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Pay Per Click Companies Alpha & Beta Campaigns

Pay Per Click Companies UK – Alpha & Beta Campaigns

Pay Per Click Companies UK - Alpha & Beta Campaigns

Alpha and Beta campaign structures are a way of organising Google Ads campaigns and are used by many Pay Per Click Companies UK. The advantage of using this structure is that you can expand the amounts of converting keywords in your account, whilst allowing you to invest more on the keywords that are performing well in your account.

Beta Campaigns contain phrase match and broad match modified keywords. The role of these keywords is to find converting search terms. And help remove search terms (by creating negative keywords) that you do not want your ads to show for. The bids for these keywords to not have to be as high as your alpha campaign if you are getting the volume that you require.

Alpha campaigns contain the converting exact match keywords that you have found from the search terms found in the beta campaigns. If done correctly Alpha campaigns are predominantly the campaigns that will have better conversion rates and lower CPA’s than beta campaigns. Which is why Pay Per Click Companies UK prefer to use them.

Things to considers when creating beta campaigns

• The main aim of Beta campaigns is to find converting search terms, so do not be surprised if they are not as profitable as the Alpha campaigns.

• Use either Broad match modified or phrase match keywords. Do not use broad match keywords unless you have a VERY extensive negative keyword list.

• Ensure all Keywords in an ad group are relevant to the ad copy and landing page. This will help improve your click through rate and your quality score. By having a good quality score will mean that you will keep your cost per click as low as possible.

• Do not lump all your keywords into just one or two ad groups. Make your campaign as granular as possible to ensure that you can see what is and is not working.

• Review your search terms as often as possible. Finding a converting search term early allows you to convert it to exact match. You can then increase the bid on the exact match and have a bit of confidence that it will perform. Reviewing you search terms regularly will allow you to save budget by adding negative keywords.

• Add keywords to your Beta campaign to broaden your searches periodically.

• Do your research. Use the Keyword planner to help you find relevant keywords with good volume.

Things you need to consider when you create Alpha campaigns.

• Again, ensure that your ad groups, keywords, and ad copy etc are all relevant. This as mentioned before will improve your quality score and click through rate, and ultimately lower your CPA.

• Creating SKAGs in an Alpha campaign is recommended to ensure ad relevance. SKAG stands for Single Keyword Ad Group, creating these your adverts will be specifically tailored to the keyword thus increasing the relevance.

• Only use Exact match keywords in alpha campaigns. This allows you to spend more of your budget on the keywords you know will convert.

• When adding a search term from the beta campaign to the Alpha remember to add the search term as a negative in the beta campaign. This will ensure that the keyword will only show in the Alpha campaign. If this is not done, then it could lead you to believe that the alpha keyword is not performing as you expect. But the keyword is being cannibalised by the beta campaign which may have a higher bid, hence why it will show there instead. This could lead you to pause it, instead of giving it the budget it deserves.

• If you have a keyword that is performing extremely well, do what many Pay Per Click Companies UK do and give it its own campaign. This is advantageous because you can quickly see how its performing. And give it more or less budget depending on its conversion performance and impression share.

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PPC Management Company Guide To Keywords

PPC Management Company Guide To Keywords

PPC Management Company

There are only 4 types of Keyword types used in Google (& Microsoft) Ads. These keywords are what a PPC management company (or individuals managing their own account) use to tell Google when they would like their adverts to show.

Each match type has is own strengths and weaknesses and some are more useful than others! In this guide, we will talk about the different types of Keywords and when to use them.

Broad Match

Broad match keywords in general should not be used, because as the name suggests they are too broad and whilst they can generate some relevant keywords, they can also bring in a lot of search terms that are not relevant. Here is why…

A company selling crystal glasses using the broad keyword of glasses, this would yield search term results such as-

Crystal glasses, reading glasses, drinking glasses. Where can I buy glasses, prescriptions for new glasses, where can I buy spy glasses. Magnifying glasses, where can I recycle glasses.

As you can see all the search terms are relevant to the keyword glasses – BUT the intent behind them are different and only one of the search terms (crystal glasses) is relevant to the company.

The only time a PPC management company would use a broad match is if there are very low search volume on your targeted keywords. Or on a re-marketing campaign, where the keywords are inexpensive, and the audience is highly engaged with your brand. If you still want to use broad keywords you will need to have a considerable library of negative keywords. Either that or get ready to say goodbye to a considerable chunk of your budget.

Broad Match Modified

All broad match keywords have + symbols in front of the words. This means that the search term HAS to contain the keywords with a + symbol in front of them. The keywords can appear in any order in the search term.

IMPORTANT – ensure there is not a gap in between the + and your keyword, otherwise your keyword will just be a broad keyword!

Broad match keywords are ideal for trying to find new search terms for your campaign. The benefit of using broad match modified keywords or BMM’s is that you have more control over them than broad keywords.

The same company selling crystal glasses this time uses the BMM keyword +crystal +glasses, this means the search terms will have to contain both crystal and glasses but in any order. This could generate search terms such as- reading glasses for sale near crystal palace, smashed crystal glasses, buy glasses made of crystal, and rent crystal glasses.

As you can see the search terms are more relevant but they still contain some irrelevant keywords. When you use broad match keywords you will need to ensure that you have a good base of negative keywords. You will need to regularly review your search terms and add converting search terms or add negative keywords if irrelevant.

Phrase match keywords

Phrase match keywords are keywords that use “ to indicate that it is a phrase match. For instance “crystal glasses for sale” means that your advert would ONLY show when the search term contains the keyword in that order only. These keywords are good if you have a keyword that you know works but want to find longer tail keywords.

Search terms generated from “crystal glasses for sale” would be-

Crystal glasses for sale.  Low price crystal glasses for sale.  Cheap crystal glasses for sale. Crystal glasses near me.

As you can see these are a lot more relevant, but you will still need to monitor the search terms to add converting terms. Make sure to add negative keywords if any irrelevant terms show.

Exact Match Keywords

Exact match keywords are for search terms that you know have and will convert. To create an exact match keyword, use the square brackets []. The exact match keyword of crystal glasses for sale would be shown like this [crystal glasses for sale]. The search terms generated by this keyword would only be- crystal glasses for sale. (Google will include any synonyms or spelling mistakes in the search terms.  If you do not want these included then just add them as a negative).

The volumes on exact match keywords can and probably will be a lot lower than the broader keywords. But exact match keywords that are most effective and relevant to your business. And will often tend to be your best performing keywords in your account.

As you can see BMM’s and phrase match keywords are used as exploratory keywords to find new search terms. A good PPC management company (or individual managing their own account) would then convert them into exact match keywords. You can then afford to up your bid on the exact match keyword as you know that it will convert.

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PPC Campaigns With Small Budgets

Tips For Google Ad Campaign Management On Small Budgets

As an adwords management company we’re used to dealing with clients with large budgets, but not everyone has £100k+ to spend on their advertising. So here are some tips if you’re running Goole Ad campaigns on budgets less than £1,000 per month.

5 or 6 Keywords only

Set up 2 campaigns, each with 5 or 6 highly relevant keywords. Include only 1 keyword per adgroup. One campaign should contain only Exact Match keywords, the other should be Broad Match Modified (BMM) variants of the exact match keywords.

Bid Strategy

Ensure you set your bid strategy to manual. Bid lower on the BMM keywords. If there are a large number of searches for your keyword, you can reduce your bid below 1st page estimates. Otherwise, start with a low bid & increase it daily until you start hitting your daily budget limit.

Search Terms

You must, must, must check your search term report daily & start excluding keywords that are not relevant to your business. Add these to a negative keyword list & apply it to all campaigns.

Bid Ajustments

There are many ways you can adjust your bids in Google Ads. Think about your audience & adjust your bids to reflect this. What gender are they, how old, what device will they be using? (Tip, if you’re B2B company, exclude mobile devices with a 100% decreased bid). Other ways to adjust:

  1. Time of day – set to when you’re able to respond to customer enquiries
  2. Device – focus on desktop, these generally have higher conversion rates
  3. Demographics, exclude age ranges that are not in your target market
  4. Locations – carefully select the areas your customers live
  5. Audiences – create a remarketing list & add a positive bid adjustment
 

I hope you find these tips useful. If you are looking for a pay per click management agency, check out our services.

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Pay per click management services – Attribution Models

What are attribution models

An attribution model is how you would like to credit conversions in your conversion path in Google Ads. There are 6 different attribution models available to pay per click management services or an individual managing their own account. The 6 different types available are in the image below.

pay per click management services

Data Driven

 

This is a bit of a black box as the data is applied by Google themselves based on your account and how important the clicks in the path were to converting. I would not recommend starting with this attribution model, but rather starting with first click and then switching to data driven once there is sufficient data in the account. This model works well with SMART campaigns.

Last Click

This applies all the conversion credit to the last advert that the customer clicked, meaning that it tends to apply credit to brand search terms and none to any of the proceeding exploratory clicks. Good pay per click management services will tend not use this attribution model. This is the default option for Google, so this should be one of the first thing you should consider changing in your account to improve performance.

First click

This is the best attribution model to use for growth, as it applies the conversion to the first touch point a customer has had with your business. Which means that it shows you HOW people are finding your business. Good pay per click management services should favour this attribution model.

Linear

This applies credit for the conversion across all touchpoints in the conversion path. The trouble with this type of attribution is that ALL touchpoints are considered equal which is not the case in most instances.

Time decay

This attribute the conversion based on time, for instance the last attribution would get more than a click two weeks ago. Like last click it applies to much credit to the final step in the customers journey and so could lead you to believe that your brand campaigns are more important to your account than they are.

Time decay and the last click attribution could shrink your reach as Google optimises towards your brand campaigns and way from the exploratory search terms which are how your customers are finding you!

Position based

Position based attribution applies equal credit to the first and last touchpoints and then splits the rest equally across the other points in the conversion path. This is a bit of a compromise between last & first click, but there could have been more important steps along the way that have been undervalued.

When you change to anything other than first or last click your conversions will be displayed as decimals. At first glance it does not make sense, how can you have half a conversion? But it is simply a way for Google to show you which keywords are working for you and allows Google to optimise your account.

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Google Ads campaign experiment guide

Google Ads campaign experiment guide

Whether you work for a ppc management company or you are looking after your Google Ads account yourself, this guide will walk you through how to set up a campaign experiment yourself.

What are Google Ads experiments?

Google Ads has an option within PPC advertising campaigns to create an experimental campaign. This options allows you to try out certain theories that you may have about your campaign without completely tanking and killing your campaigns, wasting not only your precious advertising budget but also losing potential leads/sales – double jeopardy!

When/why would you use them?

Have you noticed that one landing page is performing better than another or a new page might perform better altogether? You may also have noticed mobile devices are outperforming the other devices? Or you may want to try an automated bid before fully committing to it to see how it performs first? There are many reasons why you may want to create an experiment! Using this guide, you will be able to create your own experiment testing the parameters that matter for your business.

How to create an experiment

The good news is that experiments are easy to set up and they are not only for ppc management company experts. First you need to select the drafts and experiments heading in the menu on the left-hand side of the screen and then click campaign drafts from the sub menu. This will take you to a screen with a list of past experiments, if you have not created any before it will display that you currently have no drafts. To create a new draft, select either the blue cross in the left-hand corner or the blue cross in the middle of the screen if this is your first draft (see below).

ppc management company

Name your experiment, adding a description is a good idea especially if you have a few tests. Try to avoid just naming it test, again if you have more than one it may make finding your campaigns and experiments confusing.

You will then be taken back to the familiar campaign view, in the top left you should see the draft status and it should display Drafted, it is now that you make the changes to the campaign that you would like to test i.e. in this example we are testing a CPA bid, I would then change the bidding strategy in settings as normal and then select apply.

ppc management company

Select Run an experiment and click Apply.

Next Google will ask you to name the experiment and select the date range that you would like your experiment to run for. It’s best to give your experiment a fair amount of time, a fortnight at the very least. You can always end the campaign early if you are unhappy with the results. Next you will need to choose the experiment split. This option allows you to set the amount of the original campaigns budget you would like to use for the experiment. I generally go for a 50/50 split as it keeps thing simple, but you can split it however you choose.

The final option is whether to choose a search based or cookie based experiment. Search based will get you faster results but a user could see both the experiment and the original so the results may not be as accurate. If you have a lot of traffic you should use the cookie based option, as a user will ONLY see the experiment OR the original campaign meaning the results will be more accurate.

And that’s it! Your experiment is live and running! As you can see experiments are not just for ppc management company experts and remember you can stop the experiment at any time, alternatively if you are happy with the results you can apply the changes at any point too.

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Google Ad Creative Tips

Ad Copy For Better CTR & Conversion Rates

Ad copy is an often overlooked part of your ppc strategy. As a pay per click company in the UK, myWebhero constantly test ad creatives & have learnt a few tips over the years.

Good ad copy has the power to drive more clicks through superior CTRs, lower costs through improved Quality Scores & better conversions by framing the proposition in the customer’s mind before they’ve even visited the website.

Here we’ll share some of our top ppc agency tips for ad creative that helps you stand out on the SERP, get the click & boost your conversion rate.

Numbers

ppc-company-uk-search-result-mywebhero

The first tip is to draw the eye to the ad. Numbers are a great way of doing this and you can apply it to your meta titles too for added SEO impact. Peoples eyes are naturally drawn to numbers & they are even more visible if you have the only ad containing them.

You can use numbers such as prices, No 1 status, customers served, product lines in stock… and so on.

Symbols & Emojis

Similarly, you can use symbols (and in some cases emojis) to draw the eye in a similar way. Take a look at this example of one of our ads.

Currency symbols work well, as to copyright & Registered Trademarks. On some rare occassions, you can even sneak in some emojis!

Pricing & Qualifying

As well as drawing the eye, pricing can help qualify customers in or out of your service / product. There’s little point paying for a click from someone who cannot afford it!

Adding a price helps people frame your product & know whether it’s within their range. Yes, you can use a price extension, but putting a price in the headline makes it front & centre, unavoidable.

There are other ways to qualify people in or out, using works such as expensive or luxury etc. help you set your stall out and avoid unnecessary clicks.

Dare To Be Different

There’s little point just making up the numbers on the SERP. You need to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Quite often you’ll see bland & repetitve ad copy from your competitors, this is your chance to shine.

Keywords & Natural Structure

The perceived wisdom in writing ad copy is to include the exact keyword in the headline. This can lead to some pretty clunky & repetitive ads.

Yes, you should make sure that the ad is relevant & immediately recognisable as the searcher scans the SERP, but that doesn’t mean blanket use of the keyword.

Remember that somebody is searching for an answer to their problem. If you ad can address & answer that problem, then you’re going to see some pretty hefty CTRs.

Writing in plain English for the searcher, rather than the engine will always be preferable!

Call To Action

Finally, don’t forget to add a call to action to your ad. This plants the seed in the visitors mind of what you expect them to do when they visit the website.

Classic examples are; Sign Up, Buy Now, Browse For.., Download – you get the idea!

Our Services

Well, thanks for reading this far, here are some links to our services if you want to checkout how we help clients achieve extraordinary results through their PPC campaigns.

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