pay per click

Wondering how to optimize your Google Merchant Center Shopping Feed? As we move into a new year, most businesses are currently going over end of year reporting and planning Paid Search budgets for 2018. This is the boring stuff the VPs are sifting through while the fun is just beginning for your resident Google PPC Geeks who love presenting the facts and building out improvements to their Google Product Listing Ads. If you manage a Google Shopping Feed and utilize programs like BigCommerce, Magento, Shopify and a dozen other CMS […]

Ecommerce paid search has had a renaissance in recent years and now Amazon is looking to use its credibility in the Ecommerce space to build a Paid Search Platform. According to a study by BloomReach in 2017, Fifty-five percent of people start their digital shopping experiences on Amazon. Seth Dallaire, VP of Global Sales at Amazon Media Group, said, “There’s an expectation from people who visit Amazon [that] they’re going to find anything they want.” Amazon hopes to use this credibility to create a paid search product that will monetize […]

Customers are constantly being barraged with marketing messages, often multiple marketing messages from the same company. So, as a marketer, how do you know which message drove a customer to convert?   Recently, I was looking to buy a new pair of shoes. Let me walk you through my buying process: I had been looking at various big brand department stores that I had visited in the last few weeks, and I was finally in that sweet spot of looking to purchase. But after looking for deals on Amazon, Google […]

So, You Decided to Run Terrestrial Radio Ads… Why: You wanted to achieve mass reach, with a low CPM, to reach a captive audience. You know your target demo is there, and 93% of U.S. adults still listen to AM/FM radio each week! It’s a no-brainer, right? Right? Radio listening is quite literally “wireless”. There is no meter to measure actual usage. There are no tickets sold, there are no circulations audited. There is no quantifiable “click-through” to point back to. The ratings systems of Nielson, Arbitron and holding companies […]

If you’re like me, and check Instagram a few (hundred) times a day, you have probably noticed that your feed has included a lot more “Sponsored” posts, aka “ads,” recently. That’s because, in September 2015, Instagram gave access to all brands to advertise on their platform, opening up a new way for companies to engage in the social space. Its no longer just a way to build a brand by having a profile; it now allows brands to push products and promote themselves to just about anyone. Instagram advertising is […]

On September 1st, Google made an interesting statement regarding websites that showcase annoying lightboxes urging users to install the mobile app version of the site (ie. every news site). This has been teased for a while now in the SEO community, but seems the threat has finally come to light. Google claims that top banners for an app install will not be penalized, only full page lightboxes are under attack. Apple and Chrome-supported smart banners (app install banners) should be safe from this update, which will go live on November […]

In this age of data, endless supplies of information can be accessed with just a click of a button. But most of us have no idea what to do with all of the information available. One area confusing marketers is how to grab actionable insights from our site data. Whether you are a Google Analytics pro or novice, we all know that surfing through analytics can be difficult. Let’s do a quick test of our Google Analytics prowess: Are you using Google Tag Manager or event tracking? Have you setup […]

Pinterest is upping their ROI game to attract more marketers (and money) to their platform. Brands have already been playing with Paid Pins and now, we are seeing the Buyable Pins working their way into user feeds. With the paid pin campaigns I have done with clients so far, we have found a good deal of success with clicks and engagement at a relatively low cost per engagement (CPE) and cost per click (CPC). If you know that your potential customers are spending time on Pinterest looking at content that […]

As with any PPC/Display advertising campaign, there are no magic bullets to guarantee success. The best ad-campaigns are crafted through strategic audience targeting, identifying KPIs and objectives up front and tracking/testing performance analytics.  These are the keys to effectively *tweak* social marketing campaigns to see favorable results. Creating a successful video ad campaign is, in many ways, an even loftier task than a traditional static image ad. But the pay-off in audience engagement and viewership is well worth the creative commitment to video.  Define Budget Pacing and Bid Types that […]

In part of one of this three-part series about social video ads, I reviewed the social media industry’s shift towards promoted video ads. The focus was specifically on Facebook, as they continue to emphasize native video content recently announced ANTHOLOGY, their in-house publishing and production shop for advertisers. During a recent client campaign promoting Mobile App Installs for iOS devices, emfluence A/B tested video ads against static image ads (using the same audience targeting). The results of a month long test showed video ads significantly outperform image ads across a […]

As Google relies on a wider variety of link and social sources, content marketing has taken the cake. Yet another Google algorithm was released in early May that laser focuses on quality content. Everyone is in the content game, but few are effectively combining content and search strategy. We need to look into where content is heading and how we can best utilize strategic content creation to both increase awareness and build brand loyalty. 86% of B2B businesses are utilizing some form of content marketing, and 87% of organizations claim […]

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is a great way to target those searching for solutions and products like yours. In fact, at emfluence we often recommend PPC as a way for our clients to find new customers, leads or email subscribers, fast. On Google’s search results page, PPC ads are the listings at the top and down the right side, usually marked “Ad”. This is a pay-to-play game and the company that bids the most per click on a specified keyword usually gets the top spot. PPC can range from a few […]

Technology might have thrown the traditional publishing industry into turmoil, but BookDaily.com is thriving—and helping authors succeed—thanks to a digital marketing strategy, that emphasizes Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. Three years ago, they wanted help reaching a new market and the PPC team at emfluence was eager to help. BookDaily.com, owned by Virginia-based ArcaMax Publishing, offers the first chapter of more than 88,000 books via email, for free. BookDaily.com’s customers are the thousands of authors who use its platform to promote their titles. (A basic account is free and allows authors to […]

Last fall, Google announced that they would be phasing out keyword data in its Analytics toolbox, and replacing it with new features for search engine marketing professionals to use. One of these features is DoubleClick Demographic Data. Google Analytics demographics reports offer aggregated age, gender, and interest data that can be paired with other analytics metrics to help understand the personality of your customers. Are they movie lovers? Shutter bugs? News Junkies and Avid Readers? I know what you’re thinking: “What is the fastest way for me to find this […]

If your paid search ads are seeing great click through rates, but garnering few leads, chances are the problem isn’t with your ads, it’s with your landing page. Here are 5 tips for making your landing pages conversion-friendly

Google recently announced that they are moving to encrypted (https) search in an effort to make searching “more secure” for users. Whether the move actually creates a more secure search experience is up for debate, but for the SEO world, this announcement has created quite a stir.

On April 17, Google announced new matching behavior on AdWords for Exact and Phrase Match keywords. What does that mean in the world of pay-per-click (PPC) marketing? For one, it means that PPC campaign managers everywhere will no longer have to create variations of Exact and Phrase Match keywords, like including both singular and plural versions, misspellings, abbreviations and more…