The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads Campaign Management

We’ve all seen Google Ads. Whether you call it Google AdSense, AdWords, or Ads, they’re the ads displayed in the search results on Google. Learning how to set them up is important, but learning how to manage and maintain their performance is a whole different ball game.

In this guide, we’re pulling back the curtain and looking at what steps you’ll want to take after you have the ad set up. Whether you have a high or low-performing Google ad, you’ll want to do these things regularly.

What Is Google Ad Campaign Management?

Setting up your Google Ads campaign is an important and essential piece of the puzzle, but the work doesn’t stop there. There’s no such thing as “passive income” when running and managing Google Ads campaigns.

Those who have successful ad campaigns spend a lot of time on the backend evaluating the performance of their ads, looking at different keywords, switching up the designs and copy, and testing everything against key metrics to see how they perform. These are the necessary steps toward building a campaign that can pay you for months and even years if you hit the nail on the head.

It’s worth the work in the long run, but you need to get your Google ads campaign management right if you expect to have those types of results.

Good thing Google provides us with some simple ways to track everything in the backend. First, you can set email notifications to alert you whenever something happens with your campaign.

For example, if you want to receive alerts for possible policy violations you can do this from your Google ads account under setup and preferences. Determine what you would like to trigger an email notification. Some people only want to receive an email for critical issues while others want to stay up to date on every little detail.

Step 1: Check Current Google Ad Performance

Before you can determine what you need to change, you need to first look at your ad performance and see what’s working and what isn’t. There are five key metrics to pay attention to:

impressions
clicks
cost
conversions
click-through rate (CTR)

Let’s break each of these down a little more.

Impressions

An impression occurs each time your ad is displayed and seen by someone on Google. The best way to increase your impressions is to increase your campaign budget. This can push you higher on Google, thus giving you more visibility. Budget plays a role here but ad quality and relevance are ultimately the most important factors.

If Google decides that your ad isn’t relevant to the audience you’re targeting, Google won’t display your ad high enough and you will end up with low impressions and poor performance.

Clicks

This is the bread and butter of a Google ads specialist. Everyone wants more clicks. A click happens when someone sees your ad and then clicks it. Ideally, you want as many clicks as possible but if your ad isn’t getting clicks, you may want to rethink your copy or ad targeting.

Cost

Cost is the amount of money you spend, simple right? What’s more important is your “cost per click,” or CPC.

The way talented advertisers are able to scale ads is by determining how much money they need to put in to get a click or conversion. If you can determine that spending $2 on Google ads results in you making $5 for every click, it’s simple math at that point. Spend $4 and you’ll make $10, and keep building it up from there.

It’s not that simple, though. Your bid, quality score, and ad rank will impact how much you need to spend. Your bid is the maximum amount of money you’re willing to pay for a click. The quality score is a rating Google provides from 1-10 based on how relevant your ad, landing page, and keywords are. The ad rank is Google’s value to determine where they will place your ad in the SERPs.

Conversions

A conversion occurs when someone takes the action you want them to take; this happens off the search engine results page and on your landing page or website. For example, if you’re running an ad for an e-commerce store and you want people to see the ad, click it, and then buy a suit on your landing page, each time someone buys the suit, that would be a conversion.

Google provides ways for us to track this using conversion tracking as discussed in the video above.

Click-Through Rate

Your CTR is the best way for Google to measure the relevance of your ad. It also allows you to determine if the ad is resonating with the audience you’ve chosen. A high click-through rate means that a lot of people are seeing the ad, clicking it, and converting. That’s a high-performing ad.

If you get a lot of impressions or clicks, but little conversions, it could mean your ad copy is good but the product or service you’re selling doesn’t align with the ad. Your CTR is a percentage based on the number of clicks and impressions.

Click-through rate = number of clicks / number of impressions x 100

The standard in most industries is five percent but you can still have success with a lower click-through rate.

Step 2: Reevaluate Your Ad Targeting

With every type of digital marketing, targeting is an important factor. You want to understand the buyer intent of your audience and if you don’t have a solid buyer persona drawn up, you’ll want to start there.

What does your ideal customer want? What do they look like? Where do they live? How much money do they make? What are their interests? What upsets them? Think about all of these things when determining your ad targeting because you need to get inside their head if you can expect them to click on your ad and convert.

Here are some examples of the metrics you can use for Google ad targeting:

Demographics: targeting based on location, age, gender, and devices
Affinity: reaching your audience using search and display networks
In-market: showing ads to people with a history of searching for products just like yours
Custom intent: choosing keywords related to the people who have engaged with similar content
Remarketing: targeting people who have interacted with you in the past but might not have converted

Step 3: A/B Test Ad Copy and Design

Now let’s take a look at your ad copy and design. It’s broken down into a few different segments:

your offer
your headline
your description
the URL
zny extensions

If any of these factors are hurting the performance of your ad, test them up against something else. The most important thing to learn is you only want to change one thing at a time. That’s the only way to figure out if that was the culprit.

For example, if you find yourself getting a lot of impressions but you’re not converting well, you might want to change the headline because it’s not enticing people to click. If you find that you’re getting a lot of clicks but little conversions, maybe your offer isn’t relevant enough.

Dynamic ads are a great way to work around this because they pull content directly from your site to ensure that the headline and description are relevant to the offer. This takes some of the thinking out of it and it’s worth testing up against a custom ad.

Step 4: Dig Into Negative Keywords

No need to complicate this: Negative keywords are keywords that you don’t want to display your ad for. There are many reasons why someone would do this but one of the big ones is you’re letting Google make a lot of the decisions for you. In that case, you might want to use negative keywords for things such as brand names, competitors, or other keywords that you know won’t lead to a conversion.

To add negative keywords, you’ll go into the Google ads campaign manager, select keywords, Negatives, and add the keywords to the proper ad group.

Step 5: Optimize Your Landing Pages

Remember that a big part of Google ads campaign management actually happens off the SERPs. It happens on your landing pages as well. If you have an ad that is getting a lot of impressions and clicks but you’re still not converting, chances are there is something wrong with your landing page. You’ll want to fix this quickly before Google finds out and drops your ad lower due to low relevance.

Optimizing your landing page requires you to take a look at the overall offer, the headline, structure of the page, CTA, and placement of buttons and calls to action. The best way to identify the problem is to A/B test.

If you think that you don’t have enough CTA buttons on the landing page, create a duplicate page and add a few more to see what happens. Doing so will require you to get a high-quality landing page builder and optimization tool like Unbounce and Convert.com. Convert is a great tool with A/B testing and it allows you to really pinpoint certain steps to take to improve the performance of your landing page.

Step 6: Consider Switching to Automated Bidding

When you create a Google ad, you have two choices: automated or manual bidding. Each has its pros and cons.

Automated bidding allows Google to decide how much you’ll pay per click based on a few key metrics.

Increase site visits: If you’re trying to increase visitors to your site, you can choose to optimize your ad based on clicks.
Increase visibility: Target impression share sets bids with the goal of showing your ad as high on the page as possible. You may end up getting less clicks this way, but you can quickly spread awareness.
More conversions: If you want more conversions on-site, you’ll optimize for your target cost-per-action. You may pay more per conversion but you’ll convert more visitors.
Target ROAS: If you want to meet a certain return on ad spend, you can allow Google to pay what it thinks you should based on how you value each conversion.

Keep in mind that choosing manual bidding requires you to figure this all out yourself. You won’t have the luxury of picking a “blanket” goal and having Google optimize your ad spend for you. However, manual bidding does give you more control.

Step 7: Avoid Common Google Ad Mistakes

There are a few critical Google ads mistakes that can kill your ad from the get-go. Here are a few examples:

Using the Wrong Keyword Match

We’ve all heard of keyword match: broad match, phrase match, and exact match, right? Choosing the wrong one will make it more difficult for your ad to reach your audience.

For example, broad match will display your ad when someone searches for a phrase similar to your target phrase. This can work well in the beginning when you’re experimenting and gathering data. If you don’t know a lot about your audience, you wouldn’t want to use “exact match” because you don’t have the data to back it up.

Bad Ad Copy

Your ad copy is the key to the mint essentially. If you know how to write great copy, you shouldn’t have a problem converting as long as your audience, ad match, and everything else is in place. Be sure you squeeze in every character Google allows. The goal is to make your ad stand out.

Not Having Clear Margins

Keep in mind no matter what you do, Google isn’t looking out for your finances. You’re the only one who knows what you can spend to break even or profit from your ads. If you don’t have this figured out and established ahead of time, you can end up spending way too much on ads and having to play catch up later on.

Frequently Asked Questions About Google Ads Campaign Management

What is a campaign in Google ads?

A campaign is simply a set of ad groups that share a budget, targeting, and other settings. You can have multiple ads within the campaign you’re testing.

How do I run a successful Google Ads campaign?

The best way to run a successful campaign is to try and try again. Don’t be afraid to test a lot of different factors, too. You never know what will work.

What is a good daily budget for Google Ads?

If you’re just starting out, you shouldn’t spend more than $10-$20 per day until you see how everything is performing. In the beginning, the goal is to gather data so you can optimize your ads. If you’re just starting out, you shouldn’t spend more than $10-$20 dollars per day until you see how everything is performing. Don’t expect to hit a home run right away.

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Google Ads Campaign Management Conclusion

Remember setting up your ad and hitting start is only one piece of the equation. The steps you take after that will really determine the success of your ad. You can start out with a low-performing ad but take steps to optimize, test, and change the ad, and end up with a highly successful campaign, resulting in a lot of money in your pocket. If you need help getting your ad off the ground, we can help.

What do you think is the No. 1 thing that kills a successful ad campaign?

The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads Campaign Management

What Is Google Ad Campaign Management?

It’s worth the work in the long run, but you need to get your Google ads campaign management right if you expect to have those types of results.

Good thing Google provides us with some simple ways to track everything in the backend. First, you can set email notifications to alert you whenever something happens with your campaign.

Step 1: Check Current Google Ad Performance

Before you can determine what you need to change, you need to first look at your ad performance and see what’s working and what isn’t. There are five key metrics to pay attention to:

impressions
clicks
cost
conversions
click-through rate (CTR)

Let’s break each of these down a little more.

Impressions

If Google decides that your ad isn’t relevant to the audience you’re targeting, Google won’t display your ad high enough and you will end up with low impressions and poor performance.

Clicks

Cost

Cost is the amount of money you spend, simple right? What’s more important is your “cost per click,” or CPC.

Conversions

Google provides ways for us to track this using conversion tracking as discussed in the video above.

Click-Through Rate

Click-through rate = number of clicks / number of impressions x 100

The standard in most industries is five percent but you can still have success with a lower click-through rate.

Step 2: Reevaluate Your Ad Targeting

Here are some examples of the metrics you can use for Google ad targeting:

Demographics: targeting based on location, age, gender, and devices
Affinity: reaching your audience using search and display networks
In-market: showing ads to people with a history of searching for products just like yours
Custom intent: choosing keywords related to the people who have engaged with similar content
Remarketing: targeting people who have interacted with you in the past but might not have converted

Step 3: A/B Test Ad Copy and Design

Now let’s take a look at your ad copy and design. It’s broken down into a few different segments:

your offer
your headline
your description
the URL
zny extensions

Step 4: Dig Into Negative Keywords

To add negative keywords, you’ll go into the Google ads campaign manager, select keywords, Negatives, and add the keywords to the proper ad group.

Step 5: Optimize Your Landing Pages

Step 6: Consider Switching to Automated Bidding

When you create a Google ad, you have two choices: automated or manual bidding. Each has its pros and cons.

Automated bidding allows Google to decide how much you’ll pay per click based on a few key metrics.

Increase site visits: If you’re trying to increase visitors to your site, you can choose to optimize your ad based on clicks.
Increase visibility: Target impression share sets bids with the goal of showing your ad as high on the page as possible. You may end up getting less clicks this way, but you can quickly spread awareness.
More conversions: If you want more conversions on-site, you’ll optimize for your target cost-per-action. You may pay more per conversion but you’ll convert more visitors.
Target ROAS: If you want to meet a certain return on ad spend, you can allow Google to pay what it thinks you should based on how you value each conversion.

Step 7: Avoid Common Google Ad Mistakes

There are a few critical Google ads mistakes that can kill your ad from the get-go. Here are a few examples:

Using the Wrong Keyword Match

We’ve all heard of keyword match: broad match, phrase match, and exact match, right? Choosing the wrong one will make it more difficult for your ad to reach your audience.

Bad Ad Copy

Not Having Clear Margins

Frequently Asked Questions About Google Ads Campaign Management

What is a campaign in Google ads?

A campaign is simply a set of ad groups that share a budget, targeting, and other settings. You can have multiple ads within the campaign you’re testing.

How do I run a successful Google Ads campaign?

The best way to run a successful campaign is to try and try again. Don’t be afraid to test a lot of different factors, too. You never know what will work.

What is a good daily budget for Google Ads?

Google Ads Campaign Management Conclusion

What do you think is the No. 1 thing that kills a successful ad campaign?

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How to Utilize Chatbots in Tandem With a PPC Campaign

Have you thought about incorporating the AI magic of chatbots with the wide net of a PPC ad campaign? Combining these two strategies can add a boost to your next digital marketing campaign.

To ensure a successful PPC campaign, you have to start with the end in mind. Where do you want people to go once they’ve seen your ad and shown some interest? Do you want to make a sale or provide information?

You also need to consider what they want to learn about you and how you can help them find all the information they want.

That’s where chatbots come in.

What Are Chatbots?

Chatbots are a type of artificial intelligence (AI) created to answer customer questions. They’re capable of answering basic or common questions, sending people to pages answering their questions, looking up orders, and more.

You can program your bot to escalate a customer to a real person if needed as well.

Most people think to look for chatbots in the lower right-hand corner of a company’s website. The button may say something like “chat now” or “support,” like the one on Imperfect Foods’ website:

However, you can also set them up on Facebook Messenger and some other social media sites.

Chatbots can become very interactive, depending on the platform and the script. Also, you can check in with them however often you want and follow up with prospects when needed.

Functionalities vary widely, but however you incorporate bots, they can be a powerful, real-time player in your digital marketing strategy, buttressing your PPC campaign with interactivity and deepened brand awareness.

5 Ways to Use Chatbots During a PPC Campaign

The great thing about adding chatbots to your PPC campaign strategy is the flexibility they bring. No matter your business, sales goals, or individual PPC campaign goals, chatbots can become your right-hand person when you can’t be there for every click-through.

Here are five things they can do to help your customers while freeing you and your team up to focus on the big picture.

1. Answer User FAQs Immediately

We’ve all seen PPC ads, and chances are you’ve clicked on at least one because it intrigued you enough to want to learn more about what was in the content you saw.

Was your curiosity satisfied immediately? Or did you have to dig for the information promised by the ad?

Save your prospective customer the trouble and have a chatbot ready to answer their questions.

When a user clicks the PPC ad, your chatbot can appear on the page and ask if they have any questions. Through a series of scripts, you can help prospective customers learn more about you and find the products or services they need.

Going back to the Imperfect Foods example, if you’re a first-time visitor, it simply tells you to ask it a question.

How to Use Chatbots During a PPC Campaign - Answer User FAQs Immediately

However, if you’re a returning user, it knows why you probably clicked on the chat function: You forgot your password.

How to Use Chatbots During a PPC Campaign - Imperfect Foods Example

If that’s not knowing what your audience is going to ask, I don’t know what is.

2. Forge a Connection

People like to make a connection with real people behind a brand.

A chatbot is, by definition, a bot—not an actual person. However, even when companies tell consumers they’re talking to a bot, something fascinating tends to happen. According to Psychology Today, “When interacting with chatbots, our brain is led to believe that it is chatting with another human being.”

Further, since they are always there, ready to help, people can feel a real personal connection with them. (So, be sure to program your bot’s voice to fit in with your brand story!)

This can improve brand awareness and encourage people to continue that connection by following you on social media or coming back to your website when they need your products or services.

It could also help with immediate sales. Getting emotions involved in your marketing can improve your leads and conversions.

People like feeling supported. When they come to your website and don’t have to poke around to get their questions answered and find the resources they’re looking for, they’re likely to feel better about the experience.

3. Direct Users to the Right Landing Pages, Product Pages, or Resources

As you create your PPC campaign, the reality is you can’t guess what every person is shopping for. While you should create a targeted landing page or ensure your PPC ads take users to the right place, sometimes miscommunications between customer intent and where they land can occur.

How can you keep users from landing on your page, then immediately bouncing if they don’t see exactly what they need?

A chatbot can showcase your entire inventory or website content from any page your customer lands on.

You can use them to ask users what they’re looking for and direct them to the corresponding page or resource.

4. Learn More About Your Target Audience

PPC ad campaigns only tell you so much about who is clicking. You can gather specific metrics from analytics, but those are often demographic stats from which you would have to deduce motivations or needs.

What is your target market looking for? How can you help meet them where they are?

Why not use a chatbot to actually ask them?

In an on-brand tone, you could have your chatbot pop up with a specific question to start a conversation.

Even if a customer chooses not to buy or comes back later, that chatbot conversation can help you uncover valuable information about your target market.

As the PPC campaign continues, you can look for patterns.

For example, HubSpot uses chatbots on their pages to ask the user what they want to do next. HubSpot employees can review those conversations later to learn about what their viewers are looking for.

5. Improve Brand Awareness

Whether your PPC campaign is introducing potential customers to your brand for the first time, debuting a new product or service, or keeping your brand at the forefront of your target market’s mind, chatbot integration can help to improve your brand awareness.

From the first pop-up welcome or introduction message to the answers to questions, chatbots can be designed to show brand personality.

This can be as simple as just using vernacular specific to your brand and how your customers talk. If your brand is casual, perhaps a chat could start with “Howdy!” If your voice is more formal, something like “How may I assist you today?” could be more appropriate.

You can also incorporate any characters or mascots you use in your branding to be the “face” of the chatbot. Generally, people logically know they aren’t talking to a real person and are okay with that. However, it’s much more fun and feels more personal if they get to talk to a character associated with your company, thereby potentially improving their experience with your brand.

Evaluating the Success of Your PPC Chatbot Strategy

Before you can dive into the metrics and measure whether your chatbot PPC campaign is working, you need to define success for yourself. What are you trying to accomplish with this campaign?

Success metrics could include:

higher sales of a particular product or service
more visitors to your website
an increase in followers on a social media platform
additional sign-ups for your newsletter
heightened awareness of your brand offerings

When you know what defines success for this campaign, you can look at the right metrics to understand what’s working and what you can improve upon.

With the PPC campaign as a whole, one of the primary data points you can look at is click-throughs.

With chatbots, though, there is an added component: Interaction. The conversations between chatbots and users allow you to answer questions like:

How often are people using your chatbot?
How long are the interactions?
What sorts of things are users searching for?
Which conversations turn into conversions?

The information you learn from your chatbots in your PPC campaign can help you:

optimize campaigns for what buyers want based on common queries
create content reflecting what buyers ask
update inventory based on what buyers are looking for

Here are two examples of how Chatfuel shares its chatbot metrics. Users can explore engagement through these dashboards. Most chatbot platforms have similar metric dashboards.

Evaluating the Success of Your PPC Chatbot Strategy

Chatbots for PPC Campaigns FAQs

How do I get people to use my chatbot?

Your chatbot on your PPC campaign’s landing page needs to be obvious, popping up soon after a user clicks your link. To encourage interaction, program your chatbot to welcome the user and ask them a question.

What is the best chatbot platform?

The best chatbot platform for PPC campaigns is one you can seamlessly integrate onto the landing page where people click to. This varies by your needs, but HubSpot’s Chatbot Builder, ManyChat, and Chatfuel may be worth checking out.

How expensive is it to set up a chatbot?

Chatbot pricing depends on the provider and features you choose. Many offer free trials or a free basic level, with prices going up after your trial or as you add additional options.

How can I make my chatbot interesting?

Give your chatbots a personality in line with your brand. Make the bot feel like a real person, even if you’re upfront about being a bot, so the user feels connected to your brand. The bot should introduce itself, ask questions, and provide relevant information to customers as they interact.

Chatbots Conclusion

Using chatbots in tandem with PPC campaigns can make your prospective customers feel “seen,” help them learn more about your brand, and potentially increase conversions thanks to the help they give.

Setting up a chatbot on the landing page of your PPC campaign can put your brand’s features, options, benefits, and customizations at your customers’ fingertips from the get-go.

The chatbots your PPC campaigns introduce users to can also teach you more about what your customers want. Then, you can use that data to create future digital marketing campaigns specific to their needs.

How are you going to incorporate chatbots into your next PPC campaign?

How to Set Up a Bing Ads Campaign

With more than a billion unique monthly visitors, Bing is a hugely popular search engine. Sure, it’s nowhere near as popular as the world’s biggest search engine, Google, but it’s an impressive and powerful platform in its own right.

In fact, if you’re running a paid ads campaign, it could be a mistake to ignore Bing and all the possibilities it can offer you.

With that in mind, let me show you why it might be worth launching a Bing PPC ad campaign.

Why Should You Run a Bing Ads Campaign?

Depending on what you’re selling and who you’re targeting, Bing could be the missing piece of the puzzle for your marketing strategy. Here’s why.

First, Bing has a 6.7 percent market share, making it the world’s second-largest search engine. That might not sound like much, but there’s huge growth potential here.

Next, over 1 billion people use Windows 10. Since Microsoft owns Bing, they direct a lot of traffic to their own search engine through Cortana and the search bar at the bottom of the computer screen. That’s some easy, reliable traffic right there!

Finally, according to a Wordstream study, the average click-through rate (CTR) for Bing Ads is 1.25 percent, while it’s only 0.86 percent for Google Ads.

Seems like it’s worth paying attention, right?

How to Set Up Your Bing Ads Campaign

Ready to get started? Great. It’s simple to set up your first campaign, so let me walk you through the steps.

1. Create a Microsoft Advertising Account

To start, you need a Microsoft Advertising account since Bing Ads is now a part of Microsoft advertising. It’s free to sign up, and you can use an existing email address to do so.

First, head over to Microsoft Advertising, and click “Sign Up Now” to register.

How to Set Up Your Bing Ads Campaign - Create a Microsoft Advertising Account

On the next page, click “Create One” to set up a new Microsoft Advertising account.

How to Set Up Your Bing Ads Campaign - Go to “Create One” to set up a new Microsoft Advertising account

You can either use an existing email address or create a new one to run your account.

Next, simply follow the onscreen instructions. You’ll need to input some basic details like your name and your business location. Agree to the Terms of Service and create your account.

2. Import an Existing Google Ads Campaign (Optional)

Are you creating a Bing Ad from scratch? Move on to step 3. If you’ve already got a Google Ads campaign you want to run on Bing, this step is for you.

First, go to your top menu, select “Import,” then select “Import from Google Ads.” Then, just sign in to Google. Go to “Choose Accounts,” select the account you want to import an ad from, and hit “Next.”

If you’re happy to import your Google Ad with no changes, name the imported campaign and click “Start Import” or hit “Customize Report” to tweak things like your bids and bid strategies.

Want to import multiple Google Ads simultaneously? You can import up to 10 at one time, and the steps are pretty much the same.

Once you’ve imported your desired campaigns, double-check all the details to ensure they’ve moved over correctly, paying particular attention to your targeting settings, bids, and budgets.

Make any adjustments as necessary, and you’re good to go.

3. Choose the Right Keywords

Before you create your campaign, you need to choose your target keywords. Unless you choose the “right” keywords for your campaign, your ad won’t reach the right people.

How do you find the perfect keywords? Well, you need to run some keyword research. Microsoft advertising has a built-in keyword planner to help you do just that.

First, sign in to your account. Select “Tools” from the top menu and scroll down to “Keyword Planner.” You can then enter details like your business name, location, and service, and the keyword planner will show you suggested keywords to bid on.

How to Set Up Your Bing Ads Campaign - Choose the Right Keywords

To improve the search results, input any keywords you know you want to use and note down any negative keywords you want to exclude from the results.

How to Set Up Your Bing Ads Campaign - Use Keyword Planner

You can also check for search volumes, trends, and cost estimates to help focus your keyword research.

How do you know which keywords to go with? Stick with keywords connected to “commercial intent.” These are the keywords people generally use when they’re ready to buy a product or sign up with a service, so it makes sense to target them in your Bing Ads campaign.

Say you sell wine. A phrase you might use is “buy wine” because, unsurprisingly, most people using this search term want to actually buy wine. When you search for this keyword and related suggestions, this list appears:

How to Set Up Your Bing Ads Campaign - Use Keyword Planner, Sell Wine Example

While all the columns matter, pay close attention to the CTR and cost-per-click (CPC) columns. The higher the CTR, the more people click through the ad. Balance this against how much the average click actually costs you to determine which keywords might be best for your campaign and your ad budget.

There’s no need to limit yourself to Microsoft’s keyword planning tool. You can also check out Ubersuggest for other keyword ideas and use your findings to inform your ad.

4. Create Your Bing Ads Campaign

Once you’ve set up your account and completed your keyword research, it’s time to create your first Bing Ad. If you didn’t import any campaigns in step two, or if you’re creating a new Bing Ads campaign, this step is for you.

First, go to your “Campaigns” page and then click the “Create Campaign” button in the middle of your screen.

How to Set Up Your Bing Ads Campaign - Create Your Bing Ads Campaign

Then, set your goal. Your goal could be, for example, conversions to your website, a dynamic search ad, or selling products from your catalog. The setup wizard walks you through the different options available.

Next, simply follow the onscreen instructions to complete your Bing Ads campaign. Once you hit “Save,” your ad will go live.

Before you finish setting up your Bing Ad, you can go ahead and set customized parameters to maximize your chances of reaching the right audience. For example, you could choose which times you want to show your ad or which age groups you want to see your ad.

Bing Ads - Set Custom Demographics for Targeted Ads

Setting up custom parameters ensures you’re getting the most from your Bing Ads.

5. Track Your Results

It’s all well and good setting up a Bing Ads campaign, but you also need to ensure it’s bringing you the desired results! To assess the effectiveness of your campaign, you need to track two metrics: conversion rate and CPC.

Checking your conversion rate tells you how many people are taking the desired action through your ads, and assessing your CPC shows if you’re overspending on your ad budget.

How do you track these metrics? Well, let’s start with conversion rates. You can easily track conversions by simply clicking on the “Campaigns” tab and checking out the number in the “Conv.” column.

How to Set Up Your Bing Ads Campaign - Track Your Results

From here, you can tell how many conversions you’re getting per campaign. You’ll notice you can track everything from impressions to your CTR from this tab, so you can quickly track whichever metrics you deem the most important, all from one page.

Similarly, then, you can view your CPC from the “Campaigns” tab. Check how much you’re spending per single click and confirm it’s in line with your expectations and marketing budget.

If you’re spending too much, consider bidding on different keywords or amending your campaign somehow.

5 Tips for Creating a Successful Bing Ads Campaign

A successful Bing Ads campaign is about more than just keyword research and metrics tracking. To get the most from your campaign and maximize your ROI, follow these tips.

1. Know Your Audience

Whether these ads work for you really depends on what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to. For example, slightly older and wealthier audiences may prefer Bing to Google, so if you’re selling, say, wine boxes aimed at middle-class Americans aged 45+, Bing could be perfect for you.

The best way to know if Bing’s worth your time? Build a customer profile. Identify who you’re targeting and what they respond to best.

Do you already use a tool like Google Analytics? Check your demographics data. If you trend towards a younger audience, you might not get the results you’re looking for from Bing Ads.

2. Import High-Performing Google Ads

If you’re already running high-performing Google Ads campaigns, it makes sense to import them into Bing Ads. While you can, of course, simply set up entirely new campaigns, you’ll save time and effort by just importing your successful campaigns.

Not sure which Google Ads campaigns to import? Think about which ones are most likely to appeal to the demographic you’re targeting on Bing Ads and work from there. You can always remove these campaigns and import others later.

One final point here: Just remember to double-check that everything moved over seamlessly from Google Ads to Bing before you go live.

3. Improve Your Targeting

To get the most from your Bing Ads, you must ensure they’re reaching the right audience. How do you measure this? By pulling multiple analytics reports.

For example, you could track segments including:

audience
time of day
device
geography

Say you discover you get the most conversions from mobile devices on weekends before 5 p.m. Focus on ensuring your ads appear most frequently at this time to maximize your conversions. You’ll get the most ROI from your budget this way!

You’ll find all the tracking tools you need on the “Campaigns” page.

4. Use the UET Tag

To track your conversions accurately, you need to set up the “Universal Event Tracking” (UET) tag. Why? This tag allows you to see exactly what users do after they click on your ad and visit your site.

In other words, if you want to know whether someone bounces from your landing page immediately or actually commits to a purchase, you need a UET tag.

It’s easy to set up. First, go to your “Campaigns” page, click “Conversion Tracking,” then “UET tags.” Give it a name to help you identify it. In the description box, enter your URL or website name. Save the tag you’ve just created.

Next, copy the code and paste it into the pages of your website you wish to track. WordPress plugins can help here.

Finally, add some conversion goals to your tag, whether it’s tracking how long someone spends on your website, purchases they make, and so on.

The Microsoft support page has more guidance on how to run UET tags if you’re new to them.

5. Monitor Your Quality Score

Your quality score reveals how your Bing Ad stacks up against competitors’ ads. It’s based on three things: your CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Here’s what the scores mean:

Tips for Creating a Successful Bing Ads Campaign - Monitor Your Quality Score

In short, a low-quality score means your ads won’t appear as often as they should, whereas a high-quality score means you’ve got a competitive keyword and CTR, so your ad appears more often.

To view your score, click the “Keywords” tab on the “Campaigns” page and check out the “Qual. score” column. Check it frequently to confirm your ads are performing well.

Final Thoughts on Bing Ads

While Bing Ads aren’t for everyone, they’re definitely worth a closer look. For many businesses, they offer a cost-effective alternative to Google Ads, while others might find it’s best to run PPC campaigns across both platforms.

The only way to know is to try them out for yourself! It’s simple to set up a campaign, so consider importing a high-performing Google Ads campaign and seeing how it goes.

Have you set up your first Bing Ads campaign yet? How are you finding it?

How to Use Semantic Search for Paid Ad Campaign Copy

Semantic search isn’t only for organic traffic; it’s for paid search as well. Understanding the difference between broad and exact match search is important, but semantics is all about the search intent behind a query.

Google is focusing a lot more on search intent and keyword variants. Knowing the correlation between intent and semantics can help you narrow down to the perfect audience.

How Does Semantic Search Work?

What is semantics, and how does it apply to search? Semantics focuses on the search intent of a keyword and the thoughts and feelings that the person has as they search that keyword.

It’s a complicated subject, and there isn’t a “black and white” set of steps to follow. A lot of context and concept is behind every search query, and many SEOs overlook this by thinking basic keyword research will solve all their problems.

When it comes to semantics for paid campaigns, we’re talking about incorrect spelling, plurals, variants, synonyms, and other related words and phrases pertaining to the search word.

If we understand what semantics is, we can understand how it impacts paid search.

The goal of every advertiser on Google is to gain visibility for as many applicable keywords as possible. The problem is, no matter how much keyword research you put in on Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, and SEMrush, you’ll never find all the keywords that people in your target audience are searching.

This is where semantics come in.

Google uses semantics in broad and phrase search to help find a wider range of searches and triggers that will match user intent and display your ad.

Exact Match Vs. Broad Match in Semantic Search

To understand semantics, it’s important to know the difference between exact and broad match in Google ads. An exact match requires the searcher to input the exact keyword you’ve chosen to display your ad on.

For example, if you used the exact match “wedding cakes,” the person searching must enter some of the following keywords into Google to display your ad:

wedding cakes
white wedding cakes
chocolate wedding cakes
cheap wedding cakes
and so on

These are exact match keywords because they contain the phrase exactly as-is. As a result, this type of advertising doesn’t use semantics because it doesn’t allow the flexibility necessary to locate related phrases with the same search intent.

Here’s another example: If someone searches for “cakes for weddings” or “weding cakes,” your ad may not display because Google thinks it doesn’t match your intention.

Even though the search intent is the same, you’re not using semantics in your advertising and may experience a higher CPC because you’re targeting a much narrower audience than necessary.

Using Semantics for Paid Vs. Organic Search

When it comes to organic search, many SEOs and site owners like to find every slight permutation of a keyword and include it somewhere in their content. At one time, this was the best strategy.

However, with the RankBrain update, Google started to implement machine learning and AI to understand the search intent and context of the search rather than rewarding the people stacking as many exact match keywords into their content as possible.

The goal is to make the process of finding information on Google as natural and conversational as possible.

For example, if you asked a friend, “Who is the richest person in the world?” they might respond, Jeff Bezos.

If you then asked, “Who has the most money in the world?” the answer would be the same, correct?

This factor should apply to Google search as well. Just because two people ask the same question differently doesn’t mean they should receive two different sets of search results. The question has the same intent, and the query demands the same answer.

If we apply this to organic search, it would tell us that we don’t need to worry so much about getting every single variation of the keyword because Google will identify the similarities and help us rank for all the keywords with the same intent.

On a different note, Google’s machine learning is using your habits as a searcher too. After searching for the richest person in the world on Google, I searched “most money” to see what that would bring.

The number-one result on Google was still relevant to my original search. Since I didn’t click through to anything, Google is still scrambling to find an answer to my query.

Why Should You Use Semantics for Paid Search?

Goog l e released data that tells us how important semantics are for paid search. Approximately 15 percent of daily searches are new searches that they’ve never seen before. If those 15 percent of searches have never entered Google’s database before, how could anyone ever pick them up using keyword research or competitive analysis?

You can’t.

When it comes to long-tail keywords, the goal is to grab as many of those as possible. However, thousands and thousands of search phrases never hit the keyword research phase because they yield no traffic, and most people would never include a keyword with no traffic in their content.

Unless Google does it for you.

This factor has become ever prevalent with the rise of voice search as well. Voice commands are much more common today than they were when released in 2011. Twenty-seven percent of the population uses voice search on their phones. It’s also believed that 62 percent of individuals would make a purchase using voice technology on their smart home device.

We all know that people do not speak the way they search on Google. Semantics play a major role in Google’s ability to take a voice search and translate it into accurate results.

3 Steps to Use Semantic Search for Paid Ads

What can you do to capitalize on semantics? By now, we see the importance of semantics for paid search, but what should you do to ensure you’re reaching as much of your audience as possible?

Worry Less About Keywords for Semantics
We should all worry less about creating content around keywords and instead create content around topics.

The goal is to cover a topic as in-depth as possible, and the keywords will come naturally.

A lot of SEOs talk about “silos” and “clusters.” These two strategies help you build out content in a way that increases site relevancy and boosts authority. By doing this, you’re showing Google that you’re an expert on the subject, and it should give you precedence over your competition.
Focus More on Intent
I’m always preaching the importance of search intent, but this has become Google’s bread and butter. It makes it more difficult for SEOs to game the system by stacking a bunch of keywords in their content.

When choosing keywords for a paid search, you want to focus on the thought behind the keyword and target the intent. Think about the queries that lead people to your website.

What are they trying to do when they come to your site?

Are people there to learn something? Purchase something? Inquire about something? Once you’ve determined that, you’ll want to find keywords matching that intent.
In this image, the keyword “best deals on iPhones” has a different search intent than “best iPhones,” pictured below. While they both contain a similar phrase, the person searching is trying to accomplish different things.

Someone searching for deals is already in buy mode; they want to buy an iPhone and are looking for good deals.

Someone searching for the best iPhones may not have settled on the phone yet. They want to research brands, quality, read reviews, and learn more before making a purchase.

These two individuals are at different steps in the buying process.

Understanding this can help get more people to your site and may even decrease your bounce rate because they’ll get more of what they bargained for when they land.
Don’t Ignore User Experience When It Comes to Semantics
With the release of Core Web Vitals, we know that Google is paying attention to the on-site experience. Factors such as loading speed, load delay, and page layout are important.
Focus is shifting away from advertisers and affiliates and turning to the users. Google doesn’t care about how well you understand SEO and how many hours you spent on keyword research.

All they care about is that people get what they want on your site. If you’re giving people what they want, Google will reward you. If you’re not, they’ll reward your competition.

For many years, site owners pumped out sub-par keyword-loaded content built to rank but ignored the people searching for those keywords. That won’t cut it anymore.
Work on improving your page speed, optimizing your site for mobile, and pay attention to bounce rate and session duration. These are all indicators of whether or not you’re choosing the right keywords and targeting the right audience.

If you find that certain paid ad keywords have a higher bounce rate, it could mean you don’t have the right search intent. Semantic advertising isn’t all about verbiage; it’s also about relevancy. You could have the best offer in the world, but it won’t mean anything if your site doesn’t function properly.

Measuring the Success of Your Paid Search Campaign Using Semantics

How can you measure the success of semantic search in paid ads? The most important metric you’ll want to track is the success of individual broad-match keywords. By finding out which words Google’s AI is displaying your ad for, you can determine whether you should continue advertising for that broad-match keyword.

For example, if you’re advertising a site that sells iPhone cases, and you find that your audience’s search intent doesn’t align with the phrases your ad is displaying for, you might want to readjust or target something different altogether.

Two other metrics that can tell you a lot about the success of your campaign are the bounce rate and average time on page. If you’re targeting the right audience and bringing the right people onto your page, they’ll likely stay awhile.

If you have a 90 percent bounce rate and an average time on a page of less than a minute, chances are people are landing on your site, not liking what they see, and going somewhere else.

This could be a sign of a deeper on-site issue, but for this example, you might want to make sure you’re sending the right people through.

semantics for google analytics dashboard

You can use tools like Google Analytics or the Google Ad dashboard to explore this data.

Conclusion

Much of this article will be great news for many of you. It means you don’t have to lose your mind on hours of keyword research anymore. By using broad matches and focusing on intent, you could pick up all the relevant keywords without having to identify them manually.

If you need a little more help, we can walk you through the steps necessary to get your campaign up and running.

The paid ad space is constantly changing and adapting to the digital environment, and we all have to jump aboard and roll with the changes. If we don’t, we risk letting our competition get ahead while paying more per click and receiving lower-quality click-throughs.

Be sure to keep semantics in mind as you set up your paid campaigns and really think about what the individual is trying to accomplish when they type a phrase into Google.

How have you used semantics to narrow down on your target audience?

How to Run an Omnichannel E-Commerce Marketing Campaign

Think back to the last time you made a big online purchase. If you’re like most consumers, there’s a good chance you interacted with the brand multiple times on different channels using different devices before you paid.

The customer journey isn’t straightforward anymore (if it ever was). It’s a meandering path where customers visit brands on different platforms before converting. To successfully target and convert consumers across every channel and platform, you need a unified marketing strategy. That’s the crux of an omnichannel e-commerce marketing campaign.

This article walks you through precisely what omnichannel e-commerce looks like, why it is crucial for e-commerce brands, and how you can create your own killer omnichannel e-commerce marketing campaign.

What Is Omnichannel E-commerce?

Omnichannel e-commerce is a marketing approach that creates a unified customer experience across multiple platforms. Specifically, omnichannel retailers deliver the same experience across every channel and create a seamless experience that transcends individual platforms.

This is different from multichannel e-commerce, where brands sell across different channels but offer different experiences. While consumers may be able to shop on social media, a website, and a brick-and-mortar store, they can’t move seamlessly between them.

There is one other form of commerce: single-channel e-commerce. This is when brands only sell through one channel. That could be a traditional store, an online shop or a marketplace like Amazon. This approach limits brands to just one platform, which can be devastating if that platform makes changes.

With omnichannel e-commerce, customers hop from device to device, or platform to platform during the conversion process. As a brand, you need to keep up.

Why Is an Omnichannel E-commerce Strategy Important?

An omnichannel e-commerce experience sounds better than a multichannel or single-channel experience, right?

That’s reason enough to adopt an omnichannel approach, but it’s not the only reason you should. Omnichannel e-commerce provides a better customer experience and allows your brand to take advantage of new platforms, increase customer retention rates, and boost sales.

Omnichannel E-Commerce Strategies Provide a Better Customer Experience

Google reports that 85 percent of online shoppers start the purchase process on one device and finish it on another. Why does that matter?

Convenience rules when it comes to e-commerce; just ask Amazon. It’s not enough to offer a great selection, competitive pricing, and next-day delivery, however. Brands must show up where their customers are and offer a seamless experience when they switch devices or channels.

Take off your marketer’s cap for a second and remember that most consumers don’t view their shopping experience as separated. It’s all one journey to them, and that’s exactly how an omnichannel e-commerce experience approaches it.

As you can see from the infographic by Invesp below, customers can use an omnichannel experience in several different ways. They can:

check the availability of products
reserve or buy items and pick them up in-store
have constant access to their profile information
enjoy a personalized shopping experience regardless of platform

Omnichannel Is the Future of E-commerce

Want to future-proof your brand? Omnichannel is the way to go. Statista found e-commerce accounted for 14 percent of omnichannel sales in 2019, but it accounted for a whopping 63 percent of omnichannel growth—which means omnichannel is growing fast.

According to BigCommerce’s Omnichannel Retail report, consumers shop fairly evenly between different online stores, even though the bulk of spending happens on marketplaces like Amazon and large retailers.

omnichannel e-commerce sales distribution

Increase Customer Retention Rates and Sales

An omnichannel marketing strategy isn’t just good for customers; it can be incredibly profitable.

Customers keep coming back to stores that offer an omnichannel approach. A survey by Aspect Software finds organizations that leverage an omnichannel strategy see 91 percent better year-over-year customer retention rates than businesses that don’t. If you’re serious about generating repeat online sales, omnichannel marketing is the way to go.

Omnichannel customers are better customers in the long run, too. IDC finds these consumers have a 30 percent higher lifetime value than single-channel shoppers.

Research also shows 47 percent of shoppers who engage with brands on 10 or more channels purchase from their favorite brands at least once a week. That’s compared to 21 percent of shoppers who engage across one to four channels.

8 Tips for Building a Successful Omnichannel E-commerce Marketing Campaign

Omnichannel e-commerce marketing is essential for brick-and-mortar or digitally native brands that want to drive more e-commerce traffic and increase e-commerce sales in the years ahead.

Here’s what it takes to run a successful campaign.

Identify Each Channel’s Opportunities

Every channel is important in an omnichannel e-commerce strategy, but they play different roles. Begin by identifying where your customers spend the most time, how they interact with these channels, and the types of products they normally buy there.

Some channels are more suited to advertising particular products, while others may be better for customer service. For example, an enterprise software company probably won’t get many direct conversions from Twitter, but they can still engage prospective customers there.

Keep in mind, your omnichannel strategy shouldn’t include every single marketing platform. If none of your customers use TikTok, there’s no point creating a presence there. Omnichannel should focus on the channels your customers use.

Understand Your Customer’s Needs

An omnichannel approach should put your customers front and center. Every business likes to think they know their customers, but how much do you really know about them? Now is the time to find out.

Think about the channels where your customers hang out. What content do they like to see on those channels? When are they most likely to convert? These are the questions you have to answer.

You can use data to understand how customers interact with your brands across each channel, but don’t be afraid to speak with them directly through surveys and polls. This may help you uncover things you didn’t know about the buyer’s journey.

Personalize Ads and Messages

Customers expect more than an omnichannel experience; they expect personalization at every touchpoint on every channel. They want to land on your website and see the products they frequently buy. They expect the emails in their inbox to contain offers and marketing messages relevant to them.

The trouble is, 67 percent of marketers are not providing customers with contextual, personalized messages.

You don’t need to personalize your messaging for every individual customer, however. Instead, segment your audience into smaller groups that have the same traits. These traits can include:

demographics
shopping patterns
favorite channels
favorite products
spending amounts

Personalization strategies can even be implemented in stores. It may be a little more complicated recommending related products online, but setting up kiosks or equipping shopping assistants with mobile devices can help bring the online experience in-store.

Keep Your Brand Voice Consistent

Apple, Nike, Wendy’s; there are some companies with instantly recognizable brand voices. Why? Because they have an unfailing commitment to maintaining consistency across every channel.

It doesn’t matter if you see an Apple ad on TV or in print, read the copy on their website, or even watch one of their product launches. The language and tone of voice are exactly the same. That’s the secret to developing a great omnichannel e-commerce marketing strategy. The more consistent your messaging and tone of voice are, the less likely consumers are to get confused and fall out of your marketing funnel.

At the same time, they’ll find your message much more engaging. It’s one thing to be hit with a promotional message in an email. It’s another thing to see that same message on social media, your website, and in-store.

Your promotional strategies should also be consistent. It’s not an omnichannel marketing strategy if you’re running separate promotions in-store and online and aren’t allowing either shopper to use the other channels’ promotions.

Make Each Channel and Touchpoint Shoppable

With an omnichannel experience, customers should be able to purchase wherever they interact with your brand. Your online and brick-and-mortar stores are a given, but can they make purchases on social media channels or your app?

This wasn’t possible a couple of years ago. Thanks to some pretty significant updates on the major social media platforms, it is now possible to drive sales through Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Don’t stop there, though. Consider expanding your reach to marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy, if appropriate. As we saw in the breakdown of omnichannel e-commerce spending above, marketplaces have the second-largest share of shoppers and drive the most sales.

Sure, in an ideal world, it’s better if customers buy your products on your own website. But having customers purchase on Amazon allows you to engage with them and bring them to your website.

Keep Testing and Gathering Data

Your omnichannel e-commerce marketing campaign will need to evolve over time. Consumer habits change, new channels emerge, and existing platforms become less important. That’s why gathering data and continuing to test and refine your campaign is so important.

More data allows you to better optimize your campaign, and, ultimately, be more successful. Test your campaign as a whole and run live A/B tests on your personalized messaging to each customer segment. Tweaking headlines, body copy, and images can dramatically improve engagement and conversion rates.

Back It Up in the Back Office

There’s no point in developing a killer omnichannel marketing campaign if your backend operations can’t follow through on your promise.

Specifically, inventory visibility and management should be top of the list. Use an inventory management system that centralizes inventory across warehouses and physical storefronts, so no customer orders an out-of-stock product.

Shipping, fulfillment and returns are also important. Customers should have the ability to purchase their products in several ways, whether that’s having purchases delivered to their door or picking them up from their nearest store. The same goes for returns. In-store and online returns are essential components of a true omnichannel approach.

Conclusion

Omnichannel marketing for e-commerce stores is becoming the norm. Customers expect a seamless experience when switching between devices and channels, and it’s your responsibility to deliver it.

Omnichannel marketing significantly improves the customer experience, but it also drives better engagement, creates better customers, and leads to more sales. That puts it up there with some of the biggest factors of e-commerce success.

If you want to succeed with e-commerce, omnichannel marketing isn’t a strategy; it’s a requirement.

Want help setting up your marketing campaigns to align with your omnichannel e-commerce strategy? Let us know and our agency can help.

Which are the most important channels for your omnichannel e-commerce marketing campaign?

How to Set up a Google Search Network Campaign (The Right Way)

Google Search Campaigns are one of the most popular forms of online advertising. If you’ve always wanted to run a Google Search Campaign of your own but didn’t know how this article will help you get started. Even if you don’t know what a Google Search Network ad is, know more than enough to run …

The post How to Set up a Google Search Network Campaign (The Right Way) first appeared on Online Web Store Site.

46 Crowdfunding Resources Available to Help You Run Your Campaign

Are you looking for crowdfunding resources? You’ve come to the right place. There are videos, books, articles, blogs, and even special tools to help you run the most successful campaign possible.

Of course, some of the information these resources offer will not be as useful to you as others. It all depends on your unique needs and situation. Do take the time to browse them all, even those that are written specifically for a platform you do not intend to use. You may be surprised at what you can learn and what advice can cross over.

Be aware too, that each platform has its own set of rules. Do not neglect to read the regulations and FAQs for whichever platform you choose to go forward with.

Keep your business protected with our professional business credit monitoring.

Try These 46 Crowdfunding Resources to Help You Run a Successful Campaign

Regardless of how many crowdfunding resources you find or how successful your campaign is, you will still need to build fundability for your business. Crowdfunding won’t work forever, and you need to be sure you have every funding option possible available to you. The best way to do that is to ensure your business is as fundable as possible.

In truth, fundability is much more important than building the perfect crowdfunding campaign. That doesn’t mean you should give up on crowdfunding, but you definitely can’t rely on it. It may work, but it may not. So, building fundability will ensure you have access to the funding you need throughout the life of your business.

What is Crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding sites allow you to inform thousands of micro investors about your business or business idea. Anyone who wants to can invest as much or as little as they want.

Investors pledge a broad range of amounts depending on the campaign and the platform in use. They may give $50, they may give $150, or they may give over $500. Pledges can even go as low as $5.

Though not always necessary, most offer rewards to investors for their giving. Typically, this comes in the form of the product the business will be selling. Different levels of giving result in different rewards. For example, a $50 gift may get you one incentive, and a $100 gift will get you an upgraded version of that incentive, or something different all together.

Where Do You Get Started with Crowdfunding?

There are many crowdfunding sites, but the most popular are Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Many crowdfunding resources are geared toward aiding in success on these two platforms. Much of the advice these resources offer is useful on any crowdfunding campaign, but some is specifically useful on one of these two.

The platforms are similar, but there are some very large differences. The most obvious is when you actually get the funds you raise.

For example, with Kickstarter you have to reach your preset goal before you can receive the funds. If you set a goal to raise $12,000, investments have to reach that amount before you get your hands on any of the money.

Indiegogo on the other hand lets you choose if you want to receive funds as they come in or wait until you reach your goal. In addition, they have the option for InDemand, which lets you continue to raise funds after your initial campaign is over. There is no need to start a new campaign.

Indiegogo also has a flexible funding option for those who may need it.

To make the choice for yourself, you need to figure out who your audience is, and which platform will best reach them.

The internet is full of advice and tools to help you fund a fabulous crowdfunding campaign. We’ve gathered some of them here in one place so you can get the best start possible.

Keep your business protected with our professional business credit monitoring.

Platform Specific Crowdfunding Resources

Like I said, you’ll find many crowdfunding resources are geared toward help on a specific platform. Remember though, don’t underestimate a resource that is not geared toward your platform. Certain aspects can be helpful regardless of the platform you use.

Kickstarter

Here are some great crowdfunding resources to help with success on Kickstarter.

Indiegogo

Here are some crowdfunding resources geared toward Indiegogo users.

Other Specific

These crowdfunding resources are geared toward specific platforms other than Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

Non-Platform Specific Crowdfunding Resources

These resources are not directed toward success on any specific crowdfunding platform. Rather they can offer inspiration and direction on techniques and circumstances that should work regardless of the platform you choose.

Videos

These video crowdfunding resources may be useful.

Other Crowdfunding Resources

The following crowdfunding resources do not really fit into another category so we are calling them miscellaneous.

Don’t Put all your Eggs in the Crowdfunding Basket

Crowdfunding is a great option, but the cold hard fact is that it rarely works. There are far more campaigns that fail than see success. Even those that are successful often end up not raising enough funds. Then, entrepreneurs end up needing to seek out funds from other sources.

These other sources may include loans, invoice financing, and lines of credit. Of course, grants are an option too. However, they are few and far between. Furthermore, competition for grants is fierce. That leaves the financing options, and to be eligible for those, your business has to be fundable.

Fundability if the ability of your business to get funding. It is affected by many things. Business credit is a huge piece, as is personal credit. However, it is impossible to have fundability regardless of your credit, if your business is not properly set up to be fundable.

Keep your business protected with our professional business credit monitoring.

How to Set Up Your Business to Be Fundable

LIke I said, setting up your business to be fundable is not the only piece of the fundability puzzle. However, it is the first piece that has to be placed and the biggest piece missed by most business owners. Here is where you start.

Contact Information

The first step in setting up a business to be fundable is to ensure it has its own phone number, fax number, and address. You can still run your business from your home or on your computer if that is what you want.

In fact, you can get a business phone number and fax number that will function over the internet rather than phone lines. Also, the phone number will forward to any phone you want it to so you can simply use your personal cell phone or landline if you want.

In addition, you can use a virtual office for a business address. This is a business that offers a physical address for a fee. Sometimes they even offer mail service and live receptionist services. Even better, there are some that offer meeting spaces for those times you may need to meet a client or customer in person.

EIN

The next thing you need to do is get an EIN for your business. This is an identifying number for your business that works in a way similar to how your SSN works for you personally. You can get one for free from the IRS.

Incorporate

Incorporating your business as an LLC, S-corp, or corporation is necessary to fundability. This helps show your business is legitimate, and it gives some protection from liability.

It does not matter which option you choose when it comes to fundability. It does matter for your budget and needs for liability protection. The best bet is to talk to your attorney or a tax professional. Keep in mind, when you incorporate, you become a new entity. Basically, you have to start over. You’ll also lose any positive payment history you may have accumulated.

As a result, you have to incorporate as soon as possible. Time in business is important to fundability as well. The longer you have been in business the more fundable you appear to be. That starts on the date of incorporation, regardless of when you actually started doing business.

Business Bank Account

You need a separate, dedicated business bank account. Here’s why. First, it will help you keep business finances separate from personal ones. This is important for tax purposes.

But wait, there’s more. You can’t get some types of funding without a business bank account. Many lenders and credit cards want to see a minimum average balance. In addition, you cannot get a merchant account without a business account at a bank. That means you can’t take credit card payments. Generally, consumers spend more when they can pay by credit card.

Licenses

For a business to be legitimate, it has to have all of the licenses it needs to run. Conversely, if it doesn’t, it will not appear to be a legitimate business. Do the research you need to do to make sure you have all of the licenses you need to legitimately run your business at the federal, state, and local levels.

Website

How can a business website affect your ability to get funding? In today’s world, you do not exist if you do not have a website. However, a poorly put together website can be even worse. It is the first impression you make on most. If it appears to be unprofessional, it will not look good for you with consumers or potential lenders.

Even more to the point, if potential investors from a crowdfunding site check out your website and it stinks, they will not donate.

Do what you have to to make sure your website is professionally designed and works well. Also, don’t use a free hosting service. Don’t forget, your business needs a dedicated business email address. Make sure it has the same URL as your Website. Don’t use a free service such as Yahoo or Gmail.

Get all Your Proverbial Ducks in a Row

What’s the take away? First, crowdfunding is a legitimate option, and these 46 crowdfunding resources can help you on your road to success. Next, you have to have a backup plan. You have to know you can get funding if crowdfunding doesn’t work out. Fundability is your backup plan. There are a lot of things that affect fundability, but none of it matters if your business isn’t set up to be fundable in the first place. There are several things you have to do to set up your business to build fundability.

If your business is fundable, you will be able to access pretty much any funding you need now and into the future. You won’t have to worry about the ability to qualify for a loan, line of credit, or any other type of financing. This will help ensure your business can run and grow for as long as you want.

The post 46 Crowdfunding Resources Available to Help You Run Your Campaign appeared first on Credit Suite.

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