PPCChat | PPC Secret Weapons | 25 Sep, 2018

This week’s PPCChat session was hosted by Julie F Bacchini. PPC experts discussed about their secret weapons in Bing Ads, Google Ads, Facebook, LinkedIn and other paid search advertising platforms.

Here is the screencap of the discussion that took place.

Q1: What is your favorite “secret weapon” when working in Google Ads?

The easy answer is adwords editor but for me it’s always been excel. know that’s not much of a secret but us PPC pros would be a bit lost without all of the advanced functionality that’s in the program and not available from google –  @jdprater

The distance report for local businesses combined with concentric location targeting with associated bids – @amaliaefowler

For me it has to be scripts – scripts for reporting, tracking, uncovering sneaky errors that have crept into my campaign. and many other things. – @mindswanppc

Direct marketing principles. – @stevegibsonppc

Not sure it’s a “Secret Weapon” but leveraging audience building and working cross channel is a major key for me … Also Maximize Conversions bid strategy. I’ve had SUCH PHENOMENAL results with it! – @markpgus

The search terms report. I constantly look to see how my keywords are matching so I can get traffic to the best ad groups. – @anna_arrow

Within the platform, we use impression share a lot to see how often we are showing, followed by the reasons why with impression share ad rank or budget. Google Insights is cool when you can’t figure out why you are getting fewer impressions but the same impression share. Maybe it’s just being searched less. Why I am I forgetting the obvious! Google Analytics! We like to see the whole funnel, check for site speed issues, time on site, number of pages viewed and segment to see what pages they are looking at. Location reports. Be sure to layer all the possible cities in your target area so that you can apply bid adjustments to areas converting.  – @elevatedmrktng

Not sure if search terms reports are secret, but they are invaluable for the accounts I run. – @Howdy_Doughty

Auction Insights is the first place I go when things majorly shift to get a sense if a new player has emerged or if it seems like a competitor is ramping up effort/spend. – @NeptuneMoon

Hmm hard to really find a ‘secret’. But I would say maybe using Keyword Hero for the ‘not provided’ keywords in Google Analytics, checking for revenue on those keywords and then using these in the Google Ads campaigns –  @StephanieErne

In Google Ads, we keep an eye on conversion name/source segmentation for our main client’s multiple properties, as well as Search Impression Share to see what we can do to improve the visibility and increase conversions. – @marccxmedia

Q2: What is your favorite “secret weapon” when working in BingAds?

Not a secret, but filtering campaigns regardless of the channel helps. –  @IamNextSTEPH

The biggest “secret weapon” for me when working in BingAds is to not just clone exactly what I’m doing in Google Ads. Ok to start that way, but then definitely treat it as a different platform/audience, because it is. – @NeptuneMoon

The only real answer right here Bless @BingAds for playing nice with Google! – @markpgus

Import tool  – @elevatedmrktng

My biggest secret weapon in Bing is to leverage it as a separate tool – I have a different process for optimizing and purposefully build it out differently than AdWords after the initial import. It’s a high performer for my clients (but with low volume) – @amaliaefowler

Using the ‘low search volume’ keywords that we’ve paused or removed in Google Ads. Oh… and not forgetting to remove the Google Ads language targeting when targeting multiple languages before uploading to Bing. – @StephanieErne

Q3: What is your favorite “secret weapon” when working in Facebook Advertising?

Loving me some in-market audiences in Bing. B lead ads coupled with the correct audience targeting. Hand over fist the lowest CPLs on the block. –  @ValenciaSEM

We follow a Facebook groups or two one being “facebook ad buyers” Duplicating campaigns and just changing the marketing objective from Video to say Traffic. You reach more people of the same audience.  – @elevatedmrktng

Does my best friend who is a Facebook expert count? I rely on him when I get stuck. Aside from him, my secret weapon would be combos. Traffic + Lead Gen + Remarketing or Traffic + Messenger Ads + Remarketing. Combos and solid audiences create absolute gold in Facebook – @amaliaefowler

Audience exclusions is big in Facebook since ad fatigue is real and happens fast in a lot of cases. Excluding audiences to minimize overlap can help with this. Whenever possible, have more than just one ad set and ads built, approved and ready to go. Thinking of advertising on Facebook in more of an ad series mentality is really helpful. – @NeptuneMoon

Facebook Analytics is amazing and is a great tool to learn for everyone running ads! – @jdprater

Audience Insights! This tool has really been crippled but can totally be leveraged! Especially if you’re running a page likes campaign, so that you can actually analyze your growing following. Wish they’d let you see Custom Audiences again – @markpgus

Getting granular with interest targeting is my secret weapon. e.g. if you want to target country music fans, don’t target people who like the most popular country music artist. Target someone a little less well-known to ensure a more accurate interest-based audience. – @Howdy_Doughty

From what we’ve used of Facebook Ads, the audience targeting and dayparting functions would be our “secret weapons”. – @marccxmedia

Retargeting fb audiences via super targeted Google ads – @LorcanDigital

Shamelessly stolen from a fb expert friend: Don’t expect much and target your competitors. if you’re better than them or you don’t have any competitors left, boast about it in your ads. – @mindswanppc

Q4: What is your favorite “secret weapon” when working in LinkedIn Advertising?

Good content for Linkedin! – @elevatedmrktng

Avoid text ads, leverage email lists, use group targeting, and sponsored inmail is my best friend – also messaging can really change your results LI also has to be part of a larger campaign with really solid content built around it in my experience (which is mostly B2B) – @amaliaefowler

I saw @wilcoxaj talk at INBOUND about FB advertising. Favorite takeaway was to use LI traffic data to retarget them on different channels (FB, Google Ads, etc) – @Howdy_Doughty

Ask @wilcoxaj every question I have when we go on our weekly. Outside of the Human Cheat Code @wilcoxaj making sure that you have an excellent white paper/offer. Then I’d say UTM tagging which @michellemsem has talked a lot about! Build highly targeted audiences in LI and Retarget in FB and save – @markpgus

Much like Bing Ads, we don’t work much with LinkedIn Ads. – @marccxmedia

As @wilcoxaj mentioned @heroconf; Exclude your own company (or the clients company when working at an agency) in the targeting options. And maybe also your competitors if you don’t want them to know what you’re doing.  – @StephanieErne

Q5: What is your favorite “secret weapon” when working in YouTube Advertising?

Remarketing with Display ads pr search ads to those who have watched our videos!  Taking advantage of all the audience choices! Building placements to target using broader audience targeting of topics, custom intent and custom affinity.– @elevatedmrktng

Remarketing/retargeting a user e-mail list with a video ad campaign is particularly cool. – @marccxmedia

Everything @BryantGarvin and @coryhenke have put out there! Still need to meet @coryhenke come hike with me and @wilcoxaj Custom Intent audiences, Custom Affinity audiences off of Competitor/industry publication URLs – @markpgus

Q6: What is your favorite “secret weapon” when working in other platforms, such as Pinterest, Twitter, Quora, Reddit, etc.?

Pinterest for ecom and Quora for SaaS/service based brands. – @duanebrown

I’m biased but @Quora is an awesome platform for advertisers and SEO. – @jdprater

Q7: What is your favorite “secret weapon” when working on competitive research?

Google alerts and following them on social media. Also, always do your own manual searches to see search results, don’t just rely on what tool(s) tell you will be there. – @NeptuneMoon

Click all the Ads! But really, go to competitor site’s and get in their remarketing. Also, thanks FB for showing us all the ads our competitors run! Also, like @NeptuneMoon said earlier Auction Insights FTW. If you/client already have things running that data will be 10x more insightful than SpyFu. – @markpgus

Now that we can see everyone’s Facebook ads it’s nice to go to competitors and see their “info and ads” in the bottom left hand corner of thier page Just looking at the competitions ads in search results gives some great ideas for extensions.  – @elevatedmrktng

I love going to review sites to see how people talk about the competition. – @jdprater

We’re pretty thorough in our keyword research. Not much of a “secret weapon”, though. – @marccxmedia

Recently, I’ve been viewing all active ads in the Info and Ads section on competitors’ Facebook Pages. It’s done wonders for analyzing ad copy & imagery trends. – @mpls_digital

Q8: What is your favorite “secret weapon” when working on reporting? Bonus points if your answer is something besides “Excel”.

Pay for @swydo …. But really crafting a story for clients. If you present data without context/explanation clients will come to their own conclusions. You’re the expert! You tell the story! – @markpgus

For routine reporting, we’re using @whatagraph to consolidate and present all of our data. It’s very easy for our account managers to create and review automated reports. And it makes my job easier. – @Howdy_Doughty

DATA STUDIO!! – @elevatedmrktng

Do not get too “inside baseball” in your reporting. Provide the person you’re giving reports to quick and easy access to answers to questions likely to be asked of them. You can always provide more detail in a supplemental document/report. – @NeptuneMoon

Tableau is much faster than Excel when you need to group things together. E.g. how ad copy performed across a set of ad groups. Plus you get a clean, client facing viz – @JasonStinnett

PPCChat Participants:

• Julie F Bacchini – @NeptuneMoon
• Amalia – @amaliaefowler
• J D Prater – @jdprater
• Mark Gustafson –  @markpgus
• Elevated Marketing – @elevatedmrktng
• MindSwan – @mindswanppc
• Jason Stinnett – @JasonStinnett
• Kim Doughty – @Howdy_Doughty
• Steve Gibson – @stevegibsonppc
• Orlando Valencia –  @ValenciaSEM
• Duane Brown – @duanebrown
• Stephanie Erne –  @StephanieErne
• Stephanie Cockerl –  @IamNextSTEPH
• Marccx Media – @marccxmedia
• Lorcan Digital – @LorcanDigital