The Daily Carnage

Whether you like it or not, some clients expect you to be part PPC hero, part business consultant. Here are 9 common questions your PPC clients have and how to answer them with confidence:

1. “What should our budget be?” Platform planning tools, like Google Keyword Planner, provide cost estimates that can serve as suggested ranges to start the conversation—but they’re not always realistic. Reverse engineer a budget based on your client’s target number of leads and CPL.
2. “Who should we be targeting?” … You tell me, right? Get as much information as you can from your client about their buyer personas and conduct target research on the ad channels to develop a multi-channel or cross-channel approach.
3. “Who are our competitors and how can we differentiate from them?” A client’s market competitor may not necessarily be their PPC competitor. Use Auction Insights to determine which domains are bidding against your client, as well as a keyword research tool to identify keywords to try or avoid.
4. “Should we focus on growing our customer base or servicing the customers we already have?” It depends. If you’re losing customers faster than you can make them, you should focus on retention. That said, you should be doing some prospecting no matter what.
5. “Should we expand into new geographic markets?” Maybe! If there is search volume and high enough target audiences to support it—and if shipping, timing, service, and production can keep up—let’s run a controlled test.
6. “Does it make sense to extend our product or service offerings?” With keyword and audience research and competitor analysis, PPC pros can help determine whether or not there is existing demand and if a client is prepared to compete with the cost and quality of competitors.
7. “Should we have a holiday sale this year or hold off?” Typically, holiday sales aren’t going to rake in the highest ROAS performance. Consider what your client’s goal is and confirm whether or not it’s realistically achievable with planning tools and historical performance.
8. “What areas of our company do you think are resonating well and what could be done to improve?” You can only answer this question from a campaign persective. Which ad copy, CTA, or keyword group sees the most engagement?
9. “What are some brands you engage with regularly and what do you like about them? How could those same practices apply to our company?” Scroll the Facebook and TikTok ad libraries for high-spend brands doing cool things and prepare some key takeaways.

Get the full scoop on PPC Q&As at WordStream.

The folks at YouTube have identified three ways marketers can take inspiration from successful creators to make more meaningful connections with viewers:

1. Leverage the power of communities. Over half of Gen Z watches content that no one they know personally is interested in. So, encourage participation—in contests, challenges, and charity fundraisers—from online groups with niche interests to create brand moments that capture public attention.
2. Meet audiences on their own turf. Audience interest continues to span multiple formats and content categories, changing rapidly based on their mindset and the moment. Creators who utilize multiple formats see the fastest audience growth. In fact, 59% of Gen Z  use short-form video apps to discover things that they then watch longer versions of. Simply adding a vertical creative asset to a Video action campaign delivered 10% to 20% more conversions per dollar on YouTube Shorts than using landscape assets alone.
3. Create fun, innovative Shorts. Successful shorts are often designed to recreate the spontaneous feel of viral shortform content of the past, with an immediate hook and deliberate moments of surprise and delight. Embrace the format’s strength and encourage people to watch them again and again.

For examples of dynamic creators who mobilized audiences in 2022, read more from Think With Google.