Google Ads: How to Use the Digital Marketing Tool to Generate Leads

There is an information overload in this day and age.

With the vast amount of content online, customers have information available at their fingertips when they wish to buy something.
Gone are the days when businesses would rely on outbound marketing to lure buyers. Nowadays, inbound marketing strategies are used to attract potential local Miami buyers.
Instead of mass advertising to people, you need to figure out ways to make the customer come to you. It has thus become crucial for a business to build and grow their digital presence and improve inbound marketing techniques.
With inbound marketing, the most important thing to focus on is building a solid lead generation strategy. This involves tweaking all digital marketing platforms, optimizing websites and social media, and search engine optimization (SEO) to cater to customers.
Often, this process begins with a traditional lead generation funnel.

Lead Generation Funnel

The lead generation funnel, a tool used in conventional marketing, is now also used in digital marketing to generate leads locally in Miami.
At the very top, you focus on gathering leads through content awareness,who then turn to customers later on. Two techniques which help marketers achieve this are:
Organic search:
Customers are most likely to find businesses through the keywords they use on search engines. This is why it’s important to have a good SEO strategy. Around 85 percent of search clicks will come from one organic search. However, ranking higher on search engines requires a lot of time.

Pay-per-click (PPC):

With PPC advertising, ranking is not an issue. Your business ads will feature prominently on most platforms depending on the click rate. It is an easier, albeit expensive, way to generate more leads.

PPC for Lead Generation

Using PPC to advertise to customers ensures that you will be attracting people based exactly on what they are looking for. There’s no need to worry about keyword rankings.You are also more likely to learn about consumer behavior and ways to generate even more high-quality leads in the future. Read here about the importance of PPC.

So how can you improve your PPC advertising and generate more leads?

Optimize Google Ads

Google ads, Google AdWords, or PPC (pay per click)help the right type of customer to reach your business. By investing time and money in making your Google AdWords campaign highly specific, you can get more high-quality leads. Here are some of the methods suggested by experts:

Use Branded Keywords

Using words that are specific to your industry or business greatly improves your ad campaign. It appeals to potential buyers and thus helps with lead generation. The more targeted your campaign is, the higher is your score on Google AdWords, which in turn lowers your PPC costs.

Use Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs)

SKAGs use only one main keyword and center other ad groups on that keyword. The main keyword acts as the root word and makes it easier to manage your campaign. It also makes the ad more specific, thereby improving your quality score and lowering costs.

Optimize your Landing Page

Any leads generated through your Google AdWords campaigns must not be lost along the way. When they arrive at your landing page, they should be further attracted by what it has to offer. To ensure that, make the landing page clear, concise and user-friendly. Do not ask for too much information in one go or bombard them with offers. Make sure your landing page doesn’t take too much time to load otherwise visitors will leave.

Test Your Campaign

Once your ads are up and running, evaluate the campaign thoroughly to see where it can be improved. Test your keywords, landing pages and targeting techniques. Use the Google Ads analysis tool to tweak your ad campaign and generate more leads.

PPC Budgeting: How Much Should You Pay For Google AdWords?

In the world of digital marketing, everything is a numbers’ game

Advertising budget, ad spends, lead conversions, returns on investment (ROI).
It can often get confusing for marketers to figure out how to use the company’s advertising money effectively.
There is no tool that exists to calculate the ideal amount of advertising money that needs to be spent to generate maximum ROI.Calculating the advertising budget for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is often a matter of trial and error. It is also compounded by the fact that there’s no way to predetermine how many clicks your campaign will get.

In order to begin budgeting, a digital marketer needs to keep some specifics in mind:

Company goals regarding lead generation, revenue and profit
Ideal ROI
Current gap in spending
Tools to be used for PPC advertising
Costs for traffic needed to drive conversions
• Important Key Performing Indicators for the company
Competition in the industry
Sales conversion targets

Then comes the budget planning stage.

Planning the Google AdWords Budget

Begin with a Budget Estimate

This will be an intelligent guess of your baseline budget. It depends on how much money company executives are comfortable with spending every month. This budget can be adjusted on a monthly basis based on your results and the success of your local Miami Google Ads campaign. The budget estimate also takes into account how important the Google Ads campaign is compared to your current digital marketing strategies.

Use Google Keyword Planner to Calculate Cost-Per-Click

The average cost-per-click (CPC) is the money you pay to Google locally in Miami once an ad is clicked by a potential buyer. Google Keyword Planner lets you calculate an estimate of the CPC based on the parameters you enter.  Adjust the remaining parameters according to their relevance: industry, location, terms to avoid, etc.
Simply enter search terms in the product field to get an estimate of the cost of that keyword. For keyword suggestions, you can take help of the landing page field and enter your website’s URL to generate relevant keywords. The planner will show you the bids for your keywords which you can use to arrive at a budget estimate.

Know Your Conversion Rates

It is very important to know your average customer conversion rates per month. This will tell you how many leads you need to generate and how many of them will convert to customers. For people unfamiliar with conversion rates, a good estimate to use is 1 to 2 percent, as it happens to be the rate for most websites out there.
It is usually helpful to calculate customer conversion rates for both digital and offline marketing methods such as phone calls, billboards, pamphlets, etc.
Using these metrics, you can enter all your data into a spreadsheet to calculate the first budget of your local Miami PPC and Google Ads campaign.

How to Get to the Top of the Local SEO Marketing Game

Do you think you’re struggling to get customers to your local business?

Being an owner of a small business in Miami can sometimes feel like a thankless job. You can run into multiple issues such as lack of funds, hiring new people, generating leads, high rents for your office space— the list is a gloomy one.
Once the teething troubles are over, the issue of getting new customers and maintaininga steady stream of regular ones arises. But with the right marketing strategies, small businesses can grow successful pretty fast.

So, what exactly are these strategies?

Your business needs a failsafe online search engine optimization strategy, one that is centered on local SEO marketing.
Did you know that four out of five customers rely on local search to look up details for local businesses online? This makes local SEO one of the most powerful tools for your business.

Search engines generally look at these components to rank business websites:
• Local content
• Social media profiles
• Citations
• Reviews and ratings

How to Improve Your Business Website and Rankings

Work on the Basics: Meta Title and Meta Description

You need to make sure your basics are sound before embarking on any major changes.
The meta title and descriptions are the HTML components that give clear and concise details about your content. They provide a preview of sorts in the search engine results page (SERP). This is how you can draw in more customers with unique and meaningful content.
Make sure your keywords are included in the meta title and description.

Improve Visibility in the Local Pack

The local pack or 3-pack is the list of top three businesses that shows up in the SERP for a query. It is an element of Google search results that caters to local search specifically.
It displays a portion of Google Maps near your area and the physical locations as well details of the top three businesses relevant to your search. Details included in the local pack are extracted from a business’ Google My Business (GMB) profile.

Optimize Your Google My Business Profile

The key advantage to having a GMB profile is that it’s verified by Google and hence comes across as reliable and authentic. Customers will always opt for a business that has complete and accurate details in its GMB profile.

To optimize for Google My Business, remember to:

Come up with an interesting and unique description of your business
Categorize your business properly
Include your working hours
• Mention when your business is likely to be closed
Highlight methods of payment
Include relevant, high definition pictures
Use Google AdWords
Add genuine customer reviews

Remember to Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

51 percent of internet users in the United States rely on mobiles for local search over desktop computers.

For the optimum user experience, your website needs to:
• Have a user-friendly interface
• Be supported on all devices

On the mobile version of your webpage, always remember to include the NAP:
• Name
• Address
• Phone number

This makes it easier for customers to find you and reach out.  Let the Local SEO experts in Miami get you ranked!   Call Smash Interactive Agency today.

Why Your Business Needs a Website

In the Age of the Internet, it is no surprise that more people prefer to do most things online.
Be it reading, working, or retail, the influence of the internet is too powerful to ignore.
Recent studies have also revealed that most people in the United States prefer to shop online as compared to visiting conventional brick-and-mortar stores.
And yet, not every business owner in the U.S. has an online presence. In fact, around 46 percent of small business owners do not have websites and 35 percent think they have no need for one.
With the rise of e-commerce, it simply makes zero sense to not have a website for your business.

There are many benefits to having Smash Interactive Agency build a website for your business.

It Builds Trust

Customers expect a business, no matter how big or small, to have a website. It lends enormous credibility to the business and helps customers trust your business. If you haven’t mastered your digital presence, how can you expect customers to trust your brand? If you incorporate customer reviews into your website, you gain even more credibility.

It Saves Costs

Does this sound like a paradox? Well, having a business websitesaves all the money you would otherwise spend on countless brochures, pamphlets, marketing personnel and billboards. Your message gets across without having to invest hundreds of dollars on physical marketing materials monthly.

It Adds Your Business to Google Search Results

Once Smash Interactive builds your website, you’re automatically entered into Google’s search results. Why is this useful? Because 81 percent of consumers conduct an online search before making a purchase. Of course you’ll need to work on search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to rank higher once you’re in the search pool.

It Provides a Unique Way to Display Your Products

With a business website, you can display the full range of your products and services in one place. Not only you can  make creative use of images, but you can also rely on tools such as reviews, tutorials or PDF instructions to highlight different aspects of your products.

Everyone Else Has a Website

Not investing in a business website is just an unwise decision at this point. All your competitors in the industry are likely to have websites. Without one, you’re telling your online customers that you’re not in the market. You lose out on potential customers and revenue.

Better Communication

A website ensures round-the-clock communication for both customers and employees. You can create separate streams for employees and keep them informed about company policies and regulations. Your customers also have a foolproof way to contact you 24/7.
To get started, call the Miami Web Developers at Smash Interactive Agency and get started today!

AdRoll: What Is It and How It Helps Remarketing

It is easy to lose yourself in the world of tens of different marketing tools available online.
Being a marketer in this day and age requires the acumen to choose the right advertising platform for your business in Miami. You need to keep your business objectives in mind and make sure your strategy is cost-effective.
Of course all of that comes later. First you need to bring customers to your website. And not just that, you need to make sure people actually choose your business over the hundreds of other options available to them.
An effective way to ensure that is to choose the right remarketing techniques.

What is Remarketing?

You know how you absent-mindedly visit a website sometimes? And its products start showing up in your browser ads and social media ads a few days later?
That is an example of a business that has invested in a good remarketing strategy.
Remarketing, or behavioral retargeting, is the technique of using clever sales and advertising tactics to bring potential customers to your website or business.

Is Remarketing Effective?

You might be tempted to dismiss it, but remarketing is a highly impactful technique. In fact, research has shown that:

• 26 percent of all customers will go back to a site after being retargeted
• Retargeting ads generate twice the amount of ROI
• Retargeting brings user advertising response up by 400 percent
• Almost 50 percent of all companies use some form of retargeting
• The click-through rate (CTR) for retargeting ads is 0.7 percent compared to just 0.07 percent for traditional display ads
And best of all, 25 to 30 percent of users actually respond positively to remarketing!
So, what are your options when it comes to good remarketing platforms?

Google AdWords?

Though, that may be the standard response, statistics show that not every business is relying on just AdWords anymore. It’s become too mainstream.

Instead, businesses are increasingly turning to AdRoll.

What is AdRoll?

It’s another marketing platform, or more accurately, a remarketing platform that reaches out to potential customers with retargeting ads over social media, handheld devices or computer browsers.

AdRoll versus Google AdWords

Which one should you choose then? Consider these points when making a final decision:

Google AdWords is More Expensive

You need to remember this if you’re a small business or if you’re working with a tiny budget. AdRoll may not be as well-known but because of this very reason, it has fewer users and is thus less expensive.

AdRoll is Less Competitive

Keep this in mind when you’re looking for ways to bring down your ad costs and cost-per-click (CPC). With Google AdWords there is a lot of competition for keywords and usually only big businesses can afford to buy coveted keywords spots. You don’t want to be left out in the lurch.

AdRoll Can Target Facebook Users

Do you know how vast Facebook’s reach is? 2.8 billion people log in to Facebook on a daily basis. AdRoll can give you access to all those potential customers since it has partnered with Facebook, whereas Google hasn’t.

Allow the local digital marketing experts in Miami master AdRoll for you, and you’ll be increasing conversions for your business in no time.

PPC Budgeting Tips and Tricks

The fear of mishandling budgets is omnipresent in a digital marketer’s life.

There are often defined campaign budgets to stick to, key performance indicators (KPIs) to meet, and capricious clients to cater to.
On top of all that, software tools that make your task easier— such as Optmyzr, ReportGarderden, Supermetrics, etc.— are expensive, and not every agency relies on them.

However, budget pacing is integral to any pay-per-click (PPC) campaign and allows you to utilize budget spend effectively before the end of the budgeting cycle. It also helps marketers pace spend more smoothly throughout a cycle, ensuring maximum visibility for all advertisements.

How You Can Track Budgets on Your Own

Tracking Tools

To track budget spend carefully, you can use widely available, free tools such as Google Excel or Google Sheets. The advantage of choosing these is that they allow daily refreshing and document sharing. It’s also easier to account for daily fluctuations as you will be tracking based on day-of-week spend.
To start, list the categories you will be tracking on the left-hand side of your document. These will include:

• Budget Cycle Length
• Budget Cap
• Spend to Date (for Current Budget Cycle)
• Budget Remaining
• Percentage Budget Spent
• Recommended Daily Spend (to Achieve Budget Cap)
• Important KPIs

Next to each main category, enter the relevant dates. These will be used to calculate formulas for the budget spend. A commonly used formula is:

Fx=(Current Spend/Amount of Days)*Total Days in the Month

Remember to enter formulas separately and in their respective tracking column. The option to track redundancies should be switched on to spot errors as soon as they arise.

Account for Daily Fluctuations

When planning a budget, it is imperative that you account for day-of-week fluctuations. Some days of the week will have a higher cost than others. This matters most when just a few days are left in the budgeting cycling. Remember to adda function that will calculate the historical day-of-week distributions to avoid mismanagement.

Avoid Overspending

An easy way to avoid overspending your budget is to set parameters for ads beforehand. For instance, if you use Google AdWords, it will calculate a monthly budget based on the daily budget you set and ensure you stay within limits during the month.

To avoid overspending on campaigns manually, adjust some of the parameters:

• Get rid of non-converting networks, campaigns, keywords/placements/audiences, ads, etc
• Change budget allocation depending on the performance
• Tweak your daily spend caps based on daily/ weekly trends or promotional events
• Refine “too-broad” targeting strategies
• Add negative keywords
• Evaluate bidding strategies
• Test driving spend to lower cost ad networks/channels
• Hold back on some of the budget to boost spend on promotional days

Social Media Marketing: How to Get More Out of Facebook Ads

While planning a Facebook campaign for advertising, you can run into a lot of challenges.

The biggest concern is getting enough conversions after investing your time, effort, and money.
After all, you’ve put in a lot of ad spend (and thought process!) into designing your campaign. In order to generate returns on investment (ROI), you need more sales.

Here are some ways you can improve your Facebook Ads for better ROI.

Conduct More Research About Your Audience

The key to success with Facebook advertising lies inknowing your target audience.Facebook retail ads can be tricky in that they require you to have completed research before launching your campaign/ product. You need to select your target audience carefully beforehand.

At the beginning of your campaign, it might take some time to generate leads as the Facebook algorithm attempts to understand your audience. A process called the “learning phase” is taking place, where the ad set goes through “50 optimization events” to deliver the best possible results.

To gather more audience data specifics, you can use a combination of different sources:
• Google Ads
• Competitive analysis
• Local demographic information
• Your real-time website analytics

Optimize Target Parameters

Daily, some 1 billion-plus people use Facebook. It’s become more important criticalnow than ever to target the relevant people for your campaign.
Facebook ad targeting has been simplified considerably by Facebook itself. All you need to do is select an audience type and set parameters.

Saved Audiences

Here you can set broad parameters such as location, age, gender, and language. However, if you select “detailed targeting”, you can target customers who are specifically interested in your product by choosing a particular interest from the drop-down list.
Another useful feature is the “Behaviors” option. This allows you to target people based on their purchase history, upcoming personal anniversaries, digital activities, and even mobile usage. It doesn’t get more specific than that!

Custom Audiences

With Facebook Custom Audiences, you can choose users who have visited your website in the past, installed, and used your app or people who have subscribed to your services such as newsletters. If you target people based on past activity or engagement, you naturally have a higher chance of conversions.

LookAlike Audiences

Most retailers forget to utilize this feature of Facebook Ads. Facebook Lookalike Audiences are great because they allow you to expand your reach to users,similar to regular customers. Thus, you can target audiences where chances of potential conversions are high. To narrow down that pool further, you can add an additional layer such as interest-based or demographic-based targeting.
Remember, there is no easy hack to figure out which audience type works for your campaign. You will only realize where your strengths lie once you test the different types of audiences after targeting your potential customers wisely.

How to Lower Costs Per Click and Increase Traffic to Your Site

As digital marketing expands, the paid search industry gets more and more competitive.
With rising competition come rising costs to generate traffic and draw attention to your site.
Once you understand the techniques you can use to rank your website higher on search engines, you can automatically bring down your costs per click (CPC) and optimize your marketing strategies.

To improve your rankings, you need to work on your website’s quality score.

Quality Score

The quality score is a rating assigned by Google and other search engines to your digital campaigns or advertisements. It directly determines your ranking and affects the costs per click (CPC). There are three things that factor into calculating the quality score:

• Keywords relevance
• Landing page experience
• Ads relevance

Why Do You Need a Good Quality Score?

If your ads are highly specific and relevant to the queries and terms used by people on search engines, your click-through rate (CTR) increases. An increase in CTR immediately leads to a better quality score. This, in turn,lowers your cost per click (CPC).

Thus, you will be paying less and receiving more traffic.

But to get there, you will have to design campaigns more effectively. This means putting in more time and effort researching relevant keywords and making sure users have a great experience when they reach your landing page.

Keywords

Learning how to use keywords effectively makes your task significantly more manageable. Here are some tips to keep in mind when it comes to keywords.

Create Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs)

As the name suggests, SKAGs use only one main keyword and center other words and ad groups on that keyword. The main keyword acts as the root word and makes it easier to manage your campaign. It also makes the ad more specific, thereby improving your quality score.

Use Keywords with Low Bids

Keywords with low bids will have a lower CPC. If a keyword is very generic, more people tend to bid on it, making it more competitive. Usually, the more competitive the keyword is, the higher the CPC.

Don’t Shy Away from Long Tail Keywords

Using long tail keywords makes your intent very specific. These keywords have a lower search volume and are most likely used by people searching for something very specific. This ensures that your ad spend will not go to waste. It also improves your quality score and lowers CPC.

Landing Page Experience

Once users click your ad, they will arrive at and interact with your landing page.You need to ensure your landing page is user-friendly and easy to follow. Here are some things to keep in mind to improve the landing page experience:

Loading Speed

If your landing page takes time to load, you’re more likely to end up with fewer conversions and money wasted on resources. Users expect a website to load within two to three seconds, after which they generally move to a better performing site.

Compatibility

It is necessary to check the compatibility of the landing page on different devices. Make sure the landing page is both mobile and browser-friendly. Users should be able to get the gist of your message immediately regardless of which device they access your landing page on.

Geo-Targeting: A Geo-Marketing Strategy for the New Age

Geo-marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in the marketing industry these days.
Everything is now connected to location.
Businesses are slowly figuring out that it is a colossal waste of time, money, and resources to market to consumers that might remain out of their reach.
Location-based technology is providing new marketing techniques to business owners and marketers alike.

So Why is Geo-Marketing a Big Deal?

Using geo-marketing, businesses can conveniently and effectively make decisions about which customers to target, and when is the best time to target them.
They can make use of location data from a specific location to create an all-encompassing digital map. The map can break down consumers’ data by city, suburban communities, and even neighborhoods.
Using tools such as Google Analytics a business owner can map out very specific details of prospective customers and utilize them when the need arises.

What Goes Into Geo-Marketing?

Consumer data is collected via their social media or smartphones. Most businesses now use Geographic Information Software (GIS) to obtain data in real-time.

What is Geo-Targeting?

Geo-targeting is a highly specific form of geo-marketingused to create and deliver content to consumers based on their geographic location.
In geo-targeted marketing a consumer’s online IP address is used to determine their geographical location. Here is where geo-location services come in handy. Using tools such as GPS signals or geo-fencing, a business owner can figure out the exact location of their customers and calculate demands per location.
Then, when a business needs to create online advertisements using Facebook ads or YouTube Video ads, they can select a specific location and run relevant advertisements for that location. This allows marketers to schedule sales for particular consumers in a particular locality.
Geo-targeted marketing can greatly improve returns on investments (ROI) for businesses. By figuring out the needs of their consumers in real-time, they can launch effective advertising campaigns at the right time.
For instance, if a restaurant business wishes to drive sales, they can make use of geo-marketing. Using data from search engines and Google Analytics, they can figure out the top searches and demands in their vicinity. Once they have that information, they can create mobile ads for customers in that locality offering the very specific items customers were searching for. Or they can time their social media posts to coincide with customers’ searches.

Geo-Targeting on Facebook

Geo-marketing using Facebook’s geo-targeting tools is now becoming increasingly popular. It is a simple, inexpensive, and easy-to-follow process that drives great results. A marketer simply needs to create an Ad Set and curate their Audience based on locations.
They can select as small a radius as they desire (the range is usually between 1 and 50 miles) after entering an audience and selecting the number of their target audience, and launch their advertisement.

The basic aspects to consider when designing a new website

The design of a new website for local Miami business for the promotion of products and services requires a set of strategies designed for the site to be a seller and successful and achieve the mission that an entrepreneur or an SME has in the network. This is why to catch and awaken the interest of the user from the beginning, it is vital for a business in the network, after all the exit door is only within reach of a mouse click, here are few tips that will undoubtedly help to achieve it.

Your page has to load fast

You only have a few precious seconds to arouse their interest before they leave. Your visitors and probably you would not wait for 30, 40, or 50 seconds until the site loads, on the Internet time weighs a lot, when we surf the web you lose patience quickly, so it is best to make sure your pages are graphically light,so it does not turn your website into a “heavy” site.

Determine to rank based on your interest

Your visitor before buying goes first of all in search of information, the “What’s Here for Me”, give them just that information, give them content that cannot get in your competition, make sure your website content is not the same as others have, you must approach it from a novel point of view, that makes it fresh and original. This way they will feel that your site has what they are looking for and that only you can offer.

Put in view what you offer

Teach them clearly and from the outset the products or services you sell, if your prospects are not sure that your website is going, they will get confused,and they will go away,and it is very unlikely that you will recover them.

Catch it with a powerful title

If you put a title that draws your attention, you will attract their interest to see what you have for them and will stay longer which increases the possibility that you can sell your products or services.

Give to receive

Do you want your visitors to subscribe to your Newsletter?Then offer them free and relevant content, is the best way to earn their trust, trust is a very important step before they decide to buy your products or services. After the subscription you can also send information periodically, be it courses, seminars and even free software that supports and serves as a tool to complement the relevant information of interest.

Simple but elegant design

A simple website does not have to be unattractive, contrary to what many people think, the websites that have the most business opportunities and that currently sell the most on the web are precisely those that are simple but elegant. Very important without grammatical errors, a place with spelling errors denotes little professionalism and generates rejection and distrust in the users. It should not have garish background colors; it should be pleasing to the eye and its texts with a suitable size and easy to read for everyone.

Put a map to your site

If your website is very large, it is best to have a site map to help you get what you are looking that grasps your interest.

Basic Information

Always, you must include the name, address, and phone numbers on our website. It is amazing the number of businesses that circulate through the network that give the impression of being orphans, they lack basic information of the person in charge, which generates without doubt distrust and little credibility for the user, there is also a contact e-mail if possible, in every one of the pages that make up the site.

FAQs

If you have to answer the same questions over and over again, it is best to make a page with the answers to these frequently asked questions; your visitors have to consult them to clear their doubts related to your products or services quickly.

Offer them a Glossary of Terms

An excellent way for your prospects to come back again and again to your business is to put at your disposal, a glossary of terms with the information they need, they will return again and again to consult your doubts,and you will have more possibilities to offer your products or services.
The website must be designed to catch and awaken the user’s interest from the start, and in this way, the prospect spends as much time as possible on the website, so that you can see your products or services, and before that he thinks that what he is looking for is elsewhere and leaves.  When you are ready for that new website
contact the experts at Smash Interactive Agency and get started today!

If you have tight budget then here is the tip for How to Get a Fabulous Website Design and Development on a Tight Budget?