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Tag: search engine marketing

Understanding the key terms on Google AdWords

 

Have you been into your Google AdWords dashboard and saw the terms that seem complicated? No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. AdWords can be really confusing especially if you are not familiar with the terms that you’re seeing on its dashboard.

Google AdWords is Google’s online advertising platform. Through this, you will be able to create online ads to reach people and encourage them to buy your products or services.

As a search engine marketer, understanding the vernacular of AdWords is important in order to create campaigns that are suitable for the marketing objectives of your client and easily make some tweaks if needed. Having the knowledge on the definition of these jargons and being able to explain it in layman’s terms will help you in creating valuable and effective performance reports for your clients.

Since there are hundreds of terms that you may see on your AdWords dashboards and insights, we will only be dealing with the most common encountered key terms upon implementing ads and those that are normally included in your reports.

 

AdWords Basics

  •  Campaign – A campaign on Google AdWords is the set of ad groups that share budget, location targeting, and other specifications depending on the marketing objectives of your client.

 

  • Ad Group – An ad group is consisted of one or more ads that contain a shared set of keywords. Through Ad Groups, you will be able to distinguish and organize your keywords depending on their theme.

 

  • Keywords – These are the words, phrases, or terms that best describe your products, services, or your website itself that will help on determining when and where your ad may appear.

 

  • Daily Budget – This is the amount that you will set for each ad campaign. You can specify the average amount that you would like to spend for each day. To determine your Daily Budget, divide your monthly budget by 30.4 which is the average number of days in a month.

 

  • Maximum CPC Bid – or Maximum Cost-per-Click. This is the highest amount that you are willing to pay for each click on your ad.

 

  • Final URL – This is the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of your ads landing page (in green font color). Meaning, this is where the online users will go upon clicking your ad. You must remember that the approval of your ads also depends on the site where the users will land upon clicking which is called the Destination Experience. The landing page or the website itself must adhere to the Google Advertising Policies, otherwise, your ads will be disapproved. (See the Destination Requirements here.)

 

 Google AdWords Metrics

  •  Clicks Column – This column generally counts every click on your ad. Know that a click is still counted even if the user doesn’t reach your website due to downtime or internet problems. Highly-relevant ads are more likely to receive clicks.

 

  • Impressions Column – The number of impressions is equivalent to the times your ad was served or seen on Google Search results. Even though an impression is not guaranteed to turn into clicks every time, this is still valuable on calculating your ad’s click-through rate to test its effectiveness.

 

  • Click-through Rate – Abbreviated as CTR, your click-through rate determines the effectiveness of your ad. It is derived by means of dividing the number of your acquired ad clicks by its acquired number of impressions.

 

  • Average Cost-per-Click – This is the average cost of each click on your ad. It is derived by dividing the amount that you pay for your ad by the total number of your acquired clicks.

 

  • Average Position – This metric shows your ad’s position among other advertisers.

 

  • Quality Score – This is the estimated rating of your ad made by Google AdWords based on the ad quality, its keywords, and the landing page.

 

As you can see there are a lot of terms that you need to know and understand. Some terms may take you some time to digest, but, just keep in mind that these are all beneficial for your own learning and search engine marketing skills development.

To further have an idea and complex knowledge on all of these, try engaging yourself to Google Academy for Ads. This will not just help you understand the terms mentioned above but will also give you some in-depth details on how AdWords works.

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San Francisco, California – The Ads and Commerce Business of Google has announced new innovations at the recently concluded Google Marketing Next 2017 event. They made it clear to the audience that these updates are thrilling for both advertisers and agencies. The innovation for this year focuses more on making AdWords, Analytics and DoubleClick, much efficient for all – especially in making reports and digesting data to better understand the online audiences.

The Keynote event was started by the Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s Senior Vice President for Ads and Commerce with the overview of what shall be expected with Google AdWords, Google Analytics and DoubleClick for this year. Below is a rundown of interesting facts that you need to know:

  • Ramaswamy presented that 87% of the world population rely on Google search in times of need. He highlighted in his talk that “search” above all, serves as the first contact point of users whenever they are curious about knowing something or doing research prior to purchase.
  • 20% of worldwide searches are voice search. And what does this supposed to mean, especially for the marketers? This is a good gauge that as mobile devices evolve in a fast-paced, so is the way users search in Google.
  • Ramaswamy reminded marketers to always put consumers at the heart of their brand strategy. And the only way to do that is my making a marketing strategy driven by smart data in every phase of the consumers’ searches. And that is what the current updates in Google AdWords address.
  • Get the fundamentals of ‘mobile-first’ right. – The usage of mobile devices is increasing at a rate higher that what is expected, but the availability and infrastructure for mobile data around the world are not completely fast. There are countries like the Philippines with a below-average mobile data. To ensure users have a better experience as they navigate your website, it should load not more than two (2) seconds. Every second – beyond 2 seconds – delivers a much larger bounce rate.

In order to attain this, your website should be mobile responsive and all your media (photos, video, and dynamic) should be compressed in a size optimal for mobile web browsing.

  • The consumer has a diminishing sense of the boundary between online and offline. – The reality of doing business today is embracing the reality that users can no longer distinguish online between offline.

70% of consumers turn to their smartphones before making an action, either buying or dining. And with that, consumers move seamlessly from online to offline – from searching locally in Google to actually going into their choice of store. This action brings consumers to a thinking that what they had experienced while searching for a store online should be exactly what they will experience as they step into the store’s entrance.

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Google Updates

Below is a quick list of the updates of Google for their three platforms:

  • Google Attribution

Before, marketers are left with no choice but to rely on the last click attribution as the final touch point that contributes to conversion. Now, Google has resolved the issue of attribution in doing campaigns – hence the Google Attribution. The good thing is, Attribution will be available for AdWords, Analytics, and DoubleClicks for no cost. However, there is an Attribution 360 available for a certain cost which gives more flexibility in doing customization depending on the demand for granular data by the company.

Moreover, Google will be introducing Unique Reach reporting in AdWords. This metric is de-duplicated across devices, campaigns, and formats. Now, you can measure how many people were shown your display and video ads. You can see two new metrics in your AdWords: Unique users and average impression per unique users.

  • Integration of Google Optimize in AdWords

We all know that when a website is hard to use, the bottom-line of the campaign will be severely affected. Google Optimize is a tool targeted for marketers to create a landing page that can be tested for its effectivity. This tool doesn’t need the help of a webmaster and coding skills to run. Google will soon integrate Optimize to AdWords for marketers to evaluate the effectiveness of their landing pages to improve their ad quality scores.

  • Google Surveys in AdWords and DoubleClick

After getting a hit from your ad, it is still hard to get from these figures a qualitative data that is essential in evaluating the success of your campaign. Google announced that it will soon integrate Google Surveys in AdWords to let marketers send an automatic quick survey to every click to extract some vital qualitative information.

For further functionalities, Google will make Google Survey 360 available for advertisers who need it.

  • Google Assistant

This is the most exciting part for retail-type of clients. Google Assistant is a conversation with Google to help people get things done – this is a brief but powerful message from Jennifer Liu, the director for Google Shopping.

For a better understanding, Google Assistant is an artificial intelligence that is activated via voice command. From the word itself, it is designed to help users search for something over Google without lifting a finger.

Now, this one is by far the most thrilling innovation for retailers. Why? Because Google Assistant is designed for searches of tangible products (or even services in the future). Google is encouraging retailers to take part in making shopping via Google easy for every user by sending updates of their inventories in their branches.

You can watch the entire Keynote speeches in the video from Google below:

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Google Marketing Next 2017 surely brought a lot of exciting innovations what will surely improve every stakeholder of Google’s ecosystem. It will surely make advertisers and agencies happy and most of all making users much happier by getting more relevant information.

If you want to know how AdWords can help your small business make a big leap in Google search engine, you can always reach iManila at (02) 490-0000 or at [email protected] for services relevant to Google marketing such Search Engine Advertising for search and display, and Search Engine Optimization to improve your website’s ranking.

 

Facebook or Google? This could be one of the common questions business owners kept on asking themselves. One of the digital truths that you need to deal with is that a business cannot grow online on organic alone. That is true in some cases, especially when venturing into digital marketing for the first time. But with so many platforms available, from search engines, apps, websites, and to social media networks – you might be wondering which one to choose when advertising your business online.

The truth is, these overwhelming choices shouldn’t be your primary concern.

Why?

Because there are only two dominant leaders in online advertising today namely: Google and Facebook. And you should stick with them quite often when dealing with digital ads,

The Duopoly

Admit it or not, there are only two entities in so far, who have valuable profile data of online users in the world – Google and Facebook. They are the two titans who earn a lot from their ad platform businesses, thus calling them a duopoly.

Why duopoly? You probably asking yourself.

To begin with, Facebook owns Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. These four are the top social media networks and social messaging platforms in terms of numbers of active users.

In the recent quarterly report of Facebook, the flagship platform has reached a 1.9 Billion user base per month. Instagram has 700 million each month while the two leading social messaging platform – Messenger and WhatsApp – both have 1.2 billion user base.

Facebook earns a staggering 97% of its 2016 revenue from its digital advertising business.

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Meanwhile, Google – a world renowned search engine brand that reached immense trust and popularity for having a spot in the Oxford dictionary is also a leader in transforming digital marketing these days. This brand has earned an accepted scholastic use of its verb variations such as “googled” and googling” making Google undeniably one of the greatest modern enterprises of the millennium.

Google owns YouTube – the world’s largest video streaming site. It also expands its services through consolidating its core businesses under the name Alphabet Inc. Alphabet is responsible for developing and reshaping its services that are linked with their core mission to improve the user experience. Alphabet Inc. from the name of the company itself covers almost the entire Roman alphabet including the Ad platform of Google for search and display networks.

Google digital ad business generates 32.8% of the total revenue of this tech conglomerate.

Which One is Right for Your Business?

A good approach to this question is to try both and see which works well with your business. But since most of the SMEs marketing budget are strictly limited, doing so is not in your priority list. To weight which one is right for your business. Below is our weigh in:

 

  • B2B and Service-oriented business

Does your business belong in this category? If YES, then Google search engine marketing (SEM) fits your business well. Why? The reason is plain and simple. A B2B model relies heavily on website transactions, and this is out of corporate custom revolving around the idea of legitimacy. When a website is your primary contact point online, Google’s search engine marketing is a go-to platform.

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  • B2C and Consumer Goods / Retail

The good thing about this category is that the risk of losing money when investing in both platforms is low compared to B2B and Service-oriented businesses. The reason is, reaching the end consumers with products (tangible trades) that they really need is one foot ahead than business offering services (which are intangible).

In this kind of business, if one looks after brand awareness, social ad via Facebook is a good avenue. With most retail business in the country relying on brick-and-mortar store than e-commerce, social ads by Facebook fits just fine. Be it engagement or web clicks (or visits), Facebooks ads can surely reach to the end consumers with ease.

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In the Philippines, there is a preconceived notion of having comfort in purchasing tangible trades than the intangible ones. If you are in the business of providing services, you got to build a solid reputation to compete well with your competitors online. If you are dealing with consumer goods and retail, the challenge is to create a way to sift through the clutters of other consumer-centric ads online.

Be it Facebook or Google, the success of an online ad relies on understanding your audience and your business. Once you all had it in your mind and in your heart, sending the message across these two platforms won’t be too much of a pain.

If by chance that a business like yours is looking for an assistance in starting your brand presence online either through Facebook or through the search engine of Google, iManila is capable of helping you get noticed by your target audience online.

Give us a call at (02) 490-0000 / (02) 565-4064, or send your inquiries through our website portal at https://imanila.ph/lets-talk/

#Achieve: The road towards a successful SEM campaign

 

On an average, Google processes over 40,000 search queries every second. If you do the math, this means that 3.5 billion searches are made per day and more than 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. Given these numbers, how do you think can your business manage to compete online? How can you make your business be seen on search engine results? The answer is simple: Use search engine marketing.

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Search engine marketing is an internet marketing strategy that is utilized to improve the position of a website in search engine results through online paid advertising. It’s a big competition. You cannot just shoot and pay Google to get your online ads visible on search engine results. It needs precise planning like any other marketing strategy. In case you are planning to give SEM a go for your business, we laid out a few things you can contemplate on before launching your online campaign.

  • Know what your campaign goals are
    There are many reasons why you want to put up an ad campaign. You might want to increase brand awareness, increase web traffic, or increase your sales. Each goal requires different approach that leads to different directions. So, for you to prevent the incident of mismanaging your campaign specifically your budget, you must deliberate your campaign’s objectives.
  • Use the best and the right keywords
    In SEM, keywords are your bread and butter. It is important to select the most relevant keywords for your campaign. When this step fails, all else will. It is also important for you to think like a client searching for your business. Think what keywords and terms they might be using in the possibility of looking for your products or services. You can use Google AdWords’ Keyword Planner tool to have an idea and an estimate if the keywords you have selected fit perfectly for your campaign.
  • Optimize your landing page
    Another crucial facet of creating an SEM campaign is the optimization of your landing page. Google’s algorithm also considers the landing page of your ad. The relevance and coherence of your ad to your landing page is one factor that Ad Rank takes into account. Start with putting up informative website copy that viewers can view and visible call to action buttons that will lead the web visitors to your contact page outright.
  • Set the right bid for your campaign
    Of course in any marketing campaign, budget is significant. You should determine the period of your campaign and allocate budget for how long you planned it to last. You have to bid strategically with your desired keywords to stand the pace with your competitors.

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  • Evaluate results
    One of the advantages of online ads is its capability of showing immediate results. You can monitor your campaign on a regular basis to know its performance. See if you are really meeting your goals or ensure that you are gaining high ROI from it, because it’s what this is all about. Moreover, since you have the full control with your campaign, you can also make certain adjustments if necessary.

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These are but basic factors in achieving success with your SEM campaign. There are many other strategies you can experiment with. But if you experience trouble in making your own campaign, better opt hiring a professional help. For more than two decades, iManila have helped many businesses reach their marketing and business goals through its experienced and knowledgeable digital marketing team. Want to know more about SEM? Contact iManila now, give us a call and we’ll be happy to accommodate your concerns.

 

Reference: SVM E-Marketing Solutions

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