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How To Use The Contextual Targeting Tool to Estimate CPC and Budget for Google Display Network Campaigns [Video]

December 29, 2011 By Glenn Gabe

When most people think of running AdWords campaigns, they immediately think of ads running on Google.com. Many don’t realize that you can target audiences outside of Google.com with both text ads and display advertising. The ads will run across Google’s Display Network, which includes any website running Google Ads. Note, this also includes Google properties like Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, etc. It can be extremely powerful when set up and managed correctly.

Although there are several different ways to target audiences across the Display Network, setting up targeted themes is often a strong way to go. That’s where you set up ad groups targeting a tight set of keywords, which Google can use to understand the content you want your ads to match up with. For example, if you want your ads to show up on hdtv review sites, you would create an ad group that includes a tight set of keywords around the topic “hdtv reviews”.

That’s great, but how do you estimate the cost per click (CPC) and budget for Display Network campaigns? Is it even possible to gauge CPC’s for various themes you are targeting? Yes, you can do this, and I’m going to show you how to do it today. I’ve created a five minute video below that walks you through how to use the contextual targeting tool in AdWords to find estimated CPC’s by theme. Check out the video below to learn more.

Video Transcription:
Hello, everybody. This is Glenn Gabe from G-Squared Interactive. I just wanted to take you through a quick video tutorial today. What I’m actually going to go through is the contextual targeting tool and how to estimate CPCs and budget based on the themes that you set up. For those of you that aren’t familiar, the Display Network enables you to target an audience outside of Google.com. It could be extremely powerful, but you do need to understand what a rough CPC and what the rough budget will be. That’s what we’re going to go through today.

There are various ways to target an audience across the Google Display Network, but the way that we’re going to work through today is by targeting themes, very tight themes that Google will interpret and then provide your ads against targeted content. It’s contextual advertising.

In order to get started, what you’re going to do is log in to your AdWords account. You’ll probably be under your Campaigns tab. What I want you to do is actually go to Tools and Analysis, it’s a tab up top, click the dropdown, and then click Contextual Targeting Tool. That will take you to this screen right here.

The first thing we’re going to do is actually map out some themes for a specific category. So it’s that time of year. It’s the holidays. A lot of people are buying electronics and TVs. So let’s use HDTVs as a test for us. What I want you to do is go up into the search box and actually type “HDTV” and then hit Search. What Google is presenting now are themes based on HDTVs. You have about five or six different suggested ad groups with about five to seven different keywords in there. Again, very tight themes.

What this is going to tell Google, if you choose a specific “suggested ad group”, which you won’t for every one, I mean, some of these are not going to be targeted, like “HDTV antenna” probably isn’t one that you’re going to run, but for the ones that you’re going to run, you’re telling Google to present your ads against content that is relevant to the specific themes. And that could be very, very powerful if used properly.

What’s worth noting here is that if you go to the far right, you’ll see Suggested Bid based on the ad groups that are suggested here. Suggested Bid is based on historically competitive bids on the sites that are relevant to the keywords you entered. So Google is taking a look at what bids were on sites that matched these themes and giving you an estimated CPC.

Moving back to the left here, you’ll see two icons for each of these suggested ad groups. One is a plus symbol, another is an ellipsis. If they’re grayed out, you cannot drill into them. If they are active, you obviously can. The ellipsis represents predicted placements. These are websites that Google is saying that your ads can show up on based on the themes that you’ve set up. If you click the ellipsis, you are actually going to see all of those websites, and more importantly, you are going to see an estimated CPC like we saw before. So this is a bid suggestion, which you can use to estimate clicks, costs, obviously clicks times estimated CPC. You can start to back out conversion numbers. It’s just a great place to start based on the themes that you’re creating.

So that’s predicted placements. Let’s pop back to the results here. We clicked the ellipsis before. Now what I’m going to do is click the plus sign. Again, it needs to be active. If it’s grayed out, you cannot drill into it. Let’s go into HDTV deals. If we click the plus icon, what you’re actually going to see are more themes based on HDTV deals. So now you’re going deeper into the themes, sub-themes within HDTV deals. This is something that you definitely would want to do if you’re researching this for a specific project.

Back to our CPCs for a minute. If you go to the right here, you’ll actually see again suggested bid. Again, this is based on each of the historical bids that Google has found for each of the themes that you’ve created. Of course, like we did before, you could actually click the ellipsis icon to drill into predicted placements. You could click the plus sign to expand links to the websites so you could actually check those out. Again, you do have bid suggestions up top for estimating your CPC. This is the way that you would drill into specific themes, figure out estimated CPCs, and then start to gauge what your rough budget would look like.

This concludes the tutorial. I hope you feel more comfortable using the Contextual Targeting tool to estimate CPCs and budget. Again, it’s a great way to actually map this out and export it directly to your campaigns. So head over to my blog at GSQi.com, post a comment, ask questions. That’s totally fine, and you could email me directly from the blog as well. Good luck with the Google Display Network and happy bidding.

Filed Under: adwords, google, SEM

Targeting Competitor Fans via Facebook Advertising: Legitimate Practice or Risky Business?

December 21, 2011 By Glenn Gabe

Targeting Competitor Fans via Facebook Ads

I’ve been launching more and more Facebook advertising for clients over the past few years. Although many marketers will be quick to say that Facebook Ads don’t produce the ROI that Search Marketing campaigns do, I don’t necessarily think that’s a fair comparison. Actually, I believe they can work together, and both can be powerful in their own ways. For example, Facebook provides powerful demographic and interest-based targeting that’s not available in SEM (for now anyway). Sure, you can target interests via The Google Display Network, but not to the level that Facebook provides.

Similar to SEM, upfront planning pays huge dividends. There’s a direct correlation between the amount of thought and research you put into your campaigns and the performance of those campaigns. For Facebook Ads, this comes down to your targeting, and the subsequent structure of your campaigns. While brainstorming various targeting options for clients, it’s amazing to see the audiences you can pinpoint via the “interests” available in Facebook.

For example, you have a wide range of demographic targeting options available to you, including age, location, gender, education, etc. In addition, you can target interests, which opens up a powerful mechanism for reaching an extremely targeted audience. For example, you can target men, aged 35-45, who live in New York City, who are college graduates, that are interested in football and beer. That’s pretty darn powerful.

An example of demographic and interest-based targeting in Facebook:
Targeting Precise Interests via Facebook Advertising

Targeting Facebook Fans
Considering the targeting options available to marketers in Facebook, it shouldn’t be surprising that questions quickly arise regarding competitors. For example, can a company target fans of a competitor’s Facebook page? And, can those competitors target your own fans? Does Facebook police this, or do they secretly want this to happen? These are all good questions, and it’s healthy for marketers to explore these topics in great detail.

To be clear, there’s no right or wrong answer with this subject. Some companies will go down one aggressive path, while other companies will avoid the strategy altogether. Let’s take a closer look at the situation below.

Precise Interest Targeting
When targeting interests in Facebook, you can use Broad Category Targeting or Precise Interest Targeting. When targeting precise interests, you can get extremely granular while building your audience. When you start searching for interests, Facebook populates the search box with various interests that match your keywords. For example, when I enter Samsung Tele…, you will see “Samsung Televisions” in the dropdown. The “Estimated Reach” box shows 130K people (in the United States).

Targeting people that have shown a precise interest in Samsung Televisions:
Targeting People Who Have Shown a Precise Interest in Samsung Televisions

When you start entering keywords, interests that Facebook reveals that contain hash symbols (#) relate to anyone who has shown interest closely related to your keyword. Interests that show up without the hash tag are people that have expressed that specific interest (more targeted). Using the example above, you are targeting people that have liked Samsung Televisions since the hash tag is not present. Hypothetically, if you were a competitor of Samsung TV’s, you might choose to run aggressive advertising to their fan base in an attempt to get them to buy your own brand of HDTV. That’s how the battle begins…

For example, Samsung could turn around and target one of its competitors like Vizio:
Targeting people who have shown a precise interest in Vizio via Facebook Advertising

The Ethical Problem
As you can imagine, this type of targeting brings up serious ethical questions. Although those fans might be an incredible target for a company, marketers needs to decide if that’s the type of advertising activity they want to be involved in. It’s similar to targeting competitor brand terms in SEM (yet even deeper). Note, I’m referring to running brand keywords only and not using competitor brand terms in your ads. There’s a difference.

As I explained earlier, there’s no right or wrong answer here. It completely depends on your company, your industry, and how your competition is playing the game. Are they targeting your fans? Are you losing customers to them? How does this come across to prospective customers? Will they know you are targeting them based on their “likes”? All of this needs to be weighed when deciding whether to run Facebook ads targeting competitor fans.

Facebook’s Stance
As of now, you can target competitor fans. Facebook lets companies do this without violating its advertising guidelines. Not only that, but Facebook can benefit greatly from competitor battles. As one competitor runs ads targeting another’s Facebook fans, the other company might retaliate. When they do, more ads are run, more money is spent, and Facebook generates more revenue. And the uglier the battle gets, the more money Facebook stands to make.

Therefore, I’m not sure this will change anytime soon. That’s unless Facebook is forced to change their policy (which could definitely happen). At that point, what gets changed, and what Facebook allows moving forward, is anyone’s best guess. This is just another reason to seriously analyze the situation before pulling the trigger on targeting a competitor’s fans. You might be within Facebook’s guidelines one day, and violating its terms the next. Welcome to digital marketing. :)

So, should you target competitor fans or not? As I explained earlier, it’s a tough question that needs to be analyzed on several levels. Therefore, to help you make an informed decision, I’ve provided several important points to consider below.

Points to Consider When Deciding Whether or Not To Target Competitor Fans with Facebook Advertising:
1. Weigh Risks and Benefits, Prepare for Possible Backlash
Don’t take this decision lightly. Depending on how aggressive you are, targeting competitor fans could cause serious backlash. Don’t simply implement a campaign that targets fans of competitor pages without walking through all the possible scenarios. For example, how will your competitors react, how will the audience react, how will your own fans react (if the story is surfaced) and what will your stance be if approached about the campaign?

Depending on the size of your company, I would make sure that you get several key people involved from Marketing, PR, Legal, etc. If you are a smaller company, then make sure others from your team are involved (both internal employees and important contractors like consultants or strategists from your agency). Walk through possible scenarios, the upside of targeting competitor fans, the downside, how you will respond, what happens if fans react negatively, what if your competitor goes public with their allegations, etc. Remember, there’s a difference between targeting an interest and targeting fans.

2. Don’t cross the line.
When setting up your ads, you need to decide how aggressive your creative will be. If you go too far, it can really anger your competitor(s), while also rubbing your audience the wrong way. For example, if you were targeting fans of a competitor, specifically targeting its weaknesses in your ads could be risky. You can also violate Facebook’s Advertising Guidelines by using competitor logos or misrepresenting a competitor.

Crossing the line could be perceived as sneaky and unprofessional. In addition to infuriating your competitors, their fans might not be thrilled either. Therefore, be careful with your ad creative.

3. Track and Analyze
This should go without saying, although I still see many companies not tracking their Facebook campaigns. If you decide to target fans of competitors, the performance of those campaigns will be the true test. If you map out a strong analytics strategy, you will know exactly how your campaigns are performing. Targeting competitor fans can be risky, so it’s important to know how well those campaigns are working. For example, tracking several conversion goals and events based on your specific business and website.

If you are driving visitors to an external URL (a landing page you control), then you should be looking at engagement levels, conversion, revenue, etc. For example, you might be utilizing a Facebook campaign to drive email signups, whitepaper downloads, ecommerce transactions, etc. Make sure you are tracking those goals on your site so you can analyze your Facebook campaigns based on performance. If not, you’ll see traffic and that’s pretty much it.

To Target or Not To Target… Facebook Fans
Facebook offers some incredible targeting options for marketers. Using a mixture of demographic targeting and interest-based targeting enables you to build powerful audience segments. Although that’s incredibly powerful, you can cross the line. Targeting competitor fans is a polarizing topic with no right or wrong answer. As I explained above, there are several key points to consider before pulling the trigger. And after analyzing the situation, you just might find that you never pull the trigger.

GG

Filed Under: facebook, SEM, social-media

For Writing Effective SEM Copy, John Caples Was Right – Specific Beats General

December 13, 2011 By Glenn Gabe

How to write effective SEM copy.

Earlier in my career I read an advertising book that had a big impact on me. The book was Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples, who is one of the most famous copywriters in advertising history. Reading his book completely changed the way I thought about ad copy. I won’t go in depth on every aspect of the book, but it holds some incredible principles for writing effective copy. And for SEM, I use those principles on a daily basis.

One incredibly important point that Caples makes in the book is that when writing ad copy, be as specific as you can, and avoid generalities. This principle resonated with me immediately, and I have consistently used this strategy during my career. Actually, I use it on a daily basis while writing ads, speaking with clients, and speaking at meetings or conferences. Yes, I even use this principle outside of writing ad copy…

It’s a simple rule that can dramatically change how your ads perform (and impact how well your core points get communicated). Using this approach will enable you to write tight copy that punches benefits, screams facts, and helps you increase the performance of your campaigns. And who doesn’t want to do that?

Here is a snippet from the book:
"Make your copy specific. Anybody who works on tested advertising will tell you how important it is to be specific in your copy. {Using specific numbers and facts} tells the reader that a strict and accurate count has been made." Caples goes on to say that, "What you say is more important than how you say it." I couldn’t agree more, and my testing has proven this time and time again.

Why Being Specific Rules and Why Using Generalities Falls Short
It makes complete sense when you break it down. There are so many generalities used in advertising that specifics seem to connect with prospective customers. They pop off the page.

Compare the following two pieces of copy and tell me which one sounds more credible:
Thousands of people enjoy our service.

Find out why 6,745 people signed up for our service in the past 60 days.

The second line of copy clearly has an advantage. Telling someone the exact number of customers that signed up for the service is credible. Adding the timeframe also brings a level of credibility. The first line of copy is so general that it loses impact.

General Copy Can Easily Be Discounted By Prospective Customers:
Specific SEM copy is more credible.

This is exactly what John Caples was talking about. Build credibility by being as specific as possible and you can increase your response rate. In SEM, response rate translates to people clicking through to your landing page and converting. Although, I would argue that we are focusing on the first part of the handshake (the click-through). And without the click-through, you have no shot at conversion.

The Power of Testing in SEM
What I love about SEM (and digital marketing in general) is that you can split test copy relatively easily and quickly. In SEM, you can always test new ads against your control to see which one performs best. If you want to see the impact of specific copy, set up your test and fire away. Then you can base your strategies on hard data versus opinion.

SEM Enables You To Quickly and Easily Test Ad Creative:
Quickly and Easily Split Test Ad Creative in SEM

How Can You Be Specific in SEM Ad Copy?
In order to be specific, I recommend using facts, figures, sales numbers, percentages, sale prices, dollar amounts, etc. You need to break down the features and benefits of what you’re selling and then identify various statistics and facts that can be used in your copy. And this doesn’t just translate to numbers. You should be specific with location too. If you are close to a landmark, include that in your copy. And that’s especially the case when you are targeting mobile visitors in SEM. For example, "5 minutes from Nassau St. in Princeton" is better than "Close to Princeton."

Examples of Specific SEM Ad Copy
As many of you know, you are limited in SEM ads by character length (when running ads in Search). That said, you can still be specific with your ad copy. Let’s take a look at some examples across categories. Note, I’m not providing full SEM ads below (all lines of copy). I’ll just provide some quick examples of specific copy. It’s up to you how you craft your final ads. And again, I encourage you to test your ads to determine the best performing copy.

eCommerce: Tablet Computer for Kids
Over 1025 Games & Downloadable Apps
Just $100. Don’t spend $600 for a tablet!

B2B: Consulting Firm
74 years of combined experience.
Sign up now & access 375 reports.

Local Business: Restaurant
In business since 1943. Zagat-rated
367 Positive Reviews and Counting.

Electronics: LED HDTV
Sony 1080p LED HDTV. 60 inch screen.
On Sale Today, Only $549.

Coffee: K-Cups
100% Arabica Beans. 48 K-Cups for $32.
Free Shipping On All Orders.

Instructional Book (How-To)
218 pages of Computer Repair Training.
24,698 copies sold in 2011.

You get the picture. Although these examples aren’t lengthy, they still convey some powerful lines of ad copy. Being specific builds credibility and can get prospective customers noticing your ads, clicking through, and giving you a shot at converting them. On the flipside, if your ads are generic, bland, and lack specifics, they just might be overlooked. And if they are overlooked, your click-through rate drops, your Quality Score drops, and your CPC’s rise. And that’s all bad for SEM performance.

One Important Caveat – Be Realistic
One point John Caples makes is that your ad copy must be realistic. If you use specific ad copy, but it’s so far from reality, you can do more damage than just using general copy. For example, “25 million units sold in 48 hours!” That’s not very believable… I’m advocating being specific, but truthful. You should use real numbers, statistics, percentages, etc.

Summary – Be Specific, Forget Generalities
Put yourself in a prospective customer’s shoes and take a hard look at your ad copy. Would you jump to click through? If not, revamp your ad copy with specifics, and drop the generalities. As I explained earlier, the beautiful part about SEM is that you can easily split test ad copy. You just need to start.

In closing, I hope you found this post helpful. Now it’s time for me to analyze 47 holiday campaigns, including 769 ad groups, encompassing 328,456 keywords. How’s that for being specific? :)

GG

Filed Under: adCenter, adwords, bing, google, SEM

How to Set Up Remarketing in Google AdWords Using Custom Combinations [Tutorial]

October 3, 2011 By Glenn Gabe

How to set up Google Remarketing using custom combinations.

Last year I wrote a tutorial explaining how to set up remarketing in Google AdWords, which ended up being one of the most popular posts on my blog. I’ve received many emails from marketers who used the tutorial to successfully launch their own campaigns, which can be a confusing process if you are new to remarketing. That’s awesome, but one common question I received from readers was how to use custom combinations to ensure you present remarketing ads to the right people. For example, if someone converted on your site, you probably wouldn’t want to present a remarketing ad to them asking them to come back to the site to place an order. That can be an embarrassing situation.

In order to accomplish this type of targeting, you would need to use a custom combination, which would tell Google to present ads to a specific audience, but NOT for people who already converted. You can think of it as a conditional (Include Audience A, but not Audience B). By the number of requests I was receiving, it was easy to see that people were confused by the topic.

Well, the readers of my blog have spoken, and I’ve been listening. I’m happy to announce that the tutorial below explains how to use custom combinations to achieve your remarketing goals (less the embarrassment of presenting ads to people who already converted). Note, “conversion” can mean a lot of things, including an ecommerce transaction, filling out a form, downloading a pdf, or even visiting a specific page on your website. Conversion is determined by your specific business and website and should be determined while building a strong analytics strategy.

Revisiting My First Remarketing Tutorial
The tutorial below is for marketers already familiar with setting up basic remarketing campaigns. If you are new to remarketing, I highly recommend you walk through my first remarketing tutorial to gain a solid understanding of the setup. Once you learn how to set up a basic remarketing campaign, you can revisit this post and learn how to use custom combinations for advanced targeting across the display network, while if you want to market your services online, there are services that help promote your business such as therankway that help a lot in this area.

A Quick Overview of the Sample Remarketing Campaign We’ll Be Using
I’ll walk through an example below of a common remarketing campaign that would benefit from using custom combinations. For this example, imagine we run an ecommerce site selling sports equipment. We want to use remarketing to present ads to people that visited a section of our site, but didn’t convert. Those ads will show up across the Google Display Network to visitors who viewed pages from that section of our ecommerce site selling sporting goods.

For this example, our “audience” will be visitors to our football gear section of the website. This means we’ll need to place remarketing tags on any page within the football section. But again, we don’t want to present remarketing ads to visitors that actually converted (and purchased something). So, we’ll need to make sure we know when certain people converted by creating a second “audience”. We’ll need to add that second remarketing tag to our thank you page, which is presented after a customer completes a transaction. Then we can set up an ad group within our remarketing campaign that uses a custom combination to present ads to only non-converting football visitors.

Step by Step, How to Set Up Custom Combinations
Without further ado, let’s dig in and set up a custom combination, based on the scenario I listed above. Again, I’m not going to cover the initial steps of setting up a remarketing campaign in detail, since that was covered in my first tutorial. Instead, I’m simply going to focus on the process for setting up a custom combination in the AdWords interface.

1. Set Up Your Remarketing Campaign and Ad Group
Go to your remarketing campaign (set up during my previous tutorial), and add a new ad group called “Football Gear”. This ad group will contain ads for people that we know visited our football gear pages, but never converted. If you haven’t gone through my previous tutorial, you’ll need to set up a new remarketing campaign and then create this ad group. You can review my previous tutorial to learn how to do this. Remember, this ad group will not contain any keywords, since we will only be presenting ads to the “audience” we are targeting. You can set up a basic text ad when creating the ad group, since we’ll revisit ad strategy for remarketing campaigns later in this tutorial.

Custom Combination in AdWords, Creating a New Ad Group

2. Create Your First Audience
Set up your first audience (visitors to our football gear pages). Access the “Football Gear” ad group you just created and then click the “Audiences” tab. Then click the “Add Audiences” button. Note, if you don’t see the audience tab in AdWords, you should review my previous post to learn how to find it.

Adding a new audience in Google AdWords

3. Create Your Remarketing List
Click “Remarketing Lists”, and then “Create and Manage Lists”, which is located below.

Creating a new remarketing list in Google AdWords.

4. Enter The Details For Your Remarketing List
Now click the “New Audience” button and fill out the details for your football gear audience. Note, you should choose “Remarketing List” from the dropdown menu. You can name the new audience “Football Gear Visitors” for this example. You can review my previous tutorial to learn more about this process and the fields you need to fill out at this stage.

Selecting Remarketing List When Creating a New Audience in Google AdWords.
Setting up a new remarketing list in Google AdWords.

5. Access Your Remarketing Snippet
Once you create your audience, you will need to access the tag that AdWords generates, and include that in all pages within your football category (on your website). You can find the snippet of code by clicking the link under “Tags/Rules” for the audience you just created. You can place the tag before the closing body tag in your football category pages. Note, this snippet needs to be added to ALL pages in your football category (if you want to target any visitor to those pages).

Finding the remarketing snippet of code in Google AdWords.

6. Create Your Second Audience
Now use the same process we just went through to set up a second audience for visitors that converted. When you need to get the remarketing tag (the snippet of code), make sure you choose “https” in the dropdown, if the conversion page will be rendered via https. For example, if you are collecting credit card information, then it will probably be https. You can add this snippet to the thank you page before the closing body tag. Note, if you are unclear about using https or http, just check out the URL as you go through the process on your website. If there’s an https in the beginning of the URL, then choose https as your selection.

Copying the remarketing tag in Google AdWords.

7. Create a Custom Combination
OK, now you have two audiences set up that will become part of your custom combination. Click the “Audiences” tab, and then the “Custom Combinations” link. At the bottom of that window, click “New Custom Combination”. Give your combination a name and description. For our example, let’s use “Football Gear Less Converted”.

Creating a new custom combination.

8. Adding Audiences To Your Custom Combination
In order to create a custom combination, you will need to create a conditional using the dropdown menus in AdWords. First, select “all audiences” from the first dropdown titled, “Users included or interested in…” When you use the second dropdown for “Select audiences”, you’ll need to select “Remarketing Lists” to view the two lists you created. The default view will show you “Interest Categories” and not your remarketing lists. Now add your football audience by clicking the “add” link next to the remarketing list. Click the “OK” button below to proceed.

Step 1 in creating a new custom combination.

9. Exclude An Audience
Now click “Add Another” to add a second condition. Choose “none of these audiences”, since we want to exclude visitors that converted. Now use the “select audiences” dropdown to select the “converted” audience. Again, you’ll need to choose “Remarketing Lists” once you use the dropdown, since “Interest Categories” will be the default view. Add your “converted” audience by clicking the “add” link. Click the “OK” button to proceed.

Step 2 in creating a new custom combination.

10. Save Your Work
Click “Save and Continue” to complete the process of creating your new custom combination. Last, click “Save” at the bottom of the window, and you should be good to go.

Saving your custom combination.

11. Create Your Remarketing Ad
OK, you’re almost there. Your custom combination is set up, which is awesome, but your ad group doesn’t contain a targeted ad yet! At this point, you’ll need to create ads that will be presented to people that visited your football gear pages, but never converted. Note, you can include both text and display advertising in your remarketing campaigns (and I highly recommend doing so).

When creating your ads for this ad group, make sure you have a solid strategy for your remarketing efforts. For example, I mentioned in my initial remarketing tutorial how easy it is to creep people out with very aggressive remarketing ads. Just because you know they were on your site doesn’t mean you should mention that in your ad. :)

Presenting special offers, discounts, etc. is smart to do, while you should refrain from “We know you like our football section, come back now!” For our purposes, let’s include a 20% off special offer to get those visitors back to your site. We know they were checking out your products already, so maybe the special can nudge them to come back and buy. Also, you can drive these visitors to a specific landing page customized for this audience. You can provide tailored content, knowing they already visited your website (and that they’ll be receiving a 20% discount).

Creating a remarketing text ad.

Congratulations! You have set up a custom combination in Google AdWords, and you are ready to remarket to a targeted audience!

Summary – Advanced Remarketing With Custom Combinations
Remarketing in AdWords can be extremely powerful when set up correctly. My hope is that between the two remarketing tutorials I’ve provided here on my blog, you can be up and running relatively quickly. As you can see by going through this tutorial, you can come up with some interesting targeting scenarios using custom combinations. Once you get comfortable with setting up a basic remarketing campaign using custom combinations, you can easily expand to more advanced tactics.

Happy Remarketing!

GG

Filed Under: adwords, google, SEM

When We’re All On Page 1 – The Potential Impact of Google’s Infinite Scroll

September 13, 2011 By Glenn Gabe

Last month, there were several sightings of Google testing “infinite scroll” in its main search results. If you’re not familiar with infinite scroll, it would all but eliminate the need to click through to page 2, 3, and beyond of the search engine results pages (SERPs). Instead, you could simply click a button at the bottom of the search results to “show more results”. Then via AJAX, Google would load additional sets of search results. Yes, that means we would all achieve page 1 rankings. Not exactly, but you get the point. :)

Note, Google Images already uses infinite scroll, and Yandex just rolled it out on yandex.ru last week. You can check out both properties to see how it works. You can also check out the YouTube video below to see one of Google’s tests in action.

Google Testing Infinite Scroll (Credit: Waebo):

Google has also been testing a locked search bar (the header), which makes sense. Google will still want users to be able to refine their searches, even when viewing additional sets of results via infinite scroll. By implementing a locked header, the search bar would remain at the top of the page as you scroll down. It’s similar to freezing a row in Excel. The search box would always be accessible.

The Potential Impact of Infinite Scroll
It’s widely known in Search that many people won’t click through to page 2 or beyond. This has been highlighted in various studies, and I also documented this when analyzing the long tail of SEO. Instead of clicking through to page 2, many users would scan the top listings on page 1 and then refine their queries if they didn’t find what they needed. This obviously made ranking on page 1 extremely important, but also made targeting the long tail extremely important (as you would want to rank for long tail keywords that followed searches for head and torso terms).

So, now that Google is testing infinite scroll, there are many questions about how this could impact organic search, paid search, local search, etc. Therefore, I spent some time taking a look at infinite scroll, with the goal of trying to determine its potential impact. Below, I’ll cover several ways that the Search results could be impacted by infinite scroll and what this means for companies trying to gain more exposure, clicks, and sales. Note, I did not cover every possible way that infinite scroll could affect the Search results. Instead, I focused on some core elements within each category of Search.

Multiple Number 1 Rankings
Prior to infinite scroll, if you didn’t rank on page 1, you would need to rely on users clicking through to page 2 and beyond to see your listings. With infinite scroll, users might be more apt to simply click a “show more results” button to reveal another set of listings on the same page. If that’s the case, then rankings 11, 21, 31, etc. will become more important real estate-wise. Sure, they won’t be as strong as a true #1 ranking, but the first listing in a new set of results will give that listing more exposure than it gets now.

In addition, this doesn’t just apply to rankings 21, 31, etc. The first few listings in each new set will increase in importance. We know via eye tracking studies that users tend to focus on the first few listings in the search results and then their focus fades as they scan down the listings. If you have content ranking high on page 2, those listings could very well gain more exposure when infinite scroll kicks in.

Standing Out Via Universal Search
When infinite scroll kicks in, users might be viewing many more listings per search session (versus just 10). For example, if someone clicks the “show more results” button twice after searching, they will see 30 listings. This leads me to think that Universal Search will become even more important than it is now. If you’re not familiar with the concept of Universal Search, it’s the blending of various types of content in the SERPs. For example, video, images, news, blog posts, shopping, etc.

An example of universal search in action (Shopping Results):
Example of Universal Search Result (Shopping)

Universal Search can help you stand out, since it often includes image thumbnails, whether that’s a video thumbnail, news thumbnail, product thumbnail, etc. With infinite scroll, users might be scanning 30 or 40 listings to find what they need. If you make sure that you target various types of content with a strong content generation strategy, you can have a greater chance at showing up within the blended results. And that can very well lead to more exposure and click-through.

Rich Snippets Will Become Richer
Similar to what I explained about Universal Search, rich snippets could become more important too. If you’re not familiar with rich snippets, you should start researching the topic today. The core engines have come together to support schema.org markup , which can provide more information about content across the web. For example, you can use markup on your site for articles, events, ratings, reviews, people, etc. Rich snippets enhance listings in the SERPs, and each snippet can look different based on the data at hand.

When you break it down, the engines advocate using this additional markup, the snippets can help your listings stand out, and the markup is relatively easy to implement. Again, I recommend understanding how rich snippets work and then determine how your content can benefit from adding the necessary markup. You can see an example of a recipe rich snippet below.

An example of rich snippets in action (recipe):
Rich Snippet Example (Recipe)

(Stronger) Paid Search Inventory
Although Google already provides additional paid search ads when users click through to page 2 and beyond, we know that many people don’t take the effort to actually venture beyond page 1. Since Google generates ~97% of its revenue from paid search, ad inventory is very important. With infinite scroll, I believe users will be more apt to load additional sets of search listings. If this is the case, then AdWords inventory will increase, which can help both paid search advertisers and Google. In addition, I believe the “new” ad space will be stronger for advertisers. The increased ad inventory can help both advertisers gain more exposure and clicks, while also helping Google increase revenue. It’s a win-win.

Similar to what I explained about the organic listings, there will now be multiple top paid search rankings. If your paid search ads did not reach page 1 due to a lower Ad Rank, you now may have a greater shot at a top ranking (as users load additional results). We’ll have to see what the final implementation looks like for infinite scroll, but Yandex manipulates the page to jump the new set of listings to the top of the page. If that’s the case, the top paid search listings on load 2 and beyond will look very similar to what it looks like on page 1. And again, infinite scroll could increase the amount of time these ads show up, which can obviously impact impressions, clicks, and sales.

Paid Search Ad Formats and Ad Extensions
Both ad formats and ad extensions in SEM will become even more important when infinite scroll rolls out. If a user is viewing additional sets of paid search listings, then having your ads stand out is very important. I see this already with my own clients when they effectively use ad sitelinks, location extensions, product listing ads, product extensions, etc. If you aren’t familiar with the various ad formats and ad extensions available to AdWords advertisers, then now is a good time to research them. For example, by using the range of ad extensions, your ads gain more real estate and provide additional visuals that can help your ads stand out, gain more credibility, and enhance click-through. And those are all good things in SEM.

An example product listing ads (AdWords):
Example of Product Listing Ads in AdWords

Local Search, More Places To Choose From
Similar to organic search, rankings #11, 21, 31, etc. will be additional #1 spots for local businesses. Obviously the first set will be more important, but 11 won’t be so bad either (if infinite scroll is used more than clicking to page 2). Place Search is critically important for local businesses. With infinite scroll, more places can be dynamically displayed, which can help even more local businesses gain much-needed exposure.

In addition, if set up and managed correctly, the combination of paid search and place search could be extremely powerful for local businesses. As I explained earlier with paid search, there will be more ad inventory as users load more results using infinite scroll. Ensuring you have a solid local paid search strategy will be extremely important. Also, I mentioned ad extensions earlier in the post. Location extensions and call extensions can be a local business owner’s best friend. They enable advertisers to provide address information and a clickable phone number right in the search results.

Social and Google+
If more people use infinite scroll to view additional listings, Google could possibly add more Google+ related information in the right sidebar (along with ads and/or universal search elements). For example, if a user loads additional sets of listings via infinite scroll, Google could decide to provide social recommendations in the right sidebar that drive users to Google+ (to either sign up or to interact with other users and organizations).

Also, and it’s something I mentioned in my post about Google+ Advertising opportunities, advertisers might be able to run Google+ ads that leverage both Search and Social information. As I explained in my post, Google will be the first company to close the loop between Search and Social. This can enable Google to drive more advertising revenue, while also helping Google+ grow (which of course can lead to more users, more ad inventory, more revenue, etc.)

Infinite Summary
We’ve seen the tests, we’ve seen it in action on Google Images, and now Yandex has rolled it out. In my opinion, infinite scroll is coming soon to a SERP near you. I hope my post explained the potential impact that infinite scroll could have on organic, paid, local, and social search. Let’s face it, if Google can enhance usability, increase ad inventory, gain more clicks for advertisers, while also increasing revenue and profitability, why wouldn’t it implement infinite scroll? Now the ball is in your court. I recommend reviewing your digital marketing efforts to make sure you’re ready for infinite scroll.

And by the way, now is probably a good time to visit page 2 and beyond before they are gone forever. Go ahead and click past page 1, take some screenshots, and then say your goodbyes. It won’t be long now…

GG

Filed Under: adwords, google, google-plus, SEM, SEO

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