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So far Blastoff Labs has created 108 blog entries.

Conversion Value Setup For Search Campaigns

Whether a search campaign is for lead generation or eCommerce, each type of conversion needs to be assigned a value.   Here, we are focused on lead generation campaigns, which include the majority of search campaigns. For example, advertising a service business where leads (sales inquiries) are handled by a sales organization. We have a separate article about this topic for e-commerce search campaigns.  By assigning a conversion value, we are able to measure the two most important metrics for a search campaign: 'return on ad spend', and 'advertising margin'. Even more importantly, we are able to inform the automated bidding system in relative terms how valuable a conversion is. So the automated bidding will be more aggressive in bidding for more valuable conversions. 

PPC Machine Learning

This series of articles takes a look at PPC automation available today, both how it works and associated controversies. We'll share the high points of what we've learned, including the positive and less positive angles. Digital advertisers are already...

Display Campaign Reporting Setup

Display campaign reports are designed a bit differently because they drive the mid-funnel and high-funnel.  So the focus is shifted more towards engagement metrics versus conversions. This includes metrics like the number of pages viewed, average time on page, total time on site, and bounce rate.

Our display campaign reports also include key performance indicators (KPI's), or implement custom KPI's most closely aligned to your business objectives. Our reporting system pulls data from Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising real-time API interfaces to access campaign data.

In a display campaign, there is an increased emphasis on attribution, since display campaigns often serve to pull in upper and mid-funnel traffic, which can be overlooked when focusing only on conversions. But we also report on conversion performance and financial ratio metrics.

Search Campaign Competitor Assessment

Once a search campaign project is onboarded, we study your website, products, and services then begin our paid search competitor assessment.

    • Identify the significant direct and indirect competitors.
    • Familiarize with their products, services, and positioning in the market.
    • Familiarize with advertising history, ad copy, ad spend.
    • Identify significant competitive trends.

This provides visibility into how your ad campaigns can be best structured for highly competitive PPC ad auctions.

Keyword Discovery Process

The quality of the keyword base generated for a search campaign influences how well a campaign performs. The keyword base is the foundation.

    •We spider the competitor sites identified during our “PPC competitive research” process.  We also spider your site and landing pages to extract and filter keywords that go into a "keyword bucket" as shown in the diagram. 

    •While locating direct competitors, we also familiarize ourselves with their products and/or services. We take note of competing advertiser positioning, messaging, offers, and trends.

    •We then expand the number of keywords discovered using proprietary software tools until we've developed a comprehensive keyword base. 

Create Display Campaign Structure

The ad group structure in display campaigns is used to segregate and test targeting methods, targeting configurations, ad images, and ad copy. This diagram shows ad group structure in a small display campaign. 

Without the structure provided by ad groups, we wouldn't be able to evaluate the effectiveness of different combinations of targeting and ads.

Some targeting methods require multiple ad groups in order to better control and observe results.  For example, when we're targeting using "custom intent" targeting by URL, we'll create one ad group per URL targeted.  Placement targeting to show ads on specific websites, the same. 

By using ad groups liberally in display campaigns we're able to rapidly evaluate targeting and ad quality.

Configure Search Campaign Serving Parameters

Ad Spend: A search campaign should be purchasing at least 15 to 20 clicks daily. Below that failure rates are higher.

Geo Targeting: Controls locations where the ads serve, and don't serve.

Bidding: Influences when a campaign participates in an ad auction, rank auction, and pages the ads appear on.

Campaign Serving Schedule: We start most campaigns to serve 24x7x365. Becomes baseline to optimize the serving schedule.

Ad Rotation: Resesponsive search ads (RSAs) can be rotated to split test.

Search Campaign Conversion Tracking Setup

Search campaign conversion tracking is crucial to success. PPC conversions are meaningful events including sales transactions, form fill submissions, phone calls, and other meaningful actions.

PPC campaign conversion tracking provides visibility into campaign performance. But the more important benefit to advertisers results from the conversion metadata being fed back into the campaign's machine learning algorithm. Conversion metadata is the fuel for automated bidding.

When properly configured and optimized, machine learning will lift most campaigns to higher levels of performance.

Develop Ad Copy for Search Campaigns

Blastoff has experimented with and tested a number of methods for creating, improving, and optimizing ad copy.

Our small team develops high quality ad copy in multiple refinements with all team members participating over multiple days. The ads go up on a wall-mounted TV during review and brainstorming sessions. This method of developing copy consistently delivers superior ad copy.

It is important to recognize that the purpose of a search ad is not to completely sell the customer on your service or product. The purpose of search ad copy is to intrigue the customer to click on your ad, instead of the adjacent ads from your competitors.

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