Businesses and consumers rely heavily on the internet for decision making when it comes to partnerships and purchases. At the same time, businesses use the internet to reach their target audience and promote their business. Google Ads help businesses digitally reach that desired target audience through their SERP advertising and gain measurable results from it.
Google Ads raises awareness by putting your brand in front of other consumers who are searching using keywords relevant to your business.
A feature that Google Ads has that can help your SEO strategy is testing keywords in order to see if conversions derive from them. After that, you can use that data to improve your SEO strategy and make sure you’re using keywords that will produce results once your website is optimized.
Using Google Ads remarketing ads process consists of categorizing audiences based off of what source they went through to get to your site and targeting them through the Google Display Network.
With an Ads share report, you’ll see how many times your competitor outranks you on Google. By choosing “Target Outrank,” you can adjust your bid in order to outrank the competition.
The Enhanced Cost Per Click strategy on Ads adjusts your bid based on the previous conversion data and other insights such as location, device, browser, time of day and week that potential consumers engage with your ads.
Google Ads provides many PPC metrics that allow you to measure what strategy has been working and what does not. From here, you can determine which campaigns to proceed with and which to turn off. Google Ads is also pretty scalable, considering the fact that it does not require excess effort to get leads. If you create a campaign that’s converting at a good rate, you can increase your budget, which can result in increased leads and profits.
Google Ads has the flexibility of hyper-targeting the audience you want to reach. For instance, you can specify keyword match types, use ad extensions, access non-search users with Youtube and Gmail Ads, leverage the display network, and narrow down the audience by location, time of day, language, browser or device.
A perk of Google Ads is not having to wait long to see results. Putting resources into your Google Ad campaign will bring you impressions and clicks instantaneously. Since it’s so fast, you can test certain keywords or audiences to see if they’re worth pursuing in your SEO strategy.
Google seamlessly combines your advertising needs into one platform. Google also suggests how to adjust your spending on ads based on Google’s observations of their performance.
Taking over SERPS: Google prioritizes Google Ads over organic results since they fall under the same umbrella. Once you start your PPC campaign, you will be able to get your ads high up on SERP, where they have a higher chance of getting clicked.
Many small businesses operate with a restrictive budget, so they want to make sure they’re investing their money into something that will produce results. Adopting Google Ads into your digital marketing strategy will allow you to allocate your spending as you please with no minimum investment or monthly ad spend.
They call it “pay-per-click” because that’s exactly what you’re doing. Google Ads also tracks who has been clicking your ads but not converting, to see how you can adjust your ads.
Google is everyone’s go-to for just about everything. If someone takes their time out to search for something, chances are they are ready to buy, which is a perfect time to place your ad in front of their face.
Global paid search spending has been increasing exponentially and much online revenue is made based off search ad impressions that your competitors are using. If the competition is using Google Ads, it’s definitely something worth looking into.
Google has such a massive reach and pretty much provides the answer to everything online, so why wouldn’t you want your business advertised on their platform?
If you’re ready to set up Google Ads for your business, feel free to contact us and we’d be happy to assist you!
Online reviews can make or break your business. Companies are relying on social media and online review outlets to inform the public on their services, connect with current and prospective consumers and spread the good word about their business.
Unfortunately, people tend to post reviews if they’ve had a really bad experience or a really good one. The consumers who have had an okay experience don’t usually take the time to leave a review. This audience is the largest and needs some extra encouragement to leave an organic and positive review. So how do we tap into this group? Here are our recommendations:
Offer a discount or monetary reward based on referrals. Word-of-mouth is an incredibly powerful method of communication. With a referral program, people tend to speak more favorably about your company in order to get that referral – and the reward that’s attached to it.
It’s important to keep your audience up-to-date with new innovations being made, new products or services being offered, and promotions and specials. Newsletters let consumers know you care about your relationship with them and want to keep them in the loop. It is best practice to send these out, at a minimum, on a quarterly basis. Sending out too many emails will categorize you as spammy and will wind up costing you business.
Generally, the most popular sites for reviews are Facebook, Google and Yelp. Depending on the nature of your business, other review sites may be more relevant. Create a CTA to request reviews with a link to each outlet noted on the footer of any digital correspondence you have with you customers, such as emails or online receipts, so your customers can easily take the next step.
It’s important to keep up with reviews and respond in a timely manner. Make sure to thank customers for taking the time to leave a review. And never ignore the negative. Failure to respond to negative reviews only makes your company appear dismissive. Not sure how to respond to a negative review? Here’s a simple guide:
Read. Make sure you have a solid understanding of the customer’s problem. You’ll only make matters worse by missing the point your customer is trying to make.
Resolve. Find a solution for their problem, and if you don’t have one, let them know you’re working hard to solve it.
Record. Jot down these details to help improve your business practices and prevent this type of problem in the future.
Many times, bad reviews are the result of the customer not having the right information. Creating a FAQ page customers can easily access on your website will help prevent common minor issues people may encounter with your product and or service. If there is a solution already presented at their fingertips, they won’t need to leave a review about what happened. Also, if they have any doubts about your products or services, your FAQ page will answer those questions.
Reputation management software takes control and monitors your online reputation. For example, if a negative comment is posted, you’ll quickly receive an alert, so you can go nip it in the bud, helping you to be responsive in a timely manner. It’s hard to keep up with every review posted, but reputation management software will help address them quickly and effectively. Podium is a great software that we recommend for you to use in order to manage reviews.
This doesn’t mean just ask your customers for a review. You want to ask them at the right moment. If you ask at the wrong time, you may come off as pushy and get a negative review instead. After a customer enjoys a positive experience, you can have them fill out a survey/review form immediately. Leaving a positive post on social media is another good opportunity to ask. And if your service is subscription-based, you can insert a form to leave a review in your renewal letters. This also works for people who decide to re-purchase your products. When prompting your customer to leave a good review, make sure the language is casual, relaxed, and friendly.
Numbers are important
The ultimate goal is to get as many reviews as possible. For instance, if you have ten reviews with eight of them being good and two of them being not-so-good, you’re still in a good position.
Good reviews make for great shareable content. Share your positive testimonials people post on social media. Share positive reviews with your target audience, so your target audience doesn’t have to go looking for them.
Ultimately, the greatest advertising is a great product. If your company is constantly providing exceptional products and services, there really shouldn’t be a reason for anyone to leave a bad review. Make sure customer service is always available for consumers, ready to help and constantly remind them that you care about their experience.
Quick recap: Gaining positive online customer reviews are not only dependent on your services being good but the way you communicate and connect with your consumers to leave a good review in the first place. If there are any questions or professional assistance needed in forming a social remediation strategy, feel free to contact us!
Here at Boxcar Creative, we use Brand Tiles (or style tiles) to convey the design direction for any website or digital collateral we plan to build. Our clients often mistake a Brand Tile for website layouts. But as we usually have to emphasize, they are NOT layouts. 🙂
Brand Tiles are a design deliverable in the form of a digital mood board that consist of fonts, colors, photo treatments, buttons and other interface elements that communicate the visual essence of a brand for the digital space. They assist with forming a common visual language between our designers and our clients and provide a stimulant for discussions around the design preferences of the client.
The best analogy for Brand Tiles is that they’re similar to an interior designer’s finish palette or mood board. The paint chips and fabric swatches an interior designer presents must be approved before going all in and designing a room. The same idea applies to our process in designing websites. Our Web designer will not design three different webpage mock ups for a client at the first design kick-off meeting. It simply is not efficient or cost effective for either parties.
It seems simple to come out and just tell your client what you think they need for their website, but your clients hold an invaluable amount of information about their industry that can intelligently inform the design of their website. So what we do is stop and listen by initiating a design kickoff meeting. During this meeting, our design team becomes acquainted with our client and we discuss the answers to their website design survey (completed before the meeting).
During this phase, our designers individually interpret how the insight communicated during our meeting translates into design principles. With the meeting notes in hand, our designers are able to make choices about how to use the elements of design in their brand tile. Ultimately, the designer’s goal is to provide the perfect visual cues that will guide client’s subconscious assumptions towards the communicated desired adjectives and themes.
This is the step of our process in which the designer creates the Brand Tile. They determine themes from the aggregated feedback and begin to match those ideas up with styling techniques. The Brand Tiles give our client a point of reference to determine if their vision is aligned with the designer’s.
To be as efficient as possible, we present multiple tiles to give our client information to work with that can influence the evolution of a final brand tile. We often see that our client’s opt to combine Brand Tile options; combining Brand Tiles fosters a process that allows for a natural evolution of stylistic elements without losing sight of the established design goals. Making revisions to Brand Tiles is a simpler and more objective manner of refining a visual design without being too vague or precise.
Like our process? We’d love to work with you! Feel free to drop us line on our contact page, if you’re interested in some killer web design.