage for everyday internet citizens to take the test. And when I did, I noticed a lot of factors that may tip the scales in Bing’s favor instead of staging this competition as a fair fight. You can take the test yourself at Bing It On.

Here are a few stray thoughts and observations:

Bing is up front with the fact that their blind search engine results are stripping out all ads on each result. This includes all paid search ads, but also takes out Google’s shopping results. And yet, Bing’s shopping results are included in their search result. This may not seem like a huge difference, but see for yourself how just a few pictures can make one side of the blind test stand out over the other. That’s Google on the left and Bing on the right. Notice a difference? Why did Bing allow its own shopping results into the test while excluding Google’s?

I did an informal poll around the office, and 40% of my coworkers said that if they were taking the Bing/Google challenge, they would search for some kind of product. If this is true of most people that have taken this test worldwide, that means that in almost half of the test cases, Bing has set itself up with an unfair advantage by showing their shopping results while excluding Google’s.

Another 40% of those I surveyed said they would search for a keyword that was location-based. And guess what? Bing is also excluding all Google Maps/Places graphics from their side-by-side results as well. Since Google’s results page is optimized and laid out to look better when that location information is displayed, completely eliminating it makes their result look junky and poorly laid out. In other words, Bing is eliminating a HUGE piece of Google’s location-based searches in this test, which makes Google’s results look terrible. So in my unofficial office study, we’re now up to 80% of searches that Bing has significantly given their results a leg up in a side-by-side comparison.

If you take the Bing It On challenge, one thing you’ll realize is how hard Bing is trying to make itself look like Google. Even I was amazed sometimes when I thought I was clicking on the Google result as being superior and finding out it was actually Bing. And I work with these search engines every day! So instead of trying something new and different when it comes to search, Bing seems to be trying really hard to out-Google Google. And if that’s their end goal, I wish them all the luck in the world, because that’s a tough mountain to climb. If you don’t believe me, ask Jeeves. Or should I say ‘ask Ask Jeeves’?

The bottom line is that even if you throw out everything I’ve mentioned above and brand me as biased against the Little Decision Engine That Could, it doesn’t change the fact that Bing does not beat Google 2:1 in the ways that immediately pop into your mind when you hear that statistic. In this (in my opinion, slightly biased) Bing It On competition, users on the street may indeed pick the Bing search results over Google 2:1, but that doesn’t mean that Bing has any chance over the next few years to surpass Google in traffic or popularity. Google is built into more of our phones and tablets. Google still has more of the search market covered than every other search engine combined, and it’s not even close.

Maybe Bing will find a place in the marketplace for themselves and thrive as a niche search engine for specific types of demographics. But they have a long way to go for “I should Bing that” to start rolling off the tongue as easily as “I should Google that” does. And while flashy campaigns like the Bing It On test seem like a good way to grab attention, some of their claims don’t seem to hold up under closer inspection.

The post Bing It Down A Notch: Does Bing Really Beat Google 2:1? appeared first on 435 Digital.