PPC Blog

It isn’t unusual for companies to offer free online PPC analysis tools.

So perhaps it isn’t surprising that Google itself got into that game in 2018.

Google Ads has a built-in feature that provides users with an optimization score and recommendations to improve it.

This sounds good in theory.

But what would happen if you applied Google’s recommendations across the board?

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By the time you become a PPC pro, you’ve probably launched hundreds of Google Ads campaigns.

But even with all this experience, you can sometimes overlook key PPC fundamentals in a rush to get ads live — or when grappling with Google Ads changes and updates.

And naturally, this kind of thing is even more likely to happen to PPC newbies.

In today’s article, I’m going to hit on three fundamentals for launching Google Ads campaigns that PPC pros sometimes overlook — and that PPC newbies might be fully aware of.

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If you weren’t able to use December to prepare for PPC in 2002, it’s not too late!

You still have time to regroup and look ahead.

And it’s important to do so — because the strategies you put into place now can continue to pay dividends throughout 2020.

If you’re not sure where to start, here are four suggestions on where to put your efforts.

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In the past few months, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking (and writing) on the topic of building brand awareness through PPC.

Why is this topic so often overlooked?

I suspect it’s partly because so many of us are focused on account performance.

Performance is important, of course. We’re all keenly interested in performance metrics, such as leads, conversions and sales.

But if your sole focus is performance — to the detriment of brand awareness — then you will lose opportunities, jeopardize long-term performance and even put the health of your entire business at risk.

Therefore, let me continue to bang the drum of brand awareness by recapping some of my most recent articles:

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Google Ads message extensions were rolled out in October 2016 without a lot of fanfare.

At the time, we assessed which of our clients would be a good fit for this kind of extension and approached those clients to see if they’d be willing to give message extensions a try.

But many of them resisted – often with legitimate concerns.

More recently, however, we’re taking another look at message extensions.

Some additional features and options have been added since their initial rollout, making them more flexible and appealing.

Still, I expect to hear many of the same objections.

Therefore, I will use this article to review what message extensions are and address the most common concerns we hear.

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As has become tradition here at Group Twenty Seven, we like to mark this time of year by compiling a wish list of all the things we’d love to see in PPC for the coming year.

Looking back, we realize we didn’t get everything on our PPC wish list for 2019 (or even 2018), but we’re not giving up hope that this year will be different!

So here’s what we wish for in 2020:

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Of the many functions available to us in Google Ads, one of my favorites is sitelinks.

Sitelinks are fantastic because they’re so effective and versatile.

Whether you want to promote low search volume themes, push lagging products out the door, maximize hot sellers, highlight certain product categories, answer common questions, or handle a PR problem – sitelinks can do it all.

But lately, I’ve been seeing more and more instances where advertisers are using sitelinks incorrectly – and they’re missing valuable opportunities.

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Once again, Thanksgiving is quickly approaching.

And in keeping with tradition, my team and I like to use Thanksgiving as an occasion to reflect and give thanks for the many PPC functions and tools that made our jobs easier this year.

Because when we can complete our work more easily, thoroughly and efficiently, it helps us deliver better results for our clients.

So without further ado, read on to see what we’re grateful for this past year. (And if you’re not using these functions or tools yourself, it might be time to give them a try.)

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When you decide to hire an outside marketing agency – either because you want to outsource your marketing entirely or supplement your existing in-house team – you’ll have a lot of decisions to make.

And one of the biggest will be whether to hire a generalist or specialist agency.

Let’s start by defining our terms: a generalist marketing agency is one that handles all kinds of marketing. These may include (but not be limited to):

• Content creation and strategy
• Social media management
• SEO
• SEM
• Email marketing
• Analytics
• Media buying
• Affiliate marketing.

A specialist agency, in contrast, will focus on only one of those channels. So they will do only SEO or only email marketing, for example.

So which should you choose?

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The paid search community was recently caught up in a flurry of tweets on the topic of a certain “dirty trick.”

The CEO of Basecamp, Jason Fried, complained that Google Ads allows competitors to bid on a company’s branded keywords (including his own). He claims that the practice is cowardly and nasty — and implied that it’s a dirty trick.

Fried is right in that Google does allow competitors to trigger ads with protected brand keywords. However, Google doesn’t allow advertisers to display competitors’ protected marks. (Hat tip to Marty Weintraub for the clear explanation.)

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