Category: Enterprise

There’s no guaranteed formula for creating a perfect “unicorn ad”. However, by learning from best practices and continuously refining your work, one can master the art of Ad-Creation. Here are some quick tips and tricks that have proven to improve the Click-Through Rate (CTR) of ads as well as increase the Quality Score (QS) of your Keywords.

1. Exclamation Points (!) & Question Marks(?) – USE THEM!

You are limited to one exclamation point in your ad description. Make sure you use it! As for question marks, they can be used either in the ad description or headline. But, they have been proven most effective in the headline. By placing them there, they grab the attention of your potential client by sparking their curiosity. This simple trick will help to kick-start your journey to a noticeably increased CTR.

2. Use Numbers, Currencies And Percentages

Use numbers, with currencies or a percentage sign, in order to make your ads stand out and provide your brand with increased credibility – “100% of the time”!

3. Use Keywords Or Close Synonyms

Your goal is to be as relevant as possible by providing exactly what your users are looking for. This is particularly relevant for desktop ads description where search terms and their close synonyms are bolded in the search query. This adjustment to your ads can take time, but it is proven to increase your visibility!

4. Create Effective Headlines

Headlines 1 and 2 are the first items noticed by users. Take your time to create them in order to be certain that they grab everyone’s attention! Most users don’t read past the headlines, so make certain to optimize and test them first. If you are short on time, and you’re looking for the biggest impact – focus on writing brief and clear goal-oriented headlines!

5. Use A CTA (Call-To-Action) In The Headline

Although you can’t use an exclamation point in your headlines, you can still make a major impact utilizing a Call-To-Action. It’s surprising how CTA’s improve results. See for yourself!

6. Use Relevant Final URLs

Go the extra mile and determine if your ads are using the most relevant final URL to users’ search queries. You lose customers with every additional click, so minimize the distance between where the customer journey begins and ends.

For example: When someone searches for “Nike sports shoes”, they should land on a relevant page showing Nike shoes, and not a miscellaneous shoe listing or an inconsequential page.

7. Maximize Ad Extensions

The more extensions you have, the more real estate your ad occupies in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). It’s best to invest the time to add all possible extension types to your account. Moreover, adding extensions on the Account Level will guarantee they will be shown in all campaigns.

Structured snippet extension: You can add additional extension types. You are not limited to only one. Sometimes your ad will be shown with multiple types of snippets at the same time.

Sitelink extension: Be certain to fill in the 1st and 2nd description lines, not only the site link text. When your Quality Score is high enough, Google will show expanded site links with your ads.

8. Create Several Ads Per Adgroup

Aim to have at least three different ads in each Ad group and take advantage of ad rotation optimization. We heard this tip straight from Google– and we have seen the results that back it up!

Essentially, ad variations allow you to increase the effectiveness of your ads as they are matched to the most relevant people searching on Google. This means you’ll be able to increase your reach which would cause your ads to perform better, or, more simply, increase returns on your ad spend.

9. A/B testing

Test the effectiveness of your ad ideas by creating copies of an ad while changing a single detail between them ( an exclamation point versus a period, different call to action, etc…). This way you’ll know which part of your ad made the difference and performed better, helping you to optimize your advertisements.

For example: Use the same description while testing different ideas for Headline 1 – after finding the winning headline, test different ideas for Headline 2, then follow with optimizing the description with your proven Headlines.

10. Don’t Use All Of Your Space

If you have a line or phrase that sounds great, it’s unnecessary to add additional words to fill the space available. If you can deliver your message effectively and succinctly – set your baseline and A/B test from there to measure how it performs!

Time Managment

By using AdScale’s automation for bid and budget management, you will increase your time to concentrate on ad testing and optimization while knowing the important details are being handled. Let AdScale do the heavy lifting by addressing these issues while you maximize results!

Go to adscale.com and try our 30-day free trial. Or, for an in-depth product walkthrough– schedule a demo today!

Do you know…

• how much every customer is worth to you?
• how much you should spend to gain a new customer?
• your retention cost for existing customers?
• how to reduce your churn rate?
• how to calculate Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)?

If you answered “no” to any of these questions, you need to read this simple guide.

Retention Value

“Acquiring New Customers Can Cost 25 Times More Than Retaining Them”
(Harvard Business Review, 2016)

After a customer relationship is established, his value will increase the longer you manage to retain him. So, get to know your audience – what they want, at what price, and at what frequency. Over a year’s time, a statistical metric will emerge, which enables the prediction of the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

Customer Lifetime Value Definition:

1. The CLV is the prediction of the net profit attributed to a customer’s relationship for the lifetime of their relationship with a business.
2. The present value of the future cash-flows attributed to the customer during their entire relationship with the company

This measure is the maximum amount you can spend on retention, for the duration of your customer’s relationship. If the business spends the full CLV on retaining each customer, this will produce zero profit. Therefore, striking the right balance is paramount, as the less you spend – the more you will earn, but if you underspend – you are more likely to lose the customer.
This guide shows how to predict the maximum amount a business should spend to retain its customers.

So how do you predict the maximum amount a business should spend to retain your customers for profitability and sustainability?

There are 2 different approaches to calculating CLV, depending on what results from a business is seeking and how much data they have:

The Simple Approach – Linear Fixed Assumptions

The basic approach for measuring CLV: Average Order Value X Average Margin X Amount of Purchases per Year X Annual Retention Rate X Lifetime (in Years)

Average Order Value: Average amount in ($) the client spends on orders
Average Margin: Average amount of profit margin of the business per sale
Amount of Purchases/ Year: # of times the clients order from this business
Annual Retention Rate: Average retention rate is (1-Average Churn Rate)
Lifetime: Average amount of years the business retains each customer

The Average Retention Rate is (1-Average Churn Rate).
I.e.: In the simple model we assume that the future churn rate is linear and equivalent to the churn rate of the first year. You might want to deduct a coefficient for unexpected churn in the first month.

Example: Your client bought your product for $50 in February, $30 in August, and $40 in November.
This means you had an average of 3 purchases over the year for an average price of $40 = ($50+$30+$40)/3

Furthermore, you should assume two more things:
1. How many years the client will stay with you on average
2. Your average gross margin for your product

Assumptions for this example:
1. 20% of your new clients leave during this year = 20% average churn rate
2. -> Annual retention rate = 1- churn rate = 1-20% = 80%
3. Average client stays for 5 years with the business
4. Average profit margin is 25%

Customer Lifetime Value = Avg Amount x Avg # of Purchases x Retention rate x Margin x Lifetime
CLV = $40 x 3 x 80% x 0.25 x 5 = $120

A CLV of $120 would allow a budget of up to $120, to retain each client over a 5-year average lifetime. And if you spend less and retain him longer – you make a bigger profit!

Actual Vs Average

In comparison to the Simple approach, using the actual figures per customer determines a more accurate lifetime value.

You will substitute the average amounts with the total of the actual amounts.

This approach is more common for long-standing businesses, which can utilize supported data over a longer time frame. It is also common to use the real retention rate; as they often change from year-to-year. Substitute these stats in the above formula.

These substitutions will provide a more accurate lifetime value. Now, you are able to strategize which customers to take on and how much you’re willing to spend to retain them.

The Actual Cost
For a more comprehensive approach, you can deduct marketing and acquisition costs from your CLV.

To determine acquisition cost, calculate the total amount spent over a period of acquisition time. Divide this amount by the number of new customers acquired during the same period.

This approach is useful for assessing acquisition strategies and planning new and more effective approaches – while keeping in mind the potential profit of a client over the whole lifetime period and the amount necessary to retain customers.

CLV Applied
Use your customer’s lifetime value metric to revamp retention strategies. You have the ability to target your audience efficiently and successfully provide them with what they’re looking for – when they’re looking for it. In turn, you grow their CLV, loyalty, and your bottom line!

So Now, We Know Whom To Target And Where To Bolster Our Budget Allocation. Go Get ‘em!

As we know, at AdScale, how hard it is to find new customers and retain them, we have built powerful tools to assist you in both! Ask us about our free audit report which can assist you to retain customers, as well as attract new ones!

Go to adscale.com and try our 30-day free trial
For an in-depth product walkthrough – schedule a demo today!

Whether creating a large number of campaigns from scratch or auditing a Google Ads account for a big client, it’s easy to omit this simple but essential step: checking a campaign’s configuration. Beware! The wrong configuration seriously affects your campaign’s performance – it’s worth the additional five minutes to optimize your configuration settings.

Getting Started

The default settings for new (search) campaigns -either created via the web interface or the Editor- will not optimally serve our needs. Normally, we make short order of the campaign’s Bid Strategy, Budgets, and Geotargeting and overlook other important settings. So here’s a quick list of important (and often omitted) settings to configure:

1. Campaign Type

Make sure campaigns are configured as “Search Network only” and not as the default “Search Network with Display Select”. “Display Select” will bring you loads of low-quality, low-intent traffic, which you don’t want in your search campaigns.

2. Device Bid Adjustments

If your campaign structure is using a granular approach, and campaigns are separated by device types – correctly configure your device targeting. This is vital!

3. Enhanced CPC

For campaigns managed with manual CPC/CPA bidding, make sure that the Enhanced CPC option is configured correctly. From accounts we manage here, we’ve learned that ECPC never worked as intended – it always resulted in an increase of CPCs and CPAs. We recommend disabling it unless you are absolutely certain it works for you.

4. Language Targeting

This setting is highly dependent on the countries you are targeting and the type of product/service you are advertising – be sure it’s configured accordingly.

We have seen that targeting “all languages” never significantly impacted our campaigns’ performance but always increased traffic.

In specific cases, it is best practice to target specific languages.

5. Targeting & Exclusion Methods

In most cases, to get geographically-relevant traffic, it is best to select “People in your targeted/excluded locations”.

Take, for example, a US car rental company that wants to target UK tourists that will need transportation when arriving in the States. The best practice is to create a separate campaign, targeting the UK, with relevant keywords like [us car rental], [rent a car in the USA], and so on.

Going A Step Beyond

So why settle for less? Take a look under the hood – check your campaign’s configuration settings. A little extra time/attention and your campaign will deliver big results!

Ready to get started? Try our 30-day free trial
For an in-depth product walk-through – schedule a demo today!

In SEM, unlike in SEO, negative keywords are a vital component of a successful PPC activity and a healthy AdWords account. However, most PPC managers don’t understand how impactful a thorough list of negative keywords can be.

Read on for tips that you can incorporate into your SEM game:

Positive From The Negative

It’s much easier to start working on your negative keywords with an account that has historical data and enough clicks to deep dive into search queries reports. Whether manually, or with our Tweak & Fix module, you can build your optimal list quickly.

But what if you want to start a new account or campaign for a niche you have no data for – should you just sit and wait until enough clicks accumulate?

As with positive keywords – you can either start running on broads/phrases and gradually gather exacts from search queries or you can be proactive and make thorough keyword research, starting with 1000+ exacts from the get-go.

Finding The Wrong Words

So, how can you do initial negative keyword research? How do you find ideas for negatives?

Start with these steps:

1. General Negatives

There are some negatives that will fit in 80% of AdWords accounts, in most niches. These words are relatively easy to figure out. The first step is to think of general searches that might contain some of your desired words – the final meaning/intent is not related to your service/product. Those searches could be for music or videos, movies, places, job applications, some general or educational info, etc.

Here’s a brief example list to give you some thought direction:

“youtube” “Wikipedia” “mp3” “podcast” “videos” “sex” “xxx” “porn” “nude” “naked” “affiliate” bot” “malware” “scam” “jobs” “positions” “virus”

2. Keyword Planner

Another great way to get ideas for negatives is actually during your positive keywords research.

Keyword Planner will suggest to you quite a few irrelevant keywords – you can use as ideas for negatives.

Get specific! Look for places where your service/product does not operate/get delivered. You can find negatives for similar services offering features you do not provide.

3. High Volume Returns

Dig deeper by taking your top 5 high-volume keywords and checking them with keywordtool.io or ubersuggest.

These tools will generate a big list of long-tail keywords, sourced from Google search autocomplete. Get the search volume for these keywords -use keyword tool– and look for the ones with big/significant volume. Here you will find more ideas for negatives relevant to your product and niche.

Less Is More

Remember it’s not always what you include, but what you exclude, that will deliver results.

Ready for positive results? See for yourself with our 30-day free trial
For an in-depth product walkthrough – schedule a demo today!

Our sophisticated algorithms are working hard to improve your Google Ads campaigns by adjusting bids and budgets, but there are still many things that can be done on your side to further improve performance!

You’re probably wondering:
“What more can I do?”
Well, we can start by getting to know AdScale’s Tweak & Fix module.

Digital Consultant

The Tweak & Fix module is your digital consultant. It rigorously examines your campaigns and makes suggestions to improve your account and campaign structure. This module is “where it’s at” to find suggestions that will bolster your bottom line.

1-Click Fix

To assist and save your time, we’ve expanded our Tweak & Fix module to include additional 1-click applicable recommendations and fixes.

Whether it’s adding new positive or negative keywords, pausing duplicates or adding/excluding search partners to certain campaigns – all recommendations are based on your account’s statistics and are mathematically proven to increase your quality scores and performance.

Simply Click And Optimize!

We’ve been hard at work expanding and improving Tweak & Fix recommendations and would love to hear your feedback. Let us know what you think.

If you aren’t using our optimization platform yet  – you’re invited to test our upgraded Tweak & Fix module via our 30-day free trial!

The most competitive players in the world of PPC advertising harness the power of automation to maximize their AdWords campaigns. Here at AdScale, our machine learning platform delivers results beyond what is capable of manually managed campaigns. However, the following steps are helpful for digital marketers using (almost) any automation platform.

The Real Benefits Of Automation

With the implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) the digital marketing landscape has been transformed. We are no longer in the dark, guessing, misdirecting ad budgets, and wasting effort. Now AI tactically decides for us – making dynamic bid adjustments based on behavioral statistics. But we shouldn’t think of AI automation as putting our business on autopilot. We should feel empowered by it, seeing ourselves in the cockpit – piloting our campaigns to greater heights.

Laser-Focused Targeting

Through optimizing your Adwords with automation, you now have time to laser-focus your campaigns. Based on the accounts we manage here at AdScale, those who go beyond with their campaigns are paying attention to these important details. Here’s what to look for:

1. Timing Is Everything

Are you marketing to multiple time zones? Separate your campaigns according to who is awake and who is asleep.

2. At Home Or On-the-Go

Users’ activity and “readiness to convert” are different throughout the day, and significantly depend on the device they use. Split your campaigns to target desktop and mobile separately.

3. Boys Vs. Girls

Behavioral patterns of shoppers give us keen insight – use this information to focus your campaign according to gender.

Above & Beyond

Let automation do the heavy lifting while your business gains the insight necessary to dig into the details. We at AdScale watch our clients’ business soar by applying these accuracy tips to their campaigns. While some might say, “don’t sweat the details” – this precise information leverages your business above and beyond the competition.

Ready For Results?

See for yourself with our 30-day free trial and get that robot to work for you!
For an in-depth product walkthrough – schedule a demo today!

A month ago, I was spending the weekend with family in Long Island, NY. I woke up in the morning, to find that the weatherman was wrong and the flurries we were expecting turned into an overnight snowstorm. The sidewalk and driveway, car included, were buried under a foot and a half of snow.

I always enjoy Winter, the white powder, the look of purity, and the calm that comes with heavy snowfall. While enjoying my morning coffee, I was watching my uncle clearing the snow around my car and sidewalk using his 212cc engine red snowblower, managing to dig my car out and plowing a path in no time. Sitting next to the window, I also watched his neighbor, Mr. K., grabbing an old snow shovel and attacking the white monster manually. With cold air on his skin and looking through the cloud that was his breath, he plunged his shovel into the snow. Starting with the front door, working his way to the porch and stairs. He was moving, singing, and sweating and it seemed that he had a great time and got a good workout at the same time. Both men started the work simultaneously. While my uncle was done after a bit less than one hour, Mr. K. was still shoveling when his wife called him in for lunch. I was in shock, he had dug for hours and it seemed like all that work had been done, only made a dent in the snow.

At lunch, I asked my uncle about his neighbor and why he’s not using a more technologically advanced approach (e.g. snowblower) to tackle this time-consuming and redundant task of clearing a path in the winter months. The answer was that Mr. K. feels the need to do all the work personally to ensure the job was done.
Yesterday, I had a meeting with a mid-size media agency, who I approached concerning our automation and optimization software for Digital Advertisement. To my surprise, I was introduced to Mr. K. who is the CMO of the company!!!

I was in a pickle. What should I do? On the one hand, I know that AdScale’s automation software could assist Mr. K and his employees to free up important time and achieve better results. On the other hand, from my experience last month, Mr. K. is the kind of man who shovels snow manually even so that there are better and more efficient ways available.
As you can imagine – that was a hard sell.

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Don’t be Mr. K.

There was a great deal of confusion for AdWords managers upon the introduction of last year’s 2x budget change.
Despite Google’s attempt at clarifying the change, many questions remained:
What happens if new campaigns are opened in the middle of the month? And what about campaigns scheduled to run on certain days of the week – will the monthly charging limit be adjusted accordingly?
We’re well aware that even with more traffic and increased Ad spend for specific days, this will not guarantee a higher rate of conversion.
What’s the solution?

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Gaining Clarity

AdScale’s smart budget management calculates a budget for every day of the month in advanc. This is based on historical data and sophisticated algorithms.
Recent performance trends are also taken into consideration. Your campaigns’ budgets are adjusted accordingly each day.
This way you will know exactly how much your Ad spend is for each day of the month.
AdScale’s adaptive budget management algorithms ensure control over your budgets – saving your funds from low-quality traffic.

Get account clarity!
See for yourself with a 30-day free trial!

Every media agency today faces a growing list of challenges that keep it from scaling its success: digital margins are too low, client needs are varying, aggressive competition increases customer churn, cost of sales is too high and the list goes on.

So What Is The Key To Success That Helps Many Media Agencies To Increase Margins And Scale?

If I would tell you that you can free 90% of your staff’s time and increase customer satisfaction at a cost of 1 working hour only, would you adopt that solution, or would you look for reasons why not? Would you pick the opportunity, or would you skip it?

Meet AdScale, an automation and optimization platform for Google AdWords, designed to help media agencies compete and succeed in today’s fast-moving competitive market.

How Can AdScale Help You Upscale Your Agency?

By automating the most time-consuming tasks and optimizing your accounts 24/7, AdScale saves 90% of your time at a surprisingly competitive price (see the end of the article for details).

Here are some samples of how AdScale can help you:

1) Automated Budget Management

• Monthly budget planning based on past performance
• On-going budget optimization based on real time results
• Easy control with cross-account budget utilization dashboards

2) Automated Bid Optimization

• Advanced real-time AI algorithms
• 24/7 automated bid optimization
• Easy control with powerful policies & tools

3) Automated Quality Score Improvements

• Automated analysis of search query reports
• Creation of new keywords and negatives
• Ongoing account structure optimization

4) Automated Click Fraud Prevention

• Live monitoring of all IP Traffic
• Real-time analysis of suspicious IP addresses
• Automated blocking of fraudulent IPs and bots

5) Automated Reporting

• Powerful white label report generator
• Fully customizable reports
• Automated and scheduled distribution to customers

6) Automated Sales Acceleration Tool

No matter how good your sales pitch is, people prefer to purchase your services when you can show them how much of an added value you can provide. AdScale’s sales booster provides exactly that. The client can connect his existing AdWords account to your system, and receive, a detailed white-labeled analysis of his account including a clear estimation of the optimization potential. By deploying it on your website, you can scale the process and easily attract new clients.

Now For The Good Part: What Is The Cost For All Of That?

As little as $49 /Account /Month (or even less)…

Yes, less than the cost of 1 working hour!

So, are you ready to take the opportunity and scale your business?

For more info visit adscale.com