Boston, MA PPC Agency

What is Boston, MA PPC Management?

The act of creating and optimizing Boston paid advertising campaigns is known as PPC management. That is an incredibly simple explanation though, so let's dive a little deeper.

A paid ads agency for Boston often begins by getting to know your company and its business model before providing professional PPC management. You can use this information to determine the next steps, since paid advertising for a local business differs from paid advertising for an ecommerce store.

For example, local Boston service providers are often only interested in qualified leads. In order to accomplish this, paid advertising can drive traffic to a landing page or sales funnel that is optimized. Start with Google Local Service Ads or Facebook Lead Forms if those digital assets don't currently exist or need a lot of revisions.

Alternatively, ecommerce brands tend to be interested in online sales. Using paid advertising, you can drive traffic to a page optimized for products or categories. You might even want to include Google Shopping Campaigns in some cases. We've even utilized sales funnels to help sell products, subscriptions, and services.

The next step in Boston PPC management is understanding the metrics that will be used to optimize and scale. To maximize the value of paid advertising, most Boston agencies implement email collection strategies through squeeze pages or lead magnets. To better understand ad attribution and reporting, it is often worth integrating with Wicked Reports, Triple Whale, or Northbeam.

To be successful with paid advertising, your Boston business should utilize multiple advertising strategies and marketing tools. Pay-per-click campaigns in Boston should include tactics like:

• Promote your digital assets (websites, sales funnels, etc.) via search engines, social media channels, and third parties.
• Make money online or through qualified leads for your Boston business.
• Integrate third-party attribution tools to better understand ad attribution.
• Present social proof through case studies, white papers, and video testimonials.
• Build and nurture relationships through user generated content, story creation, and email address collection.
• Test ad creatives across various ad placements and between different media formats.

In addition to managing Boston-area PPC campaigns, our team also offers Cambridge, Lawrence, Lowell, Medford, Plymouth, Springfield, and Worcester small businesses and large corporations a professional PPC management service.

How Paid Advertising Helps Boston, MA Businesses

The most obvious benefit of Boston paid advertising is the near instant increase in traffic it provides.

Whether a traffic increase results in higher conversions depends on your ads, landing pages, and business model.

If you are interested in running paid advertising in Boston, we recommend that you start slowly.

A working sales funnel, realistic goals, and the ability to gather actionable data are essential before you invest in paid advertising or scale your existing ad campaigns.

If you run into trouble getting the conversions you were expecting, don't blame Facebook or Google. It is usually the creatives, campaign settings, or sales process that is the problem.

The right combination of paid advertising and digital marketing strategy can greatly enhance your Boston business's digital marketing strategy. Remember, more traffic doesn't always mean more conversions!

Types of Paid Ads for Boston, MA PPC Campaigns

There are numerous ways to run paid advertising for your Boston business. Let's discuss some of the most common paid ads being run within various business industries in Boston.

Local Ads within Boston

If you have a business in Boston, you can run local ads on almost any advertising platform. Depending on the nature of your local Boston business, you may find better success in one platform versus another. To find out which option works best for you, you should try all of the options available. Now let's discuss some local advertising options.

From Google, you'll have two options.

As a first step, you can run traditional Google Adwords, possibly using their newer Performance Max campaign type. The Google algorithm finds the best combination of headlines, images, videos, and service locations to bring you local customers using this type of dynamic ad campaign. We often use Performance Max campaigns for professional services companies in and around Boston, such as accountants, lawyers, dentists, and physicians.

The second option from Google, if you are in a qualifying business industry, is to check out their Local Service Ads. As a pay-per-lead platform, Google Local Service Ads charges a flat fee per lead. Home service contractors in Boston, such as plumbers, electricians, roofers, and heating installers, frequently use Google Local Service Ads.

You can also use Facebook Ads to target people in your local Boston area. The process is a little simpler since it just requires setting up a campaign with ad sets with geographic restrictions to specific ZIP codes in Boston. Local Facebook Ads are often used by Boston businesses of all types.

Social Ads for Boston Websites

Almost all online ads you see on social networks qualify as social media ads.

Maintaining fresh ad creatives is key to social ads. If you don't rotate out ad creatives every few weeks your campaign performance will slowly decrease. For higher spending ad campaigns, you might need to look at weekly ad creative changes.

Using social ads allows you to reach audiences who have never thought of your product or service, or aren't thinking about it right now. It's quite the opposite when you run search ads since you only get to show them when someone searches for what you offer in Boston.

That benefit can also be a curse though, since conversion rates are often lower when people aren't closer in the revenue funnel of making an immediate purchase.

Search Ads within Boston

You'll want to invest in search ads if you know people are looking online for the products you offer.

In some circles, this is referred to as Boston Search Engine Marketing, or SEM. There are different ways to explain search ads, which are advertisements displayed on search engines' search results pages.

If you have been running search ads on Google for a while and have been successful, consider copying your campaigns over to Bing Ads. As of an October 2022 study from StatCounter, about 3.57% of online users rely on Bing for their primary search engine.

Display Ads for Boston Businesses

There are display ads on message boards, chat rooms, game lounges, news websites (sometimes even local Boston news stations), gossip websites, and more.

Bing Ads and Google Ads both offer these.

To get started with display ads, you just need a set of ad creatives in different image sizes. Both ad platforms have algorithms that help you generate results from your ad spend if you have an understanding of your target audience.

Retargeting Ads in Boston

There is a good chance that not everyone will convert during their first experience with your Boston website, landing page, or sales funnel.

To help people return to your site after they've thought through various options, retargeting ads are almost always recommended.

You can run retargeting ads on Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, and many other platforms.

Shopping Ads for Boston Ecommerce Companies

This type of search ad was popularized by Google Shopping Campaigns.

In order to get started with Google Shopping, you just need an e-commerce website, a product feed (CSV or TXT), a Google Merchant Center account, and a Google Ads account.

With these tools, you can provide Google Ads with an accurate list of all of your product data, including title, SKU, image, price, and availability. From there, they will be able to find the right types of search queries to display your products at the top of the search results page.

Video Ads within Boston

Social networking websites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram allow you to advertise with video.

Using Google Ads, you can run YouTube Ads by creating a video ads campaign or performance max campaign.

Facebook Ads is required if you want to run video ads on Facebook or Instagram.

Video is an excellent ad creative in terms of conversion opportunities. We frequently use video ads to showcase product launches, custom services, personal introductions, and more!

If you have the budget to support ad creatives in video format, definitely look to implement them into your Boston paid advertising campaigns.

Boston, MA PPC Management Services

We are a team of paid advertising specialists with extensive knowledge in the latest PPC trends for Boston local businesses. Take advantage of our experience across dozens of business industries to help drive traffic and conversions to your Boston digital assets.

Keyword Research

Keyword research in PPC is mostly used for Google Ads and Bing Ads search network campaigns. After all, search ads only show up based on what is searched on Google or Bing.

A search for "Boston Roofer" on a search engine, for example, might lead someone to a roofing company in Boston. It wouldn't be necessary to conduct extensive keyword research to target that exact phrase as the paid ads manager for that roofing company in Boston.

What if, however, that exact match keyword wasn't producing enough search volume and the Boston roofing company wanted to increase their traffic and conversions? In order to solve the problem, keyword research would be required.

After discussing options, the next step might involve the paid ads manager talking with the Boston roofing company what services they want to target more often and where. It might also require some broadening of the keyword targeting.

For instance, the Massachusetts PPC manager might discover high search volume for "Cambridge, MA roofing companies" or even "Boston roof repair." First phrase targets a location near Boston, which may still be in the service area of the Boston roofing company. In the second phrase, a slightly different service is being targeted, which might result in a more lucrative replacement project if extensive repairs need to be made.

You can also benefit from keyword research when building out negative keyword lists. You can use them to prevent your paid ads from showing up in search queries that you know are not likely to result in a lead or sale.

An individual searching for "free roof repair services" or "when to advertise to roofers" is unlikely to buy a new roof. Your paid ads may appear if you use broad keyword targeting without negative keywords such as "free" or "advertise".

You can see that as you scale your ads and reduce wasted ad spend, the needs for keyword research become more complex.

Audience Research

When you hear audience research talked about in Boston paid advertising campaigns, it is often within the scope of scaling social media ads on Facebook and Instagram. There are options within Google Ads and Bing Ads for audience targeting as well though.

Let's take a look at audience research and targeting within Facebook Ads.

Boston paid advertising managers used Facebook's custom audiences extensively in the past. After all, one of the most attractive features of the Facebook Ads platform was the data it collected on its users, which Boston advertisers lined up to exploit.

A number of factors, including data privacy and machine learning, have had an impact on custom audiences over time.

In the iOS 14.5 update, Apple included a pop-up message that allowed users to opt out of tracking for personalized ads. The change negatively affected Facebook's ability to track user behavior across Boston and beyond. Even ad attribution reporting was affected.

For most Boston advertising agencies, machine learning algorithms greatly reduced the need for custom audiences and lookalike audiences. Their algorithm has become so good at understanding your ideal audience that you typically do more harm than good by choosing your own interest-based targeting.

While there will still be plenty of Boston paid ads agencies relying on custom audiences, it is clear the trend is moving toward broad targeting. You can see it for yourself. Every few months Facebook rolls out updates that gradually remove lesser-used interest-based targeting options. They even keep changing out "Advantage Detailed Targeting" is pushed in the ad set creation.

Interested in another take on audience targeting? Social Media Examiner's blog article does a good job of explaining recent changes.

This isn't to say audience research and targeting is going away. The targeting options within Boston ad campaigns will likely always be manageable to boost performance.

Landing Page Creation & Optimization

It is important to focus on a high quality landing page when running paid advertisements in Boston.

We begin by examining the landing pages on any paid advertising campaign in Boston to make sure they follow best practices. Our review takes into account the following factors:

• Is there a benefit-focused headline?
• Are there any images above the fold?
• What is the quality of the content? Is it well written?
• Do you have a lead form I can use right away?
• Are the call to actions easily noticeable?
• How quickly does the page load?
• Is social proof present?
• Does the page load on mobile devices?

Quality landing pages are the result of many factors.

Until you have a landing page that follows best practices, don't spend money on Boston paid advertising.

Ideally, you should never consider your landing page to be finished. Try running A/B testing every few months to continue refining your Boston sales pitch.

Sales Funnel Development

As an alternative to a landing page, you might want to consider building out one or more sales funnels. We rely heavily on sales funnels for lead generation, email audience building, and even online purchases.

For example, we have a client that promotes an online fitness challenge that you could even join from Boston. While managing their digital marketing we built multiple sales funnels within Click Funnels. Here are some of the funnels we made:

• We used squeeze pages to help capture email addresses while building awareness for the program.
• We used lead magnets to provide people with healthy eating tips, fitness tips, webinars, and sneak peaks in exchange for an email address.
• We used application funnels to push people toward the idea of wanting to apply to participate in exclusive programs.
• We used sales letter funnels to serve as the registration system for the online program.

There are many different types of funnels, so your Boston business isn't limited to only these options. Just keep in mind these can be incredibly helpful for gauging interest in a product or service, building out an email subscriber base, and selling a product or service online.

If you do decide to implement a funnel, take your time at it. Doing this type of work yourself can take weeks of training, whether you learn it at home by yourself or at a technical school in Boston. It can take years of experience to master funnels, however. You can save yourself some time by looking for a PPC management firm, like WebCitz, to handle the heavy lifting!

Conversion Rate Optimization

Having a clear understanding of your conversion rate is critical to making informed advertising decisions. The average conversion rate is between 1-3%, but that varies greatly between industries, products, and services throughout Boston.

Let's run through a basic scenario to help illustrate the impact of conversion rates.

1. You sell a $100 sweatshirt in Boston on your website.
2. You have a 1% conversion rate, meaning for every 100 Boston residents that visit your website you sell 1 sweatshirt.
3. You have a $0.50 average cost per click (CPC), meaning for each person in Boston that visits your website you spend 50 cents.
4. To sell 1 sweatshirt, you need 100 clicks from paid ads, which would cost you $50. This is known as your cost per acquisition (CPA).
5. Your return on ad spend (ROAS) would be 2x, meaning for every dollar spent in paid ads you get two dollars in return.

For most Boston businesses, this return on ad spend wouldn't be acceptable unless the margins were great.

To improve the situation, you hire a paid advertising agency to modify your campaign settings, ad creatives, and landing page experience.

Let's assume those improvements bring your conversion rate up from 1% to 2%. That means for every 100 visits to your website you now sell 2 sweatshirts. This is twice the return on ad spend! You might actually be profitable now selling those sweatshirts.

Understanding your conversion rate, and knowing how to improve it, can be crucial to the management of your Boston paid advertising.

Ad Creation

This is potentially one of the most important aspects of a Facebook Ads account.

When you run Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads in Boston, you are mostly targeting a cold audience that is more interested in quickly scrolling by advertisements in favor of seeing what their friends and family are up to online.

You have to develop an understanding of how to capture someone's attention in a split second.

To do this, you need build out amazing ad creatives that make someone stop for a second and say to themselves, "wait a second, what...?"

This doesn't happen by running the same ad creative over and over and over again. Even if it is a great ad, it will eventually become stale. You have to change things up frequently, even if you are just targeting people in Boston.

If you don't change out your ad creatives and test new ideas, you'll suffer from what is called "ad fatigue." This is the state in which your target audience (in Boston and beyond) has already seen your ad so many times that they instinctively scroll by it without ever interacting with your brand.

Don't be caught in this situation. You have to understand when to pause an ad because it isn't performing as well as it once did. You have to understand when to test new ideas, especially if you are emotionally attached to an ad that you spent a lot of time making.

This is one of the benefits of working with a PPC management company that helps Boston businesses, since we are proponents of testing new ad creatives regularly.

Ad Attribution Consulting

Knowing your ad attribution is important. If you don't know what ad attribution is, it is the process of determining which advertisement resulted in the conversion you experienced on your Boston website or funnel.

You might be suffering from ad attribution issues and not even know it.

Do you rely on Facebook Ads or Google Ads to tell you which campaigns, ad sets, and ads are performing the best?

If so, you are relying on incomplete data to form critical decisions about when to turn off or scale an ad.

For Boston ecommerce businesses running on Shopify, we recommend you look at ad attribution companies like Triple Whale or Northbeam to get a much clearer picture of your ad attribution.

For Boston content-based websites, or ecommerce websites in platforms other than Shopify, check out ad attribution companies like Wicked Reports or Hyros to get a better idea for how well each of your paid advertising campaigns are doing.

Free PPC Calculators for Boston, MA PPC Managers

Our digital marketers are so excited about managing Boston paid advertising campaigns, they worked with our web development team to build out some helpful PPC calculators that you might be interested in trying!

• Return on Ad Spend Calculator
• Cost Per Acquisition Calculator
• Churn Rate Calculator

View All PPC Tools

Why Choose WebCitz to Manage Your Boston, MA PPC Services

We want to be your Boston team's paid advertising partner! As a full-service PPC management company targeting Boston, we have multiple internal teams focused on search engine marketing, social media advertising, sales funnel development, and ad creative testing. In most Boston PPC companies, only one person handles all tasks, but this is not the case for us! You might not be testing campaign optimizations and creative ideas often enough with those Boston PPC companies to get the results you desire.

There are many factors to consider when researching paid ads agencies for your Boston business. The PPC strategies and tactics we suggest for your Boston company are backed by more than 18 years of experience. As a lead generation agency, we often use similar PPC tactics.

In addition, you should choose us as your paid advertising agency because you are confident we can help your Boston company grow. Our PPC experts are a good option for a number of reasons:

• It has been more than 18 years since we opened our doors, which makes us an industry leader.
• We rely heavily on sales funnels and paid advertising to shore up our organic search rankings.
• We do not outsource Boston digital marketing services, including PPC management, sales funnel development, or ad creative services since we have our own internal advertising team.
• It is likely that one of our teammates will answer your call within a few rings if you call during normal business hours.

Get in touch with our PPC experts to discuss what we can do for you in Boston! We often provide complete paid advertising management services to Boston small businesses, but we can also augment the marketing department of larger Boston corporations to fill in missing skill sets.

We hope you consider our company when searching for a PPC advertising agency for you Boston small business or large corporation. We would be happy to talk to you about your follow-up questions via email or phone if you have any.