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Five tips on how small retail businesses can increase footfall with PPC advertising

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By Rashed Khan, PPC director at a UK-based PPC agency Pepper

PPC advertising allows businesses to pay money for their ad to be shown on the Google search results pages.

The advertiser chooses the keywords that they want to appear for, the ad that they want to show when someone searches for those keywords, and how much they are willing to pay for a click.

PPC works through an auction system; the more the advertiser bids, the better chance they have of appearing higher up on Google’s search results pages. The advertiser only pays when their ad is clicked.

Competition is ever increasing on Google, which means click prices tend to increase annually. This isn’t as much of an issue for large companies because they tend to allocate larger budgets. It does, however, put pressure on smaller businesses with more modest budgets.

However, smaller retail businesses can still compete using PPC advertising on Google. The key is to be smart about where you place your advertising spend.

In this post we will look at five great tips that small retail businesses can use to get increased footfall to their retail store without breaking the bank with PPC advertising.

Show PPC ads only when you’re open

If you’re trying to get more people to come into your store, then you don’t want to be paying to run PPC ads when your store is closed.

While it is possible that a customer may see your ad outside of opening hours and decide to come into your store the next day, the chance of obtaining a store visit by running PPC ads when your store is open is much higher.

As a small business, you likely don’t have the same budget that larger companies have. It is therefore better to place your budget in areas where you’re likely to see the best performance.

To tell Google the times you want to run your PPC ads, click on ‘Ad Schedule’ when in your campaign. In here you will be able to start editing your ad timings.

Bid on keywords containing your location

People who are based far away from your store are much less likely to want to visit it. This is because there is likely a competitor’s store that is located closer to where they live. Bid on keywords that contain your location or a location that is nearby.

For example, if you are a PPC agency based in Leeds, then it is a good idea to bid on the keyword ‘PPC Agency Leeds’. This is because the person searching for this keyword is not only looking for a PPC agency — we also know that it is important to them that the agency should be based in Leeds.

Therefore, the likelihood that this person is going to get in touch after seeing the ad is much higher than someone just searching for ‘PPC agency’.

You would expect to get more traffic from a broader keyword like ‘PPC agency’, but the quality of traffic is not likely to be as good. As a small business retailer with a modest budget, the focus needs to be on obtaining the highest quality traffic and not necessarily the highest amount of traffic.

Identify your best performing times of the year

You don’t have to have the same PPC budget every month or even every week. Most retail businesses have times of the year where they get more sales.

For example, coats sell better closer to winter, suitcases fly off the shelves as summer approaches, and school uniforms are most popular a few weeks before the new academic year begins.

Consider the products you sell and have a think about the time of year that each product is likely to sell the best.

You may not have enough budget to run PPC advertising for all of your products all year round.  Have a think about when each product is likely to be most popular and run PPC advertising for them during the relevant times of the year only.

If you’re going to be running a sale, then you know that your conversion rate is probably going to increase. This means you can justify being more aggressive with your PPC advertising and still make a good return.

Block out irrelevant IP addresses

If you’re constantly keeping an eye on your competitors’ activity on Google or if your staff often search for keywords that you’re bidding on, then there is a good chance that either you or your staff members are seeing your ads.

This can be problematic because if you don’t click the ad, then your clickthrough rate lowers. This can negatively impact your Quality Scores and that can then, in turn, result in your click prices increasing.

On the other hand, if you or your fellow team members click your ad, then you will be charged for a click. This is unnecessarily eating into your advertising budget while skewing your stats.

As a starting point for rectifying this issue, block out your office IP address and your home IP address in Google Ads. If your team is happy to share their IP addresses, then you can block out theirs as well. You can easily find your IP address by Googling ‘what is my IP address’.

There are sneaky ways to get a competitor’s IP address too that I’m not going to outline in this post. However, if you do have a competitor’s IP address, then you can block this out as well so they don’t see your PPC ads.

To block out an IP address in Google Ads, click on Settings while in a campaign. Find the IP Exclusions section and add all of the IP addresses that you don’t want seeing your ads.

Utilise location extensions

You can add in the address of the branch that is closest to the user. This should help to increase footfall to your store because users can see how close you are to them. Your opening times also appear which, if you follow tip number one of this post, will always say that you’re open.

To add the address of the nearest store to the user, you first need to create a Google My Business account and add in the addresses of all of your stores.

Once this is done, you can go into Google Ads and connect your Google Ads account to your Google My Business account.

The final step is to add in Location Extensions to your campaigns. This can be done in the Ads & Extensions section of Google Ads.

Wrapping up

It is true that Google Ads is becoming increasingly more competitive in 2020 but small business retailers can still compete if they’re smart.

Google receives 63,000 searches per second. This means that small businesses will never have enough budget to show an ad to every user who may be interested in it. In this case, it pays to use the features that Google Ads offers to target the people who are most likely to purchase your product.

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We asked ChatGPT what will be Google (GOOG) stock price for 2030

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We asked ChatGPT what will be Google (GOOG) stock price for 2030

Investors who have invested in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) stock have reaped significant benefits from the company’s robust financial performance over the last five years. Google’s dominance in the online advertising market has been a key driver of the company’s consistent revenue growth and impressive profit margins.

In addition, Google has expanded its operations into related fields such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence. These areas show great promise as future growth drivers, making them increasingly attractive to investors. Notably, Alphabet’s stock price has been rising due to investor interest in the company’s recent initiatives in the fast-developing field of artificial intelligence (AI), adding generative AI features to Gmail and Google Docs.

However, when it comes to predicting the future pricing of a corporation like Google, there are many factors to consider. With this in mind, Finbold turned to the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT to suggest a likely pricing range for GOOG stock by 2030. Although the tool was unable to give a definitive price range, it did note the following:

“Over the long term, Google has a track record of strong financial performance and has shown an ability to adapt to changing market conditions. As such, it’s reasonable to expect that Google’s stock price may continue to appreciate over time.”

GOOG stock price prediction

While attempting to estimate the price range of future transactions, it is essential to consider a variety of measures in addition to the AI chat tool, which includes deep learning algorithms and stock market experts.

Finbold collected forecasts provided by CoinPriceForecast, a finance prediction tool that utilizes machine self-learning technology, to anticipate Google stock price by the end of 2030 to compare with ChatGPT’s projection.

According to the most recent long-term estimate, which Finbold obtained on March 20, the price of Google will rise beyond $200 in 2030 and touch $247 by the end of the year, which would indicate a 141% gain from today to the end of the year.

2030 GOOG price prediction: Source: CoinPriceForecast

Google has been assigned a recommendation of ‘strong buy’ by the majority of analysts working on Wall Street for a more near-term time frame. Significantly, 36 analysts of the 48 have recommended a “strong buy,” while seven people have advocated a “buy.” The remaining five analysts had given a ‘hold’ rating.

1679313229 737 We asked ChatGPT what will be Google GOOG stock price
Wall Street GOOG 12-month price prediction: Source: TradingView

The average price projection for Alphabet stock over the last three months has been $125.32; this objective represents a 22.31% upside from its current price. It’s interesting to note that the maximum price forecast for the next year is $160, representing a gain of 56.16% from the stock’s current price of $102.46.

While the outlook for Google stock may be positive, it’s important to keep in mind that some potential challenges and risks could impact its performance, including competition from ChatGPT itself, which could affect Google’s price.


Disclaimer: The content on this site should not be considered investment advice. Investing is speculative. When investing, your capital is at risk.

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This Apple Watch app brings ChatGPT to your wrist — here’s why you want it

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Apple Watch Series 8

ChatGPT feels like it is everywhere at the moment; the AI-powered tool is rapidly starting to feel like internet connected home devices where you are left wondering if your flower pot really needed Bluetooth. However, after hearing about a new Apple Watch app that brings ChatGPT to your favorite wrist computer, I’m actually convinced this one is worth checking out.

The new app is called watchGPT and as I tipped off already, it gives you access to ChatGPT from your Apple Watch. Now the $10,000 question (or more accurately the $3.99 question, as that is the one-time cost of the app) is why having ChatGPT on your wrist is remotely necessary, so let’s dive into what exactly the app can do.

What can watchGPT do?

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Discord goes all in with AI: chatbots, automods, whiteboards and more

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Discord goes all in with AI: chatbots, automods, whiteboards and more

AI is the future, at least over on Discord.

The messaging application originally made for gamers has become Gen Z’s favorite online hangout destination of choice, and now it’s rolling out a number of features powered by artificial intelligence.

In an announcement(Opens in a new tab) on Thursday, Discord shared what’s coming to the platform soon: an AI chatbot, an automated AI moderator, a conversation summarizer, an avatar remixer, and a whiteboard. Some of these features begin rolling out today, March 9. Others will launch in the coming weeks and months.

While AI has jumped into the mainstream thanks to the popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, Discord has had an active AI community for quite a while now. According to the company, third-party AI apps already on the platform already have more than 30 million monthly users. Nearly 3 million servers on Discord have some AI element integrated into the community.

In fact, the biggest community on Discord is Midjourney, a text-to-image AI project which allows users to generate art from right within the server. Discord says Midjourney’s server has more than 13 million members.

So, with AI being such an integral part of Discord already, it seemed like only a matter of time before Discord itself started bringing AI directly into the platform.

images

AutoMod AI
Credit: Discord

The first feature coming to some Discord servers as soon as today is AutoMod AI. Discord already has an AutoMod feature, which basically automatically moderates rooms for admins based on the rules of the server. Discord has now integrated OpenAI-powered AI into AutoMod, allowing it to search the server and contact moderators when it thinks rules are possibly being broken. According to Discord, AutoMod AI can also consider the context of a conversation so, for example, users don’t get penalized for posts that are misconstrued.

Clyde is a bot that Discord users may already be familiar with, and starting next week, Clyde is getting an AI upgrade. Currently, the Clyde bot provides information, such as server error messages, and also responds to timeout or ban requests from users and mods. However, that’s pretty much all Clyde was able to do. Until now.

Clyde chatbot

Clyde
Credit: Discord

Clyde will now be able to answer all sorts of questions from users, much like OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot. Users simply have to type “@Clyde” followed by their prompt. Clyde will be able to pull up information and also help find specific emojis or GIFs based on a user’s description.

Another AI feature coming to Discord next week is Conversation Summaries. Again, the name is fairly descriptive of what it does. With users all over the world, many Discord channels are always moving regardless of time of day. Conversation Summaries will allow users to catch up on what they missed on a Discover Server. The AI-powered feature will “bundle” chats into topics so users can easily read up on what they find most interesting.

Conversation Summaries

Conversation Summaries
Credit: Discord

Starting today, developers can start playing with Avatar Remix, an open-source Discord app that integrates AI art into the messaging app. Avatar Remix allows users to take a fellow user’s avatar and change it up “using the power of generative image models.” What does that mean? In the demo that Discord showed Mashable, a user was able to add a party hat or a mustache to a friend’s avatar by simply mentioning their username and describing what changes they’d like to make.

Avatar Remix

Avatar Remix
Credit: Discord

The company is also launching an “AI incubator,” offering support for developers creating AI-powered apps on Discord.

Finally, Discord revealed a feature that’s coming soon that has long been requested by the Discord community: a whiteboard. But, of course, this won’t be just any collaborative whiteboard feature. It’s going to be AI-powered, allowing users to collaborate in generating AI art and more.

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