You need creative flair and innovative thinking no matter what industry sector you work in. Take a look at these top advertising agencies and choose one to work with you on your next project.

Ogilvy

Location: New York, London

Ogilvy is the crème de la crème of advertising agencies. With offices in over 160 cities all over the globe, they have a wide range of creative experts working with clients as diverse as Boots and Aldi. Their brand awareness is second to none which is why they won the CLIO Agency Network of the Year in 2013. If you want a stalwart of the advertising world to work with you, Ogilvy takes some beating.

Saatchi & Saatchi

Location: London

Saatchi & Saatchi is the company of the ‘lovemark’. This is how they label their advertising projects as they hope that they inspire customer loyalty and leave a mark of love. As a marketing agency, these are the guys that come up with the slogans that we all know and love. Who enjoys painting the town black with Guinness? The brand managers from Saatchi & Saatchi are the brains behind this.

Wieden & Kennedy

Location: London, Portland

For a kookier and more humorous take on advertising, Wieder & Kennedy are well worth a look. If you enjoy the quirkiness of the Cravendale milk adverts or you enjoy watching the mini dancing horse on the Three network ads, this is the company who can recreate this vibe for you. Their marketing experts can launch a social media campaign to hone the company voice and enhance the reach of a brand. They have won a whole host of awards for their innovation and work.

Wunderman Thompson

Location: London, New York

Wunderman Thompson are something of a hybrid company, mixing up a range of advertising credentials with tech and design. This makes them a perfect company for those digital advertisements that you want to project across social media channels. Wunderman Thompson work with up and coming brands who want to surpass the market leaders. Their main edict is to translate content into commerce.

Boxer

Location: Chicago

A brand design agency with heart, Boxer specialises in creating the big brand idea from its inception. They try their hand at everything from digital advertisements to PPC marketing. If you are keen to work with a smaller design-based firm, then forego the Saatchi & Saatchis of the world and opt for a niche bunch of creatives who will work solidly to craft your advertising project.

adam&eveDDB

Location: London

With a list of major clients under their belt like Google, Volkswagen, Marmite and Halifax, these big hitters craft some of the most memorable advertising campaigns in the UK. These advertising pros are expert at pitching nuanced ideas towards the target market of any campaign. They have won numerous awards including the Marketing Magazine’s Agency Of The Year in 2010 and four Epica Awards.

The DDB international network has been around since 1949 and these guys are a part of it. This gives them a bit of kudos when marketing to clients. If you want an award winning agency to work with you, adam&eveDDB could be the team for you.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty

Location: London

‘The Lynx Effect’ is just one of the many catchy and memorable slogans that have entered the popular culture psyche that originated from this company. They use nuanced marketing to enhance a brand and hone the feel and voice of a company. BBH are currently the Creative Review’s Agency of the Year and rightly so. They enjoy working with a range of global clients across an array of different industries. While they may appear a Jack of all trades, their specialists can turn their hand to any PPC marketing campaigns and social media marketing ads. BBH have brand managers that are exceptional at crafting advertising that has longevity.

Mother

Location: London, New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai.

If you are eager to work with an advertising agency that is keen to foster young talent, Mother could be the agency for you. Having been rated the fifth best agency in the world for young creatives, this company is a hive of young and enthusiastic minds ready to tap into the millennial psyche. Why are they called Mother? Who knows? Some people think it’s because they give birth to incredible advertising ideas and others think it could be because they are the nurturer of young and gifted brand managers. Whatever the reason, this agency is an outstanding forward thinking hive mind of ideas.

Grey

Location: New York (with “432 offices in 96 countries, operating in 154 cities”)

At over one hundred years old, this advertising agency is a stalwart of the industry. They have won the Effies Agency Network of The Year four years on the trot between 2005 and 2008. However, don’t think of them as a company that have past their hey day. Grey are still seen as an achingly cool design agency. Cat Deeley is the face of Pantene because of these guys. Rather than focusing on the big idea that launches fast with little longevity, Grey like being in it for the long haul, honing brand awareness and ideas that linger within popular culture across a range of media.

Publicis UK

Location: London

Publicis is another mammoth behemoth of the industry with offices worldwide. The parent company owns Publicis alongside Saatchi & Saatchi, BBH and Razorfish.) However, the Publicis arm of the fleet is worthy of a mention in its own right. The company has been rated number 1 in Creative Performance in the Gunn report every single year for the past decade. Working across print, social media, television and digital, this advertising agency focuses on the detail to gain buy-in from the target market. Multi-award winning, Publicis is renowned for the talent of their brand managers.

Advertising is still big business in the UK, and while there are many excellent agencies worthy of note, these top 10 advertising agencies in the UK should be on your list of possible companies to work with.

Perhaps the most important focus is to write amazing content that engages and encourages readers to take the next step in contacting your firm. The other thing to do is to be authoritative. You need your law firm to be a trustworthy source and something that clients may be able to feel confident in.

This has to happen by working with other entities such as media outlets and online magazines that write articles about the relevant subjects for which you offer services. In this article, I will look at the ways law firms can make the most of SEO.

The importance of content for SEO

Content is the #1 priority. You have to realize that many potential customers are completely unaware of the law. They may have a gist of it, but they don’t quite know how it could favour them. For example, a potential client has been hit by a car, and they are in the hospital recovering. They don’t know how they could form a case that could award them compensation from the guilty party. It’s up to you, to have content they will click on, read, be informed, and most of all, be motivated.

Questions to ask

How often should you optimise your website?

You should create fresh content regularly but it must also be relevant to your target audience. It’s important to stay on top of any new keywords and topics relevant to your industry and your local area.

With law firms, local SEO is really important as you’ll be competing with other practices in your area.

Ensure your site is also easy to navigate. Content and technical audits should be carried out at least every 3-6 months to keep things up to date, not only for the sake of SEO but the ever-changing world of law.

How long does SEO changes take to come into effect?

Any changes you make to your site can take days, weeks, or even months to take effect on the SERPs. The key is to always stay one step of the game by having great on-page and off-page link building techniques.

Being able to take your users on an educational journey is very satisfying and this can be done by pointing them toward government websites where laws are presented in indices and political documents.

In-house or agency?

You can do both.

Writing amazing content that is informative and engaging is the best way to reach your audience. Attorneys should place themselves in the heart of the content. Show how you helped a client overcome their adversity (within reason) but also how you helped them to understand the law better.

An SEO agency can help with this too. They do this for a living and SEO optimization is their bread and butter.

What kind of keywords should you target?

Your chosen keywords must represent your firm and your firms place in the industry, locally and nationally. Terms such as ‘personal injury lawyer’ or ‘malpractice attorney’ are good places to start but you should also focus on terms including your local city or region.

Good keyword research is how it all begins and tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush and SpyFu can help you target the best keywords based on difficulty to rank in the top 10, their monthly search volumes, and how the SERPs look (ie. whether they include featured snippets to help you stand out).

On-page and off-page SEO

The two fundamental elements of SEO are on-page and off-page.

On-page SEO refers to collective actions you take on a website to improve your ranking on SERPs, while off-page SEO focuses on factors outside your website that can influence your rankings. They both ensure the higher site visibility on search engines, attracts more high-quality traffic, and demonstrates authority. As a law firm, that last part is paramount.

Read our guide on how to optimise for on-page and off-page SEO for tips and advice.

The importance of backlinks

Backlinks from other sites to yours are an important part of off-page SEO as they show Google that you’re trustworthy and authoritative. But not just any backlink will do. It’s about quality as well as quantity and having a rich, varied backlink profile is better than having loads of links from poor sites or very few from high authority sites.

Backlink acquisition can be difficult which is why you may need to enlist the help of a digital PR firm or a general digital agency to help. Head over to Adzooma Marketplace for a wide range of agencies that can help.

SEO techniques to avoid

We’ve talked about what you can do with SEO. Now’s the time to discuss SEO techniques to avoid at all costs. Here’s a quick list of things you shouldn’t do:

1. Don’t use misleading redirects. This misleads not only the user but also Google. When someone clicks a link, they expect to go straight to a page they expected.
2. Don’t publish low-quality content purely for the sake of ranking. Google can choose not to index pages with content it deems “thin”.
3. Don’t do link exchanges as a long term strategy and certainly not with questionable sites. This won’t help your rankings and could do more harm than good.
4. Don’t spam keywords (known as “keyword stuffing”) as the writing will look unnatural and Google will spot it and penalise you.

Note: Nefarious activities can get you in trouble with Google and result in penalties such as loss in rankings or removal from Google’s index altogether.

Possible legal SEO issues

While none of the above are illegal by the laws of the land, there are some instances where they could be.

For example, linking to harmful websites that promote illegal content or activity is bad for the site and it’s against the law—not a good look for a law firm!

Plagiarism is also something that crosses the boundaries between legal and against Google policy. Quoting is fine as long as you cite your sources and don’t pass off work as your own when it isn’t.

Also consider any potential GDPR laws regarding the content you share from your country.

SEO tools

There are a range of SEO tools that you can use for keyword research, SERP rankings, backlinks and reports. Here are our top picks:

SEMRush’s Keyword Magic Tool

The tool can generate over 2 million keyword ideas for SEO and PPC campaigns and group them by topic. If you find a handful of interesting keywords, you can save them in the Keyword Analyzer and estimate the number of clicks and how likely you’ll rank for them in the top 10 of the SERPs.

Answer the Public

A digital PR favorite, Answer the Public finds the questions and queries that searchers are asking and gives a report based on Google SERPs. Their Pro version features include: unlimited searches, comparable data, language & location-based results and saved reports – you can access all of these fantastic for $99/month.

Checkbot

Checkbot is a great platform that finds critical SEO, speed and security problems before your website visitors do. They test hundreds of pages at once for broken links, duplicate titles, invalid HTML and loads of other checks – if there’s something wrong with your website, they will find it.

Advanced Web Ranking

Advanced Web Ranking (AWR) give you fresh daily, weekly and on demand rankings packed nicely into white label reports that are accessible from any device. They provide you with custom SEO reports which are fully customizable, straightforward and integrated with third-party reporting tools.

SEO PowerSuite

SEO PowerSuite holds enough tools for an SEO campaign of any caliber. It’s got everything from SEO analysis tool to keyword research tools to backlinks checkers to content editors to PPC ads optimization and much more. With its intuitive UI and a wealth of pro-level features, it’s a perfect SEO tool for newbies and experts alike.

Dashword

Dashword helps writers produce content that ranks with this keyword tool. The software uses self-built ML models to determine relevance based on data from the top 30 Google results of any given keyword. It then assigns a score to each topic and you can evaluate competitors’ content as well. A worthy addition to any SEO tool kit.

Adzooma’s SEO Performance Report

Another solution is by using Adzooma’s SEO Performance Report. The report will analyse your website and identify immediate actions you can take to improve. Like our PPC Performance Report, you’ll get an overall score out of 100. The closer to 100 you are, the better optimised your website is. 

You’ll then get a more detailed breakdown of your performance into 4 key areas: keyword performance, onsite SEO, page speed and backlinks. You can also compare your client’s performance with a competitor, showing how they compare with the competition. 

Fundamentally, the SEO Performance report will give you the tools to: 

• Get ahead of your competitors by finding keywords they’re missing 
• Increase conversions by improving on-site user experience 
• Compliment your campaigns with more organic traffic

The report is available to all Adzooma users, try the basic version for free to get a taste of what this report can offer. Not an Adzooma user? Sign up for free, here. 

Conclusion

Whether you decide to work with an SEO agency to write and publish content, do it in-house, or create a combined strategy, make your work count.

Having case studies can help to show authority along with a robust link building strategy and good internal linking so your site can reap the benefits. Alongside that, focus on local SEO and strong keyword research techniques and your site will get the high-quality traffic it needs to thrive.

What is a conversion funnel?

A conversion funnel is an eCommerce term used to describe a consumer’s journey from the first interaction with your advertising or organic campaign to the final point of conversion – the sale. The “funnel” gradually gets smaller as a customer travels through.

Why is it important?

Understanding the conversion funnel is crucial in understanding a consumer’s thought process. If you can think like a customer, you’ll know what kind of habits they have and can use more targeted and personalised marketing techniques to guide them to those final conversions.

A successful conversion funnel translates into a healthy profit for your business.

How to create and optimise your funnel

1. Outline the process

The conversion funnel can be thought of as having three divisions: the upper funnel, middle funnel and lower funnel.

• Upper funnel: This describes users who have just searched for a product and don’t know a lot about it. They search through several brands as they try to figure out what exactly they need.
• Middle funnel: These consumers know more about the product and even know about popular brands and technical features of the product. They know what they want and will turn away from brands that do not meet their specifications.
• Lower funnel: These potential buyers are ready to purchase but might need a nudge. They have favourite brands and look for more specific information about the product from customer reviews about it. Consumers at this stage of conversion can be triggered to make a sale through remarketing techniques that get them off the fence.

To be efficient at every stage of the conversion process, aim to convince your customer to go a step further in each stage of the conversion funnel. The popular AIDA model is an excellent tool to divide and conquer the funnel at each stage.

AIDA stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. These are the responses you want to evoke from your consumers at specific stages of the conversion funnel.

• Awareness

For Upper Funnel consumers, you want to create Awareness of the product. There are several ways to achieve this, including social media, organic search, blogging, and pay per click (PPC) campaigns.

• Interest

Now your consumers have made it to your landing page. What measures have you put in place to keep them there? What stops them from tagging out as soon as they arrive? Some strategies include offering consumers a discount or special offer in exchange for their contact information. For instance, they can sign up for an account on your site to benefit from free shipping. These techniques are also known as lead magnets.

• Desire

By this stage, you need to convince your consumer to trust your brand. The aim is for them to desire to choose your brand over others’. Customers can be described as being in the ‘Middle funnel’ during this process; they would value more information about your brand, which you can provide through email marketing. This marketing technique is more targeted to your consumer’s needs and will keep them engaged.

• Action

This is when you want to provide a trigger which pushes your customer to take the final step of making a purchase. That ‘push’ is usually described as a Call to Action or CTA for short. It could take the form of an attractive discount or giving the user a limited amount of time during which they can benefit from a special offer.

This creates a sense of urgency that can be hard for them to resist.

2. Set up conversion goals

Now that you’ve laid out a plan for guiding your users through the conversion funnel, you want to know how well those plans are performing. An excellent tool for evaluating your funnel is Google Analytics. Use this tool to set conversion goals to give you a good idea of whether your conversion strategies are succeeding or not.

To be thorough, set up goals for each stage of your funnel and significant conversions. Conversion goals could be anything from signing up for a mailing list to downloading resources.

After setting up your goals, your site will accumulate user information for analysis in Google Analytics, allowing you to figure out where you can make improvements.

3. Identify weak points to optimise

Another useful feature of Google Analytics is the “Funnel Visualization” report. It helps you to analyse exactly which parts of your funnel are causing your customers to abandon the funnel altogether. In other words, it gives you information about your site’s abandonment rate. Furthermore, it shows you where they go next.

This will show you what might be distracting your users from going through the next stage of your funnel so that you can determine what needs fixing and how to fix it.

4. Use data to justify changes

Evidence-based action is the way to go to ensure optimisation of your conversion funnel. A heat map is a great way to visualise where most of your visitor traffic is going. It helps you to make informed decisions concerning what to change on your page to direct your visitors to the desired destination.

5. Use split testing

Split testing – also known as A/B testing is a neat way to test your conversion techniques by creating two varying forms of a page and analysing them to see which one is more successful at conversion.

6. Consider automation to improve efficiency

Autoresponder emails help you to remind your customers to revisit your page. It’s an efficient way to maintain a lifeline of communication with your buyers to encourage them to repeat purchases in the future. Avoid bombarding them with excessively frequent emails, and they will be less likely to unsubscribe from your mailing list.

There are numerous strategies available for optimising your conversion funnel. Depending on your business, tailor your conversion path in response to how well it leads to conversions to yield valuable increases in your conversion rates. The more users that convert at each stage of your funnel, the more buyers you obtain at the very end.

7. Let an Adzooma Marketplace agency take care of it

Sometimes, you just don’t have the resources to tinker with your conversion funnel and we understand. It’s at times like that why we created Adzooma Marketplace—to provide a connection between potential clients and agencies who can help them. Our list of agencies that specialise in CRO are at hand to get your funnel into shape and get those conversions flowing through.

Google Shopping campaigns can always be improved. Our guide will show you how to optimise your campaigns and increase revenue.

What is a Shopping Campaign?

Google Shopping is a form of advertising where advertisers or resellers promote their products to consumers. It works in a similar way to a shopping comparison website (and is therefore a type of Comparison Shopping Engine).

A Google Shopping campaign, therefore, is a campaign that gives users detailed product information with the aim of gaining clicks. They include:

• Product photos
• Product titles
• Descriptions
• Prices
• Store names

Below is a carousel of Google shopping ads for “leather shoes”:

How to set up a Google shopping campaign

Requirements

Before you start, there are three elements you need before starting a shopping campaign:

1. You’ll need a Merchant Center account to link with your Google Ads account
2. You’ll need to adhere to Google Shopping policies
3. You’ll need to send Google new product data at least every 30 days and ensure it meets their data quality standards

Instructions

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account
2. Click Campaigns from the page menu on the left
3. Click the plus button, then select New campaign
4. For “Campaign type,” go to Shopping and click Next
5. Choose your advertising preferences. You have 11 options to choose from:
   • Campaign name
   • Merchant
   • Country of sale
   • Inventory filter
   • Bidding
   • Daily budget
   • Campaign priority
   • Networks
   • Devices
   • Locations
   • Local inventory ads
6. Click Save and continue
7. Then pick what kind of ad group you want:
   • Product Shopping ad
   • Showcase Shopping ad
8. Create your first ad group, enter the ad group name, and bid amount
9. Click Save

How to optimise your shopping campaign

Once you have your shopping campaign, the next thing to think about would be how to optimise it so that the campaign can prove successful or your website, your products and, of course, your business.

1. Improve your product titles

Compelling product titles have an impact on ad performance. In a study by Andreas Reiffen for Search Engine Land, he found that “products with optimized, more keyword-rich product titles saw a CTR uplift of 18%.”

To improve them, he suggested the following:

• Understand Google’s matching algorithm and adding exact keywords to avoid Google misunderstanding any synonyms.
• Use language customers are familiar with

By doing so, you could see similar levels of uplift.

2. Improve your product descriptions

You want to ensure that people are getting all of the relevant information they need about the product, but you also want to include keywords.

Why? Because product descriptions impact ad impressions. Google crawls product feeds to establish whether listings are relevant for search queries. By including keywords in your title and descriptions, you improve that relevancy, impressions, and chances for clicks.

3. Improve your images

Your images need to be clear and attention-grabbing. The images also need to follow these requirements:

• For non-clothing images: at least 100×100 pixels
• For clothing images: at least 250×250 pixels
• Maximum image file size: 16MB
• Accepted file types: GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF 

You should also test image types to see what works. Depending on your product, lifestyle images might work better or perhaps plain images.

For example, in a study of 100 people, 82% said they would be more likely to click on a shopping ad if the image was of someone wearing the product rather than the product itself.

4. Improve your campaign structure

The best thing about a Google shopping campaign is that you can improve the structure of it and be specific. You can utilise the country, the currency and also optimise in different ways. The campaign can be structured to suit your needs and requirements. 

Savvy Revenue wrote an in-depth guide on Google Shopping campaign structures you should read for more information.

5. Improve your bidding strategy

Different bid strategies work with different online ad campaigns and goals. That means there’s always room for improvement and a way to fit a strategy that suits your needs. You’ll want to consider five basic types of goals, along with your current campaign settings. These include:

• Getting customers to take direct actions on your site
• Gaining site traffic
• Increasing brand awareness
• Increasing views or interactions with your video/display ads
• Increasing product or brand consideration

Aiming for these goals alongside bidding strategies like Enhanced CPC will help you to improve your bidding strategy and make your shopping campaign work for you. 

6. Use negative keywords

Negative keywords, when used in your Google Shopping campaigns, can stop your ads showing up for certain search queries. This will help you to avoid unwanted clicks that are unlikely to turn into conversions. This can save you money and prevent any misguided results.

Keywords to consider removing:

1. Competitor keywords
2. Irrelevant keywords
3. Generic keywords

7. Target by geolocation

The products that you sell may be specific to the location, so you won’t want people clicking through that would not turn into a conversion or sale. This is when you can target the location to ensure that you get the most out of the shopping campaign that you have set up. 

8. Target by time

You may need to target the shopping campaign with time. This gives you a chance to control your bidding strategy as well as the budget that you have. 

9. Use remarketing lists for search ads (RLSAs)

Shopping remarketing lists let you segment site visitors by previous site engagement and help you to optimise your Google shopping campaign.

You can customise your shopping bids for groups of users based on previous site engagements, such as ‘shopping basket abandoners’, ‘loyal customers’ or ‘repeat visitors’. This can help you to get more from your shopping campaign moving forward.

10. Try Smart Shopping Campaigns

Smart Shopping campaigns combine your existing product feed with machine learning to produce better ads across networks. What’s more, the ads have a better reach as Google automates their ad placements.

It can also be specific when it comes to bidding helping you to get maximum conversion value at your given budget.

11. Use Google shopping scripts

Google Shopping scripts use code snippets to automate parts of a Google Shopping campaign.

They’re designed to make the process more efficient, giving you more time to concentrate on other tasks. Besides the advantage of automation, scripts can also save you the stress of troubleshooting and tweaking your campaigns which also saves your budget from poor judgement.

12. Limit the networks your ads appear on

When you set up a new Google Shopping campaign, you’re given the option to choose what networks to appear on:

• Search network (with a checkbox for “Include Google search partners”
• YouTube and Discover on Display network (with a checkbox for “Include YouTube and Discover on Display network)

By default, Google checks both checkboxes. It’s recommended to uncheck both as you want to get a better understanding of how your ads perform with minimum extras in order to set a baseline. Once you have that, you can then add search and display networks to see if they improve or hamper your campaigns.

13. Analyse your competitors

Competitor research is critical to any type of paid advertising strategy. After all, you’re competing with other brands for ad placements so it literally pays to know how well they’re doing so you can improve where they succeed.

Google has a page dedicated to competitive analysis tools to help your campaigns which includes:

• Google Trends to gauge customer interest in real-time
• Shopping Insights to see how you fare against your competitors
• Google Alerts to track your brand as well as the competition
• Google Predictive Search to monitor how people search for your brand and your rivals

Conclusion

Google shopping campaigns give you greater flexibility and allow you to be more specific when it comes to converting online visitors into sales of particular products.

By using these optimisation methods, you’ll be in the perfect position to increase sales. But that isn’t guaranteed and it’s important to tweak your campaigns where necessary and monitor your competition.

Google is always making changes to the Google Shopping platform to improve performance for advertisers but that can mean old methods losing effectiveness so stay on top of new features.

But is it worth hiring one in 2020? In this article, we’ll look at the pros and cons and what an expert can do for your paid social strategy.

What is a Facebook Ads expert?

A Facebook Ads expert is someone who has years of practical experience using Facebook Ads. They are also a precious commodity. They can complete numerous tasks, such as:

• Writing copy
• Creating graphics
• Generating leads and sales
• Collaborate with your marketing team to ensure consistent branding across all paid programs
• Create squeeze pages and lead gen forms
• Testing and continuous monitoring of results of ads
• Reporting results of Facebook ad campaigns
• Manage the strategy of paid campaigns
• Measure and optimise the campaign using marketing analytics tools such as Facebook Pixel

Small business owners cannot afford to ignore the power of paid social media, especially Facebook Ads and its potential reach.

How can an expert help?

The debate is whether you should hire a Facebook Ads expert rather than trying to do it yourself. There are numerous reasons to use a Facebook Ads expert and how an expert can be invaluable:

1. They can target your advertising

There are many targeting options, including location, demographics, age. You can create lookalike audiences, custom audiences, and layer your targeting options to take advantage of what Facebook Ads can give you.

An expert will know which targeting options work for each industry.

2. You can leverage remarketing

Remarketing can help you improve your ROI significantly. By targeting people who have visited your website, or engaged with you in some small way may require more exposure to your brand before they buy, which can be done by tagging website visitors with a cookie.

A Facebook Ads expert can set this up, even if you don’t know how. They’ll know what generally works and can fine-tune your remarketing lists to maximise your ROI.

3. They can navigate Facebook’s strict policies

As Facebook doesn’t want their users to become frustrated with incessant or inappropriate ads, it proves challenging to write a Facebook ad that will get approved and can waste time or could get the account flagged. Hiring someone who knows the intricate rules and regulations will make the job a lot easier.

4. Best practices

Getting to grips with Facebook Ads via an expert requires you to indulge in some best practices to find the right person or people. Here some steps you can take:

• Share your goals and budget: after finding the right person, you need to be clear on your goals and budget. While an expert can help you set goals according to their experience, the primary goals should be set by you.
• Review the plan: as they understand Facebook advertising much better than you, let them review your marketing strategy and work out the details based on your input, so you are on board with all decisions.
• Set the plan in motion: The first couple of weeks of your campaign will be a steep learning curve where you will get to grips with who does and doesn’t engage with your business.
• Monitor the results and make adjustments: a Facebook Ads expert will be able to show you the results and make the alterations your ads need. If your ads aren’t performing well, monitoring progress is something you can do over time, and having a working relationship with a Facebook ad expert can take the edge off that.

Criteria to look out for

Finding the right person comprises of a handful of key components:

Testimonials

While there are many ways to hire someone, ensuring you find someone who understands Facebook advertising is crucial. Be sure to perform due diligence when it comes to the credentials of prospective candidates.

This can mean scouring freelancer marketplaces, but with the more popular freelance sites, there can be a lack of experience or vetting. Adzooma Marketplace can link you up to social media experts with the required experience.

Examples of their work

When you find the right person, ask to see past portfolios and the results they have achieved in working for other clients. The person you hire must understand your audience and tone of voice, but this is where you may choose to be detailed in how you describe the project when posting on marketplaces.

Cost

Ad consultants can charge as little as £250 per month, but some go up to £10,000 or more per month! While there is a big difference in cost, you need to factor in a few variables. Most charges are based on things like:

• Experience
• The complexity of the project
• The budget
• The ROI from the consultant

If you add into the mix that you’re maybe spending money on Facebook marketing already, getting an expert will cost you extra will be difficult, especially if you have a low budget. The more offered services they provide, based upon your budget, you should be able to see a significant ROI, but it all depends on the results they net.

Next steps

As a small business owner, there is a risk of losing money if you don’t know how to use Facebook Ads. They are complicated and intricate, and hiring someone to monitor the proceedings will help them perform at the best level. An expert can be invaluable, especially when you have a business to run.

Well, yes and no.

It’s one thing to have the expertise but in such a competitive and saturated market, even advertising agencies need to seek out and look at alternative ways to stand out. In order for agencies to continue to grow and gain business themselves.

So we thought it would be worth sharing some of the ways that advertising agencies can gain new clients and inspire you to try some of these methods yourself, whether you’re an ad agency or a brand looking for new customers.

1. Try content marketing

Content marketing is a form of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material which includes:

• Blog posts
• Images
• Videos
• Social media posts
• Podcasts

The distinction between content marketing and regular content is content marketing doesn’t directly promote a brand or its service. Rather, it demonstrates authority in that particular industry. An example could be a bakery that writes about types of bread or tips on how to the perfect belgian bun.

In the context of an ad agency, you may want a piece of content creating such as an article about improvements that a business can make or the most controversial ads of the 20th century. With then a paragraph suggesting marketing and advertising options. The same sort of approach can be done in video content and also through social media content.

Besides the display of authority, content marketing can also help with SEO efforts which then boosts visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Check out these content marketing tools:

• StoryCheif
• FatJoe
• Grammarly

2. Try outreach marketing

Outreach marketing is an effective method for acquiring new clients. Again, this is predominantly about providing a service to a group that may need it, such as content creation that you would then outreach out to bloggers to showcase on their established websites. It works well with content marketing as you are able to feed out and create a strategy based on outreach of your business and brand.

A great example of unique, high-quality outreach is Diamond PR’s campaign for Florida Marriott where they worked with 8 travel bloggers. The result was a heap of coverage for their client, including 39 blog posts, over a million unique monthly visitors through the travel bloggers, and a dedicated hashtag—#BloggingFL—reached almost 8 million tweets.

3. Try online advertising

Many people use the internet these days to find and source information that they need, so online advertising could be one of the best ways that an advertising agency could gain new clients. It can include online adverts that run and using platforms like Google Ads can be a great step forward.

Using different online methods to advertise, be that through social media platforms or otherwise, can help you to build your audience and subsequently have your business seen by the right people and potential clients.

Facebook Ads, for example, will let you use their engagement and tools to create ads to be seen by more people than it would if you just shared it to your page. The costs can vary but it can prove to be a very successful method of online advertising and it can be great PR for your business.

4. Try social media

On the subject of Facebook, one of the best ways these days to advertise any business, let alone just you as an advertising agency is to use social media. Coming up with a social media strategy can help you to understand what it is you need when it comes to creating content.

Small factors that you can take into consideration would include different content, images and videos. You will also want to ensure that you focus on building the audience organically, which means engaging and responding to comments and direct messages.

Further to that, social media can be a great way to advertise if you understand the algorithms and the best times to post. Making the most of when people are online and pushing your content through quality and consistency.

Here are some social media management tools that you can use:

• Crowdfire
• PromoRepublic
• POSTOPLAN
• TapLink

5. Try traditional marketing

There is so much focus on online marketing and advertising these days that we can forget there are other offline methods that could prove extremely useful. Radio is a popular advertising option that could be very successful. People still listen to the radio in their cars and advertising locally or even on a national level could be a great option to consider.

Other offline methods include:

• TV
• Magazine and newspaper ads
• Trade shows
• Networking events
• Business expos
• Leaflets

6. Try local ads

Advertising locally is one of the markets that many people are yet to tap into, but in truth, this could be a lucrative one to explore. Locally, people are wanting to support other local businesses and you may find that you could be the only one offering your services in your area. There are many ways that you can advertise locally. You could use offline methods that include local papers and magazines or even things like leaflet drops. Or you could choose online methods such as advertising in local Facebook groups.

Many communities hold events throughout the year and at some point, these will be perfect networking opportunities for you to get involved with local businesses. Local advertising is one of those things that we should explore more to gain more sales and with there being more focus than ever before to support local businesses, you may find that you will be helping others as well as them helping you by becoming new clients.

7. Include case studies on your site

Using case studies is a great way to showcase what you can do and a more informal approach to showcasing your skills. People are not always interested in what you have to say and would rather take the word and experience that others may have. You could use case studies on your website, advertise them through your social media links and also share them with potential customers and clients.

Examples of case study pages on agency sites:

• OneAgency
• Basic Agency
• Amp Agency
• Arise

Case studies use positive language, showcase statistics and results and give your potential customers and clients an in-depth look at what you can do.

8. Try online directories

We’ve written about the power of online directories before and they shouldn’t be overlooked in 2020.

Here are some stats:

• 76% of UK consumers research or get inspiration online before they make a purchase
• 66% of people prefer to shop online, compared to 27% who prefer otherwise
• The number of online shoppers is expected to hit 2.14 billion by 2021, meaning 26.8% of the global population will be digital buyers

With traditional directories like the Yellow Pages and Thomson Local Directory moving online, that meant a transition for business listings. Now, directories are more advanced and have a stronger reputation than they used to, back when people used black hat tactics to gain better rankings.

Besides those online directories, you also have things like Google My Business and Bing Places, and marketplaces like Adzooma Marketplace, Clutch, and The Manifest.

9. Try email marketing

Despite rapid advancements in communication, email is still around and shows no signs of disappearing anytime soon. So why not use it to promote your ad agency?

Blogs and content marketing can do a lot but there’s a certain buzz you get from an email from someone you know and trust. Try starting a weekly email newsletter full of advertising tips, interesting articles, opinions and more.

And if you’d rather not do it all yourself, you can use an email marketing firm to help with a campaign or check out these email marketing tools:

• SaneBox
• Reply
• SendInBlue
• Woodpecker

Conclusion

There are so many different methods that you can try and as an advertising agency, you will know only too well the value in certain paths to explore. But the main focus for any advertising option that is chosen should be the type of content that you share to make it unique and different.

More people are being exposed to content these days as statistics for social media and monthly active users are getting bigger, so the type of content that you share is just as important as the method of advertising you choose. Hopefully, this has given you something to think about when it comes to advertising agencies getting new clients.

But if you need some more inspiration, Adzooma Marketplace is home to a variety of different agencies such as Spread Like Wildfire that offer advertising and content marketing services.

It uses something called Ad Rank, a value that Google Ads uses to determine a paid ad’s position on a SERP. As far as components of Google Ads go, it doesn’t get mentioned as much as clicks, impressions and CTR but it’s a significant part of the PPC process general ad visibility.

In this article, I’ll look at how Ad Rank is calculated, key elements of the value, and how to improve your rank.

How is Ad Rank calculated?

A simple formula for Ad Rank is:

Ad Rank = CPC Bid x Quality Score

As Google Ads uses an auction system, it checks if an entered search query contains the keywords you’ve bid on and uses the formula to decide which ad will be displayed and where.

In summary, to get the top position, you need to have the best CPC bid and the highest Quality Score.

You can still achieve a high position with a lower quality score but that would require you having a higher CPC bid, which might not be cost-effective as you’ll be in competition with other advertisers who may have better Quality Scores.

But how does this also affect the amount that you pay for ads? Well, that also involves your competitors. Your price is worked out by the Ad Rank of the company below you, divided by your own Quality Score plus $0.01. In addition to this, there are lots of other factors at play making up your Ad Rank.

5 key factors of ad ranking

Your Ad Rank score is composed of 5 key factors which help Google to determine the quality and relevance of your ad:

1. Ad/Landing Page Quality – Google uses algorithms to determine a Quality Score for both your ad text and the landing page it links to. It needs to be both useful and relevant for the keywords that you are bidding on. You will be given a Quality Score that helps to determine your ad position.
2. User Search Context – There are lots of different elements at play in each user search. The search terms used, the time the search was performed, the user’s location when performing the search, other ads, organic search results and even the device the user is searching from are all taken into account.
3. Ad Rank Thresholds – There are certain minimum thresholds that your advert needs to achieve in order to be seen – these are set by Google. If you don’t meet them, the ad is deemed ineligible to be shown
4. Ad Extensions and Ad Formats – Using ad extensions can be useful to boost your Ad Rank. These are additional information, such as links to more specific content. Google calculates a projection of how these and other ad formats will weigh on the performance of your ad. 

How to improve your ad rank

There are several techniques that you should be adopting in order to improve your Ad Rank, and most of them are relatively simple to implement.

Using Ad Extensions

Ad relevance is crucial to calculating Ad Rank and ad extensions play a major part in that. As Google said itself:

When estimating the expected impact of extensions and ad formats, we consider such factors as the relevance, clickthrough rates, and the prominence of the extensions or formats on the search results page. So even if your competition has higher bids than yours, you can still win a higher position at a lower price by using highly relevant keywords and ads.

Extensions add further context to ads and direct users to specific pages and contact details they might need. But it’s also important to only use ad extensions that have a purpose. Adding unnecessary extensions won’t help your CTR and may harm your Quality Score, which will affect your Ad Rank.

Make your ads more relevant

The clear focus on quality means that it’s more important than ever for all ads to be highly relevant to the search terms you’re bidding on. Doing your research and understanding audience intent is absolutely crucial now, so revisit your audience personas, think about their challenges and goals, and tailor your ad copy to directly answer that need. 

Optimise your landing page

The quality of the content on your landing page is equally as important, and if it doesn’t match up, Google will suspect click fraud and make your ads ineligible for display. Think about the experience your customer needs when they visit your site, how relevant the content on your page is, how you can add value to them and how easy it is to navigate and carry out other actions on your landing page.

There are also many free and cost-effective resources online that can help you create a successful landing page. Even better, some can be used together to drive excellent results and automate your workload.

Here are some of our favourites:

• Landingi
• Unbounce
• Simvoly
• Instapage
• Wishpond

Boost the performance of your ad groups

As your ads need to be extremely relevant, you should also look at making your ad groups much more specific. Each group needs to have a tightly controlled theme, and the keywords within it must be highly relevant. If you have a few rogue keywords in there, take them out and set them up in separate groups. 

• Single theme ad groups (STAGs) – These are proven to increase CTRs and improve quality scoring. You use one keyword only per Ad Group.
• Keyword Match Types – These are parameters that you can set on keywords that help to control which searches display your ads. There’s the Broad Match Modifier, which only matches when you include words selected with a + sign, a Phrase Match, which includes your bid terms in an uninterrupted order, and Exact Match (this can still include function words not present in the search).
• Negative Keywords – These prevent your advertisements from displaying for certain search terms, ensuring even greater relevancy.

Conclusion

Although the landscape with Ad Rank is constantly changing, you can make an impact and a better experience for your customers at the same time. Whichever strategy you decide to try, developing a mindset of continual optimization, analysis of results and tracking will give you the most competitive advantage and the best position. 

As strong competitors in a highly competitive market, the frequently-asked question remains: which is better – Google Ads or Facebook Ads. In this article, we’ll look at the differences and see how they fare against each other.

The differences between Google Ads and Facebook Ads

When you’re looking for ways to promote your business online, Google Ads and Facebook Ads are the top 2 contenders as both platforms pull in billions of users through their online advertising.

Most companies will be looking to allocate their budget on one of the platforms, but the tricky part can be deciding on which of the two platforms will be suitable based on the audience, goals and the kind of results that need to be achieved.

While Google Ads appear in Google search results and across websites in Google’s Ad network, Facebook Ads are displayed across Facebook, Instagram, and other sites in the social media platform’s network.

Pro tip: If you care less about which network to choose and more about which audience to approach, you can use a tool such as the self-serve Zeropark Ad Network, which offers ad formats such as push notifications, pop, and domain redirect ads on both platforms.

How does Google Ads work?

Google Ads is a PPC advertising platform that runs advertisements that are paid for by businesses. It works by targeting users who are searching for products or services that your business might offer. The role of Google here is to drive traffic to the site and advertisers will only pay when a user clicks on their ad.

How does Facebook Ads work?

Facebook Ads work in the same way in the fact they are paid for promotions like Google except these are shown to users who are not actively searching for a specific product or service – they will simply appear in their feed as they’re scrolling down the page. This is great for targeting social media users while they’re connecting with friends and casually looking at content that interests them. By tracking social behaviour when on this platform it can make it very useful for ads to be targeted for that particular user.

Audience/reach

Google has the largest audience potential of any advertising platform, processing over 3.5 billion searches a day and 1.2 trillion searches a year worldwide. Google Ads also reaches over 90% of internet users and although social media is extremely popular, not platform can rival the reach that Google offers – not even Facebook.

But Facebook is still a popular site, with over 2.6 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2020. It also performs well in certain demographic categories, meaning that audience targeting is very important and likely to be where you spend your time when creating a Facebook campaign.

Cost

On average, CPCs (cost-per-click) can work out as less on Facebook Ads than Google Ads ($0.97 vs $1-$2 on the search network). However, there are cases where Google Ads works out cheaper when using display ads.

Facebook Ads also offers comprehensive audience targeting options which makes it a great choice for advertisers who have limited budgets and are needing to build brand awareness.

Google Ads can be more costly than Facebook Ads but there’s more purchase intent with Google Ads, which might convert more visitors. Facebook tends to be more cost-efficient as their low-cost, high ROI model makes it a very likeable platform for small businesses that need to make their limited advertising budgets stretch further.

Types of targeting

Both platforms offer demographic and behaviour targeting but keyword targeting is one of the most popular strategies for Google Ads, especially when using the Google Search Network. If businesses want their ads to appear in relevant search results, they must choose the best keywords – then those keywords determine where the ads appear in search results.

With Google Ads you can create campaigns that will only appear when users search a keyword that they want to advertise for. For an even more targeted approach, local businesses can target people searching for their keywords in specific geographic regions.

Facebook Ads on the other hand, excels when it comes to targeting people based on the behaviours and patterns you choose through their targeting profile. Unlike Google Ads, it is not based on a user’s search query. Not only does it provide a wide range of targeting options based on the usual demographics, it can be much more specific in areas such as relationship status, job type, purchasing behaviours and interests.

Ad types

Google Ads is a more data-focused interface and the ad types include:

• Text Ads
• Responsive Search Ads
• Image Ads
• App Promotion Ads
• Video Ads
• Product Listing Ads
• Showcase Shopping Ads
• Call-Only Ads

Facebook Ads has various types of options to choose from, that include formats such as image, video, slideshow and carousel, collection, and instant experience, that can be displayed through the following methods:

• Facebook Feed/Stories
• Instagram Feed/Stories
• Facebook Marketplace
• Video Feeds
• Right-hand column
• Messenger inbox

Ease of use

Usability can often be a big factor when it comes to choosing where ads are placed. Facebook is easy to navigate using it’s basic features but can become less functional when moving on to use the more advanced features. Google has a much more data focused interface that can be confusing to operate, yet is an easier platform to manage once mastered.

Both platforms offer support to businesses running ads, however, they both differ in the level of service provided. Google provides support through a call centre and emails and Facebook offers an online chat and email service, that isn’t as responsive.

The verdict

If you are a new business and need to make a hard choice based on getting more sales right now, a lead campaign on Google will provide you with the better return on investment, based on a sales outcome.

They’ll click on your ad and see what you have to offer. If you’re a good fit for their needs, you can earn more conversions for your business. With remarketing on Google Ads, you can even bring back users that previously had an interest in your product or service, but weren’t quite ready to convert.

On the whole Google Ads is a solid way to secure immediate sales, whereas Facebook Ads is best for lead generation and brand awareness.

When it comes to which one is best, then there is no clear winner. It’s very dependent on what a business wants from an advertising campaign and the main focus of their digital marketing strategy.

PPC audience targeting is critical to any business using paid advertising, so let’s look at how you can use it to improve campaign performance.

What is PPC audience targeting?

Audience targeting is a method that involves consumers being separated into different segments depending on things like their interests and hobbies, known as demographic data. Knowing your audience can help you formulate PPC campaigns, whether you’re on Microsoft Ads or Google Ads, and align your strategy with that your audience’s lifestyle and preferences.

The typical demographic data you’d want includes:

• Age
• Average income
• Location
• Gender
• Interests

In terms of data, the more the better but make sure you picking out essential data. You also want to think about the type of product or service you’re selling and what will be relevant.

When it comes to audience targeting, it helps you to understand the buyer’s journey and what they’re looking for when they’re on the internet. It ensures you’re using your marketing resources correctly and in the most effective way.

Audience targeting also has uses outside PPC. Companies like Netflix use its user data alongside AI to improve its recommendations and target the audiences most likely to watch specific shows. That’s how they boost viewerships numbers.

How does audience targeting work?

Audience targeting has two main elements in terms of data:

• First-party data includes everything a business has directly captured its customer’s interests and behaviours. This is usually collected with cookies, small pieces of data sent from websites to a user’s computer and stored by their browser.
• Third-party data includes information obtained from an outside source. As this hasn’t been collected by the business that obtains it, third-party data may need to be filtered before it can be used for audience targeting.

With both forms of data, you can then segment them based on your goals and the demographic groups they fall under. You can also assign them buyer personas to improve personalisation.

Both forms of data are needed in order to create an effective PPC ad. First-party data is something that most businesses will have access to and use the most as it’s cheaper, but third-party data can bring in information that may not have been available without more money, time, or resources.

Benefits of audience targeting

Publishing ads without consideration for potential audiences is a waste of money. What you need are high-quality leads that maintain and increase ROI (return on investment) for your business and that needs some effort and data analysis. Here are some of the key benefits of audience targeting.

Maximising your time and resources

Focusing on specific groups of people help you save time and resources for bigger tasks. For budget management, this is essential and strengthens long-term strategies. You might also have limited resources and, therefore, you need quick and effective solutions. With audience targeting, you’ve got the opportunity to focus your ads to make those impressions count and convert browsers into customers.

Optimising the sales funnel

When it comes to sales funnels, anything you can do to increase your chances of turning a click into a completed goal. There’s a lot of digital touchpoints that marketers need to go through until they reach the post-purchase stage.

Audience targeting skips some of those steps by doing the legwork for the potential buyer. When they have something that they need or want to pop up in front of them at the right time, they might skip straight to the purchase stage of the funnel.

Improving customer retention

Repeat custom is arguably more important than acquiring new customers as it can lead to customer loyalty and free promotion to new customers by word-of-mouth. By having customers that stick around beyond that initial transaction, they’ll come to you for their needs or interests and they are more likely to stick around.

Audience targeting covers that by honing in on what your audiences need and providing them with the right product or service.

Types of targeting

There are different types of targeting:

• Search targeting – where ads appear on SERPs
• Display targeting – where ads appear on display networks like Google Display Network and Microsoft Audience Network
• Inventory targeting – where ads are placed on sites that offer the specific type of content that is often visited by the consumer.
• User targeting – where ads are served to those who have displayed a particular behaviour or interest.

These can be broken down into segmentation strategies and divided into externally measurable characteristics. Behavioural targeting focuses on how and what users consume on the internet as well as their behavioural patterns. For example, that could involve their past purchases and browsing history.

Using a CRO tool like Hotjar can also help identify and collect some of this data.

How to target the right users

Audience targeting can take time. It can often be a case of trailing your way through each advertising campaign until your performance improves. There are decisions you can make as a business to improve your efforts such as conducting polls or analyzing your data. However, there are two methods that should be at the top of your priority list.

Audience exclusions

Audience exclusions remove sections of your target audience to help create a smaller group of targeted individuals that are highly relevant to what you’re trying to advertise. Doing this means you’ll be able to reach higher-quality leads, increases conversions, reduces costs, and avoids any issues with ad deliveries. The types of audience exclusions you can do are as follows:

• Take away those existing customers that are currently in your target audience.
• Exclude audience members that you’ve already pinned for a different advert campaign and who are more relevant to that.
• Remove those website visitors that have already performed an action that you wanted them to do.

In-market audiences

Another way of targeting the right users is through in-market audiences, which connect consumers who are already researching or comparing products and services across the internet. Being able to take advantage of real-time data, it helps your ad to appear at the right moment.

In-market audiences can drive incremental conversions, helping you to connect with consumers as the last step before they make a purchase decision. Leveraging real-time data and a powerful classification system based on demonstrated in-market behaviour, these segments can help you to present the right offer at the right moment to those most interested in your products and services. Use in-market audiences in combination with remarketing to drive highly-qualified users to your site and improve overall remarketing efficiency for your campaign.

Google on the benefits of in-market audiences

Customer Match

With customer match, it allows you to use your online and offline data to help reach and re-engage with your audience. Using information that customers have shared with you can help Customer Match to target ads to those customers who’ll benefit from them. It’s a useful advertising tool in order to help better your audience targeting and improve your PPC advertising efforts.

Remarketing

Remarketing can allow you to advertise to those individuals who have already visited your website, your mobile app or in your CRM databases. By being able to remarket towards those who are already familiar to your business or brand can help to give that extra little push the consumer might need to proceed with a purchase.

Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA)

RSLAs let you tailor your paid search campaigns based on people who have previously viewed your website or interacted with your mobile app. With an RLSA campaign, you can use your audience lists for your search campaign to help bid on those keywords that you wouldn’t normally bid on.

RLSA with Dynamic Search Ads (RDSA)

This form of remarketing combines RLSAs with Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs). DSA campaigns are where you’re providing Google Ads with your homepage, and Google helps create categories based on how your site has been indexed. These categories can then be targeted, and description lines for your ad can be created. Google then creates the best landing page that matches a user’s search with a dynamic headline to help pull in more traffic.

What does success look like?

When it comes success with PPC audience targeting, it’s worth looking at the conversion rates and how quickly your consumers work their way through the funnel. If your target audience is shrinking, but your engagement is growing, then that can be another measure of success and a sign that your ROI will increase. Being more in-tune with who your customers are and what they like will ultimately garner more success when your target them.

Audience targeting is just one of the many options that can help when it comes to improving the success and performance of your PPC ads. It can hold a big influence over how targeted your advertisements come and to help save your business time and money with more effective campaigns.

TL;DR

• There are two key ways to advertise your business on Google, the first is through organic search rankings which you improve through SEO.
• The second is through PPC advertising, which gets your business seen by the right audience at the right time.
• To improve your PPC campaigns, you need to research the keywords that your customers are using and target your adverts to the exact location you need.
• You can also boost your success by adding ad extensions and testing winning ad combinations.

There are 3.5 billion Google searches every single day.

It’s a hard number to visualise. But it shows how much we use and rely on Google. The thing is, people don’t just search Google for fun. Or to find the name of ‘that actor’ that has just slipped from their mind.

They use Google to buy. It’s how people start their purchasing journey, it’s how they find products that they’re interested in and local businesses that can carry out the service they are looking for.

Getting your business on Google is a key cornerstone for your marketing.

But simply being listed on Google isn’t enough. If you want to get visitors clicking through to your site, you’ll need to appear at the top of the results for better results.

The results in Position #1 have an average click-through rate (CTR) of 35%. If you’re in second position, it halves to 15%.

The two types of search to help you advertise your business on Google

For any business looking to promote themselves online, there are two ways they can do that on Google: organically and with paid ads. Getting onto Google amongst the ads or the organic listings is one thing but having a sustainable strategy to keep you there is another.

Organic search rankings

These are the normal search listings on Google. If you’re wondering how you can advertise on Google for free, this is your answer.

If you want to increase your organic search rankings, you need an SEO strategy.

But be warned.

Even though you’re not spending money, you still need to invest time on your SEO strategies. What’s more, it can be months before you start reaping the rewards of your hard work.

PPC advertising

Google Ads appear at the top of Google search pages, before the organic search results. This gives you instant results and attention from your users, without months of hard SEO work.

It works like this:

1. You create your ads, set your bids and choose your keywords. 
2. A user searches in Google, containing one of your keywords. 
3. Google then enters your ad into an auction process, where it looks at the bids, Quality Score and Ad Rank of each advert to determine what’s shown and where. 

And that’s it. That’s how your user sees your advert.

Not sure what your Ad Rank and Quality Score are?

Don’t worry. They’re simply how Google measures the quality of your ads to ensure that only the best get shown.

It means that top spot doesn’t just go to the ones willing to pay more.

If you create top-quality adverts and increase your Quality Score, you’ll reap better rewards and could even save yourself money.

Ready to boost your profits through PPC ads?

We already have a post on ways to win with Google Ads. But here are some quick tips to take away.

Choose your network

Google Ads gives you two options for where your ads show:

• The Search Network. This is made up from the Google search results, as well as advertising on Google Maps, Google Shopping and text ads on partner sites such as YouTube. 
• The Display Network. This lets you advertise on over 2 million websites as well as apps and platforms like Gmail, using a variety of formats including images and videos.

The different networks are great for targeting users at different places in their buying journey.

The Display Network is perfect for raising awareness of your company and plant the seed of buying. Unfortunately, not all seeds take root and you might find that it takes a while before it flowers into a purchase.

If you’re just starting out or want to focus on sales, the Search Network will be a better option for you.

It’s perfect for targeting those who are further along their buying journey and more likely to purchase. That’s because they’re actively searching for products or services in Google. They already know what they want, they just need somewhere to get it from.

That’s where you step in with your ads.

Set your location 

When it comes to PPC advertising, you don’t want your advert showing to every Tom, Dick and Harry out there.

It may seem like a good idea to target as many eyes as possible, but it’s actually a great way to waste your budget instead.

That’s because not everyone is interested in your product or service. If you’re advertising to people who aren’t your customers, you’re never going to earn any revenue back from them. That’s a simple fact.

You should only advertise to your potential customers.

There are a few targeting options you can use for this, but location targeting is one of the best.

Let’s use an example. Say you’re a bakery in Cambridge, who provides delicious made-to-order pastries and cakes that are available to deliver within 5 miles of your store.

There is absolutely no point showing your adverts to anyone in Edinburgh. You don’t deliver that far away, and no matter how divine your puff pastry is, it’s extremely unlikely they’ll drive for 6 hours to take a bite.

Set your budget

The first step to setting your Google Ads budget is calculating your marketing budget.

This will let you know how much money you have available to dedicate and spend on your ads. But deciding how much to set your budget as can be intimidating. After all, you don’t want to blow your entire budget on a campaign that doesn’t work.

But that’s not going to happen with our expert tips, is it?

To set the right budget, you not only need to work out how much is available – but also how much you’re willing to spend on leads and conversions.

Let’s say that you spend £10 per lead.

Now if your leads were making you £500 in sales – this is a good price to pay. But, if each lead only led to a £5 purchase then your business is losing revenue big time.

It might be trial and error while you figure out what works and what doesn’t. So, take it slow and steady until you get the insights to take your campaigns to the next level.

It’s also best practice to select standard ad delivery – which spread your adverts throughout the day and give you data on what times work best for your business.

If you need help monitoring your budget, setting up automated rules is a great way to keep an eye on things 24/7. You can set ads to turn off when a certain limit is reached and get notified of any changes via email. The Adzooma platform offers this along with many other features, so if you think this is something that could help you, why not find out more?

Choose your keywords

Keywords are your Google Ads building blocks.

Here’s how they work.

1. You choose keywords that describe your ad. So if you’re a decorator, you might choose keywords like “decorator”, “painter” or “decorator in Birmingham”.  
2. A user searches for something on Google, using one of your keywords. 
3. Google now knows you might be a good match for this search – and enters you into the auction process. 
4. Your advert is now placed in front of the user, ready for them to click. Woo!

The only problem? If you don’t choose the right keywords, your adverts aren’t going to appear in the right searches.

That’s why it’s important to get them right.

But before you run off and press the big old red panic button, choosing your keywords isn’t as hard as you may think. Trust us.

Start off by thinking about your customers and what they’re likely to be searching for. Then, use Google’s keyword planner or SEMRush to find out the basics about your keywords, including how much they’re likely to cost you, the search volume and the competition you’ll be facing.

You can also use it to find other suggestions for keywords that you might not have thought of before. With SEMRush, you can find out what keywords your competitors are bidding on.

The keyword planner is your friend. No, seriously it is. So use it.

Write winning adverts 

Get the marching bands ready to roll! It’s time to write your very own adverts.

Okay, let’s break it down.

Your standard Google Ads text advert is made up of the following elements:

• Your headline. This is the attention-grabber for your audience. On each text ad, you’re allowed up to 3 headlines of 30 characters. But make sure they all make sense on their own – as all 3 might not show to your users. 
• Your display URL. This isn’t the exact URL that you send your customers to, but the one that they’ll see on the ads. So, use it as an opportunity to clean up any odd numbers or words that make it look untidy and confusing. For example, www.catsinhats.com is much more trustworthy than www.catsinhats.com/whitecats/bighat-78371-googleads.
• Your description. This is the small text that goes underneath your headline, giving you an extra space to get across why customers need your business and products. You’re allowed two descriptions of 90 characters. 

It isn’t many characters. But you’ll soon become an expert at writing in a short and snappy way.

Just don’t waste your limited space with bland and vague copy.

Make your ads engaging, motivating and exciting. Get specific and don’t try to sell your entire inventory in 90 characters.

Got a benefit or something unique for your customers? Tell them about it!

Take a look at these two examples for a local photographer. Which one are you more likely to click on?

Example A:

Example B:

Answer: It’s B.

That’s because it’s more specific to one service (wedding photos) outlining the benefits loud and clear. It doesn’t try to please everyone like A, but instead tells you why you need them.

That will earn you more clicks, each and every time.

Use extensions 

Ad extensions allow you to add extra features and information to your adverts. This is perfect for getting more eyes and attention on your ads – which can lead to more clicks.

In fact, ad extensions can improve your CTR (click-through rate) by 10-15%.

The best thing? They’re 100% free.

For more in-depth information, read our full guide on ad extensions.

And the final tip?

To achieve Google Ads success, you need to monitor and test your campaigns.

This is how you tell what’s working, what isn’t and where you can make changes to boost your success. It’s essential not just for Google Ads, but every marketing campaign that you’re carrying out.

But, spending hours trawling through this data is hard. It’s time-consuming, confusing and difficult to understand.

We’ve got an easier way.

Adzooma analyses your account, carrying out custom-checks and crunching the raw data for you. It then transforms this into opportunities to better your campaigns, which you can apply in seconds.

Often, all it takes is a single click. So try Adzooma today.