Connect with us

MARKETING

How Learning Python Can Improve Your PPC Campaigns

Published

on

Python has a major focus in SEO but what about PPC? The two disciplines are often treated as polar opposites but they share common goals and adding a bit of Python to a PPC campaign can do wonders for improving conversions, CTR, and time spent.

But before we have a look at how Python can boost your PPC performance, we need to outline what the language is all about.

What is Python?

Python is a programming language created by Guido van Rossum in the 1980s and publicly released in 1991. van Rossum wanted Python to emphasize code readability with five philosophical pillars:

  • Beautiful is better than ugly
  • Explicit is better than implicit
  • Simple is better than complex
  • Complex is better than complicated
  • Readability counts

Its structure and syntax help users to write logical code regardless of project size.

Companies that use Python include Google (naturally), Netflix, YouTube, NASA, IBM, Mozilla, and Disney.

Is it easy to learn?

The entry-level for Python is very low. Everything is based on logic and the language shares a lot of its syntax with other well-known languages such as JavaScript and C++. And if there isn’t a function that can solve your problem, you can create your own.

How do I install it?

As Jacob Fairclough said, Python can be difficult to install for some users. But that depends on your operating system.

Advertisement

For most Mac users, Python comes built-in so you can use your Terminal to access it. That’s not the case for Windows users. The recommended way is via Anaconda as this also installs a lot of useful libraries to use (which I’ll explain in more detail later).

Google has its own environment as well called Google Colab.

Python techniques to help your PPC campaigns

In the words of Aristotle, “for the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them”. And Python is no exception. Practicing Python in SEO is common practice and it’s the same for PPC.

Understanding other languages is important but Python can save professionals a lot of time by automating jobs that would normally take hours.

The amount of data you can obtain from a PPC campaign can grow very quickly so a way to organize and automate it into a logical structure would make everyone’s lives a lot easier in the long run.

Two of the biggest applications of Python are AI and machine learning and they’re also the main bridges between the language and PPC. As Danielle Strouther said in her article AI For PPC Is Only Useful If You Use External Tools, “using AI for PPC is no longer an option. It’s a necessity.” So that’s what we’ll look at – integrating Python with external tools and software.

Advertisement

Other things you can do with Python that can help you with PPC management includes:

  • Data scraping
  • Data analysis and mining
  • Data visualization
  • Natural language processing (NLP)

Python + Google Ads

We all know how laborious Google Ads management can be. So Google created an API for its ad platform so users can automate a wide range of PPC-related tasks. You can find a list of them on the Client Library page.

One programmer created a script for KPI reporting which would come in handy for clients, shareholders, and colleagues.

Python + Google Search Console

When you write PPC ads, you want them to convert so your ROI can be as high as possible. Search data from Search Console can help find areas to improve or examples of success to capitalize on.

Passion Digital created a script that analyses search queries from Search Console to gain insights to improve SEO and PPC performance. It does this by finding keywords and phrases with poor conversion rates and CPA using those terms.

Python + Excel/Google Sheets

One of the most common Python workflow combos involves Excel and Google Sheets.

As data can be exported as CSV files and spreadsheets by most external tools, it’s easy to import them into a spreadsheet program. And Python loves data.

Advertisement

The list of ways to use Python and Excel with PPC data is exhaustive. You could use it to project future trends, CTR prediction, campaign creation, keyword generation, bid modifying, account structure analysis, customer match lists, geolocation targeting.

Python + Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio is a powerful tool for data visualization and it’s free to use. So combining it with Python means a streamlined approach to data viz and reporting.

There are also paid tools like Panoply which can integrate Data Studio and Python along with a multitude of services like Salesforce, Zendesk, and Google Analytics. Suddenly you have a large network of data from every department – sales, dev, customer support, project management, design, web analytics. Phew!

You can even spy on your competitors using Python and create PPC reports and graphs with Data Studio to show the results.

Python + Google

The SERPs are more than just a display of results. They can be used as their own data source and give an insight into how well you and your competitors are doing.

With APIs like Serpstack, you can extract data about ads from any SERP and analyze things like position, title and description optimization, sitelinks, and displayed URLs. You can also leverage this with organic results to find new potential keywords you can bid on and improve your campaigns.

Advertisement

Python + Facebook

In 2017, Facebook made its Prophet open source. The forecasting tool is accessible through Python and R (another programming language) and is optimized for businesses to forecast trends, whether they’re hourly, daily, weekly, or seasonal.

It’s highly advanced and mainly for large scale business use but if you have the expertise and the resources, Prophet has the potential to streamline major paid campaigns.

Useful libraries, modules, and APIs

Vanilla Python can do most jobs but its power lies in all the libraries, modules and APIs you can use. Although they all share similarities, they’re all different additions. A module is a Python file containing functions, variables, and methods, a library is a collection of modules and pre-defined functions that let you perform actions without writing the code yourself, while an API is an interface set of standards and instructions.

Here’s a list of some useful ones you can use.

  • Pandas (library) – Pandas is an open-source library that makes data structures and data analysis tools. You can make tables, create ordered and unordered data series and “dataframes”, join, merge, and split them. It’s probably the most flexible data analysis tool to have if you’re using Python.
  • CSV (module) – This module goes hand-in-hand with pandas as it allows you to export data into a CSV.
  • Requests (library) – Requests is a must if you’re scraping web data. It sends requests to HTTP pages, allowing you access to pull anything from a webpage. If you’re planning to scrape SERP data, it’s an essential library to use.
  • Beautiful Soup (library) – Beautiful Soup is the companion to requests, letting you take out everything inside an HTTP page.
  • Serpstack (API) – The serpstack API allows you to scrape Google SERP data in real-time and at scale and it lets you export the data in JSON and CSV formats (depending on your account level).
  • Google APIs (API) – Google being Google, they have a library of APIs you can use for all kinds of things.
  • TensorFlow (library) – One of the best libraries for machine learning.
  • SciKit Learn (library) – Another machine learning library for predictive data analysis

Other resources

Summary

Learning a programming language can seem daunting but Python is one of the easiest and most accessible languages out there. Its automation and analysis capabilities have a wide range of uses and it can help to simplify complex data and automate time-consuming tasks. Nobody wants to make their jobs harder!

If I had to give some takeaway advice to remember while you learn, I’d say:

Don’t let FOMO get to you

When I started learning Python, I got carried away with jumping into projects without knowing all the techniques. Everyone on Twitter was making amazing scripts and I was still learning about lists and loops. But then I realized I was never going to get to their level by copying and pasting when I didn’t understand. So I went back to my course and focused solely on that.

Advertisement

Fully understanding the basics is the only way you’ll be able to build up to the advanced techniques. And there’s no expiration date on education.

Practice, practice, practice

Most courses come with practice examples. Aside from those, you should always test what you’ve learned. It doesn’t have to be part of a big project, just something small so you can get the hang of the techniques.

Stay curious

Learning something new isn’t always easy. You’ll get frustrated when things don’t work and you may need some time away if it gets too much. But never lose your curiosity. Programming languages have so many applications and some haven’t even been discovered yet. Stay curious and you might find one.

Find others who are learning

Communities are great places to improve your learning. Here are some great places to collaborate and grow with Python:

Sign up to the Python Weekly newsletter

PPChero.com

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address

MARKETING

How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

Published

on

A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

Advertisement

Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

Advertisement

Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

Advertisement

“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

Advertisement

Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

Advertisement

Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

Trends in Content Localization – Moz

Published

on

Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

Published

on

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

(more…)

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

Trending

Follow by Email
RSS