The is a lot of confusion and a host of myths about what Paid Search is for.

• Some feel like good SEM will lead to good SEO (there is virtually no relationship).
• Some feel like it will provide virtually unlimited growth to their business.
• Some feel like it will be all they need.

We will review some of these beliefs and try to set PPC in its proper context, and explain what we mean about fishing!

Demand Capture, Not Creation

Think of demand and interested users as fish and then the metaphor illustrates the difference between Paid Search and just about every other digital ad medium.

Paid Search is you as an advertiser with a bunch of nets trawling through the Web’s ocean, catching demand (fish). You use different nets (keywords or match types, for instance) to catch different forms of demand. You target parts of the ocean where the right types of people/fish will be. But Paid Search does not cultivate the fish nor provide the environment for the fish to breed.

Display, email and social advertising are the fish farm in this metaphor. They seed and feed the fish/demand and send them out into the open ocean for Paid Search to catch them.

Offering a novel service? Maybe push YouTube and display ads to drive awareness that such a new thing exists.

Launching a new company/new product/new product line? Perhaps drive your brand socially and through banner ads to stimulate searches and soften up people to search ads they’ll see later.

Non-marketing efforts, like word-of-mouth and similar organic sources, are the naturally occurring fish food floating about in the ocean. But the real impetus is given by the cultivation performed by the non-paid-search channels.

Unlimited Growth

PPC’s strength is in its transparency and efficiency. But PPC in terms of growing a business is reliant on two vital factors in how much it can really grow revenue:

• Is your site well-designed enough to drive visitors to convert at a good enough rate that you afford to pay for traffic?
• Is your profit margin robust enough that a significant chunk of it can be used to attract traffic to the site?

You wouldn’t spend a fortune on a Formula 1 car and not inflate the tires, so spending on PPC with a flawed site or business model makes no more sense than that.

The consequences of have razor thin margins are very little ability to cope with any rise in CPCs due to competition or other influence, and very little scope to bid enough and so get you enough traffic to be worth it.

If your site has a problem turning visitors into clients/customers, then any form of traffic buying is only going to bleed you dry.

The flip side is that if these criteria are strong, you’re going to make a lot of money through well-run PPC!

Furthermore, if you are a well-established online business and brand, SEM alone cannot get you a huge swathe of new customers because you’re already in position to profitably capture the existing demand (assuming a well-run campaign). This takes us back to the fishing metaphor.

Paid Search Going Solo

To address the supposition that Paid Search might be the only tool you need, you can see from the fishing concept that Paid Search really needs active marketing elsewhere to reach its full potential.

There’s certainly demand out there, and it will be captured by PPC, but you will face a natural limit unless you supplement this channel with many other marketing and advertising initiatives.

Even in these days of in-market audiences in search and Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA), ultimately, if there’s no demand, there’s no search your Paid Search ads will be triggered by.

Prove It

Don’t just take our word for it, cross-channel attribution tools like Wizaly and Adobe Marketing Cloud can prove to you that Paid Search is only a fragment (but an important one) of your total marketing mix that is responsible for your online sales.

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Since the main purpose of PPC (like all marketing) is to communicate and persuade humans to choose a business, manual management is unlikely to disappear entirely. However, Google, in particular, have been investing massive sums in “Machine Learning” so as to reduce marketers’ reliance on human management of campaigns. Whilst we’re in this hybrid stage (a little like where we’re at with self-driving cars) it pays to not entirely reject automation.

Also, with the gradual takeover of Google Ads’ new UI, some legacy bid rules setups will be changed or removed. So getting accustomed to the more AI-style automation will be important in the coming months.

Here are some ways you can get automation to play nice and to driving your KPIs in a controlled and accountable way.

AUTOMATION IS GREAT

At ESV, we have always employed automation in a number of ways so we’re no strangers to letting computer power take the reins. However, we always monitor the effect on performance and the decisions made by our silicon-hearted friends.

TYPES

There are currently two broad types of automation right now:

• Bid automation.
• Content and keyword creation (e.g. ad messaging, extensions etc.).

BIDDING

The simplest and also most risky element is the bid automation. It’s simple because in Google Ads it boils down to simply setting a performance target and seeing what happens. The risk is in the fact that...you merely set a performance target and see what happens!

There are more rule-based ways to bid but they are somewhat limited both in control and in the fact that they cannot take advantage of the more target-oriented bidding schemes (called Smart Bidding) which bid per query (based on all the context of that query, such as user history, browser, location etc.).

To simplify your decision on which option for bidding to go for, look at the data levels in your account. If it’s dealing with many hundreds of conversions per day, you’re likely going to see a pretty good performance with Smart Bidding. If you’re talking a couple hundred or less per day, you’re going to need to set it on only the highest-converting parts and generally, the rules will work better.

The reason is Smart Bidding is entirely algorithm-based, which needs data. The less data, the less accurate. So scale is extremely important if the algorithms are going to do the right thing more often than not.

DO:

• Ensure your campaign structure is set up to make the most of the bid automation. If you’re dealing with mainly Broad traffic, try first to get it to majority Exact traffic. This will ensure less can go wrong.
• Get negative keywords in place to reduce the likelihood of an explosion of useless traffic when bidding commences.
• If performance and volumes are wildly different across devices, think about splitting them out so the algorithms can concentrate on the most consistent data. The more “reliable” the data set, the less the algorithm will introduce quirks. Essentially, if you know statistics, it’s getting the groundwork done to maximise the R2 ratio.
• Start any of this with the highest volume campaigns to test what target is working for you before rolling out to the rest of the account.

DON’T:

• Set up multiple portfolio smart bidding schemes and set them live at once - you’ll go crazy!
• Expect it to be perfect first time. Never is.
• Try to instantly turn ROI from 2 to 45 in a week. Gradually increase the target over time.
• Try this without robust conversion tracking!

CONTENT CREATION

This automation segment comes in a variety of flavours and purposes. The major examples of automation you have tangible influence over are:

• Ad Customizers (they populate ads based on a sheet of options linked to a criteria (e.g. User location or device).
• Countdown customizers.
• Dynamic Search Ads.
• Responsive Ads (in Beta on Search and already fully launched on display).
• Dynamic remarketing.

Other elements that are not really in your hands include:

• Review extensions (out of 5 stars).
• Social Extensions.
• Location Extensions.
• Automated ads (that create new ads where ad groups have less than 3 active ads).

The advent of Google Ads scripts allows the more code-loving amongst us to really automate creative in almost any way you like but most users will limit themselves to using Google Sheets to populate ad copy with Countdowns and Ad Customizers.

DO: 

• Exploit these carefully - done wrong, you could really embarrass your brand.
• Creatively implement them to get ahead of complacent competitors.
• Test heavily - some will work best on top-funnel and others at bottom-funnel areas.

DON’T:

• Use them everywhere, you need to be accountable for what they do.
• Cut corners any more than you would on static content.
• Implement them without a solid plan so you know what is out there at any given time.
• Forget about Quality Score - don’t try to be fancy at the expense of ad relevance.

This should serve as a good introduction to this subject and over time we’ll explore this topic further.

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Google has announced that the Average Position (in some quarters referenced as “Average Rank”) metric, already relegated to a “Competitive Metric” value from its prime “Performance” metric status, will be killed off from September this year.

Is this a good or bad thing?

There were supporters of it but, like many averages, it was nearly impossible to pin it down in such a way that it was genuinely actionable. Therefore, it is being substituted by “Impr. (Abs. Top) %” and “Impr. (Top) %.” - these are the share of your impressions that were above the Organic results or on top of all other ads.

In addition, you can see “Search top IS” and “Search abs. top IS” as well as “Click share” for a sense of how competitive your bids are.

The beauty of these newer metrics is that they not only give you a far better sense of share of voice/visibility but also how much you can expect in terms of impression growth if you improved “rank” on search. Click Share is being provided on Search for the first time (previously it was only on Shopping campaigns).

Average position would give you some sense of this but when bidding on Non-branded traffic, you were generally less concerned with position than with profitability and so you would bid down if parts of the account were not profitable and bid up if they were beating your efficiency targets.

What was wrong with Average Position?

The main problem with an average figure like Average Position (but also CPC and CTR) is that it illuminates very little about the true performance of an account or segment of an account. This is partly because at any given moment for any given search, you may be positioned in 3 or 6 or 8 and yet the average position for the day may be 2.1.

To illustrate a further weakness, if two keywords in an ad group had the following numbers:

You will see that the good performance of one keyword is masked by the other. This is because Average Position is weighted by impressions. So the more impressions a keyword (or other entity) has the more they impact the average. For the record, the equation is (Entity Imps x Position) ÷ Total Imps.

But worse still is that the below scenario throws up almost the exact same Average Position top number as above but the average position for both keywords individually is worse than that shown in the first table.

Therefore, an absolute percentage share of the total potential as a metric (e.g. Top of Page Impression Share) is far more preferable because it has equal fidelity and transparency at any level against which it is shown.

Effects and Possibilities

The addition of automated bidding strategies that let you target a percentage share of “Absolute Top Position IS” and the like is a welcome opportunity for advertisers to control their share of voice (better than targeting a “position”) whilst it continues to keep the Google auction still pretty blind.

In addition, the new share-based metrics will make for fewer metric-related disruptions should Google choose to radically change the layout of search pages and where they place the ads.

As long as you run a report with the Impressions metric, you will be able to aggregate these numbers quite easily and reveal how many impressions (including Top and Abs Top) you’re missing out on using any given dimension/segmentation (such as Day, Device, Keyword etc.). Here’s how:

• Create new columns in a report and populated them for each line with below equations/formulas:

- Impressions x Impr. (Top) % = Total Top Impressions

- Impressions x Impr. (Abs. Top) % = Total Absolute Top Impressions

- Total Top Impressions ÷ Search Top IS - Total Top Impressions = Lost Top Impressions OR Total Top Impressions x ( (1 ÷ Search top IS) - 1)  = Lost Top Impressions

- Same as above but using “Total Absolute Top Impressions” in place of “Total Top Impressions”

In this table, the Grey columns are metrics provided by Google and the others are established through the above calculations:

It’s not yet known if Bing Ads will also sunset the average position metric or whether they will wait and see if it is or isn’t missed by Google advertisers when it dies. If history is any guide, however, it’s highly likely they will follow suit.

Conclusion

There will be those who do mourn the passing of Average Position in September but for many, it will be forgotten as they get to grips with leveraging the more useful new metrics now available.

It has been commented within the industry that it makes PPC more of a programmatic buy, like a DSP. To some extent that is correct - and this seems to broadly be the direction PPC is heading as a logical conclusion sometime in the not-so-distant future.

For more information about Digital Advertising and ESV Digital’s Paid Search strategy, get in touch.

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Together or not?

Holistic Digital Marketing

Everyone loves holidays: spending time with friends, good food, and plentiful drinks. Nobody would deny that it’s nice to have some extra days to relax and recuperate, especially when life is feeling overly fast-paced and chaotic. People need time to rest and take it slow, but often this isn’t an option in the search industry. Unlike us, technology never takes a day off, and these constant developments mean that the search industry, and SERPs in particular, is always changing. This article uses the history of Google Search Engine Results Pages to show how much digital advertising has changed over the years, and the rapidity of these developments is staggering.

History

When Google! Beta launched in 1998, it laid the foundation for the future of SERPs as well as digital marketing and advertising. Google! Beta let users search the web, and provided pages that matched keywords the user entered -- it wasn’t until two years later in 2000 that Google launched AdWords, which allowed 350 companies to use pay-per-click advertising. A year after that, Google added Image Search. Already, it was clear that these technologies were evolving much more quickly than people had expected. Soon after AdWords and Image Search were released, Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook (2003), which sparked the development of more localised Google results (2004), Youtube (2005), and a new outlook on the division between public and private spheres online. By the late 2000s, Google had integrated images, video, news, and personalised content into its results pages, and was introducing the concept of “People Also Ask” under its search bars.

Then the first iPhone launched in 2007, followed by Google’s Android in 2010, which again revolutionised Search by introducing smartphones and mobile search functions. Now, both Google and Facebook have drastically improved their abilities to analyse and learn about each user, personalise content, and decide which ads and results are best suited to them. Search Engine Watch predicts that the defining trends we will see in future developments will be “Increased PPC presence, Voice search, Hyperlocal targeting, and Machine Learning.”

Why Does It Matter?

Because of the nature of the Search industry and its perpetual development, it is essential that digital performance agencies stay on the cusp of all these technological revolutions. ESV Digital does this by staying informed about new technologies available for SERPs and SEM, and using the most effective developments to help their clients stay ahead of the game online. It’s easy for digital marketing agencies to fall behind the competition by not adapting to changes in the industry, updated formulas for generating results, or the advertising potential of new technologies like voice search or artificial intelligence. In order to provide our clients the best possible service, ESV Digital never takes a day off when it comes to staying up-to-date on every method and development available to us and the businesses we help grow - in our campaigns, ESV employs the newest, most effective ad formats and methodologies. Even though the holidays gave us all much-needed break, we still understand the importance of constantly learning and adapting to the very dynamic field of Search advertising.

To learn more about how ESV Digital stays on top of the latest developments in Search advertising, follow us on Twitter @ESV_Digital_UK or on LinkedIn.

Was Christmas and holiday season a gift for your business?

Since it is one of the largest retail holidays in the UK, with consumers spending millions of pounds, if you feel like you missed out on some revenue, here’s how you might want to diagnose why. It will help you improve your performance on other holidays in the future.

Impression Share

Check out your Impression Share (IS) and look at it at a granular level to see if the parts of your account that contribute the largest amount of conversions/revenue have the highest impression share.

Action: If you find that you lost some impressions due to Budget, reassess how you assign budgets for the next holiday.

If you find you lost a lot of impressions due to rank and some keywords or ad groups are beating your conversion KPI by a lot, ensure you set higher bids (not just for holidays but overall) for these.

Year on Year (YoY) comparison

The below metrics should be reviewed for this year’s holiday vs the same last year and see what the differences were in terms of:

• Volumes.
• IS.
• CPCs (Cost per Click).
• Conversion delay - both after the holiday and how much build up is needed prior to the holiday.

The latter can be established by understanding through cohorts (in Google Analytics) can show you customer behaviour from visit to purchase.

Action: If volumes were lower, this should lead you to look at ranking, bids and Quality Score (QS) to understand the underlying cause. If QS is lower, it may take more work to learn why - review ad copy for relevance and if there were any changes to landing pages could also help to resolve this.

Other YoY checks should be Ad Copy messaging - is it the same or different and does it seem that this year’s copy was not as effective?

Also, review how the device-related landscape has changed. Maybe you had a bid modifier that reduced mobile bids but Mobile grew in impression share or improved on conversion rate but bids did not reflect this.

Beyond that, did you do anything else - display advertising different remarketing, non-PPC marketing, added or removed product offerings, etc. - that was different to this year and that could have had a material effect on performance?

Action: Adjust your tactics according to what you learn from this assessment and you should see a better performance next time.

Final Tips

Finally, here are some ideas to drive your holiday and sale performance further even if your account has good fundamentals.

Try building up to the holiday through display ads to drive awareness before they start searching. The best way to do this is to target by interest, page topic and audiences like “Similar Audiences” and Remarketing lists.

For the latter, carefully segment for bids, budget and messaging, the audience lists by those who bought during the last sale or holiday and those who have visited but not bought.

When the holiday starts, add Similar Audiences on the highest-converting search campaigns from the year before and bid aggressively for them. They should be more receptive to buying than the wider internet audience.

Also employ RLSA with a particular emphasis on targeting people who made purchases from last year’s holiday and the most recent holiday. Learning which of these two performs best can be a learning opportunity for refining your RLSA for the following sale or holiday.[box]

Conclusion

The great thing about digital marketing is that, due to its data-heavy nature, even if your campaigns don’t do that great on a certain occasion, you can nearly always isolate the cause and not just guess, which gives you the chance to make it better next time.

Reviewing the performance in the above way should keep your account developing in the right direction.
For more tips on how to make the most out of your online advertising, follow us on Twitter @ESV_Digital_UK or on LinkedIn.

The Importance of Localisation

How to Optimise Localisation

• Providing custom Unique Selling Points (e.g. “Stay Warm Watching the Bears this winter”) can make all the difference in strengthening your brand, and driving traffic and sales. Bidding on local competitors’ names.
• Using Google data sheets to feed local weather if such a factor can affect part or much of your sales in an area. You can build a script to read these weather patterns and change bids or activate and pause parts of your account.
• Remarketing patterns may differ locally and it’s worth checking these and customising bids.
• Geo-targeted bid modifiers are a must for any sophisticated account for a country the size of the UK.
• For areas where you have few, if any, local stores, look to drive non-mobile traffic as the intent to convert online is higher than mobile users who may be en route to a store.
• Conversely, think carefully about tying in your mobile ad efforts to local stores in places where you have a high density of stores.
• Look at how you are geo-targeting. There are default settings that can include people who are physically outside of the location you’re bidding for, and this may or may not be what you want. It could be wasting a lot of money so check these settings. More information on this link.