The world of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising waits for no man or woman. Google’s offering is constantly being updated with new services to improve the tracking and management of campaigns. Make sure you’re not stuck in the dark ages, or 2012 as it was known, with our 5 top PPC tips for the new year.
Product Listing Ads
To promote your products on Google Shopping, Product Listing Ads allow you to display your product price, image, business name and more to interested users. Setting up your product listing ads is easy and you can opt to build your campaign directly from Merchant Centre or from AdWords. Once your campaign has been set up Google will automatically display the products most relevant to a users search query.
Until now product listing ads were only available in the US, but by the end of March 2013 this feature will be available to retailers in the UK, Australia, Japan, Brazil, Spain, Italy, France and the Netherlands. By improving user experience, product listing ads will create new opportunities for retailers to attract additional customers to their stores.
Remarketing
Remarketing is not everyone’s cup of tea as some users find the adverts overly invasive. In a nutshell, Google Remarketing allows you to target your ads at users who have visited your site and then left. You’ve probably seen those adverts which seemingly follow you about wherever your online activity takes you – that’s remarketing at work.
The beauty of Google remarketing is it allows you to display your ads to a targeted audience, helping you avoid wasted spend on unqualified traffic. Browsers targeted by remarketing have already shown an interest in your products by visiting your site, making them the most qualified leads you have available. Remarketing works for some retailers and not others, but if you decide to give it a spin, allow yourself every chance of success with a trial that lasts a few months rather than just a couple of weeks.
Mobile
As each year goes by the stranglehold of mobile technology on our lives becomes stronger. Smartphones are now the last thing many of use at night and the first thing we pick up in the morning. With 9 of every 10 phones sold now a smartphone, 2013 is set to become the year more people access the internet on a mobile device than through their computer.
93 per cent of people in the UK use their mobile everyday to access the internet, so just think of the size of the potential market you are missing out on without a dedicated mobile PPC campaign.
Tracking
With marketing budgets increasingly under the spotlight, understanding how your customers convert and the value they hold to your business is vital. There are many tracking options available to track online activity, but if you’re worried about how to implement the correct code or how long it will take to get through your IT development backlog, Google’s Tag Manager could be the solution for you. Tag Manager removes the hassle and cost of adding and updating marketing optimisation tags on a website. Using a single intuitive interface allows users to edit their website’s tags without having to make changes to the code.
Tag Manager helps to:
- Get campaigns live quickly;
- Remove the need to edit code to add or change tags;
- Catch problems before they occur;
- Error checking to let you know whether a tag is working.
Attribution Modelling
The attribution modelling tool has been greeted enthusiastically by marketers since its introduction a year or so ago for Google Analytics Premium. Attribution modelling allows for greater insights into the customer journey and the success specific online marketing activities are having. This helps marketers to devise strategies which work together to drive sales and conversions across a range of channels.
Attribution modelling will soon be available to all Analytics users by the end of the second quarter 2013. Data will be available instantly and no additional setup is required, allowing you to compare multiple models and values across a range of channels including paid and organic search, email, affiliate marketing, display ads, mobile placements and more.
AdWords & Analytics Data
A Google Analytics account can now be simply linked to an AdWords account, providing marketers with important metrics such as bounce rate, pages per visit and the average duration of a visit, from within the AdWords interface. This provides additional insight for the PPC team, helping them to identify the most attractive parts of the website for customers, as well as determining the proportion of traffic or sales being driven by AdWords.
With so many new tools for Pay-Per-Click marketers to get their teeth into the year ahead certainly promises to be a busy one, and if all goes well, plenty more profitable too!