PPCChat | Impact on Performance Due to Pandemic | 5th May 2020

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This week’s PPCChat session was hosted by Julie F Bacchini who encouraged experts to talk about the changes seen in PPC performance over the past week, Are CPCs down, up or steady in their accounts?,Are they using any smart bidding or other automated bidding strategies? and more.

 

Q1: Are you seeing spend increase in any of your accounts? If so, which industry or industries?

 

Not yet. and there should be there is room and we are way below target. Heck for one of our products we have hit the H1 target. and this is Finance. @mindswanppc

Spend has been going up since last month acorss Ecom for fashion and other clients. Some clients want to spend more but can not keep up with demand….so we make the budget work to max revenue. @duanebrown

Are y’all ready for a roller coaster? Two of our clients are ramping up: public sector – makes sense – and our cruise line. *stares directly into camera* @JuliaVyse

I have a higher ed client who’s budget has gone up. @SEMFlem

Yes, ecom clients are definitely spending more and continuing to increase spends. @lchasse

We’re seeing some huge increases in CPG clients, as well as for some niche household good products. Also booze. @DigitalSamIAm

Yes for some ecommerce clients particularly in fashion-related verticals. @CJSlattery

Yep- clients who have showrooms are now ramping up to get people in their shops this weekend. Other clients literally going gangbusters because they had stock where others were impacted. All of them are doubling spend. @ynotweb

Multiple clients spend is up – nursery (plants), pond supplies, lingerie, vitamins, baskets, outdoor decor. A few clients have issues with not being able to keep up with orders, so budget constrained that way. Other clients continue to be done. Just depends. @nikkijumpfly

So, I have picked up 2 clients who do hand sanitizer – one for personal use and one the components to make it. Those are going like gangbusters. Everything else, not so much…@NeptuneMoon

Healthcare and CPG are both trending at higher than peak season levels for us. People are scared for their personal care, and replacing grocery shopping with CPG items oddly. @JonKagan

B2B is still cutting. @Mel66

 

Q2: Are you seeing better conversions in any of your accounts? If so, which industry or industries?

 

Yep, clients in home improvement, furniture and decor are all seeing huge conversion rates. @ynotweb

Yes here too – same clients. Stronger conversion rates especially for those who also are on Amazon, but can deliver faster etc than Prime now. (My basket client’s April was their best month in almost 20 years, by 25%.) @nikkijumpfly

Anyone spending more is seeing better conversion rate, ROAS and CPA. Trying to ride that wave while we can but also make sure clients can keep up with demand and supply products. @duanebrown

Yes, mostly in the consumer goods area. Anything that supports the home or personal seems to be doing extremely well. @lchasse

Big box retailer (of course). @SEMFlem

Conversion rate is flat – which is good considering. Total convs down due to lower spend. @Mel66

Yes I am. As per previous answer, in Finance, we are seeing very good conversion rates and low cost per applications. @mindswanppc

Anything health related, things you do at home/home office related has been doing better. Also, with the typical brick and mortar competition out, we’ve seen an uptick in necessity products like contact lenses. @360vardi

B2B health is so gangbusters that clients cannot keep up with demand so they’ve paused advertising. @Mel66

Our Baby/Kids goods client is not able to cope with the huge demand through search and social. Home schooling now plays a huge role. @MenaPush

Nonprofit fundraising & finance. @bufoting

SaaS client growing like crazy. An ecom client that sells entertainment products is doing great. Cut budget more than 50% last month, purchase volume is higher than previous month spending 50% more. CPA down 10%. Anecdotal but cool to see. @timmhalloran

CPG, we do 90% of our revenue via retailers and 10% through the site. Now the site is producing at 15%-20% of the revenue. @JonKagan

I’ve taken the advice of many FB marketers and gone Broad, like more Broad than our typical target demos. It’s been working well in the first 3 days of testing compared to our more targeted segments. @RyBen3

 

Q3: How are CPCs in your accounts? Up? Down? Steady?

 

As we’ve seen quite a few competitors drop out of the market…better CPCs actually. @mindswanppc

Mostly all CPCs are down for accounts. The auction insights reports look a lot different than they did last year this time. @lchasse

Some up, mostly down up until now, but expecting them to rise drastically in the next week for clients in California. @ynotweb

Search: B2B CPCs are up, substantially in some industries. Social CPCs are way down. Social is a good place to be right now. @Mel66

CPCs are pretty much all over the place. Some up, some down, some with nothing statistically significant. @CJSlattery

Ecomm client – Amazon disappeared everywhere – lower CPCs, but lower CVR, so we’re performing about the same as pre-virus. @SEMFlem

Brand CPCs are down for a lot of things. No where near what it was years ago, but better. @360vardi

Although we’d expect a reduction for now its fairly steady still, overall. @MenaPush

It really is the perfect time to start remarketing on Facebook if you’re not already… cause CPCs are down for every industry that is not on a huge pandemic upswing! @NeptuneMoon

Just pulled a cross-account report on FB. CPC down 22% comparing 30v30. More so in certain accts. @timmhalloran

Despite so much competition exiting, our CPC’s have remained flat. @JonKagan

 

Q4: Are you using any Smart bidding or other automated bidding strategies? How are they holding up? What industry or industries?

 

Maximize clicks for my public sector pals. people need to understand forms, applications, etc. other than that, Manual with Enhanced CPC. @JuliaVyse

Automation is a mess rn. Starting to settle in but between rapidly changing budgets and market volatility, it was pretty “gone wild” for the last 2 months. @Mel66

Yes and they are doing well. I’ve not had to take anyone off Smart Bidding because things have blown up or gone south. Surprisingly, no complaints. @nikkijumpfly

We have changed some of our auto bidding strategies – sometimes adding, sometimes taking away- dependent on the client. Some conversion based had to be changed when appointments couldnt be made, some we wanted to start capturing more IS. @ynotweb

Target ROAS for Shopping has seemed to hold steady, helped out with the departure of Amazon of course. @SEMFlem

Not using automated right now, too much volatility. I will say that the “we might spend up to 2x your daily budget” is in FULL effect for accounts with volume right now. Scaring the pants of new advertisers seeing their budgets blown by in the first week. @NeptuneMoon

I have Google Smart Bidding in place on a case by case basis. They did a webinar last week and said you should leave smart bidding in place (shocker!). Webinar was pretty good actually, watch it here. -> adsonair.withgoogle.com/events/googlea… @FindingAmanda

Still using some automated strategies on campaigns that are running VERY high (think 100+ conversions per day) and aren’t seeing issues with those. For smaller campaigns have shifted most back to manual control. @CJSlattery

Using SA360 autobidding and surprisingly still doing well. I’d expect quite a few anomalies because of current situation. We don’t naturally apply them on everything – just in areas that have been tested to do well. We’ve made no change to that. @mindswanppc

I am still seeing some automation working well. I had to pause some, because the conversion rates are different now vs. what Google has in their data set from past months. Consumer goods still seems to be strong. B2B is where I have had to modify. @lchasse

Smart shopping has kept up but smart bidding has been more miss then hit…pulled back some campaigns to manual. Adjustable spend as well. Taking it one week and month at a time. @duanebrown

 

Q5: Anything else you’ve noticed in the past week that’s interesting?

 

If you want to continue the PPC party after this, there’s another Google Ads Webinar at 1pm EST -> adsonair.withgoogle.com/events/googlea… #ppcchat #GoogleAds (you can also watch after the fact). @FindingAmanda

My surprise is how well social campaigns and their conversions have been doing. This has continued to be a pleasant surprise for me. Even with some higher end apparel retailers I work with. @lchasse

Hey folks, are you ready for this? Apple billing will ONLY use california time zones. and nothing else. that’s it. so if you turn things off in March, hoping to not spend in April, you’ll get a tz invoice for overnights, NO MATTER WHAT TZ YOUR ADS USE. oh my. @JuliaVyse

I feel like CPM’s in Facebook have gone up this week. While we are still efficient, spend isn’t as efficient as it was 2-3 weeks ago. We’ve done some testing, which accounts for that, but there is definitely more competition in auctions this week. @RyBen3

Paid Social: Snap, TikTok & Pinterest are releasing more features at a faster rate: Pinterest Trends, Snap Commercial and their growth numbers are on fire. TikTok has shopping. If you only know how to do Google Shopping, you are at major disadvantage to others. @duanebrown

 

Q6: With conferences on indefinite hold, how do you plan to keep up with professional development in the coming year?

 

Twitter. I have found a lot of value in these and creating lists of people to follow for respective FB Ads, DTC, PPC users to stay on top of things. I love to see new tests people are rolling out. @RyBen3

We just looked into this yesterday. A bunch of conferences are now going virtual, so we are investing in those- especially the ones overseas or that we haven’t attended yet, so we get an idea on their quality. Also looking at booking more in Oct/Nov. @ynotweb

Virtual conferences, podcasts, reading books, writing blog posts, internal training. @SEMFlem

Well,  since I haven’t been able to travel to conferences in years due to health reasons, I’ve loved attending the free webinars and conferences that have popped up in the last couple of months! A great option for folks. @Mel66

I’m doing some courses (paid) and taking advantage of all of the free webinars and online conferences. Although, I’m a little burnt out on them at the moment, but will definitely be participating in them for the foreseeable future. @NeptuneMoon

Tuning into #ppcchat every week! also checking out some of the online webinars that are going on. Looks like they could take speakers. @siliconvallaeys and team do a weekly townhall. It’ll be great if there was a list of all the web-conferences going on. @mindswanppc

Doing a lot of reading and a lot of writing. I find that writing stuff helps you learn. I just finished my 18,000 word Ads 101 step by step guide, and learned a lot of small things I didn’t know because I had to teach them! @CJSlattery

I am a small shop, so I usually do not travel for conferences anyway (expensive). I take a lot of courses online, plus I do take the classes each platform offers as well. Along with that expensive college degree from years ago. So basically blogs & learning. @lchasse

Even if I don’t follow all their recommendations I like to keep up content that #GoogleAds puts out. It helps to know where they’re coming from and answer client questions. @FindingAmanda

Does anyone have and great slack channels for PPC people? Would love to join some. @CJSlattery

Conversion XL by @peeplaja is awesome and the one thing I have pay for each of the last 3 years. Worth every penny. It’s great to branch out of the usually suspect for PPC knowledge. @duanebrown

 

Q7: Are there resources you could really use right now that just don’t seem to be available?

 

I feel bad for anyone that wants to publish marketing books. By the time they publish, they’re so outdated (I see this in education all the time). I need some podcasts talking tests they’re running. Stop all the “high level” talk, what is working and what isn’t. @RyBen3

Need more team resources, but too limited on time and restricted by California regulations. Any C or S Corps who subcontract, DM me.. @ynotweb

Definitely want to up my Facebook & Instagram game, so I’m looking for good resources for advanced practitioners. FB/IG definitely much weaker for me than Google where I am top notch. @CJSlattery

 

Q8: Are there resources you’ve found or use now that you love? Please share!

 

Well #ppcchat of course! I bookmarked quite a few tweets from people here for sure. @CJSlattery

I’ve been going old school back to books. Most blog posts are meh, and books are years of an author’s research for like $20. Hard to beat. @SEMFlem

I like Udemy and Skillshare for classes. Both platforms could use more experts who are comfortable in the public eye. I also love some of the old basic marketing books. Good to Great and others. Zig Ziglar’s books are still great. @lchasse

If you need help with Google Shopping; my Udemy course is on sales. We have been picking up steam the last 4 weeks with new students. Very grass roots in filming as it’s like watching the 1st YouTube video after someone got famous…@duanebrown

@Moz are doing free SEO courses? I know we mostly talk paid media here. But knowing how SEO works could be something that could really benefits chats with clients. moz.com/blog/moz-acade… @mindswanppc

 

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