Ads that work harder for your money
With so many keywords, platforms and options, it can be difficult to find a solution to manage and optimise your paid search ad spend. For example, First Choice, the UK’s leading leisure travel company, needed to manage over a million keywords in their online advertising campaigns.
“We estimated that to optimise every keyword in our account it would take around 35 days, just to do once. We clearly needed something to help us with that” — Chris Fensome, TUI Travel UK (parent company of First Choice)
First Choice and the Adobe Media Optimizer team worked together to automate their paid search campaigns, leading to some impressive results including an increased CTR of 56% in just four months. Watch this short video to learn more.
So what should brands focus on to get the most out of their paid search campaigns? Here are our top tips:
- Link your ads with your inventory
New technology means advertisers can link directly to stock information and automate the process so ads are always up-to-date. Customers no longer click to find an offer has ended and advertisers no longer lose budget with inaccurate pay-per-click ads. - Tailor results to customer intent
It’s important to know where a customer is in the purchase funnel – if they are only doing research, don’t send them through to inventory. Different levels of messaging for different levels of the funnel will help you and your potential customers. Don’t forget about retargeting – your returning customers are as valuable as new ones. Don’t neglect ads for those who have already visited or purchased, but instead use stronger call-to-action for retargeting ads. - A lot happens before the conversion click
60–90% of customers research their purchase through a search engine. It’s important to understand the journey a customer will take before making an online purchase. Four to six interactions might take place before a conversion click, so take the user journey into consideration when planning display and search campaigns. - **Optimise on more than one channel, and do it effectively
**Mobile and tablet use is having a huge impact on ensuring campaigns are optimised for cross platform. Don’t serve an ad to a mobile that puts users through to a non-mobile site. It’s up to your brand to deliver the same information over multiple channels, so ensure product information and prices are the same, regardless of the platform. When running multi-channel marketing campaigns, be sure your search and display ads are targeting for search terms from the campaign – if you don’t do it, your competitors will. And with the launch of Google enhanced campaigns, make sure you use mobile multiplier to adjust the mobile bid and take advantage of the lower cost of the mobile device. - Connect offline with online
Yahoo! research found that up to 60% of sales are researched online and purchased offline. You can track this with special offers and redemption codes for online or in-store use. This will help you see which search terms customers use, even if they don’t buy online. - Don’t forget about social
Platforms like Facebook have come a long way as a performance marketing channel. It offers specific targeting such as interest and demographic for a relatively low cost. Geo-targeting means ads can be location specific down to the city. You can even gather customer opt-ins through offers, check-in deals and sweepstakes.
We all wish we had more, but maybe the solution is spending what you have more wisely. Stay on point, on time and on budget with Adobe Media Optimizer.