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 ReadingB2B Monday Myth: Your Website Is an Online Brochure
by MGB2B
The Myth: Your Website Is Like an Online Brochure
The Truth: Your Website Should Be Used as an Engagement Tool
Your website should offer more to your visitors than a listing of services or products. It should do more than simply tell people who you are (although it should do that at the very least). Think about what your prospects want from your website. Then think about what you want them to find out.
Take into account how your prospects make purchasing decisions. Chances are, a visitor is not going to arrive on your home page and decide right then to buy your product. It takes time, and they are likely exploring competitors. To foster engagement, your website must go beyond what’s contained in a traditional brochure. But it needs to have a clear path for your prospects to follow.
Here Are the Keys to Building a Better B2B Website, and More Effectively Convert Leads:
Define The Primary Function Of Your Site
Clearly identify what you want people to get out of your website. What actions would you like them to take now that they’ve visited you? Is your overall goal to provide buying solutions, or is it to direct a customer to a sales representative? These two functions are very different, and the decision you make will change how your website is set up. Once you know what you want your visitors to do, you can provide them with a clear call-to-action.
Give Your Home Page Purpose
Your home page should very clearly state who you are and what you do. These are basics for what the visitor should get from initially viewing your website. It is also helpful to state your value proposition, or a clear statement that tells the customer what benefits you can provide them.
This may be the first thing website visitors see when checking out your website. First impressions are important. If your home page has too much going on, or doesn’t have a clear call-to-action, people will move on. Keep it simple and easy to navigate.
Create User-Focused Landing Pages to Build Your Leads List
If you haven’t already, you should consider landing pages that live as a part of your website but focus on specific topics that interest prospects. For instance, if you are a manufacturer or components for multiple verticals, but you want to push a product that benefits only the aerospace community, a specific landing page will help you get the job done. You can drive the exact type of prospect you are looking for to this page using Paid Search. If their search terms match what you’re offering, they find a product that is relevant to them instead of finding your home page. Furthermore, you can use the page to capture their information and get them into your sales funnel, instead of having them kick around on your home page, then bounce on over to your competitor’s site.
Use Content To Your Advantage
Another way to drive people to your website is by creating relevant content, usually in the form of a blog. Doing so is a good way to provide information while positioning yourself as an honest company with integrity and authority. Some larger companies go beyond the blog and create full, separate sites just devoted to content. You have to examine what your capacity is for creating content, and churn out only what you feel will be most effective given the time you put into creating it. Whatever you create, make sure it is optimized in order to draw in prospects who are in the right mindset. It is a slower burn than Paid Search, but a great way to gain the trust of a prospect over time.
If your website is only providing information, you are missing out on these key opportunities. Give your site more of a purpose, and use the web as a tool instead of a stand-alone collateral piece, and you’ll both engagement and leads start to rise.
Continue ReadingThe ABCs of B2B Search Success in 2017
by MGB2B
Follow These Basic Tenets of B2B Search Engine Marketing To See Success in 2017.
2016 was a year of big changes in the field of online search. With the switch to a mobile-first ranking system, the addition of expanded text ads in paid search and an overhaul of the desktop search results page that reduced paid ad space, our friends at Google are always doing their best to keep us in B2B search marketing on our toes. And 2017 is sure to be another exciting year full of changes, opportunities, and challenges. That makes right now the perfect time to reflect on some of the basic tenets of B2B SEO and SEM strategy. Or as I like to call them — the ABCs of B2B Search Success in 2017.
A – Audience Awareness
Whether you’re freshening up ad copy, running a new link-building campaign or strengthening your keyword lists, the most important thing is to focus on addressing the needs of your audience. It’s easy to get caught up in your own sales goals and deadlines, but if you don’t think of the customer first, you won’t each either one successfully. Research their demographics and interests. Understand who they are and where they are before you plan your SEM. Imagine who you’re writing that ad copy for and what things they care about. Remember what drives them to search in the first place, what problems they have, and the answers that you can provide when adding keywords. Mastering this skill will give you an edge over your competition in 2017.
B – Business Opportunities
We all work in different business sectors, with different goals, priorities, and concerns. Whether you run one large SEM account or multiple accounts for different sub-brands, it’s important to keep your strengths and weaknesses in mind. And keep a sharp eye out for SEM opportunities that play to those strengths. This will help you pinpoint the most effective pathway to meeting your goals. Perhaps it means capitalizing on gaps in the search market for your field. Or pushing a specific promotion for a new product launch or bestseller. Or maybe just understanding the seasonality of your product offerings, and adjusting budgets and goals to reflect this. Whatever opportunities and challenges your particular business faces, staying on top of them will help you ride out any changes to the search landscape.
C – Conversion Tracking
For most marketers, conversion tracking is the main pathway to search success. You need to be able to see which pages, keywords, and ads bring home the bacon in order to optimize and exceed your goals. This means taking advantage of every conversion opportunity available. In this modern world of search, your customers are using an ever more diverse set of routes to reach you; you need to follow each one. You’ve likely relied upon standard landing page conversion tracking for years. But now it’s more important than ever to branch out and expand your reach. Call conversion tracking allows you the chance to capture customers that may have been untrackable in the past. As mobile search continues to become the forefront of search, the ability to click on a phone number and speak to a rep is becoming a more viable option than form fills for your busiest customers. Now’s the time to capitalize on this conversion avenue and give your campaigns a welcome boost in the new year.
It’s tough to predict which new innovations and technologies will shape the search engine landscape of 2017. But by sticking to the ABCs of B2B Search Success you can weather any search storm.
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