3 Game-changing Functionalities That Boosted My 2015 PPC Campaigns

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything." -George Bernard Shaw

Welcome to 2016! In order to stay ahead of the game each year, marketers need to adapt. We live in an era of interconnectivity and digital advertising is becoming an increasingly more impactful lead generation source. New technology is being developed every year to help us reach our target audience. As I looked back at 2015, I thought about my 3 favorite pieces of functionality in the PPC world that helped me move the needle...

1. Cheaper Conversions with Facebook Lead Ads

The traditional process with most lead generation focused PPC ads is that a person sees an ad, clicks the ad, gets to a landing page (hopefully mobile optimized), and converts into a lead. The flow results in hyperfocus not only on the creative of the ad, but also on the landing page. Facebook Lead Ads allows digital marketing teams to focus mainly on the first half of that process. Now, instead of going to a landing page to convert, Facebook allows for a form to show up within Facebook on a person's mobile phone. This means that the user never has to leave the platform and go to a landing page, they have their information pre-populated on a form and only have to click submit to become a lead in your database. Depending on the asset, Lead Ads can increase conversion rates dramatically. Try it out with an easy CTA that doesn't need much description. 

The only downside is that your leads now come in the form of cells on an Excel spreadsheet. Save time on uploading lists by using Marketo's newest addition to the Ad Bridge solution, the integration to Facebook Lead Ads. Your leads coming in on the Facebook platform can then be sent straight to your marketing automation system with no effort involved on your end.

Want more info on Facebook Lead Ads? See their product page here. 

2. Testing More with Direct Sponsored Updates on LinkedIn

A while back, Facebook introduced us to dark posts. The ability to boost a post that wasn't on your company's feed. The beauty of dark posts finally made its way to LinkedIn in the form of direct sponsored content. The functionality was originally announced in 2014 and was made generally available on the self-service platform mid 2015. Why is this important? For two main reasons: testing and reporting.

With the old sponsored updates, you could still run tests on different sponsore updates (with varying copy, creative, and etc.) by posting directly on your company page. This resulted in a flood of unwanted posts getting shown to your company's followers. Using direct sponsored content, the sponsored updates you are showing to your specific target audience doesn't necessarily need to be on your company feed. You can go ahead and test a multitude of ads without bothering your organic followers. Separating out your ads into direct sponsored content pieces also means you can differentiate between organic and paid leads on the backend in your marketing automation solution. Helping you find the true ROI of your sponsored updates campaigns. 

Need help on LinkedIn direct sponsored content? Visit their product specific help page.

3. Having Tailored Messages through Google Customer Match

If you love and know the power of creating lists in Facebook through custom audiences (If you don't, ask Dennis Yu!), then you'll love Google Customer Match. PPC managers can really go full funnel on Google and continue to market to audiences that already have previously converted. Take any list you want from your database and upload it into Google to give them tailored messages on Search, YouTube, and Gmail. 

Wish you could market specifically to leads in your database that haven't converted into MQLs or opportunities with another top-of-funnel piece of content on Google? Well now you can. Wish you could give current customers a specific ad to create upsell opportunities? Here's your chance. 

Go even further with it by creating "similar audiences," which is the same concept as Facebook's lookalikes. On YouTube and Gmail, Google can serve your ads to those who are characteristically similar to those on your uploaded list, helping your new name campaigns. 

Want to set up your customer match campaign? Get the full instructions from Google here. 

2015 was a BIG year! I can't wait to see how the rest of 2016 unfolds.

But those were just my favorites. What functionalities did other people love in 2015?

I asked Michael McEuen and Nate Gancher their thoughts...

Social ads retargeting by content and visit date

Retargeting using social ads has proven to be a very effective medium. Social streams and feeds provide better engagement than a standard web banner ad - which is often ignored. Admittedly, I'm guilty of using retargeting as a "catch all" in the past. Simply running the same set of creative to all web visitors who did not convert. Segmenting your web retargeting lists provides great opportunity for increased conversions and shrinking costs.

Segment based on content visited

My conversion rate increased considerably when I started segmenting my website audience buckets by page visited, and offering up a more relevant ad copy.

Examples: 

• Pricing page
• Features page
• Blog content type (by Network)
• Whitepaper topic

For example, I created a list of web visitors who viewed any of our blog or whitepaper content with 'LinkedIn' in the title (using the url contains function). I then created ad copy speaking specifically to LinkedIn Ads.

Segment based on date visited

Until you test, it's hard to understand how a web visitor from yesterday might convert differently than a user from 15 days ago. By bucketing web visitors by recency, I was able to obtain an overall lower cost per conversion, while allocating my budget to segments that performed better.

Here's some suggested segments to test:

• Visitors from 1-3 days ago
• Visitors from 4-15 days ago
• Visitors from up to 30 days ago

(Ensure to exclude the other segments as a negative audience target when testing).

-Michael McEuen, Director of Demand Generation, AdStage 

Target specific segments with Facebook Custom Audiences

Custom audiences have helped us immensely in sending ads to a more targeted group on Facebook, but even more so in the users we are not showing ads to. By utilizing custom audiences to create exclusion lists, we're able to limit wasteful ad spending by negative matching users who may have already converted, given negative feedback to our Facebook pages, or were deemed a disqualified lead.

Not only are we able to increase the efficiency of our campaigns, but we're able to avoid repeatedly showing ads to those who we know do not want to see them, which helps our online image.

-Nate Gancher, Sr. SEM Manager, Obility

Join the conversation: What was your favorite PPC functionality in 2015?