Photo Courtesy of Hero Conf
Portland played host to Hero Conf this year and needless to say, it was two full days of PPC, social advertising and landing page optimization awesomeness. If you’re a big PPC nerd like me, you probably follow PPC Hero to learn about the latest bidding strategies, ad extensions and keyword tools. If you are not like me, well, that’s what this blog is for. For social and mobile marketers, let’s dive right into some of the top takeaways this year:
It’s THE Year of Mobile
(Source: @finholm, Microsoft 2015 Internal Data, Hero Conf 2015)
In case you missed it, 2015 is the year of mobile. No really, I know marketers have been saying the same thing for the past decade or so, but I get the feeling it has reached its peak this year. Here are some compelling stats from Scott Finholm (@finholm), senior manager of Bing Ads Mobile, to back it up:
- Mobile click volume has grown 75% in the past two years.
- 61% of mobile callers are ready to convert.
- Both CTR and revenue per impression are stronger for mobile-optimized ads than traditional desktop ads.
- Sitelink extensions can improve mobile CTR by 20%+.
- Brands must compete for Position 1 (65% of mobile ad clicks) on any mobile search result page to drive any significant volume of traffic. Once in position, they can take advantage of ad extensions to take up more of the landscape (see bullet above).
- Mobile search is fairly flat all day, which means brands can advertise during any daypart and reach an active search audience at any time.
(Source: @finholm, Hero Conf 2015)
Mobile vs. Desktop Targeting
This one is easy: Don’t treat your desktop strategy the same as your mobile one. Obviously, you are working with two different devices, but the user experience and actions you want customers to take differ as well. For example, if you are promoting a longer piece of content, such as a white paper, you’ll want to focus your advertising on desktop users who are in front of a full-size monitor in order to digest long-form content. If you’re trying to grab an email sign-up or share an infosushi (something known in the industry as “low-touch” actions) then a mobile ad campaign is a good bet. You can certainly place ads in both, but if one favors another, then you’d do well to upbid to make sure that placement is optimized.
(Source: Bing Ads FAQ)
70/20/10 Rule for Ad Testing
Speaking of ad optimization, it’s the name of the game, and everyone loves a good A/B test – or better yet – a multivariate test. But how do you reallocate the budget to perform all those tests? Unless you have an unlimited supply of money, you need a plan of action.
Budget breakdowns can be tricky, especially when you are working with a limited resources to begin with. And when you’re splicing and dicing between channels, ad types, KPIs, creative … well, you get the idea. The further you break it down, the smaller the piece of ad pie, and the more difficult it is to get your ads any traction for service.
Here’s a good general rule of thumb to follow: allocate 70% of your budget to the campaign, 20% to test variations of copy and image units, and finally, 10% for entirely new ideas and concepts. This ensures your advertising campaign continues to perform to meet your core objectives and, better yet, evolves as the marketplace changes.
Measure What Matters: CRO and ROAS
No one doubts the importance of having a highly targeted and relevant landing page to drive all your search and social traffic. As a whole, the industry seems to be accepting conversion rate optimization (CRO) as a key metric for how well your company’s PPC campaign is performing. Did customers sign up for your webinar? Download a white paper? Call to schedule a demo? All these actions are now measurable from ad click to conversion, including multiclick attribution for your social and mobile assists.
Another important measure is ROAS, or return on ad spend. This one is easy to figure out – if you put money in, you expect to get money out. What is the bigger picture behind the smaller actions that we ask our customers to take? Beyond brand awareness, social amplification and content consumption, can we attribute social or mobile ads to driving goals and events in the multichannel, multiclick funnel? And at the end of that, tie those actions back to sales, new leads or even perceived brand lift?
If possible, have these two metrics in mind when building a campaign, and then work backwards to set campaign metrics that help drive toward this bigger picture.
(Source: Google Analytics Academy)
Just because There’s an Ad Type Doesn’t Mean You Should Use It
Merry Morud (@MerryMorud) from aimClear said something that caught my attention during her presentation on Twitter Ads: Promoted Tweets always outperform Website Cards. But wait, why would Twitter offer an ad type for a specific KPI if it didn’t perform better than a standard promoted tweet? Aren’t all new ad types (Website Cards, Lead Gen Cards, Native Video) the new and shiny things that must be used?
Well, being the ever-curious sleuths that we are, CMD ran a Twitter ad campaign to test this theory with one of our current tech clients. After 28 days of conclusive data, the Promoted Tweets did indeed outperform Website Cards in clicks by 10%, CTR by 41% and engagements by 31%. The moral of the story: Don’t take new ad types for granted and always test, test, test.
The End of the End is the Best Place to Begin
Advertising campaigns should always have a definitive time frame. You may be tempted to spread that spend across the entire year, but if you have very specific tentpole events, and clear start/end dates, it’s best to schedule your flights around these campaign dates to avoid social ad fatigue. Plus, this solves the issue of frequency (the natural cap that an ad will be shown) and recency (the relevance of new versus old) issues. With Twitter, for example, an ad’s lifespan is literally 3 – 4 days).
What other tips have you heard about social and mobile advertising this year? Tweet us at @CMDCreates and let us know!
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