While Google Ads may remain the most popular digital paid media network, it’s also among the most expensive. Naturally, this is hardly ideal if you plan to increase your ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) or simply tighten the purse strings.

With that in mind, it pays to consider some great alternative ad networks to ensure that your business gets the most bang for its proverbial buck.

The only question is, which one do you choose? In this article, we’ll help you decide.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

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3 Reasons to Consider an Alternative Ad Network

First, let’s take a look at the advantage of using other, cheaper ad networks.

More Competition Means Higher CPC Rates

The obvious drawback with popular advertising platforms is that they’re, well, popular. Most PPC platforms use auction bidding systems to price their ad inventory. That means the more people who use the platform, the more expensive it gets for you to buy traffic.

So while market leaders like Facebook Ads and Google Ads are great platforms for driving targeted traffic, there are reasons to test alternative channels.

First of all, there’s the cost factor mentioned earlier. The cost of advertising on the most popular networks is pretty high, given the amount of competition. For instance, the average CPC in Google Ads across all industries is between $1-3 for search and $1 for display:

However, some industries can be much higher, with consumer and legal services in particular costing an average of $6+ per click.

Meanwhile, the average CPC of Facebook ads is $1.72 and rising steadily as advertisers flock to the platform:

When you start exploring the cheaper ad networks below, you’ll find that average CPC ad rates can be much lower, making it a better option for businesses with modest advertising budgets.

The Bigger Platforms Have Tougher Restrictions

To maintain their reputation as kings of the industry, popular options like the Google Display network and Meta’s advertising platforms impose strict regulations on what can and can’t be advertised.

Those of you in the adult, tobacco, pharmaceutical, gaming and weaponry industries, as well as affiliate marketers, may find yourself shut out of popular platforms due to these regulations and therefore may simply need to find alternative advertising networks out of necessity.

Flexibility and Experimentation

The cheapest CPC ad networks generally allow you to get started and run ad experiments with a lower initial investment than the major players.

This gives you the opportunity to test different ad creatives, targeting parameters and campaign strategies without committing significant financial resources upfront.

The lower entry barriers provided by these cost-effective ad networks means you can fine tune your advertising approach and identify what resonates best with your audience before going all-in with your PPC ads.

8 Popular PPC Platforms for Targeted Traffic

Before we hit the list of cheaper ad networks, it’s worth taking a quick look at the eight most popular ad networks that every marketer uses.

There’s a reason why they’re so popular. From Facebook to Google to Amazon, these sites have enormous and highly engaged audiences, as well as increasingly sophisticated audience targeting systems.

That being said, if you’re a seasoned advertiser looking for new ideas and an alternative ad network, feel free to jump down to our 17 cheapest alternative ad platforms.

1) Facebook Ads

As the world’s biggest social media platform, Facebook generates as much as $32 billion per quarter in ad revenue. So, if advertisers are willing to spend so much, it’s clearly a platform that works.

On Facebook you can run a variety of ad types in a variety of locations. Ad placements include:

• Desktop newsfeed
• Mobile newsfeed
• Desktop right sidebar
• Stories
• Messenger
• Marketplace

It is a self-serve platform, meaning anyone can sign up and start running ads for their business. Ad targeting and delivery settings are becoming more and more automated, which makes the platform beginner-friendly:

Performance can be measured by installing a Facebook tracking pixel on your website to track conversions. The tracking pixel also gathers data about what type of person is most likely to convert. As it learns, Facebook can then automate your ad delivery to find other people with a similar demographic and interest profile who are likely to convert.

Lastly, if you’re planning to run ads on Facebook, make sure you optimize for mobile since:

94% of all Facebook ad spend happens on mobile.

To maximize your chance of achieving a positive ROI on the platform, you need to be thinking mobile-first when designing your creative, writing your copy, and building your landing pages.

2) Google Ads

Next on our list is the king of search, Google, which offers two advertising options:

A) Google Search Network

Ads on Google’s Search Network appear at the top and bottom of Google’s SERPs, as well as on Google’s search partner sites. These are ideal for getting in front of prospective customers at the exact moment they’re seeking your solution.

On the Search Network, you can run a variety of text-based ads, including dynamic and responsive search ads. You can also run call-only ads, and shopping ads.

B) Google Display Network

Google’s Display Network lets you place ads on a network of millions of websites that have chosen to sell ad space in their content.

These ads help you get in front of your target market before they start searching for your solution. That means the potential reach is much higher, but the expected click-through rate and conversion rate is lower.

On the Display Network, you can run static image ads, responsive display ads, and video ads optimized for clicks or engagement. You can also place ads in Gmail at the top of the user’s inbox.

3) Bing Ads

So far in 2025, Bing has 3.93% of the search engine market share. While that might not sound like a lot, it meant about $211.92 billion in advertising revenue for Microsoft in 2022.

Bing Ads run on three search engines: As well as tapping into Bing’s own audience, your ads can also run on Yahoo! and AOL searches to increase reach.

Although the maximum potential from this platform is lower due to fewer searches, the average cost-per-click is also lower. The exact numbers vary in different verticals, but for example, WordStream found that Bing had an average of 33.5% cheaper CPCs than Google.

4) Instagram Ads

Compared to Facebook, Meta’s other major social media brand, Instagram, typically has a higher CPC, but also higher engagement:Instagram Ads are created in the Facebook Ads manager, and use the same audience targeting and bidding settings. To create an ad for Instagram, you simply choose Instagram placements (such as newsfeed or story ads) during the ad creation process.

5) X Ads

X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter, generates 90% of its $4+ billion annual revenue from advertising, proving that, despite many recent changes, it’s still a hit with advertisers. On Twitter, you can optimize ad campaigns around objectives such as:

• Website traffic
• Video views
• Engagement
• App installs
• Reach

A variety of Twitter Ad formats are available, including plain text, images, GIFs and videos, with useful optimization tools to help you maximize the value of each ad:

Compared to other social advertising platforms, X’s average cost per click for promoted ads can be low: about $0.25 to $2.

6) LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn is the premier social network for professionals, so it’s a great place for B2B advertisers to promote their messages. Advertising on the site is self-service and can be targeted by geography, job function, seniority and industry.

It’s one of the only ad networks that lets you target viewers by their role in an organization, and they have the best data on job titles, company size, industry and more. This makes it much easier to build an audience that represents your potential customers.

Even better, they report to you about how your ads are performing on all of those metrics, even if you aren’t targeting them.

LinkedIn Ads’ CPC is, on average, $2-3, and there are four main types of ad placements, most of which are self-serve:

• Sponsored Content. These are posts that show up in the newsfeed, just like you’d see with Facebook Ads.
• Sponsored Messaging. This is when you pay to message people directly in their inbox. It’s essentially simple email marketing for LinkedIn.
• Text Ads. Simple display ads that show above and to the right of the news feed.
• Dynamic Ads. These are also displayed to the right of the news feed, but offer more features that the user can interact with. Only available to clients who spend at least $25,000 in a single quarter (not self-serve).

If you sell a B2B product or service, LinkedIn is definitely a channel you need to check out. To help you out, we’ve created this short video LinkedIn Advertising 101: How to Get Started:

7) Amazon Ads

If you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur with products listed on Amazon, then you’ve undoubtedly heard of Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), a self-serve advertising system through which you can quickly launch three types of PPC ads:

• Headline search ads. These display three or more products at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs).
• Sponsored products. These appear at the top and bottom of the SERPs with organic listings (like Google Ads). These can also display under the “Related Products” sections at the bottom of other product pages.
• Display ads. These are essentially banner ads that display on the right-hand side of some screens.

The average CPC for Amazon Ads is $0.99.

One bonus is that they allow you to do conversion tracking to see how your ads are performing. This is big because currently there is no way for outside advertisers like Facebook and Google to track conversions post-click.

8) Pinterest Ads

Pinterest has a successful advertising platform, with audience targeting settings available for demographics, interests, keywords and more. Very similar to what you’ll find on Facebook. The average CPC for a Pinterest Ad is about 10¢ to $1.50.

Ads on Pinterest are particularly effective in the early awareness and discovery phases of the decision-making funnel, since Pinterest is often used for discovery, inspiration and new ideas:

If you’re wondering whether your target audience is on Pinterest, the answer is likely to be yes. There are 454 million active users, and that number is growing.

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17 Cheapest Ad Networks You Should Definitely Consider

Ready to give a new ad network a try? That doesn’t mean you can’t also use a popular ad network, but if you’re a smaller brand or just getting starting with advertising, we suggest you give these ones a try.

We’ve compiled this list of 22 of the best ad networks that serve as a solid alternative to the big name advertising platforms.

1) TikTok

TikTok is a video-sharing mobile app that surged in popularity in recent years. This platform has a predominantly Gen-Z audience, but the number of older uses is rising, too.

If you’ve used Facebook Ads, the TikTok Ads manager will feel quite familiar in terms of campaign setup, audience targeting, billing events and conversion tracking. Also similar to Facebook, TikTok uses a tracking pixel to help with measuring website performance.

TikTok has a minimum ad spend of $500. The platform bases its prices on a CPM (Cost Per Mile – otherwise known as Cost Per Thousand) model, with ads typically costing $10 per CPM. To reach 100,000 ad views, this would cost $1,000.

Here’s a list of placements available.

2) YouTube

YouTube advertisers can use the service to run highly engaging display or overlay ads in videos, in addition to targeting the people viewing your ads by demographics, topics, keywords and interests.

Despite being a Google product, YouTube prices its advertising options differently to search and display network ads. Ads typically have a Cost Per View (CPV) of between $0.10 – $0.30 with no minimum ad spend requirement.

This makes it a good option for those starting out on a limited budget. However, it does work out more costly in the long-run compared to other platforms, with the average cost of 100,000 YouTube ad views coming in at around $2,000.

One great thing is how they count views compared to most platforms. On YouTube, a view is only counted when someone watches at least 30 seconds or completes your video (whichever comes first). But since it’s so large, it’s also a bit more complicated with tons of targeting features and display formats.

3) Opt-Intelligence

Opt-Intelligence is a unique platform that charges per lead rather than per impressions or click-throughs as is standard in the world of PPC.

Prices vary depending on industry and audience demographics, though the average Cost Per Lead (CPL) is around $1.50 for general consumers. Some industries, such as financial investing, can be much higher, with average rates starting around $8 per lead.

This makes it a significantly good deal when you consider that the average conversion rate for PPC is 2.35%.

To get 10 leads from Opt-Intelligence at an average of $1.50 per lead, you’d spend $150. To get 10 leads from Google Ads, for example, you’d need to spend around $638 (based on an average Cost Per Click of $1.50).

4) OddBytes

OddBytes, formerly Propel Media, is arguably the most popular pay per view (PPV) advertising solution in the world.

Use it to reach customers through contextual text links and display ads. OddBytes makes the platform as effortless as possible with visualized analytics that help you to monitor trends and editing features that help you easily edit your campaigns.

Pricing models depend on the type of ads you run. Text links are served using a CPC model with a minimum bid of $0.05 per click, while display and lightbox ads have a minimum bid of around $0.10 per 1,000 views:

5) Taboola

Taboola specializes in native ads.

They claim to have wider reach than Outbrain and other native ads providers, including ad placements on the following publishers in the Taboola network: The Motley Fool, The Atlantic, Ben & Jerry’s and Netflix.

The company offer both CPM and CPV pricing models which are among the most affordable in the industry. It’s not uncommon to get CPCs of around $0.60 on desktop and just $0.30 for mobile ads.

The only downside is that the company requires a minimum campaign budget that is 30X the amount of your bid. So, if you bid $0.40, for example, you’d need a minimum ad spend budget of $12. Still, that’s very reasonable compared to some minimum budgets required by other platforms.

6) BuySellAds

Operating since 2008, BuySellAds (BSA) offers advertisers a mix of display ads, media buys, sponsored content and custom unit opportunities. They work with 1,500+ well-known publishers like the Atlantic, NPR and PBS, and have plenty of success stories:

BSA’s CPM rates average around $0.25 – $0.75, making them undoubtedly one of the cheapest Google Ads alternatives out there.

7) Ad Recover

Ad Recover is an top ad network that works by recovering your ad blocked inventory. Because of this, the network is able to monetize this in a way other publishers are not able to, which gives you a larger range of publishers to deploy your ads on, despite the rise of ad blockers.

What’s more, CPMs average around $0.50 per 1,000 views, making it highly competitive in the cost stakes.

8) Ad Maven

Ad Maven has additional monetization strategies, including banner ads, light boxes, interstitial ads and slider ads.

This company serves hundreds of millions of impressions in over 200 countries, so advertisers have a wide range of options when it comes to geotargeting. One of the key elements that separates them is a well-constructed RTB (real-time bidding) system, which helps them give you precise targeting with your ads.

The platform requires a minimum deposit of $25 and minimum campaign budget of $10, though their highly competitive CPC and CPV rates ensure they remain one of the cheapest PPC advertising networks to work with.

9) AdRoll

AdRoll is an advertising platform that offers retargeting and multi-device display advertising services. Their retargeting feature is available for ads on Facebook, Twitter and countless other sites, while their staff offers excellent support to help you leverage retargeting to its fullest potential.

Pricing plans start at $36 per month, though a custom Pay-As-You-Go model is also available:

Check them out if you’re new to retargeting and need some hand-holding to help get you up to speed.

10) MediaVine

MediaVine is an advertising service that focuses on influencer marketing and programmatic advertising.

Their inventory includes thousands of sites, with a reach of 125 million monthly unique visitors, with particularly good reach in the lifestyle niche. For both advertisers and publishers, they offer fully managed services to help you maximize the effectiveness of your campaigns.

The platform has a $100 minimum ad spend requirement with average CPC rates ranging from $0.50 to $2, making it a competitive alternative to Google Ads.

11) Adblade

Adblade is a content-style ad platform that advertisers can use to deploy their content to specific target audiences across the web. They’ve got a variety of big name publishers on their network, including Fox News, ABC, Yahoo, and 1,000 other branded sites.

They’re vigilant about screening which websites they allow onto the platform, which means that you won’t have a bad ad placement on a site that you don’t want to be associated with.

Adblade requires a minimum ad spend of $50, after which average CPC rates range from $0.50 to $1.

12) Epom

The Epom ad server lets advertisers reach customers with display, video and mobile app ads. One of the unique selling points of the Epom Ad Marketplace is that they offer a 30-day trial through which you can receive up to 1 billion free impressions.

After the free trial is over, plans range from $212 for 8.5 million display and mobile web impressions per month up to $2,125 per month for 150 million impressions. These pre-packaged ad services offer a great alternative for those who want to eliminate the guesswork when it comes to their monthly ad spend.

13) Spotify

Over the past decade, Spotify has taken the music industry by storm. Boasting over 220 million subscribers, it’s one of the largest streaming companies on the market. Of the 551 million monthly active users, over half of their users (331 million) have a free account, which means they pay for the service through advertising.

Spotify Ads are broken into four main categories:

• Audio
• Display
• Video
• Podcast
• Sponsored playlist

You can start advertising on Spotify for as little as $250, with a minimum daily budget of $1. Average ad impressions are between $0.015 and $0.025.

14) Snapchat

Snapchat is a social media mobile app. It is designed so that, by default, when you share an image or a video, it is only available for a short amount of time.

Snapchat has one of the lowest minimum spend requirements in the industry at just $5. However, the company do recommend that you spend at least $20 to generate any significant return on your investment.

Snapchat’s CPC are on the higher side, around $1 – $3 per click, though given that it presents a tremendous opportunity to get your brand in front of a large and predominantly young audience, this does make the popular social media app a worthwhile ad alternative for those targeting the youth demographic.ore.

15) Reddit

Reddit boasts a gigantic audience with loyal and active communities dedicated to just about every niche and topic of interest.

That alone should hold some appeal to budget-savvy advertisers, though if that’s not enough to convince you, the fact that Reddit advertisers typically enjoy 27% better conversions might.

Here, you can choose from either a daily minimum budget of $5 or a minimum lifetime budget of $160, with average CPCs comparable to Google:

16) SmartyAds

SmartyAds offers a programmatic media buying platform (DSP) that connects advertisers to premium global publishers, SSPs, and leading PPC ad networks who attract various types of audiences.

These audiences can be easily tracked with cross-device and cross-channel targeting options tuned up in self-serve DSP dashboard. Targeting narrowly, advertisers show ads only to the relevant audience, eliminating expenditures on ineffective impressions.

What makes SmartyAds such a great option for budget-conscious advertisers is their Adaptive CPM model. Using this model, you set a budget cap and then launch your ads. The Adaptive CPM ensures that you never spend more than your cap while also keeping every bid at the most competitive level to ensure maximum ROAS.

The ad formats are rewarded video, interstitial, native banner, CTV, audio and DOOH, and the average CPM is $10 to $25.

17) Vibrant Media

Vibrant Media is an ad network that helps advertisers place their content on over 6,600 premium publisher sites. They have a variety of ad formats available, including in-text, in-image, lightbox, storyboard, and mosaic. Some of the features they offer advertisers are:

• Native ad placement. Vibrant can place your ad in the middle of premium content on different publisher sites so that it gets seen by an engaged audience, and so that you establish consumer trust.
• Real-time targeting. Vibrant analyzes the content that your ad appears in, so that it also appears in the right context.
• Designed to engage. Vibrant takes branded content and deploys it in such a way that it tells your brand’s story through interactive experiences.

The company charge custom rates depending on your circumstances, though they are competitive compared to the likes of Google and Facebook Ads.

Want to start capitalizing on a wide-reaching portfolio of ad networks, but don’t know where to start? That’s where working with a professional PPC agency like Single Grain can help organize all of your initiatives and reach a new standard of success from paid media. If you’re curious about which ad platforms we would leverage for your brand, reach out to our paid media team here, and we’ll strategize a custom PPC plan built around your distinct selling offer.

Which Factors to Consider When Choosing Other Ad Networks

There are many excellent cheaper ad networks to choose from, but which one is best for your business model?

Unfortunately, there’s no clear answer to that question, as there are so many different factors that come into play. Here are a few variables you’ll want to take into consideration as you make your decision:

The Devices Your Customers Are Likely to Use

In 2025, the question is no longer “is mobile marketing important?” but rather “mobile marketing is important; now how do I take advantage of it?” People still use different devices for different reasons.

So when selecting an ad network, it’s crucial to consider the devices your customers primarily use. Different ad networks may specialize or perform better on certain devices, influencing where and how your ads are displayed. Here’s why this is important:

• Mobile vs. Desktop Users: The divide between mobile and desktop users can greatly affect ad engagement. For instance, if your target audience predominantly uses mobile devices, choosing an ad network with a strong presence and optimized ad formats for mobile platforms is essential.
• App vs. Web Browsing: Understand whether your customers spend more time in apps or browsing the web. Some ad networks specialize in in-app advertising, which could be more effective if your audience engages more with mobile apps.
• Screen Size and Ad Format: Different devices have varying screen sizes, which can affect the visibility and engagement of your ads. Ad networks that provide responsive ad formats, which adapt to different screen sizes, can ensure a more consistent and effective ad experience.
• Operating System Considerations: The operating system (iOS, Android, Windows, etc.) can influence ad performance. Some ad networks may offer better targeting or ad formats for specific operating systems.
• User Behavior and Device Preferences: Understanding the typical behavior of your audience on their devices is key. For example, younger demographics might be more engaged with ads on social media apps on smartphones, while a business-oriented audience might respond better to ads on professional networking sites accessed via desktop.

The Targeting Options Available to You

Today’s ad networks offer much more sophisticated targeting options than ever before, such as geographic location, demographic data, device, income and other elements. Some also include retargeting features, which enable you to put your ads in front of customers who have already visited your website.

This is an incredibly valuable option, as conversion rates on retargeted traffic can be double that of standard advertising. Familiarize yourself with the different options each network allows before deciding which is most appropriate for your goal.

Run-of-Network Options

Many of the ad networks listed above allow you to have your ads placed on random websites in their inventory. There are pros and cons to this option:

• The downside is that your ads may not be displayed on the highest quality or most relevant sites in the network.
• The upside is that this can be an efficient way to test multiple sites to see which ones are consistent with your branding and traffic goals.

The Relevance of the Network’s Niche Publishers

Large ad networks typically work with thousands of different publishers. Try to find out which publishers are in their inventory and see if they’re relevant to your target audience. Remember, there’s no point running ads on websites that your target demographic isn’t viewing.

Last Word on Using Cheaper Ad Networks

There are many different factors that you need to take into consideration when determining where to run your ads. Since testing a new network requires an investment of both time and money, it’s important that you figure out which of these chepaer ad networks (or any, really) are best suited for your business first.

That said, remember that you aren’t required to stick with the first ad network you test. If you’ve given a network a good try but aren’t seeing the results you need, don’t be afraid to pick another option from this list and try your luck elsewhere.

If you’re ready to get the maximum return on your online advertising investments, Single Grain’s ad experts can help!👇

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Additional content contributed by David Borgogni.

The post 17 Cheapest Ad Networks for Best PPC Conversions in 2025 appeared first on Single Grain.

With 9 million businesses advertising on Facebook in the second quarter of 2020, there’s an abundance of ads that make it harder than ever to make your brand stand out.

In this environment, creativity has become as critical for a digital marketer as a designer, writer or video editor. The right mix of creativity and copywriting techniques can result in an ad that outperforms even the most optimistic expectations.

The following 12 Facebook ads will show you what some of the top publishers are doing to promote their brand and increase their reach.

SiteGround

Source

SiteGround, a leading blog hosting provider, starts with a strong emotional word— “fear”. The capital letters command attention to the word and the rest of the sentence.

They start the ad by using an emotional premise, which is the fear entrepreneurs feel when they start a new business. Then, they jump right into the solution—an article where experts share solutions to this problem.

Unlike traditional tutorial pieces that focus entirely on best practices, the ad stresses the expertise of these experienced entrepreneurs and their solutions.

The last sentence adds a CTA that leads to the article, which wasn’t replicated in any of the other ads—this is most likely because this ad promotes an article and not a landing page.

Finally, the company makes smart use of the ad’s image, including the article’s name, the expert’s face, the fact that he’s an expert, and an interesting quote that shows one of the solutions mentioned.

Grammarly

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Grammarly, a grammar checker software company, starts their ad with a quote from an authoritative review. They also present their software as a direct solution to their audience’s problem. This combo of social proof and benefit-driven copy gives their ad relevance in the mind of their audience.

What’s even more impressive is how the company used the video in the shape of a short quiz. The quiz proves the central premise behind Grammarly’s software—the importance of knowing your grammar.

As soon as the quiz ends, the video shows a CTA, which matches the ad’s button. The description repeats the beginning of the ad by mentioning the popularity of their product.

Related Content: 9 Tools for Creating Effective Facebook Video Ads that Convert

Calm

Source

Calm’s ad, which promotes their meditation app, is all about simplicity, which matches their brand. Their ad copy follows the mantra, “show, don’t tell,” by highlighting two important awards they won and a raving review. The rest of the ad shows a 39-seconds video.

The video starts by opening a “knowledge gap”—the fact three-quarters of adults experience stress. As soon as they present this problem, they jump to one of their main features: their guided sleeping stories.

Not only that, but they pack the video with more social proof by showing Stephen Fry, a popular British actor who’s also the narrator, and positive reviews from its users. 

Using influencers is a well-known tactic to draw attention to an ad. Even if Fry isn’t a meditation expert, his fame does the trick to project authority quickly.

Using open questions in their video effectively engages their audience, which can positively affect the ranking algorithm.

BigCommerce

Source

BigCommerce, a leading ecommerce platform, uses a concise and intriguing copy. They don’t explain why online merchants jump to their platform; they ask you to check it yourself.

What’s more, the image’s copy complements this copy by giving a hint to why this happens—i.e., more features with fewer transaction costs. The image also illustrates the features the copy talks about (except for the camera, which doesn’t seem to relate to the ad).

Interestingly, the ad’s URL has the name of its main competitor—Shopify. A click in the ad leads to a landing page that says, “Don’t Hit the Shopify Ceiling.” This compares BigCommerce’s features with Shopify’s, a popular bottom-of-the-funnel content marketing tactic. 

By the time you click on the ad to read why BigCommerce says they offer better features than Shopify, it’s already too late: you have fulfilled the ad’s goal.

Pipedrive

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In this ad, Pipedrive, a leading CRM software company, shares a video from a customer success story. Their copy starts by creating a positive association by using the words “the right tools.” More importantly, the ad promotes their customer’s success, not its product.

The ad leads to a case study, not a landing page, a type of content marketing tactic used to nurture leads and drive them down the funnel.

Their emphasis on the results their customers got makes it much easier for the audience to believe Pipedrive and click on the ad. What’s more, the ad description—“How to sell more with fewer salespeople”— makes it almost irresistible for any salesperson to click.

Asana

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Asana, a project management software company, fuels its ad with a shocking statistic that puts the spotlight on the user’s productivity habits. Once the reader realizes they could suffer from this issue, Asana comes into rescue.

The background color of the ad’s image doesn’t contrast with Facebook’s white background, something that may not be ideal. The ad compensates with the illustration and the copy below it, representing the premise of Asana’s software—giving the time back to its users.

The ad headline features a 30-day trial offer that connects with the primary text; it’s action-driven, and it’s risk-free.

Related Content: 5 Facebook Ads Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2023

Headspace

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Headspace, a popular meditation app, uses an animated video of a smiling circle expanding and contracting. The video shows you how you can start doing meditation by just focusing on your breath. After this 15-second exercise, Headspace offers a free trial.

There’s a strong value proposition in the primary text, which perfectly connects the ad’s description and its CTA.

This ad represents a perfect match between their main offer—a subscription to their guided meditations—and the ad copy and video.

Sonos

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Sonos, a speaker manufacturer, uses a minimalistic ad to promote one of their latest products, which they mention in the ad’s title. Their copy highlights the one attribute its target audience wants to hear, “premium.”

The mustard background is quite different from the bright colors commonly used in Facebook, which probably makes the ad stand out in the user’s feed. The image also leverages the praises the product got from Wired, quoting the words used to describe the product.

CoSchedule

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CoSchedule, a content marketing automation company, starts by stating what they want: hire new employees. They are specific on the positions they are looking to fill and clear on their purpose, which is to “help us keep making awesome things for our customers.”

Their image shows their employees and presents them as their “incredible team.” Their headline also matches the primary text and the CTA.

The ad description explains what the company aims to do—change the way the world creates and publishes content. It even adds a fun fact, which is that they are from North Dakota.

The radical transparency the company takes in their ad differs from all of the other ads, and to most of the traditional job posting ads.

Related Content: How to Uncover Your Competitor’s Facebook Ad Strategy

Brooklinen

Source

Brooklinen, an online retailer of bed sheets, starts the ad by presenting themselves. It’s a human approach, relatable and transparent. Their copy looks like a person wrote it, which is similar to the approach many brands take to write their product descriptions.

They also put themselves in their customer’s shoes by saying they want to help them save money. More importantly, they make it clear to whom it speaks: to those who wish to celebrate a housewarming party. (These are parties people celebrate when moving to a new house.)

The video shows different pictures of their products. They repeat their desire to help the viewer save money for their housewarming party. The expression “without spending an arm and leg” is also informal and personal.

In the ad title, the company reinstates its offer with specificity—“10% off all the bedding you need”. And their lifetime warranty offer is reassuring. Interestingly, their CTA—“View Shop”—doesn’t put pressure on making a sale, but on shopping.

Coursera

Source

Coursera, an online education company, starts their ad with the one thing the viewer wants to see: the skills they can acquire. An expression like “unlimited learning from leading universities and companies” motivates the target audience to see themselves getting the benefits from Coursera’s courses.

They also mention these companies and universities, which adds social proof to their statements, while their use of emojis, benefits, and student quotes makes it even more interesting to read.

Their ad copy is the longest from this list; it looks almost like a short sales page. This may be due to their offer, which leads to a landing page for a premium subscription, and their target audience, which may not be entirely nurtured.

Their video is a six-second animation that shows the number of courses and photos of their students, both highly reassuring elements in their ad.

Uber Eats

Source

Uber Eats, the famous food delivery company, positions its ad to restaurant owners, one of their two core audiences. The ad focuses on the benefits they get—more customers and profit—and on what their audience’s customers want too—an excellent service experience.

Uber Eats even make this benefit even clearer in their image—you offer a pickup service, and you will save money.

The ad title adds another benefit: engaging with the restaurant’s customers. And they add some scarcity with the “time-limited” offer of free signup.

Related Content: How to Get the Cheapest Facebook Ads Without Sacrificing Quality

7 Learnings from Analyzing Facebook Ads

1. Use video. Most of the companies in this list used video, even if it’s a five-second animation of the image shown. People like video; it entertains them.
2. Use short copy. Let the ad speak for itself. Use the right offer, so the ad only works to present it—if you target the right audience, this will make the need to “sell” the offer even more redundant.
3. Connect your copy with your ad image and headline. The ad should look like a coherent piece that’s all connected by one strong premise.
4. Give risk-free guarantees. Remove fear, uncertainties, and doubts fast by using money-back guarantees, warranties, and return policies.
5. Leverage social proof. People follow people. If you can back your offer with numbers, quotes, and badges, it will be easier to believe.
6. Ask questions. The reciprocity rule tells us that when someone asks you a question, you answer. As subtle as this may seem, using questions in your ads can result in increased engagement rates.
7. Be radically honest. Companies like CoSchedule and Brooklinen are small startups aiming to change their respective industries. Their ads highlight their values honestly. If you are a small company, don’t be afraid to say it. Consumers like to follow brands whose values they are aligned with.

Final Thoughts on Facebook Ads Ideas

The dozen ads you saw represent just a glimpse of what you can do with Facebook ads. Most of these ads focus on bottom-of-the-funnel content, but if you want to promote an article or an ebook (top and middle-of-the-funnel content, respectively), there’s a lot more you can do.

Hopefully, these ideas will boost your creativity so you can grab your target audience’s attention and drive them to your landing page.

The post 12 Facebook Ad Ideas to Grow Your Online Brand appeared first on Single Grain.

Time is money, and while you’re waiting for traction and good data, you’re bleeding cash. But you don’t have to. Here’s how to get the cheapest Facebook Ads without sacrificing quality.

How Much Do Facebook Ads Cost?

How much you’ll have to pay for impressions and clicks on Facebook depends on a variety of factors. According to WordStream, the average cost per click (CPC) is $1.72, but that’s just the average. The finance and insurance industries pay about $3.77 per click on average, while retail, apparel, travel and hospitality are all less than $.75 per click. Those numbers also vary by country.

Aside from industry, there are many variables that make up the cost of a Facebook click, including your target audience, objectives and competition. Generally speaking, if you aren’t in a super-competitive industry, you’ll want to keep your CPC below $2 to get a good ROI.

Try these tips to help keep costs down while still getting qualified leads and engagements from your target audience.

Related Content: 9 Tools for Creating Effective Facebook Video Ads that Convert

Update or Cut Ads that Aren’t Performing

The way Facebook advertising cost is calculated is by looking at how many impressions they’re serving up and how many clicks you’re generating. The more clicks you get in relation to impressions, the less you pay for each action. That’s why it’s important to ensure that your ads are performing to their maximum potential.

Go to your Facebook Ads Manager and take a look at the placements that are costing you too much money. But don’t just deactivate them – there may be simple reasons why they aren’t performing. Really dig into the stats on each ad to figure out what you can do to improve the click-through rate (CTR).

For example, if you’re targeting your ad to people between 18-65 years old (I hope you’re not!), you can see which age segments perform the best for your ads. If I’m selling enterprise software, I probably don’t want to reach out to the segments of 18-25 years or 55+. I want to reach people who are 25-55, and the performance metrics will probably reflect that. Once you update that targeting, the ad will start delivering a better CTR.

But there are some ads you should just cut. Typically, right-column ads have terrible CTRs and Instagram campaigns will hurt your numbers. If you start turning those placements off, you’ll probably notice that your Facebook overall ad costs go down, and your relevance score goes up. Ditto on any ads that don’t seem to be working on any level – bad creative, bad messaging, bad targeting (hey, we all make mistakes!).

What Is Relevance Score?

Relevance score is a 0-10 metric that Facebook uses to identify how good your ad is. The higher your relevance score, the cheaper your cost per action, which can be a click, like or other engagement.

Here’s a look at the scoring system:

• Relevance Score 1-3: Not relevant. Low impressions. Higher bids required.
• Relevance Score 4-7: Relevant. Solid impressions. Average bids.
• Relevance Score 8-10: Extremely relevant. High impressions. Lower bids.

When your relevance score is a 2-5, they’re going to charge you more because they’re showing your ad to a ton of people who basically aren’t interested. So if you’re not getting a lot of clicks, that means you’re just wasting money.

If you scroll through your Facebook feed, sometimes you’re going to see posts or advertisements that have thousands of likes and tons of people sharing it. I used to wonder: how the heck do I get there? Because, for me, I was lucky to get even 10 likes or 10 shares on an advertisement.

The key is that you want to make sure you’re promoting only one specific post. A lot of times people will make 10 different ad sets because they want to try different variations or different types of targeting. But instead of doing that, you want to run just one advertisement instead. That way, you can let that engagement build up on just one post.

If you do that, you’re going to drive your CTRs higher, because people like to click on things that a lot of other people are engaging with already. Then your CPCs are going to go down and your overall cost per acquisition (CPA) is going to go down as well. Then you’ll be making money from your campaign.

Learn More: 11 Ways to Improve Your Facebook Ads Relevance Score

Use Your Images Wisely

Another thing you should start looking at is your images. After your ad has been running for a while, you’ll notice that the same people are seeing it over and over again. When you can keep your frequency as close as possible to one, you’ll notice that your cost for advertising is lower.

In order to do that, you need to continually upload new images. I know this is really simple, but you’ll be shocked by how many people don’t do this. Facebook shows you the frequency. So if the frequency starts getting too high, you’ll notice that you’re paying through the roof for those ads. Because if you keep seeing the same ad over and over again and you never clicked on it in the first place, why would you click on it later? Chances are you won’t. For that reason, you need to continually adjust your images.

There’s another benefit from adjusting images: it helps you to A/B test them. Over time, you’ll figure out what types of images resonate most with your audience, and then you can go all in on them.

I was running a marketing-related campaign targeted towards a Brazilian audience once, and trying to get them over to my marketing page. So I tried different images of Brazil, like the Brazilian flag, and I also tried a yellow Camaro (at the time, there was a popular pop song in Brazil called “Camaro Amarelo,” which translates to “Yellow Camaro”).

And I noticed that the CPC kept going down. In fact, the costs per like were the cheapest when I was using the Brazilian flag or the yellow Camaro.

Learn More:

• How to Run A/B Tests that Actually Increase Conversions
• 5 Important Landing Page Elements You Should Be A/B Testing
• Overlooked SEO: Optimizing Images and Video For Search

Explore Automation for Your Facebook Ads

If the idea of doing all this updating and analysis sounds a bit daunting, there’s always programmatic advertising, which automatically shuts off ads or segments that aren’t performing well.

AdEspresso lets you create a ton of different variations of your Facebook Ads at once. They’ll basically make changes to your headlines, images or anything you want to test, and then you can just set certain thresholds for your bare minimum CPA. Then if your CPA goes too high, it’ll shut down automatically. In every case, it will auto-optimize for you and show you what’s winning over time.

If you’re going to make ads at scale – let’s say you want to make 5-6 ads at a time so that you can test rapidly – don’t do just one and then go to your designer and have them do another one, and so on. Designers hate banner ads and they’re going to kick your ass if you keep asking them to do these ads. Trust me, I’ve done this before and I’ve gotten the hate from designers. Instead, you should go to Design Pickle, which is $399 per month for unlimited designs from professional designers:

Another option is to just subscribe to a stock image supplier and use high-quality stock pictures that almost look like they aren’t stock. Whatever you do, don’t just lift images from the Internet because you could find yourself in a lot of trouble with copyrights if you do that.

Learn More: How to Use Multicultural Marketing in Your Digital Advertising

Remember, Cheaper Isn’t Always Better

When you’re running your ads, another thing that you should test is optimizing for cost. A lot of people look at campaigns or clicks to a website and try to get clicks or likes for the cheapest dollar amount. But what you’ll find is that not every single visitor or every single like is equal.

For example, when we were running the Brazil campaign, we ended up with over 100,000 likes, just from marketers in Brazil trying to learn more about marketing.

One campaign was costing us around three cents per like. Another campaign was costing around 10 cents per like. Some ad people examined the campaigns and said “You should be turning off the one that’s 10 cents per like. Why would you pay 10 cents when you could be paying 3 cents?”

But when we really looked under the hood at clicks and engagement, the 10 cents per like campaign was getting 7x the comments and shares than the one that was 3 cents per like. That’s a huge difference.

It’s not about getting the cheapest fans in the highest quantity; it’s about quality. Why would you want fans who don’t engage? You want the best fans. In fact, if you have fewer fans but more of them are sharing your content, Facebook will start showing that content to their friends and other people. That’s virality.

When you’re driving traffic to a website, don’t just look for the cheapest clicks, either. Target the right people: your ideal buyers. Cut out anyone who may not be your ideal buyer. Sure, you may end up spending more per click, but your campaign will convert way better and you’ll recoup that money.

For example, I ran a webinar and we drove Facebook traffic to it. We started off doing re-marketing and getting clicks at around 20 cents per click, which wasn’t too bad. And it was converting.

But you know what? As the campaign progressed, that cost climbed to $1 per click and I instinctively made a sour face. I was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. How are we going to make the numbers work?” But those people were way more qualified. Sure, it cost us more money, more than 5x, but the conversion rate was so much higher that it was actually more profitable than those 20-cent clicks.

Dive Deeper: Facebook Ads: 7 Changes All Marketers Need to Know in 2019

Try Using Facebook Lead Ads

Facebook Lead Ads have been around for awhile, but hardly anyone uses them. Basically, they allow you to collect information about users right on Facebook instead of sending them to a landing page. You’re allowed to collect information directly from Facebook’s app.

In the above example for Lead Ads, you can see how it works. Someone clicks on a CTA button on an ad to sign up, join, subscribe, etc. and they are taken to a form where they enter their contact information. Then, you have access to that information and can follow up on that lead.

Hootsuite has a good round-up of Facebook advertisers who ran lead ads and saw not only higher conversions, but lower costs compared to a standard ad that drives users to a landing page. Will they work for everyone? No. But it’s worth trying to see if they work for you.

Asking questions is a particularly effective tactic when creating lead ads, but only if you do it right. In a study done by AdEspresso on Lead Ads, they found that when you’re asking one question, your conversion rate is much higher than if you’re asking 7-8 questions. If you have just one question, your conversion rate can be as high as 30-40%. If you add too many questions, it’s going to drop super low and you’re going to be paying a lot of money. Makes sense, right?

Learn More: How to Increase Mobile Conversions With Facebook Lead Ads

Don’t Forget Retargeting

When you retarget an audience with Facebook Ads, you’re delivering those ads to a “warm” audience. In other words, to people who have already engaged with your brand in some way. As the saying goes, a user needs seven touchpoints with your brand before they are ready to convert.

Retargeting hits people lower in the marketing funnel:

And because those people are more likely to click than someone who is seeing your ad for the first time, you’ll bring the CPC down.

Learn More:

• How to Easily Set Up a High-Conversion Facebook Retargeting Campaign
• The Difference Between Retargeting and Remarketing
• Retargeting 101: Why It’s Essential for Any Marketing Funnel

Final Thoughts

Facebook Ads don’t have to cost a fortune. If you do them right, you can get quality leads and customers without blowing your whole marketing budget. As always, when it comes to marketing, it’s important to test different tactics, then optimize, then test more tactics, then optimize. Rinse. Repeat. Success.

The post How to Get the Cheapest Facebook Ads Without Sacrificing Quality appeared first on Single Grain.

How can you leverage that knowledge to increase our retargeting conversion rates? Remarketing.

It is no longer news that retargeting is one of the most effective online marketing strategies.

In fact, only 2% of users who visit your website for the first time are likely to convert, so businesses need a way to get the other 98% to come back and either make a purchase or complete a call to action. So far, retargeting has proven to be an efficient strategy in bringing back that other 98% that have already indicated an interest in your offer.

Studies have shown that 70% of customers who see retargeted ads are more likely to convert and that retargeting can help increase ad engagement by up to 400%.

What Is Remarketing?

First, let’s clear up the definition of remarketing and how it differs from/compares with retargeting.

Since about 79% of people abandon their online shopping cart, your main goal is to get them to finish their purchase.

Retargeting primarily uses Internet ads to entice interested prospects back to your website to finish a purchase. This tactic turns window shoppers into buyers. By adding pixels (a short snippet of code) to your website, you will be able to track the user’s actions through cookies placed in their browser (i.e. “follow” them around the web).

Remarketing entails gathering your site visitors’ info and then sending them emails to persuade them to return to their abandoned shopping cart on your website and complete a purchase.

These terms are often used interchangeably and, indeed, are quite similar: Both of these strategies are designed to bring back customers who have bounced from your website after performing a certain action in order to persuade them to make a purchase.

Here are a couple of stats that will probably make you rethink the power of remarketing:

• 97% of e-commerce purchases come from repeat visitors
• 90% of all Internet users are retargeted at some point by Google Display
• One online retailer increased their conversation rate by a 161% (compared to their previous campaigns) as a result of a remarketing campaign

If you aren’t in on the game, you’re missing out!

How Does Remarketing Work?

When we hear terms like “remarketing” and “retargeting,” we usually think of complicated pixels and cookies associated with Google or Facebook ads. However, the concept is actually a lot simpler than that.

Think about driving down a highway and seeing a billboard for McDonald’s with a picture of a hamburger that says the next exit is 15 miles away:

You glance at it but keep driving. In another 5 miles you see another sign. By now you’re starting to feel hungry after looking at all these signs with food, so when the next sign comes up 2 miles from the exit, you decide to get off the highway for some lunch.

This is a very simple remarketing example.

In this article we will mainly talk about optimizing your retargeting conversion rates online, though remember that your audience may be better reached by remarketing via phone, email or signs.

If you choose an online remarketing strategy, you might run ads through Google, Facebook or YouTube. These platforms use a system that uses cookie tracking to tag non-converting website visitors and then follow them around the web. Your previous visitor might be on another site but he/she can still see an ad for your site.

For example, I was looking at some electronics on Best Buy and later that day I was on another website. And guess what popped up on the side of my screen?

That’s right. This Best Buy ad is a good online remarketing example.

The potential for business growth and conversion rate increases can be staggering. According to an Adobe report, “retargeting is responsible for boosting ad responses by as much as 400%, and can help to improve brand recall and awareness in visitors.”

Okay, so how do you get started with increasing your retargeting conversion rate?

Dive Deeper:

• The Difference Between Retargeting and Remarketing
• A Simple Hack to Combine Facebook Ads and Google Ads
• The Ultimate Guide to YouTube Advertising in 2019

Before You Start: Crucial Remarketing Concepts for CRO

If you are focused on increasing conversions online, you need to have a few things in place before setting up a remarketing campaign.

Understand Your Buying Cycle

Setting up long cookie times that result in multiple remarketed ad viewings over time doesn’t make financial sense if your company’s buying cycle is short.

Think of buying cycles in terms of traffic temperatures.

A retailer like J Crew has short buying cycles. If someone is looking to purchase a new shirt, they probably won’t be looking for very long. The buying cycle might end that day.

In that case, you may be better off investing your ad resources elsewhere in order to encourage immediate purchases.

However, if you’re trying to sell industrial machinery for over $10,000, your buying cycle will be a little longer. So doesn’t it make sense to continue to retarget your prospects for several months?

Dive Deeper: Buyer’s Journey 101: What Your Email Data Says About Your Customers

Understand How to Measure the ROI of Remarketing Campaigns

Measuring the financial impact of multiple ad displays can be challenging, as it may be difficult to assess the value of each individual step in the view-through process.

And measuring analytics can be a tricky process, so make sure that you have a plan in place before jumping in.

As a result, remarketing is best used by companies with past experience running traditional PPC campaigns (or by those less-experienced advertisers who are willing to bring on professional consultants to ensure campaign profitability). If you are about to launch a remarketing campaign and want it to result in high conversion rates, make sure that you have a system in place to track ROI.

Setting Up Your First Campaign for Conversion Success

Remarket to People With High Intent to Purchase

Targeting everyone who comes to your site might be very broad and use up all of your ad spend. Instead, try to target people who have already been to a specific page, like a sales or cart page.

This is one of the best ways to easily increase your conversion rate, as you are simply cutting out a large number of non-converters in your testing group.

Target People Who Are Willing and Able to Buy

This one goes along with intent to purchase, but there is one subtle difference: Some people may be engaging with your content without the means to buy.

Does it make sense for Tesla to retarget 15 year olds? Probably not. Sure, they may have demonstrated strong interest, but they probably don’t have the money to buy one. Don’t waste your ad dollars.

If you’re wondering how well targeting a niche audience works, check out this Growth Everywhere video of Andy Mackensen of SnackNation and see how he targets niche audiences to grow his business:

Avoid Constant Use of the Same Ad Copy

You can ruin the success of your retargeting campaign if you continuously show the same ad copy and images to the same target audience. Showing ads similar to previously displayed ads can negatively affect your conversion rates because people will ignore ads they’ve already ignored before.

For example, if you are targeting a customer who bought one item from your store, you can make the ad copy about how another person who recently bought the same item liked additional items on your website. The addition of whole new ads can also be effective.

Dive Deeper: 8 Facebook Ad Copywriting Tricks to Maximize Conversions

Use Discount and Affordable Pricing

Cost is one of the top reasons why customers abandon their online shopping carts. This is why most e-commerce retailers will try to eliminate all shipping costs by employing a flat rate shipping service in order to help keep the overall cart total down.

When retargeting, keeping the price of your product or service as low as possible can go a long way to determine the rate of conversion of your ads. Wherever possible, offer discounts and free shipping when retargeting.

Dive Deeper: The Competitive Pricing Strategy Guide (Covers B2B and B2C Businesses)

Leverage Dynamic Retargeting

Dynamic retargeting is an excellent way to get people to engage with a brand that is already well-known:

“Remarketing allows you to show ads to people who have previously visited your website or used your mobile app. Dynamic remarketing takes this a step further, letting you show previous visitors ads that contain products and services they viewed on your site. With messages tailored to your audience, dynamic remarketing helps you build leads and sales by bringing previous visitors back to your site to complete what they started.”

The fact that your products have proven to be trustworthy can only add credibility to your retargeting campaign. For example, you can retarget people who are in the process of switching to a different brand or those who previously switched from your brand.

Dive Deeper: Retargeting 101: Why It’s Essential for Any Marketing Funnel

Exclude Current Customers/Clients

This is important because if you continue to try to sell to your current customers in the same way you sell to prospects, they won’t feel like valued customers. Make sure that you treat every single one of your customers with respect and make them feel appreciated. Remember that it is much more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep current customers happy.

Segment Intelligently

Have you ever seen ads that just make you wonder what the heck the marketer was thinking serving it to you? We already wrote a complete guide on segmentation, but I’ll give you an example here. If I were searching for car tires and was shown an ad about luxury resorts, wouldn’t that make you think that the luxury resort brand is crazy? Don’t let your brand turn into a laughingstock.

via GIPHY

Use Frequency Capping

Frequency capping is a crucial strategy in remarketing to prevent ad fatigue and maintain the effectiveness of your campaigns. By limiting the number of times a user sees your ad within a given time frame, you can:

• Avoid annoying potential customers with excessive ad exposure
• Maintain the freshness and impact of your message
• Optimize your ad spend by not wasting impressions on uninterested viewers

A good rule of thumb is to start with a frequency cap of 15-20 impressions per user per month, then adjust based on your campaign’s performance and audience engagement.

Implement Burn Pixels

Burn pixels are an essential tool for maintaining the relevance of your remarketing lists. These pixels “burn” or remove users from your retargeting audience once they’ve completed a desired action, such as making a purchase. By implementing burn pixels, you can:

• Avoid showing ads to users who have already converted
• Focus your ad spend on potential customers who haven’t yet taken action
• Improve the overall efficiency and ROI of your remarketing campaigns

Set Up Cross-Device Remarketing

In today’s multi-device world, it’s crucial to reach your audience across all their devices. Cross-device remarketing allows you to:

• Maintain consistent messaging as users switch between devices
• Increase the chances of conversion by reaching users at different touchpoints
• Gather more comprehensive data on user behavior and preferences

To implement cross-device remarketing effectively, ensure that your ads are responsive and optimized for various screen sizes and platforms.

Last Thoughts on How Remarketing Can Help Increase Conversions

Remarketing has emerged as a powerful tool in the digital marketer’s arsenal, offering a unique opportunity to re-engage potential customers who have already shown interest in your products or services. By leveraging the data collected from previous interactions, remarketing allows businesses to create highly targeted, personalized ad experiences that speak directly to the user’s needs and preferences.

One of the most significant advantages of remarketing is its ability to optimize the customer journey. By strategically placing ads at different touchpoints along the path to purchase, marketers can guide potential customers towards conversion more effectively. This is particularly valuable in addressing common obstacles like abandoned carts in e-commerce or incomplete sign-ups for service-based businesses.

As with any marketing strategy, the key to success with remarketing lies in continuous testing, learning, and optimization. Marketers should pay close attention to metrics such as frequency, reach, and conversion rates to fine-tune their campaigns for maximum effectiveness. By approaching remarketing thoughtfully and strategically, businesses can significantly boost their conversion rates, improve ROI, and drive sustainable growth in an increasingly competitive digital landscape.

If you’re ready to level up your retargeting efforts, Single Grain’s retargeting experts can help!👇

Refine Your Retargeting Strategy

For more insights and lessons about marketing, check out our Marketing School podcast on YouTube.

The post How Remarketing Can Help Increase Conversions appeared first on Single Grain.

Here are some best practices to kick off your PPC campaign analysis.

Viewing the Campaign from a Macro Level

When setting up a PPC campaign, it’s important to think of the long term. By looking further down the road, you’ll learn the importance of giving your PPC project ample time to grow before evaluating it.

For instance, a week is not enough to measure your campaign’s success, so even if you see noticeable changes within that short time frame, you’re unlikely to find them significant. You can’t compare a week-long campaign to one that’s been going on for months.

When it comes to PPC campaigns, keep in mind that growth is gradual and results take time.
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Because of the nature of PPC campaigns, you can’t just go around abandoning a project because it didn’t meet your target ROI threshold. Don’t go second-guessing your campaign before you have time to evaluate it. Remember that there is more to it than ROI.

You can reap great benefits even if a campaign’s financial returns seem stagnant. So, instead of focusing on a specific metric, review all the data available to you and assess your campaign’s efficiency using different key performance indicators (KPI).

Related Content: 10 Ways Your Paid Marketing Campaign Can Go Wrong

Benchmarking Results Against Goals

Before carrying out your PPC campaign, you should set specific goals first.

You need these to understand how you’re going to measure your progress—that is, how near or far you are from reaching your goals. Your objectives may differ from those of other brands, but that’s okay. After all, priorities vary from business to business.

However, you have to identify what matters to you most:

• Is branding your first concern?
• Do you want to convert sales or leads?
• Are you adamant about bringing new traffic to your website or blog?
• Is your PPC campaign primarily for maintaining a competitive edge through search engine optimization (SEO)?

Although all metrics are important, your goals will determine which of them you should focus on first. They are the primary determiners in measuring the success of your PPC campaign, and they can help you take action when results don’t measure up.

Enhancing Your PPC Campaign with SEO Strategies

5 Ways to Use SEO for Your PPC Campaign

To create an efficient PPC campaign and be competitive in your niche, you should optimize your ads appropriately. If the ad you paid for doesn’t make people follow the link, you’re wasting your money. So, here are the main things you should consider when working on your PPC strategy:

• Keywords
• Ad copy
• Ad scheduling
• Landing page
• Metrics

Evaluating KPIs and Other Campaign Data

After giving your PPC campaign enough time to grow, it’s time to review your KPIs and analyze the wealth of information you have in your hands. There’s a wide array of tools and metrics you can use to measure the effectiveness of your campaign. Familiarize yourself with them to determine which is the most pertinent for your campaign.

1) Click-Through Rate

The Click-Through Rate (CTR) is one of the most closely monitored metrics by PPC experts. You can compute it by dividing the number of individuals who click on your ad by the number of people who see it (clicks divided by impressions).

A good CTR means that your target audience has found your ads helpful. As a result, your Quality Score will skyrocket while your Cost Per Conversion (CPC) will plummet. This will give you more opportunities to increase your overall conversions if you’re losing ground to competitors.

2) Quality Score

Your Quality Score is a good indicator of whether the combined performance of your keywords, ads and landing page is good or not. It provides insights into how well Google views your ads, and the more relevant your keywords are to the users’ search queries, the higher your Quality Score will be.

A strong Quality Score means that your rankings have improved, your CPC has dropped and your overall ROI has increased. Consequently, although more people will see your ads, you’ll pay less when someone clicks on them.

Related Content: How to Measure the ROI of Your Content Marketing

3) Cost Per Conversion

The Cost Per Conversion (CPC) is important in determining how much you have to spend to gain a new client.

If your campaign costs more than what you earn from a new lead, then you’re not using your budget wisely. Keep track of your CPC to learn how to improve your campaign. Use the data from this metric to adjust your strategies and reinvest on what works.

4) Search Impression Share

The Search Impression Share reflects the percentage of the total number of times your ad could have been shown versus the actual number of times it was shown.

A part of it will illustrate which percentage of searches was lost due to budget. Needless to say, a low score in this metric can have a negative impact on the overall performance of your PPC campaign.

5) Bounce Rate

The Bounce Rate can show certain aspects of your campaign that need optimization.

This metric is measured by the number of visitors who visited your site and left without responding to your call to action. If your campaign has a high Bounce Rate, it means that you’re targeting a broad audience, a good number of which are simply not interested in what you’re offering.

Related Content: How To Create CTAs that Actually Cause Action

6) Conversion Rate

The Conversion Rate refers to the number of times a user clicked on your ad and completed a desired action within a certain window of time. It’s important to track this metric because it can show results based on seasonal trends.

You have to keep in mind that the ultimate goal of every PPC campaign is conversion.
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By tracking this metric, you’ll be able to gauge if people are buying your product at an ideal rate.

(Source)

7) Impressions and Clicks

Impressions refer to the frequency of your ads being displayed in a search results page. Clicks, on the other hand, refer to the number of times a user clicked on your ads.

You’ll be ill-advised to focus simply on the Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) of your campaign. You might miss out on volume, which will consequently lead you to miss out on profit. You need to strike a balance between the volume and cost of conversions.

8) Account Activity

Running a PPC campaign warrants constant monitoring. You can’t ensure the success of a campaign unless you actively manage and optimize it. An active involvement in your account activity also entails frequent analyses of your data. The more habitually you oversee your account, the bigger the returns you are poised to acquire.

The opposite is also true. The reason many PPC campaigns fail is that marketers don’t spend enough time to manage them. Keep an eye on this metric, and gain valuable insights as to the amount of time your competitors are spending on their own paid search campaigns. With that knowledge, you’ll be able to gain an edge over the other players in the field.

 9) Ad Text Optimization

Copy shapes your ads. It can differentiate you from competitors and catch your target audience’s interest.

It’s only fair to optimize the text in your ads because that is, after all, what potential customers will read first. Ad Text Optimization primarily entails watching the keywords you use. By optimizing this metric, you can improve others like the CTR, quality score and, ultimately, your ROI.

Learn More: 3 Advanced Ways to Write Content that Converts

10) Mobile Advertising

The rise of mobile platforms is evident across many fields and industries. Because of the popularity of recent mobile trends, it’s imperative that you leverage any opportunity you can get to boost both your mobile and PPC campaigns.

Ask yourself, is my PPC campaign compatible with mobile? Am I utilizing the best practices in mobile paid search? Unless you answered a solid “Yes!” to each of these questions, you should work harder to integrate your paid ads into different mobile platforms.

Related Content: Facebook Lead Ads: How to Increase Mobile Conversions

 11) Wasted Spend

As the opposite of the Conversion Rate, the Wasted Spend will show you when your PPC campaign is foundering. It essentially measures how much money you’re throwing away when people are clicking on your ad but are not converting.

By reflecting how much money you could save, this metric can help you optimize certain areas of your account. One way to minimize Wasted Spend is to refine your keywords by creating negative ones that can stop your ad from showing up in search engine results pages (SERPs) when unrelated keywords are used in a search query.

12) Keyword and Landing Page Optimization

If you target long-tail keywords effectively, you’ll be able to yield strong conversions at lower costs. Many marketers overlook this metric and instead focus on more costly ones, so you’ll be gaining an edge if you leverage it.

The same holds true for landing pages. Marketers tend to neglect paying sufficient attention to them and instead keep their eyes stubbornly fixed on stronger ads. What they don’t realize is that these ads are not enough to maximize ROI. You should have enough landing pages that can accommodate your conversions if you’re hoping to boost your bottom line.

Final Words

It’s important to assess your PPC campaign to find out which part works and which needs to be reconfigured. Make sure that you understand the different metrics so that you’ll be able to gauge whether your campaign is effective or not. Don’t be dispirited if you find room for improvement – treat each loophole as an opportunity to take your campaign to the next level and expand your brand.

The post How to Gauge the Success of Your PPC Campaign appeared first on Single Grain.

She talks about how she built Canva from 1,000 to 10 million users in just 3 years, without spending any money on ads. 

We also asked her about the unconventional strategies she used to raise venture funding for Canva, how she hired world class employees for her tech team, and more.

Canva’s Story: Growth Hacking from 1K to 10M Users 

Eric Siu: What does [your] story look like? How did you settle into Canva?

Melanie Perkins: I was at university and I was teaching design programs and students would struggle learning the very basics. It would take a very long time just to design and learn where the buttons were let alone actually how to actually design anything.

And so what I wanted to do was to make design really simple and easy.

So we had this big grand vision of how we were going to make the entire design ecosystem, integrated into one page. But the funny thing was I was 19 and had absolutely no business experience, or experience learning software or anything like that. So rather than trying to take on the entire world of design at the same time, my boyfriend became my business partner. And we took over my mom’s living room and launched the big concept but for the niche market of school year books in Australia.

And I think that was really fortunate because rather than trying to take on a huge market, we were able to really concentrate our efforts in one area and do really well at that. So that grew very quickly, expanded across Australia, launched in France and New Zealand. And a few years into that we really wanted to take Canva to the next level.

We realized there was still nothing in the market that enabled everyone to design everything, and so wanted to take that concept to a much broader market. And so we set out on the adventures of Canva, which took a very very long time. But [at first] we thought, ‘Oh we’ve got a possible company. We’ve been able to do this before. Raising money would be really easy to take on this bigger market.’ That definitely wasn’t the case.

[We] ended up spending a very long time in San Francisco — three months firstly living on my brother’s floor, trying to pitch investors, pitch technical co-founders. And then it was another year later that we actually ended up finally raising investment, which was three years after meeting our first investor. So it was a very long time in the making. And then once we finally landed our technical team, landed investment, it was another year of development before we launched Canva. We launched Canva just over three years ago, and fortunately it’s been growing very very rapidly across the globe.

Eric Siu: It sounds like you guys had two/three years until you got your next investment? So what kept you guys going, or how did you know it was the right idea when all these investors just kept passing?

Melanie Perkins: For Canva, it was three years between meeting our first investor and actually landing investment. So it was a very long road to get to the point of landing investment. And as to your question about how we kept going, it was tough.

It was like a really tough experience being rejected so much. But I think that now, in retrospect it was really beneficial because it meant that we got to get incredibly strong on a strategy. Our strategy became very refined, we ended up with an excellent pitch deck that we’ve now used when we’re trying to explain our concept to customers, or explain our concept to team members.

Eric Siu: There’s an interesting story about how you were basically [had to] learn kite boarding to basically raise capital. Can you talk about that?

Melanie Perkins: [I had] the opportunity came to go to a kite surfing entrepreneur conference where there are a lot of investors. [So] I was like, “Okay, well that’s an opportunity too good to pass up.” So I went to kite board, despite the fact it is one of the most dangerous sports in the world. It was very well worthwhile because it meant that we got to get in contact with a lot of investors.

I think that you just have to keep on planting seeds, and eventually one of them will sprout. A lot of them won’t, but the one that does is the thing that matters the most.

Eric Siu: How did you guys go about acquiring, let’s just say your first thousand customers?

Melanie Perkins: When we first started we were doing absolutely everything, like I was going to a lot of tech conferences, a lot of blogger conferences. Really just trying to move the needle. In the early days getting 10 people on board was like, “Woo, yay, this is awesome!” We were fortunate that before we launched Canva, because of the investment that we’d raised, we were able to get a bit of media when we actually launched the product.

We sort of were in stealth, and we had a few announcements in stealth, and then we launched. Which meant that we launched with a bit more fanfare than when we launched our first company and our parents were the only people that cared.

I think the most important thing for any company is to solve an important problem. If you solve a problem that affects a lot of people, it really helps.

Firstly [you should] have an audience when you launch your product because they actually care about [your product], and then secondly they’ll tell other people because they [probably have friends that care] about that problem too.

So for social media marketers and bloggers, they had a really significant problem that they had to create a lot of visual content without having had any design experience, typically. And so what we were able to do with Canva was really tap into their needs. Then not only did they use that product but they then helped to spread it.

Even today most of our traffic is still coming from word of mouth. We’ve had, I think 17 thousand videos made and 15 thousand vlogs written, by just the community about Canva. Not to mention all of the tweets and Facebook posts. So I think that that all really just comes back to if you solve a problem that really affects a lot of people, it dramatically helps in your marketing because people then spread the word about it.

Eric Siu: What’s the most effective thing other than word of mouth that’s working for you in terms of customer acquisition today?

Melanie Perkins: Word of mouth has been our strongest driver. We’re not doing any paid acquisition at all. We aren’t even doing affiliate programs or paid sponsorship or anything actually. We have a non-profit program which has been growing really rapidly. So we had over seven thousand non-profits on the program, where we give our paid product away for free. Which is an incredible thing for the non-profit community because they’re able to create awesome graphics to help spread their word and raise funds for their charities.

We also have a lot of people that are finding about Canva because they’re actually searching for Canva. They’ve got design needs, whether that’s to create a poster or a social media graphic. Then of course we’re there to meet those needs when they come across them.

Eric Siu: I’ve seen a lot of your content online. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you guys are doing in terms of content marketing/SEO?

Melanie Perkins: Yeah, sure. So our design school has been really fantastic. We have over a million users a month coming to our design school and we are teaching everything from color theory, to font pairing, to how to create combinations or layouts that look good.

But then we’re also teaching a lot about best strategies for, or top strategies for social media marketing, or top strategies for all sorts of other things. And that’s been really effective and popular. And so when people are sharing our content, then of course that helps people to find out more about Canva. And gives people who are enjoying our product the opportunity to spread the word more.

Eric Siu: So about your background, are you technical?

Melanie Perkins: I was studying communications, psychology and commerce at uni and then started my first company before I graduated. So while I’m not an engineer, I’ve spent a lot of time working with engineers.

Eric Siu: Tell me about how you built such a great team. You know, where do you go find all the great people, and some other great tips and tricks that you have?

Melanie Perkins: Yeah, I wish there was a magical tip or trick that helps you to find an amazing tech team. It was a year of looking to find our first technical [team member], to find our co-founder, and our tech lead. Literally going to every single conference I could under the sun, calling people, emailing people, connecting with everyone on LinkedIn, just trying to do anything I possible could. [We] eventually landed some amazing people.

Lars Rasmussen who co-founded Google Maps, very kindly offered to be our technical advisor.

So what that actually meant was a year of bringing resumes to people, sending LinkedIn things, and him rejecting everyone, which was incredibly frustrating at the time. Because it meant that we couldn’t get started on Canva.

I was like, “We need to do this now!” It was so frustrating. But very awesomely, he ended up introducing us to both our co-founder and our CTO. And they helped set the bar for an incredible tech team that we have today.

We’ve got over 150 people on our team now, across our two offices. One’s here in Sydney, Australia and the other is in Manila, the Philippines. And we’ve been very fortunate to have an incredibly talented and motivated and passionate team, that’s helping to build out this crazy, crazy product.

Eric Siu: So how do you go about meeting the co-founder of Google Maps? Is it just going to conferences? Networking? If you have an advisor like that who can block you from making a lot of mistakes, that’s huge.

Melanie Perkins: Yeah. It was huge. So I seem to have a lot of disaster stories, so I’ll tell you another one. So I was at a conference. We were WA runner up inventor of the year back in 2008, I think it was. No, 2009? And then the following year I met Bill Tai who runs the conference MaiTai when he was in Perth. He was there to go kite surfing but was at the conference.

So we had a five minute chat, he said if I went to Silicon Valley he’d be happy to meet up. I went to Silicon Valley the following year and then he introduced me to Lars Rasmussen. That was how that bizarre story unfolded.

Eric Siu: How do you go about working with your significant other?

Melanie Perkins: I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to work with him, for now 10 years, almost I think. Because it’s meant that as things are like a crazy rollercoaster and you come across all these challenges, you have someone who understands exactly what you’re going through, and are able to bounce off each other.

Of course it can be challenging at times, because we work together and we live together. So we’re essentially spending 24 hours a day together, seven days a week. It is important to sometimes gives yourself a little bit of separation, but I think it’s been an incredibly awesome thing to be able to do together. Especially when like, in the early days when I was in San Francisco and he was running the company.

It was a really awesome thing to be able to, just have complete trust in each other.

Eric Siu: Tell me about one big struggle you’ve faced while growing the business. It sounds like, you know there’s the raising funds thing, there’s finding that technical co-founder. What’s another big struggle you’ve had?

Melanie Perkins: There’s constantly big struggles every single stage of the company. The struggles that we have now is we’re growing really rapidly on every single front. Which might sound like, “Oh poor me.”  But it is really important to get the company structure right, to get the culture right. I think that we’re doing a lot of things really right, but there’s always so much room for improvement.

So we, in the very early days we would have stand ups. And every week everyone would go to Canva design and say what they’ve been working on for the week. And then we got to the point that we had too many people and that that was going on for like an hour, and then we had each team present. And then we’re like, okay this is cool, each team can present, it will mean that we can roll it up much more quickly. But then people can still get to communicate every week all the important things.

And then we got to the point that we had too many teams, and that was taking too long. So then we had to change it again to having deep dives, say we’d have five teams doing a deep dive on what they’re working on each week. And then there was room to make it a lot more efficient, again.

But across the entire company you’ll get to a point [where] the current systems you have will break and then you have to reinvent the systems, and then those systems will break, and then you have to reinvent the systems again.

It’s just this constant process. So every single stage of the company, everything’s breaking and then you’re having to fix everything again. But it’s fun, I like challenges.

Eric Siu: This has been awesome. Melanie, what’s the best way for people to find you online?

Melanie Perkins: You can find me on Twitter, my handle is @MelanieCanva. That’s probably the best spot.

The post Growth Hacking Tactics to Get 10M Users in 3 Years (Without Paid Ads): An Interview with Melanie Perkins appeared first on Single Grain.

According to the Wall Street Journal,

In the U.S. and Canada, Facebook’s most-developed market, revenue grew even faster, to $9 a user, up from $6.03.

(image source, WSJ)

As of December 31, 2014, Facebook has over 1.39 billion monthly active users and 1.19 billion mobile monthly active users. And these people are essentially giving you all the details of their lives and what they’re interested in.

Seven online properties that have reached 1 billion users. (image source, OkDork)

Businesses make tons of money on Facebook ads alone. Advertisers saw click-through rates increase 3.75X in 2013 compared to 2012. From November 2013 to November 2014, retail advertisers saw almost a 200% increase on their return on investment with Facebook ads.

All of this is to say that, as Facebook advertising platform continues to grow, your business can join and reap the benefits of that platform. It’s not too late to figure out how to make Facebook ads work for you.

(image source, Kenshoo)

If you’re running Facebook ads but not seeing any results and you’re just about to curse it and drop your Facebook advertising campaigns altogether, I’m about to tell you about 27 Facebook advertising mistakes you can avoid to start seeing real results.

By avoiding these mistakes, you’re going to stop wasting money and start earning it.

Here are the 27 Facebook advertising pitfalls to avoid.

1. You haven’t clearly defined your goals.

First thing’s first: you MUST have a goal in mind. The easiest mistake to make in running Facebook ads is not having a clearly defined goal because you won’t know what signs of success to look for.

(image source, Facebook)

You have the choice to increase page engagement, get likes, send people to your website, giveaway offers and so on. Now you have to decide which type of ad will help you reach your goal.

Are you trying to collect emails? Or promote a specific product? Or get more sales?

2. You aren’t targeting or segmenting your audience.

Say I walk into the middle of a crowd on a busy street with a megaphone and say, “Buy my new app that’s going to change the way you listen to music!”

Everyone would look at me like I’m a crazy person. Chances are, no one there will care about my app and no one wants me to change how they listen to music.

That’s essentially what you’d be doing if you serve your ad to everyone on Facebook (it’s also a waste of money). You need to segment your audience, determine what type of people are interested in your business and target specific groups of people based on their location, their interests and demographic.

3. You’re not testing your audiences.

When I first started running Facebook ads, I knew about segmenting and targeting audiences. I thought I knew who my audience was so I targeted those people. Turns out there was another group of people who were more interested in what I had to offer.

Educated guesses are good, but it’s best to test our assumptions. There’s an old Russian proverb that says, “Trust, but verify.”

Test your audiences to make sure you’re targeting the right audience. Also test other similar demographics to see if you can expand your target audience.

4. It’s not clear what you’re offering.

Don’t be like this ad.

(image source, Sandstone Melons)

So they have melons. Are they edible? A clearer message would be, “Fresh cantaloupes from Arizona, available at your local Sam’s Club.” At least that would tell me they want me to buy their melons.

If your offer isn’t clear, no one is going to take a second look at your ad.

Take a look at the next two ads.

(image source, Virgin America)

(image source, Five Four Club)

For the first ad, $25 off a future flight? Awesome. They take Visa? Great, I use Visa.

The second ad is a little more vague. It’s not too clear what they mean by “It’s like shopping. Without all the shopping.” However they offer a $20 off coupon, presumable to buy shirts. In this case, although it’s vague what they do, they do provide a clear offer.

The best Facebook ads have ONE clearly defined offer.

5. You’re pushing people to your homepage instead of a landing page.

People need to be told what to do. If someone clicks through your ad and end up on your website homepage, they won’t know what to do. Should they read your about page? Or look at your products? Should they contact you instead? Or they’ll just leave your website.

If someone has clicked to your website, then they’ve shown some interested in what you have to offer and that’s rare. So now you have to keep their attention by telling them exactly what to do.

So push them to a well-designed landing page where there’s one clear call to action. The landing page should also provide something of value that will keep the reader interested.

6. You’re sending people straight to a sales page.

Imagine you get a call from an unknown number. You answer the phone and they start selling you on some diet supplements. You would no doubt hang up or tell them you’re not interested.

Whereas Google Adwords are search-based, Facebook ads are display-based. People don’t see your ad because they’re searching for it. They see it because you’re putting it in front of them based on what they say they like, not what they say they will buy.

When someone clicks on your ad, they don’t expect to be sold right away. They don’t wantto be sold.

Instead, you should grow their interest by sending them to a landing page with useful information.

(image source, Hubspot)

7. Your landing page isn’t converting.

There’s no point in pushing people to a landing page if they don’t convert. Optimize your landing page for conversions.

If you want to collect emails, then provide an enticing offer and provide a clear call to action for the reader to enter their email.

If your Facebook ad is good enough to generate a click, you don’t want to lose that opportunity by having a weak landing page. Hubspot has a great article on what makes a good landing page.

8. You’re too focused on getting likes.

Likes are fine, but they won’t get you sales. At Single Grain, our goal is to increase the bottom line for our clients, so we focus on sales and conversions.

Facebook is slowly adding new features to help advertisers increase conversions. It’s a good idea to take advantage of these new tools.

(image source, Warby Parker)

In this ad, Warby Parker displays multiple products that I can browse through, giving them more opportunities to sell me on a pair of glasses.

Again, if your goal is to get more likes, that’s fine, but you have more tools at your disposal to generate sales, and dollar signs are nicer to see than a thumbs up.

Noah Kagan shares how you can profit off your first $100 Facebook ad spend.

(image source, Jon Loomer)

9. Your images aren’t the right size.

Facebook has a huge caveat on what images sizes are best for different positions. You’ll find that your image will get cut off if you don’t abide by these image dimensions,

Jon Loomer did the legwork and provided us with the exact Facebook image dimensions. Now you won’t spend all your time designing an ad and find out that it’s the wrong size.

10. Your headlines are boring.

The headline is arguably the most important part of your ad because it’s your first chance to make an impression on the reader. If it doesn’t catch their attention, they won’t read the rest of your ad.

Copyblogger has a great article on how to write headlines that work.

(Image source, Social Media Examiner)

11. You aren’t A/B testing your ads.

From your headline, copy, image and call to action, all elements should be split tested to optimize your ads performance.

Just because an ad is working right now, doesn’t mean it’ll work next month or next week. By testing different versions of your ad, you will keep it up-to-date and ensure it continues to perform well.

12. Too much focus on artistic eye.

Some advertisers make the mistake of going with “artistic instinct.” Here’s the thing: what you want to see may not be what your customers want to see.

If you’ve tested your ad elements (which you should be) you may find that an image you don’t particularly like is performing better than all other images. The numbers don’t lie. Forget your artistic intuition and let the numbers decide which image to go with.

You need to optimize your ad for conversions, not aesthetics.

13. You have a weak call to action.

A weak call to action is like building up hype, but not taking advantage of it. If you’ve mastered your headline and image, you need a call to action to take the reader to the next step.

Increase conversions for your ad by writing a powerful call to action.

14. You’re not using tracking URLs.

Tracking URLs tell you the source of your traffic. You can create these custom URLs using Google URL builder. If you’re sending users to a page on your website, tracking URLs help you determine the effectiveness of a campaign. This becomes really useful if you have multiple campaigns going running on different channels like Twitter, your blog, YouTube and so on.

15. You’re killing ads too soon.

Your Facebook ads won’t always work immediately. Depending on the daily budget you set, you may need to give your ad 2-3 days to give you actionable data. Once you have that actionable data, you can pull useful reports and know the proper steps to take to improve your ads.

16. Your audience might be too narrow.

oCPM bidding works best on audiences >1,000,000 people (try narrow audiences with cpc or cpm bids).

Facebook recommends starting with CPC bidding before you even try oCPM. Get some benchmarks in place for CTR, conversion rate, and relevance score. Then Facebook’s algorithms will have more data to work from.

(image source, Facebook)

 17. You’re putting all your eggs in one basket.

Don’t make the mistake of putting all your ads in one ad set. You should have multiple ad sets, each targeting a different audience. This helps you avoid saturating your audience with the same ad over and over and allows you to send different ads to each demographic.

Say you’re an online business based in California and you’re trying to get clients in New York. You can’t expect someone from New York to understand the same references that a Californian would understand. It’s a different culture. Make sure your ads are segmented and tailored for each demographic.

With the new structure of Facebook ads, Facebook’s algorithms do a better job of choosing winners and losers from your tests… but only if you set them up correctly! The infographic above shows you the best practices.

(image source, Digital Marketer)

18. You’re not taking advantage of retargeting.

Have you ever done some online window shopping on Amazon then went on Facebook and saw an ad for the exact item you were looking at? You’ve been retargeted. But retargeting isn’t only for e-commerce. You can use it for any page on your website.

You can set a retargeting pixel on specific pages on your website so when people land on your page, a cookie is dropped on their browser. Then you can retarget them with a relevant ad.

This tactic only targets people who have already demonstrated interest in your business by visiting your website. Much less effort than getting a new lead.

19. You aren’t using lookalike audiences.

If you’ve been retargeting and advertising to your current customers frequently you’re going to experience ad fatigue quickly.

At that point, it’s time to expand your reach using Facebook lookalike audiences.

According to Facebook,

Lookalike audiences help you reach people who are similar to your current customers for fan acquisition, site registration, off-Facebook purchases, coupon claims and brand awareness. 

(image source, Jon Loomer)

Using Facebooks lookalike audiences took, you can analyze your current customers and Customer Audience lists to create a new segment based on their similarity to your customers.

20. Don’t forget to check your placement/demographic reports.

Facebook has included some awesome default reports in their updated reporting section including “Responder Demographic” and “Placement Based Metrics”.

Even if you don’t segment your audiences by age, gender, or placement, that doesn’t mean you can’t get that valuable data. Say you have a campaign targeting people of all ages and all placements. By running these reports, you can see if there are any sub-audiences that are more active than others.

What if most of your conversions are coming from 25-35 year old males? What if your mobile CPA is 50% less than desktop? These reports can help you identify if there are any key audiences that you should be focusing on.

21. You’re not taking advantage of CPM bidding.

If you’re looking to develop awareness instead of getting sales, CPM bidding could be your best option. If you’ve got a targeted audience size of about 10K, then CPM bidding may be cheaper than CPC bidding.

22. Don’t try and get the cheapest clicks or impressions—you get what you pay for!

Cheap clicks don’t equate to quality. There’s a reason the highest bidder get the most clicks, because quality clicks are in higher demand. It depends on your situation, if you’ve managed to target a small niche that generates cheap high quality clicks, awesome.

The key thing to remember is that it’s about quality, not quantity.

If you have an email list, you can target them using Facebook ads. This takes advantage of people who have already shown interest in what you have to offer and pushes them further down your conversion funnel. It takes much less effort than generating a lead.

24. Don’t change your bids/budgets too frequently (max: 3x/day for oCPM)

This also falls into Facebook’s recommended best practices. You need to be patient when you’re testing different budgets or Facebook won’t have enough time to show an effect. We recommend only making one or two changes per day then LEAVING IT ALONE for at least a day to let the computers do their thing.

I know it’s tempting to constantly tweak your campaigns, but you’ll miss out on impressions due to your ads being in “waiting approval” limbo all day.

25. You’re setting it and quitting it.

This is the biggest reason advertisers lose money on Facebook ads. They set up their campaign and just let it run without checking on it. If you have tons of money, then the money probably isn’t a big deal, but you won’t be getting returns from your ads.

If you’re on a small budget, you probably want to get as much bang for your buck as you can. That means you have to check on your ad regularly, at least weekly or daily. Run your reports and review the data.

You want to keep an eye on your click-through rate (CTR), cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) to make sure they aren’t horrible. If so, then you can pause your campaign and adjust your ad to lower your CPC and CPA and increase your CTR before it’s too late.

(image source, KISSmetrics)

26. You’re not tracking ROI.

You may be checking up on your campaigns regularly, but if you’re not tracking for ROI, then your CTR, CPC won’t matter at all.

KISSmetrics has an amazing infographic on how to track online ad ROI.

27. You’re not scaling up on what’s working.

If your ads are performing amazingly, then by all means, scale it up (as long as it’s in your budget). What some advertisers don’t understand is that, if your ad is performing well and generating sales, it’ll pay for itself (and more) if you scale up.

Conclusion

Don’t worry, that was a lot of information to take in at once. By no means should you try implement every piece of advice here. That would just get exhausting.

The important thing to remember is that there’s hope. Facebook ads CAN be a profitable marketing channel IF done correctly.

By following the steps above, you’ll improve your Facebook ads little by little and you’ll start to see the return on investment.

So how are you going to start doing Facebook ads differently?

The post 27 Facebook Ad Pitfalls That Are Destroying Your Valuable Ad Spend appeared first on Single Grain.

As it’s clear that Google is cracking down on advertisers that abuse the AdWords network, it’s imperative that you make yourself aware of all current AdWords policies and ensure you comply in order to avoid facing a similar fate.

Why Were So Many Advertisers Banned?

According to Gupta, the advertisers targeted by Google’s action were banned “to make the Internet safer for search engine users.” With this action, Google removed about a quarter of a million malware sites from the network in the past year alone – higher than any other year since the company’s founding. Google also used this action to ban 7,000 advertisers that promoted counterfeit products.

Unfortunately, some AdWords network users argue that these claims represent an intentional misdirection by Google, as many other users were banned, even though their products or services didn’t violate any laws or pose any serious risks to consumers.

In September 2014, Jignesh Gohel of SEMRush implied that many new policy changes were made to comply with new regulations and to avoid alienating consumers that were upset by seeing certain types of products advertised in Google’s AdWords blocks. This could explain why many advertisers were eliminated from the network late last year.

While it’s clear that Google banned many advertisers for engaging in dangerous behavior, there does seem to be evidence that suggests other reasons for the drastic crackdown. Click-through rates on AdWords blocks have dropped sharply over the last three years, which has the potential to significantly damage Google’s business model. As declining trust appears to be one of the biggest reasons for this shift, it would make sense that Google is trying to regain user confidence by removing suspicious advertisers.

Understand the Purpose of AdWords Policies

Whenever Google makes a change, plenty of advertisers complain about the company’s seemingly arbitrary policies – ranting in online forums that they were banned without cause. And while this may be cathartic, it also seems to have the effect of making other brands reluctant to create an AdWords account.

Whether you’re a new or existing advertiser, you’d be wise to take these complaints with a grain of salt. Google isn’t turning away its paying customers just to be mean. The company is trying to protect its brand reputation and keep itself safe from regulatory penalties. Adapting policies such as the most recent ban offers the following beneficial effects:

Retain Customer Trust

At the end of the day, Google wants to be sure that search engines users feel comfortable clicking its ads, as it stands to reason that customers would stop trusting the company’s ad blocks if unscrupulous advertisers were constantly spamming the network to promote their services.

Avoid Regulatory Penalties

Google operates in a number of different regions across the world, which means that the company is subject to many different regulators and sets of regulations. In 2011, for example, the United States Department of Justice seized over $500 million from Google for illegally promoting Canadian pharmacies to U.S. consumers.

The United States isn’t the only country that’s starting to crack down on Google’s advertising services. Russian regulators also fined the search engine giant for allowing advertisements for abortion clinics and other services that President Vladimir Putin felt were inconsistent with the country’s traditional values.

As a result, the company is feeling greater pressure to amp up its policies in order to avoid fines and other regulatory sanctions. Cracking down on advertisers that violate these laws is, in essence, an action the company’s taken for its own protection.

Provide a Better User Experience

In addition to protecting customer safety, Google wants to make sure that customers have a quality experience while using the advertising platform. As an example, the network’s Bridge Page policy was put into place because most customers don’t enjoy being directed to a low quality website that exists for the sole purpose of being funneled to another website.

Google has also enacted similar policies against thin content to penalize spammy websites that don’t provide a quality user experience. Not only do these policies serve to improve the user experience, they protect the company’s reputation among advertisers as well. Google knows that advertisers will be quick to blame the engine for low conversion rates, rather than accept that their landing pages need work. Eliminate ineffective advertisers, therefore, serves to minimize the number of unhappy users complaining about poor ROIs on Internet forums.

What Can You Do to Protect Your AdWords Account

While Google has disclosed some of the reasons behind its massive advertiser ban, there are likely other reasons that went unspoken that you need to be aware of. Keep in mind that, although Google has very strict policies, it isn’t always as communicative about them as we might like. That said, if you read between the lines, you’ll find a number of different measures you can take to protect your AdWords account.

Don’t Look to Other AdWords Campaigns for Guidance

While Google has a very efficient system for tracking down companies that abuse its policies, some rule-breakers will always slip through the cracks. As a result, some companies that blatantly promote illegal products and services may be able to successfully run AdWords campaigns for some time before their accounts are shut down.

What that means is that you should never assume that Google endorses a practice, simply because a company employing it hasn’t yet been shut down. They may very well be banned in the near future for their actions, and you don’t want to find yourself on the same list.

Truly, your only safe bet is to familiarize yourself with AdWords’ policies and follow them to the letter.

Don’t Run Sites Purely for Arbitrage

As it stands today, Google’s Bridge Page policy prohibits advertisers from promoting websites that exist solely for the purpose of directing traffic to another website. Interestingly, though, many affiliate marketers on popular online forums report that, while they were never sanctioned for violating the policy in the past, their accounts were removed in 2013 and 2014.

Many advertisers believe that the introduction of the Bridge Page policy is an indication that Google won’t allow any form of affiliate marketing at all, but this isn’t accurate. Instead, the point Google has made is that affiliate marketing is permissible, as long as the site hosting the affiliate ads serves some additional function that isn’t available on the destination site.

Clearly, Google’s definition of bridge pages is ambiguous, but your chances of being banned are much lower if you make an effort to ensure that your site offers some type of additional value. Sites that offer reviews of different products or that provide a tool or service that isn’t available elsewhere are much less likely to be banned.

Try to Work With a Google AdWords Representative

If you’re concerned about the potential for your account to be banned, it may be worth trying to work directly with a Google AdWords account representative. These professionals are paid to ensure that their customers receive the necessary support to run successful AdWords campaigns. They can even handle your campaigns for you, making it even less likely that your account will be banned for violating AdWords policies.

The drawback to this is that there are generally minimum campaign requirements that you must meet before you can qualify to receive support from an AdWords representative. While Google hasn’t publicly posted the specific criteria needed to qualify, many brands that have worked AdWords account reps have stated that they were told Google prefers to work directly with brands with initial budgets of at least $6,000 and strong growth potential.

If you meet these standards, you may want to see if you can quality for the support of an AdWords representative. If not, a marketing agency focusing on PPC campaigns may be able to help as well.

Understand Prohibited Industries

Outside of Google’s advertiser bans, it’s important to keep in mind that a number of products and services are prohibited from being promoted on the AdWords network. Many of these are illegal, while others are simply products that Google simply feels aren’t trustworthy. If you’re an advertiser, a marketing agency or an affiliate marketer, you’ll need to be aware of these restrictions to avoid promoting clients or products in prohibited verticals.

Here are some of the industries that Google regularly bans:

• Unproven weight loss products
• Certain adult material
• Knives designed to be used as weapons
• Informational products that violate copyright laws (such as ebooks that use the word “Facebook” in the title)

Google’s prohibited industry policies are constantly changing, so you’ll want to update yourself regularly. For example, Google recently announced that it will ban all explicit adult content. The new AdWords policy also implies that ads for toy guns are also no longer allowed.

Just to make things even more confusing, Google occasionally lifts certain bans, as a recent post from Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable recently claimed after discovering some link buying advertisements on the AdWords network.

Be Aware of Differences in Geographical Regulation

Advertising regulations vary significantly throughout different jurisdictions, so it’s important to understand the laws that apply to every region you operate in. You may believe that Google endorses certain types of promotions, just because the company hasn’t penalized you before, but they could easily ban your account if you run a similar ad in a region where it is illegal to do so.

As a result, you’ll need to learn various regulations carefully before running any ads – especially if you’re going to be operating in multiple countries.. Businesses that operate in the pharmaceutical, gambling and pay day loan industries tend to face the most issues, but virtually any industry can run into these challenges, depending on the whims of Google and the country-specific regulatory bodies that oversee its operation.

Create Informative Websites

Recently, a number of AdWords advertisers have been banned for running numerous ads to low quality landing pages. And since Google has placed more and more of an emphasis on this factor over the past couple of years, advertisers would be foolish to ignore this trend.

Last June, Hal Varian, Chief Economist for Google, released a white paper detailing the significance of the quality score system that Google uses, as well as some of the things that advertisers can do to boost their assessments. Use his guidance to monitor your campaign quality scores closely and to improve them as much as possible. It’s likely that we haven’t seen the end of this trend yet, with Google likely to ban even more advertisers in the future that don’t provide landing pages that create a quality user experience.

Be Cautious When Using Rebilling Programs

You may not believe that you’re doing anything wrong by running a rebilling program with your business, but your customers may disagree. Acai berry and many “Make Money at Home” products have recently been banned by Adwords for their controversial rebilling practices. Many of the affiliate marketers that promoted these products have faced similar bans as well.

Even if you believe your policy keeps you on the straight and narrow, it’s a good idea to seek legal counsel from an attorney who specializes in digital transactions. At a minimum, make sure that your rebilling terms are clearly described and that customers can easily cancel in order to keep your AdWords account safe.

Regularly Check Your Site for Malware

Finally, bear in mind that Gupta’s announcement stated that malware was one of the biggest reasons behind Google’s advertiser bans in 2014. According to a recent report, 43 million ads were banned in 2014 for referring visitors to malware sites; if accurate, this means that more ads were removed for distributing malware than for any other reason last year.

You probably aren’t intentionally distributed malware, but unfortunately, that doesn’t mean you won’t run into trouble. Hackers can install malware on your site without your knowledge – though that isn’t a very compelling excuse to the AdWords team. Their primary concern is keeping their visitors safe, and they won’t hesitate to ban a negligent advertiser that didn’t remove this harmful code from their site.

You may even run into trouble if any of the scripts on your website resemble malware in any way. Recently, a team of hackers was able to create a controversial spoofing script that tricked AdWords users who were trying to visit legitimate magazine sites. In light of this type of attack, Google may opt to strengthen the protocols of its malware detection technology, inadvertently resulting in potential false positives.

If you have run cookies or scripts on your site, you’ll need to make sure that they don’t appear suspicious in any way. Google is highly unlikely to reverse a ban if they believe – even incorrectly – that your site contained malware.

Take All Possible Steps to Avoid Being Banned from AdWords

AdWords is considered the single best advertising platform on the Internet. The only downside to including this network in your marketing strategy is that it also comes with some of the strictest rules online. Though these policies have caused many companies to be banned from the network, they’re unlikely to let up anytime soon, as Google takes the steps necessary to protect its brand reputation and ensure that it abides by necessary regulations in different regions across the world.

It may feel frustrating to have to jump through so many hoops, but if you’re able to protect your account by taking the steps described above, you’ll have access to one of the strongest sources of traffic that exists online today.

What are your thoughts about the massive AdWords ban of 2014? Are there any other suggestions you feel advertisers should be aware of? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Image: Flickr

The post What Google’s Massive Advertiser Ban Means for You appeared first on Single Grain.

While a growing number of brands are embracing the cost-effectiveness of content marketing, it’s important to remember that even the most affordable marketing strategies require some financial investment. If you’re struggling to get the content you created seen by your target audience, you may want to consider utilizing paid traffic to improve the effectiveness of your content marketing campaigns.

Paid content is becoming more popular than ever as brands try to boost their ROI and compete in an increasingly-crowded digital space. According to a 2013 study from Socialbakers, 77% of Facebook Pages were promoted with paid traffic. With such widespread adoption taking place, it’s worth considering whether or not paid promotion should play a role in your campaigns as well.

Beyond Facebook ads (including both Promoted Posts and retargeting ads built with the company’s FBX platform), there are a number of paid traffic sources you should be aware of, including Google Adwords, Outbrain, Zemanta and BuySellAds, among others. Get to know all of these different platforms so that you’re able to leverage the ones that will best support your content campaigns.

Benefits of Driving Paid Traffic to Your Content

Let’s face it – while content marketing remains one of the most effective ways to generate exposure for your brand, it’s also becoming more difficult. Consider that an average of four million blog posts are published online each day. If blog posts represent the bulk of your content strategy, you’ll need to do more to get them seen than just press the “Publish” button – and that’s where using paid traffic sources to improve your ROI comes in.

Here are a few of the benefits you’ll enjoy from paid traffic sources:

Get Seen in a More CROwded Space

According to a study by Ion Interactive CTO Scott Brinker, competition in the digital marketing industry increased nearly 900% between 2011 and 2013. That’s huge!

As a growing number of content marketing agencies and in-house content marketing campaigns compete for attention, the digital content sphere is becoming increasingly congested. This means that brands need to be more strategic to stand out. Paid traffic can be the answer to improving visibility for their content – especially in highly competitive niches.

Earn Highly Targeted Viewers

That said, the sheer volume of traffic you drive to your content isn’t as important as its relevancy. To see the difference, ask yourself if you’d rather receive 100,000 page views from visitors who will only convert at a rate of 0.01%, or 1,000 visits from prospects who convert at a rate of 10%? Clearly, you’d want the latter scenario, as it represents a ten-fold increase in conversions – and pay-per-click (PPC) traffic can help you do it.

Instead of relying on broad promotions or on the “come one, come all” nature of organic search traffic, paid traffic campaigns can be set up to drive extremely targeted traffic to your website and content pieces. In fact, a 2013 study from MarketLive shows that conversion rates from paid search traffic are 35% higher than organic search traffic on average, due simply to the fact that the traffic is more targeted.

Here’s how this important targeting occurs:

• Unlike free content marketing platforms, paid traffic sources provide more control over ad copy, banner designs and other elements, which can shape visitor expectations and send the most relevant visitors to your site.
• Google Adwords, Facebook and most other PPC sources allow you to target visitors by a number of different factors, including demographic, region and device. If you want to get your content in front of Midwestern moms browsing the internet on their iPads, you can do with with paid traffic.
• Instead of deploying banner ads to a broad audience, you can purchase them directly from publishers or through media buying sites like BuySellAds.You can select specific niche websites that are related to the content you’re promoting, as well as use tools such as Alexa and Compete.com to make sure the demographic would be interested in your content. You can even use retargeting features on Adwords, Facebook and other programs to minimize the very real issue of banner blindness among internet users.
• Outbrain, Zemanta and other native content advertising platforms will promote your content on similar pages across the web, putting your links in front of people who have recently consumed content on the same subjects. They’ll also allow you to filter your traffic by device and region, ensuring that the traffic you pay for comes from visitors who are likely to convert.

With all of these features working together, it’s clear that using paid traffic to promote your content on relevant sites will significantly increase the benefits  and ROI of your content marketing campaign.

Generate More Reliable Traffic

Although many brands used to rely heavily on organic search traffic and traffic from referring websites, those sources aren’t nearly as dependable as they used to be in the wake of Panda 4.0 and other algorithm changes. This is one of the many reasons brands are diversifying their promotional approach with paid traffic sources, although it isn’t only affecting small publishers.. Even larger brands may be forced to turn to paid traffic sources after these updates went into effect, as demonstrated by a WordStream case study showing that eBay lost 80% of its organic rankings after the most recent Panda update.

Collect More Data for Split Testing

Split testing is an important part of conversion rate optimization (CRO), but unfortunately conducting these tests can difficult with organic search traffic alone, as Google, Yahoo and Bing have stopped sharing some key pieces of information with website owners.

If you login to your Google Analytics dashboard, you’ll probably notice that many of the keyword listings for your organic search traffic read “Not Provided.” Regardless of why this is occurring (and you’ll hear different stories from marketing experts than from Google itself), this change makes it difficult to determine which keywords are actually driving organic traffic to your site. You also won’t be able to tell which keywords are converting the best, which can turn into a nightmare when it comes to split testing.

Fortunately, Google Adwords and other advertising platforms still provide keyword data to advertisers. Using this information, you’ll be able to determine which keywords are converting best and, consequently, how you should allocate your marketing efforts in the future.

Free Traffic Sources Are Dying Out

Along these same lines, guest blogging used to be an extremely effective way for brands to drive traffic to their websites. These days, however, many publishers have stopped accepting free guest posts in light of acknowledgement by Google that this technique may not be entirely “white hat.”

Most recently, Google penalized My Blog Guest and at least 50% of the publishers using the platform, arguing that posts distributed by the services represented a violation of its paid link schemes prohibition. This frightened many bloggers to stop accepting guest posts altogether, and those that still do often offer only nofollow links that don’t provide the link juice many brands using this technique for SEO purposes relied on. This has drastically reduced the value of guest blogging for brands, giving companies one more reason to turn to paid traffic.

Putting Together Your Paid Traffic Plan

Let’s say that the reasons to use paid traffic on your content marketing campaigns listed above resonate with you, and that you’re ready to use this powerful technique to improve your overall marketing results. Before you get too carried away, there are a few things you’ll need to keep in mind:

• PPC traffic can get expensive. If you’re in a highly-competitive industry, don’t be surprised if you see cost-per-click (CPC) fees as high as $25 or more for a single click. Not all options are this expensive, but with PPC, it all comes down to ROI. If it takes you ten clicks at $25 to earn one new customer who will pay you $2,500 a year, investing in this way is a no-brainer.
• Proving the ROI of your PPC traffic can be difficult. That said, while tracking and maintaining a positive ROI is vital for PPC campaigns, measuring the return on your paid ads investment can be a challenge. At a minimum, you’ll need to use tracking tools that tell you which visitors have landed on your website through your PPC campaigns, as well as which keywords or ads they clicked and which of them go on to become conversions.
• Proper attribution modeling is a must. ROI modeling becomes even more complicated when you recognize that the click on to your website likely represents only one touch point in a much larger sales funnel. Prospects rarely click through your PPC ad and buy right away. Instead, they might look at your project page, then read your blog, and then check out a few of your content pieces before converting. Assigning the appropriate amount of weight to each of these touches is a challenge today’s top marketers are still working to resolve.

I don’t say all of that to scare you away from PPC – only to help you recognize the challenges involved in using this powerful technique. It’s relatively easy to create a content piece and post it to a few sites online. Once you start sending paid traffic to it, on the other hand, you’ll need to become much more sophisticated in terms of the ways you measure progress and performance online.

If, after all of that, you’re still interested in driving paid traffic to your content campaigns, your first step should be to create a game plan that will help you get the most out of your investment. Here’s what your plan should include:

The Source of Your Traffic

As mentioned above, PPC isn’t just Google Adwords anymore. Today, you have a number of different options to choose from:

• Google Adwords is by far the largest source of PPC traffic, and it’s one of the strongest as well. Because Google’s search engine still retains the majority of search queries, its PPC engine provides an extremely large pool of potential visitors that can be narrowly targeted with your ads.
• If you’re heavily involved in social promotions, Facebook also provides PPC traffic, as do Twitter and Stumbleupon. Be careful, though, as engagement rates with these networks can be extremely low relative to the number of views you can acquire.
• BlogAds, BuySellAds and SiteScout are media buying platforms you’ll want to consider if you’re interested in posting your banner ads on specific platforms.
• Native advertising platforms like Outbrain, Taboola and Zemanta are specifically designed to promote your content on related articles across the web. If, for example, you’ve ever read to the end of an article on a site like CNN and seen a list of suggested posts you might enjoy, these referrals come from native ad platforms.

The Content You’ll Target

In addition to choosing the strategy and platform you’ll use to promote your content, you’ll want to use caution when selecting the specific content pieces you’ll share. If you think about it, your business likely already has loads of existing content, including everything from blog posts to infographics and from ebooks to whitepapers and more. And if you’re going to spend money on traffic, you need to be sure it’s being routed to the content pieces that will benefit most – out of all these different options – from paid traffic.

Keep the following guidelines in mind when choosing content to target:

• If you already have a conversion tracking program set up on your website, you should have a good idea of the content pieces that are making the biggest difference in your bottom line. These materials represent one of the best targets for your paid traffic campaigns.
• Think about where your PPC ads will be displayed. If you choose to advertise on a native ads platform, for example, your content piece will likely be one of at least 5-10 links that readers see. For this reason, blog posts or other materials structured as list posts or that use controversial titles may attract the most attention.
• Consider carefully whether you want to direct your paid traffic to gated content. Your bounce rate will be higher if you, say, request an email address in exchange for the content piece you promoted, but you may also capture more leads than if your paid traffic is able to land on your site, consume your content and navigate away without leaving any information.

Your Campaign Parameters

Next up, think about how you’ll structure your campaigns by asking yourself the following questions:

• How narrow is the audience I’m trying to reach? If you’re going after specific buyer personas based on past sales trends, you’ll need to choose a PPC platform that includes multiple targeting options. You’ll also have to define which demographics you’ll target your campaigns towards and actually put these qualifiers into place.
• How does my audience browse the internet? We’ve already passed the point where desktop web traffic exceed mobile visits, so don’t think of PPC solely in terms of traditional desktop users. If your target customers are avid mobile users, be sure the settings of your PPC campaigns reflect this.
• Do I have a set budget? Most PPC platforms give you the option to limit your daily or monthly spend, and I definitely recommend taking advantage of this feature to prevent cost overruns.

Unfortunately, going in depth into all the different settings that are possible with a PPC ad is beyond the scope of this article alone (trust me – there are a lot of them!). If you need further assistance, either reach out to your account rep or to Single Grain’s PPC team for answers.

How You’ll Measure ROI

Finally, as you plan for your PPC campaign, be sure you determine how you’ll define success.

In the world of content marketing, ROI is a somewhat murky subject, as the aims of content creation often involve such nebulous concepts as brand awareness, brand sentiment and perceived authority. If you’re running a PPC campaign to promote your content pieces, these ideas can still be important, but you’ll also want to consider more concrete metrics that can determine whether or not your investments are paying off.

A few of the different metrics you may want to track include:

• Total website visits
• Lead generation form completions
• Content downloads
• Free trial signups
• Email newsletter subscriptions
• Product purchases

Not all of these metrics correspond to company financial gains, but those that do can be especially helpful. For example, suppose you know that you eventually convert 50% of your free trial users into paid customers. From this, you should be able to determine the financial benefit to signing up a free trial user, which you can then compare to your PPC costs to determine whether your content marketing promotional efforts are worthwhile.

Taking all of these elements into consideration will help you to set up a game plan for PPC success, but just because you’ve built a plan doesn’t mean that you’re locked in to the approach you decide on today. PPC, like anything else, has a learning curve, and as you run more campaigns, you’ll learn more about the combination of ad networks and content pieces that works best for your audience.

So what I’d recommend is that you set up a game plan now that will help get you over the initial hesitation that’s associated with starting something new, but that you also set aside at least an hour for each week over the next three months to monitor your performance. Dive deep into your analytics and use every piece of information you can find to improve on your chosen strategies. Make changes as you learn and grow so that, with every passing week, your ability to drive affordable, effective paid traffic to your content pieces improves.

Are you currently using PPC traffic to promote your content marketing campaigns? Share the challenges and successes you’ve experienced by leaving a comment below!

Images: Yakobusan and WorldIslandInfo.com

The post Should You Send Paid Traffic to Your Content Marketing Campaigns? appeared first on Single Grain.

Looking at this trend from an advertiser’s perspective, it’s clear that any companies that are investing in PPC campaigns must structure their ads in such a way that they reach consumers wherever they are—whatever device they’re using.  And since some customers will use multiple devices throughout the day, it’s critical that campaigns take that into account.

Importance of CROss-Device PPC Marketing

Certainly, the customer buying process varies across industries. Some companies need to spend months nurturing leads in order to convert them into sales, while others only need to engage with leads a few times before generating a sale. Most, though, fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, requiring multiple touches before a conversion occurs.

For this reason, consumers’ first experiences with a brand may take place on a desktop, while  the next few engagements take place on a tablet or smartphone. Consider the following statistics that prove the importance of optimizing marketing campaigns across multiple devices:

• According to an infographic published on this blog post at Crazy Egg, 56% of customers researched a product on a smartphone and then made a purchase from their computer.
• Research from the Multi Screen World Research report of 2012 found that 90% of consumers who own multiple devices switch between them to accomplish various tasks, illustrating the importance of creating a sound user experience across various devices.

A brand may have a well-optimized campaign to target desktop users, but it will inevitably fail to convert those customers if the campaign isn’t setup properly for mobile devices. Since PPC advertising is a core component of many brand’s digital marketing campaigns, it’s important that these companies begin optimizing for customers using multiple devices.

CROss-Device Marketing Challenges

Overall, the number of companies using cross-device marketing increased 59% between 2013 and 2014, but unfortunately, many of these brands have discovered that cross-device marketing can be complex – especially when it comes to PPC campaigns. Here are a few of the specific challenges that brands face:

Optimizing for User Experience

It isn’t surprising that the growing number of customers using multiple devices presents challenges for the brands that market to them. Not only do brands need to create an exceptional user experience during each stage of the buying process, they need to create a consistent, uniform experience that sets expectations and boosts the company’s brand image. This is one of the reasons that an estimated 88.5% of businesses use responsive websites.

But a responsive website alone does not a cross-device marketing campaign make. You could have a website that formats beautifully on every device known to man, but if your PPC campaigns can’t tell that you’re dealing with the same device user that was on a desktop PC earlier, you’re throwing money away. That’s where tracking consumer behavior comes in…

Tracking Consumer Behavior

Tracking user behavior is an obvious challenge, with less-than-obvious solutions. Historically, brands embedded cookies in users’ web browsers to track their activity, which enabled them to maintain a consistent experience across multiple browsing sessions on the same device or computer.

Unfortunately, the growing prevalence of “cross-devicing” has left many of these companies without a clear cut solution to issues involved in the logistics of tracking consumers.

Some help comes from Google, which recognized the difficulty many brands faced with cross-device tracking and offered “Estimated CROss-Device Conversions” to Adwords users in 2013. The new option helps brands to measure the effectiveness of their PPC campaigns across all platforms and to optimize them for higher conversions.

That said, Google typically only presents this data to brands with at least 50 conversions a day, leaving smaller merchants unable to benefit from this useful feature.

Building Landing Pages Around Consumer Behavior

Businesses are also realizing that consumer behavior changes on different devices.

People typically use computers to send emails and make purchases, while they use mobile devices to engage with followers on social media or research local businesses. While these trends obviously don’t encompass all users, these new behavioral patterns are significant enough that you can use them to inform your PPC marketing efforts.

So how do proactive brands decide what types of landing pages to build? Unfortunately, even this question is complicated by the fact that split testing—a popular approach for improving landing page effectiveness—becomes more complicated in a cross-device environment.

If your split-testing tool doesn’t allow you to separate desktop conversions from mobile actions, how will you ever be able to tell if your landing pages are meeting the needs of these distinct groups of visitors?

Though the answers to these questions aren’t entirely clear yet, best practices are emerging to the challenge of cross-device marketing, based on the results experienced and reported by marketing thought leaders and large brands.

Creating an Effective CROss-Device PPC Campaign

The benefits of cross-device PPC marketing are undeniable. When executed correctly, cross-device PPC marketing strategies can ensure a strong user experience, attract customers at the appropriate stage in the buying process and boost conversion rates over brands that adopt a “one size fits all” PPC marketing approach.

However, these ideals rarely materialize in the real world. Companies using these strategies report varying results, due to both industry differences and the fact that some brands’ cross-device PPC strategies are optimized better than others. Here are a few things you should keep in mind in your quest to implement a successful PPC campaign for customers using multiple devices.

Optimize Website for Different Devices

It should go without saying, but one of your first priorities as a cross-device marketer should be to make sure that your users have a great on-site user experience, regardless of the device they’re accessing it with. Creating a responsive website is the best way to accomplish this goal, so if you’re one of the 11-12% of business sites that don’t take advantage of this technology, consider this your first assignment.

In addition, take the time to view your landing pages from different devices to make sure that it always loads properly, contains all the key elements needed to prompt users to action and has a crisp layout that isn’t impinged upon in any way by your site’s responsive styling.

Online emulators can show you how your site will render on different devices; take advantage of them, but also test your site on the live environments of you and your friends’ devices to be sure the emulators are accurate.

Target Keywords By Device

As with any solid PPC strategy, you need to consider the different stages in the buying process before choosing keywords. Customers using mobile devices are often looking to research a product, but will eventually go on to make the purchase on their desktop computers. These differing needs are confirmed by Alex Harris, of Alex Designs, who told Unbounce that businesses should think of mobile as more of a lead generation tool than a sales generator:

“Through our research we have found that mobile users tend to do research on their phone and then complete transactions and purchases on their other devices (tablets and computers). This makes generating leads the most important conversion for the mobile device.”

With this in mind, consider targeting mobile PPC campaigns towards keywords that appeal to customers that are still in the research phase of the buying process. This can be accomplished in a pretty straightforward process using Adwords PPC (though the process is similar for most other PPC providers:

• Log into your Adwords account
• Select the campaign you want to edit (you can select multiple campaigns by selecting the respective checkboxes)
• Go to your edit menu
• Click “Devices”
• Choose the devices that you want to target

Remember, if you encounter any difficulty setting up mobile campaigns by device, you can always call in to speak with an Adwords representative. Even if you are able to set up your campaigns on your own, setting up a call with these PPC professionals to be sure your targeting selections are set the way you intended can be beneficial.

Keep Devices in Mind While Creating Landing Pages

While creating landing pages, keep in mind that the devices consumers are using will impact their behavior. You’ll need to match your conversion goals to these devices, which means that you’ll need to create landing pages with those devices in mind.

To see this idea in action, here’s an example of the different types of landing pages a sample health insurance agency might use in its cross-device PPC advertising campaign:

• The brand decides to targets customers with the keyword, “how to choose health insurance.” Since this particular keyword is ideal for generating new leads rather than closing sales, the agency decides to build a landing page around the keyword that’s tailored to mobile web users. The final page contains all the information users need to make an educated decision on their insurance needs, in addition to encouraging users to subscribe to the agency’s mailing list.
• The insurer then uses its mailing list to nurture those leads and encourage subscribers to click a link to a landing page to sign up for one of its insurance packages. Since consumers are more likely to complete the sign up action on their desktops, the landing page is optimized for desktop users.
• In addition, the agency recognizes that the keyword “sign up for health insurance” – a query it deems to have sufficient traffic volume to be worth pursuing – is better tailored towards desktop internet users. As the company builds its desktop PPC campaigns alongside its mobile advertising programs, it creates a landing page built around this keyword to attract desktop users.

Using a responsive website is a good way to create a pleasant user experience on any device. However, you’ll still need to consider the devices your users are likely to be using to maximize conversions, as some factors (such as sales copy and calls-to-action) will require additional planning and foresight.

Set Up Customer Tracking Tools

Tracking user activity is critical to optimize landing pages. Unfortunately, due to the growing prevalence of cross-devicing, you may need to leverage some special services and tools to monitor customers and conversions. The “Estimated CROss-Device Conversions” feature in Adwords can be very helpful if you’re planning a large scale campaign, but smaller brands may need to turn to different solutions.

Tapstream is a great third-party provider that’s worth looking into. You may also want to check into Facebook’s Atlas Ad Platform, which offers specific features targeted to advertisers trying to reach customers using multiple devices.

If your budget allows, experimenting with these services can provide valuable insight that enables you to track potential customers as they learn about your brand—no matter where they’re accessing that information.

Tailor Your PPC Campaigns to Users With Multiple Devices

Optimizing PPC campaigns has always been difficult, but cross-device internet browsing has added a new layer of complexity to the equation. As a result, you need to be aware of the various devices that customers are using, as well as the inherent differences in their behavior on these devices, compared to traditional desktop usage.

Can’t handle these changes on your own? If the thought of structuring your PPC campaigns to reach users across the different devices they interact with throughout the day seems overwhelming, consider working with a qualified consultant or marketing agency like Single Grain that can help keep your business ahead of this important marketing trend.

But whether you handle it or you pay a consultant to create your campaigns for you, keeping these new considerations in mind while selecting keywords, creating landing pages and adding tracking tools to your campaigns will help keep your conversion rates high in a time of shifting user behaviors.

Have you tackled cross-device internet usage, either in your traditional marketing efforts or your PPC campaigns? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!

Image: Wikimedia Commons, MarketingFacts

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