MARKETING
The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads [Examples]
If you’re considering spending any amount of money on ads to reach your target audience, you’d better spend it in the right place.
That is, somewhere with over 2.9 billion unique monthly visitors and 5 billion daily interactions.
Somewhere like Google.
Google Ads was launched just two years after what has become the most popular website in the world: Google.com. The advertising platform came on the scene in October 2000 as Google Adwords, but after some rebranding in 2018, it was renamed Google Ads.
Given Google’s expansive reach, chances are you’ve seen (and probably clicked on) a Google ad, and so have your potential customers.
It’s no secret that these days, the stronger and more focused your paid campaigns are, the more clicks you generate — leading to a greater probability of obtaining new customers.
Little wonder then that Google Ads has become increasingly popular among businesses across all industries.
In this guide, you’ll discover how to begin advertising on Google. We’ll cover features specific to the platform and teach you how to optimize your campaigns to achieve the best results with your ads.
What is Google Ads?
Google Ads is a paid advertising platform that falls under a marketing channel known as pay-per-click (PPC), where you (the advertiser) pay per click or impression (CPM) on an ad.
Google Ads is an effective way to drive qualified traffic, or good-fit customers, to your business who’re searching for products and services like the ones you offer. With Google Ads, you can boost your website traffic, receive more phone calls, and increase in-store visits.
Google Ads allows you to create and share well-timed ads (via both mobile and desktop) among your target audience. As a result, your business will show up on the search engine results page (SERP) at the moment your ideal customers are looking for products and services like yours via Google Search or Google Maps.
This way, you reach your target audience when it makes sense for them to come across your ad.
Note: Ads from the platform can span across other channels, too, including YouTube, Blogger, and Google Display Network.
Over time, Google Ads will also help you analyze and improve those ads to reach more people so your business can hit all of your paid campaign goals.
Discover how HubSpot can help you better manage your Google Ads.
Additionally, no matter the size of your business or your available resources, you can tailor your ads to suit your budget. The Google Ads tool allows you to stay within your monthly cap and even pause or stop your ad spending at any point in time.
Now, onto another critical question: Is Google Ads really effective? To answer this, let’s consider a few statistics:
- Google Ads has a click-through rate of nearly 2%.
- Display ads yield 180 million impressions each month.
- For users ready to buy, paid ads on Google get 65% of the clicks.
- 43% of customers buy something they’ve seen on a YouTube ad.
Does Google Ads work?
Yes, Google Ads works. You can create a high-ROI marketing campaign with an optimized ad campaign and lead flow.
Why advertise on Google?
Google is the most used search engine, receiving over 5 billion search queries daily. Not to mention, the Google Ads platform has been around for nearly two decades, giving it some seniority and authority in paid advertising.
Google is a resource used by people worldwide to ask questions answered with a combination of paid advertisements and organic results.
Need another reason? Your competitors are using Google Ads (and they might even be bidding on your branded terms).
Hundreds of thousands of companies use Google Ads to promote their businesses, which means that even if you’re ranking organically for a search term, your results are being pushed down the page beneath your competitors.
If you’re using PPC to advertise your product or services, Google Ads should be a part of your paid strategy — there’s no way around it (except maybe Facebook Ads, but that’s another article).
Google Ads Best Practices
If you’ve tried unsuccessfully to advertise on Google, don’t give up. There are many reasons why your Google Ads could be underperforming. But, first, let’s cover some standard Google Ads best practices.
1. Use a PPC planning template.
Download this Template for Free
Using a planner keeps your PPC projects organized. With Google and HubSpot’s PPC Planning Template, you can view how your ads will appear online, see your character counts, and manage your campaigns all in one place.
2. Avoid broad keyword terms.
You really need to nail it for your keywords, which is why testing and tweaking should be a part of your strategy. If your keywords are too broad, Google will be placing your ad in front of the wrong audience, which means fewer clicks and a higher ad spend.
Review what’s working (i.e., which keywords generate clicks) and adjust them to best match your ads with your target audience. You likely won’t get the mix right the first time, but you should keep adding, removing, and tweaking keywords until you do.
Tip: Review the keyword strategies that we cover below.
3. Don’t run irrelevant ads.
If your ad doesn’t match the searcher’s intent, you won’t get enough clicks to justify your ad spend. Your headline and ad copy need to match the keywords you’re bidding on, and the solution your ad is marketing needs to solve whatever pain point that searcher is experiencing.
It’s a combination that will yield the results you’re looking for, and it may just be a few tweaks away. You have the option to create multiple ads per campaign — use this feature to split test which ads work best. Or, better yet, use Google’s Responsive Search Ads feature.
Tip: Read our best practices for ad copy.
4. Improve your Quality Score (QS).
Your Quality Score (QS) is how Google determines how your ad should rank.
The higher your QS, the better your rank and placements on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). If your quality score is low, you’ll have fewer eyeballs on your ad and fewer chances to convert.
Although Google lets you know your Quality Score, it’s your responsibility to improve it.
Tip: Keep reading to learn how to improve your QS.
5. Optimize your ad landing page.
Your efforts shouldn’t stop with your ad — the user experience after a click is equally essential.
What does your user see once they click your ad? Is your landing page optimized for conversions? Does the page solve your user’s pain point or answer their question? Your user should experience a seamless transition through the conversion process.
Tip: Review landing page best practices and implement them to increase your conversion rate.
Google Ads Terms to Know
- AdRank
- Bidding
- Campaign Type
- Click-Through Rate
- Conversion Rate
- Display Network
- Ad Extensions
- Keywords
- PPC
- Quality Score
These common terms will help you set up, manage, and optimize your Google Ads. Some of these are specific to Google Ads, while others are generally related to PPC. Either way, you’ll need to know these to run an effective ad campaign.
1. AdRank
Your AdRank determines your ad placement. The higher the value, the better you’ll rank, the more eyes will fall on your ad, and the higher the probability of users clicking your ad. Your AdRank is determined by your maximum bid multiplied by your Quality Score.
2. Bidding
Google Ads is based on a bidding system, where you, as the advertiser, select a maximum bid amount you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad. The higher your bid, the better your placement. You have three options for bidding: CPC, CPM, or CPE.
- CPC, or cost-per-click, is the amount you pay for each click on your ad.
- CPM, or cost per mille, is the amount you pay for one thousand ad impressions; that is when your ad is shown to a thousand people.
- CPE, or cost per engagement, is the amount you pay when someone takes a predetermined action with your ad.
And, yes, we’ll review bidding strategies below.
3. Campaign Type
Before you begin a paid campaign on Google Ads, you’ll select between seven campaign types: search, display, video, shopping, app, smart, or performance max.
- Search ads are text ads that are displayed among search results on a Google results page.
- Display ads are typically image-based and are shown on web pages within the Google Display Network.
- Video ads are between six and 15 seconds and appear on YouTube.
- Shopping campaigns appear on search results and the Google shopping tab.
- App campaigns use information from your app to optimize ads across websites.
- Smart campaigns have Google finding the best targeting to get you the most bang for your buck.
- Performance Max is a new campaign type that lets advertisers access all Google Ads inventory from a single campaign.
4. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Your CTR is the number of clicks you get on your ad as a proportion of the number of views your ad gets. A higher CTR indicates a quality ad matching search intent and targeting relevant keywords.
5. Conversion Rate (CVR)
CVR is a measure of form submissions as a proportion of total visits to your landing page. Simplistically speaking, a high CVR means that your landing page presents a seamless user experience that matches the ad’s promise.
6. Display Network
Google ads can be displayed on either search results pages or a web page within Google’s Display Network (GDN). GDN is a network of websites that allow space on their web pages for Google Ads — these ads can be text- or image-based and are displayed alongside content relevant to your target keywords. The most popular Display Ad options are Google Shopping and app campaigns.
7. Extensions
Ad Extensions allow you to supplement your ad with additional information at no extra cost. These extensions fall under one of five categories: Sitelink, Call, Location, Offer, or App; we’ll cover each of these ad extensions below.
8. Keywords
When a Google user types a query into the search field, Google returns a range of results that match the searcher’s intent. Keywords are words or phrases that align with what a searcher wants and will satisfy their query. You select keywords based on which queries you want to display your ad alongside. For example, a searcher that types “how to clean gum off shoes” will see results for advertisers that targeted keywords like “gum on shoes” and “clean shoes.”
Negative keywords are a list of keyword terms that you do not want to rank for. Google will pull you from the bid on these keywords. Typically, these are semi-related to your intended search terms but fall outside of the realm of what you offer or want to rank for.
9. PPC
Pay-per-click, or PPC, is a type of advertising where the advertiser pays per click on an ad. PPC is not specific to Google Ads, but it is the most common type of paid campaign. It’s important to understand the ins and outs of PPC before launching your first Google Ads campaign.
10. Quality Score (QS)
Your Quality Score measures the quality of your ad by your click-through rate (CTR), the relevance of your keywords, the quality of your landing page, and your past performance on the SERPs. QS is a determining factor in your AdRank.
Click to get our free guide on how to use Google Ads.
How does Google Ads work?
Google Ads displays your ad to potential leads or customers who are interested in your product or service. Advertisers bid on search terms, or keywords, and the winners of that bid are placed at the top of search results pages, on YouTube videos, or on relevant websites, depending on the type of ad campaign selected.
Many factors impact your ability to create effective and high-performing Google Ads. Let’s cover them below, plus some Google Ads examples.
AdRank and Quality Score
AdRank determines the placement of your ads, and Quality Score is one of the two factors (the other being bid amount) that determines your AdRank. Remember, your Quality Score is based on the quality and relevance of your ad, and Google measures that by how many people click on your ad when it’s displayed — i.e., your CTR. Your CTR depends on how well your ad matches searcher intent, which you can deduce from three areas:
- The relevance of your keywords
- If your ad copy and CTA deliver what the searcher expects based on their search
- The user experience of your landing page
Your QS is where you should focus most of your attention when you first set up your Google Ad campaign — even before you increase your bid amount. The higher your QS, the lower your acquisition costs will be and the better placement you’ll get.
Location
When you first set up your Google Ad, you’ll select a geographical area where your ad will be shown. If you have a storefront, this should be within a reasonable radius around your physical location. If you have an ecommerce store and a physical product, your location should be set in the places where you ship. If you provide a service or product that is accessible worldwide, then the sky’s the limit.
Your location settings will play a role in placement. For instance, if you own a yoga studio in San Francisco, someone in New York that enters “yoga studio” will not see your result, no matter your AdRank. That’s because Google’s main objective is to display the most relevant results to searchers, even when you’re paying.
Keywords
Keyword research is just as important for paid ads as it is for organic search. Your keywords need to match searcher intent as much as possible. That’s because Google matches your ad with search queries based on the keywords you selected.
Each ad group that you create within your campaign will target a small set of keywords (one to five keywords is optimal), and Google will display your ad based on those selections.
Match Types
Match Types give you a little wiggle room when it comes to your keyword selections — they tell Google whether you want to match a search query exactly or if your ad should be shown to anyone with a search query that’s semi-related. There are four match types to choose from:
- Broad Match is the default setting that uses any word within your keyword phrase in any order. For example, “goat yoga in Oakland” will match “goat yoga” or “yoga Oakland.”
- Modified Broad Match allows you to lock in certain words within a keyword phrase by denoting them with a “+” sign. Your matches will include that locked-in word at the very least. For example, “+goats yoga in Oakland” could yield “goats,” “goats like food,” or “goats and yoga.”
- Phrase Match will match with queries that include your keyword phrase in the exact order but may include additional words before or after it. For example, “goat yoga” can yield “spotted goat yoga” or “goat yoga with puppies.”
- Exact Match maintains your keyword phrase as it is written in the exact order. For example, “goat yoga” will not show up if someone types “goats yoga” or “goat yoga class.”
If you’re just starting out and don’t know precisely how your persona will be searching, move from a broad match to a more narrow approach so you can test which queries yield the best results. However, since your ad will be ranking for many queries (some unrelated), you should keep a close eye on your ads and modify them as you can gain new information.
Headline and Description
Your ad copy can be the difference between a click on your ad and a click on your competitor’s ad. Therefore, it’s important that your ad copy matches the searcher’s intent, is aligned with your target keywords, and addresses the persona’s pain point with a clear solution.
To illustrate what we mean, let’s review an example.
A search for “baby swim lessons” yielded this result. The copy is concise and uses limited space wisely to convey its message and connect with its target audience.
The Swim Revolution knew to put the keyword in their headline, so we instantly know that this ad matches what we’re looking for. Furthermore, the description tells us why this is the best option for swim lessons because it addresses the concerns of their persona — a parent looking to enroll their baby in a swim class.
They use words like “skills,” “fun,” “confidence,” and “comfort in the water” to ease our nerves about putting a baby in a pool and to prove to us that we will get what we want out of this class — an infant that can swim.
This kind of ad copy will get you clicks, but conversions will result from carrying this level of intention into your landing page copy.
Ad Extensions
If you’re running Google Ads, you should be using Ad Extensions for two reasons: they’re free, and they give users additional information and another reason to interact with your ad. These extensions fall within one of these five categories:
- Sitelink Extensions extend your ad — helping you stand out — and provide additional links to your site that offer users more enticing reasons to click.
- Call Extensions allow you to incorporate your phone number in your ad, so users have an additional (and instant) way to reach out to you. If you have a customer service team that is ready to engage and convert your audience, then include your phone number.
- Location Extensions include your location and phone number within your ad so Google can offer searchers a map to find you easily. This option is great for businesses with a storefront, and it works well for the search query “…near me.”
- Offer Extensions work if you’re running a current promotion. It can entice users to click your ad over others if they see that your options are discounted compared to your competitors.
- App Extensions provide a link to an app download for mobile users. This reduces the friction of performing a new search to find and download the app in an AppStore.
Google Ads Retargeting
Retargeting (or remarketing) in Google Ads is a way to advertise to users who have previously interacted with you online but have not yet converted. Tracking cookies will follow users around the web and target these users with your ads. Remarketing is effective since most prospects need to see your marketing multiple times before becoming a customer.
Types of Google Ads Campaigns
- Search
- Display
- Video
- App
- Shopping
You can select from one of five campaign types on Google Ads. Let’s cover the optimal uses for each and why you might choose one over the other.
1. Search Ad Campaigns
Search ads are text ads that are displayed on Google results pages. As an example, a search for “pocket squares” returns sponsored results:
The benefit of search ads is that you’re displaying your ad in the place where most searchers look for information first — on Google. And Google shows your ad in the same format as other results (except for denoting it as an “Ad”), so users are accustomed to seeing and clicking on results.
Responsive Search Ads
Responsive search ads allow you to enter multiple versions of headlines and ad copy (15 and four variations, respectively) for Google to select the best performers to display to users. With traditional ads, you create one static version of your ad, using the same headline and description each time.
Responsive ads allow for a dynamic ad that is auto-tested until you arrive at the version that is best suited for your target audience — for Google, that means until you get the most clicks.
2. Display Ad Campaigns
Google has a network of websites in various industries and with an array of audiences that opt in to display Google Ads, known as the Google Display Network. The benefit to the website owner is that they’re paid per click or impression on the ads. The benefit to advertisers is that they can get their content in front of audiences that are aligned with their personas.
These are typically image ads that draw users’ attention away from the content on the webpage:
3. Video Ad Campaigns
videos. Remember, YouTube is a search engine, too. So the right keywords will place you in front of a video, disrupting the user’s behavior just enough to grab their attention.
Here’s a video advertisement that pops up in the middle of another video on how to tie a tie:
4. App Ad Campaigns
Google App Campaigns promote your mobile application through an ad displayed on Google Search Network, YouTube, Google Play, Google Display Network, and more.
You can run ads that encourage your audience to install your app or, if they already use it, to take a certain action within your app.
Unlike other ad types, you don’t design an App ad campaign. Instead, provide Google with your app’s information and audience, and place a bid. Google does the rest to get your app in front of the right eyes:
5. Shopping Ad Campaigns
Another type of Google Ad is Google Shopping Ad Campaigns. Shopping campaigns, like these other types of ads, are displayed on SERPs and include detailed product information such as price and product imagery. You can run a Shopping campaign through Google Merchant Center, where you input specific product information that Google pulls from to create your shopping ads.
Instead of marketing your brand as a whole, Shopping Ads allow you to promote specific products and product lines. That’s why, when you search for a particular product on Google, you’ll see ads for different brands pop up along the top and/or side. This is what I see when I search “running shoes.” The ads at the top are Google Search ads, but the specific products advertised on the side are Shopping ads optimized for the keyword “running shoes”:
How to Use Google Ads
Convinced that you should start using Google Ads? Good. Getting started is simple, but requires a few steps. Here’s a step-by-step guide for setting up your first campaign on Google Ads.
1. Set up your Google Ads account.
First, go to the Google Ads homepage. On the top right-hand corner, click on ‘Start Now.’
You’ll be directed to sign in with a Google account or set up a new one.
2. Choose your business name and website.
After signing in, you’ll be taken to a page where you’ll provide your business name and website. The URL you provide is where anyone who clicks on your ad will be taken.
3. Select your advertising goal.
Next, select your main advertising goal. You have four options: Get more calls, get more website sales or sign-ups, get more visits to your physical location, and get more views and engagement on YouTube.
4. Craft your ad.
The next step is to create your ad. This requires creativity and can be a bit challenging.
Thankfully, Google gives you tips on what to write. But, of course, the most important thing is to write an ad that’ll attract and convert your audience.
5. Add keyword themes.
On the next page, you can choose keywords that match your brand. Google will suggest a few for you; if you’re not familiar with keyword research, we suggest selecting the ones Google has suggested to start. After selecting the right keywords, click ‘Next.’
6. Set your ad location.
The next page lets you choose the location or locations where you want your ad to appear. It can be near your physical address or anywhere else.
7. Set your budget.
Here, you’ll either use the budget options offered by Google or enter a specific budget.
8. Confirm payment.
Lastly, provide your billing information.
And that’s how easy it is to create your first Google ad!
As you can see, setting up your paid campaigns on Google is relatively easy (and quick), mostly because the platform takes you through the setup and provides helpful hints along the way. If you have your ad copy and/or images created, the setup should take you no more than 10 minutes.
What may be less obvious are all the additional things you need to do to make sure your ads are optimally set up and easily trackable. Let’s cover these together. These are the steps you’ll take once your ads are submitted for review.
9. Link your Google Analytics account.
You likely have Google Analytics set up on your website (if not, here’s how to do it on WordPress) so you can track traffic, conversions, goals, and any unique metrics. You also need to link your Analytics account to Google Ads. Linking these accounts will make tracking, analyzing, and reporting between channels and campaigns much easier because you can view these events in one place.
10. Add UTM codes.
Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) codes are used by Google to track any activity associated with a specific link. You’ve probably seen them before — it’s the part of a URL that follows a question mark (“?”). UTM codes will tell you which offer or ad led to a conversion so you can track the most effective parts of your campaign. UTM codes make it easier to optimize your Google Ads since you know exactly what’s working.
The trick, though, is to add your UTM codes at the campaign level when you set up your Google Ads, so you don’t have to do so manually for each ad URL. Otherwise, you can add them manually with Google’s UTM builder.
11. Set up conversion tracking.
Conversion tracking tells you exactly how many customers or leads you’ve acquired from your ad campaigns. It’s not mandatory to set up, but, without it, you’ll be guessing the ROI of your ads. Conversion tracking allows you to track sales (or other activities) on your website, app installs, or calls from your ads.
Manage and organize your ads with our free Google Ads Kit and Templates.
12. Integrate your Google Ads with your CRM.
There is something to be said about keeping all of your data in one place where you can track, analyze, and report on it. You already use your CRM to track contact data and lead flows. Integrating Google Ads with your CRM gives you the ability to track which ad campaigns are working for your audience so you can continue marketing to them with offers that are relevant.
Google Ads Bidding Strategies
Once you’ve set up your ad campaigns and have tracking in place, it’s time to start bidding. Remember, your ability to rank in Google Ads depends on how you bid. While your bid amount will depend on your budget and goals, there are a few strategies and bid settings you should be aware of when launching your paid campaign.
Automated vs. Manual Bidding
You have two options when it comes to bidding on your keywords — automated and manual. Here’s how they work:
- Automated Bidding puts Google in the driver’s seat and allows the platform to adjust your bid based on your competitors. You can still set a maximum budget, and Google will work within a range to give you the best chance at winning the bid within those constraints.
- Manual Bidding lets you set the bid amounts for your ad groups and keywords, giving you the chance to reduce spending on low-performing ads.
Bidding on Branded Search Terms
Branded terms are those with your company or unique product name in them, like “HubSpot CRM.” There is much debate on whether to bid on your branded terms or not. On one side of the debate, bidding on terms that will likely yield organic results could be seen as a waste of money.
On the other side, bidding on these terms gives you domain over these search results pages and helps you convert prospects that are further along the flywheel. For instance, if I’ve been researching live chat tools and am heavily considering HubSpot’s Live Chat, then a simple search for “HubSpot live chat software” will yield precisely the result I’m looking for without the effort of scrolling.
The other argument in favor of bidding on your branded terms is that competitors may bid on them if you don’t, thereby taking up valuable real estate that should belong to you.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
If the idea of spending money to convert prospects into leads makes you uneasy, then you can set a CPA instead and only pay when a user converts into a customer. While this bidding strategy could cost more, you can take comfort in knowing that you only pay when you acquire a paying customer. This strategy makes it easy to track and justify your ad spend.
Additional Resources to Optimize Your Google Ads
Your ad copy and headline is not the only component that will make your paid campaign successful. Getting a user to click is only the beginning … they should arrive on a landing page that’s optimized for conversion and then be taken to a Thank You page that tells them what to do next.
If you want your Google Ads to produce qualified leads and customers, then check out these additional resources and use them as guidelines as you set up your Google Ads campaign.
Google Ads Tips
Now that you know how to use and set up a Google Ad campaign, here are a few short tips or best practices to follow to help you create successful campaigns.
We’ve covered these at length throughout this post, but their importance can’t be overstated. Use this as a checklist you can refer to again and again.
1. Have a clear goal.
It’s vital to define your objectives before you create your ad, instead of creating an ad first and then tweaking it to fit your objectives. Sit down with your marketing team to prepare an advertising plan and create SMART goals for your Google Ads campaigns.
2. Create a relevant landing page.
When prompted to add your URL when creating your ad, ensure that the URL you provide leads to a relevant landing page. If your ad is interesting enough to get clicked, you could undo all that great work if it directs them to a poor landing page.
Therefore, optimize your landing pages so that your ad will help convert a curious visitor into a paying customer. Check out our landing page guide so you know exactly how to create great landing pages.
3. Use the right keywords.
Keywords are super important, so it’s only right that you choose the best ones for your ad.
Long-tail keywords are some of the best types of keywords because they are very specific and can target one business.
For example, say you run a cat clinic. A generic keyword like ‘cat clinic’ won’t target people in your area, but something like ‘cat clinic in belvedere’ is more likely to attract the right audience.
4. Automate the process.
You can maximize conversions by optimizing the bidding process. Tools like Smart Bidding can increase or reduce bids for you, depending on the chance of success.
Therefore, you’ll spend money only when there’s a higher chance of success.
5. Use Ad Extensions.
Extensions can take your ad performance up a notch. These extensions allow you to specify your locations, services, goods, or sales promotions.
For example, you could include a telephone number in your ad so people can call you to inquire about your services right away.
6. Use negative keywords.
Google Ads allows you to include negative keywords. Using these keywords indicates what your product or service is not, thus preventing you from showing up in irrelevant SERPs.
Using the cat clinic example, you might only cater to cats and not dogs or other pets. In this case, you can exclude terms like ‘dogs’ and other qualifiers.
7. Measure and improve upon your strategy.
When you integrate your ads with Google Analytics, you can track important metrics like page popularity, the keywords that drive the most traffic, and more.
Collecting and analyzing these and other metrics will help you improve the quality of your ads, boost your conversions, and increase revenue over time.
Start Your Google Ads Campaign
Given its reach and authority, Google Ads should be a part of your paid strategy. Use the tips we covered to get started, and remember to refine and iterate as you go.
There’s no such thing as a Google Ads campaign that doesn’t work — there are only ones that need a bit more work. Using the strategy and information provided above, you have what you need to create a successful Google Ad campaign that drives clicks and converts leads.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
MARKETING
Unlocking Hidden Revenue: The Inbox Retargeting Methodology
Page conversion rates have ALWAYS been a problem. The simple fact is most people don’t convert even on the most optimized pages.
What’s why traditional retargeting on ad networks has been so dang powerful. While retargeted leads come cheap, they still aren’t free. Worse, you’re back competing against your competition in the ol’ ad auction system.
For the last 6 years, I’ve been using a tactic called Inbox Retargeting to identify who lands on my key pages and directly reach out to them in their inbox.
No more ads. No more auctions. Just a targeted contact that showed they were interested, but didn’t quite take the leap yet.
Before I dive into the “What’s” and “How’s”, this tactic can only be used in the good ol’ US of A. If you aren’t in the states or don’t have clients in the states, you’re out of luck. Sorry!
How It Works
Inbox retargeting doesn’t take a lot of heavy lifting. I’ll share the strategy next but I wanted to start with some of the logistics.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer or coder, so keep that in mind if technical or legal questions pop up.
If you have a website, you have tracking scripts, e.g., GA4, the Facebook Pixel, Heatmap software, etc…
To get started with Inbox retargeting, you just need to be able to copy and paste two scripts on your site:
- A collection script: This fires and tries to identify the visitor
A suppression script: You’d fire this on your conversion confirmation pages, you don’t want people who converted to land in your Inbox Retargeting campaigns.
The tech works off of a database of contacts in the United States that are eligible for emails, so it’s completely above board with your ESP. However, you’ll want to do a few things before you start treating them like a regular member of your email list.
We initially tested this on one of our paid media campaigns. We already had a really strong campaign that we wanted to squeeze more leads out of…and boy did we.
We were driving traffic from Meta (Facebook for the OGs) to this landing page:
This page converts at 58%. Yeah, that’s a humble brag…deal with it.
Even with a 58% conversion rate, we’re still missing out on 42% of the traffic we’ve already paid for. That’s kind of a bummer.
After we added the collection script to the page, they were able to capture a lot more leads. The conversion rate jumped from 58% to a very sweet 87% – that’s a 50% increase!
That was the impact on a single page, that’s when we knew it was time to go bigger.
The Strategy
Most of the tools out there, whether it’s Retention.com or Customers.ai, are going to charge based on the number of contacts. So it can get pretty easy to burn through contact credits if you run the script on every page you manage, your site and your clients’ sites included.
That’s why you’ll want to make sure to select pages that capture intent versus targeting all of your traffic.
ID Key Pages
Here are some of the pages you should consider adding the collection script:
- Campaign Landing Pages – If you’re paying to send someone to a page, the referring source piqued their interest. If they didn’t convert, you’d definitely want to follow up.
- Product Pages – If someone is viewing this page they’re evaluating a particular product they were interested in.
- High Intent/Value Content Pages – This could be your pillar content on your blog pages, podcast pages, or your top level service pages.
- Registration Pages – This is a subset of a landing page, but if someone got all the way to a registration or sigh up page, they’re a prime candidate for outreach.
- Cart Pages – People abandon carts all the time. If you weren’t able to catch their details during checkout, this is an ideal opportunity.
Effectively it’s any page where you’re pushing a specific action. While the above pages are the pages to choose from, a homepage is acceptable but will require a little more finesse when you follow up.
Map to Email Campaigns
Now that you’ve identified where you’re going to identify leads, you’ll need to map it to your automation tool.
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Most tools have a direct integration with your email service provider, but worst case scenario you may have to pass the data through a no code integration tool like Zapier.
Once you’ve worked out the digital plumbing, you’ll want to follow up based on the page the contact was collected on. Here’s how you should approach follow up:
- For Campaign Landing Pages – Give them the specific asset. They were interested in it, you’ve got their contact information, just hand over the goods. This builds good will at the start of the relationship.
- Product Pages – Send over the details of the product or product category they were viewing. This could be as simple as a reminder or you could build goodwill with a special offer or coupon.
- High Intent/Value Content Pages – Send over some of your best content or freebies that move people to the next phase of the Customer Value Journey.
- Registration Pages – Treat these like an “abandoned cart” type of email and get them to take that next step.
- Cart Pages – Same as “Registration Pages” but it’s, you know, an actual abandoned cart reminder. Similar to the product pages you could entice them to come back with a deal or coupon.
- Homepages – If you do run these on the homepage, you’ll need to do more of a reintroduction then transition to showcasing your best stuff.
Email Structure
The initial message you send needs to have a very specific flow. There are four critical things that need to happen when they open up your Inbox Retargeting message.
First, remind them about who you are and how they know you. This can be as simple as a, “Hey, thanks for stopping by…” message. Have some fun with it.
Next, you need to provide highly specific value based on their browsing intent. If you get this wrong, they’re just going to file your message under SPAM.
After that, you’ve got to set expectations with what they’re getting and now you’ll be communicating with them moving forward.
And Finally, you need to give them an EASY OUT. These campaigns have our highest unsubscribe rate, but that’s because we outright ask people to unsubscribe if they don’t want any additional contact.
Once you’e gone through this, you treat them like one of your regular subscribers with all your fancy ascension automations, content emails, and promotional emails.
Here are the email stats from one of our PPC Campaigns:
With an average open rate of 53.87%, we know there’s a base line interest in the deliverable. The click rate is DANG good for messaging visitors who didn’t convert.
Sure the unsubscribe rate is a little high for this campaign, but that is intentional. We push them to opt-out in the first email so we don’t get dinged later with complaints.
The Payoff: An Additional 109k Last Year
I mean, who doesn’t want another cool 100 grand for adding a script to your website and writing a couple of emails? Here’s how the numbers work out:
Last year, we identified 3,714 leads using this method. IMPORTANT: When I was pulling these numbers, I realized we installed the code wrong on some pages and missed out on about another 2k leads…oops!
Our average lead cost was ~$7, so the leads themself were a $26,000 additional value. This alone would be a reason to use the tech.
BUT JUSTIN, did they convert?!
Yes!
We closed $36,000 in IPPC business from this lead source. For what we spent on those leads we’re looking at a 750% ROAS. Not too shabby.
The rest of the money we made was by selling this service to our clients. Since we run paid ads for clients, this method is a complete no brainer. We ran a pilot program and only offered this to a handful of clients last year, we averaged about 4k/month in sales.
We sold clients the leads at ~$2/lead for some of the niches we work in, that’s a steal.
If you decide to sell this you need to make sure the client knows these are lower intent leads and will require longer term nurtures. If you follow the email strategy I shared above, you’ll be good to go!
Protip: Charge for building the follow up sequence!
So that’s it! If you’re running your own business or are an agency owner, you’ve got to consider Inbox Retargeting. Though, I do have some bad news…
Not to be “Chicken Little” but this is starting to get way more attention, there are services popping out of the woodwork so this will become a table stakes method. So get ahead of this today.
MARKETING
What’s Media Mix Modeling? [Marketer’s Guide with Examples]
Have you ever felt in the dark when it comes to understanding the real impact your marketing dollars are having across multiple channels?
Determining where and how conversions are occurring is crucial in optimizing your budget to drive the most impact with your marketing budget. Media mix modeling (MMM) is an analytical approach used to gauge the effectiveness of various marketing channels in driving sales and conversions. This method allows us to decipher the true influence of advertising spend across diverse platforms by accounting for a myriad of factors, both within their control (like media channel spend, promotional strategies) and outside their control (such as economic conditions, competitor actions, and seasonal influences).
One of the key strengths of media mix modeling is its ability to incorporate long-term brand building effects alongside immediate sales impacts, offering a comprehensive view of marketing effectiveness. It helps in identifying which channels are most efficient, how different channels influence each other, and how external factors affect marketing performance.
Media mix modeling is a powerful tool for marketers seeking to optimize their marketing investments. By providing a holistic view of how various factors contribute to sales and conversions, MMM enables data-driven decisions that enhance marketing efficiency and business growth.
In this article, we explore how media mix modeling works, and how businesses can use analytics to drive smarter ad spend decisions.
What Is Media Mix Modeling?
Media mix modeling (MMM) is a type of analysis that measures the impact of media buys across multiple channels, showing the role various elements play in achieving a desired outcome—often a conversion or revenue KPI. With this information, marketing stakeholders are able to make specific adjustments to campaign spend to improve their progress toward reaching a given goal.
Media mix modeling can be used to address common brand marketing questions and pain points, including:
- Which of our marketing efforts are having the biggest impact on reaching our goals—or, more simply—what’s working?
- How big of an impact does seasonality have on our marketing performance?
- How closely is our performance tied to promotional efforts?
- Are shifting consumer trends negatively or positively impacting outcomes?
- Which specific mix of spend allocation drives the highest ROI?
- How will these channels likely perform in the future based on their optimized spend allocation?
“Media mix modeling is a top-down , privacy resilient approach that evaluates how historical media activity, promotions, pricing, seasonality, and uncontrollable factors—such as economic activity—impact key business outcomes such as sales revenue. MMM is a scientific approach to attribution in the sense that it applies statistical methods to analyze and interpret marketing data, providing a systematic understanding of how different marketing channels contribute to overall business goals in the broader context of the market. The quality of insights derived from MMM heavily depends on the quality and granularity of the data used.”
— Annica Nesty, Group Director of Marketing Science at Tinuiti
MMM leverages aggregate data, and can measure both online (digital) and offline (traditional) advertising channel performance, including (but not limited to): paid media channels such as social media channels, traditional print advertising, linear TV advertising, and other performance marketing efforts, organic media, operational factors like promotions, external factors like seasonality, economic conditions, outcome KPIs such as sales revenue, new customers, and conversions.
How Does Media Mix Modeling Work?
The MMM framework is a type of statistical analysis that uses statistical methods and econometric models such as a regression analysis. This econometric model helps analysts determine the strength of relationships between a single dependent variable and an array of independent variables.
Media mix modeling analysis measures the impact of your media spend today, and is also helpful in predicting the future outcome of your marketing investments on a given variable.
Example:
Let’s assume a scenario where our target metric, or dependent variable, is revenue, a critical indicator of business success. We aim to dissect the influence of various marketing initiatives on this revenue. These initiatives, our independent variables, encompass a diverse array of digital advertising campaigns, including those run on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, as well as broader Display and Streaming platforms.
The number of independent variables under scrutiny does not dilute our core objective. The mission is to measure the relationship between the marketing endeavors and the revenue they generate. This involves not only identifying the direct contributions of each campaign to revenue but also understanding the nuanced interplay between them by observing how changing aspects of those independent variables impacts the chosen business outcome
What can MMM Measure?
When using MMM to assess campaign success, marketers should leverage statistical methods and econometric models to get the most accurate picture possible. Data quality is essential in achieving an accurate media mix analysis, so take any needed time to clean your data before using it in your analysis.
Key elements an MMM equation can measure include:
- Base and incremental sales volume impact
- Channel effectiveness and return on investment
- Marketing spend saturation
Media Mix Modeling vs. Data-Driven Attribution Modeling
Like media mix modeling, attribution modeling also studies the efficiency of marketing strategies — but there are important differences.
Attribution modeling is a general term that refers to tracking engagement to better understand how specific tactics drive action at the user level. This modeling works well for analyzing specific customer touchpoints, focusing on elements like how a consumer converted, which creative on which channel led to that conversion, and what the expected ROI could be if more ad budget were shifted to that channel.
Media mix modeling takes a higher-level, more comprehensive picture. This modeling isn’t designed to measure user-level engagement like impressions and clicks, rather its primary function is measuring the impact of an entire touchpoint on specific marketing objectives.
Data-driven attribution modeling and MMM each have their own set of strengths. It’s not a matter of one being better than the other, rather one being better-suited to different types of marketing analysis.
For example:
- The precision of the data-driven attribution: Let’s assume you want to invest more spend in a social ad campaign during the holiday season. While MMM is an option for determining where to allocate those dollars, data-driven attribution excels in dissecting the intricate customer journey, offering a microscopic view of user interactions. For instance, if you’re keen on understanding the exact value of a single click from your social media campaign, Data-Driven Attribution can illuminate the path.
- The holistic perspective of the media mix modeling: Media mix modeling, can consider the impact of offline actions and initiatives. Unlike the more narrowly focused attribution models, which might overemphasize the first or last touchpoint, MMM assesses the collective impact of all channels over time. This makes it an indispensable tool for strategic planning and long-term investment decisions in your marketing portfolio.
“Attribution modeling is based on a bottom-up approach while media mix modeling takes a top-down approach. Media mix modeling provides a long-term view of the marketing ROI of media activity, while attribution modeling evaluates individual-level activity to provide a short term view of marketing ROI.”
— Annica Nesty, Group Director of Marketing Science at Tinuiti
Why Does MMM Make Sense for a Post-cookie/Post-IDFA World?
In the post-cookie and post-IDFA landscape, where privacy concerns and regulatory changes limit access to individual user-level data, media mix modeling has become a pivotal analytical tool. MMM’s emphasis on overall marketing spend allocation and its proficiency in establishing cause-and-effect models, address the challenges posed by the diminishing availability of explicit conversion information, providing marketers with a privacy-respecting and insightful approach to navigate the evolving digital advertising ecosystem.
An Example of Media Mix Modeling
With the right media mix model, a business can measure their past marketing performance to improve future ROI by optimizing the allocation of the media budget by channel and/or tactic, including: traditional and digital media channels, promotions, pricing, competitor spend, economic conditions, weather, and more.
Example:
An international ecommerce brand wanted to forecast their second-half of the year and create an optimal media mix to make their marketing dollars work smarter. A combination of client data, marketing data, and machine learning were required to create a powerful, custom media mix model.
To build the model, the business used 2+ years of digital marketing and revenue data, analyzing it by market, tactic, and day. The data was then used to create model to assess future spend showing how changes in investment across channels could impact revenue and sales.
The full digital media mix model gave the ecommerce brand a detailed analysis of where to optimize their spend across all digital marketing channels.
One recommendation was to shift dollars away from social—which historically had been at or near 30%—to paid search. This recommendation came with another layer of insight: The brand realized they were overinvesting in awareness campaigns, and needed to invest more heavily in capturing current demand during the 2nd half of the year.
Results: Working with a robust media mix model, the brand was able to break down how much media spend was needed by each channel in order to achieve the 30% YoY revenue goal they targeted.
The Benefits & Challenges of Media Mix Modeling
MMM helps you accurately connect all the dots, leveraging (ideally) a wealth of provided data, to understand how disparate aspects of marketing campaigns work together in helping you reach your business goals.
Benefits of Media Mix Modeling
The benefits of MMM are multifaceted, offering marketers a strategic edge in navigating the intricacies of their advertising efforts. Let’s dive into each benefit in detail…
Omnichannel Campaigns: MMM excels in providing insights for omnichannel campaigns, allowing marketers to understand and optimize the impact of their initiatives across various channels. This capability is crucial in today’s interconnected digital landscape, where consumers engage with brands through diverse platforms.
Improved Oversight Over Media Spend Impact: MMM provides a comprehensive view of the impact of media spend, enabling marketers to assess the effectiveness of their investments. This improved oversight ensures a clearer understanding of how each component of the media mix contributes to overall campaign success.
Media Spend Optimization: With MMM, marketers can optimize their media spend by identifying the most impactful channels and touchpoints. This data-driven approach allows for strategic adjustments in budget allocation, ensuring that resources are directed towards the avenues that yield the highest return on ad spend.
Effective Targeting of Audiences: MMM’s analysis helps in refining audience targeting strategies. By understanding which elements of the marketing mix resonate most with specific demographics, marketers can tailor their campaigns to effectively reach and engage their target audience segments.
Forecasting with Certainty: One of MMM’s strengths lies in its ability to forecast results with a high degree of certainty. This forecasting capability empowers marketers to make informed decisions based on predictive analytics, aiding in long-term planning and goal setting.
Reduced Reliance on Personally Identifiable Information (PII): MMM minimizes the reliance on personally identifiable information for analysis. This is especially crucial in an era where privacy concerns are more important than ever.
Media mix modeling is a comprehensive and powerful tool, offering a range of benefits that contribute to a more effective, data-driven, and privacy-conscious approach to marketing strategy and decision-making. While there are many benefits to MMM, there are challenges as well. Let’s look into common challenges of MMM in our next section.
Challenges of Media Mix Modeling
MMM grows increasingly complex as the media landscape becomes more fragmented, and the customer journey more personalized. Whereas in the past, advertisers may have wanted to measure something as simple as the impact of a print ad in a Cleveland newspaper, today’s consumers are exposed to brands in a wide variety of locations and formats, from a subway transit poster to a Sponsored post on Instagram.
Working with high-quality data is important in any measurement initiative, but for MMM to work effectively, it also needs a lot of data to build a reliable model. For example, if you wanted your model to consider the performance impact of seasonality, it would ideally need at least three full seasons (three years) of data to consider in its analysis.
This makes media mix modeling a ‘long game’ initiative with infrequent reporting by its nature. Brands and advertisers who are more accustomed to daily or weekly updates may struggle with ‘waiting out’ the analysis.
Because it’s not designed to make considerations based on user-level data, instead providing aggregate insights, media mix modeling offers limited insights on brand impact, personalized targeting, and customer experience. However, advanced models are available that can provide highly granular insights, but traditional MMM provides aggregate insights.
Common Misconceptions About Media Mix Modeling
Media mix modeling, like many other analytics solutions, has also become a marketing buzzword that has generated its fair share of misconceptions.
Here are a few of the most common misconceptions around media mix modeling.
Media Mix Models Are Not Transparent
With large datasets and statistical analysis involved in media mix modeling, the methods behind the technique have been critiqued for their obscurity. If there is no perceived transparency in the process, how does a brand know if its media mix model is really accurate?
Any organization specializing in media mix modeling should provide a transparent approach, with deliverables such as outlines, milestones, and performance reports. Additionally, you may want to consider partnering with an agency that truly understands how media mix modeling aligns with your needs and expectations. Every business is unique and each media mix model is based on multiple factors.
Media Mix Models Do Not Provide Real-time Data
Today, results are often measured by the timeliness of their delivery, with the current digital marketplace allowing for almost instantaneous real-time data. Media mix models do actually provide compelling real-time marketing insights, perfect for evaluating new campaigns, new competitors, and assessing pricing actions or changes in promotional strategies.
A powerful partner in media mix modeling will provide sophisticated tools and real-time approaches to satisfy your business performance assessments. Your partner should also be able to provide forecasting, simulation, or AI- and machine-learning-integrated models to suggest future movements.
Media Mix Modeling is Biased to Offline Channels
Though media mix strategies do integrate and consider offline channels in their approaches, media mix modeling also considers all digital channels — including display, email, paid search, social, and more. Remember—it’s considering your media mix. If that includes ten different channels and you provide enough high-quality data for each, they will all be considered in your marketing mix analysis.
In fact, as customers have become more intertwined with digital channels, media marketing models have adapted to go even deeper into the analyses provided by those channels’ respective insights to support better budgeting choices and customer segmentation reports.
Conclusion: MMM Closes the Loop on Marketing Performance
In an ever-evolving digital landscape, MMM’s adaptability to the post-cookie/post-IDFA world positions it as an essential tool for marketers. As businesses seek to connect the dots, leverage data, and make strategic decisions, MMM is a crucial ally in the dynamic realm of mixed media advertising.
“At Tinuiti, we leverage measurement best practices such as MMM and incrementality to understand media effectiveness, predict future outcomes, create deeper insights, analyzing what-if scenarios to provide recommendations that optimize media performance. This helps brands understand what channels they should be investing in, how they should shift budgets (media mix), creating a high-level view of what channels are driving overall sales and ROI. Our goal here is to deliver growth for our clients by maximizing the return on investment through best in class measurement”
— Annica Nesty, Group Director of Marketing Science at Tinuiti
At Tinuiti, we know, embrace, and utilize MMM. Our Rapid Media Mix Modeling sets a new standard in the market with its exceptional speed, precision, and transparency.
Our proprietary measurement technology, Bliss Point by Tinuiti, allows us to measure what marketers have previously struggled to measure – the optimal level of investment to maximize impact and efficiency. But this measurement is not just to go back and validate that we’ve done the right things. This measurement is real-time informing what needs to happen next.
Curious about how we can tailor strategies to hit your unique marketing bliss point, including Rapid Media Mix Modeling? We’re eager to chat. Contact us today for details.
MARKETING
Email Ready to Send? Make Sure to Tick These Things off First!
Designing and developing an email campaign is a complex mechanism; a few things will inevitably escape your attention during the process. So, before you hit that send button, you must draw up a foolproof checklist to ensure every single component in your campaign is in its rightful place. Wondering what an ideal pre-flight checklist looks like? We’ve carefully compiled everything necessary in this blog. Read on to find out!
Subject Line and Pre-header Text
A subject line can make or break your emails. It’s the first thing about your email that reaches the audience, and if it fails to hit the right notes, you’ll have a tough time convincing your subscribers to engage with your emails.
What makes a subject line tick, you ask? Let’s take a look!
- Your subject line should prioritize an economy of words; this will help you on two accounts- firstly, a crisp and to-the-point subject line increases your probability of catching the reader’s attention. Secondly, longer subject lines run the risk of being clipped on mobile devices, thereby spoiling the subscriber’s user experience. By keeping your subject lines concise, you eliminate this possibility.
- Ensure your subject line clearly explains what readers can expect upon opening the email. The more guesswork your subject line demands of readers, the less likely they are to open your email.
- Steer clear of using words that might be considered spammy. With email filters becoming more and more sophisticated, usage of any sort of contentious term in your subject line will result in ISPs flagging your email as spam.
- Personalize your subject line. In a climate of increasingly crowded email boxes, personalization is one technique you simply can’t afford to overlook.
Besides fine-tuning your subject line, you also need to pay attention to your pre-header text. Building upon the context provided by your subject line, pre-header texts give readers an additional nudge to open their emails. Two crucial things that you must keep in mind while curating your pre-header texts are:
- It must exist only as an extension of your subject line; it must not try to introduce any new ideas on its own.
- It must be mobile-optimized.
Broken Links
Given that the links embedded in your email eventually facilitate a conversion, it is imperative that you thoroughly evaluate their health prior to delivering your emails. Broken links aren’t just bad for business; they also spoil a subscriber’s user experience.
Here are a few things you must check after embedding a link in your email:
- This might sound trivial, but do check if the link you have inserted is the one you intended to or not; the only thing perhaps worse than having a broken link is having an irrelevant one.
- Check that the link is redirecting the user to the desirable destination.
- If the download of a resource is supposed to be triggered by clicking the link, check if that’s functioning properly; you wouldn’t want subscribers clicking umpteen times on your link only for it to return nothing.
Accessibility
Apart from acing your content and design, you must also work towards making your email campaigns accessible; people making use of assistive technologies must be able to engage with and comprehend your emails in an absolutely hassle-free manner.
Given below are a few measures that will help you make your campaigns accessible to all:
- Organize your email content. Break down long paragraphs into small sections of 2-3 lines. Use bullets and subheadings wherever necessary. This will make it easy for assistive technologies such as screen readers to parse through your content.
- Write descriptive alt texts for the images you’re including. Besides improving accessibility, alt texts also enable search engines to crawl your page more efficiently, thereby boosting your SEO.
- Use semantic markup; this will help screen readers navigate your emails in a smooth fashion.
- Try to stick to a single-column layout while designing your email template.
This email from AllTrails is an ideal example of an accessible template.
Inbox Preview
Different email clients render emails differently, even if only slightly. Hence, before sending out your emails, you must preview them across different environments and clients to check if they appear as desired. If you are designing your email for dark mode, too, it becomes that much more important to preview it before delivering.
Wrapping It Up
For your email campaigns to be able to drive maximum impact, they must be free of blemishes of all kinds. We hope the pre-flight checklist we shared above proves to be of help to you when you sit down to create your next campaign.
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