2015 was a year of innovation and change in the world of paid search marketing. Energy Circle has long advocated for the role of paid search in the marketing mix of companies delivering comfort, efficiency and healthy home services, and that opinion is as strong as ever. We continue to achieve exceptional traffic, conversion rates and job acquisition via this channel.
Here’s our perspective on the search landscape and what we see coming in 2016.
The Year in Review
Organic Search Gets Harder
In August, Google reconfigured the way it displays local, paid and organic traffic in what became known as the “snack pack.” In the new layout, the opportunity to rank organically is much diminished, which means having strategic, high-performing paid search ads are as important as ever.
The Digital Channel is Increasingly Important
2015 trends resoundly indicate that the number and sources of leads necessary to drive sales are becoming increasingly diversified. Unsurprisingly, digital channels are ofincreasing prominence--continuing to distance themselves from traditional offline channels like print advertising.
Caption: In this real world scenario, notice that none of the individual marketing channels comprises more than 16% of the overall lead mix. Digital channels represent about 66% of all leads.
Mobile Traffic Isn’t Just Growing, It’s Converting
The mobile revolution is no surprise to anyone, but this year we did see a fundamental change: conversions to leads, not just sessions, are increasingly occurring via phone calls and on mobile devices.
From the Energy Circle dataset of more than 300 companies in HVAC/Home Performance, here’s the trendline for mobile:
- In 2014, 15-20% of website traffic came from mobile users.
- In 2015, it was 25-30%.
- Based on this trend, it’s not unreasonable that 40-50% of your website traffic will be coming from mobile in 2016.
New Features We’re Excited About
Looking forward, one thing is inescapable: digital marketing is getting more complex. But within this complexity are some real gems that are producing amazing results. The Energy Circle paid search team remains dedicated to being on the cutting edge of search, and here are a few of the things we’re especially excited about:
Retargeting
An advanced feature of paid search is “retargeting.” Users who visit your website and leave without converting into leads can be targeted across the web. When they visit other sites, we can continue to target them with ads for your organization that encourage them to come back to your site. This brand-building strategy is designed to keep you top-of-mind for these potential customers and is effective for driving leads through the sales funnel. We expect retargeting will only become a more popular and sophisticated advertising option in the coming year.
Retargeting on Facebook
Retargeting options on social platforms are an increasingly popular way to target potential customers. Facebook has added a retargeting feature for their paid ads, allowing advertisers to display customized Facebook ads to visitors of your website who have a Facebook profile.
Link Your Analytics and Adwords Accounts!
Linking your Google Analytics and Google Adwords accounts grants you access to over 200 different dimensions within Analytics to use for targeting your ads. Syncing the two platforms also allows you to retargeting customers based on specific user paths. More sophisticated than general retargeting, syncing Adwords and Analytics significantly enhances your ability to show certain ads to certain subsets of your customer base.
Customer Match Options
Google Adwords rolled out Customer Match in early October. This new features allows users to upload a customer email list, find their customers signed in to their Google account, and display ads specifically to them. This enables targeted marketing beyond general retargeting. What is abundantly clear is that your “house list” is no longer just for email/snail mail. It is an increasingly vital strategic asset for your company that has major leverage. Focus on your email list growth and quality in 2016. We’re certain that these targeting options will continue to grow in depth and sophistication--all very exciting opportunities.
Call-Only Campaigns
Call-only campaigns display mobile-optimized ads that allow customers to click on the ad and call you directly without ever actually visiting your site. These campaigns have proven successful for our initiatives in 2015--having mobile-optimized text ads on Google search results page will be crucial for 2016.
Regardless of how popular call-only campaigns become next year, tracking the source of your calls with dynamic call tracking is very important. You can see which channels your calls are coming from, which traffic sources are converting the best--why wouldn't you sign up?
The Power of Extensions: Maximize Your Ad’s Real Estate Value
Ad extensions allow you to provide more information to your customers in a small amount of ad space. There are a few ad extensions, each of which displays key information about your business:
Call Extension
Display your phone number.
Sitelink Extension
Display specific links to service or landing pages on your site.
Structured Snippet Extension
Display data about your services.
Callout Extension
Display a specific call to action or promotional deal.
Location Extension
Display Google star ratings and location information of your business.
When used properly, ad extensions have the triple benefit of:
- Standing out from other ads
- Providing great info to your customers before they hit the site
- Filtering out unwanted leads. By having more upfront information upfront about your services, you’ll weed out uninterested leads early on.
*Note: as of this writing, it appears that the inclusion of star ratings within the location extension is in flux. It seems that Google may have throttled display based on rating count. We’re currently researching.
The Rise of Bing
Bing and Yahoo searches combined comprise more than 30% of total searches. The cost per lead of Bing ads is, generally speaking, on par or even cheaper than Google. Take advantage of Bing ads in 2016! We’re predicting more sophisticated Bing ad retargeting options to be rolled out soon.
