With any Google Ads campaign, it’s important to improve your KPIs where possible. But how do you know if your campaign is performing well or not if you don’t have anything to compare it to?

There are reports that can assess your campaign performance, but if you don’t know the average CTR for your industry, you could be running campaigns that just aren’t hitting the mark like they should.

In this article, we’ll cover what CTR is, how it’s calculated, if there’s such a thing as a ‘good’ CTR, as well as how to improve CTR.

What is CTR? 

CTR stands for click-through rate and measures the percentage of clicks an ad gets based on its total number of impressions. An ‘impression’ can be defined as each time an ad is visible on a page, and therefore when an ad is seen.

It’s commonly used to measure the success of an online advertising campaign for a particular website as well as the effectiveness of email campaigns.

Why do click-through rates matter?

Some of the benefits of CTR that tie into the success and cost-effectiveness of a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign include: 

• CTRs are linked to Quality Score – the higher your CTR, the better your Quality Score and the cheaper it is to maintain ad position. A high Quality Score is one of the biggest indicators of success in PPC.
• CTR is also a factor in a keyword’s expected CTR, which is part of Ad Rank (ie, what determines your ad’s position on the search results page).
• If you are advertising on relevant queries, achieving a high click-through rate means that you’re driving the highest possible number of people to your offering.

It’s a continuous cycle and click-through rates are a tangible measurement that keeps it turning.

How is click-through rate calculated? The CTR formula 

Click-through rate is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions and then multiplied by 100 to convert the number into a percentage. 

For a PPC ad that drives 1,000 impressions and 75 clicks, for example, the click-through rate is 7.5% based on the following calculation:

(75 ÷ 1000 = 0.075) x 100 = 7.5%

CTR is used as a better metric over clicks because it shows the rate of success. 1,000 clicks is a lot for a campaign with 5,000 impressions but not so good for a campaign with 500,000 impressions.

What is a good CTR? 

To assess what is considered a good CTR, the best place to start is by looking at specific industries and their averages. 

Defining your CTR by industry is important because they can differ significantly.

According to Google Ads industry benchmarks for 2021, the average CTR across all industries is 5.06% for search and 0.5% for display when it comes to Google’s industry benchmarks for 2021. Some of the best performing industries include:

• Travel and tourism (7.83%)
• Vehicles (7.35%)
• Dining and nightlife (6.63%)
• Real estate (6.19%)

This data shows you a benchmark to compare yourself to. Your CTR might not have seemed so high in isolation but if it’s performing higher than the industry average, that’s cause for celebration.

The problem with averages is they’re affected by outliers. If a campaign over/underperforms, the average is pulled up or down, and those anomalies could be due to things like seasonality or unexpected events like the COVID-19 pandemic affecting searches.

A ‘good’ CTR depends on several factors, specific to your business and the ad campaigns themselves. You also want to focus on your industry and check what the average is so that you have a good benchmark to work off of when trying to improve your CTR percentage.

If your account is connected to Adzooma you’ll also see a better CTR, since you can use the Opportunities feature to enhance your results.

From the analysis we found for both Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, the click-through rate for the accounts connected to the Adzooma platform was around 6% and 3.7% respectively, which if you’re up on your industry averages, far exceeds the 1.91% and 2.83% you’re expected to see.

So, while you want to aim for a ‘high’ click-through rate, it’s worth bearing in mind that it will vary by industry, and your expected CTR will depend on your ad’s position, among other factors.

Equally, it’s best not to use your industry average as a hard-and-fast rule. It’s one of several guides to assess your performance but ultimately, your own goals should be your priority.

How to improve CTR

Improving your CTR can be done in a number of ways. You can: 

• Improve and optimize your ad copy 
• Make the keywords you are bidding on more specific and targeted
• Reach your target audience by placing your ad campaigns in front of those you want attention from
• Test your ads more, especially A/B testing
• Understand your audience, whether that’s learning their language and jargon, to talking to your customers directly to see what they want

You can also increase click-through rate with Adzooma Opportunities when you sign up to our free PPC marketing tool.

The tool allows you to monitor your ad campaign, check your CTR and impressions, and enhance the success of your campaign through specific performance suggestions. These include things like adding new keywords, optimizing your ad rotation settings, and increasing device bid adjustments.

It’ll also show you how much time and money these direct suggestions will save your campaign, so you can maximize your results.

FAQs

What is CTR on YouTube? 

Simply put, click-through rate for YouTube is the number of clicks, divided by the number of thumbnail impressions, or how many times your video thumbnail is seen on YouTube. Multiply by 100 to get your percentage. For example, if your YouTube thumbnail is seen 1,000 times on YouTube and 100 people then click on it, that’s a click-through rate of 0.1 or 10%.

It’s worth noting that some views don’t count towards impressions, like views on external websites or from end screens, so because of this, your impressions CTR more likely represents a portion of your channel’s total views.

CTR on YouTube will vary depending on the type of content you produce, your audience, and where on YouTube the impression was shown. It’s said that half of all channels have an impressions CTR of between 2% – 10%, with a ‘good’ CTR being 5% and above.

That being said, this is just an average, and other factors need to be taken into consideration – including your subscriber base, your niche, number of views, and how old the video content is.

Why is my CTR so low? 

If you’re asking yourself why your CTR is so low, a number of different factors could be affecting it. These include:

• Ad copy that is of poor quality, or doesn’t reflect the offering
• Lack of targeted keywords
• Ads that are irrelevant to the target audience
• Targeting the wrong target audience to begin with, or not speaking their language
• Uninspiring creatives
• Poor Quality Score (based on the quality of your keywords, copy and landing pages, as well as CTR)
• Not testing your ads frequently enough
• Not using ad extensions

Essentially, it means users aren’t finding your ad relevant, while a good CTR, shows that your ad is proving relevant and useful.

If you’re struggling with a low CTR, try our Opportunities tool when you create a free account with Adzooma. It highlights ways you can instantly optimize and improve your ad campaign, which in turn will bolster your CTR.

When is a low CTR ok?

It’s not always the case that a ‘good’ or ‘high’ CTR should be your main KPI or objective.

In fact, sometimes, it’s actually ok to have a low CTR. If, for example, you’re bidding on an ambiguous keyword, for which there could be multiple meanings and purposes, it might be harder to get a higher CTR.

That said, if you do get a lot of leads from that keyword, at a good cost, then go with it. 

After all, it can be just as problematic having a high CTR, but low conversions, since you could end up paying for clicks that don’t turn into customers.

So, in essence, as long as your keywords and ads are performing well as per your business objectives, don’t worry too much over a CTR that’s slightly on the low side. It’s just one of many metrics to take into consideration.

With anything you do in business, it’s important to have an action plan and know how to get there. Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) can help you reach those goals but you need to know what keywords to target in your ads. Keywords are the foundation for everything in PPC. But without effective and comprehensive research, you could be building your campaigns on sinking sand instead of solid stone.

What are PPC keywords?

Keywords are words or phrases that users search for on search engines like Google or Bing. When creating paid ads, you aim to target keywords so when people search for them, your ads appear at the top of the page. There are different types of keywords that you can have, and all can provide influence over how effective your PPC campaign is.

There are keyword types like:

• Branded keywords that include company names
• Generic keywords that cover ambiguous terms
• Transactional keywords that cover both strong and weak purchase intent
• Locational keywords that cover a location and are great for those location-based companies
• Informational keywords that cover people who are simply looking for information

You also have service/product-specific keywords and keywords with high intent (related to discounts or special days).

When you’re creating ad groups (which we’ll touch on later), it’s important to consider these keywords types and how you want to group them together.

Why is PPC keyword research so important?

PPC campaigns are more powerful with effective keyword research and the importance of research shouldn’t be overlooked. Here are 3 reasons why you should make it a priority:

1. It helps you to budget and forecast your cost-per-click (CPC)

Keyword research can help you figure out the right budget for your PPC campaign by letting you plan ahead with what you can and can’t spend and ways of working around it with alternative keywords. That prevents overspend and miscalculation, saving money in the long run.

2. It helps you to achieve campaign goals

As I said earlier, PPC campaigns should have goals that you want to achieve and keyword research can help you achieve them. It’s all about organisation and strategy.

3. Increasing ROI (Return On Investment)

And of course, return on investment, as every ad contributes to it and ultimately keyword research boosts your chances of achieving the best ROI

How to conduct your research

There’s more than one way to do keyword research, but I want to take you through the approach we take at Adzooma, a practice which has been honed on a daily basis since our inception in 2015.

Our PPC team at Adzooma is an experienced one. Altogether, we have over 30 years worth of experience in PPC ads, while pretty much everyone at Adzooma has some kind of PPC knowledge (being a PPC platform and all!). So we know the importance of keyword research in the pursuit of true PPC success.

Know yourself

Before starting on the process of finding the right keyword, to begin you need to look at yourself and ask the question, “What do I want from this campaign?”.

• Do you want more people to know about your brand?
• Do you want to take clients away from your competitor?
• Do you just simply want to sell more stuff?

Write down your answers and critically assess them. Think about what you want to achieve and why. Think about what’s important to your business right now, what your main goal is, what you want more than anything. These are business-level goals, but to make your PPC strategy successful, those business-level goals need to be attended to and worked upon. Ultimately, you need to make sure you’re not working in a silo.

From there, worm your way down. Think about your audience, your content strategy and revise (or create) your customer personas. If these are three things you’ve done recently then great. If not, this is a vital step you can’t overlook, but one that will take time.

Therefore, familiarise yourself with this article we did with the University of Cambridge on Content Strategy, it’ll help you with the strategy behind the keyword. Because to get keyword research right, you need to know who you want to target and how you want to target them.

Research, research, research

Once you’ve taken the time out to get to know yourself and what you want, then it’s time to move on to something that seems a little more tangible, and that’s getting those keywords out from your mind and onto paper.

Trying to think of every keyword you want for each campaign for each task is a tough task, so to begin, jot down a few categories which you can put each keyword into. Here are some examples for a made up travel company called Tomsa:

• Branded keywords – Keywords that are specific to you and your business/brand (e.g. Tomsa, Tomsa holidays, Tomsa fly drives)
• Service / product specific keywords – Keywords that are related to what you’re offering (e.g. Holidays to the Caribbean, Route 66 Fly Drives, Brazil holidays)
• Feature specific keywords – Keywords that focus on a particular offer, deal on aspect of your service / product (e.g. Cheap USA holidays, best travel deals, low deposit cruise holidays)
• High intent keywords – The kind of keywords where users are further down the funnel and ready to buy (e.g. Book flights to Los Angeles, buy Norweigan cruise holiday, rent car in Barcelona)
• Related keywords – Keywords that further up the funnel that don’t directly point to your business (e.g. sights in Rome, theme parks in Florida, best ballparks in America)

Then begin thinking of keywords you can put into each category. Loads may flood to mind straight away and if they do, great, jot them all down, but if they don’t. There are plenty of great ways to inspire some inspiration.

Once upon a time, you needed to use 5 tools to conduct your keyword research, but these days, so much of it can just be done via Google with their vast array of ever-increasing features and browser extensions.

Just look at their auto completion feature, it’s a goldmine for PPCers. This what I get when I just type in Los Angeles:

Sure, not everything there is super relatable, but some of it is, and they’re just two words with no context. Look what happens when I type in Los Angeles holiday:

Gold. You can do this by trying different variants for hours and you’d still be coming up with great stuff. You don’t have to just take these ideas too, have a look at what Google comes back with and then have a think of what variants you can come up with from there.

Then take a look at what your competitors are doing too. You might get some really interesting insights, especially for your feature specific keywords.

Like here, where Virgin are promoting their ATOL Protection and Ambecrombie & Kent are promoting their booking flexibility. Not only can this kind of research help what kind of keywords you go for, but it can also help inspire the ad copy for your PPC ads and even help shape your business’ offering too.

If you’re struggling for service/product specific keywords, go a bit more granular and search for the whole of your competitor’s site with a generic keyword like so (of course these are organic results, but they’re no less relatable):

Then utilise aforementioned Chrome extensions too like the free Keyword Surfer. Every time you do a search on Google when you have this extension activated it’ll give you a list of keyword ideas related to the one you searched for with a similarity percentage and keyword volume like so:

It also tells you in the search box the estimated Google Ads price for this keyword and the search volume too, and this is super important when you’re doing keyword research. It’s alright having loads of ideas jotted down related to your business, but if no one’s searching for those keywords, you’re not going to get any clicks or conversions.

Sorting Your Keywords

So that brings us on to the next part of the task. Sorting and ranking your proposed keywords.

The easiest way to start off is by chucking all your keyword ideas into Google’s Keyword Planner (you need an account to use it – here’s how you can sign up if you haven’t already). The reason for doing this first is because the Keyword Planner will show you the potential keywords’ cost and search volume.

Then, export the data into a CVS format and import it into a Google Sheet. Here you’ll have all your hard work along with Google’s hard work, and you can then start making those all important decisions of which ones you want to go forward with.

What we at Adzooma do from there is create additional columns for Category, Intent, Priority and Relevancy.

This should give you everything you need. If this is your first Google Ads campaign, take it easy on the keywords so it’s easy to monitor and choose the ones that look like they’re going to work out best for you and your business. You can always add more at a later date.

Optimising and Refining

Once your campaigns are up, there’s no setting and forgetting. Whether you’re a veteran or a beginner, you always have to be on top of your campaigns. Even if your keywords look like they’re doing well, there’s always room for improvement with Google Ads.

Refining, optimising and adding new keywords is a continuous process, but once your first keywords and campaigns are up fortunately you don’t have to go through the whole research process again with tools like Adzooma.

Once you’ve connected your Google or Microsoft ad accounts to the Adzooma platform for free, using the Opportunities feature the tool automatically takes a look at your performance over the last 30 days to identify new keywords that will lead to an increase in clicks and conversions.

This is how it works:

• Using the last 30 days of data, Adzoomas identifies keywords that have the best clickthrough rate (CTR) in an Ad Group
• It generates a list of similar keywords
• It estimates the number of clicks these similar keywords will get
• The top ten keywords get suggested

This makes the whole process super easy and gives you so much time back in your working week.

Also in the Opportunities tab, you’ll see other actions you can take in the Improve Performance section that will help with ongoing keyword performance, like the example below:

Once you’ve clicked details you’ll see a little bit more info.

These keyword Opportunities are generated based on previous performance data which is analysed by our platform. From that analysis, it provides you an estimated impression and click uplift that you’d receive should you take the actions.

To add them to your campaign, you just need to click Add To Queue which saves you a whole chunk of time and effort in the research stage – approximately 2 hours according to our platform!

Google Ads search term report controversy

With Google’s recent change to its Google Ads search report, it’s now even more important to get your PPC keyword research right. In September 2020, Google Ads updated its search terms report to only display terms that were searched by a “significant number of users”. The decision has left many PPC marketers upset at the potential effect to their budgets.

A case study by Bethany Bey showed a reduction in the number of ad clicks in the report, from 95% in August to 33% in September. In terms of cost visibility, In August, she could see 93% of search ad spend but in September, it fell to 37%.

That means almost two-thirds of our current budget is being spent on search terms we can’t see, can’t evaluate, and can’t exclude from our campaigns without a lot of work.

Negative keywords

Negative keywords are something many advertisers aren’t using for their PPC campaigns but they should. They prevent your ads from being triggered if a user searches for those terms. They ensure your ads are only shown to people who are likely to click and convert and saves your budget.

A good way of making a negative keyword list is to look at your main keywords and anything that isn’t relevant or appears on there, note it as a negative. The more you add, the more wasted clicks you could be saving.

Here’s our in-depth guide to negative keywords for you to cast your eye over.

PPC keyword tools

Away from Google’s Keyword Planner, there are some other fantastic keyword research tools to take advantage of, with lots of capabilities outside the confines of PPC.

If you want to know about tools specific to Google Ads, you should read our article on the best Google Ads tools.

Semrush

Semrush hosts one of the best tools suites in digital marketing and offers a great keyword tool for PPC marketers. Its PPC keyword tool can find missing keywords that your competitors are bidding on, search its database for relevant keywords and manage them into groups, and you can create your own charts for further analysis.

Mangools

Mangools Keyword Finder is a great tool to find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty. It allows you to find keywords that you can easily rank for, see what your competitors rank for and get search volumes with historical data.

How keyword research can help PPC and SEO

The main difference between PPC keywords and SEO keywords is the former is paid and the latter is free. But while the intentions and methods may be different, the research is effectively the same. At the end of the day, you’re aiming to get a good keyword list and entice users to your site with them.

It’s important for both that you are starting off with a list of starting terms (shorter tail in SEO, more specific in PPC since you’re paying for them and generic keywords eat up your budget). that you’re then expanding this list using keyword research tools, and then refining it with competitive research. This is a process that can be used when it comes to both PPC and SEO.

The more effort you can make on keyword research, the better your SEO will become when it comes to your website and helping your website and pages rank better.

SKAGs (single keyword ad groups) or STAGs (single theme ad groups)?

SKAGs (single keyword ad groups) are ad groups with one keyword in them. On the surface, that sounds counterproductive.

Why would you have an ad group with just one keyword in it?

The advantage of SKAGs used to be more control, higher performance, and a better Quality Score. They also made sure keywords in every ad matched the queries that triggered them and avoided the errors that came about from Dynamic Keyword Insertion (which has since been mitigated by Responsive Search Ads).

But the power of SKAGs has waned and they aren’t generally as effective as they used to be. A 2017 change in how match types work essentially killed off their effectiveness, paving the way for a new type of ad group: single theme ad groups, or STAGs.

STAGs (single theme ad groups) allow you to have multiple keywords in ad groups that are chosen around certain themes. These are easier to maintain because the keywords are grouped together and result in fewer, but more effective ads.

With SKAGs, you had more ad groups to monitor. But with STAGs, you keep the themes of your keywords close together and that can improve click-through rates (CTRs) for your PPC campaign.

Keyword research makes the creation of STAGs much easier as you can focus on one theme and, with tools like Semrush’s Keyword Manager, group them all together.

Further resources

• How To Use A Keyword Planner To Maximise Profits For Your Business
• What Are Google Ads Keyword Match Types?
• Are branded keywords just a huge waste of money?
• How to research Black Friday and Christmas keywords for SEO and PPC
• Why You Should Cross The Streams of PPC & SEO Using Hike SEO
• How To Identify And Beat Your PPC Competition
• How to Conduct a Full PPC Audit

And finally…

It’s clear to see that PPC keyword research is really effective, whatever your approach. So, to recap:

• Consider the cost-effective and time-saving benefits of PPC keyword research and make it an essential part of your campaign building and management
• Leverage the power of negative keywords
• Use the best tools available and find the most relevant keywords for your campaigns
• Think about how keyword research can help PPC and SEO together
• Consider the idea of STAGs

Happy researching!

You’ll have access to shopping strategist teams and state-of-the-art resources to build the best Google Shopping campaign. If it’s help you’re after, here are 5 of the best Google Shopping agencies.

1. Rok Systems LTD – (Adzooma Recommended)

Location: Southport, UK

Whether you want to maximise your ROI with Google’s latest Smart Strategies or reduce your ad spend, Rok Systems Ltd can assist you.

You are missing out on a huge source of revenue if your products aren’t displaying in online shopping feeds. Rok Systems know exactly how to optimise your products and your technology so that you can take advantage of this second storefront and get in front of an audience that’s itching to buy.

2. Commerce Shop

Location: Atlanta, US

If you want to work with some of the best shopping strategist teams, you could try Commerce Shop. With their dedicated support, you can ensure the maximum exposure of your products. The Commerce Shop team are experts in how PPC works and how to set the right bid.

They will also help in creating optimum copy and title for your shopping ads in order to get the best results. Your products will also be split into relevant campaigns in order to maximise ROI.

In order to ensure your campaign is working for you, Commerce Shop carries out constant analysis along the way. Commerce Shop achieves 24/7 campaign monitoring using automation and state-of-the-art software. They also use special techniques to make sure your shopping ads reach the right people.

If you’re looking to improve your Google Shopping campaign the expert team can give you all the advice you need.  

3. Lead Horse

Location: Atlanta, US

Shopping Ads are complicated to run at times and Lead Horse is there to help small businesses get it right. If you’re aren’t satisfied with the results from your current campaign you could try consulting a Google Shopping agency such as Lead Horse.

They’ll be able to offer tailored, business-specific advice and consultation. Their approach is to get as much information about your business as possible, thus being able to create a custom strategy for you. This means optimising your shopping ads for the right audience in order to maximise ROI.

They also focus on your particular business goals and help you determine these in order to succeed. 

Lead Horse will optimise your Google shopping network campaign by also checking out your competitors. It’s important to know what the competition is up in order to get ahead of them.

Lead Horse focuses on a leads analysis strategy in order to help you achieve your targets. If there’s something missing from your current campaign, then the experts at Lead Horse will try to discover what it is.

4. Zato Marketing

Location: Montana, US

Google Shopping can be confusing and Zato Marketing are here to help. Many small businesses can get their heads around paid search but Google Shopping is a little more tricky.

Zato Media are experts in optimising the use of paid search and Google Shopping together. They also keep your shopping ads up to date with the latest trends. 

Zato Media are experienced in how the Google shopping network functions. They make sure your shopping ads strategy follows any of the latest platform changes and take care of your budget to guarantee you get the right attention from the right customers.

Zato Media offers a boutique service tailored to your business. They’re experts in PPC marketing across various channels so have a good understanding of Google Shopping, and how to optimise this for your business.

5. Clicks

Location: Berlin, Germany

Clicks can offer your business the Google Shopping help it needs. Clicks will take care of the quality of your data feed, along with the setup and maintenance of your Google Shopping campaign. Clicks also offer assistance with Merchant offer setup and creating the basis for truly effective Google Shopping ads.

If you would like the entire responsibility of your Google Shopping campaign taken off your hands, then Clicks can sort it out for you from ad creation to continued optimisation.

Clicks also offer to increase the visibility of your shopping ads using the Google CSS program. They also ensure all of your copy, images, and title meets the Google Shopping guidelines at all times.

If you’re finding it difficult to stay on top of your Google Shopping campaign then a Google Shopping agency such as Clicks can ensure your shopping ads are always up to date. They will perform constant analysis as well in order optimise them further for your target audience.

Conclusion

A top Google Shopping Agency might be just what your company needs to generate more business online. It’s time to get those ads working for you. Why not get your shopping ads to the top spots with the help of an agency of experts? With the dedicated support of shopping strategist teams, you could really optimise your Google Shopping network campaign.

And if you need an agency to help with the rest of your strategy, visit Adzooma Marketplace today and find the right service for your business. You can find the Google Shopping help you need from experts in eCommerce and digital marketing.

And if you fancy using scripts, we have a guide to Google Shopping scripts too.

Bing was initially launched in 2001 as ‘Live Search’ and is owned and operated by Microsoft. Its size and scale make it a powerful search engine for users opting for an alternative to Google.

Google is the world’s leading search engine, launching in 1998. Even the saying ‘Google it’ refers to the act of using a search engine to find the answer to a query, regardless of what search engine will actually be used.

To give you a better understanding of the two search engines, the similarities and differences of the two shall be explored, including how differently Bing search and Google search can be used by advertisers.

A brief history

Google

Google started in 1996 as a universty research project by Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Scott Hassan when they studied at Stanford. Hassan worked as the search engine’s original lead programmer and left before the company went public.

It was originally named “BackRub” referencing its use of backlinks to order links on its search results pages. This was part of its algorithm called PageRank which is still used in the background today, helping to determine site relevance for organic listings.

In 1997, Page and Brin registered the Google.com domain and went public a year later.

Bing

Bing started life as MSN Search in 1998, around the time Google became a company. Inktom, an internet software company, provided the search results. MSN Search comprised of a search engine, index, and web crawler.

In early 1999, MSN Search incorporated listings from Looksmart. There was also a period when results from AltaVista were used instead. By 2004, Microsoft built its own web crawler, updating its index weekly. It came out of beta in 2005.

A year later, MSN Search rebranded as Windows Live Search with tabs for the Web, news, images, music, desktop, local, and Microsoft Encarta (remember that?).

Then in 2007, Microsoft separated its search products from its Windows Live services and rebranded the service again as Live Search. It also merged with Microsoft adCenter (which later became Bing Ads and then Microsoft Ads.)

Microsoft rebranded its search services once more in May 2009, when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer revealed its new name: Bing.

In October 2020, Microsoft changed Bing’s name once again to Microsoft Bing.

Market share and features

Google is an absolute powerhouse that dominates the worldwide search engine industry. According to Statcounter, between June 2019 and June 2020, Google saw 91.75% of the world’s search share. Bing came in second with 2.75%. Other search engines including DuckDuckGo and Yahoo! achieved less than 40% of Bing’s share during this period.

However, in terms of the basic search functions, there is no difference between Google and Bing. Both can facilitate search via text, video, image and maps, along with a shopping feature and news feed.

The search engine results pages (SERPs)

Even how these search results appear on both of the platforms is similar. The first screenshot is of the search query “Adzooma” in a Google search result and the second on Bing.

Even the two navigation bars are of similar style, both offering a similar range of features including voice and image search.

Most importantly for your average internet user, the search process and results are generally the same. Simple enter keywords or search terms relevant to the product or service you are looking for and click search. No hassle, no fuss.

Search algorithms

Google

A notable difference between Bing and Google is with the openness of their search algorithms. Google is notoriously secretive about its algorithms—a source of comedy for many SEOs. As of April this year, Google is involved in a lawsuit where the plaintiff, a company named Foundem, requested access to its long-guarded algorithm secrets to prove bias against them.

But it’s not just one algorithm. Google’s ranking systems use a series of algorithms that look at a number of factors and ranking signals including:

• Words of the query
• Query relevance
• Expertise of sources
• Location

Some of these factors are weighted depending on the query type and the “freshness” of the content.

To help ensure that the algorithms continue performing, Google uses live tests and external Search Quality Raters who follow guidelines that reinforce the goals for its search algorithms.

Bing

Bing is a lot more open about its algorithms, going as far as making one of them open source. In 2019, Microsoft added its Space Partition Tree And Graph (SPTAG) algorithm to GitHub. The algorithm uses vector search and AI models to provide results based on search intent.

Other Bing search algorithm features include:

• Using click signals to improve accuracy of SERP listings (something Google has denied doing)
• Favouring the authority of older websites and content compared to newer sites
• Preferring sites with more qualitative backlinks and less focus on the quantity
• For online forums, Bing cites popularity and authority as trust signals as well as the quality of moderation

Google Ads vs Microsoft Advertising

Whilst the search side of things is very similar, there are many more differences when it comes to the advertising side of each platform.

For clarification, in 2019 Bing Ads changed its name to Microsoft Advertising. Google Ads was also previously named Google AdWords, before changing in 2018. It is not uncommon for people to use a mixture of both of the new and old names, with the name Google AdWords ingrained in the vocabulary of advertisers.

The main difference, and probably the most important to an advertiser, is the difference in CPC across the two platforms. Due to the difference in demand, CPC differs greatly between Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising.

The difference in costs can make Microsoft Advertising a much more feasible opportunity for advertisers with limited budgets looking to include paid search into their marketing activities. The opportunity for lower CPC also means a reduction in Cost Per Conversion, resulting in higher ROAS.

However it is worth remembering that whilst CPC may typically be lower on Microsoft Advertising, search volume is also typically lower too. This is a reflection of Bing’s lower search volume share in comparison to Google. So whilst conversions may come in cheaper, their volume may be low.

Other differences include:

• Demographics – Bing is used more by those with higher levels of education and of older age ranges, meaning that for the right advertiser this audience’s preference of Bing can be highly advantageous. In comparison, Google’s key demographics skew towards a younger and more technologically savvy audience.
• Networks – Google Ads offers advertisers the opportunity to advertise on both the Search and Display Network, whereas Microsoft Advertising only facilitates Search. This means that advertisers wishing to use image or rich media ads can only do so via Google Ads.
• Targeting – A current Microsoft Advertising Beta allows advertisers to target their ads via LinkedIn profile information including company, job function and industry. Once this is rolled out for all accounts, advertisers will be able to target their ads based on the profile data available via professional LinkedIn profiles for more precise targeting. As Microsoft owns LinkedIn, it is unlikely that this will ever be an available feature on Google Ads.
• Reach – As Microsoft owns Bing, Yahoo and AOL, ads are eligible to show on all 3 search engines.

For advertisers, there is no harm in using both platforms to advertise on. In fact, by using both platforms, they are ensuring that they are reaching a wider audience than just those using Google as their search engine.

The final result

Whilst Google is a clear leader for the search engine industry, Bing is continuously upping their game and becoming a more competitive force. And with more and more public issues regarding privacy, company ethics and corporate responsibility, Google is likely to lose more of it’s search share to Bing and similar competitors as time goes on.

Google and Bing only scratch the surface of search engines available for the general internet user, but by developing a working knowledge of the two, advertisers can reach the lion’s share of internet searches. Both platforms hold their value and any advertiser would be mistaken for only focusing on one.

Resources

• Search Engine Market Share Worldwide
• I Used Only Bing for 3 Months. Here’s What I Found—and What I Didn’t
• Bing vs. Google – A side-by-side comparison
• How To Optimise Your Microsoft Ads (Tips & Advice)
• Bing Announces New Design & Features For Webmaster Tools
• Google Is Not A Meritocracy
• Mythbusters: If You Use Google Ads, You Don’t Need Microsoft Advertising
• How Effective Are Microsoft Ads Compared To Google Ads?

It’s a process that many other PPC networks use to reconnect with potential customers who already showed an interest in your product or service. But there are nuanced differences between remarketing in Microsoft Ads and elsewhere.

In this article, we’ll look at those differences and how to optimise your remarketing campaigns for Microsoft Ads.

How to use remarketing in Microsoft Ads

Firstly, you need to place a UET (universal event tracking) tag across your website. This works for the entire Microsoft Search Network, including Yahoo! which will help you to keep track of all those that have visited your website.

If they have cookies enabled and they accept the conditions, you can see what they search for after they leave your website. So you can, therefore, remarket your products and services to fit their needs when they make more searches and perhaps more specific searches at that. 

The UET will allow you to put all visitors into the remarketing list, and the next time they search for something, your ad will be served to them. This is the basic premise.

Benefits of remarketing in Microsoft Ads

Remarketing is a great way to recapture potentially lost customers. But if they made a few more searches afterwards when they had more information about what they want, your ad could be better placed to feed them the product they need. 

The UET is already set up if you are tracking conversions so you can start remarketing straight away. You can reach a high-value audience with better lead generation, which allows you to reconnect with potential customers that are about to veer off to another competitor.

The most obvious benefit is that you have a greater ROI. Your return on investment skyrockets because you can optimize your ads, easy bid strategies, get better keywords and allow you to decrease both click-off rates at the checkout and the bounce rate from pages that seemingly didn’t satisfy their needs.

Different audience types

Microsoft In-Market Audiences

You can find curated lists that users have made for certain types of products and purchases made in a particular category. Essentially, it narrows down the searches and gives you a list of the things that users directly search for. Therefore you don’t need to build your list from your own research.

Microsoft Custom Audiences

A custom audience is a remarketing list that is generated purely using your customer data. This creates a much wealthier audience segment for each user. It’s a database that you can add to, take away and make it more personal.

The data management provider allows you to import your lists, with customer audience features. This then makes it easier for you to customize your segments to each customer.

Then you can give each one on your list a purchase history, tenure, a lifetime value, i.e. loyal customer status and little details such as the amount of purchase made last time, when, and what kind of products they are most likely to shop for currently.

Microsoft Product Audiences

This takes feedback from a campaign to the next level. The product-specific remarketing is dynamic and can change very quickly. Rather than focusing on making large consumer profiles, you are merely reacting to what the audience is telling you with their purchase intentions or habits.

Users that have interacted with specific products such as clicking on the images to enlarge them, added items to their cart, set them on their wishlist or compared them to other products (if you have such a feature), can all be collected into one list.

Then you can target your ads for products they have already shown an interest in if they were to click off and make other searches that may be related or not.

LinkedIn profiles

You can make very easy and quick changes. The management tools make it easy so that you can set up a LinkedIn profile targeting strategy very easily, and this could take as little as a few minutes. 

The other benefit is that you are targeting highly relevant audiences, such as professionals and companies. This is a great B2B strategy as you are including LinkedIn profiles that have a professional dimension, and this can boost your sales. Thus your return on investment is going to be a higher percentage and more successful with affluent clients and entities.

Microsoft Similar Audiences

With this, you can target similar customers, or rather, more qualified customers. With avid buyers and customers that are known to make purchases in a particular category, you can target more effectively.

Let’s say a customer has a history of buying computer parts, you could target your own computer parts to this customer, simply by adding them to a remarketing list of similar demographics. The consumer profile data will show their history and their purchase habits so that you can include them in a category.

Remarketing saves ad budget

In 2018, James Ratheram, director of Premium PPC at Croud praised Microsoft Ads remarketing for its ability to reduce CPA:

The enhanced targeting capabilities of Bing Ads Remarketing in Paid Search have allowed us to increase conversions whilst reducing cost per acquisition for our client. We couldn’t be happier with the results.

And the results? When Croud worked with Lending Stream, its conversion rate increased by 80% and its cost per acquisition (CPA) decreased by 77%.

Further resources

• Remarketing in paid search policies
• “Microsoft Ads Is My Go-To Platform”: An Interview With Sophie Logan
• How To Optimise Your Microsoft Ads (Tips & Advice)
• How To Get Set Up on Microsoft Ads
• A Guide To PPC Remarketing

Summary

Microsoft Advertising remarketing can help advertisers boost campaign performance through fine-tuning and targeting users who have already shown interest. Creating high-quality remarketing lists is quick and easy as is the management side.

If you’ve found this helpful, read more of our guides on Microsoft Ads features (above) and find out more about Microsoft Ads Certification and how to become certified.

Remarketing in Google Ads is a method of reconnecting with people who have previously interacted with your website or mobile app. By positioning your ads in front of these users after they’ve left your site, you increase awareness of your brand and remind them to return and make a purchase.

How does remarketing work for Google Ads?

In order to track the behaviour of a customer, you’ll need to add a snippet of code to the pages you want to track. This is known as a tag or pixel. Visitors can then become part of your remarketing audience list via their browser cookies (although the way this works is set to change for Google Chrome at least).

The code is customisable to help you narrow down the type of customers you want to retarget and maximise your ROI.

Here’s an example of how it could work:

Say you own an online store that sells beauty products. You could create a remarketing list based on people who visited product pages selling face packs. Then you could retarget these specific customers with ads selling your face packs as they already showed intent to buy because they were on the pages before.

To sweeten the deal, you could offer special offers like discounts or free shipping.

Types of remarketing with Google Ads

According to Google, there are 5 ways to remarket on Google Ads:

• Standard remarketing – This method shows ads to past site visitors as they browse other sites and apps on the Google Display Network.
• Dynamic remarketing – This method “takes remarketing to the next level” but showing ads featuring specific products or services that users previously viewed on your site or app. This is only available for e-commerce sites.
• Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSAs) – RLSAs show ads to past visitors while they do follow-up Google searches.
• Video remarketing – This is essentially standard remarketing for the YouTube platform. Ads are shown to people who have interacted with your videos or YouTube channel as they use YouTube and browse Display Network videos, websites, and apps.
• Customer list remarketing – Using Customer match, you can upload customer contact lists so when they are signed into Google, you can show them ads across different Google products.

Benefits of Google Ads remarketing

Remarketing should be a strategic part of your advertising plan. It can be used whether you’re looking to drive more sales activity, increase registrations on your site, or promote awareness of your brand. There are many benefits to remarketing.

1. You can time your targeting just right

You can show your adverts to people that you know have previously interacted with your business in some way, while they’re searching elsewhere on the web. You can target them when you’re most likely to make a purchase. You can also help a customer by delivering your ad when they actively Googling your business to find you.

2. You can focus your advertising better

Create remarketing lists that allow you to advertise for specific cases. For example, you could create a remarketing list that targets people who have abandoned their carts before completing their transactions. You can show them the product they had in their cart in order to tempt them back to complete the sale.

3. You have the opportunity to reach a wider audience

You can reach a lot of people on the remarketing list, in a lot of ways. You’ll be able to reach them across all their devices, as they browse over 2 million websites and mobile apps that support these ads.

4. It’s cost-effective

You can build very high performing remarketing campaigns with automated bidding. Real-time bidding will calculate the most effective bid for the person who is being shown your ad. This helps you win the ad auction with the best possible. Google doesn’t charge an extra cost to use their auction feature.

5. Ads are easy to create

Google Ads remarketing is easy to use. You can create text, image, and video ads for free in the Ad gallery. Bring together Ad gallery layouts with a dynamic remarketing campaign to make beautiful ads that can scale across all your products and services.

6. You can get reports to see how your campaigns are performing

Throughout your campaigns, you can access reports on how they are performing, where your ads are showing, and what price you’re paying for them.

Try Adzooma’s Performance Report to see how you can boost your Google Ads remarketing campaigns even more.

How to set up remarketing lists

1. Sign in to Google Ads.
2. Click the tools icon (it looks like a wrench), and then click on Shared Library.
3. Click Audience Manager, and then Audience Lists.
4. Click the plus (+) icon, and then select Website visitors in order to add a list of website visitors.
5. A new page will open. Enter a descriptive name for remarketing list, that tells you what the list is for.
6. Choose a template from the drop-down menu, List Members.
7. In the Visited pages drop-down menu options, choose a set of rules. For each menu option, you can add the conditions for web pages on your site where you would like to collect cookies from visitors. Once you have completed a rule, then you can click Or or Add depending on the rule option that you selected).
8. Set an initial list size, which is the number of visitors to your website during a set period of time. You can add site visitors from the last 30 days to your list, or start with an empty one. If you have a remarketing tag on your website and want to include visitors who match the rules of your list, you can select the option to add site visitors from the previous 30 days.
9. Enter a membership duration, which will be the length of time that you want a visitor to stay on your list. This duration can be changed at any time. At this stage, you can also enter a description of your audience, but this is optional. Click Create Audience, and you’re done.

After you’ve created your lists, you can start creating campaigns and ad groups to go with them.

How much does remarketing cost?

Like all costs in Google Ads, it depends on a number of factors including:

• How much you bid
• What bidding strategy you use
• The scope of your remarketing list
• When you’re delivering ads
• Your landing page experience score
• Your CTR
• Your Quality Score
• Your Ad Rank

According to WebFX, the average CPC for remarketing is between $0.66–$1.23. That’s a lot cheaper than the average CPC for Google search ads which ranges between $1–$2.

GDPR and Privacy

Before you add any remarketing code to your website and start building your lists, you should update your Privacy Policy to reflect the changes. Your policy should cover and declare your use of the DoubleClick cookie. Add something like this to your policy:

DoubleClick: We use Google Analytics remarketing codes to log when a user views specific pages or takes a specific action on our website. This means we can provide targeted advertising in the future. If you do not want to receive this type of advertising from us you can opt-out using the DoubleClick opt-out page, or the Network Advertising Initiative Opt-Out page. 

You also need to include opt-out links and spend some time reviewing Google’s Privacy Policy guidelines to make sure that your policy covers all necessary criteria and is up to standard.

Conversion tracking

Conversion tracking for remarketing is set up in the same as a regular Google Ads campaign.

Note: if you import goals or e-commerce tracking from Google Analytics as conversions in Google Ads, then they won’t track View-through-conversions.

This can be limiting, as remarketing can contribute a strong level of view-through-conversions. Instead, it’s better to use standard Google Ads conversions tracking code for conversion tracking with remarketing, so you don’t miss any key data.

Remarketing techniques for optimising your campaigns

Setting up lists is important at the start of your remarketing campaign. But you should experiment to find the optimal techniques and find out which combinations work better for you.

Try testing the following:

1. Different list member durations and different messaging. A message that worked for you a week after someone visited your website might not work as well a month after their visit.
2. Different gender targeting alongside lists.
3. Exclude different lists using custom combinations. You could, for example, exclude users who bounced from your site, or those who spent less than ten seconds on the site.
4. Exclude different categories. You could test excluding parked domains, forums, games, or other site categories.

Test your landing pages

Experiment with sending the user to different pages on the website. If they have viewed a more expensive product, then you can try sending them to land on a lower-cost version of the same product to encourage them to convert.

If they viewed an item from a range of products that you stock, then you can have them land on the main category page rather than on the same page they looked at before.

You can run this testing with things like campaign experiments to make sure the test is completely fair. Here are some of our favorite platforms for building landing pages – where you can easily create landing pages that will convert:

• Simvoly
• Squarespace CPL
• VEVS
• Strikingly
• TemplateMonster

Test your ad creative

Try tests like using different colours on your call-to-actions (CTAs). Try different images or different wording. With split-testing, it’s important to only make a very small change to the new advert so you can better pinpoint exactly which changes have had an impact, whether it’s a positive or a negative change.

Don’t forget usual optimization techniques

It’s easy to get carried away with trying to optimise things that only apply to display and remarketing, and forget about other techniques that are usually best practice across all forms of advertising. Don’t loose sight of these, and make sure to use these techniques too.

• Review performance by location. Use location bid adjustments if you need to.
• Review performance by time-of-day and if you need to, use scheduling big adjustments.
• Review the performance on mobile devices, and make adjustments to your mobile bid.

Try new formats

If you already use standard remarketing in some way, you can still try to use some other formats of remarketing alongside what you’re already doing. For example, if you currently use standard remarketing for one area of your strategy, then you can dynamic remarketing to fill another part of the strategy. 

The best way to find best practice for you is to experiment and try different things to best reach your audience.

Want to know more about Google Ads?

If you need further info on Google Ads and its features check out the following resources:

• 6 Common Google Ads Mistakes You’re Wasting Money On
• A Guide To Google Ads For Charities and Nonprofits
• 8 Best Google Ads Courses (2020)
• Enhanced CPC: A Google Ads Guide
• Agony Aunt: How Much Does It Cost To Run Google Ads?

And if you’d prefer someone else to support your Google Ads management, consider Adzooma. Our free award-winning platform can manage your Google Ads as well as Microsoft Ads and Facebook Ads, all under one screen, from remarketing to automation and campaign building. Here are some of the in-depth features on offer:

• Product Update: Two Huge New Time Saving Features
• Product Update: Create New Campaigns Inside Adzooma
• Product Update: Multiple Google Ads Accounts? No Problem!
• Product Update: Opportunities – Who Doesn’t Like a Good Queue?

The truth is, thanks to the rise of the internet, it’s NEVER been as easy to target your ideal customer. Yet, so many businesses have yet to truly embrace niche marketing.

Is yours one of them? Find out as we explain the advantages and disadvantages of niche marketing so you can decide whether your marketing strategy needs to change.

What is niche marketing?

A ‘Niche’ is simply the industry, subject or category you market to. The key here is define your overall niche, then dig down deeper to find sub niches, which are simply smaller pockets of your broader audience.

The difference between and niche and mass markets

A mass marketing strategy focuses on the largest audience possible through broad advertising. For example, this could be a TV advert or a national billboard campaign. Mass marketing tries to target everyone in the hope that the net is cast wide enough to catch the right audience.

Niche marketing is about focusing on a smaller group with interests that align perfectly with a business’s products or services. Compared to mass marketing, you’re not casting your net as wide, but you’re specific with who you want to catch. They can both work, but it depends massively on your business and your market.

If you were selling sportswear, you might consider mass marketing as the sportswear industry is worth around $62 billion in the US alone (as of 2019). But for something more specialised, like vegan women’s sportswear from Unicorn Goods, the niche approach would be more beneficial, especially as the production costs would be higher.

Example of BROAD niche markets

Broad niches refer to the broadest categories you operate in. Here are a few broad niche examples:

• Vegans
• Babies
• Gaming
• Single parents
• Bodybuilding
• Work from home

There are actually broader niches which relate to these, such as Health which covers Vegans and Bodybuilding for instance. But huge, cover-all niches like Health are far too broad and at the minimum, you need to work with a broad niche as in the examples above. 

Read: How To Use Microsoft Ads Demographic Targeting

Example of NARROW niche markets

These are the smaller sub niches you’ll find inside the broad niches.

Below is a list of narrow niche market examples, which relate to the examples in the last section:

• Vegans: Vegan recipes, Vegan clothing, Vegan holidays.
• Babies: Baby clothes, baby food, baby health. 
• Gaming: Gaming consoles, gaming chairs, gaming walkthroughs. 
• Single parents: SIngle parent dating, single parent advice, single parent support. 
• Bodybuilding: Bodybuilding  equipment, bodybuilding nutrition, bodybuilding clothing.
• Work from home: Work from home ideas, work from home franchise, work from home equipment

Breaking down your niche into smaller targeted sub-niches, is one of the best ways to increase your conversions. If you sell baby clothes for instance, make sure you run item specific ads such as ‘baby shoes’ to get laser target clicks.

How to find niche markets

Knowing the definition of a narrow niche market and a broad niche market is one thing. But how do you find them?

The answer: Google.

Once upon a time, you needed to use 5 tools for this kind of thing, but now so much of it can be done via Google with their vast array of features and browser extensions.

So, take to Google, consider your niche, lets say I have a website that’s aimed at vegans so I’ll type that in, and with the auto completion feature you’ll see the following:

Sure, maybe not everything there is relevant to market around. But even with something like “I hate vegans” you could twist that and create a cool little creative piece about the worst reasons for why people hate vegans.

Then, to really drill down into finding narrow niche markets, install the free Google Chrome extension Keyword Surfer and search for the same thing:

As you can see, you’ll now be given a bunch of keyword ideas on the right hand side inside your Google Search with the keyword volume. These ones in the example aren’t narrow markets as the volume is in the tens of thousands, but if I go for something a little bit different like vegan diet:

You’ll have a few more niche ideas. You can play around with this for hours, but what’s great about it all being on Google is that it’s so easy and quick to search for new ideas.

Advantages of niche marketing

Higher ROI

Because niche marketing focuses on specific groups of users, they’re more likely to buy your product than someone caught in a mass marketing net. Having lower traffic than a broader site might seem counterintuitive but, say Site A gets 10 purchases from 100 visits and Site B gets 10 purchases from 1000 visits, Site A has a 10% conversion rate while Site B has 1%. It’s quality over quantity and that’s how you keep your ROI (return on investment) high.

Niche marketing also makes it much easier to save money when it comes to marketing as larger mass marketing strategies tend to cost more the wider your span and if you’re aiming to get on TV or on a billboard.

Better customer loyalty

Customer loyalty is a defining feature of niche marketing. When you approach marketing in this way, you are showing customers the things that they want or need. If they visit, they already have the intent to buy compared to a casual browser. It can also give you an edge over competitors because when a product or service is niche, it stands out a lot more with unique features.

Less competition

Unlike mass marketing, niche marketing has a lot less competition. To reference the earlier example, not everyone makes vegan women’s sportswear for a number of reasons, so if can, you’ve beaten out any potential competition before you’ve started.

Generalised marketing campaigns don’t always stand out either. Unless you’re a larger, recognisable brand like Apple, you could get lost in a sea of other campaigns with better reaches.

Disadvantages of niche marketing

Smaller market

When you go sub niche, your target audience is obviously going to be smaller. However, once you try it, you should find that your conversions improve, sometimes dramatically. This is simply because you are super targeting your offers to your audience. So always compare your broad niche results to your sub niche results.

A higher ROI isn’t guaranteed

Obviously, working in smaller niches can affect your Return On Investment, but once again you should test this. The increase in conversions can also lower your ad spend, so you need to look at the big picture.

4 ways to drive traffic to your niche offers

Whether you decide on broad or narrow niches you need visitors and lots of them. So here are our 4 favorite ways to get as many targeted viewers for your offers:

SEO

SEO (search engine optimisation) is one that can make a real difference. It is all about being found through a search engine search. The people that find you from that and have found you for the right thing, will stick around; the rest will not. So think about the keywords that you use for your website, as that can make a difference to the types of consumers that find you online.

SEMrush have a excellent Keyword Magic Tool which can generate 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.

Need help with creating a successful SEO campaign? Adzooma’s SEO Performance Report will analyse your website and identify immediate actions you can take to improve. The 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. 

PPC

Niche marketing can also use PPC (pay per click) to create an element of demand. While there might not be any conscious demand for your products or services, you can use PPC as a strategy to pre-sell, to be able to generate some brand awareness and interest.

Our very own Adzooma helps make managing niche marketing campaigns on PPC both quicker and easier. If you’re going down this route, be sure to claim your free account and see what it can do for you.

Social media

Social media is another tool to help with niche marketing. You can be quite specific with any ads that you run, such as targeting certain locations, genders, or ages. You can also use analytics on your own channels, to find out about the people who follow you. Are they mainly of a particular age group, for example?

These elements can come together as you plan your strategy, which can include paid and organic social media, as you’ll know how best to aim your campaigns.

Of course, running profitable social media campaigns can take up a lot of your time. If you want to outsource the workload to someone who gets results, check out our list of recommended social media agencies:

• Crowdfire
• PromoRepublic
• POSTOPLAN
• TapLink
• Iconosquare

Email marketing

As part of social media and your website, you should also look to make the most of email marketing. That can be a good way to know who is interested in what you do, and then analyse the kinds of content that they have interest in, when you send out emails.

Email marketing also works well with PPC as we covered in a recent article.

Need help setting up email marketing campaigns that actually get noticed? Moosend are an email marketing agency who will help your business deliver powerful emails that get opened and clicked every time – and their designs are pretty cool.

Is it possible to be too niche?

This can all depend on the research that you have done. Keyword research is a good way to find out how often particular keywords or phrases are searched for online and whether there are any seasonal trends.

It’s important to estimate a value of clicks and impressions, both from a PPC and SEO perspective. If there are hardly any people searching for your target keywords, and the attached value is low, then it could be too niche.

The important thing to remember is your definition of niche works for you and your business. Industry benchmarks help with general estimations but what you do isn’t what your competitors do.

Conclusion

When it comes to the most effective marketing method for your business, there isn’t a definitive choice between niche marketing or mass marketing. However, with research, planning, and the right tools, you can find that niche marketing could work well for your business; there are plenty of advantages for doing so.

Not sure if your marketing strategy is right? Why not run it past one of the expert agencies in the Adzooma Marketplace? Click here to get started.

In this guide, I will be detailing:

• How to create automated rules with your Microsoft Ads account in the Adzooma platform
• When to use automated bidding
• The different types of bidding strategies
• Automated scripts

I’ll also be adding extra tips and advice throughout.

Microsoft Advertising automated rules

Let’s start with the basics. Microsoft Advertising automated rules speed up the process of managing your ad campaigns by only acting at certain times and/or in certain situations. For example, you can use automated rules and bids to automate keyword bid changes, or start and stop a campaign at specific times. You can also use an automated rule to set up notifications by email to let you know when certain criteria have been met.

For example, by setting an automated rule to pause a campaign when your CPC rises above your maximum threshold, you can protect your budget.

How is this helpful? If you need a campaign to stop at midnight, you need the power of automation to help you. Nobody is going to set an alarm to wake up in the middle of the night to stop a campaign when it can be done automatically.

Sophie says: As PPC marketers we can all be a bit guilty of neglecting our Microsoft Advertising accounts from time to time. Setting up automated rules to help with optimisations will help to ensure your account can still run efficiently even if you haven’t got the time to be hands-on yourself.

Automated bids

As your keyword lists grow, so do your options for targeting (and retargeting). That means bid management becomes more important and more difficult to maintain. Using Microsoft’s automated bid strategies, you can make this work a lot easier which saves time and money.

Here are 2 tangible examples of what automated bidding can do for your campaigns:

1. Improve conversions

Want to maximise your conversions? Then target users with informative data from your campaigns. Microsoft Advertising can use that data and automatically set your bids in real-time to get as many conversions as possible within your budget.

2. Reach your target cost per acquisition (CPA)

Microsoft Ads can also work with your cost per acquisition so it stays is in line with your target.

To reap the benefits of using automation on bid strategies, you’ll need an appropriate timeline of 4-6 weeks. This will give the platform time to get used to your campaign. Find out about more ways that Microsoft Ads can expand your impact and boost your sales.

How is this helpful? Automated bids can also improve your ad performance. Having control of your budget means you can put it towards even better ads and maximise your profit. You can choose how you want to focus your automatic bidding strategy.

Sophie says: Automating bidding in your Microsoft Advertising account will free your time up to be able to focus on the bigger picture and long term strategy for your account. For example, instead of worrying about changing bids throughout the week, you could begin to test different ad variations or look at your search term report for potential new topics and keywords to expand your campaigns into.

When should you use automated bidding?

So when should you use automated bidding? Here are some instances where automation is appropriate:

1. If manual bidding has proved unsuccessful in previous campaigns
2. If you’re looking to experiment with your campaigns
3. As part of a split test
4. To maximise your clicks and conversions
5. If you don’t have the time and resources to manage the bids yourself
6. If you have the time to allow your automated bidding strategy to run and build up enough data to bid optimally

We would suggest not using automated bidding as your sole strategy if you’ve heard they guarantee better performance. That isn’t the case as increased performance is never guaranteed in PPC!

Sophie says: You should only start to use automated bidding if you have successfully implemented tracking into your website. Without the correct tracking, your automated bidding will not be able to utilise the relevant data it needs to make bidding decisions.

How to create an automated rule

1. Go into one of the following tabs: Campaigns, Ad Groups, Ads or Keywords
2. Click Automate which will display all the rules you can set
3. Select from the following options:
   • Change budget when…
   • Pause campaign when…
   • Enable campaigns when…
   • Notify me when…
   • Create rule for ad groups
   • Create rule for keywords
   • Create rule for ads
   • Manage rules
4. Once you’ve set your automated rule, click Save.

While using Microsoft Ads Editor is the standard method, the UI can feel a little clunky and difficult to navigate when you’re setting up specific rules.

But with Adzooma, we’ve made our interface intuitive for all types of users, from first-time advertisers to PPC experts.

On Adzooma

1. Log into the Adzooma platform and then click Automation
2. To create a new rule, click the New Automation Rule button
3. Select from one of two options from the pop up:
   • Choose Template
   • Create Custom Rule

It’s that simple.

If you decide to use a template, you can select a rule from our range of templates, such as:

• Enable Campaigns On Scheduled Date
• Notify When Campaigns Have No Conversions
• Pause Keyword
• Enable Ad Group

You can also use the Search function in the left sidebar to find the exact template you need. These templates have been chosen by industry experts based on their most frequently used Microsoft Ads rules.

If you’d prefer to create your own custom rule, you can do so based on the following criteria:

• Details: The rule name and description
• Apply To: Choose which parts of your campaign structure you want your automation rule to apply to
• Conditions: Choose the action and/or time period you would like to apply when your conditions are met
• Frequency: Choose how frequently you want this automation to run. There’s also an option to use one-off automation for a specific event. These rules can run every 30 minutes.
• Finally, hit Save.

Automated bidding strategies

Microsoft Ads offers automated bidding strategies in the same way as Google Ads, where you can manage your bids automatically and remain within your budget.

The following strategies are available:

• Enhanced CPC – the default bid strategy when you create a new campaign. Set your bids at ad group and keyword level, and Microsoft Ads adjusts your bids in real-time to boost your chances for a conversion.
• Maximize Clicks – similar to ECPC except you don’t have to set your ad group/keyword bids as Microsoft Ads will set your bids to get as many clicks as possible.
• Maximize Conversions – much like ECPC and Maximize Clicks, you don’t have to set your ad group/keyword bids as Microsoft Ads will set your bids to get as many conversions as possible.
• Target CPA – Set your budget and your target 30-day average CPA, and Microsoft Ads sets your bids to help you reach that average.
• Target ROAS – Set your budget and your target 30-day average ROAS, and Microsoft Ads sets your bids to help you reach that average. (Note: Target ROAS isn’t available to everyone so keep an eye out if you can’t use it yet!)
• Manual – As the name suggests, you set all your bids manually

Automated Extensions

When you publish an ad, you want it to be seen and the more space you can over on a SERP, the better. That’s why ad extensions are so important and with Automated Extensions (formerly known as annotations), you can increase the visibility and performance of your ads.

We’ve written about ad extensions for Google Ads and their benefits and they work in much the same way for Microsoft Ads. They display additional information about your business, which is both helpful to the user and more SERP real estate to click on. For Automated Extensions, they are added automatically to your ads based on Microsoft Advertising’s AI and whether they think an extension would improve performance.

Note: while using Automated Extensions can save time and potentially improve ad performance, there will be cases where you want to use them and they aren’t recommended. Use your best judgement based on your own PPC data.

Automated Extensions use the following sources to populate:

• Ad landing pages
• Ad copy
• Reviews (available from third-party providers).

Automated Extensions types

Here are a few different types of Automated Extensions:

• Dynamic structured snippets – these give a short description of your business with things like a list of your products or services.
• Dynamic sitelinks – Officially named Dynamic ESL Description Extensions, they automatically turn your Sitelink Extensions into enhanced Sitelink Extensions, with descriptive text under each sitelink. This adds context and can improve CTR when written well.
• Brand Information Extensions – these help with brand awareness and attract more clicks due to the perception of reliability. These extensions are part of a group known as Dynamic Partner Data Enhancement.

Note: While Automated Extensions are available to all advertisers, they aren’t guaranteed to show up. Ads with “greater expected impact from ad extensions” will get a higher ad position if two opposing ads have the same bid and quality.

How is this helpful? The AI finds patterns, makes predictions, and learns how to target the right audience. Automated Extensions are therefore much more personalised, and effective. This also saves you time from doing all the guesswork yourself, automated extensions work for you as a marketing tool.

Automation scripts

Automation scripts allow you to make hundreds or thousands of changes across your ad campaign at once. You can use automation advertising scripts to perform tasks including:

• Scheduling campaigns
• Pausing campaigns
• Increasing keyword bids
• Importing Google Automated Scripts

Scripts are a little more complicated to create than automated rules, but they work in a similar way. They are essentially lines of JavaScript code you create to add, delete, or change things in your account based on criteria you set.

How is this helpful? Automated Scripts can cover many scenarios in campaign management as described above and are also compatible with Google Ads. If it seems a little bit complicated at first don’t worry, learn more about them by reading the official documentation.

Sophie says: Microsoft has recently added in the option to target audiences based on their LinkedIn profiles. Whilst it is still in its infancy, I would recommend checking it out and looking at how you can use this exclusive targeting feature to hit your target audience.

Summary

With Microsoft Advertising automation, you can improve the efficacy of your long term PPC strategy. Making adjustments is no longer a chore with automated scripts, and Automated Extensions offer ways to boost CTR and conversions using Microsoft Ad’s powerful AI which learns from your history and can make predictions to improve your performance.

But this process takes time and resources you may not have available.

Adzooma is the perfect platform for Microsoft Advertising automation as it makes it quick and easy to set up rules. There are no complicated scripts or tracking to implement, just straightforward rule generations, tailored to your needs. And it’s free!

Connect your Microsoft Ads account with Adzooma for free and see just how much time and money you could save.

You may have heard about Google Discovery Ads, one of Google’s most recent products announced last year. It presents an entirely new way for advertisers to target potential customers, by finding consumers that are actively looking to discover new content and areas of interest, rather than intruding on their online experience through invasive advertising.

What are Google Discovery Ads?

Google Discovery Ads are online ads that appear in the Google Discover feed, Google’s news feed app that has been around in various iterations since 2016. It shows users news headlines in a visual, eye-catching form, through which they can infinitely scroll to find the news they want.

Google Discover is a new way of consuming news, as it avoids the need for users to actively search for headlines. It shows users the stories they want before they even realize they want them. The feed, available to iPhone and Android users, allows users to personalize their content stream by selecting specific topics they want to see more or less of. It uses artificial intelligence to continually improve the display, so as a user engages more with their feed, the quality of the content improves. The aim is to make news consumption faster and more efficient, only showing the user what they want, thus reducing the amount of time spent on considering and rejecting irrelevant content.

Google Discovery Ads continues this objective by giving advertisers the opportunity to put relevant content in front of their target audiences. Discovery Ads show up seamlessly in the Discover Feed, generating demand rather than responding to pre-existing demand.

The ads are charged on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis and are not restricted to the Discover Feed. They also show up in Gmail and on YouTube. They are very similar to Google Display Ads in that they are designed to be visual and fit seamlessly into the sites and apps in which they appear.

Discovery Ads can be used by anyone, as long as advertisers adhere to Google’s Ads Policy and personalized advertising guidelines. Much like other forms of Google advertising, audiences can be targeted based on their interests and search queries. It also gives you the option for remarketing to your existing customers and website visitors.

What are the benefits of using Google Discovery Ads?

You’ve seen what Google Discovery Ads look like and what they can do, but what are the specific advantages for advertisers looking to target new and existing audiences? Here are 3:

1. Machine learning

Google’s Discover Feed is powered by machine learning. The more a user interacts with it, the more information it gleans on the user’s preferences, likes and dislikes, and reading habits. Unlike other advertising formats, where the precision and accuracy of targeting criteria alone determine the success of an ad, Google Discover’s machine learning capabilities make your ad even more likely to land in front of the right people. Whatever your targeting criteria, as Google Discover continues to learn about its users, it will be better equipped to filter out those who are irrelevant and only show your ads to those who will really want to see them.

2. Reach

Google Discover is currently used by 800 million people (not counting the additional millions who use Gmail and YouTube). Your ads have the potential to reach millions of people, and no matter how niche your audience, the chances are, you will be able to reach a considerable number of people who match your criteria.

3. Higher CTR

The combination of enhanced targeting and vast reach will inevitably lead to a higher clickthrough rate. The people you are reaching will be in the right frame of mind to be interested in your content. When another ad format such as a Display Ad appears in front of a consumer, it is usually when they are doing something else like making a search query or reading a blog. But when someone is using Google Discover, they are actively looking for things to divert their attention, so as long as your ad is captivating and relevant enough, they will want to click on it.

How to set up Discovery Ads

Setting up your first Google Discovery Ad is straightforward, especially if you have experience using Display Ads and other forms of PPC advertising. Before you begin, you must be clear on your objectives, message and targeting criteria.

Step 1: Set up your campaign

The first step is to set up your campaign in Google Ads, selecting your campaign goals – sales, leads or traffic – and then specifying the exact criteria of who you want to reach.

Step 2: Create your ad

Create a suitable headline, description, graphic and call to action (CTA) for your ad. Make it as compelling as possible and relevant to its audience.

Step 3: Publish your ad

Once your ad is out there, give it time to ramp up and start seeing results. You should measure it as you go and refrain from the urge to keep changing it. Use the results to inform future campaigns.

Do they work?

Google Discovery Ads are a relatively new phenomenon, and as such, there is little data to work with when evaluating their efficacy. But considering the vast user base Google Discover enjoys and the continually evolving AI targeting capabilities, there is potential for advertisers to see massive success.

Digital marketing is seeing a move away from keywords and towards more precise audience targeting, and Google Discovery Ads fit into this perfectly. As long as advertisers are clear on their objectives and their audiences, it looks likely that Google Discovery Ads will play a big part in the future of PPC advertising.

What does a Google Ads course entail?

A Google Ads course offers everything that you need to know to successfully advertise your business online and reach a wider audience. Despite all Google Ads courses varying in their modules, they will typically include:

• An overview of Google Ads and how you can utilise it to grow your business
• How to add keywords to ad groups
• How to set up PPC advertising campaigns
• Bidding strategies
• Google Ads scripts
• How to create a PPC budget
• How to achieve search excellence

The main goal of completing a Google Ad is not only to develop your knowledge of Google Ads and PPC marketing as a whole but to become Google Ads Certified.

Benefits of doing a Google Ads course

So what are the benefits that come with a certification? Well, not only will you have a visible edge over your competition, but you can take advantage of the following:

1. It looks great on your CV/resume

No matter how long you’ve been working for, you’re always looking for ways to improve. And a great way to boost your CV/resume is through doing a Google Ads course. If you can back up your claims of success, people are far more likely to hire you.

From looking on your website and LinkedIn, along with your other experience, a certification shines through. This is beneficial not only to those looking for a new role, but for clients that are looking to see how credible a business owner is.

It gives the best possible first impression and showcases your dedication and motivation to improve within the digital marketing sector.

2. The knowledge you gain is a must-have

Nowadays, the more you know about PPC and SEO, the better. Without this knowledge, your presence online as a professional or business owner could go unnoticed. Therefore, it’s worth completing a Google Ads course, so that you’re always in the know and can remain competitive.

3. It demonstrates your skills and credibility

Like any other certification, an AdWords certification demonstrates your skill within the specialised niche. As an instant display of your abilities, people will look to you as an expert within your industry. Certification acts as a building block for conversion because people will trust you and it helps you to achieve the success that you aimed for.

4. It acts as free promotion

Another key benefit of becoming a Google Adwords Certified Partner is free promotion. How? Well, once you achieve this status, you’ll be on their list of verified websites.

What is Google Ads certification?

The certification is a professional accreditation from Google (via its online training program, Skillshop) that shows key knowledge in basic and advanced understanding of Google Ads. Besides the benefits of knowledge, you also get a badge that you can put on your website, CV/resume and social profiles to differentiate yourself from others that don’t have it. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t research into it.

So, to help narrow down your options and ensure that you’re completing the highest quality of resources for your money, here is our picks for the 8 best Google Ads courses available this year:

1. Udemy

Kicking off this list is Udemy. Specialising in online courses, Udemy has become one of the world’s most renowned websites. Created in 2010, they have had hundreds of millions of students, each utilising their step-by-step guides and video tutorials.

Their Google Ads courses are some of the best, including:

• Google AdWords for Beginners
• Ultimate Google Ads Training 2020: Profit with Pay Per Click
• The Complete Google Ads Masterclass

You’ll be able to find the best Google Ads course for your requirements with Udemy. Not only this, but they are also very affordable, have industry experts teaching each course and can be completed at your own pace.

Offering Google Ads Certification status, it’s easy to see why their Google Ads courses are so popular.

2. Skillshop from Google

We can’t fail to mention Google’s own courses. Available through the Skillshop, these free online courses will grow your skills and help you to use Google Ads to the best of your ability.

With this course, you’ll gain that coveted Google Ads Certification status, and there are plenty of others including

• Google Ads Apps
• Google Ads – Measurement
• Shopping Ads
• Google Ads Video
• Google Ads Display
• Google Ads Search

Once you have completed the particular course, you will have gained a certification in that particular speciality.

3. Alison

Alison is another beloved website for online educational courses. A website that’s been around since 2007, it offers a whole host of recognised courses. And one, in particular, that’s becoming more and more popular is their Diploma in Google Ads.

Through this free online course, you’ll be able to learn how customer behaviours affect your website’s traffic, location targeting, how to structure your ad groups and more. A crash course in Google Ads, it will give you the techniques and skills needed to thrive. Alongside modules, this course will require you to complete three separate assessments.

4. CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing)

The Chartered Institute of Marketing is one of the most respected marketing bodies in the world. Offering comprehensive and leading courses, it’s easy to see why so many people invest in their courses each year.

Their PPC Google Ads course is just the ticket for those who are looking to optimise their online performance. Although it’s not one of the cheapest available, its learning modules and objectives make it easily one of the best.

Throughout this course, you’ll learn how to create effective PPC marketing campaigns centred around audience insights, better your PPC management, utilise PPC in mobile and more.

5. Lynda

Lynda.com is a website that’s been around for over 20 years. An online learning platform, it’s designed to educate individuals in a subject of their choice so that they can achieve both their professional and personal goals.

Their Google AdWords Essential Training course is ideal for those who are looking to learn the foundations of PPC. Although it’s one of the shortest courses on this list at just over 3 hours, within it you’ll learn a bunch of different topics, including how to research keywords, adjust your bid, write a text ad and optimise a campaign.

6. DMI (Digital Marketing Institute)

The Digital Marketing Institute has been offering prospective online students the chance to hone their skills in their chosen subject since 2009. Their Professional Diploma in Search Marketing allows you to learn all the fundamentals of Google AdWords and SEO in just 30 hours – and at the end of it, you’ll be an accredited specialist.

The topics within this course will include the likes of paid search, Google Analytics, strategy and planning, etc.

7. SEMrush

SEMrush rapidly became one of the leading educational websites internationally. Created in 2008, it offers thousands of courses that are taken by students from a variety of different countries.

If you’re looking for a Google AdWords course that’s taught by a renowned specialist within digital marketing, then look no further than SEMrush’s PPC Fundamentals Course with Joel Bondorowsky. Throughout this course, you’ll discover exactly what PPC is, along with an understanding of sales funnels, how to correctly use landing pages and more.

8. Shopify

And last on this list is Shopify. Although this business has been around for over 12 years, it started to diversify into the world of online learning. Which is where Their Google Ads for Ecommerce course came in.

Giving you a step-by-step guide into how to launch three different Google Ads campaigns in over an hour, it’s one of the most simple courses that you can take on.

Conclusion

So, there you go! Whichever course you choose will get you one step closer to accreditation, boosted credibility, and a powerful resume that impresses everyone that lays an eye on it.