PPC Blog

Bumper ads are easy to dismiss.

After all, what can you possibly accomplish in just six seconds?

As a result, some advertisers dismiss them out of hand.

But they’re missing the point.

Because bumper ads aren’t designed to be used in isolation.

Combine them with other advertising, such as additional bumper ads or a TrueView video for action ad, and you have a powerful new tool in your arsenal.

In this post, we’ll look closer at bumper ads and examples of how they can be used.

But first, let’s examine the ad format itself.

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No company wants to spend more on their advertising than they need to.

Which is why the prospect of advertising dollars going towards fraudulent ad clicks is frustrating.

And this is especially true if you’re in a highly competitive industry where the costs of keywords are high.

Some of our law firm clients, for example, can pay $600 per click.

But what’s the best way to eliminate fraudulent ad clicks?

Should you pay for a third-party software to catch those fraudulent ad clicks before they happen?

The answer might not be what you think.

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Those of you who are PPC managers know that, often, you don’t get great PPC results straight out of the gate.

And even if you do, you know there’s always room for improvement.

Sometimes, getting great results is a long, iterative process of developing creative solutions, testing, and adjusting.

We went through this recently with a new client.

In this article, I will describe the process we went through – not just so you can see how we addressed specific challenges, but so you can also see the develop-test-adjust process in practice.

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Lead forms have been around for a while in the Google advertising network, but when we first tested them in late 2019, we didn’t get great results.

But the world of PPC changes fast. And given that we’re now halfway through 2020, we thought the time is ripe to give them another look for some client accounts.

Before we get started, let’s revisit what lead forms are.

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It’s not uncommon for businesses to get excited about promoting new products or services through paid search advertising.

But sometimes, they forget they’ll need to either increase their advertising budget for this new endeavor – or re-allocate some of their existing budget.

Unfortunately, when you shift marketing budget from one area to another, you trigger a set of trade-offs.

And so, these businesses have to make some tough decisions. We had this happen recently with a client.

And today, I’ll use it as an example of some of the trade-offs you have to make when dedicating some of your existing budget to a new product launch.

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It’s not uncommon for clients to offer us additional PPC budget a few weeks before the end of a fiscal quarter.

They do their accounting and find they have some unused budget. So they offer it to us — but only if we can use it to get more results.

Unfortunately, PPC doesn’t lend itself well to this kind of short-term strategy.

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Over the past weeks, we’ve seen major economic changes due to the coronavirus and associated lockdowns.

Consequently, some companies are reluctantly letting go of their pay-per-click (PPC) marketing agencies and bringing those responsibilities back in-house.

In other cases, companies are making cuts to their marketing teams and shuffling responsibility for PPC to other team members.

Whatever the cause, many experienced marketers – who haven’t been hands on with PPC for many years – are now finding themselves with that responsibility again.

These marketers are now scrambling to get back up to speed.

If you find yourself in that situation, here are some dos and don’ts to help you get your footing.

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Last week, a prospective client speculated that his previous advertising agency was using automation to create his ad messaging.

He reached this conclusion because his ad messaging never quite captured his business goals and/or spoke to his target audience.

And when he requested changes, the agency never applied them consistently.

So was his agency using automation? I can’t say for sure, but it seems likely.

After all, this prospective client was paying only $350 to $400 a month for account management. I don’t see how any agency could create spot-on messaging at that kind of rate.

Still, I understand his frustration. The agency should have been more open about their methods, and what he could expect to get in return for their fees.

Because there’s no escaping that really good messaging — messaging that speaks directly to your target market and accurately represents your brand — takes time and expertise to develop.

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Most experienced PPC specialists will recognize the telltale signs of PPC mismanagement.

But if you’re not a PPC professional – maybe you’re a business owner or marketing director – you might overlook those indicators.

This is a problem because now, more than ever, it’s important that your PPC program is managed skillfully.

You have to be careful in interpreting those indicators and not jump to conclusions.

No one practice or setting can tell the whole tale.

And maybe your PPC managers have a good explanation for the small anomalies you see.

But when you see an accumulation of things in your account that are odd or even bizarre, you can start to conclude that the account is being poorly managed, whether due to lack of expertise or indifference.

So what are the signs of mismanagement that you should look for?

Here are seven of the most common ones.

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In the 10 years I’ve been running my business, never once has a prospective client asked if my agency is a Google Ads Partner.

Nonetheless, my team and I took it upon ourselves to become a Google Ads Partner (at the Premier level) anyway.

For a long time, becoming a Google Ads Partner was considered best practice. And it came with a few benefits, like having an assigned Google Ads rep and some additional Google training (if you were lucky).

Besides, meeting the requirements to become a Partner wasn’t onerous. So why not?

But recently, Google announced that it will be changing its Partner program by introducing new requirements. (UPDATE: Google recently announced that it will be pushing these changes to 2021.)

Which has many PPC pros alarmed.

Why? Because they essentially require Partners to put the goals of Google above the goals of their own clients.

Which has me wondering if the Google Ads Partner badge is now a red flag instead of a symbol of trust.

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