Category: SEM

Starting this month, Google Ads advertisers can enable call reporting for all call-only campaigns and call extensions in their accounts in one spot. The new account-level setting will roll out over the next few weeks. Why use this setting? Until now, advertisers who wanted to enable call reporting have had to make sure to enable it every time they added a new extension or call-only ad. Because there’s no great way to audit this without looking at each individual extension and ad, it’s not uncommon for advertisers to realize they’ve…

Read More

Revisiting your keyword research approach is essential to preparing for imminent match type changes. Here are some considerations for a successful keyword research strategy in a close-variant world. Google once again has disrupted the search marketing community by announcing exact match close variants will now include same-meaning variations. As a result, marketers putting all their chips into exact match keywords will have to shift their bidding, structure and keyword strategies to avoid wasted spend. The writing has been on the wall since 2014, and while the motive and benefactors are…

Read More

Live webinar: Thursday, September 20, at 1:00 PM ET (10:00 AM PT). Your brand is constantly under attack by competitors that bid on your branded keywords, interrupting the customer journey and diverting search traffic and ultimately revenue. These “hijack” attempts muddy your reputation and adversely impact the experience your consumers have with your brand online. So, how do you spot it and stop it? How do you protect your brand and help your customers find you instead of a competitor? Join our brand and search experts to learn how playing…

Read More

It is not every day you see SEM companies featured in Wall Street Journal articles but a few weeks ago, they ran a story named Small Businesses Search in Vain for Web-Ad Help. It isn’t good. It calls out two very large SEM companies named ReachLocal and Yodle as not delivering on their promises to their customers. Here is a quote: The Federal Trade Commission has received about 60 complaints involving ReachLocal since 2009 – roughly half of them filed within the past two years – and more than 180…

Read More

It is not every day you see SEM companies featured in Wall Street Journal articles but a few weeks ago, they ran a story named Small Businesses Search in Vain for Web-Ad Help. It isn’t good. It calls out two very large SEM companies named ReachLocal and Yodle as not delivering on their promises to their customers. Here is a quote: The Federal Trade Commission has received about 60 complaints involving ReachLocal since 2009 – roughly half of them filed within the past two years – and more than 180…

Read More

Ad strength will be visible when advertisers create responsive search ads as well as in a new column in the web interface. One of the loudest complaints I’ve heard so far about Google’s new responsive search ads — which are still in beta —  is a lack of reporting on which combinations work best. Another is how to tell if there is enough variety in the options advertisers provide while still being relevant to the ad group. Google announced a few updates Monday to help advertisers manage responsive search ads…

Read More

More and more brands are using live streaming to reach their audience and promote their business. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and, Twitch have invested millions of dollars to build and improve their own live streaming platforms. The idea isn’t exactly a brand new one, as it has been around since 2011. But when Facebook launched its Facebook Live feature in 2016, live streaming was brought to the forefront. Live streaming has rapidly grown in popularity because of its low cost and its sense of immediacy that gives viewers the…

Read More

Search ad spending growth decelerated across the engines in Q2 2018, digital agency Merkle reported in its Q2 2018 Digital Marketing Report. After two strong quarters, the slower growth for Bing and Yahoo in Q2 came from lower CPCs for both Bing Product Ads and text ads. Google search spend growth slowed for the third straight quarter, driven by lower click volume. Google search ad spending grew 18 percent, while Bing and Yahoo search ads spending increased by 11 percent year over year. Mobile devices (phones and tablets) generated 60…

Read More

Paid search is brutally competitive. Everyone is using the same tactics to drive conversions. How do you separate your AdWords campaigns from your competitors’ to acquire more customers at a lower CPL? The answer is with personalization. There are new data-driven strategies you can use to target the right audience with the right AdWords campaign at the right time and provide consumers with a relevant, frictionless experience — whether they convert online or over the phone. Join paid search experts from Elite SEM and DialogTech to learn new strategies to…

Read More

Inbound callers are proving to be highly engaged with brands, and they convert more quickly than customers who do not use the phone to interact with businesses. According to “Pick Up the Phone: Your Best Customer Is On the Line,” published by Forrester Consulting, the majority of marketers deploying ads that prompt customers to initiate a phone call say those customers convert an average of 30 percent faster and spend an average of 28 percent more. As a result, 70 percent of marketers surveyed by Forrester say they currently use…

Read More