Limited by Budget – 5 Ways to Stretch Your B2B Paid Search Budget
by MGB2B
B2B digital marketing is not always an easy job, especially for those of us poor souls who have smaller monthly budgets to work with. When your Google AdWords campaigns are constantly limited by budget, trying to turn web site visitors into leads can seem like a near impossible task. Luckily for you it’s not, and I’ve got 5 pointers to help you stretch those B2B digital marketing dollars in your Google paid search efforts.
1. Campaign Structure – Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
Google AdWords allows you to structure your account nearly any way you want. This is great, but can sometimes feel overwhelming. I won’t go into the nitty gritty of ad group and keyword groupings (although I could for hours after a drink or three), so let’s keep it simple and talk about campaign structures.
As the starting point for your AdWords account, your campaigns are where you’ll be setting your daily budgets. So, you structure them in a way where you can put your budget to the most lead generation success. I like to separate general, broad terms, say, from branded or company specific terms in different campaigns. This is so I can set my budgets accordingly depending upon how effective I think each campaign will be at generating leads.
Getting visitors to your website through broader general terms is harder work, and often requires more cash. Setting aside money specifically for that task will allow you to generate some difficult leads without breaking your overall account’s bank.
2. Search Term Reports – Sailing the Seas of Big Data
Odds are that even the best kept paid search accounts are spending some of their valuable budget on searches that are entirely irrelevant, not to mention very unlikely to convert into leads. Combing through your account’s search term reports can be a long and eyeball burning process, but absolutely worth it. You may find that you’re regularly showing up for search terms closely related to your business’s offering which the searcher simply won’t find on your site, and so will never turn into a lead.
Nix out these clicks by adding these terms as negative keywords – a vital practice to ensure you’re using every dollar appropriately, or as appropriately as possible.
3. Dimension Reports – The Whens and Wheres of It All
Another place you may accidentally be wasting some of that budget can be found in your AdWords dimensions reports. Run reports for Geographic/User locations to determine where you’re spending the most and seeing the most conversions. You may find that you can tighten up your campaigns’ location settings and nicely increase your profitability.
The same is true for Day-of-week/Hour-of-day dimension reports. If your business is only open 9 to 5 on weekdays, or only services other companies on that schedule, then you’ll likely find that nighttime and weekend clicks rarely lead to conversions.
If you’re limited by budget, cutting out traffic from these times and places allows you to use your funds where and when you need it the most.
4. Search Impression Share – Sharing Isn’t Always Caring
Sometimes us B2B search marketing folks can forget that each Google search is an auction, which means we’re often sharing space in the search results with our competitors. The problem with campaigns that are regularly limited by budget is that we’re often not being included in every auction we’re eligible for, because we simply don’t have the available funds to afford to pay the cost for them all.
A good way to get a picture of how often your ads are showing in your eligible auctions is to run reports with the included Search Impression columns: “Search Impr. Share,” “Search Lost IS (rank)” and “Search Lost IS (budget)” specifically. In Ad group and Keyword reports, only “Search Impr. Share” and “Search Lost IS (rank)” are available, but you can easily calculate “Search Lost IS (budget)” by subtracting “Search Lost IS (rank)” from “Search Impr. Share.”
These columns let you know how often your ads show up in eligible auctions, and the reasons their not when they don’t. They can point to a campaign that could use more of you allocated budget than another, or can highlight a keyword which could perform better if it only had more available money behind it.
It may be a more advanced method of analysis than you’re used to, but it can really open the doors to using your budget effectively.
5. Decreasing Your Bids for More Clicks – Has the World Turned Upside Down!?
Now I know this is going to sound crazy, and is the opposite of what Google will tell you about how to increase clicks and conversions, but if your campaigns are regularly limited by budget, DECREASING your CPC bids can actually lead to more clicks and conversions. Before you grab your pitchforks, hear me out!
Increasing your CPC bids will increase your ad’s position in the search results, but obviously it will also increase the CPC, the cost you pay for each click. If your campaign has a daily budget of, say, $100 and your CPC bids are set at $2.00 then you can roughly only obtain 50 clicks a day. This will vary by your ad rank, but let’s just keep it simple for the sake of argument. If you decrease your CPC bids to $1.50, then you can obtain an extra 17 clicks a day, without hopefully losing too much position on the search results page.
Those extra clicks will go a long way over time, and could be the key to increasing your leads and lowering your cost per conversion. All things being equal, the more visitors you can bring to your site, the more leads you’re likely to generate. If you can still bring them in at a slightly lower position, then you’re really using your limited budget to its utmost potential, something we can all get behind.
Every B2B search engine marketing specialist wishes they could have more budget to work their advertising magic with, but by following these 5 suggestions you can turn those limited by budget campaigns into lead generation gold!
Continue ReadingBrand Management: Keep Your Creative Work Professional
by Ben Quinn
Pablo Picasso and his Cubism style of art is known throughout the world by the art illiterate and aficionados alike. His captivating work distorts reality and explores composition in ways that were not only ground breaking, but are considered by many as genius. What most people don’t know is that Pablo Picasso was a superb realist painter. It was only through years of experience, study, and practice that Picasso was able to achieve greatness by simplifying and breaking down his compositions into masterpieces. What does this have to do with buying logos, or brand management for that matter?
Picasso’s deconstructed bull.
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” – Pablo Picasso
We live in a world where boards of beautiful art stream into your smartphone accompanied by 140 characters or less. It’s easy to forget that truly inspiring, thought-provoking work is usually the result of a lifetime of dedication. With so many out-of-the-box website designs and crowd-sourced logos available, it’s easy to see why companies take this approach. Unfortunately, this also sets the low bar by which most brands are measured — and managed.
There are many high-quality compositions out there, but if there is no story, no personality behind your logo, then it’s just an image. It’s not representative of the hard working people behind it.
When asked, most companies claim their product is superior to their competitors’. But think about it: it’s through the learning process, mastery and challenge of real work that superior products reveal themselves. The same is true for the brand you put forth. Anyone can buy a logo, but truly refined brands know to employ creative minds that take the time to get to know their clients. Copywriters and designers that put in sweat equity get to know the core of their client’s abilities. These are the ones that take a brand from good to great. Hard work and dedication starts in research, then flows over to the next steps of brand management, and trickles into each and every project. The ultimate result? A thoughtful, cohesive brand.
So when choosing your approach to brand management, build a relationship with a marketing team that will put in the work. Only then will you be able to break the established rules effectively and stand apart from your competition.
Continue ReadingLive Video for B2B: Why It’s Time to Get on Board
by Emily Swet
It’s official. Now that YouTube has finally joined it’s compadres and has begun offering live video, it’s time to start thinking about how your B2B brand can leverage it. If you haven’t started using the live video features already available from Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook Live or Periscope, it’s not too late to start. But why should you incorporate live video for B2B into your marketing strategy? And more importantly, what kind of content do you need?
Think Big Fish, Small Pond.
When it comes to live video, B2C brands have robustly adopted this tool as part of their strategy. B2B brands, however, have been historically slow on the uptake. Translation? Your brand has an opportunity to stand out against your competitors – the sooner, the better. If adding yet another social media tactic to your brand strategy seems overwhelming, there’s something you should keep in mind. This lull won’t last forever. The first B2B brands to begin using live video will reap the biggest gains on reach, engagement, and return. Fortunately, adding live video is nowhere near as daunting as it sounds.
With live video, your followers can comment and ask questions in real time. And live testimonials both build trust and increase your conversions. Watching live video with other consumers creates a sense of community amongst your audience that they associate with your brand. The in-the-moment nature of live video encourages feedback in real time, and can be compellingly shareable. And because live video is off-the-cuff, your B2B stands to gain a level of familiarity with your audience that’s hard to attain through more traditional marketing tactics.
Lights, Smartphone, Action.
The good news is live video is easy for any marketing department to produce: all you need is a decent smartphone, and you’re ready to roll. And there’s no shortage of ideas for live video for your B2B brand. Still need some inspiration? Here are a few to get the ball rolling:
- Ask The Expert: host an interactive live interview with one of your company’s experts and open the floor for a live Q&A.
- Up Your Customer Service: livestream a video dedicated solely to customer assistance and quality assurance.
- The Big Reveal: build some buzz for a new product or service with a live video revealing your new offering.
- Testify: interview a satisfied customer and get a live testimonial.
- Take Your Clients With You: live stream from major industry events and conferences.
- Go Behind the Scenes: show your customers your company, introduce them to your employees, and give your B2B some life.
Live video may seem daunting at first, but with a little practice, it will become as easy as any other tool in your social arsenal. And with live video taking increasing ownership of internet traffic, the time to start using it is now.
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