What is reactive marketing and why bother with it? Read this complete guide and learn why and how to apply a reactive marketing strategy to your brand.
<p>The post What Is Reactive Marketing and How to Apply It to Your Brand first appeared on PPC Hero.</p>
Digital marketing has become central to building a brand that delivers bottom-line results. However, as digital marketing techniques rapidly evolve, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the variety of approaches to attracting customers online. There’s one question many business owners frequently grapple with. Should they be allocating their marketing budget to PPC or SEO? […]
<p>The post How to Achieve a Balance Between Your PPC and SEO first appeared on PPC Hero.</p>
In the world of digital marketing (especially when you are working at an agency), a recurring challenge is how to convince clients of the value of branding campaigns when they are primarily focused on performance metrics. When operating on a limited budget, the majority of it will go towards performance campaigns. If you do get […]
<p>The post How to run branding campaigns with a performance mindset first appeared on PPC Hero.</p>
Building links – the act of getting other websites to link to yours in order to increase search engine visibility and get referral traffic – can generally fall into two methodologies: PPC – in particular Google Search Ads – can be a useful tool for organic link building. The high-level process for using Google Ads […]
<p>The post Building Links to Your Website Using PPC first appeared on PPC Hero.</p>
Creating impactful PowerPoint slides is essential for delivering a memorable and effective presentation at conferences like Hero Conf. This guide will walk you through the key principles of slide design, storytelling techniques, and best practices to ensure your content resonates with your audience. 1. Start with Storytelling 2. Know Your Audience 3. PowerPoint Slides Design […]
<p>The post Make an impact: How to design great PowerPoint slides for your Hero Conf, brightonSEO or MeasureFest talk first appeared on PPC Hero.</p>
Creating impactful PowerPoint slides is essential for delivering a memorable and effective presentation at conferences like Hero Conf. This guide will walk you through the key principles of slide design, storytelling techniques, and best practices to ensure your content resonates with your audience.
Why Storytelling Matters: Research shows people are 22 times more likely to remember information presented as a story. Incorporating storytelling into your presentation makes your data and points more relatable.
Engage with Metaphors: Use metaphors that resonate with your theme. For example, if discussing growth, liken your strategy to cultivating a garden, explaining the need for both nurturing and pruning.
Structure Your Story: Use a three-act structure:
Setup: Introduce the problem or situation.
Confrontation: Explore challenges and evidence.
Resolution: Present the solution or key takeaways.
Identify Your Audience: Understand who they are and what they care about. Tailor your content to address their specific needs and concerns.
Create an Emotional Connection: Make your presentation relevant to your audience’s experiences or challenges. This connection is crucial for maintaining their interest.
Clarity Over Complexity: Each slide should communicate one idea or point. Avoid clutter by removing unnecessary text or images.
Visual Hierarchy: Emphasize key points using size, color, and placement. Ensure your audience knows where to focus.
Rule of Three: Group information into threes. This technique simplifies complex information and makes it more digestible.
Visuals for Retention: Combine simple text with visuals. After 72 hours, people remember 65% of information presented with visuals, versus 10% with text alone.
Image Selection: Use high-quality images in your Powerpoint slides that are relevant and reinforce your message. Avoid generic stock photos that don’t add value.
Design Consistency: Maintain a consistent color scheme and style throughout your presentation. This reinforces your brand and makes your presentation more cohesive.
Bullet Points: Minimize their use. Instead, present your points using icons, graphics, or short, impactful statements.
Screenshots: If necessary, highlight the key areas using circles or arrows. Ensure that the audience can easily see and understand the data, even from a distance.
End with Impact: Don’t end with a generic “Thank You” slide. Instead, pose a question, suggest a next step, or use a strong closing statement that reinforces your key message.
Font Selection: Use large, legible fonts for headlines (54-72 points) and body text (28 points or larger). Stick to one or two font families to maintain consistency.
Color Contrast: Ensure there is a strong contrast between text and background to make your slides easy to read. Use tools to check the accessibility of your color choices.
Use of Bold and Color for Emphasis: Highlight important words or phrases with bold fonts or contrasting colors to draw attention to them.
Rehearse with Your Slides: Practice delivering your presentation with the slides to ensure a smooth flow and that the visuals support your narrative.
Use Slide Sorter: In PowerPoint, use the Slide Sorter view to review the sequence and flow of your slides. Make adjustments to ensure a logical progression of ideas.
Interactive Elements: Re-engage your audience every 10-15 minutes with a question, a quick poll, or by highlighting a significant point. This keeps their attention and encourages interaction.
Body Language and Voice Modulation: Observe speakers like Steve Jobs or Brené Brown. Note how they use pauses, changes in pitch, and body language to emphasize key points.
Review and Refine: Go through your slides several times, refining the content and design. Consider getting feedback from peers or colleagues to further polish your presentation.
Backup Plan: Always have a backup of your presentation on a USB drive, in the cloud, and in a different format (like PDF), just in case.
By following these guidelines, you can create PowerPoint slides that not only look professional but effectively communicate your message, and keep your audience engaged from start to finish. Your slides are a tool to enhance your storytelling, not the story itself. Focus on clear, concise, and visually appealing content to leave a lasting impression.
The post Make an impact: How to design great PowerPoint slides for your Hero Conf, brightonSEO or MeasureFest talk first appeared on PPC Hero.
Building links – the act of getting other websites to link to yours in order to increase search engine visibility and get referral traffic – can generally fall into two methodologies:
Outreach based link building. This involves contacting people to try and get a link from their website. It can be achieved through offering them an article, soundbyte, original data or (look away now Google employees) money.
Organic link building. This is when an author from the site you are going to get a link from finds your content themselves. Then they cite it in their article, linking back to you in the process.
PPC – in particular Google Search Ads – can be a useful tool for organic link building. The high-level process for using Google Ads to build links runs as follows:
Find keywords with “linking intent”.
Create a landing page that heroes whatever you want to get linked.
State in your ad copy that you have exactly what a potential linker is looking for.
Optimise based on why your page is being linked.
I’ll now break down each of these steps in more detail.
As PPC marketers, we are used to bidding on keywords that have “buyer intent.” These are the kind of phrases people search for when they want to buy something.
If you’re using Google Ads for building links then you need to stop focussing on keywords that have buyer intent. Instead you should focus on keywords with “linking intent”.
A “link intent” keyword is one someone would search if, for example, they were researching an article and wanted to find a stat, chart or quote to add proof or legitimacy to whatever they were writing.
By far the highest volume link intent keyword in almost any industry is: “[most commonly used word to describe your industry] statistics”.
If we wanted to try building links using PPC for PPC Hero we would be targeting keywords like:
“advertising statistics”
“digital marketing statistics”
“marketing statistics”
“Google Ads statistics”
“pay per click statistics”
There are two things to note here:
Since these keywords do not lead to traditional “conversions” (ie people buying stuff), their cost per click is relatively low. This means that you can have a low conversion rate and still build links more profitably than with outreach.
The more specific keywords (in this case “pay per click statistics”) may not have enough search volume to run Google Ads against. You have the best chance of success going for the highest volume terms in your industry (or even your broader industry), even if this means your conversion rate is slightly lower.
There are a few variations on the “statistics” keyword pattern that have link intent. The most common of these are:
[current year] [industry] statistics
[industry] statistics [country]
Latest statistics on [industry]
I’d therefore recommend using phrase match keywords to begin with, just to see what works for your specific industry. You can then optimise this once you see what keywords lead to links.
Now we know what ads we want to bid on, the next step is to create your landing page.
Unlike with sales focussed PPC advertising, we don’t want to create an individual landing page for each keyword.
Unlike with sales focussed PPC advertising, we don’t want to create an individual landing page for each keyword.
You then do the following:
Google the keyword that you are targeting with your ad campaign (for this example I will use “PPC statistics”
2. Take the top three results and stick them into Ahrefs site explorer and then go onto the Anchor report.
This tells us the exact text authors use when linking to this page. It gives us the starting point of what specific information is “triggering” the link.
From this report alone, we can see that:
People writing about PPC want to cite information about the ROI of PPC. We know this because the anchor text “$8 for every $1.60 spent” is used repeatedly
People writing about PPC want to cite information about the number of companies that use PPC. We can see this in that “65% of SMBrun some kind of digital advertising campaign” has been cited several times.
For the anchors that are just numbers, we can click through to them and see the context they have been used. You can see below what comes up if we click the “80%” anchor text:
This “80%” citation refers to the fact that 80% of companies who use PPC prefer to use Google Ads over other platforms.
Again, this tells us that people writing about PPC want data about what platforms are being used.
Once you have conducted this analysis with all the top three ranking pages for “PPC statistics” you should notice that:
The Pareto Principle very much applies to what specific statistics get cited. In other words 80% of the links come from 20% of the specific statistics. For “PPC statistics” the ROI of PPC, the number of companies that use PPC and the amount that online advertising can increase brand awareness is responsible for around 80% of links.
It should be fairly easy to categorise the different statistics. With “PPC statistics” we can categorise the different stats into:
PPC market size (stats around the number of companies that use PPC)
PPC benefits (stats around the ROI of using PPC)
Platform specific stats (what’s the most popular platform for paid ads)
Consumer opinion on online ads (how many people click on ads)
This is all the information we need to create our landing page.
Your landing page should be structured as follows:
Headline: [Number] [X statistics] [Year]. Having the exact keyword in your headline should increase your ad’s quality score and having the year tells the potential linker that your stats are up to date
Three most cited statistics in a bulleted list – In all honesty, you can get away with just copying this from what’s already ranking on Google. Bury your sources at the bottom of the page so it’s easier to link to you than to the original source. If you can create original data around this,that can improve your conversion rate. It should mean you need fewer links to rank the page organically (which is our end goal here)
An embeddable graphic that presents some of the most linkable data in a visual way. Most outlets require images in their articles. Creating an embeddable image gives an author an easy excuse to cite your article. You can also use Google’s reverse image search to find people who have used your image and ask to credit your image with a link.
A table of contents with your different categories as jumplinks: Again, we want to make the specific data points that authors want as easy to find as possible
Put your different categories as an H2 and then list the specific stats as bullet points: Each statistic needs to be so specific that a writer can just copy and paste it into their article. “For example 82% of SMB’s use Google Adwords” is far more soundbytable than “most companies use some form of paid advertising”. Specificity is king.
Put all your sources at the bottom of the page: Cite your sources, but make it easier for a writer to just link to your page rather than trawl through your page to find original sources. You’re not breaking any intellectual property laws here – everybody does this.
Your ad copy should have the following format:
Headline: [Exact keyword] | Original Data on [topic] [Year]
Description: Includes the latest figures on [most linked to topic], [2nd most linked to topic] & [3rd most linked to topic] as well as data visualisations of these statistics.
Sitelinks: Add sitelinks to the H2s in your articles. You can do this by putting url.com/#H2’s title as your site link.
So for “PPC statistics” your ad copy should read something like:
Headline: PPC Statistics | Original data on PPC Advertising 2024
Description: Includes the latest statistics on PPC’s market size, the ROI of PPC, as well as what the most popular and powerful platforms are for PPC
Sitelinks:
PPC Market size: Learn about how many companies use PPC
PPC ROI: The latest figures on ROAS for different industries
PPC Platforms: Figures on different advertising platforms
PPC Outlook: Consumer opinion on digital advertising
A big rule here is to not put your brand name in your ad. You are marketing your data, not your company.
Now we have our initial ad(s) set up, we want to optimise them so we can build links as cheaply as possible.
We do this by looking at why we are being linked to, and then adjusting our keyword selection, ad copy and landing page to hero these specific pieces of data.
Again, you will need a backlink checking tool to do this (and again, I recommend Ahrefs).
Once your ad has had around 500 clicks (this is what I tend to find is the minimum to get enough links that you can get significant data on what specific pieces of information are being linked to), you then go back to the anchor report for your piece and look at what pieces of information are getting linked to.
There are then three ways that you can optimise your ad:
Change the keywords you are targeting: Let’s say that 90% of your links are coming from data around the number of companies that use PPC. You can then try targeting the keyword “how many companies use PPC”. Admittedly, there’s a good chance that these specific questions won’t have enough search volume for Google to show an Ad for it, but if you can find one with enough search volume then your conversion rate will go up dramatically.
Change your ad copy: State in your ad copy that you have specific statistics on whatever piece of data is triggering the most links. You can even put the exact statistic in the ad description itself, making the ad almost look more like a featured snippet than an advert.
Change your landing page: Simply push whatever stats are triggering the link to the top of the page. Your most linked to stats should always be above the fold. The idea here is that the writer clicks the ad, sees exactly what they need, links and then gets on with finishing their piece.
One of the lowest effort ways of building links to your website is to rank for “[industry] statistics” keywords with a page that contains specific pieces of data in your industry.
You build links this way by writers searching for “x statistics” when researching their article, finding a specific piece of data on your ranking page, and then citing that data with a link.
If your website does not have the authority to rank organically for these keywords, then you can use Google Ads to buy your way to the top of Google for them.
Since these keywords do not have commercial intent, they often have relatively low CPCs, allowing you to build links to your website more cheaply than through outreach.
Once your page has enough links, it could then rank organically, allowing you to build links even more cheaply in the future.
The post Building Links to Your Website Using PPC first appeared on PPC Hero.
In the world of digital marketing (especially when you are working at an agency), a recurring challenge is how to convince clients of the value of branding campaigns when they are primarily focused on performance metrics.
When operating on a limited budget, the majority of it will go towards performance campaigns. If you do get the chance to run branding campaigns, you typically end up with the client asking about ‘the ROAS on that specific YouTube Branded campaign’. That’s because the client is still measuring the success of branded campaigns using performance KPI’s.
Branding is often perceived as intangible and difficult to measure – particularly when compared to the clear-cut metrics of performance marketing. In this article I offer an option that should convince your performance-minded clients to run branded campaigns.
Let’s start with the main question: why branding? Why do we need branding campaigns in the first place? Performance marketing relies on metrics like conversion rates, and return on ad spend (ROAS) to demonstrate success. These KPIs are straightforward and can be directly linked to revenue.
Branding, in contrast, focuses on metrics such as awareness, share of voice, and customer sentiment. These factors are crucial, but are not as easily quantified in terms of immediate financial return. This discrepancy can make it difficult to justify branding investments to clients who prioritize short-term gains.
Branding is, however, essential for long-term success. It helps businesses build recognition, trust, and loyalty. A strong brand presence not only supports performance campaigns but enhances their effectiveness. Because branding doesn’t directly translate into immediate conversions or clicks, however, its benefits are often underestimated or overlooked. By integrating branding into a measurable framework, you can provide clients with the data they need to see its true value.
There is abundant research to show performance marketing alone will not allow you to reach your potential (mainly because it means you are focussing on the so-called ‘in-market’ audience). This article, however, will focus on the geo-split test way of working.
Geo-split testing offers a structured way to measure the impact of branding campaigns within a PPC framework. By dividing your target market into two geographically distinct regions—one exposed to the branding campaign and the other serving as a control—you can observe the differences in performance over time. This method allows you to isolate the effects of branding and present clear, data-driven insights to your clients.
So how does this method work? Start with four clear steps:
Select Comparable Regions: Choose two regions that are similar in terms of demographics, market behavior, and competitive landscape. This ensures any differences in outcomes can be attributed to the branding campaign rather than external factors.
Establish Baseline Metrics: Before launching the branding campaign, collect data on relevant performance metrics such as branded search volume, direct traffic, and overall share of voice in both regions. These will serve as your control benchmarks. Be sure to look at those metrics from competitors as well. You might see a big increase in your test. If your competitors are also enjoying an increase, it could be due to an increase in the local market.
Launch the Branding Campaign: Deploy your branding campaign in the test region, ensuring the control region receives no exposure to the branding efforts. It’s crucial to maintain consistency across all other marketing activities to prevent contaminating results.
Monitor and Analyze Results: After running the campaign for a sufficient period (usually several months), compare performance data from test and control regions. I normally focus on branded search volume, direct traffic to the website and share of voice. As before, don’t forget to look at your competitors’ metrics.
Once the data is collected, present the findings in a way that aligns with your client’s performance-driven mindset. Highlight ways the branding campaign has contributed to measurable improvements in key metrics. Explain how these results translate into long-term business value. For example, an increase in branded search volume indicates growing brand recognition, which can lead to higher conversion rates and customer loyalty over time.
We are still talking about branding campaigns, but with this way of working (the test and control group and the possible increase in the specific metrics) it still has a performance vibe around it. I’m seeing positive signals with this way of working among performance marketeers and clients (brands) as well.
Geo-split testing offers PPC marketers a practical tool for demonstrating the value of branding campaigns. By translating the often intangible benefits of branding into quantifiable performance metrics, you can make a compelling case to clients who might otherwise overlook the importance of brand-building. This approach not only helps secure budget for branding efforts but also supports the development of a more holistic and effective marketing strategy. Time to break that performance ceiling!
The post How to run branding campaigns with a performance mindset first appeared on PPC Hero.
Digital marketing has become central to building a brand that delivers bottom-line results. However, as digital marketing techniques rapidly evolve, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the variety of approaches to attracting customers online. There’s one question many business owners frequently grapple with. Should they be allocating their marketing budget to PPC or SEO?
In this article, we break down the key differences between SEO and PPC. We then evaluate their respective pros and cons, and explain how you can leverage both to build a highly visible, profitable brand.
In today’s marketing landscape, your business’s online presence is everything. Key to establishing this presence is ensuring you are driving traffic to your website. If your website isn’t visible to your customer base, it’s unlikely you’ll achieve the traffic necessary to be profitable.
A critical factor that determines your website traffic volume is where your website ranks on search engine results pages (SERPs.) In other words: how high up on the results page your website appears. This is where both PPC (pay per click) and SEO (search engine optimization) come into the picture.
On a typical SERP, you’ll find premium ads listed at the very top of the page (often indicated by the word ‘sponsored’ or ‘ad’). These ads are PPC advertising. As you scroll, you’ll find organic search results. These search results earn their position on the SERP not by being paid for directly, but by employing techniques designed to manipulate the algorithm into ranking any given page more highly.
SEO essentially involves creating content for your website, optimizing your website, optimizing your google business profile, and creating high-quality backlinks to your website. It is a combination of all of these that will result in your website ranking higher on SERPs, while also providing helpful, relevant information to prospective consumers.
Search engines use complex algorithms to ‘read’ and rank web pages based on several factors. Some of these are public, and others remain unknown. Effective SEO services rely on what is known about search engine algorithms to ensure content ranks higher on SERPs. For example, one effective SEO technique relies on placing certain keywords that are commonly searched by your target audience (e.g. ‘best backpack’ or ‘Miami plumbing services’) in well-written, informative blog content on your website.
PPC is where businesses pay for their ads to appear in a position against a specific searched for term. When a consumer clicks the ad, the business must pay the search engine the amount, based on its bid, that won the auction to determine that position. If you search ‘best backpack’, your results will likely all be paid-for ads that take you to online retail stores.
Deciding whether to allocate more of your marketing spend to SEO or PPC services is difficult. It’s helpful to delve a little deeper into each to tease out their advantages and disadvantages. Let’s start with SEO. Its specific advantages include:
Cost. SEO is typically lower in cost compared to PCC, and there is little risk of a dramatic increase in cost because SEO services do not rely on bidding.
Sustainability of results. Another major advantage of SEO is you don’t need to constantly spend on ads to maintain your website’s visibility. Once your website and blog content have been created, it will continue to bring organic traffic to your website as long as the keywords remain relevant and you keep creating original, informative, high quality content. Organic traffic tends to last and is also easier to optimize and sustain once a high-ranking position has been achieved.
Credibility and trust. One of the best things about SEO is it simultaneously builds and enhances the credibility of your brand. Many web users are suspicious of paid-for ads and view organic search results as more trustworthy. When they click on an organic search result that directs to your business’s page filled with useful, authentic content, your brand’s credibility is greatly bolstered.
Improved website. A great by-product of SEO techniques is that you end up investing in your website over the long term, creating helpful, accessible, informative content that will always be there for users to return to.
Unfortunately, SEO also comes with its downsides. Some of the most notable are:
Lack of immediate results. It can take several months to see concrete results from SEO, particularly if your search terms and keywords are competitive. You may need to experiment with several keywords and techniques to see what works best.
Effort and expertise. A sophisticated SEO strategy requires time, skill, and technical expertise to implement. You need to have a deep understanding of search engines and the factors on which their algorithms are based. While it’s possible to learn the ropes yourself, you’ll likely need an experienced SEO services provider to create and implement a SEO strategy for your business.
Upkeep and vulnerability to algorithm changes. An effective SEO strategy can be quickly disrupted if a search engine updates its algorithms (as Google frequently does). Your SEO strategy will need to be routinely updated to sustain rankings, and may need a significant overhaul if it responds poorly to an algorithm change.
PPC ad campaigns have become an increasingly popular way to directly target consumers and generate leads. Some of PPC’s major advantages are:
High visibility. PPC ads will give your business high visibility, as they’ll appear at the very top of SERPs. This gives you greater certainty that your ads will boost traffic and lead to increased sales.
Immediate results. Unlike SEO, you will be able to see the results of a PPC ad campaign almost immediately. Once you’ve set up your campaign and outbid your competitors, your ad will immediately rank highly on SERPs. This also means that you can easily experiment with what works best, without revising an entire suite of content.
Control and scalability. With PPC campaigns, you’re not susceptible to the whims of the algorithm. It’s also easier to scale your ad campaigns by setting a higher ad budget and running multiple ads at once. It’s much harder to scale an SEO strategy.
Highly targeted. PPC services allow you to develop highly targeted ads that address your audience through personalized messaging that speaks to their geographic region, interests, demographic profile, online behaviors and more. There are several ways to target ads other than just keywords, which means better visibility to the right audiences.
As with SEO, PPC also comes with a range of disadvantages that can compromise its effectiveness for your business. Some include:
Expense. PPC advertising can be very costly when compared to SEO as you are paying per click, and this expense can quickly add up.
Highly competitive. In certain industries where specific search terms attract a lot of competition from larger companies, bidding wars can easily develop, rapidly increasing ad costs. If you’re unable to keep up, your PPC campaign will be rendered ineffective.
Lack of longevity. As soon as your PPC ad budget has been depleted, your ad will be pulled from its ranking position, and traffic to your website will drop significantly. Unlike SEO, PPC does not build stable visibility and presence over time.
Little contribution to brand presence. PPC campaigns don’t require as much investment in your website, and they can sometimes end up harming your brand credibility in the eyes of consumers who are distrustful of paid ads.
With clear pros and cons with respect to both PPC and SEO, deciding which approach to use can be very difficult. Thankfully, understanding the distinctive advantage that each approach provides allows you to craft a balanced online marketing strategy that leverages the best of both PPC and SEO.
One way to achieve this blended approach in practice is to use SEO services as part of your longer-term profile-raising strategy, incorporating SEO techniques into your overall brand awareness efforts and website visibility. You can then run highly targeted PPC campaigns for short periods linked to specific timelines or events (for example, in the lead up to Thanksgiving, before a change in seasons, when launching a new product, or when running one-time offers).
It’s also a good idea to focus on SEO if you’re a smaller business with a niche product or service. Rather focus on slowly establishing your brand authority with informational content and website credibility than spend thousands on a short-lived PPC ad campaign.
The post How to Achieve a Balance Between Your PPC and SEO first appeared on PPC Hero.
