Everyone loves the idea of ROI or ROAS – but how many people know how to monetize it 🤔. In our (Monarch) own due diligence, we have found that over 75% of paid media campaigns AREN’T monetized to their full potential 🤯 (this is NOT Google’s recommended “optimization” score). What does this mean? This means that people / companies are literally flushing $$$ right down the toilet – losing out on conversions, paying a crazy high CPC (campaign-wide), and yielding no results that justify the money that they’re dumping into a particular campaign. So how do we fix this issue? Here are some tips to monetize your paid media campaigns (search and social).
At Monarch, we always conduct an in-depth market and competitive analysis. In short, we identify how your company lines up against the competition in your vertical. We understand that there is no “level playing field”. At the same time, we understand that you want to gain that competitive edge. While our analysis is often seen as complex, the outcome is simple. We identify your company’s KPIs, look for opportunity in your vertical, create a keyword strategy plan, and build out a killer marketing campaign! Historically, Monarch yields at least a 3x ROAS (differs vertical to vertical). I mean, that’s just FREE cash!
So, let’s dive into the nitty gritty – starting with the Market & Competitive Analysis
In short, a market analysis is the quantitative and qualitative analysis of a given market or vertical. A competitive analysis is the process of analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of a company’s vertical.
At Monarch, we do this on a digital basis where we measure the competitive gap between you and your competition, online. This is the 🔑 to success for any business who cares about having an online presence. Understanding the environment in which you operate as a business is crucial on the traditional level – so the same should be true for digital. It is important to note that this typically includes both direct and indirect competition. Here are some key components to keep in mind:
- Use a SaaS like SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc.
- Get updates on traffic analytics (how you rank against 3-5 competitors)
- Analyze your competitors SEO / PPC efforts via SaaS
- Measure keyword gaps
- Manage content / social media
Next, let’s chat about creating an Advertising Research plan:
After an initial analysis is complete, we dive into the due diligence stage prior to building / launching a campaign. This is where we further identify your market and analyze consumer behavior based on your past campaigns and/or market campaigns. Here are some things we do:
- Monitor rivals’ PPC efforts (best performing ads)
- Analyze usage trends (Google / Bing)
- View examples of live ads
- Uncover the words / keyphrases competitors are bidding on
- Identify weaknesses / strengths so you can improve your campaign
While this isn’t industry “standard” we keep historic data, FOREVER (for however long you run the ad). This allows for us to continuously monetize our PPC strategy. Here are some key metrics we are tactically optimizing: bid strategies, demographic / geographic targeting, ad copies, audience channeling, and campaign structure.
Once we have conducted our initial due diligence we then jump into the Campaign Buildout:
If we are planning on advertising across a variety of different channels / campaigns it is important to first locate our KPI (i.e. which channel or campaign is performing the best). We do this for proper budget allocation (put the money where we can make the money 💰).
Once we have located our KPIs we can then start on our campaign, ad groups, and ad buildout.
How to create a kick butt campaign:
- Define your goals / objectives (traffic, leads, purchases, etc.)
- Develop a variety of campaigns (each campaign should have its own objective)
- We highly encourage the SKAG model – up to you!
- Develop hyper-focused ad groups (on a per keyword level)
- Create effective / captivating ads and extensions
- Create a strategic CTA
- Bring them to a landing page that converts
Let’s jump into ad groups:
- Focus your ad groups on single keyword ad groups (as mentioned above – SKAG)
- All ad copy and text should match and/or be consistent
- Create ad groups focused on your audience
- There is a lot more – CLICK HERE to request a full walkthrough.
Time for the individual ads:
- Utilize your focus keyword in the H1, permalink, and description
- Add benefits / incentives and call to actions
- Enable the use of call outs and site extensions
- It should look something like this:
Last but not least, optimize for Audience & Bidding:
The ability to monetize your bid strategy and double down on audience targeting has never been more important. According to SocialMediaToday, more than 7 million advertisers invested a total of $10.1 billion in PPC ads just during 2017. In short, you are competing against 7 million advertisers for ad placement. So, how are you leveling up? In our experience at Monarch, the only way is to meticulously track attribution, monitor analytics, and identify lucrative audiences to serve your ads too. Once you have effectively done this – it’s time to create a compelling ad that will capture your MQL and turn them into a paying customer.
Let’s breakdown audience targeting:
To best identify your “target audience” start with some initial research. Utilize resources such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, Google’s In-Market Audiences, etc. Run a market and competitive analysis to gather information on audience behavior, lucrative keywords, and the competitive landscape. Once you have done this cross reference your data and create a target audience (persona) that best fits your business. Finally, test your audience, run campaigns, and market the heck out of them…. GIVE IT SOME TIME and WATCH IT RAIN DIMES.
We know this can be challenging. So if you need help, we’re always here! Just shoot us a message.
Let’s breakdown bidding:
Once you have successfully made it through the swamps of setting up your paid media campaign, it’s time to focus on bidding! It’s pretty simple – just make the most amount of money (ROAS) while having the lowest CPC (cost per click) / CPA (cost per acquisition / action), all while maintaining a great CTR (click-through rate) and LTV (lifetime value). Yeah, we lost you – that’s alright maybe the GIF will be catch you again 😜!
In all seriousness picking a bidding strategy can be daunting… but it doesn’t have to be. Here is a quick breakdown of bid types (we will share our favorite at the bottom):
- Target Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): Set a target cost per acquisition and allow for Google to bid on your behalf.
- Target Return On Ad Spend (ROAS): Set a target ROAS and allow for Google to bid on your behalf. Equation –> ROAS = Sales / Ad Spend * 100% (become a math genius 🤓)
- Maximize Conversions: Allow Google to bid and use your daily budget wherever they (algorithm) see fit.
- Enhanced Cost Per Click: Set a target CPC and allow for Google to increase or decrease spend in the event that someone may make a purchase.
- Maximize Clicks (OUR FAVORITE): Set a maximum CPC bid limit and Google will bid up to that amount per ad group or keyword (whatever you set).
- Manual CPC Bidding: Set Manual CPC bids on various campaigns / ad groups.
- Target Search Page Location: Allow for Google to adjust your bid so that you show up first OR are in the top 4 ads shown.
- CPM Bidding: Bidding solely on impressions
As noted, Monarch prefers to use the “Maximize Clicks” bidding strategy.
Why?
- Maximizes the amount of qualified traffic to your website.
- Allows for you to force spend (when campaigns are yielding a higher ROAS)
- You don’t have to set individual limits (you set an average daily budget instead)
- Simplest way to bid for maximizing clicks
- In our experience, the best way to generate $$$$
If you have any questions, please feel free to CONTACT US! We would love to hear from you.
Let’s CRUSH 2020 together!