How many times per day can you watch videos?

I watch videos every single day especially about makeup and beauty products. They’re entertaining. Witty. And relax me in between writing different pieces of content.

As a result, it’s been part of my everyday life (and before you ask, I am planning to launch videos in the near future…).

According to YouTube’s Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl during his CES 2016 keynote speech, by 2019, 90% of all internet traffic will be from video. That’s a huge shift from TV to digital video content.
If you’d like to know more about video trends, you can watch the full video below.

So, let’s take a different approach. Let’s explore some businesses that are using video in creative ways.

Here are 4 clever ways businesses are using video to engage with their audiences and grow their traffic. Feel free to share your ideas in the comment box below.

4 Clever Ways To Use Video To Promote Business

Digital Campaign

You can run a video ad to raise awareness for a campaign you just released. Marketers use hashtag (#) to track social engagement. Let’s take Clark International Airport as an example.

They launched a campaign which is #iChooseCLARK with the goal of bringing awareness about the new facilities in the airport. They also featured sports stars from Philippine Azkals, Philippine National Triathlon Team, Meralco Power Spikers, Philippine National Rugby, Philippine Malditas, and PBA in their video which makes it engaging and interesting.

Below are the channels they’ve used to promote the video and the screenshots of their ads.

Facebook

Clark International Airport created a campaign which the goal is to promote the video. Below shows their Facebook ad along with the hashtag #iChooseCLARK.

Youtube

They also promoted the same video they used for Facebook on Youtube. Check out their video ad above.

Product Teaser

You can run a video ad to introduce an upcoming internationally known restaurant. Let’s take Passion by Gerard Dubois as an example.

Their strategy is to run a pre-opening promotion one month before the official opening date which gives room for them to build buzz around their brand. It is a fantastic way to generate interest and excitement in your product.

Facebook Ad

The ad below showcases four mouth-watering cuisines of Passion by Gerard Dubois in the form of video. It shows four products in one ad.

Instagram Ad

Their Instagram ad shows the facade of the restaurant which is different from their Facebook ad.

That’s okay. I believe it’s a good strategy.

They want to show different videos in different platforms to take advantage of possible opportunities.

Youtube Ad

Their Youtube ad is the same with their Instagram ad. It features the facade and address of the restaurant.

Product Demo

Do you have a unique invention? Do you want to convince your buyers that your invention is safe and easy to use?

This will the product demo in video form becomes useful.

Let’s take this MobiDock ad as an example.

MobiDock created a motorcycle docking station which is a collection of six interlocking parts that create an arena conducive to health, safety and pleasurable experiences around your motorcycle.

Facebook Ad

The Facebook ad below shows a comprehensive demo of how to use the motorcycle docking station.

Tutorial

Panni Carlo, a distributor of various kinds of breads, ran a video ad which shows users how to enjoy their tasty bread.

Youtube Ad

The Panni Carlo ad shows the mother-daughter bonding which can relate to Filipinos. Their “I-Share Mo” campaign features 3 easy steps to enjoy their tasty bread. Check out the ad below.

That’s it!

I believe creating video content is not enough. It is important to integrate video into your marketing. It is also one of the most effective ways to promote a product or service.

You can start promoting your video by working on what video you have. Channels like YouTube, Instagram and Facebook are just tools to promote your existing video. The success relies on the content of video.

With constant ad bombardment in the Facebook newsfeed, marketers can use the video ad to give something different and fresh to their target market and to stand out from the crowd.

Your Turn

Have you tried promoting your video on YouTube, Instagram or Facebook? What were your results?

I’d love to hear how they’ve worked for you! Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Why Online Presence is Important for Business?

Digital is at the heart of integrated marketing, we live in the “Digital World” and all of those who forgot to transition from the old ways to the new is really losing the battle for online presence supremacy. 

Do you still remember a time not too long ago when the traditional media that includes TV, radio, press and outdoor was a totally separate world from the digital world?

In the digital age, traditional media is also being digitized. More people spend so much time online.

In the Philippines, there are currently more than 73% of the population are internet users, and 89 million of it are Social Media Users. So, how does this affect advertising?

From a business point of view, it is now more crucial than ever to have a presence on the digital channel, whether it is an e-commerce business or the traditional brick and mortar shop.

Marketing goes where users go and as we know, the users are now online most of the time. Even if your company does not conduct business online, customers and potential customers are expecting to see you online.

If they don’t see you there, you could be losing out on the opportunity to increase your customer base and get the word out about your business.

However, many companies are reluctant to advertise online because it is a relatively new advertising format.

Listed below are reasons why Online Presence is Important for Business.

Are you ready?

Awareness

Today, if someone wants more information about a company, they’re most likely to do their research online.

Whether they’re specifically looking for your company, or they just want to find any company that offers the products or services that your company offers, having an online presence will give you a competitive edge. Potential customers will not put a lot of effort into finding you, and they should not have to.

A simple Google search should provide them with all the information they seek. If customers are not aware of your product, they will not consider it when they next make a purchasing decision for the type of product you offer.

Advertising puts your product into the consumer’s set of choices.

Brand Preference

The Internet gives businesses an effective platform for showcasing what they have to offer.

Whether it’s a portfolio and testimonials from clients on a website, or an album on a Facebook page with photos of your newest products, it has never been easier to let the world know what you have to offer.

For small businesses and startups, digital marketing is a great way to get your brand the online presence it needs.

With few simple clicks, your customers can see what you’re all about. They can even do this outside of business hours!

An online presence is an extension of your brand that never sleeps.

Online Presence Builds Relationships

Social media is an integral part of your online presence that improves your chances of generating additional revenue and building customer loyalty.

It allows customers, potential customers and other interested parties to engage easily via a channel that plays an important role in their everyday lives.

Social media is all about building relationships. This is true for both individuals and businesses. Social media gives your brand a voice – it makes your company more “human” and relatable. Customers and potential customers can interact with your brand on a more personal level.

It also gives you the opportunity to truly get to know your customers. If everyone is on social media except you, you are missing out on an invaluable opportunity to connect and communicate with your target audience. Social media is one of the simplest, yet most effective ways to get persons interested in your company and to form real relationships with real people.

Your Business Online Presence Make it Easier to Market Your Brand

Websites, social media platforms and SEO are excellent marketing tools.

They are also some of the most cost effective methods of sending out information to thousands of people.

Online marketing is extremely important for all businesses because it has a huge influence on the way consumers make purchasing decisions. Modern consumers have even indicated that they look at companies in a negative light if they cannot find them online.

Using the internet for marketing purposes allows you to overcome distance barriers. Persons thousands of miles away can be learning all about your business with just a few keystrokes.

The “shareability” of social media allow your customers to easily spread the word about your business to all their friends. Ultimately, online marketing gives you the opportunity to market your brand in creative and exciting ways.

Don’t be left behind. Getting your company online is one of the most important investments that a business can make that will eventually reap major benefits.

The Pandemic Forced More Businesses to Transition into Digital Marketing and embrace Online Presence

After the declaration of lockdown by the majority of Governments in the world due to Covid-19, people use the internet to let the time pass by, to communicate with loved ones, to attend office meetings and to attend classes, in short, the whole population shifted into Digital Medium.

The robust technological advancement and Covid 19 are the catalysts that inflates the internet users to approximately 4.94 Billion or 63.2% of the world population in 2020. 

If you are a brick and mortar shop that is not harnessing the power of having an online presence, you are missing a part of the profit that was generated by ecommerce shops in 2020 at 4.1 Trillion Dollars!

Your Turn

Have you started building your business’ online presence?

What are the results so far?

Share us your experience in the comment section below.

By the way, if your team needs help on establishing your online presence?

Feel Free to contact our team!

In the Philippines, access of internet through mobile phones penetration rate is growing at a rate of 1.5x or 30 million users every year. People spent an average of 3.2 hours on mobile every day.

This rapid growth of mobile penetration is giving the Instagram an advantage by launching as a mobile app.

One thing where Instagram stands out among other sites is that it’s a creative platform.

It has the features and tools that will enhance every photo and give more emotions to what message the photo contains and it doesn’t take too much process to bring out the best output to be posted. That makes it a good platform on advertising for businesses of any form.

Instagram also provides the opportunity to engage with your target customer, and just like any other social media platform, you as an advertiser just needs to be actively engaged in replying or commenting back to the people who showed interest in your post.

In this case, let me introduce to you the Instagram ads and its benefits as a digital advertising platform.

Instagram ads look like normal posts, the only difference is that, it has a blue “sponsored” and it will show to people even if they are not your account’s followers.

So here are the 4 reasons why you should start advertising on Instagram.

Instagram is Visually Competitive

As the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words” and that makes an advantage when it comes to conveying messages through photos.

Since Instagram is a visual content site, you have the opportunity to use photos and enhance the quality through its features and filters. It has easy to use editing function. You don’t need to be a graphic artist to draw out the best of your images.

Check out the image below and see how the easy-to use filters and tools could enhance a simple photo.

Instagram creates Personal Connection with the Audience

One of the great aspects of Instagram platform is its “casual feel” within the social media site.

Since people feel casual even though the posts is for advertising purposes, the audience starts to give trust and establish a personal connection with the business or the product that you are advertising. Posting on Instagram creates emotional attachment to the audience.

It makes them feel that you’re one of them and visualize your product as a part of their lives; better yet, picture themselves using your products or services.

In the example below, famous celebrity Kathryn Bernardo posted her photo using the service of her favorite clinic and the teatox she drinks.

High Engagement Rate

On the recent research conducted by Forrester among 3 million user interactions with over 2,500 brand posts on seven social networks, six out of the seven platforms, including Facebook and Twitter achieved less than a 0.1% engagement rate, while Instagram posts generated a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21%.

It means Instagram delivered these brands 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook, and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter.

Since Instagram establishes a personal connection, it enables the audience to engage with the post about your business.

They can simply get attracted to the photo then provide a feedback which is the start of the interaction with your potential customer.

Facebook Targeting Options

Instagram is part of the Facebook empire which means the specific targeting options that you can apply on Facebook ads can be implemented to Instagram ads as well.

Aside from location, gender, age, and even the Custom Audience feature, audience can also be targeted based on their interest and connections, making Instagram the best place to present your creative visual ads to your ideal target market.

Final Thoughts

So if you are looking for a fun yet effective way of advertising your business, Instagram is one of the best places to be.

You just have to be creative, be able to immerse into the Igers (Instagramers) community, and focus on providing what your target audience need with a touch of storytelling to inspire people and add life to something that might not seem to be so exciting.

Then in that way, you’ll definitely get what the Instagram community have been looking for.

How are you currently using your Instagram to attract potential customers and stay top of the mind of your existing customers?

What results are you getting?

Share your experience by leaving a comment below.

In this digital age where social media is not new to everyone, businesses should take the opportunity to use Facebook Ads as one of their primary marketing tool. 

Social media is not just great for sharing content with thousands of followers at once but a tool to amplify your marketing messages.

We know that there are a lot of social media platforms today. 

We have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google Plus and many more that a business can utilize for promoting their products and services. 

We’re not going to deal with each of them right now but we’re going to focus on one platform – that is Facebook.

You can do a lot of things on Facebook. Organically, you can promote your products and services through your Facebook Page or even with personal page. You can create micro sites within Facebook by using the Apps and Tabs.

But we believe that there’s one thing Facebook is very good at – advertising.

We’ve launched numerous Facebook Ads campaigns for our local clients and we’ve seen great results. The goals of our clients’ Facebook Ads campaigns vary such as driving traffic to their website, acquiring sales leads, promote a video and getting attendees to an event. These goals have been achieved with advertising on Facebook.

Now, before you start advertising, you should be equipped with knowledge of knowing the benefits of advertising on Facebook. Are you ready? Let’s start.

1. Detailed Facebook Insights

In any business, the key to success is knowing your audience. This is possible with Facebook Insights. 

You can see the dominant languages spoken among your social media audience as well as their age, gender, and location. The demographic data can help you cater campaigns and product offers to your target audience, which will provide you a better return on investment. 

You’ll also see the post that get the highest audience reach and engagement. This data can help you in crafting your status updates that will catch your audience’s attention.

2. Powerful Targeting Options

This is what we love most about Facebook. Their targeting options are ridiculously powerful. We will not enumerate all of them but we will give you the targeting options we mostly used.

Facebook fans – This targeting option is great for Facebook pages who has a small audience or likes. It is also a great to way to remind your Facebook fans with your products, services, promotions or offers.

Lookalike Facebook fans – If you want to increase the number of your fans or likes, you should have at least launch a campaign with this targeting option. Facebook will do the work for you to find potential fans with the same behavior of your existing fans.

Location – You can target your audience based on their specific location by targeting country, state/province, city, ZIP code, DMA, or address. It works if you are targeting nearby locations.

Gender and age – There are certain products and services that are fit for a specific gender and age. If you advertise, choose the right gender and age based on the product and service you’re offering to make it more targeted.

Previously visited your site – If the client wants to see the ad through his desktop or mobile, create campaign targeting the people who visited your client’s website.

Demographic – Choose your target audience based on education, relationship, work, generation, and etc.

Interest – Before you choose a specific interest, list some keywords that best describe the client’s target audience. Facebook will tell you if they have it on their interest list with corresponding number of potential reach.

Behavior – If you want to squeeze your options and make it more specific, try choosing a type of behavior. Digital activities, travel frequency, mobile device user are among the options.
Once you’ve selected all the options, Facebook will give you a potential audience reach according to your targeting details. It can help you in making decisions in your budget, creative, and messaging.

3. Choosing different objectives

You cannot run a campaign without an objective. Everything starts with the goal of your campaign. This sets all the expectations, metrics, and key performance indicators (KPIs) your campaign will achieve and gives you an idea if your campaigns are performing or not.
Here are the default objectives you can choose from. Here we go.

Clicks to Website – Choose this objective if the client’s goal is to increase the traffic of a particular webpage.

Website Conversions – Use this goal when the client’s wants to receive inquiries from our campaigns. It’s the most challenging and exciting objective.

Page Post Engagement – This goal gives you a way to boost your posts. Some clients prefer to promote their posts on Facebook to reach a wider audience.

Page Likes – Promote your Page and get Page likes to connect with more people who will be the next ambassadors of your products or services. Run a Page Like campaign if your Page has a small number of fans.

Event Responses – Do you have an event that you want to advertise? Use this objective to raise attendance at your event.

Video Views – If your client has an existing high quality video for marketing, take the opportunity to create a Video Views campaign to get more people to view your video.

Aside from we’ve mentioned above, there are other objectives you can choose: App Installs, App Engagement, Offer Claims, and Local Awareness.

4. Get Creative

Facebook allows you to get creative with your ad. You can create an ad with a combination of text and image. It’s also easy to create an ad and control it. If you think the ad is not performing, just pause it and create another one.
You can also choose a type of ad you want to run: a) single image b) video and link and c) multiple images and links.
Most of the ads we see are in the form single image. Multiple images and links are ideal for e-commerce sites while video and links are for big brands that are already advertising on TV commercials.

5. Ads Testing

Doing A/B testing is a vital strategy to achieve good results on Facebook advertising. This allows you to make changes to improve your creative and gain valuable insights to what works and doesn’t work.

Conclusion

Facebook advertising is a platform that allows businesses to run their campaigns successfully through its targeting options and different objectives while having creative control. Now that you know the reasons why you need to start advertising on Facebook, we can help you launch your first campaign and eventually determine whether or not Facebook ads are right for your business.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the act of marketing online for business to get noticed on search engines such as Google. SEM has two primary forms: the paid search and search engine optimization (SEO).

Through SEO, techniques were employed in the hopes of improving search rankings in natural way. When we say ‘natural’, it includes improving site’s content through quality blogs and hundreds of back links. It may take months or sometimes even years to get high ranks on search page results.

When businesses don’t want to wait this long, they use paid search.

What is Paid Search?

Paid search refers to any search where business ads are placed on search engines like Google.

Advertisers will pay for targeted keywords relevant to your business. When customer enters a query related to your targeted keywords on Google, your business could be place on the first page result.

It works on a pay-per-click basis where you will pay only when a customer clicks your ads and takes a specific action such as booking an appointment or inquiring for your products.

Let’s say you have a retail business and wrist watches are among your products. Using Google AdWords keyword planner, we can see that there are variations of the term “wrist watch” with hundreds of monthly searches in the Philippines.

When you type in specific brand for watch on Google, for example “casio watches”, the first page will be dominated by Casio. However, through paid search, your ads will be able to show on the first page. On the sample image below, Google placed three (3) businesses where you can buy Casio watch on the top of the page.

SEO or Paid Search?

Both SEO and paid search are effective in generating traffic to your website. However, there are circumstances when one is better than the other. Here are some strengths of paid search marketing compared to SEO:

When you want immediate result – paid search provides result fast. After running your campaign on Google AdWords, your ads will immediately displayed for thousands of related queries for people to see. After minutes you can see the flow of traffic to your website with detailed tracking reports on AdWords platform.

When you’re promoting a time-sensitive offer – promotions works well with customers. What if you are having a promo that will last for a week only? Because SEO takes time, how will you promote a service or product with expiration? With time-sensitive offers, paid search works well. Paid search will deliver the traffic you want in a matter of minutes.

When you want to target specific market – unlike SEO, paid search will allow you to narrow down your target market according to their demographics data. It will let you choose customers to whom your ads will appear. Google lets you sort out customers according to their location, age, gender, marital status and more.

When you want to dominate search result with your keyword category – paid search results are placed on Google above the organic search results. Having this top position, 64.6% of traffic goes to sponsored link by paid search. Imagine how much traffic you are losing to your competitors who used paid search.

Does Paid Search actually work?

You have probably heard paid search before but you don’t have idea if it actually works. Check our success stories.

Your Turn

Now that you have enough knowledge about paid search marketing, you are one step away from achieving your business objectives.

In this video, we’ve discussed the importance of Google AdWords to a business.

Our resident AdWords certified and managing director, Richard Noromor pointed out the benefits of using AdWords to market your business. In the first part of his video, he mentioned the internet stats and trends today and how this data justify why we need to start advertising on Google.

“One of the stats presented that is worth taking is “Only 4% of marketing budget was spent on online ads”.

The other reason I think you’ll love in this video is the benefits of AdWords for Filipino businesses to reach your potential market at the critical moment they’re looking for you.

If you have a business, you don’t want it to get left behind. He also gives you an idea what’s the difference between organic and paid listings and how do you pay as an advertiser.

Finally, he also presented successful case studies with real results in terms of ROI.

Now, it’s your turn. If you have a business, are you going to start advertising on Google? We would love to hear your comments below.

Google AdWords is a great way for Pinoy SMEs to reach more local customers and meet potential clients @richardnoromor via @EmergeLocal

What is Google AdWords?

An example of search engine advertising is through the use of Google AdWords. Google AdWords is the single most popular PPC advertising system in the world. AdWords platform enables ads to appear on Google’s search engine and other Google properties.

AdWords operates on a pay-per-click model, in which users bid on keywords and pay for each click on their advertisements.

For example, your business offers cosmetic procedure services. We can bid for the keyword “Cosmetic Surgery in Philippines”. Every time someone enters this query on Google search engine, your ad might show up on the top spot of Google result page. When your ad was clicked, redirecting the searcher to your website, you will only pay for a small fee.

In an article released by Forbes last year, Mr. Avi Dan, founder of AviDan Strategies points out that the fundamentals of marketing will always remain. However, with the emergence of different platform that goes along with the speedy development of technology, marketers should be in front of the trends.

If you are reading this post, it means that you were bitten by digital bug and were interested with marketing your business digitally. Maybe you’re already doing digital marketing and now reading to gain more knowledge to implement with your existing marketing strategy. Or you can be a business owner who never tried digital marketing but looking for a strategy to market your business and most of all to acquire more sales.

What is Pay-per-Click?

Pay-per-click or PPC is a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. It is a way of buying visits to your site, rather than attempting to get those visits organically. PPC, also called cost-per-click, defined as the amount spent to get an advertisement clicked.

Search Engine Advertising is one of the most popular forms of PPC. It allows advertisers to bid for ad placement in a search engine when someone searches on a keyword that is related to their products or services.

Why Consider Google AdWords?

The World is Quickly Becoming Digital

Digital Marketing is not the future of marketing, it’s already happening and only few businesses in the Philippines is taking advantage of this. Today is the generation where consumers embrace digital media consumption because they basically live with internet and smart phones.

It is important for businesses to have online presence as most of the consumers spend their time through surfing the internet and mobile phones on their free time or even at work.

Webrooming With 88% of Shoppers

Webrooming is the process of researching online before buying in store. As of last year, webrooming became more popular with online consumers. According to the report, 72% of people prefer online process for product comparisons.

On the critical moment when consumers are deciding to avail a particular product or service through browsing the internet, are your advertisements available to them.

You Have a Website, But Do You Have Visits?

You did the first step to have online presence with creating a website, but does your website drive sales or qualified visitors? Is your site even appears on search pages?

Google AdWords will help your site be visible on Google search page immediately with the use of keywords relevant to what your business is offering.

Do Your Ads Available Through Multi-screen?

With the availability of accessing internet through smartphones became possible, consumers are now “multi-screening”. Researchers are surfing internet with their smartphones while on their way home, stuck on traffic or waiting for someone. Then before going to bed, they will surf through desktop PC or laptop to review sites and shop online.

Consumers expect retailers to be available everywhere they are. Every businesses should Take the opportunity to get online presence anytime, anywhere on multiple devices.

Google AdWords is a digital marketing platform that will help you create brand awareness and drive qualified sales on your business. It gives business owners the possibility to track its marketing performance. We can track which keywords and ad variations compel to consumers, which are not readily available in traditional marketing.

Are you a business owner who uses traditional marketing and seeks another way to market your products or services? Take the first step by going to our live demo. Smart marketer knows how to be ahead and anticipate which one promises opportunity.

People in the marketing and advertising industries are quite familiar with the term Digital Marketing. It has been used for quite some time already, but it hasn’t been given an exact definition.

What many people know is that it compasses so many things related to marketing and promotion – banner advertising, blogging, e-mail marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), podcasting, pay-per-click (PPC), and so much more. However, if you read that closely, it’s easy to see what digital marketing is not.

Digital Marketing is a form of marketing strategy that veers away from what we’re used to such as print ads, large billboard ads, TV commercials, and radio advertisements that don’t necessarily produce instantaneous feedback that reaches the knowledge of business owners.

Finding out how many people responded positively to a commercial they saw on TV takes a while, and sometimes, the data gathered are merely assumed numbers.

On the other hand, since digital marketing revolves around the Internet, verifying feedback, call-to-action responses, and more becomes so much easier.

Digital Marketing in the Philippines

Digital marketing is fast gaining ground in the Philippines, all thanks to the majority of Filipinos’ affinity to the Internet, particularly social media.

In fact, a special report explicitly said that Internet access in the Philippines enjoyed a staggering 500% growth over the last four years! That’s not hard to believe considering almost everyone in the Philippines, young and old alike, owns laptops, computers, tablets, and smartphones.

Because of their exposure to the Internet, Filipinos are becoming more and more tech-savvy. Whereas before, they were content with accessing the Internet to browse YouTube videos, check their emails, or browse their social networking accounts, nowadays, they have become more adventurous in exploring the World Wide Web.

Many Filipinos are now active bloggers, video bloggers, social media managers, online shoppers, and more, and all these despite the fact that about 70% of Filipinos have yet to have Internet access.

That says a lot about the potential for growth of digital marketing in the Philippines. That’s also the reason why business owners who want to reach many prospective customers should strive harder to be where these people are – online.

On that note, let’s look at four things business owners and digital marketers can do to rake in those immeasurable ROIs.

1. Visuals say a lot in internet marketing.

Most would agree that content marketing is usually the first option of digital marketers when brainstorming campaign ideas.

There’s actually nothing wrong with that, except that most digital marketers focus on a single aspect of content marketing – writing articles.

The truth is articles are not the only form of content. Videos, comics, white paper, PR, and infographics are all forms of content that digital marketers can try out.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and a visually stimulating infographic can say a lot about your business.

What’s more, some people just don’t have time to read lengthy articles but enjoy looking at visual content posted on Pinterest or Instagram during their lunch break.

So tap into your inner Picasso and start doodling those infographics and see your business soar.

2. Diversity is the key if you want to win in your Digital Marketing Campaign.

There was a time when social media meant Facebook, Twitter, and occasionally, YouTube.

Nevertheless, the emergence of more diverse social media players like Pinterest, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Path, and even Tumblr is making business owners think twice.

Apparently, experts see these social media platforms dominating many digital marketing campaigns not only this year but also in the coming years.

Hence, business owners should start zeroing in on these and use these to their advantage.

3. Sharing is caring.

Creating a blog for your business is a great way to build not only a strong online presence but also links.

A blog requires a tremendous amount of work from your end, but you can actually turn the tide around and make your customers do the branding for you.

First, make sure your blog has a seamless look that makes it easy for visitors to leave meaningful comments.

Second, make sure to integrate social media sharing buttons to prompt visitors to share the content they just read on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and everywhere else.

4. Steer your Digital Marketing in the right direction.

Pay close attention to location-based digital marketing.

What does that mean?

Many smartphone and tablet users install apps with GPS or location-based features. At the same time, a few of the more popular social networking sites encourage users to “check-in” and update everyone on their location anywhere they are in the world.

If digital marketers focus on location-based digital marketing, it would be so much easier for them to send the most relevant content or information to their existing and potential customers based on their geographical location, which in turn leads to a more personalized approach.

There you have it; four things you can try out to jumpstart your digital marketing campaigns.

Please read part 2 of our review on the latest Digital Landscape and Digital Transformation (DX) in the Philippines in our blog entitled “How Digital Marketing Helps Philippine Businesses Fast-Track Growth“.

Along with the keywords, ad copies are the backbone of each PPC account.

A good list of keywords will do nothing if you don’t have compelling ads that will draw the attention of searchers. Sure it will give your ads more impressions but might not gather clicks.

It will hurt your click-through rate (CTR) and quality score and soon, your ads will not appear on top pages anymore.

This will be a nightmare for every PPC managers.

It is mainly the reason why PPC marketers should think ads variations that may tickle the interest of customers as good as their keyword list. The challenge is, you only have 95 characters to sell your products or services.

Google AdWords gives you the control to have up to 50 ads per ad group, however the ideal number of active ads in each ad group is 3 to 4.

PPC managers should use these ad slots wisely by testing variety of ad copies to determine which ad appeals with the customers.

Let’s discuss further why you should do ad copy test and how to test?

1. Why do Ad Copy Test?

In marketing, A/B testing was being done to determine which ones produce positive results. PPC ad is not an exemption.  Account managers run 3 to 4 variations of ads with each ad group and measures which one gathers more responses from searchers.

It is also to determine what type of ad customers will most likely to click and convert to sales.

2. What should be included in Ad copy?

Ads are the introduction to your website and it should create good impression. To have a good introduction, you should know your goals; what is the purpose of your campaign?

Ads should include clear description of your product, its benefits, special offers or promotions, key products and call to actions. You can sit down with your client or boss and discuss about them.

3. Test one thing at a time.

Honestly, I did not know about this until I read different blogs about PPC strategies. When I do testing, I just think variations about the products or services we sell.

I practically change whole thing about the ads with its varieties.

But the ideal way to test ads is you should only change one line at a time with each ad copy. It is to measure which of the headline or the description lines received higher Click-through rate (CTR) and number of converted clicks.

You can test as well with company name on headline or products / services name on headline, with or without official website on ad copy and with or without keywords on display URL.

4. Track and analyze the result.

Though it is an obvious step after setting up a test, most of the PPC managers who are bloggers as well, state that there are still managers who tend to forget to stop the testing and figure out the ad winner.

It maybe because ads should run with long enough time to gather data and measure the champion ads. And after waiting a long time, they forget to draw their attention back on testing.

Account managers should set a specific date to review each testing and stick with that. It is ideal to let the testing run for a month or gather up to 100 clicks before analyzing the result.

For large accounts, it is advisable to review testing every two weeks. You can use labels to keep track when  do ads starts running.

5. Keep testing your Ad Copy

After getting the ad which collected most clicks and conversions, you may think you can stop testing. Your champion ad which continues to give you positive result is running on the first place.

But you should not stop experimenting about new ideas and variations with your ads. Start testing new ad copies against your winner ad. There might be another ad copy which can outperform your champion ad.

If you’re running out of new ideas, you can try to run your loser ads again and let them compete with your champion ad.

There are instances that “losers” performed better than champion ads. As what they say, treat it as a fashion, you are looking for what works best at the moment.

One way of being successful in managing PPC accounts is to think like a customer. You should know your audience, know their interests and know what attracts their attention. If you are not sure about them, test it!

The first step in starting a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) account is creating a PPC keyword list.

PPC Keyword List is the foundation or the bread and butter of any PPC account. Keywords are the words or phrases your customers would use when searching for your product or service.

PPC blogs and articles provide different techniques on how to create keyword list, the right approach in PPC keyword research and the best way of choosing the right keywords.

However, as you go through in setting your account up and running, you will realize it doesn’t end in having that final keyword list. You will need to optimize your account and optimizing will mean keeping the high performing keywords.

It will require removing, pausing and adding new keywords which may lead for you to have a whole new keyword list.

If you are new in managing PPC accounts, you might have wonder why you need to go through optimizing your keywords since you had already chose the best keyword list possible. We will clear some of those confusions.

1. Why you have to add new PPC keywords?

As you gather enough data with your account, Google AdWords offers the Search Term Report function that will provide the specific words or phrases the customers used in searching for your product or service. This report will give you new keyword ideas to add in your account.

These new keywords may gather more traffics or clicks since you get an idea on how customers think and what words they usually use in searching.

2. Why you need to pause keywords?

Pause those under-performing keywords. This action varies in different situations:

Pause those keywords with a status of “Low search volume”.

Unless they have clicks you can give more time for them to perform well. But usually, keywords with this status don’t have any click. You can just pause these keywords to make your account look clean.

AdWords Best Practices described low search volume keywords as waste of space in your campaign. You need to give keywords a week or 8 days of running before considering them to pause.

Pause those keywords with very low Click-Through Rate (CTR)

CTR determines the relativity of your keywords to your ads.

The ideal CTR is 1 % and those keywords with CTR below it did not perform well. You can consider pausing these keywords since it can affect your Quality Score that will determine your ad’s position on the search page. Low CTR with low quality score will result to low Ad Rank.

Review those keywords with low Quality Score

In this step, I recommend review your ads and keywords first for you to identify what can be done to improve your Quality Score.

The ideal quality score is 5 and above. Low quality score means your keyword is not relevant enough with your ads. You can consider optimizing your ads first.

After experimenting with ads and your keywords did not generate high quality score, you need to pause them.

Pause keywords with high clicks but did not generate conversions

The main goal of every campaign is to generate conversions that will lead to Return–on –investment (ROI). You may think that those with high clicks are performing well but those which did not lead to any conversions may only cause you expenses.

Pausing these keywords will allow you to focus your budget on profitable keywords.

3. Why you need to remove your keywords?

The truth is, removing keywords is not really an option in optimizing accounts. It is on the best practices that it would be better if you only pause those keywords that did not perform well so you can go back to them if you are expanding your campaigns.

Google AdWords gives you the control to undo your changes but it is only for the span of twenty-four hours after your changes had done.

Removing them will mean deleting them permanently.

Unless you have keywords conflicting with negative keywords, you can consider removing them right away.

When I was new in managing accounts, I was hesitant to pause or remove those keywords in my initial list. I was thinking they may generate traffic and conversions in the long run.

But as I go through optimizing accounts, I realized it would be better to have fewer keywords that will give you high amount of Return-on-investment than having a lot of keywords that may lead to high expenses.