Working with an Advertising Agency
Advertising plays an integral role in how you present your business to the world, and the internet age has changed the game. Today, you don’t just have to circulate traditional advertisements, you also need to bring web users to your site with carefully implemented pay-per-click advertising campaigns. PPC is one of the major pillars of digital marketing, and as such, we pride ourselves in making the most of it for businesses like yours!
Advertising From Click to Revenue
Clicks are a hot commodity today, and businesses are willing to pay for them. Pay-per-click (PPC for short) is a wildly popular method for getting traffic to your site through advertisement, most notably on search engine results pages (SERPs, another cool acronym for you to casually drop into a conversation). If a person sees an advertisement for your business in their search results and they click it to arrive at your site, you pay a fee (about $2.00 on average, but this can range anywhere from $0.20 to $30 or more). The likelihood of a user seeing and clicking your advertisement depends on a number of factors (don’t worry, we’ll get to that in a moment).
PPC is an excellent complement to the other aspects of your marketing plan. SEO, for instance, is essential for organically driving traffic to your website through great content and smart web development techniques. The catch is that tracking its results and progress can take a bit of time. With a strong PPC strategy, you’ll be able to compensate for this beautifully by driving paid traffic to your site and getting immediate feedback on how your advertising is performing.
Overall, the sheer value that we can secure for your business with PPC advertisements is probably their most attractive attribute. If you’re promoting your products or services with great advertising creative and the landing pages they lead to are working their magic, a single click can become a new mailing list subscriber, a booked appointment, a purchase, or even a longtime customer. Additionally, PPC is a must-have tool for amplifying your voice, as paid search advertisements can boost brand awareness by as much as 80%.
Google: The King of PPC
There are a number of platforms that utilize the PPC model of advertising, including search engines such as Bing and Yahoo! as well as the world’s largest social network, Facebook. However, the most developed and widespread by far is Google Ads (formerly known as AdWords). While search ads aren’t the only way Google helps you advertise, it’s their longest-standing advertising system, one that can’t be ignored. Google holds just the majority in search engine market share with tens of thousands of searches taking place every single second. No business owner should want to miss out on that kind of exposure!
The popularity of Google Ads for PPC is thanks to not only the visibility it offers business owners, but also the tools that come with the service.
The analytics and management capabilities of this platform give marketers like us everything we need to run precise campaigns that give you maximum ROI. Seeing that CAYK is a Google Partner and our PPC experts are fully Google Ads Certified, we’re the perfect team for the job! Still, we wouldn’t fully be doing that job if we didn’t help you understand exactly how PPC works in practice.
Anatomy of a PPC Campaign
The process of advertising your business with Google’s PPC system revolves around planning and executing campaigns. We may, for instance, initiate a campaign with the goal of driving traffic towards pages on your business website that have been optimized to facilitate specific conversions. A campaign is made up of one or more ad groups, with each group corresponding to, say, a particular product or service being advertised. Within a given ad group will be one or more advertisements that are connected to a set of relevant keywords. Each advertisement will have its own copy and will link to a landing page. The exact architecture of a campaign can vary in a number of ways, but the important part is recognizing these six major components.
Your PPC Advertising in Action
Let’s take a look at how those components function in an ideal situation. Through savvy research & campaign strategy, our friendly neighborhood PPC experts select relevant keywords that are perfect for what you’re advertising in an “ad group”. With smart budgeting, they set the highest value you’re willing to spend for a click, also known as a maximum CPC bid (short for “cost-per-click”). Using specific technical advertising expertise, they write attention-grabbing copy & design your advertisements to ensure high click-through rates (or “CTR”, the percentage of people seeing the advertisement who click it). Through top-of-the-line targeting and CRO, they ensure that your ads lead to relevant, engaging landing pages. So far so good, but your advertisements are not alone!
When multiple parties bid on a certain set of keywords, and a user carries out a search that is relevant to them, an instantaneous auction takes place. Within a fraction of a second, the all-powerful hive mind of Google formulates what is called an “ad rank” for each advertisements placed by each organization. This is calculated by taking your max CPC bid & multiplying it by the quality score of your advertisement, which is determined by its predicted relevance, click-through rate, & the effectiveness of its corresponding landing page. The higher an advertisement is ranked with this formula, the better its position will be in search results, & the more likely it is to be clicked on.
Making the Most of PPC
Perhaps your ad relevance needs to be enhanced by adding negative keywords, which ensure that your advertisements appear in the searches that you want rather than the ones you don’t. Maybe your business is highly weather dependant and would benefit from weather based advertising optimization. Maybe some keywords are costing you more than they’re worth, so they should be removed. Ad rank not hitting the mark? Extra functions and bits of information called extensions can be implemented in your advertisements, improving relevance and CTR. Your PPC efforts can even be refined with AB split tests, and don’t even get us started on the importance of remarketing.
In a nutshell, if PPC is done right, everyone wins. It incentivizes marketers to develop actionable goals, research and choose keywords carefully, and create advertisements of the highest quality. The search engine earns ad revenue, users find the products and services they need, and business owners like you get new customers. In fact, almost half of all clicks go to the top three advertisements on search engine results pages. When the CAYK team works with you to combine high-performing advertising campaigns with high-converting landing pages, your business reaps the rewards.
Custom PPC Campaigns from CAYK
PPC is a tricky, competitive, and often intensive process, and it requires a great deal of training and experience to get right. When you have an advertisement-savvy marketing team like CAYK by your side, you can leave all the technical stuff to us. We’ll help you devise actionable conversion goals for your business and knock them out of the park with fantastic PPC campaigns and substantial results. Get in touch with our online advertising specialists today!
Conversion Goals & Objectives
The Right Conversions
The short answer: Absolutely. But you don’t have to just take our word for it. There are plenty of real-world split tests to look towards as examples of what this process can reveal. In 2007, search specialist AJ Kohn ran an A/B split test between two nearly identical sets of advertisements in a Google Ads campaign. It revealed that advertisements using capitalization in their website name (www.WebsiteName.com) earned a 53% higher click through rate than those using lowercase.
How a Lead Becomes a Sale
What if your business sells products to customers directly on your site? Then your leads can become customers in the blink of an eye. This means that the conversion goals shaping your advertisements, website, and landing pages need to revolve around creating a seamless and highly persuasive experience. Email address signups are an especially important conversion goal here, as they’ll enable to you send reminders to shoppers who have abandoned their carts.
Powerful Tools, Actionable Goals
Set & Achieve Your Conversion Goals with CAYK
Everyone wants today’s marketing tools to get them more conversions at the lowest possible cost, but not everyone utilizes those tools in the right ways. Using excellent advertising campaign strategy, sharp web design and development, and the latest analytics tools, the CAYK team has perfected an approach to conversion goals and tracking that delivers revenue to our clients at a fantastic value. Contact us to get the most out of your marketing strategy today!
Google Ads
Considering how essential they are to the success of a business, it’s no surprise that advertising has become incredibly sophisticated in the digital age. Whether on YouTube, search engines, or almost any kind of website in general, there are countless places online for you to capture the attention of your leads with persuasive, engaging advertisements. You need to seize that opportunity and make your voice heard. Using Google Ads, the advertising experts at CAYK can help you do it.
Google Ads 101
Google Ads is built primarily around an auction-based form of advertising called pay-per-click. Under this model, you only pay an advertising fee (about $2 on average for search ads) when your advertisement is clicked by a user. Skillful budgeting, bidding, & keyword research are essential to your success. Google also provides powerful management tools that allow us to closely track & continuously improve your performance. For marketers who want to truly master these tools, Google offers rigorous education & testing processes, making our Google Ads Certified technicians your best possible option for the profitability of your campaigns.
“Wait a second,” you may be shouting at your computer screen, “exactly how far does a Google Ad campaign reach? When I work with CAYK on my advertising strategy, where will my advertisements show up, and why does it matter?” First of all, no need to yell. Secondly, we’re glad you asked!
In Google Search Results
Remember those billions of searches we mentioned? The ones that happen on Google every day? Each of them yields a search engine results page (or SERP for short), and as you’ve no doubt noticed, these are adorned with advertisements relevant to the words you use in your search. Google Ads allows us to advertise your business on these pages through what’s known as the Google Search Network, the definitive example of pay-per-click advertising. As noted in our explanation of PPC, we use this system to create and organize advertisements, connect them with strategically chosen keywords, and bid to get you the best value for a click.
This gives you direct access to one of the most valuable advertising spaces in the world. Yet it’s more than just a space — it’s a moment in time. When Google results are displayed for a lead, this is a crucial early stage in the sales funnel. It’s where countless discoveries and first impressions are made when someone needs a product or service, wants to weigh their options, or simply wants an answer to a question. Clicking an advertisement is as easy and immediate as clicking an organic search result, so when CAYK is there to help you make your search ads as persuasive and relevant as possible, you’ve got that lead in the palm of your hand.
On Sites Across the Web
Appreciating display ads is about more than just the sheer quantity of their reach. It’s also about the quality. Because these advertisements are displayed based on their relevance to the website being browsed, we can help you reach leads who are already engaging with the websites they love. This provides excellent opportunities for targeting & improving relevance based on user interests, demographics, and online activity. If Kate is reading tips on a wedding planning blog and sees an advertisement for your invitation design service, it’s the perfect moment for a perfect match!
On top of this, the Display Network goes beyond the written word format of search ads by also allowing image-based ads. Our Google Ads specialists can leverage this versatility (and the artistry of our in-house designers) to encapsulate the brand of your business, complementing your ad copy with rich, eye-catching visuals. Combine this with the impressive reach of the Display Network and the CAYK team has an incredible tool not only for getting you conversions and revenue, but for developing your brand awareness and building your audience.
Even on YouTube
Once again, this branch of your Google Ads strategy is as notable for its quality as for its quantity. Like any search engine, leads are using YouTube to find answers to questions, check out product comparisons and reviews, get tutorials, and more. Those billions of daily video views happen because people are engaging with video content relevant to their interests. This makes YouTube another critical place and time for capturing potential customers. While this advertisement system uses a pricing model different from PPC, our team can use it to your advantage with the same budgeting prowess, keyword research skills, and analytics expertise. You’ll capture the most relevant, high-quality leads possible on the world’s largest hub for visual content!
Its Fullest Potential
CAYK’s approach to Google Ads isn’t just about utilizing it on a surface level and calling it a day. We formulate extensive advertising plans & set conversion goals so that Google Ads empowers your marketing strategy to its fullest potential. Crucially, we complement your advertising strategy with top-of-the-line SEO to balance paid traffic with organic traffic and CRO to ensure that the landing pages your advertisements link to can actually drive conversions and sales. Our tracking, analysis, and AB split testing will give you all of the insight you need into your performance and progress. Still, we’d be giving you the short end of the stick if we stopped there.
With our experience in marketing automation & remarketing, we can ensure that your Google Ads campaigns will not only be more efficient than ever, they’ll target & nurture users with highly relevant advertisements based on past engagement with your site & your brand. Capturing local customers is essential for a small business, so your campaigns will be built to perform beautifully for terms like “near me” & “
CAYK: Google Partner, Google Ads Certified!
For years, the in-house Google Ads Certified team at CAYK has leveraged this powerful platform to stunning results. We’ve planned, executed, and managed countless advertising campaigns that establish new levels of notoriety and yield excellent ROI for businesses across Calgary. Our status as a Google Partner even allows us to give you the edge on your competition and deliver the best possible value from Google’s advertising tools. Schedule a consultation with us today!
Social Media Advertising
More than Meets the Eye
In 2018, global social media advertising revenue hit nearly $27 billion US. Sounds about right, considering the fact that over 2 billion social media accounts are currently active. Businesses across the board have found paid social to be essential in their marketing strategies, with nearly half of small businesses using it and almost all business with more than 51 employees investing in social media for their success. Plus, with 91% of all social media users accessing social media via mobile, it’s absolutely essential for tapping into the mobile traffic that makes up half of all traffic worldwide. With a social media advertising strategy from CAYK, you’ll never miss out on all that visibility. You also won’t fall behind those of your competitors who have already caught on!
Advertising on Facebook
With over 2 billion active users and over $16 billion in advertising revenue at the end of 2018, the world’s largest social network has become nothing less than a superpower of online advertisements. The average Facebook user clicks on 10 Facebook ads every month, and a 2017 study of American consumers found that nearly 48% of people’s most recent product purchase was made via a Facebook post. It’s easy to see why the platform has garnered more than 7 million active advertisers!
Still, one does not replace the other. Facebook has several tricks up its sleeve that make it the perfect example of how CAYK can complement your Google Ads strategy with social media advertisements.
It's a Targeting Powerhouse
Age, gender, location, interests, occupation, & more – Facebook is a massive database of demographic data. Can we use that data to segment and target your audience? Absolutely. Facebook allows us to carry out targeted campaigns with amazing specificity. This is a lifesaver for small or medium sized businesses, letting you focus on leads who are local and most likely to find your products or services relevant. Facebook can even target audiences for you based on the known traits of existing customers or leads who have previously engaged with your advertisements.
It's Driven By Visuals
Like all social networks, Facebook is also highly visual in nature. While advertisements on the Google Display Network also allow images, social media is where people are far more likely to be expecting rich visual information like photos and videos. Facebook gives our team the perfect opportunity to craft eye-catching advertisements and use great visuals in boosted posts from your company’s profile, ensuring that your brand can distinguish itself in the timelines of countless users. This is especially important when using social media advertisements to shine a light on your content.
It Helps You Get Seen
Plan, Test, Track, and Report!
Like any other form of online advertisement, paid social should never be a shot in the dark. It requires sharp campaign planning, actionable conversion goals, and identification of the right KPIs, not to mention thorough testing, tracking, and reporting. With a combination of Google Analytics, the integrated analytics tools within your social platforms, and more, we’ll see to it that your company’s social media advertising campaigns are data-driven and built to succeed. It’s also our promise to keep you fully updated and informed on your performance and progress, working with you to adjust and enhance your social media advertising strategy for the highest possible value.
Social Media Advertising from CAYK
