There are customers searching for what you offer on Google. If your website is regularly creating new content or adding new inventory, it can be time-consuming to try to keep your ads relevant. Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) are the easiest way to find customers searching for what you have to offer. Ideal for advertisers with a well-developed website or a large inventory, a Dynamic Search Ad utilizes the content of your website to create a targeted ad consisting of a distinct headline and an applicable landing page. A DSA will show based on Google’s crawl of the content on your website as opposed to the keywords you are targeting. Even if you have the most targeted keywords, it’s likely that you’re not covering every relevant search term that a potential customer searches. Should your business not use Dynamic Search Ads, you may miss out on reaching valuable customers whose unique search queries differ from what your business typically targets.

How a Dynamic Search Ad is Created

Let’s say you are the owner of a prominent deli in New York called Charlie’s New York Deli. If an individual searches Google for “best deli New York,” Google will recognize the titles and keyword phrases on your website relating to being voted the best deli in New York and generate an ad with the headline “Best Deli – New York.” Should the individual choose to click on the ad generated by Google, the user would then be directed to a landing page from your website that Google selected consisting of reviews and accolades that support your business being the best deli in New York.

The Benefits of Dynamic Search Ads

From automatically updating your ads to automatically generating headlines, DSAs are easy to set-up, will save you time, and keep your ads relevant and effective.

Save Time: Dynamic Search Ads do not require keyword research and targeting, which each take a significant amount of time and effort. 

Easy Set-Up: DSA campaigns require you to only create descriptions relating to your business since the ad’s headline is automatically generated by Google.

Automate Updates: Should you make changes to your website, Google automatically accounts for these changes in its Dynamic Search Ads. 

Lower CPCs: Dynamic Search Ads tend to drive more traffic at a cheaper cost than a standard ad. If your business does its part in ensuring that this is high-quality traffic and that potential customers are being directed to appropriate landing pages, your business could benefit from the increased traffic from a DSA campaign.

What You Need to Know Before Creating a DSA Campaign

Targeting: When setting up Dynamic Search Ads, your business needs to consider the structure of your website. Dynamic Search Ads could be targeted using landing pages from your standard ad groups, categories of website content based on themes, or specific pages from your website.

The Importance of Negative Keywords: A DSA campaign could drive a lot of traffic to your website. However, you need to add a group of negative keywords to the campaign and continually add to this list based on search term queries to ensure that the traffic is relevant to your business. 

Loss of Control: By running a DSA campaign, your business loses control over which queries your ads are served to by not utilizing keywords. Your business thus needs to frequently monitor search terms queries that prompt your ad appearing to a Google searcher. Just like with traditional search ads, irrelevant queries can waste your budget quickly.

Getting Started with Dynamic Search Ads

If done correctly, Dynamic Search Ads are great for supplementing text ads of your business. By using a DSA campaign as part of your Google Advertising efforts, you can discover searches that your current keywords do not cover, increase traffic to your website, and portray ads with headlines that are optimally relevant to a user’s search query. 

If you have a large business with a lot of products and landing pages on your website, creating Dynamic Search Ads may be easier than creating manual ads for every product. If these products and inventory are constantly changing, Google is able to regularly crawl your website and display Dynamic Search Ads only for products that are in stock. If you have a smaller business, Dynamic Search Ads may not be necessary on a long-term basis. However, they can still be useful short-term in terms of driving traffic to your site, discovering keywords you may be overlooking, and increasing brand awareness.

If you are looking to drive quality traffic to your website with Dynamic Search Ads, contact us at Today’s Business and we’ll help get you started! 

The post Google Dynamic Search Ads: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Today's Business.

Google has taken a gigantic shift towards competing with Amazon.

Google announced that they are going to roll out free listings on Google’s Shopping search. With the COVID-19 Pandemic, Google is trying to help brick and mortar retailers sell their products online. 

Bill Ready, President of Commerce at Google stated:

“For retailers, this change means free exposure to millions of people who come to Google every day for their shopping needs. For shoppers, it means more products from more stores, discoverable through the Google Shopping tab. For advertisers, this means paid campaigns can now be augmented with free listings. If you’re an existing user of Merchant Center and Shopping ads, you don’t have to do anything to take advantage of the free listings, and for new users of Merchant Center, we’ll continue working to streamline the onboarding process over the coming weeks and months.” 

This is a win for both sellers and consumers. For retailers that already have items in stock and ready to ship are going to see big upsides with this update if they take action. When consumers go to the Shopping tab on Google, they will see ads at the top and bottom of the page (similar to the “All” search tab). The new update will help increase visibility and it is still important to run Google Shopping Ads for products that are competitive online to help stand out amongst the rest. 

PayPal Partnership/Integration 

Google has partnered with PayPal to help users link their accounts in the onboarding process so creating an account runs smoothly. This helps google with the verification process to make sure they have trusted merchants in their system. Google will pull seller information from PayPal to help speed up the process. Google stated that they will be sharing more information about the onboarding process in the next few weeks and even months. 

How To Set Up Free Google Product Listings

For existing users of Merchant Center and Shopping ads, you may already be able to show your products in the free listings if you already set up surfaces across Google. 

1. In order to opt in the program, you will need to sign into the Google Merchant Center and then select “Growth” and then “Manage programs” and then you should be able to select “surfaces across Google.” 
2. The next step would be to create products in your feed. You can do this via a plug in or manually enter the shopping values in a sheet.

For those that are new to Google Merchant Center, you will need to sign up for one. You will need to go through the same process as listed above by selecting the “surfaces across Google” program and then create your product feed. Google is going to be releasing more information about the onboarding process in the upcoming weeks and months. 

Google is currently working on a reporting system where you can see your unpaid clicks from Google’s Shopping. 

Optimize Your Organic Product Listings With Today’s Business 

This new Google Shopping Update allows for increased efforts for SEO strategists and e-commerce marketers as they will be able to now optimize for organic product search. Optimizing organic product search is very important for any retailer’s business as it increases visibility for people that are looking for your products online. If you are a retailer and have inventory saved up, getting your products on Google and optimizing them should be part of your SEO strategy. At Today’s Business, we have the SEO experience and knowledge needed to help implement SEO tactics to boost your business to the next level. Contact us today to discuss different SEO strategies that can help you organically enhance your business impact and gain more customers.

Sources

The post Why Google Shopping Opening Up Free Product Listings is Huge for Retailers and Consumers appeared first on Today's Business.

YouTube Launches 6-Second Bumper Ads

By: Raj Trivedi, Director of Digital Advertising

6-second Bumper Ads on YouTube allow advertisers to sequence their ads for more effective storytelling. In advertising, we always try to focus on showcasing the pain points and the results of whatever we are promoting, but only having six seconds to accomplish it is a challenge we are excited to take on.

Break down your longer videos into splashy 6-second ads with Bumper Machine — the perfect tool to extend your campaign’s reach. Check out more from #GoogleMarketingLive → https://t.co/i7inE9yJNp pic.twitter.com/jkOlSo22ZD

— YouTube Advertisers (@YTAdvertisers) May 14, 2019

YouTube ads are great for brand awareness for any of our clients in any industry. According to data collected by Google, a series of three bumper ads leaves a much more memorable impression on consumers than one single 30-second ad. If we are able to portray a story with multiple bumper ads, it could be very effective versus just one 30 second ad. I am excited to try to showcase emotion and story in 6 seconds in these types of campaigns and also very interested to see how it impacts brand searches. Long story short (literally!)… You only have six seconds, so use them wisely.

Google & YouTube Join Forces With Discovery Ads

YouTube ad updates didn’t stop at Bumper Ads in this years GML. Discovery ads are a simple and effective way to tap into the power of YouTube, and the best part is, you don’t even need a video!

Video isn’t the only way to advertise on @YouTube: Repurpose your most effective image assets with Discovery Ads. See more from #GoogleMarketingLive here → https://t.co/i7inE9yJNp pic.twitter.com/txKzgsFIVv

— YouTube Advertisers (@YTAdvertisers) May 14, 2019

Discovery was a big theme at GML this year and Google’s new Discovery Ads fell nothing short of that. Discovery Ads are native ads that appear in multiple Google feed environments: YouTube home feed, Discover, and Gmail. These ads will allow businesses to build awareness and connect with consumers by using intent-based targeting, meaning you don’t need to enter a query at that time in order to see the ad.

Our first announcement is out! ‍ Presenting Discovery ads: inspire and engage consumers with rich and relevant creative across the YouTube home feed, the Gmail promotions and social tabs, and the feed in Discover. Hear more at #GoogleMarketingLive → https://t.co/J8PIH9BX7m! pic.twitter.com/38DDfzkSJU

— Google Ads (@GoogleAds) May 14, 2019

A unique way to leverage your top performing content is to utilize the best images from a social campaign you previously saw success in. Simply upload those images and YouTube will optimize your media mix for maximum performance. The YouTube home feed has always been a great place for users to discover new content and creators. And now, it can be a great place for them to discover your brand.

The YouTube Home feed is where every @YouTube user starts their journey. With help from our new tools, your brand can be part of that process too. Check out all the news from #GoogleMarketingLive here → https://t.co/i7inE9yJNp pic.twitter.com/01zMdSUC9Q

— YouTube Advertisers (@YTAdvertisers) May 16, 2019

People often focus so much on purchases and conversions that they often forget about how important brand awareness is. By getting your brand in front of new eyes, you will in turn get the right eyes on the right products, which will then lead to conversions. At the end of the day, brand awareness is the discovery. And once you’ve been discovered, let the shopping begin!

A Redesigned Google Shopping Experience

By: Billy Ash Jr, CDO

Let’s talk shop. Online shoppers expect their shopping experiences to be simple, fast, and intuitive, right? Google has done just that, by making Google Shopping more, well, shoppable.

We just unveiled a redesigned Google Shopping experience at #GoogleMarketingLive. Learn more at #GoogleMarketingLive → https://t.co/J8PIH9klIM pic.twitter.com/uh6nDaBooV

— Google Ads (@GoogleAds) May 14, 2019

The overall search experience has changed drastically, especially over the past 2 years. It is apparent that Google has been making it a priority to keep users on their platform with their introduction of knowledge graphs, quick answers, and other types of rich snippets into their search results pages. Google Shopping is their newest attempt at making Google a one stop shop for all of their users needs. With this update, Google has taken a major step in the e-commerce space to fight back against Amazon, who has been increasing their share of the overall search landscape every year. Google’s ‘buy now’ feature allows the user to add products to their universal shopping cart from all different sites and checkout from their Google account, rather than on each individual website. This is a big trend as we saw Instagram launch their new shop feature around the exact same time. Just like how Netflix changes your homepage based on shows that you’ve watched before, Google will be creating homepages based off your shopping habits and products that you indicate you want to see. With both shipping and pick up in-store options, Google is catering to all types of users who purchase online while also incentivizing businesses to participate as it drives foot traffic to their locations. What is really exciting about this shopping experience and truly differentiates it from Amazon is that it is not just limited to Google Search; they plan on releasing it to YouTube and Google image search later this year.

Sell your products directly on Google is as easy as 1, 2, 3 #GoogleMarketingLive
Sign Up https://t.co/cZvVUKIPvP pic.twitter.com/84wvCzMzze

— Google Ads (@GoogleAds) May 24, 2019

With this new feature, it’s imperative for business owners to ensure that their product feeds are set up correctly and that they are Shopping Actions merchants. Otherwise, they cannot participate in Google Shopping.

Google Adds Images to Paid Search With Gallery Ads

By: Amanda Hatton, Lead Social Media Strategist 

PPC advertisers now have the ability to feature up to eight images in Gallery Ads, Google’s new mobile search ad format. Going hand-in-hand with the updates to Google Shopping and Discovery Ads, it is safe to say that Google has come to accept the simple fact that images drive engagement and conversions. With Gallery Ads, they’re are finally putting that into practice.

Google announces Gallery Ads at #GoogleMarketingLIVE . Available later this year from @GoogleAds @Optmyzr #PPC pic.twitter.com/ttHV68yu2a

— Frederick Vallaeys (@siliconvallaeys) May 14, 2019

As an avid online shopper, I love seeing carousel format ads on my social news feeds. Having a collection of products dynamically curated for me, based on my online activity is a personalized experience that always leaves me wanting to shop and see more. Now, to have the same experience on Google, right at the top of search engine results? You’ve caught my attention.And, the fact that Gallery Ads aren’t strictly for products is a huge game changer. Think about it, wouldn’t you be much more convinced to book a reservation at a restaurant if the standard text ad you would normally see on Google was paired with a carousel of images of the food, drinks, and atmosphere? I would. Reading about something can only get someone so far; but by pairing memorable text with eye catching images, how could any business or brand not see success with this new ad format?

Final Thoughts from the TB Team

With all of these new updates, Google has made it very clear that they are doing everything they can to compete with other advertising and e-commerce giants like Facebook and Amazon. Just as Google is doing its job to keep up, it is our job as marketers to keep up with these updates as well and implement these new best practices into our campaigns. Not only are these updates critical to PPC success, they are achievable by businesses large and small. For example, any business, no matter their size or level of creative expertise, can succeed on YouTube with the ease and simplicity of the machine learning used to create Bumper Ads. We look forward to implementing these new strategies in our SEM campaigns and also providing our clients with an even better ROAS from Google ads.

The post Key Takeaways from Google Marketing Live 2019 appeared first on Today's Business.

Visibility on Google

SEM allows for your website to show up at the top of Google, regardless of where you rank organically. When you invest in PPC, it becomes possible for you to rank above your competitors even if they are ranking higher organically. In a study from Wordstream, it was estimated that around 41% of clicks on searches go to the top 3 paid ads in the search results page.

That’s not just effective for desktop. On mobile searches, paid results are the first visible results because you don’t have to scroll to see them, as you would organic. In 2019, everything is shifting to mobile, which is why it is extremely important to pivot your marketing strategy towards PPC. 

Brand Awareness

Paid search boosts brand awareness. People who would not otherwise see your business at the top of Google are seeing it. If it shows up for multiple searches, they are more likely to click and remember your brand in the long run. Google display campaigns reach 80% of global internet users. Having a solid SEM strategy will ensure that you are capitalizing on the eyes that are already on search ads and making the move towards converting some of them into profitable customers.

There are two components to brand awareness through paid search. You can run location extension ads which means that if you’re not showing up for location searches organically, you can compensate with Google ads. The second component is sitelink extensions. This means that you can drive users to different pages on the website besides the homepage. This is a strategy that has proven to be effective for bringing awareness to a new product or service your business is offering.

Consistent Traffic

One of the key factors in successful digital marketing and PPC is a consistent source of traffic. Traffic not only drives conversions, but it provides valuable insights into your target market.

This increase in users on your website is useful for collecting data about your target audience. The more data that we have on the users that visit your website, the better we can tailor our ads on multiple ad networks. Planning remarketing campaigns based on the data we have about your target market will ensure that you will see more conversions from your campaigns.

Cost Effective

When it comes to SEM, you are paying per click. This means that even if someone sees your ad, but does not click on it you are not charged for that view or impression. This is an extremely cost-effective marketing tactic because you make the most of every dollar that you spend because it is being funneled into every click you receive.

Businesses make $2 in income for every $1 they spend in AdWords, according to Google. SEM is great for really seeing an ROI on your marketing spends.

Here at Today’s Business, we adhere to a manual keyword bidding strategy. This allows you to be in complete control of your bids and how much you want to spend in the most efficient way possible so that your ads can show to the right people on search engines. When it comes to keywords, we make sure that we are bidding on keywords with the highest search volume, the lowest cost per click and the lowest competition.

Keyword Strategy

Utilizing a PPC strategy can work symbiotically with your SEO campaign because it can help you determine the most lucrative keywords in your industry. It can also tell you what your competitors are ranking for.

There are three different keyword match types that we utilize. Broad Match Modifier ensures that regardless of the order that the keywords are typed by the user, it will show up in the search ads. Phrase Match ensures that if the user types additional words before the keyword phrase, it will still show up. Exact Match, just like the name suggests, is when the ad will show up when the exact keyword phrase is typed into the search bar.

SEM (PPC) at Today’s Business

Our approach to search engine marketing is different from any other agency because we base our campaigns solely off of performance and our bidding strategies are perfect for those who want the most cost-effective approach possible. If you’re ready to take your search marketing to the next level, let’s talk!

The post 5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs SEM (PPC) appeared first on Today's Business.

Do you know what your digital advertising dollars are really going towards? Chances are, you’re being robbed blind. Many businesses hire “expert” advertising agencies to run their Google Adwords account but fail to know the basic ins-and-outs of the campaigns their agency is running. If the stats you are given aren’t lining up or if you are looking to call your agency out on their failed strategies, read on as I give an inside look at the top four mistakes ad companies make, which cost your business a lot of money. 

1. They are not breaking up your campaigns by branded and unbranded searches

Branded vs non-branded search in terms of Google AdWords is the starting point to find out how your ads are doing. Every single one of your campaigns should be separated by brand vs. non-brand and there should be a clear difference in what the cost per acquisition is for both campaigns.

What is a branded search?

Short and sweet, branded keywords are those that are directly correlated to your business/trademark and no one else’s. Which can include:

• Doctors name, if a multi-physician practice
• Your name plus other words: company name + reviews
• Products or product name

What are non-branded keywords?

A non-branded search does not include your brand name or any part of it. Instead, the user is searching for a specific service or product. It’s important that the non-branded keywords you are bidding on align with your company’s offerings. If not, you will end up wasting money bidding on keywords that you cannot convert on. Examples of non-branded search terms a plastic surgery practice may want to bid on include:

• Plastic surgeon near me
• Tummy tuck near me

Branded vs. Non-Branded Paid Search Campaigns

Now that we know the difference between branded and non-branded searches, let’s dive into why there needs to be a clear line between the two. There is going to be a significant difference between the average cost per click (CPC) of a branded search compared to a non-branded search. Furthermore, someone searching for your brand name is much more likely to convert than someone who is out there prospecting.

To inflate stats, common practice ad agencies will tell you a general cost per acquisition (CPA) for all of the ads running on your Adwords account. At Today’s Business, we try to be as transparent as possible by telling our clients what the CPA is for both their branded and non-branded campaigns. We even take it one step further, breaking down each campaign by ad group so our clients know what keywords are the most valuable to their business.

2. They are not accounting for data discrepancies between Analytics and Adwords

The first thing we look for when starting a campaign that has already been running is how many clicks Google AdWords says you received compared to the number of sessions Google Analytics is telling you Adwords sent you. On average, we see a 10% discrepancy between clicks and sessions, but that number can be higher. We have seen some accounts with discrepancies upwards of 60%. When Google AdWords is telling you that you got 600 clicks and Google Analytics is telling you that you received 200 sessions of those clicks, essentially it means that ¾ of your ad budget is not being tracked properly. Additionally, users may click your ad multiple times, but it only results in one session. Why do these things happen? Because agencies mistakenly do the following:

• Build a landing page and forget to track and implement the Google Analytics codes
• Don’t implement different analytics codes per landing page
• Don’t properly connect your AdWords to Analytics

For example, if you have your own physician site and your own practice site, Google will allow you to connect two different AdWords accounts to one Analytics account (even though you shouldn’t). Just because you technically can do it doesn’t mean you should, and agencies that make this mistake will not be tracking campaigns properly. When things like this happen, you have no real way to tell what your cost per acquisition is, so you are essentially throwing money out the window.

3. They are not setting up Goals in Analytics 

Goals are the most important objective in any advertising campaign, as they allow you to track specific user interactions on your site. When a website visitor performs that action, Google Analytics and/or Adwords records that as a conversion. If you run campaigns without incorporating goals, you will never be able to find your true cost per acquisition.What does this mean? Your stats mean nothing if your goals were not completed.

Without goals, it would be impossible to optimize your page and determine which ad groups are actually working. It’s important to note that budgets are set in the campaign level and within each campaign, you have ad groups that each contain different keywords and ads. If you aren’t able to tell what your cost per acquisition is per ad group, you aren’t going to be able to determine if should pause one campaign and spend more on another.

When running Google AdWords campaigns, be sure you are tracking the following:

• Phone calls
• Contact forms
• Request an appointment
• PDF downloads
• Email subscribers
• E-Commerce sales

4. They are using the wrong keyword match types

When running any SEM campaigns, it’s important to know not only what keywords your agency is targeting but how they are targeting them. This is where match types come into play.

PPC Keyword Match Types

Currently, there are 5 different match types. They are:

• Broad Match
• Broad Match Modifier
• Phrase Match
• Exact Match
• Negative Match

1. Broad Match

A broad match type gives you a ton of opportunity to show up in unrelated keywords. With this match type, you are getting the widest reach and least amount of relevance. For instance, if your agency is bidding on broad match for plastic surgery, it can include:

• In a different state 
• Misspellings
• Synonyms
• What Google thinks is a related search
• Close variations
• Negative keywords

For instance, if you are a plastic surgeon in New York City, by using a broad match type, you could be bidding on plastic surgery in San Diego. Equally as detrimental, a broad match for plastic surgery could be bidding on orthopedic surgery.

2. Broad Match Modifier

The second least relevant keyword type is broad match modifiers. This includes one example keyword with an extra keyword on top of it. This means you will bid on keywords that fall under plastic and surgery. For instance, you may bid on keywords such as ‘what plastics are used during surgery.’

3. Phrase Match

You can set a phrase match by putting it in quotes. This match type will include the exact phrase of your keyword and include any other words in that segment, including negative keywords, as opposed to having plus signs in what plastic is used in surgery, this will only show up in plastic surgery jobs or plastic surgery colleges.

4. Exact Match

Exact match provides the lowest reach but the highest relevance. You are only going to be showing up for the exact keywords that you are putting in brackets. For instance, if you use plastic surgeon, the only additional keyword you would show up for is plastic surgeons.

5. Negative Match

Designating a negative keyword tells Google to never display your ad when a user searches for it. Negative match keywords are often used in conjunction with broad and phrase match types, as it helps better target potential consumers. This can lead to an increase to your ROI when using a broad match strategy.

Summary

If you don’t know the details behind the numbers in your campaigns, the figures that your advertising company is showing you are most likely skewed. Now that you’ve read my insider tips, go out and ask your agency what types of keywords you’re bidding on, what match types you’re using, and what negative keywords you’re using. Furthermore, if you’re running your PPC advertising yourself, ensure you are not making these mistakes. If you have any questions or concerns, leave them in the comments below and we can discuss!

The post 4 Ways Your Ad Company is Robbing You appeared first on Today's Business.

The healthcare industry is one of the largest and fastest growing industries in the world. Because the industry is constantly growing, there is constantly more and more competition for your practice. How can you stand out above your competition? Investing in online marketing can help drive traffic to your practice’s website, which brings more patients through your doors. Online marketing is made up of many different components. One of the major drivers to your practice’s website is Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Key Components of SEM

Keyword Strategy

Every healthcare practice wants to show up as the top search result on Google for services they provide. If your practice has a terrible website that is not mobile friendly, best of luck even showing up on the second page on Google. Not only does Google penalize old and outdated websites, potential patients do not have a good site experience either. This leads to them bouncing off of your website and clicking on your competitor’s site.

SEM is a great tool to use if your healthcare practice already has a responsive website, or you are looking to update your website. If your practice does not utilize SEO (which I highly recommend you do), SEM will help you show up in the top search results on Google.

You may have noticed that sometimes you can search a doctor’s name on Google, and information about other doctors in the same field show up instead. What that means is that your competitor is bidding on your doctor’s name. By setting up your SEM campaign, you can begin bidding on your name. This will help ensure that you are always the number one result when someone is looking for you.

Ad Extensions

Ad Extensions are your best friend when you run a SEM campaign. This tool gives your text ads more visibility as it has more information and links that will help increase your Click Through Rate (CTR). CTR is one of the most important metrics to look at in your SEM campaigns. Some of the most popular Ad Extensions for Healthcare practices are sitelink extensions, call extensions, and location extensions.

• Sitelink Extensions

Sitelink extensions are key to increase your CTR and bring people to the exact pages you are looking for. They show links to specific pages on your website and they appear under your text ads. The great thing about these extensions is that you can add sitelinks for any pages you have on your website such as contact us, specific services, doctor bios, etc.

• Call Extensions

You have the ability to add phone numbers to show up under your text ads on Google. If you choose to create a Google forwarding number, you can directly track how many calls you get from your text ads. This is a great opportunity to drive in more conversions. According to Google, call extensions typically increase click through rate by 4 to 5 percent.

• Location Extensions

Location extensions show the businesses address, hours and other information about your practice. This is a great option so potential customers know exactly where you are located before clicking on your website. On mobile, customers can get directions to your business with one click. Location extensions also allow your Google reviews to show up on your ads, which can help entice the customer to call you or visit your business.

Conversions, Conversions, Conversions!

Every business wants to see an ROI, especially healthcare practices. Some of the best conversion points to track are phone calls and contact forms on your website. Keeping track of the number of phone calls and contact forms are filled out because of your SEM efforts is the easiest way to see how well your campaign is performing.

Start an SEM Campaign Today

If you’re new to the world of digital marketing, we would suggest trusting a SEM expert to bring you the highest ROI. You want to choose a company that can show you successful healthcare case studies, so you know they can produce the same (if not better) results for your practice.

Here at Today’s Business, we have many clients in various healthcare industries, including physical therapists, orthopedic practices, plastic surgeons, eye doctors, and urology practices, among others. With proper keywords, extensions, and conversion tracking, we can help take your healthcare practice to the next level. For more information on how we can help increase your digital presence, please contact us today.

The post How SEM Improves Your Healthcare Practice appeared first on Today's Business.

How It Works

The first thing you need to do to set up a remarketing campaign via Google Adwords is to set up a remarketing code on your website. You need to go to your “shared library” tab in Adwords and click on “audiences.”  From here you can send your remarketing code to an email to implement it on your website. The remarketing code places cookies in people’s computer who have visited your website. You can adjust your audience to people who have been to your website within a certain amount of days. It’s a good idea to target people that have been to your website within 30 days since they tend to have the highest potential of converting.

High Quality Images

High quality remarketing images with strong calls to actions can drive a lot of traffic to your website. When you run a remarketing campaign through Google Adwords you have a few different image sizes to choose from. It is important to create images in each different size so you can do A/B testing to see which performs the best. The different image sizes are 160×600, 300×250, 728×90, or 320×50 (mobile).  When it comes to the images you can have one solid image or you can create a gif that can display multiple images after a certain time. For example, the gif can have 3 images that rotate every 30 seconds.

Solid Remarketing Image

Image from TreadHunter Remarketing Campaign

Remarketing images for any deals or discounts you currently have are very effective for driving sales.

Remarketing Example- Gif

https://imgur.com/Cwqh28Q
GIF via Woodmont Ridge Remarketing Campaign

If is important for images to have a call to action such as the phone number or website, just in case the user doesn’t click on the ad. If the user does not click on the ad, it is free promotion – so why not include information that the customer would find interesting?

View post on imgur.com

Image via Amazology Remarketing Campaign

Text Ads

Text remarketing ads are just as important as image remarketing ads. They will also show up on the sides on the Google Display Network. The great thing about remarketing ads, especially text ads, are that they have a low cost-per-click (CPC).  When it comes to remarketing, you never want to pay more than $1 for a click. Text ads are helpful if you don’t have a graphic designer on your team but you still want to stay in front of people that have been to your website.

Conclusion

Remarketing is a great way for you to display your ads to potential customers who may be interested in your product. Remarketing is an inexpensive advertisement, and you can generate great leads from it if you design a high quality image or gif with a proper call to action. It is important to set up the code properly on the website so you can gather your audience list and target them effectively. Google Adwords is a great place to run remarketing ads, but you can also use other platforms like Adroll. If you want to learn more about Google Adwords and the proper ways to advertise on it, check out our other SEM blogs, here.

The post The Importance of Remarketing for Businesses appeared first on Today's Business.

1. Directing People to a Bad Website

User experience and overall quality score are two components that will cause a campaign to over spend or not get displayed at all. We suggest making sure your website is up to date before spending money on Google. Sending potential clients to an ugly or poorly designed website will hurt conversions drastically and reduce quality score. The three questions we ask when evaluating whether to send people to a client’s website are the following:

• Is the layout update to date?
• Is the content relevant and interesting?
• Are they using high quality images?

Modern website designs follow certain conventions including a header menu with drop downs and an overall clean design. If these elements are absent, users will not be confident in the business and most likely bounce (meaning they will leave your website).  Content, both media and text, needs to be engaging and also not have any spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors. Lastly, images need to be high quality but not be too large, otherwise they will take a long time to render.

2. Not Sending Visitors to a Targeted Landing Page

Every campaign built in Adwords should be directed to a specific landing page based on the keywords used and the ad text. People are lazy and when someone clicks on a PPC ad they are looking to inquire or bounce. If they are asked to do any extra steps or navigate a poorly designed page, they will leave. Insuring a strong call to action is in place will give the visitor every reason to convert. The biggest question that needs to be asked: How impactful is the landing page? If the value proposition of why the visitor should fill out the form or call the number is not clear, the message needs to be changed. Also, never simply drop a user on the home page and assume they will navigate the rest of the site and convert. This is not what PPC dollars should be spent on, and sending someone to just the home page is why organic SEO is powerful. Messing with this convention is a waste of ad spends.

3. Nonspecific Ad Text

Once again, people are lazy and are not as likely to interact with ads that they know are in fact just advertisements. The goal is to make your ad stand out in the sea of paid results for a given search result. Making sure that the ad text includes a keyword or phrase they would have typed in the search bar. The ad needs to stand out, so use capital letters for each word. The call to action also needs to be different. All too many advertisers use “click here”. That is understood though, and does not need to be said. “Call now” is also a waste of characters and a line that many advertisers use. “See our offers” is a vastly superior way to entice people to actually click on the ad.

4. Not Using Regional Targeting

By default, ads are visible nationwide, which works just fine if your business is nationwide. If this option is not modified though, you will be spending money on clicks that will not convert or potential spam entries. Adwords provides a great radius targeting option that allows for advertisers to pinpoint exactly where they what their ads to hit. Time is also a factor that should be taken into account. This way, ads are not being run late at night for a client that is only open during lunch hours. It is also possible to target multiple stats simultaneously. Customizing these options for a client before setting up a campaign is crucial to improve conversion.

5. Using Only Broad Match

Adwords offers three matching options for keywords: Broad, Phrase, and Exact. Broad ads are shown for any version of the desired phrase and variations of this phrase. Phrase ads are shown when this phrase is entered exactly. Exact ads are shown only when the desired phrase is entered exactly. Broad matching can be useful for running brand awareness campaigns or when selling products that are well known. For everyone else, these match types needs to be used sparingly otherwise the results will not be great.

A good rule of thumb is to use phrase match in most cases and exact match if you have many variants that you are able to add.

When running Google PPC just creating a campaign is not enough. By default, if a campaign is left unmanaged the results can waste ad spend or result in unintended results.

Interested in running Adwords for your campaign? The experts at Today’s Business can handle this and more for you.

The post 5 Adwords Fails (and how to avoid them) appeared first on Today's Business.

Image Via Google

Biding Strategy

Digital Marketers now will have to adjust their Adwords strategy to show up on the top four ads on the first page in Google. What this could mean for marketers now is that they might be dealing with more competition than ever before. Before the Adwords change, businesses were happy to be on the top of the searches in the right sidebar. Now, nobody wants to be on the bottom of the first page! Sure you’re on the first page of Google, but how many people do you know click on the bottom few search results or even make it to the bottom of the first page? Besides my mom who clicks on random links, I don’t see too many people making it to the bottom of search results.

Businesses will now have to look at custom bidding strategies to get on the top of search results or on the first page. One bid strategy that will be popular is “Target Search Page Location.” This bid strategy adjusts your bids to help your ads show up on the top of page or on the first page of search results.  This will mean more money will be spent to get you to the top spot because you are going against all of your competitors. This strategy will help you get one of the top spots on Google’s search engine which will help you get more leads. You will be spending more on this bid strategy, but the payout could be worth it since you have a higher chance of being in front of your customers. To learn other effective ways to run a successful SEM Campaign, check out this blog.

Click Through Rate

Image Via AppFlood

What does this new change mean with click through rates? My prediction is that they will drastically decrease, especially if you are not on the first page of Google. With Google’s recent change it seems like only the strongest will survive.  The only campaigns that will have a high click through rate are the top four ads on the first page. It will be interesting to see how the bottom ads perform, but I don’t see them getting anywhere close to the click through rates that the top ads get. With low click through rates, the quality score of ads will be impacted. You can learn more about that from SEM Post.

Conclusion

Google Adwords update plays a big role on how Digital Marketers should now market on Google’s search engine. Everyone will now be targeting the top 4 spots on Google. Now that the right sidebar only displays Product Listing Ads, this might be a large opportunity for E-commerce businesses to thrive on Google.  It will be interesting to see how the bottom ads on the search results perform, but I don’t see it doing well. Always aim for the top spot, as we do here at Today’s Business!

The post What Google’s Adwords Update Means For Businesses appeared first on Today's Business.

AdBlock, those who are not aware, is a plugin for the chrome browser that hides ads on websites, videos on YouTube, and search engine result pages. In 2015, this form of ad blocking cost publishers nearly $22 Billion dollars. Currently there are 198 million active AdBlock users around the world. It is safe to say that this trend of blocking unwanted and sometimes intrusive ads will not go away.  Our goal as advertisers is to get creative with the way we deliver our ads. In 2016, there are three primary ways in which I see this being done: Emphasis on mobile focused ads, guest blogging and vlogging for the desired product or service, and Wi-Fi advertisements.

Mobile

The use of AdBlock is more prevalent for Desktop computers compared to mobile devices. This offers us a great opportunity to avoid plugins that will block our ads whether they are on Facebook/Instagram/YouTube and advertise directly to our demographic. Studies from the PageFair and Adobe 2015 Ad Blocking Report find that “Ad Blocking behavior on websites is a function of audience demographics. Websites that cater to a younger more tech savvy audience are more likely to use this plugin”. Mobile on the other hand is a tougher platform to block advertisements on, especially through third party apps like Facebook and YouTube. Ad Blocking on mobile devices is possible, although in order to block said ads you will need to browse by using a separate browser entirely, unlike the desktop add-on, which does just that. Mobile is one platform to begin focusing advertisements on in 2016 to ensure the message will not be blocked. However, using the power of content marketing and influential people on the Internet is becoming more viable.

Guest Blogging and Vlogging

When people go on the Internet to search for a product or service, they may not know the name of said product or may be shopping around. Reaching out to a “Top 10” or other blog for the desired category is a great way to get the message of said product or service out to the target demographic. The goal with this type of advertising is to integrate within the content and not scream out to the user that it is an advertisement. Sponsoring popular YouTube accounts and giving them a unique promo code for a discount is one tactic that can be used to get the message of the product out, and also come off as an ad that cannot be blocked. The message also comes from someone who has a voice on the Internet that is trusted by loyal viewers or readers of a popular blog.

Wi-Fi Ads

When out at traditional brick and mortar stores, using Wi-Fi instead of data is a common occurrence, due to the high data costs and sometimes slower speeds. However, placing ads that capture a user’s email or Facebook info before granting access to the Wi-Fi is one way to both extract a target demographic for use in other online advertising endeavors, but also avoid Ad Block completely. This is done through their inbox by sending them special offers and promos for using your Wi-Fi. As well as promos and ads directly on the login screen they use to get access. Turnstyle is one such solution we plan on using to help our current clients monetize their Wi-Fi and advertising deals directly to the most loyal customers they have. Offers can be pushed directly to a user’s phone as a text, which as expected have a very high open rate and ultimately can’t be blocked.

AdBlock Plus and the free version of the plugin, and its many clones, are not going anywhere. But I feel it is our job as advertisers to understand why someone would install such a plugin to block out ads. The most common reason is that they are intrusive and sometimes websites with an unknown ad network can be dangerous or have a spammy message. Avoiding these practices and using creative ways to reach your target audience is key. The only place you can avoid ads nowadays is by going to sleep, so making sure they are not obvious or offering some form of value proposition is going to be imperative in 2016.

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