Enhanced Campaigns

In today's customer-centric world, User Experience(UX) plays a crucial role in determining the success or failure of a product. With a singular focus on the target audience and their experience, an expertly-designed UX ensures that users have a seamless, enjoyable, and immersive experience with a product. This, in turn, leads to a steady stream of satisfied and loyal customers. This is why industry giants like Google and Amazon have made UX a fundamental aspect of their business operations.

To stay competitive in today's market, successful companies continually test and iterate their products to align with the evolving needs of their users. Investing in UX has become an essential component for achieving success. Furthermore, UX plays a critical role in elevating the return on investment (ROI) for organizations. This article delves into the ways in which UX design can impact customer satisfaction and boost ROI.

UX and CX: Are they the same? 

The customer experience (CX) covers a customer’s holistic interaction with a brand across multiple touchpoints such as customer service, advertising, brand reputation, sales process, pricing fairness, and product delivery. In short, it is concerned with all the user touch points including social channels. Analyzing CX helps companies to know where their brand is positioned. 

On the other hand, user experience (UX) relates to how a user interacts with a specific product and it focuses mainly on the digital touchpoints of the user like website, applications, and devices. UX primarily focuses on areas such as usability, interaction design, visual design, information architecture, content strategy, and user research. 

CX is a more holistic initiative for customer retention whereas UX design aims at providing a pleasurable and easy experience for the users while using the product. UX is a subset of CX and is essential to enhance ROI. 

Both UX and CX have to be in tandem to boost customer loyalty and customer retention.   Let’s see an example of purchasing a product from an online store to illustrate this. 

• A user logs into the website to search for the product with the desired specification. If the navigation is seamless and product recommendations and customer reviews are personalized, the user can quickly arrive at a decision. 
• Then, within a few clicks, he can complete the payment. This is a positive user experience. Such an experience will make the user come back as the customer experience was great. 
• Imagine the package will be delivered to the user on time but the product was defective. 
• The next step for the user will be to contact customer service to figure out whether the product can be exchanged or not. 
• If the customer service team promptly responds to the user and resolves the issue, it is a positive customer experience. 

Thus we see how both UX and CX are essential for customer loyalty which is a determining factor of the profitability of the business. 

UX Strategies to Improve CX and ROI

Eliminating the risks of product failure is the main goal of UX to improve customer satisfaction. For this, certain principles of UX have to be focused on. 

• Usefulness: The design needs to have a purpose, and only user research can help in finding what is useful for the users.  
• Usability: Valuable insights and feedback have to be gathered from the users to measure the usability of the product and iterate the design accordingly. 
• Speed: The product design must ensure that it can cater to the fast interactions of the users on the web page/mobile app. 
• Trends: The UI/UX design has to be relevant and empower users to buy more. 
• Simplicity: Users like to have simple, accurate, and user-friendly solutions for their pain points. So keep the design as simple as possible. 

A good UX and CX are the pillars of a great ROI. Investing in UX enhances customer satisfaction which directly affects the company’s ROI. Following these core UX strategies will help to create a flawless user-centric design.

User Research to Create a Customer Persona

Before getting into UX design, UI UX designers need a firm understanding of the user types, their needs, and their pain points. For this, designers interview people who are using similar products, gather feedback from them to identify the pain points, conduct one-to-one meetings or launch online questionnaires to gain valuable insights into customer needs, motivations, and concerns. Keep in mind that the user needs may vary with demographics, interests, and purchase behavior. To summarize, knowing the exact target audience will help tailor user-centric designs that eliminate pain points and deliver the best customer experience. 

Mapping Customer Journeys

The data from customer personas can be applied to design a flawless customer journey. The key touchpoints that customers have with the product are identified and difficulties faced by the customer while interacting with the product are mapped. Using these maps, UI UX designers ensure that every interaction of the customer with the product is seamless. Such customer journey maps eliminate the errors that can arise due to assumptions made by designers. In addition, these maps are a great tool to understand where the customer needs are not met and then iterate the design to serve them better. 

Prototyping and Wireframing 

The design team creates a layout to demonstrate how the key interface elements look and work in a digital product. The layout can be low-fidelity wireframes or high-fidelity wireframes, also known as rapid prototypes. The choice of wireframes depends on the purpose of the design of the product and the requirement of the team members. Such basic skeletons of the design help designers prioritize all the elements with customers at the center point. The high-fidelity prototypes are close to the ultimate version of the product and developing such prototypes helps to gather feedback from the customers at an early stage. 

Testing the Usability 

Usability testing is performed to evaluate the design or prototype with real users. It helps UI UX designers to make corrections and modifications at an early stage of the design process. As discussed earlier, prototyping is the best way to find out the bottlenecks of the UX design and fix them before it goes on a large scale. Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer conducts permanent A/B testing to redesign the product that caters to user needs. 

Why should you calculate ROI for UX? 

UX/UI  improvements in design will deliver brands more positive product reviews, enhanced brand loyalty, considerable reduction in user errors, and better conversion rates. There are many success stories of companies that had an indirect increase in profits due to improvements made in their UX design. 

• Humana, a health insurance company performed A/B testing on their homepage banner. The first design was good but the company felt that it had to be improved to increase click-through rates ( CTR). Simple changes were made in the design and copy. These small changes in the UX design of the homepage banner resulted in a 433% increase in clicks. 
• Virgin America wanted to make its website more usable for modern travelers. So in 2014, they decided to make minor changes to their website to give a pleasurable digital experience for their customers. After successful A/B testing, they released a responsive website. As a result, they observed a 14% increase in conversion rates and 20% fewer support calls. 
• Rev, online transcription and captions service, completely redesigned their website to give it a modern look. Initially, the website had a carousel as the main design element to highlight the value propositions of the company. In the new design, the carousel was replaced with a simple bold value proposition with call-to-action(CTA button). This resulted in an increase in conversion rate by 19% in 9 months. 
• Vocier, a luxury suitcase brand found out that their website lacked usability. They made A/B testing pages. After implementing the changes, the conversion rate of the final version was 75% higher than the older website. 

These real-life examples show that simple changes in the UX design can have a positive effect on the conversion rate and dramatically impact your company's bottom line. So it stands to reason that investing in UX can contribute to the growth trajectory of the company, and already has for many brands. 

How can I Calculate the ROI for my Investments in UX/UI services?

It's quite challenging to get raw data on return on investment(ROI) in UX/UI services, as the result of the changes has an indirect impact on the profitability of the company. But these observations can help in determining the impact UX has on ROI. 

1. Cost-benefit analysis: In this method, the costs of the UX/UI services, including the development and test of the design, are calculated. Then the value is compared to the benefits, such as increased productivity, improved user experience, and reduced support costs. This analysis gives the net benefit of the investment.
2. Return on assets (ROA): Here, the return on the UI/UX services is calculated as a percentage of the assets invested. To calculate this, divide the net benefit of the investment by the total cost of the services and multiply by 100. 
3. Net Present Value (NPV): The present value of the future cash flows of the UX/UI services are assessed by considering the time value of money. 
4. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) measurements: Track the before and after key performance metrics such as the task completion rate, error rate, and task completion time. 
5. Cost of rework: Compute the cost and effort of UI/UX design services at the beginning of the project. Then compare the data to the cost of rework after software implementation to analyze the total cost savings. 

A solid UX design enhances CX and boosts ROI

A pleasurable user experience greatly influences the customer experience. Research by Deloitte and Touche reveals that customer-centric companies were 60% more profitable than companies that were not focused on the customer. And a good UX is inevitable for a positive user experience. Therefore, investing in UX is a smart move due to the following reasons: 

• Greater ease of use boosts overall revenue/conversion as the customers get emotionally attached to the brand. And this results in customer loyalty. 
• A well-designed product enhances customer satisfaction along with business-to-business satisfaction. 
• UX techniques preempt user issues in the development stage of the product. This lowers the company’s expenditure for support calls. 
• A product backed with comprehensive user research is less likely to fail to eliminate the risk of a wrong thing. 

Now that you know how to get started with improving CX and UX, increasing overall on-site conversions, you can also start the process of bringing higher quality traffic to your website in the first place…through effective advertising and targeting. With MarinOne's paid media management platform, you will be able to see what ads perform across all paid media channels you're running, and invest wisely accordingly. Get started with our expert consultation team today to learn more about improving your customers' brand experience.

‍

Aparna K.S. is a guest contributor to the Marin blog.

‍

Modern businesses serve an increasingly diverse and demanding customer base. Between older customers who prefer traditional methods of outreach and younger customers who want a more personalized approach, marketing efforts must always be balanced to appeal to each target audience. 

The popularity and widespread use of social media also increases pressure on businesses to ensure that their marketing and messaging hits the right notes with every customer every single time. Attribution can help teams decide which messages resonate with their audiences and adjust tactics accordingly. Read on to find out how incrementality can help modern marketers conduct attribution research more effectively and accurately. 

3 Ways marketing strategies have changed in recent years

Data availability has increased significantly

Customers are engaging with businesses through digital channels more than ever. This allows businesses to monitor, measure, and adjust these interactions to yield the best marketing results. Social media interactions, engagement data from digital marketing tools, and many more systems are available for business leaders to learn about how their customers react to certain messages and marketing material over time. Modern marketers can combine this insight with effective targeting mechanisms to ensure that carefully crafted messages reach the customers that would resonate with them the most. 

Marketing campaigns are becoming more complex

In the past, marketing campaigns typically relied on traditional methods of outreach such as advertising or promotions to increase interest in their offerings. However, the rise of social media combined with the ease of e-commerce has changed the marketing landscape dramatically. Marketing collateral now has the ability to directly drive traffic to channels owned by the brand or to a landing page designed to convert customers. This has led to marketing material being spread over a wider variety of channels to increasingly targeted audiences. 

Rising marketing budgets come with higher pressure to deliver results

Modern marketers have cutting-edge digital solutions to help them reach their customers more effectively. They also have more data about their customers than ever. Business leaders understand the potential that this combination of marketing insight and strategy can realize for their organizations. This has led digital advertising spend to rise consistently in the past few years. Industry estimates show that worldwide spending on digital advertising will cross $500 billion by 2024. This increased spending also places significant pressure on marketers to deliver results and present these results in a compelling way. 

‍

What is incrementality?

Marketers must study their outreach efforts closely across channels, messages, and outreach types. This can make attributing business outcomes to a specific platform, tactic, campaign, or ad set challenging. While most social media and websites provide marketers with rudimentary data about their ads on their own site, these analytics are limited in the insight they can provide for omnichannel marketing efforts. 

Incrementality refers to the measurable increase in business outcomes as a direct result of specific activities. This measurement typically includes significant testing and experimentation with various test and control groups for maximum accuracy. 

“In the context of marketing, when there is a concerted action, what is the compounding action of that concerted action compared to if you take that concerted action away,” shares Supriya Shukla, Customer Engagement Manager at Marin Software. “It’s like a tap. You open the tap and water comes out - you assume all the water coming out is from you opening the tap - you took an action and there was an outcome but then you close the tap and there’s a leak - from where? - is it from you opening the tap or was the leak always there?”

Why incrementality is a powerful arrow in the modern marketer’s quiver

More businesses are employing data-driven marketing to improve the effectiveness of campaigns

Most businesses use data to effectively segment and target audiences. Social media platforms, sales sites, and owned marketing channels each provide marketers with significant data about their customers, marketing effort success, and the relationship between the two. Since this data is so easily accessible, the accuracy of this data and its ability to generate strategic insight often makes all the difference for successful marketers. 

Marin can help make the difference for businesses that operate in highly competitive marketplaces. Supriya shares an example of a financial services client who employed Marin’s solution:

“Financial services is a very competitive space known to have very high dollar CPAs. Over time, MarinOne has seen, because this client lead-scores their customers along their buying journey, various patterns and insights as they’ve tracked them incrementally as they move from one part of the funnel to the next that they wouldn’t have foreseen otherwise,” she says. “This has enabled them to formulate hypotheses that they’ve been able to test. This demonstrates how incrementality can play a huge role in sophisticated marketing measurement for customers in the digital age.” 

Multiple social media platforms with divergent user bases require unique marketing strategies 

Social media users have more options for online engagement depending on their unique needs. This has led to audiences being spread across multiple platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, and more. While this helps marketers reach their target audiences more efficiently, it also means that omnichannel marketers have to tweak their marketing material based on the formats that are most effective for each platform. 

Marin is able to adapt to the platforms that are most valuable to you. Supriya explains how Marin’s solution “can be highly customized in terms of the data you can pull into it through business intelligence connection tools, as well as the ability to bring in custom call-ins and calculations to display in a grid format. You can calculate custom metrics within a BI tool that brings the data in or you can manually set it up within Marin. This will enable you to attribute by seeing side-by-side campaigns to see how they’re converting when compared to custom conversion touchpoints.”

How incrementality gives marketers greater insight into campaign performance and business impact

Combine internal data with industry insights to benchmark campaign performance against key competitors

Marketing data can be received from a variety of sources but it is always important to put this information into the right context. Market conditions and customer preferences change and evolve regularly. Measuring internal marketing performance and comparing that insight with competitor data and industry benchmarks can help marketers keep track of these movements and ensure that they are consistently effective in rapidly changing marketing environments. 

Effectively target increasingly discerning customers with better messaging

Modern customers are always on the lookout for brands whose value sets align with their own. Value-based marketing is more popular and effective than it has ever been. It is important for businesses to choose the right words in their messaging and adjust them where necessary to better align with their customers. Incrementality allows marketers to measure the extent to which their messages resonate with their customers and adjust accordingly. 

Accurately determine the value of each lead generated through specific marketing efforts and optimize spending accordingly

Marketing efforts can generate significant rises in sales and interaction figures and are directly responsible for a measurable amount of revenue. Incrementality measurements allow business leaders to weigh the amount they are spending on each lead against the value they generate for the business. This measurement can also improve reporting and enable better decision making at all levels. 

Meet your marketing goals with accurate insights generated across complex omnichannel marketing campaigns

Marketing data comes in all forms and has to be consolidated from multiple sources and platforms. MarinOne allows marketers to access all their crucial marketing data on a single platform while still conducting attribution analysis at various levels. 

‍Get in touch with one of our experts to learn how MarinOne can help you plan, monitor, and adjust marketing activities to achieve optimal results every time.

As the online space becomes more competitive, brands are going to new and greater lengths to ensure they stand out ahead of the competition. One promotional route that many are choosing is display ads. 

When well-executed, display advertising is an excellent way to capture your audience’s attention. Display advertising allows you to effectively convey your product and messaging. The ads are designed to entice the reader to click through and learn more. 

However, some expertise is required—poorly implemented display ads can negatively impact your business. When they miss their mark, users might find them intrusive and irrelevant, and you could waste a lot of money. 

But what exactly is a display ad, and how do they work? What are some good examples of display advertising? Let’s find out. 

What Is a Display Ad? 

Display ads are a common form of online advertising. There are several kinds of display ads; you’re used to seeing them in emails, and they’re also common on websites and social media. 

Display ads can serve multiple purposes. Some businesses use them to build awareness of new research, for example, while others will utilize them to promote the company’s products and services. 

How Do Display Ads Work?

When you implement display advertising, you start by choosing the platform you want to promote yourself on, as well as the ad size and positioning. 

The pricing varies depending on what you pick. You can choose several pricing models for display ads, such as cost-per-mille (CPM) and pay-per-click (PPC). When you run an advertisement of this kind, you can choose how long you want the campaign to run and select other parameters—such as the audience segments you’d like to target. 

Examples of Excellent Display Ads, and Why They Work

To help you create an excellent display advertising campaign of your own, let’s look at these real-life examples. Below, you’ll find eight display ads that have worked in the past. We’ll discuss why they’ve enjoyed success. 

Spotify

Music streaming giant Spotify has become well known for its innovative and quirky advertising. The company has run several paid online campaigns, each featuring its instantly recognizable branding. 

This is a promotion for Spotify Premium. If you use the free version, you know all too well that the ads can be intrusive to the in-app experience; this ad works because it gets to the point. What they are directly and indirectly saying is, “You can wave goodbye to ads and try the full version of Spotify for 30 days, after which you probably won’t want to return to the free edition.” 

What makes this ad work? It addresses a pain point that customers using the free service all have, and offers an immediate, free (for a time) solution. The text is clear and not cluttered, and the green-means-go action button stands out. Single or two-tone color schemes with vibrant tones are also very effective statistically as they tend to pop out to the user on a desktop or mobile device.

MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the world’s most popular email marketing tools, and its marketing strategy is a key factor. 

Why does this particular ad campaign work? Well, there are several reasons. Rhyming is a powerful way to make your message stick, and each ad is equal parts funny and absurd—inviting connection through humor. Moreover, the colors are simple and appealing. 

Klarna

Klarna has taken the fintech world by storm, and its advertising campaigns challenge the assumption that the financial services industry is drab. 

This pay-later service originated in Stockholm, Sweden—where it still has its headquarters. And in the ad you see above, it has dug deep into its Scandinavian roots. Klarna isn’t actually Swedish for “smoother shopping”, so it’s added a bit of humor for users, as you can see with the two characters that pay homage aesthetically to playful Swedish stereotypes. 

The ad also works because the copy is simple—only four words in a unique font—and both the colors and textures suggest the smoothness they’re talking about. 

HP

HP is one of the largest tech companies in the world and is perhaps best known for its printers. How do you make printing seem a little more interesting? Create ads that are fun to view and read, of course. 

Anyone who has had to file their own taxes knows that tax season can often be stressful. HP’s ad works because it offers a promise—that its product will make your job more straightforward. 

The ad also works because the colors are simple and the printer is at the focal point of the image. 

Adobe 

Adobe is one of the world’s biggest software companies. Adobe’s solutions primarily focus on helping creatives achieve their goals. Photographers, designers, and podcasters use several tools (e.g.,  Lightroom, InDesign, and Audition). 

Any photographer will tell you that what they saw in real life often doesn’t look the same on camera. Editing software is useful for improving color quality and creating a unique style, as this ad shows. 

The ad is successful because it sums everything up in four words; you take the picture, before bringing it to life with one of Adobe’s editing tools. The company has also used complimenting colors, making the ad more eye-catching. 

Samsung

Samsung is a global manufacturer of various consumer items, including smartphones and tablets. It's one of the fiercest competitors to Apple. As such, the company needs to ensure that its advertising game is on point. 

Upon releasing the Galaxy S6 tablet, Samsung produced a campaign with a simple message: you can create work regardless of where you are. The ad appealed to people who might need to create quick prototypes for clients on the go, along with those either traveling or working remotely. 

In addition to the messaging, the ad also works because the colors are simple – and the tablet is the main focal point for the viewer. 

Huawei

Huawei is a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in China. For a recent Christmas campaign, the company put together the following ad campaign.

The ad encourages people to be present with their loved ones aside, but it’s clever because you can still see the main product that Huawei is trying to sell. Moreover, the candy cane adds to the Christmas theme – as do the shades of red. 

Huawei’s ad was also effective because it played on viewers’ emotions. Christmas is a time to create memories with people you care about, and the messaging reminds people about the importance of disconnecting from the virtual world now and then. 

Puma 

Puma is one of the world’s best-known sports clothing manufacturers. While it isn’t as big as Nike or Adidas, the company still has a huge presence and following – with several major partnerships. 

‍

Puma has created several memorable display ads in the past, but the ad above is one of the best. It uses the term “we’ve got sole” to describe the fact that puma shoes often have comfortable and sturdy soles, but also that its products have a sense of character. 

Unlike some of the other ads on this list, the Puma campaign features a wider variety of colors. However, they remain pleasing to the eye and work together without looking disjointed. 

4 Ways to Create Your Own Successful Display Ad Campaign

Now that you’ve seen a couple of display ads in action, we can discuss the top factors that will help your own campaigns stand out. 

Set a Clear Goal for Your Ads

Before you start creating copy, you must have a clear goal in mind for your display ad campaign. You can use display ads for several types of goals. Below are three to get your creative juices flowing: 

• Generate more leads 
• Increase email subscriptions 
• Offer a free trial for a premium version of your product 

Consider the action you wish readers to take, and select your words carefully to connect with your audience demographics.

Use Interesting Visuals 

Each display ad example in this article uses interesting visuals. The images are simple and tell the story with minimal complexity, making it easy for the viewer to understand what’s going on.

Color is a critical factor to convey mood and personality, so choose carefully. Warm colors like red, orange, and yellow generally convey a sense of energy and enthusiasm. Blues and purples more often connote poise, wisdom, and stability. Green, of course, makes people think of action and growth.  

Think About Your Fonts

Your text will be the first thing that most people look at when engaging with your display ads, and you should have fonts that appeal to them visually. 

Your fonts should match your branding; using something modern if you sell antiques probably won’t work. Be creative; we recommend trying at least two or three different kinds to see which ones bring more engagement.

Carefully Pick the Platform for Your Ads

Since you can create display ads on several platforms, place them wisely to get the highest return on your investment. Younger customers are often found on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, while more mature audiences can be found on Twitter and Facebook.  

How to Write Copy That Gets People Clicking on Your Ads

Once you’ve chosen your display ad campaign’s goals and visuals, you’ll need to consider the copy itself. Below are some pointers to help you out. 

Understand Your Audience

When you create ad copy, it’s crucial that you understand your audience. How they speak is especially important—tone and style matter. If you’re struggling to write copy that resonates with your audience, consider outsourcing this part to someone from the same demographic. 

Keep Your Copy Short

In each of our display ad examples, the copy is short and gets to the point. People won’t read lengthy ad texts online. Long paragraphs will turn them off. 

You might find it helpful to write a few versions and A/B test them to see which works best. 

Inject Some Humor 

People love laughing, and humor is one of the best ways to connect with your target audience. Don’t be afraid to go a little left-field with your visuals and copy. The payoff is huge if you get it right. Just ensure that it feels authentic and acknowledges a common experience they’ll recognize.

Solve the Audience’s Problem

What’s in it for them? At the heart of all advertising, you need to ensure that you communicate how you will solve your audience’s problem. The reader must want what you are selling, so be sure to communicate your solution clearly and immediately.

How MarinOne Can Help

Display advertising is an excellent way to reach your target audience, and you can have a bit of fun planning your campaigns. The fight for online attention is fierce, but the rewards are big if you successfully portray yourself in the best possible light. 

We hope you are inspired by some of the best display ads of 2022, and that our tips help you create the best ads possible. If you would like to improve your display advertising, MarinOne can help you identify opportunities and optimize your campaigns across Amazon DSP, Yahoo! DSP, and Criteo Marketing Solutions

‍Schedule a demo with one of our display advertising experts to find out how a display-driven strategy can innovate your marketing strategy.

Each year, the US Search Awards recognizes the best and brightest brands among the world’s leading search and digital agencies and professionals. We compiled advice from eight of this year’s judges on what every brand should do to optimize their PPC campaigns.

This year’s awards will take place at Paris Las Vegas on Wednesday, October 7th. For more information and to enter, visit the US Search Awards website.



Diane Pease

Inbound Marketing Manager, Cisco Systems | @DPease

Monitor Your Extension Performance

With all the hype around ad extensions, we can sometimes get caught up in “extension excitement” – putting site links, callouts, and location extensions on our ads to provide a better user experience. But it’s important to monitor the performance of your extensions, to ensure they’re really working for you in the way you want them to. Create a reminder – and check on a bi-weekly basis. If you have an extension that’s not performing, make adjustments or try removing it. Extensions are a great way to expand your ad, but they need to be monitored.



Matt McGowan

Head of Strategy for America’s Advertising, Google | @Matt_Mcgowan

RLSA. Do it. It amazes me how many clients don't add the tag to their sites. For free, you can bring together intent, context, and audience to help your business drive sales and leads with great ROI. With remarketing lists for search ads, you can modify bids, ads, and keywords for past site visitors. For example, people visit your sports apparel site to check out available styles, and look at the shoe section of the site. You could add these shoppers to a "Shoe category" list. Then, the next time they search for running shoes on Google you could bid more for them. More here.



Richard Gregory

UK Industry Expert | @Smartrich

You absolutely have to be leveraging Gmail Sponsored Promotions (GSP) these days. At a recent SAScon event, Larry Kim highlighted the low CPCs that early adopters of the format have benefited from. One great tip is to run a campaign targeting Gmail accounts containing newsletters from your competitors, remembering to negative your own keywords to avoid upsetting existing customers.



Jim Banks

Global Head of Biddable Media | @Jimbanks

Anticipate the device your users will be on and have ads that reflect that context. If someone is on mobile, then having the CTA as "Call" or "Tap" will get higher CTR (TTR - Tap Through Rate) than "Click". Dayparting is now a 168-hour a week function, and device, location, and time of day/day of week will help or hurt more than keyword, bid, or ad.



Lisa Williams

Digital Marketing Strategist, Author, Speaker, Networker, and Columnist; Sustainable Digital Marketing | @SEOPllyAnna

Look at the performance of high-volume, general PPC ads and test the content for titles and meta descriptions. For example, the shipping message "same day shipping" performed better in Paid than the message "fast shipping". Test the better performing message CTR and conversion to see if you get lift in Organic Search the same way you did in Paid Search.



Matt Umbro

Senior Account Manager, Hanapin Marketing; Founder of #PPCChat | @Matt_Umbro

In order to quickly find keywords that are costing too much and not providing enough (or any) conversions, create an automated rule. I'll generally create a rule that runs weekly and looks at the last 30 days’ worth of data. I'll set the rule to identify all keywords that have seen at least 50 clicks and zero conversions. I'll have these keywords emailed to me so I can choose whether to change my bids, pay particularly close attention to the search queries, and/or pause the keywords all together. You can adjust the filter as you see fit, but this rule helps to easily find poor performing keywords.



John Gagnon

Bing Ads Evangelist | @Jmgagnon

To bid or not to bid? Bid. And, there’s finally concrete data. Bing Ads completed a study measuring the number of clicks a brand received when they were the top organic spot alone, versus the top organic spot plus the top paid ad.

After looking at three million impressions on brand searches for retail during 2014, the study found advertisers saw an incremental 31 clicks for every 100 brand searches when a paid search ad was used in combination with the top organic result. That’s huge!

Only 11 of those clicks would have been received anyways. Adjust your CPA lower by about 18% to account for the overlap – and you have a concrete strategy for bidding on your brand terms.



Jonathan Beeston

Owner, Beetsonomics | @Beeston

If you're a retailer, then of course you're running Shopping campaigns. But your campaigns will only be as good as the product or inventory feed that powers them. Spend as much time optimizing your feed as you would any other part of the campaign, making sure you have the right imagery and search-friendly titles. As you can use the feed with Bing Shopping Campaigns (now in beta), Facebook Product Ads, and Google Shopping, the optimization will pay off more than once.

The deadline for submitting an entry to one of the 22 categories in the US Search Awards is the 17th of July, so download the entry form today and you could be a worthy winner at the glittering Las Vegas event in October during Pubcon!

The migration deadline has officially passed. I believe some accounts are still being migrated over, however, as I noticed some old legacy paused campaigns that I purposely did not migrate were officially moved over this morning. I figured this would be a good time to go over some high-level data points to see what the performance was pre- and post-migration for our own Marin Software marketing account. (Note: This article does NOT include data points from any of our customers.)

We migrated over on June 12, 2013. That gives us six full weeks of data post-migration. For comparison, I took data points pre-migration for the entire year of 2013 up until the migration date just to get a large enough sample set for the period before, though it should be noted that the before and after comparisons are usually flawed because of seasonality/promotions/budgets anyway. By the nature of our business, we don’t do a ton of marketing through mobile search. I would like to preface the analysis of our data below by pointing out that the impact of enhanced campaigns on our account may not be as profound as it would be on a retailer that relies more heavily on mobile searches to drive sales or customers to their stores. After the migration, we kept our search bids even and dropped the mobile bids by 50%. Here what we’ve seen so far:















Enhanced Campaigns Change

CTR

CPC

Avg. Position

Post-Migration (% change over pre-migration data)

+12.34%

+16.60%

+0.0%

We’ve seen a healthy increase in our Click-thru rate but also a larger increase in our CPCs. Our average position has remained constant over this time period so there's nothing alarming there. I didn’t include conversion and conversion rate data as we’ve made some significant changes post-click in the last couple months which makes me think that the changes on that front are more weighted due to that. It’s nice to see we’re initially getting more clicks per impression, but it is worrisome that our CPC has risen so much in the last 6 weeks.

All in all it’s still early, but our results are a mixed bag. I’ll continue to monitor them over the next several weeks and start working on some changes to our bidding strategy by segment to find the optimal sweet spot in the new Enhanced campaign world. Let us know if you have any stories to share.

Unless you’ve been living on another planet for the last 6 months, you’re no doubt familiar with what is arguably the biggest change in search advertising since the launch of AdWords – Google’s Enhanced Campaigns. The invention and launch of Enhanced Campaigns from the search engine giant has made it easier for advertisers to scale their campaigns to take advantage of the, now significantly sized, mobile audience.

In the US, mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) now account for 25% of overall clicks from search [1]. More than 50% of the UK population now owns a smartphone and some sites receive more than 30% of traffic from mobile devices, so the importance of mobile commerce cannot be ignored [2].

We’re often asked by advertisers of all different sizes, from different verticals, how to make the most of the opportunity. Today’s blog post outlines four ways for advertisers to embrace mobile search and ensure that you do not miss out on engaging with the growing mobile search audience.



Mobile e-commerce (Mobile Site Links)

Web users all around the world are using smartphones and tablet devices throughout the purchase cycle. Retailer and service providers are benefiting from increasing levels of user-confidence in mobile devices; a study by eMarketer showed that 61% of respondents had purchased a product online using a PC, with smartphone and tablet users less than 10% behind, at 52%. During the research phase, the results are even closer, with 50% of worldwide internet users reporting using a PC to review a brand or product online, the same percentage report using a smartphone and 52% have used a tablet [3].

Retailers and service providers are ahead of the pack with the majority now offering a fully-functional mobile website. The next step is to make it easy for potential customers to find your website: ensure maximum keyword coverage through correct migration to enhanced campaigns and calculate mobile bid adjustments to reflect any differences in performance you see across different devices (for more information, please read our white paper, "The Search Marketers’ Guide to Enhanced Campaigns").



Click to call ads

For brands whose products or services are often bought over the phone rather than online or for those who do not yet have a mobile ready website, click to call ads are a great solution. These ads work in much the same way as traditional mobile search ads; the fundamental difference is that instead of clicking through to a website, the click on the ad triggers a call. The resulting sales and revenue from these calls can be tracked and attributed back to the keyword search so that bids are optimised correctly.



App download ads

New research from eBay shows that mobile apps involving retail products or services had a 42% success rate for reaching launch stage, with just shy of 73,000 retail apps made available in app stores last year. Both online retailers and traditional bricks and mortar stores have embraced the world where there is always “an app for that” by creating user-friendly apps that provide mobile users with an alternative to visiting the full mobile website. Small screen size inhibits use of mobile websites on smartphones as it is simply too fiddly to input strings of information and smartphone users are often in public places where they may not feel comfortable typing out payment information. Apps are particularly attractive to users on smartphone devices as they facilitate the storage of personal information, such as credit card details, so that they do not have to be manually entered on a small screen in a public space.



Joining online and offline

One of the emerging tactics used by high street retailers is to offer vouchers that are redeemed by simply showing a code on your smartphone at the point of sale. This is a highly innovative, trackable use of mobile which should not be missed out on. Geo-target mobile ads to the areas close to stores or restaurants, promote the voucher in the ad copy to foster click-through and make the voucher accessible within one or two clicks of the landing page. When users redeem the voucher in store, you have a reliable way of quantifying the footfall driven through mobile advertising. This strategy can be taken further by using a technology such as Revtrax who can pass keyword information via the voucher code so that in store redemptions can be attributed to individual keyword clicks for powerful optimisation.



References

1. Marin Software Q1 2013 Global Advertising Benchmark Report
2. Econsultancy Mobile Commerce Compendium June 2013
3. eMarketer How Mobile Is Shaping Global Digital Behavior

Last week we delved into best practices for Google enhanced campaigns, and now we’re back with six more ways to ensure your transition is as seamless and profitable as possible.

Best Practice #6 – Use Mobile-Optimized Landing Pages

Make sure to use mobile-optimized landing pages to ensure a good experience for mobile users. If you leverage creative-level destination URLs that direct users to various landing pages, use the {ifmobile} and {ifnotmobile} ValueTrack parameters. For example: {ifmobile:m}{ifnotmobile:www}.marinsoftware.com.



Best Practice #7 – Track Conversions and Revenue by Device

Google’s new {device} ValueTrack parameter enables advertisers to track paid search performance by device. If destination URLs are tagged with this parameter, a “c,” “t,” or “m” will be inserted based on the device the user has clicked and converted from. To make use of this new feature, it is critical to migrate your URLs correctly and confirm their function properly. We recommend migrating URLs after merging parent and sibling campaigns in order to reduce the number of URL changes required.



Best Practice #8 – Leverage Upgraded Ad Extensions

During a campaign merge, ensure that all ad extensions in sibling campaigns are present in the parent campaign. If your mobile sitelink or call extensions are unique from your desktop ad extensions, you will want to leverage upgraded extensions. Simply specify “Mobile” next to device preferences to customize your extensions for a mobile-optimized experience. Mobile-optimized extensions will be triggered more frequently over standard extensions for searches on mobile devices.



Best Practice #9 – Generate Mobile Preferred Creative

If you have creative that specifically target mobile devices, set the device preference to “Mobile” for these creative in the parent campaign. Creative text that contains phones numbers will be disallowed, so use call extensions instead. To make the most of your mobile campaigns, consider creating ads that leverage location identifiers. Finally, remember that mobile-preferred creative are eligible to show on desktop and tablet devices, so you will want to create desktop optimized creative as well.



Best Practice #10 – Separate Display Campaigns

At this time, advertisers are not required to merge separate, network-targeted campaigns. Continue to separate search campaigns from display campaigns in order to calculate optimal display mobile bid adjustments based on display performance. “Display Network only” campaigns can still target creative by device models and operating systems.



Best Practice #11 – Monitor Performance

Be sure to monitor the performance of your new enhanced campaigns to ensure they are achieving your performance goals and satisfying your business requirements. Generate recurring reports segmented by device, and create alerts to identify significant shifts in key performance indicators. This will allow you to successfully analyze and respond to your campaign results.



This concludes our series on best practices for Google enhanced campaigns, but you don’t have to stop there. Download our full guide, “The Search Marketer’s Guide for Migrating to Google Enhanced Campaigns,” for even more information on how to successfully advertise using this new upgrade.

With the July 22, 2013 migration deadline just around the corner, every search marketer is paying close attention to Google enhanced campaigns. We have yet to realize the full impact they will make, but one thing is clear – it is best to migrate early and armed with a plan.



To help create your plan of attack, download our white paper, “The Search Marketer’s Guide for Migrating to Google Enhanced Campaigns,” and read on for a selection of 11 best practices from our team of experts here at Marin Software.



Best Practice #1 – Maintain Historical Quality Scores

Quality Score estimates reflect a keyword’s overall performance across devices. Therefore, migrating to enhanced campaigns does not result in a loss of historical Quality Score information as long as keyword, creative, landing page, and device combinations remain the same. However, if your device combinations change or if you decide to merge matching campaigns, your Quality Scores will update to an average of the keywords’ original campaign Quality Scores, weighted by search volume.





Best Practice #2 - Separate Location-Targeted Campaigns

At this time, advertisers are not required to merge separate, location-targeted campaigns. Advertisers that have matching campaigns targeting separate locations should continue to segment these campaigns by location target. This will enable optimal bid calculations based on performance by location, rather than relying on campaign-level location bid adjustments.





Best Practice #3 - Adjust Campaign Daily Budgets

Upon merging your matching campaigns, your enhanced campaign daily budgets will likely need to be increased due to the additional click volume from expanded device targeting. Add the daily budget of the sibling campaigns to the parent campaign, and review the budget of the parent campaign to ensure it meets your business requirements. You can make adjustments from there based on your goals and the results you’re seeing.





Best Practice #4 – Calculate Optimal Mobile Bid Adjustments

If you previously separated your campaigns by device target, you can now set a mobile bid adjustment at the campaign or group level to bid on mobile devices separately from desktop and tablet devices. Mobile bid adjustments are set as a percentage of the keyword-level (desktop and tablet) bid. See our white paper for more details on these percentages.





Best Practice #5 – Utilize Time-of-Day Bid Adjustments

When it comes to scheduling your bids, there are a couple things to remember. First, scheduling reflects the account time zone and not the user’s time zone. Second, scheduling is applied across all devices regardless of performance. Therefore, we recommend applying a bid adjustment that accounts for the average performance between devices.





Next time: Check back soon to see six more best practices or download the white paper, “The Search Marketers’ Guide for Migrating to Google Enhanced Campaigns,” to get our full guide today.

On Tuesday, Google announced that, after spending almost a year in beta, “Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)” will be rolling out to all enhanced campaign advertisers. RLSA will allow marketers to update and customize search keywords, bids, and ads based on a person’s previous visits to their websites.

I imagine there’s a sense of excitement among online marketers, with the ability to start utilizing RLSA soon if they have not started any campaigns previously.

Companies are spending a larger amount on display re-targeting efforts and RLSA can help supplement these campaigns and become another highly relevant, cost-effective way to win more business. The search landscape is competitive, and anytime you can get a second at-bat with a known potential customer it is a win-win opportunity. The key to success, the second time around, will have everything to do with how an online marketer strategically uses the full range of tools Google has to offer to get a customer back to their site and convert. If you lost on the potential lead/sale the first time around, banking on the status quo probably won’t work the second time around. Bid adjustments, creative messaging, and CTAs will all be important things to bear in mind based on what you know about a customer's first visit.

If you’ve been holding off on migrating to enhanced campaigns, now may be the best time to make the move and start playing around with RLSA. Its potential to increase conversion rates and overall conversions to your website is clear. Information you have about your customers can, more often than not, be leveraged for greater success. So the question is: how do you plan on using RLSA to your best advantage?

Enhanced campaigns are talk of the town, no matter which town you’re in; today’s blog post tells the story of how one London-based independent media buying agency, the7stars, successfully migrated to enhanced campaigns using Marin Software.

When Steve Wright, Head of Biddable Media, first heard about Google’s enhanced campaigns he was concerned about the amount of work that would be required to migrate and also the potential impact on performance. He was, however, excited about the enhancements that would streamline workflows across multiple devices and the ability drive incremental revenue for their clients with increased visibility across all devices.

For Steve and the team at the7stars, knowledge is king and they spent time learning as much as they could about enhanced campaigns, including reading Marin’s white paper, listening to our webinar and most importantly documenting a migration plan with Marin’s Client Services team. The migration plan included: identifying parent and sibling campaigns to be merged, updating all URLs to include the {device}, {ifmobile}, and {ifnotmobile} ValueTrack parameters, calculating mobile bid adjustments, and deciding when to push the migration live based on each client’s marketing schedule.

The actual migration involved no campaign down time or loss in tracking and was completed in less than a day. Most importantly Steve and the team report that migrating was stress free and easy to implement. In other words, they never once lost focus on their ultimate goal of helping their clients succeed! Steve and his team are now busy monitoring performance and refining their strategy. We look forward to hearing their findings in a few weeks' time.

Launched in 2005, the7stars is a London-based media buying agency, clients include Suzuki, Pizza Express and CityJet. Steve Wright is a seasoned media professional with a keen interest in digital technologies and their application.

Since Google’s announcement in early February of this year, Marin Software has been rapidly developing and releasing initial support for enhanced campaigns. This includes, but is not limited to, the ability to create enhanced campaigns, set mobile bid adjustments, generate mobile preferred ads, and bulk and multi-edit enhanced campaign settings. Each of these critical features enables Marin users to efficiently manage, report on, and optimize enhanced campaigns.

However, as the July 22, 2013 migration deadline approaches, Marin understands the importance of preparing campaigns not only for the initial migration of legacy campaigns to enhanced campaigns, but also the eventual merging of separate desktop, tablet, and mobile device targeted campaigns. To help search marketers navigate through this time of change and successfully migrate to enhanced campaigns, Marin has created a comprehensive campaign migration guide.

This guide will help search marketers:

• Understand what enhanced campaigns are.
• Establish a plan for migrating to enhanced campaigns.
• Review the requirements for merging campaigns.
• Execute best practices for ensuring post-migration success.

Download the comprehensive 12 page guide for migrating to enhanced campaigns, here.


Register for the webinar on Thursday, June 6th at 10am PST, here.