Optimization Score is now available on the Recommendations tab in Microsoft Ads, according to the latest announcement from the company. The new scoring system is meant to help improve advertisers’ account optimization status and potential, help advertisers spend their time more efficiently and to prioritize the optimization actions with higher impact, and track their optimization efforts over time.

“Along with the overall Optimization Score, you’ll see a list of recommendations tailored specifically for your account, to help you optimize each campaign. Each recommendation displays a score uplift percentage, showing how much your optimization score will be impacted when you apply or dismiss that recommendation. Optimization Score is available at Account and Campaign level, and is shown for active Search, Shopping and Audience campaigns,” said Jessica Cui, Principal Program Manager and Cristiano Ventura Sr. Product Marketing Manager.

How to check Optimization Score in Microsoft Ads. Visit the Recommendations page in Microsoft Advertising. “You’ll see a percentage score in blue (see below). Each category of recommendations is shown with an aggregated score uplift from the recommendations belonging to it, and each recommendation is indicated with a score uplift in an ellipse on the top right of the card with a value from 0.1% to 100%, representing its estimated impact on your account or campaign performance,” wrote Cui and Ventura. If you apply or dismiss a recommendation, your score will adjust accordingly.

How is Optimization Score calculated? Microsoft Advertising looks at multiple aspects of a campaign: bidding and budgets, keywords and targeting, and ads and extensions. From there it determines if these features are fully optimized and displays recommendations for full optimization. “The recommendation is evaluated by its impact to your performance: the more performance impact from the recommendation, the greater effect on your overall score,” according to the announcement.

How to improve your scores. Any recommendation can be applied or dismissed. “You can see the total score achieved from the dismissed recommendations, showing as the light blue portion of the percentage bar. For example, if you apply or dismiss a recommendation that has a score uplift of 10%, your account’s optimization score increases by 10%. Applying or dismissing all recommendations can get you to 100% for your account,” said Microsoft Ads.

Why we care. Google has had optimization scores and the ability to apply or dismiss for a while now. This means Microsoft Advertisers will have a similar experience in the competitor platform. The availability of Optimization Score in Microsoft Ads now means advertisers have the option to ensure they understand all of the recommendations and consider options they may not have before.

The post Microsoft Ads announces optimization score appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.

Good morning, Marketers, are we doing the work or going through the motions?

My friend and I were taking a walk around our coworking space just to get some fresh air and reset our brains before afternoon calls. We both park in a deck down the road because the parking lot right outside the office is 3-hours only. However, the handicapped spaces directly outside the space are all-day parking. At first, I thought that was pretty cool. Good for this space for being accessible, I thought, and for not making people who use wheelchairs park in the parking deck far away. 

And then I looked at the entrances right outside these parking spots and noticed the ramp was nowhere close. Then I thought about the actual space and how I think I’ve only ever seen one elevator — which is on the other side of the building to the parking spaces.

Just like in life, accessibility on our sites can’t be an afterthought. We’ve been working on an accessibility audit of Search Engine Land, and we encourage you to think about doing the same as you plan your 2022 goals. It can’t just be an afterthought. We have to do the actual work. With the increased focus on user experience in SEO, we need to make sure our sites have a positive experience for all users.

Carolyn Lyden,
Director of Search Content

3 sessions search marketers will want to see at MarTech

How are we handling the data challenge?
MarTech Editorial Director Kim Davis’s keynote explores the importance of data to modern marketing with experts from major brands like HBO Max and El Camino Health.

Guiding company influencers and evangelists to successfully engage on LinkedIn
Join Darryl Praill, CRO at VanillaSoft, as he explains how he interacts on LinkedIn, who he responds to, who he completely ignores and why.

Is your brand ready for the search-first age?
Deepcrawl shows why CMOs need to shift from being search-shy marketers to become search-first CMOs.

Get your free pass now.

Video and vertical-based product ads pilots arrive on Microsoft Audience Network

Video ads and vertical-based product ads are now being piloted on the Microsoft Audience Network, Microsoft announced yesterday. In the announcement, the company also revealed disclaimers in ads, new third-party integrations with Universal Event Tracking, flexible insertion orders and inline appeals for rejected offers in Microsoft Merchant Center.

Why we care. While unlikely to be game-changing, Microsoft Advertising’s September announcements offer a variety of quality-of-life improvements for paid search marketers:

• Microsoft Audience Network’s new video format may help brands increase awareness as well as engagement with their ads.
• Disclaimers in ads may help advertisers in regulated industries stay compliant.
• Inline appeals may help decrease the amount of time your team spends reaching out to Microsoft Advertising’s support team. This can be especially useful for resolving rejections during the holiday shopping season, a crucial time of the year for many merchants.
• The new UET integrations may mean a simpler setup process for event tracking.
• Flexible insertion orders may provide advertisers with a more versatile way to manage their budgets.

Read more here.

81% of B2B tech marketers believe the importance of SEO has increased in the last 12 months

SEO budgets in B2B have reflected this increase in importance as over a quarter of B2B tech companies have increased their investment in SEO in the past year, according to data from FINITE, the global B2B technology marketing community.

However, with the increased emphasis on SEO and budgets related to it, only half of B2B tech has an SEO strategy. The report also found that most of the SEO efforts in this industry are being performed in-house: “Only 28% of B2B tech marketers rely on third parties to help with their SEO strategies.”

Attribution is a challenge even outside this industry, but FINITE’s data found that nearly half of all B2B tech marketers struggle to measure the impact of organic search. What were the other big challenges for the respondents?

• technical SEO (38%),
• link building (21%) and 
• content creation (21%)

Why we care. This information could help agency and in-house marketers looking to make the move to B2B tech/SaaS. Even more companies are seeing the value in organic search optimization, but are missing out on strategy and implementation best practices. Knowing this can help search marketers craft proposals and help these companies hone in on the best ways to improve their SEO.

Search Shorts: End of ETAs #PPCChat, reducing churn, and stats in content

#PPCChat on RSAs and ETAs. Check out the advice, thoughts, and reactions from the experts in yesterday’s #PPCChat about the end of ETAs.

3 ways to reduce customer churn with content marketing. No matter how large they are, even multinational corporations aren’t immune to customer churn. But there’s a way to retain customers – and it all starts with content marketing.

Truth or Dare: How to use statistics in your content. Statistics actually have the power to make your content more engaging and compelling. When you use them the right way, statistics can help you tell an even better story than you could with words alone.

What We’re Reading: The secret to happiness at work

Job satisfaction is up, according to this piece in The Atlantic by Arthur C. Brooks. “In 2020, despite the fact that millions of Americans had shifted to remote work, 89 percent said they were either ‘completely’ or ‘somewhat’ satisfied,” he wrote. Brooks teaches graduate classes and says his students often assume that, in order to love your job, it has to be your “dream” job: “one where your skills meet your passions, you make good money, and you are excited to get to work each day.” 

But, says Brooks, that’s not what drives satisfaction at work. “After all, how many kids say, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to be a quality-assurance analyst’?” And, how many of us knew we wanted to be search marketers when we were asked our future career aspirations as children? I think mine shifted from marine biologist to broadway star to writer as I got older. And here I am in search.

To really be satisfied with work, Brooks says your job needs two things:

1. Earned success. Earned success gives you a sense of accomplishment and professional efficacy. Employers who give clear guidance and feedback, reward merit, and encourage their employees to develop new skills are the most likely to give you those feelings.
2. Service to others. This is the sense that your job is making the world a better place. That doesn’t mean you need to volunteer or work for a charity to be happy, but that you’re helping make the world a better place for someone or making their life easier.

So what’s the secret to happiness at work? “Rather than relentlessly pursuing a ‘perfect match’ career that they’re sure will make them happy, a better approach is to remain flexible on the exact job, while searching for the values and culture that fit with theirs,” said Brooks.

The post New pilots from Microsoft Ads and the secret to happiness at work; Wednesday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Video ads and vertical-based product ads are now being piloted on the Microsoft Audience Network, Microsoft announced on Tuesday. In the announcement, the company also revealed disclaimers in ads, new third-party integrations with Universal Event Tracking, flexible insertion orders and inline appeals for rejected offers in Microsoft Merchant Center.

Video ads pilot on Microsoft Audience Network. Video ads are now available on the Microsoft Audience Network as a pilot program in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand and the U.K.

Videos can be between six seconds and two minutes in length, and video ads on publisher partner placements will also be coming soon. To test out this new product, contact your Microsoft Advertising support representative or the Microsoft Advertising support team.

Vertical-based product ads pilot on Microsoft Audience Network. The company is also piloting another Microsoft Audience Network feature — vertical-based product ads, which use an advertiser’s existing feed to generate ads for auto listings, entertainment events, hotels, tours and activities and vacation rentals in native environments.

“Microsoft’s audience intelligence delivers the right message to the right audience and matches the user with the items in the feed where they’ve shown interest, helping you better connect with potential customers who are ready to convert,” Microsoft said in the announcement. The pilot is currently only available to advertisers in the U.S. and UK; to participate, get in touch with your Microsoft Advertising support representative or contact the Microsoft Advertising support team.

Disclaimers for regulated industries. Microsoft Advertising is introducing disclaimers in ads (as shown below). While this feature isn’t specific to regulated industries, it can be particularly useful for advertisers in verticals in which consumers may need to be informed about details related to your business.

To use disclaimers in ads, advertisers must first create a brand new campaign, as they are only enabled at the campaign level.

Coming soon: Inline appeals in Microsoft Merchant Center. Microsoft will be adding inline appeals for product ads to Microsoft Merchant Center ahead of the holidays (the company did not specify an exact date). This feature is designed to give advertisers an overview of policy violations that may be driving editorial rejections for offers.

Advertisers will be able to request an appeal/manual review from the interface (shown above) with a single click for all rejections in that particular policy. Note: the maximum number of total requests is 100,000 offers per month per store.

New third-party integrations with Universal Event Tracking. As an attempt to streamline the Universal Event Tracking (UET) setup process, Microsoft is also launching third-party integrations with Google Tag Manager, Shopify, Squarespace and WordPress.

To get started with one of these integrations, select the “Add the tag through a website editing platform” option during setup and instructions for the chosen platform will be provided.

Flexible insertion orders. Flexible insertion orders can now be used to set open-ended and/or unlimited budget insertion orders.

Why we care. Microsoft Advertising’s September announcements offer a variety of quality-of-life improvements for paid search marketers:

• Microsoft Audience Network’s new video format may help brands increase awareness as well as engagement with their ads.
• Disclaimers in ads may help advertisers in regulated industries stay compliant.
• Inline appeals may help decrease the amount of time your team spends reaching out to Microsoft Advertising’s support team. This can be especially useful for resolving rejections during the holiday shopping season, a crucial time of the year for many merchants.
• The new UET integrations may mean a simpler setup process for event tracking.
• Flexible insertion orders may provide advertisers with a more versatile way to manage their budgets.

The post Video and vertical-based product ads pilots arrive on Microsoft Audience Network appeared first on Search Engine Land.

When it comes to creating ads that convert searchers into customers, many advertisers dive in to structure, testing, and more, and gloss over one of the most important elements of any campaign: copy. Your ad copy is the very basic building block of your advertising. Getting it right can be the difference between a milquetoast conversion rate and driving huge value for your clients and stakeholders.

In her session at SMX Convert, Alyssa Altman did a deep dive into writing ad copy that actually converts including understanding search engines, funnels, intent and more. Check out our recap of her popular session below:

The evolution of search engines

“Google, Microsoft, and other search engines have reversed engineered their search algorithms over time (and re-engineered them) to make sure that they are giving someone the best answer to their ‘question’ as humanly possible,” started Altman. Many pieces of information that used to exist solely on websites are being pulled directly into the search engine results (things like weather, mortgage rates, math problem answers, etc.). That means there’s a lot of competition for clicks in SERPs as a result.

The key to effective ad copy, said Altman, is to understand what your PPC copy is answering in the first place:

Questions to ask yourself about any given topic include the following: “Is someone looking for general company information? Are they doing company comparisons? Are they doing some window shopping?” said Altman. For micro-moments, “people are telling us exactly what they want, so our copy should match that request.” And, of course, some people are just ready to convert, so the ad’s copy should reflect that intent.

This is all easier said than done, right? This is why she focuses on how marketing funnels actually work and figuring out how to align intent.

The reality of funnels and intent

Ad copy that converts starts with narrowing down the funnel, instructed Altman. The traditional notion of the marketing funnel assumes the user does a search to gain awareness of solutions to a problem. From there they consider a company/solution, and then they convert.

But most paid search marketers know it’s not that simple. The conversion process is not as linear for most customers, especially given how cross-channel marketing works. “Our searches don’t actually connote what we are looking for,” said Altman. “There’s this assumption that Google or Microsoft knows what we’re thinking before we think it… but someone could type in a company name and they could be thinking two completely different things.” One person could be looking for a website while another might be looking for a contact form, for example. 

The key to remember is that there are awareness and consideration searches that happen throughout the funnel. Plus, conversion searches might happen on queries that we may not normally consider “bottom-of-the-funnel” type of searches.

”When we’re looking at the reality [of the funnel] it presents the case as to why testing needs to happen or we need to take a deep dive into why a search is happening. Not every search is created equal!” shared Altman in her session. You can have two searchers using the exact same query with completely different intent. That’s where writing PPC copy gets tricky. To determine what people actually mean when they search for something, advertisers have to test.

Testing in action

How to test ambiguous intent. When you’re not sure if your searcher is ready to purchase or just looking, you can test ad copy in a single campaign with dual ad groups and matching keyword terms. Altman also recommends using the same audience for this test. “Starting with a question or a concern that someone may have has the potential to convert at a higher rate,” recommended Altman.

The measure of which ad is doing best for this intent test is click-through rate and conversion rate. “If you’re running this test and noticing that you’re getting more downloads than form submissions than you can estimate that this query might be in the form of more general research,” she instructs. “If you’re getting way more form submissions in this split test, you can shift your messaging to be more primarily geared toward sales.”

How to test obvious intent. When you can tell that the intent is obvious, you can hone in even more and change one variable in an ad. “This testing works well when a user is explicitly telling you what that want to do. ‘I want to purchase this vehicle near me,’” said Altman. The test setup is the same except you’re doing ad variation testing within Google Ads with a 50% split. 

This can give us information about a potential customer. In this example, our lead forms can tell us, “if they’re trying to haggle another deal or they don’t understand a pricing” which we can then use as data to inform our copy, said Altman. “Understanding the content of a submission or a lead is just as important as writing the copy itself.”

Copy mistakes to avoid

If you’ve done your research, created tests to determine intent and then narrow down the messaging when you do know the intent — there still may be some hiccups in your ad copy. Here’s how to avoid them:

Mistake 1: Forgetting the power of your headlines

Your headlines are prime real estate! Use them for unique identifiers, not duplicate information. For example, this ad from a university duplicates the URL in the headline. This is a waste of potential ad copy that could catch a searcher’s eye or convince them to click through on your ad versus a competitor.

Mistake 2: Obvious keyword stuffing

It can be tempting to repeat your main keyword(s) multiple times in your headlines, descriptions and extensions. Altman recommends only doing this if it makes sense in the context of the ad. Quality Score takes your keywords into account as a diagnostic tool for recommendations for improvement. Its three main components are: 

1. Expected CTR
2. Ad Relevance
3. Landing Page Experience

A headline like this doesn’t make sense for this query and likely won’t lead to a conversion — just a wasted click.

Mistake 3: Inconsistency from search > ad > landing page

Ensure that not only the search term is included in your ad and landing page content, but it addresses the larger picture. If you’re paying for a search term, make sure your process is setup for success. In Altman’s example below, we can see that when people search for “primary care doctor near me” a relevant headline is key, but so is a customized landing page experience. 

Taking this searcher to a page that highlights services related to that query will be more likely to lead to a conversion than just taking them to the home page and letting them figure it out on their own.

Next steps

Altman recommended ​​understanding what you are specifically testing before looking to set up an experiment. Testing intent vs. the winning messaging are two very different paths to go down. Clearly identifying what your end goal is will help to drive your upfront testing strategy. 

When testing copy, make it worth testing. Use power words like “free, special offer, now available, in stock, etc.” or emotional calls-to-action such as “explore with us, speak to a person, etc.” to really analyze what messaging has a stronger appeal and why.

Finally, Altman said that advertisers should make sure they have enough data to run a proper test when it comes to copy. Timeframes for testing mean nothing if an activity doesn’t occur during that predetermined frame. For example, if a 50% split test is occurring, aim for 100-200 clicks before starting to analyze your data.

Want to see the full session? Check out all of SMX Convert here on demand.

The post How to write ad copy that actually converts (and 3 major mistakes to avoid) appeared first on Search Engine Land.

“You can adjust conversion values based on characteristics like location, device, and audience. By applying a rule to these characteristics, you can adjust conversion values to align more closely with your business outcomes,” said Stephen Chang, Product Manager, Google Ads in an announcement.

This added feature means that businesses can use their inherent knowledge of what’s working in their industry to improve their conversion rates in Google Ads. For example, if advertisers know certain audiences or people in certain locations are most likely to convert, they can set a rule to multiply the conversion value for the chosen group by two.

“These rules will also be used by Maximize conversion value and Target ROAS to optimize your bids in real time. Conversion value rules will be available for Smart Bidding across Search, Shopping, and Display over the next few weeks,” wrote Chang.

Why we care. “This is a great feature addition. Love it because it allows businesses to get their intuitive/institutional knowledge into the machine learning to optimize more accurately,” tweeted Robert Brady, PPC expert at Righteous Marketing. Having this available in smart bidding also allows advertisers to tweak campaigns for their individual business goals and adjust as campaigns happen in real-time (like for sales, events, or the like).

More Google Ads news:

• Google Ads will soon block ad targeting based on age, gender or interests of people under 18
• Google Ads Editor v1.7 brings support for Hotel ads and lead form extensions
• Google publishes timelines for Privacy Sandbox proposals

The post Advertisers can adjust conversion values in Smart Bidding in the coming weeks appeared first on Search Engine Land.

In her hit session at today’s SMX Convert, Amy Bishop, Owner and Marketing Consultant and Cultivative, schooled us on multi-channel targeting tactics to turn prospects into paying customers. Her three-step strategy includes ways to better understand your audience, how to determine their varying paths to purchase, and tips to ensure that you’re targeting them at every stage along that path.

Knowing your target audience

Just like on the SEO side, it’s critical to have your personas handy for this exercise. If you don’t have a set group of personas, Bishop included a few questions to ask yourself about your potential target audience (plus some handy sheets for B2B and B2C):

She says the best way to dig into personas is to involve other client-facing teams, as well. This includes getting with customer support, sales, customer success, and more to answer these questions about your target audience.

• What is your target audience solving for?
• Where do they get their information?
• What characteristics make them a good prospect?
• What are indicators that they’re in-market?
• What influences them?

Along with asking these key questions, Bishop also recommends using the data you already have at your fingertips. “If you have a Facebook account, even if you’re not running ads, you have a wealth of information in Facebook audience insights,” she said. It’ll take some sorting through initially, but Bishop recommends identifying top purchaser demographics and zeroing in from there. After that, you can further segment by layering interests and other demographics and then identify specific interests to target. From there, you can monitor performance to flesh out and validate your personas.

Other sources of persona data that Bishop uses include the following:

• Google Ads audience insights,
• Google Analytics demographics insights, and
• Google Analytics conversion data.

Designing your campaigns to support the funnel

Catering to your prospects means supporting their journey toward that final conversion (whatever conversion is for your organization — it isn’t always a purchase!). “A common question that I get,” said Bishop “is which channels belong where [in the funnel]. I would really caution against this line of thinking because most channels have different ways that you can reach prospects. It doesn’t have to be ‘YouTube at the top, then display, and then search.’ You can make any channel work for you depending on who your prospects are and which channels they use and which targeting options are available across all channels.”

Instead, she recommends focusing on targeting options at each stage of the funnel:

In the first stage, work on targeting options that go for potential customers who don’t know all their options yet. After that, seek options that allow you to capture prospects seeking solutions and to re-engage those who have engaged in the past. Finally, at the bottom of the funnel, we want to target options to convert hot traffic to leads or sales.

Bishop maps this out in a spreadsheet asking these questions:

• What stage of the journey is the prospect in?
• What information do they need at that stage to feel comfortable moving to the next stage?
• What action or resource do we have available that is going to meet that information need that they have?
• How are we tracking it and creating an audience off of it?

In order to acquire this data to answer these questions, Bishop recommends looking into the data you DO have to complete this spreadsheet:

• First party data can tell you paths and interactions
• Client-facing resources can give you information on objections and questions
• Publicly available data can serve as market research
• Your market can give you info through customer surveys

Considerations for improving your campaign performance

If you’ve taken all the steps above and in Amy Bishop’s SMX Convert presentation and are still having some hiccups, here are some common mistakes she’s noticed in campaigns before.

Lack of data

“As marketers, we love to have control, so we end up making hyper-specific audience. But what happens is that we over-segment them and, even if [these small audiences have] brought conversions in the past, sometimes CPL and CPA can be pretty volatile,” said Bishop. With automation becoming more of a factor in PPC every day, platforms thrive on data. removing some of the segmentation (device, platform, etc.) can help create a larger audience. This can help give your bidding strategy a boost.

Not optimizing to a higher funnel conversion

“Even if you’re in the bottom of the funnel you can optimize to a higher in the funnel conversion,” she recommends. One of Bishop’s clients was struggling to get out of learning mode, so they tried optimizing to Add to Cart. They saw huge increases in ATC, a 91% increase in purchases, and a 155% increase in purchase value. These are all strategies worth testing for your campaigns if it makes sense.

Not testing better qualifying audiences and look-alikes

“Having any first-party data is good,” said Bishop. “That’ll only become more important as time goes on. Even better than that is putting some qualifications around it.” Analyze the behaviors of SQLs and work to find more of those by feeding those data values back into platforms.

The keys to improving your targeting are threefold, Bishop told us at SMX Convert. Really get to know your audience beyond surface persona data. Work to understand their path to purchase. And, finally, designs your campaigns around that path to purchase.

Want to see the whole session? Sign up to watch the entire SMX Convert learning journey on-demand.

The post Three targeting tactics that power every stage of the funnel appeared first on Search Engine Land.