PPC Advertising: Raising Your Quality Score

For one of my clients, we’ve developed animated explainer videos that we’re using for YouTube advertising. For each video, I’ve created a corresponding landing page that lives on our website. This page is only accessible to those who watch our ads/videos and click on the call to action. It’s been running for a little more than a month; we’ve closely identified our audience, our cost-per-click (CPC) is around $2.25, and we’re getting a nice increase in site traffic and calls. I’m carefully monitoring and tracking this effort, and we’re raising our quality score. 

What is a Quality Score and why does it matter? 

Landing pages are often a potential customer’s first interaction with a brand, and they set the stage for an ongoing relationship. Quality Score is an approximation of your keywords’ and ads’ relevance to your target audience. It’s usually represented as a number from 1-10. Search engines and social media platforms use this metric to decide which ads to show and how much to charge for each click or impression. 

Google ads pioneered Quality Score in their ad rank algorithm to reward those advertisers with relevant ads with a lower CPC. Most PPC platforms use this formula to determine where your ads appear. CPC Bid x Quality Score = Ad Rank.

Quality Score Guidelines

• Landing page experience: Is your ad’s landing page relevant to visitors’ intent, helping them accomplish their objectives quickly and transparently?
• Ad click-through rate (CTR)/Engagement: Are your ads clicked as often as competing ads?
• Ad relevance: Do your ads align with your audiences’ interests and intent?
• Post-click conversion rate: Are visitors likely to convert or take meaningful action after clicking your ad?
• Recency: Are your ads recently published or updated regularly?

God only knows what goes on with algorithms, but landing pages are one part of the of the PPC campaign process over which we do have control. We can provide relevant content, fast loading time and make sure our sites look great across all devices. 

Quality Score across platforms

Savvy PPC advertisers understand the nuance of each platform and customize their campaigns for the best results. 

• Google. Google Ads’ emphasize the overall user experience. Your landing pages must be relevant to keywords and ads that your visitors clicked on, but it’s just as important to that your landing page loads quickly, is secure, and looks great on all screens. 
• Facebook. Quality is measured using feedback on your ads and the post-click experience. Your ad is ranked against ads that competed for the same audience, ads that have the same optimization goal and your expected conversion rate.
• Twitter. There’s no mention of landing pages. Most of Twitter ads’ conversions happen within their platform in the form of likes, retweets, content engagement and follows.

Algorithms are opaque, so it can be difficult to know what’s working or not. Strive for clean, simple messaging that’s visually pleasing. A call to action that’s accessible. Monitor your ad and check frequently. 

PPC Advertising: Raising Your Quality Score. Talk to Top of Mind Marketing about your content program, including online advertising and PPC campaigns. Get it right and make it work for you

Is It Time To Add Pay-Per-Click To Your Marketing Mix?

With increasing online competition, pay-per-click (PPC) is becoming a critical way to get your content in front of your potential customers. Those who rely on organic strategies may find themselves frustrated that their blogs, social media posts and newsletters are just not enough anymore.

Here are three myths that may be keeping marketers from implementing successful AdWords campaign.

Myth #1: People don’t click on Google ads

Google is a publicly traded company—anyone can access their financial records that tell the story. Google generates more than $100M in revenue every single day from people clicking on their ads. With an average cost per click between $1 and $2 that’s more than 50M clicks/day. Google experiments constantly to make their ads entice more enticing. They’re not going to present you with a free, organic result at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) when they could showcase several ads that generate revenue. Start paying attention: The first few line items at the top of every search is an ad.

One more thing: Think about your own behavior

When you see an ad that entices you, do you click on it? Of course you do! Smart companies are using remarketingefforts that identify customer tastes to present you with items that you may have been looking at earlier in the day. They may serve up similar items or those by the same designer or manufacturer. I shop almost entirely online, and I’m fascinated by remarketing, which illustrates how marketing has gotten smarter.

Myth #2: My competitors can just click on my ads all day, costing me money

Google has extremely sophisticated technology to prevent “click fraud” and “invalid clicks”. This involves the analysis of several click-pattern factors.

Google provides very good reports on AdWords campaign performance, and any suspicious activity is quickly exposed. If a business is concerned they are victims of click fraud, they can contact Google directly to launch an investigation. Google reimburses questionable clicks.

Myth #3: AdWords is an outbound marketing tactic

AdWords is designed to showcase your content when potential customers are initiating a Google search. It’s the only inbound marketing tactic that guarantees your content will rank high on Google when a user performs a search. This is one very attractive reason to be using Google as your PPC platform. The sheer number of Google searches/day makes you part of this community.

PPC delivers a better user experience for the searcher

Think of the information you provide when you set up your Google account. This all becomes part of a huge database, and databased information makes it searchable. Because of this information, when you create a Google ad, you are able to drill down by location, demographics, interests, etc. This is not specific just to Google—Facebook, Linkedin and other social channels also provide rich search preferences.

Integrating AdWords with your inbound marketing strategy

Along with your existing content marketing and SEO efforts, PPC is becoming a critical component of an inbound marketing strategy.

Do you need help with your PPC or other online marketing program? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re internet marketing specialists.