Tag : digital marketing

Supercharge Your Google Ads With Every Possible Extension

Željislav Petrovič 9:29 am , February 19, 2025

Life science companies constantly face numerous challenges in capturing their audience’s attention on crowded search engine result pages (SERPs) with Google Ads. To make their ads stand out and attract their scientific audiences it is essential to present key information in a clear and engaging way. That’s where Google’s ad extensions (now called assets) come in as a game changer. They transform the ads from simple, inconspicuous text into rich, informative experiences by making them more noticeable, valuable, and engaging for the viewer.

By leveraging a variety of ad extensions, you can present all crucial information related to the products or services you promote (from unique product features to product variants/service packages with pricing, physical locations, and more) directly on the search results page. In this post, we’ll explore the different types of ad extensions, their benefits, and the best practices that can help you maximize the impact of your Google search marketing ads and most effectively gain the attention of your life science audience.

The Benefits of Using Ad Extensions in Google Ads

Maximizing the use of ad extensions in Google Ads has multiple benefits for life science marketers, including:

Increased Visibility: Extensions make your ads larger and more prominent on the search results page, capturing more attention from viewers.
Higher Click-Through Rate (CTR): By adding more hyperlinks and valuable information to your ads, extensions provide users with more reasons to click, resulting in a higher CTR.
Enhanced Ad Rank: Ad extensions contribute positively to Google’s Ad Rank formula, leading to improved ad positions and potentially lower costs per click.
Improved Relevance: Extensions allow you to tailor your ads to specific user searches, increasing relevance and engagement.
Better User Experience: By providing quick and easy access to relevant information, extensions improve the user experience and encourage interaction.

Overview of Google Ads Extensions and Their Suitability for Life Science Companies

To help you prioritize which ad extensions will deliver the most impact for your campaigns, we’ve split them into two categories: All-Stars: Must-Have Extensions and Other Extensions to Consider. This will make it easier to focus your efforts on the extensions that will likely yield the best results for you, while keeping additional options in mind to experiment with as needed.

All-Stars: Must-Have Extensions

1. Sitelink Extensions

What It Is: Sitelink extensions are additional links (clickable text assets with headline and description) that appear below your ad, helping users navigate directly to specific pages or sections they may want to browse on your site.
Use Cases: Link to individual product or service pages, collection / category pages, a contact page, quote request page, or page with downloadable content. This allows users to navigate directly to relevant content, decreasing bounce rates while improving engagement and conversion rates.
Who Should Use It: Companies with multiple landing pages that highlight various aspects of their offerings, showcase specific products or services, provide access to valuable resources like case studies and white papers, or allow users to take meaningful action.

*Example of Sitelink extensions for a distributor of lab homogenizers*

2. Callout Extensions

What It Is: Callout extensions are short, non-clickable descriptive text snippets that allow you to highlight the key product/service attributes and benefits within your ad.
Use Cases: You can use callout extensions to emphasize distinctive qualities, such as unique product/service features, certifications, warranties, fast shipping, or the availability of expert support.
Who Should Use It: Companies with differentiating product or service attributes that aren’t easily conveyed in the main ad text should consider using callouts to highlight these strengths.

Example of Callout extensions *for a distributor of lab homogenizers*

3. Structured Snippet Extensions

What It Is: Structured Snippet extensions allow you to showcase specific aspects of your products or services in structured text format. Unlike Callout extensions, which highlight key benefits, Structured Snippets present categorized details like product types, or service packages, to clarify the offerings in the ad.
Use Cases: Use structured snippets to list various product types you offer (e.g., “Cell Counters,” “Microplate Readers,” “Triple Quad LC-MS”) or the exact services you provide (e.g., “Cell Line Development,” “In Situ RNA Seq” “Bespoke Oncology Models”).
Who Should Use It: Companies with a broad product line or service catalog that want to showcase a variety of options directly in the ad, making it easy for users to see their range of offerings at a glance.

Example of Structured Snippet extensions *for a distributor of lab homogenizers*

4. Call Extensions

What It Is: Call extensions are special assets that display a clickable phone number in your ad, encouraging users to contact your sales or support team directly from the ad.
Use Cases: Sometimes a scientist wants to get straight to the point. Call extensions facilitate direct contact, enabling outreach directly from the ad.
Who Should Use It: Companies with dedicated sales teams who have a consultative sales process.

Example of Call extension *for a distributor of lab homogenizers*

These are the extensions that should be prioritized in your Google Ads campaigns, as they significantly enhance the relevance, engagement, and performance of your ads.

Other Extensions to Consider

1. Location Extensions

What It Is: Location extensions allow you to display your physical business address, a map link, and distance (if applicable) to your location from the searcher’s location in the search results, which helps potential customers to easily find and visit your physical location.
Use Cases: When you serve customers in specific locations, you can use this type of extension to show your business locations on the map..
Who Should Use It: Companies that have brick-and-mortar locations that clients may visit (such as company headquarters, laboratories, research facilities, or regional distributors) can use this extension to demonstrate convenience and reassurance of local availability while improving ad relevance. For companies which only deal with customers remotely, this is less relevant.

Example of Location extension for a provider of lab instrument services

2. Image Extensions

What It Is: Image extensions allow you to add visually compelling images to your ads, which can significantly enhance the appearance of your ads and make them more engaging.
Use Cases: You can use image extensions to visually showcase your products, team, facilities, software/app in action, or feature scientific images related to your scientific specialty.
Who Should Use It: Companies that have a strong collection of images related to their products / services and want to provide potential clients with a quick visual preview of their offerings in the ads.

Example of Image extension for *a distributor of lab homogenizers*

3. Lead Form Extensions

What It Is: Lead form extensions allow users to submit their information and sign up for something you offer directly through the ad without leaving the search results page.
Use Cases: Capture leads directly on the search results page using Google Ads’ built-in forms, allowing users to request more information, sign up for demos, or access downloadable content like whitepapers, application notes, or brochures.
Who Should Use It: Companies focused on lead generation, whether by providing high-value downloadable resources, offering product demos or simply making it easier for potential customers to get in touch.

*Example of Lead Form extension for a supplier of cell imaging systems*

4. Price Extensions

What It Is: Price extensions allow you to showcase a list of products or services with pricing right below your ad, giving potential customers instant visibility into the price of your offerings.
Use Cases: Provide potential customers with a quick cost estimate of your offerings by displaying the exact prices of individual featured products and product variants or starting prices of specific product types, product lines, and service packages within your ad.
Who Should Use It: Companies with standardized product/service prices, especially those that list a wide range of products or service packages on their website and do direct sales through the site.

Example of Price extensions for *a distributor of lab homogenizers*

5. Promotion Extensions

What It Is: Promotion extensions allow you to highlight special offers, discounts, or limited-time deals directly in your ad, making it easier for potential customers to see and take advantage of your promotions.
Use Cases: These extensions can be used to highlight promotional offers with monetary or percentage-based discounts alongside your ad, and attract users looking for special deals.
Who Should Use It: Companies that sell tangible products, software/app subscriptions, or service packages online and run promotions with limited-time discounts.

Example of Promotion extensions *for a distributor of lab homogenizers*

6. App Extensions

What It Is: App extensions allow you to embed a direct link for downloading your mobile app into the ad, making it easy for users to install and access your app without the need to visit your site first.
Use Cases: If you offer mobile apps (such as LIMS, ELNs, reference management apps, or other apps that support research work), you can use this extension to promote your app within the ad and drive downloads for your app.
Who Should Use It: Companies offering iOS or Android apps designed for scientists, especially those offering subscription-based apps or free apps that provide them with downstream marketing opportunities.

*Example of App extension for a vendor of* Android/iOS app

Best Practices for Using Ad Extensions in Life Science Campaigns

To maximize your ad extensions’ potential, make sure to follow these best practices:

1. Choose the Extensions Based on Your Campaign Goal

Not all ad extensions will be relevant to your campaign and business type. For instance, if you’re promoting an automated cell counter and your campaign objective is lead generation, callout extensions can highlight key features like high accuracy and speed, while a lead form extension can help capture leads from researchers interested in learning more. Make sure to align extensions with your objectives, whether it is generating leads, driving sales, or increasing website visits.

2. Use Extensions That Are Concise and Compelling

Scientists often scan information quickly, so it’s crucial to use ad extensions that are direct, clear, and impactful. Instead of long, generic phrases, focus on specific, concise, benefit-driven messaging. For example, rather than “Advanced Cell Counting Technology,” try “Fast & Accurate Cell Counting”’ to immediately convey value. Keep language precise and focused on what will resonate with your audience.

3. Tailor Extensions to Your Target Audience

Different audience segments within life sciences have different intentions and respond to different messaging. For example, if you’re targeting an audience with more scientific queries, sitelink extensions could lead to a white paper showcasing your technology, while for an audience with more commercial queries, they could lead to a case study showing improved results or cost savings. By aligning extensions with keyword intent, you can ensure your ads deliver the most relevant content to each audience segment.

4. Keep Extensions Fresh and Up To Date

Outdated extensions can lead to poor user experiences, negatively impacting ad performance and overall results. Make sure to regularly review and update all extensions you use, especially price extensions that should display valid product prices, promotion extensions that should reflect current special offers and discounts, and sitelink extensions that should direct people to up-to-date pages with useful resources.

5. Monitor Performance and Measure the Success of Extensions

Just like ad copy and keywords, ad extensions should be periodically evaluated for effectiveness. Use Google Ads performance reports to track and see which extensions drive the most clicks and conversions and which extensions do not generate any results. For example, if a callout extensions about key product features have a low engagement rate, consider testing different wording or replacing it with a more relevant extension. If your performance reports show that certain price or sitelink extensions drive meaningful results, try creating more extensions like these.

6. A/B Test Different Extensions and Messaging

Not all extensions will perform equally well in every campaign. To optimize performance and get the most from your ad extensions, continuously experiment with different extension types and messaging. For instance, test variations of callout extensions to see which callouts work best for your audience, or compare lead form extensions with sitelink extensions to determine which drives more conversions. Continuous testing and refining of your extensions will help you maximize ad visibility and engagement.

Following these practices will ensure you get the most out of your ad extensions. The ad relevance will be drastically improved, and you will see better engagement rates and more conversions coming from your campaigns.

Conclusion

Ad extensions provide a powerful way for life science marketers to enhance their Google Ads, providing more value to viewers, improving engagement, and ultimately driving more qualified leads or sales. After leveraging various extension types that are suitable for the products or services you promote and aligned with campaign goals, you will create a richer, more informative and engaging ad experience that resonates with audiences from the life science industry. Ready to supercharge your Google Ads campaigns with ad extensions? Contact BioBM for a customized Google Ads strategy tailored to the unique needs of your business.

"Want more cost effective Google Ads campaigns? Contact BioBM. Our deep search marketing expertise and fluency in the life sciences combine to give your campaigns an unbeatable edge. Know exactly how best to target scientists.Work with BioBM."

What is Generative Engine Optimization and can life science marketers make use of it?

Carlton Hoyt 1:01 pm , November 30, 2024

Everyone knows what search engine optimization (SEO) is, and many companies take great efforts to ensure they show up near the top of organic search results and benefit from the resulting traffic which comes at no unit cost. Traditional organic search results are slowly being replaced, however, with a lot of the focus being shifted to what Google calls a search generative experience (SGE; note that this is synonymous with AI Overview on Google Search, and the SGE is titled AI Overview on the search results page). It is widely accepted that as SGE becomes more prevalent, traffic to websites from legacy organic search results will decrease. This is due to two factors:

Fewer people will click on organic search links – or any links – when SGE is present.
The webpage links referenced in an SGE answer have lower clickthrough than standard organic search links.

*Legacy organic search results are far less prominent on search engine result pages (SERPs) when SGE is present.*

In other words, some searchers will see the answer provided by the AI overview, accept it as accurate and sufficient, and take no further action. These searchers who would have clicked through to something else in the past may simply not click on anything. The bounce rate of SERPs likely increases markedly when SGE is present. SGE also contains its own reference links, which will inevitably cannibalize some legacy organic search traffic. Data from FirstPageSage shows that the result is not dramatic (yet), but just the first link in the AI overview is already garnering 9.4% of clicks. While this compares to 39.8% for a top search position result or 42.9% for a rich snippet result when SGE results are not present, it still has to come from somewhere, and the FirstPageSage data shows SGE is now appearing on 31% of SERPs.

In this post, we’ll address what life science marketers can do, and should be doing, to address the new search paradigm of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

How Generative Engine Optimization and Search Engine Optimization Overlap

Luckily for search marketers, GEO and SEO have a lot of overlap. If you are doing well at optimizing for search, you are probably doing a fair job at optimizing for generative engines. A number of key SEO principles apply to GEO:

Perform keyword research to ensure you are addressing popular user queries and develop content targeting those keywords.
The content you create should be helpful, reliable content that demonstrates experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (what Google calls E-E-A-T).
Ensure you are signaling the relevance of your content through optimization of on-site and on-page factors (copy, metadata, schema, etc.) for targeted keywords.
Further signal the relevance of your website and content through off-site link building.
Ensure all your content is getting indexed.

Increasing the quantity of content, using clear language, and using technical language when appropriate also improve performance in both generative and organic search results. Other practices to improve the authority of a page or domain such as backlinking almost certainly play a role in GEO as well, as search AIs pick up on these signals (if not directly, then through their own understanding of organic search ranks).

There is further overlap if your goal in creating content is to get it seen by the maximum number of people instead of solely driving traffic to your website. In that case, disseminate your content as much as possible. While AI Overviews are not citing Reddit and other discussion forums as much as they once did, the more places your content lives, the more of a chance you’ll have that the AI will cite one of them, especially if your website itself is not well-optimized.

How GEO and SEO Differ in Practice

Optimizing for GEO is akin to specifically optimizing for rich snippets: there is additional emphasis on the content itself vs. ancillary factors. You need to pay more attention to how you provide information.

A seminal preprint paper by Pranjal Aggarwal et al uploaded to arXiv in late 2023 which coined the term generative engine optimization investigated a number of factors which they believe might help optimize for inclusion in SGE. Note that this paper has yet to pass peer review and was subject to a lot of scrutiny by SEO professionals, most intricately by Tylor Hermanson of Sandbox SEO who gave a number of compelling reasons to believe the data may be overstated, but having read the paper and a number of critiques I still think the paper contains meaningful and actionable lessons. There are two figures in this paper which I believe summarize the most interesting and useful information:

Table 1 shows how different tactics affected results. They used a metric called position-adjusted word count to measure the performance of websites in SGE before and after various GEO methods. I am more interested in this because it is an objective determination as opposed to the subjective impression metric, which basically involves feeding results into GPT-3.5 and seeing what it thinks. We can see from the results that specific types of content addition – adding quotations, statistics, or citations – have a notable impact on the position-adjusted word count for those websites. I point those out specifically not only because they have the greatest impact (along with fluency optimization), but they are not things which would necessarily be considered important if the only consideration for content creation was SEO. All the others which they tested and found to be useful – speaking clearly, fluently, technically, and authoritatively – are things which good SEO copy already needs to do. The inclusion of quotations, statistics, and citations are simply additional content.

The other interesting lesson from this paper is that the most impactful GEO methods differ based on the topic of the content.

While I would like to see this data presented the other way around – what methods are the highest performing for each category – it still makes the point. It also suggests that scientific content may receive disproportionate benefit from fluency optimization and authoritativeness. Again, those are already things which you should be factoring into your copy.

Practical Steps Life Science Marketers Should Take for GEO

If you are looking to optimize for generative engines, first ensure you are doing everything required for good SEO, as outlined above in the section of how GEO and SEO overlap. That is 80% of the job. To reiterate:

Perform thorough keyword research to address popular and relevant queries
Write in a way which demonstrates experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (EEAT)
Optimize on-site and on-page factors (copy, metadata, schema, etc.) for targeted keywords to demonstrate relevance
Further demonstrate relevance through off-site link building
Stay on top of Google Search Console and ensure your content is getting indexed
Write more / longer content
Write clearly and use appropriate technical language considering the subject matter

To specifically optimize for generative search beyond normal SEO, make a note to cite your sources and include statistics and / or quotations when possible. That is the lowest-hanging fruit and where most life science marketers will be fine stopping. If you really want to deep dive into generative engine optimization, however, you can use a tool such as Market Brew’s AI Overviews Visualizer to investigate how search engines’ semantic analysis algorithms perform cluster analysis with your website content and see how content is grouped and related.

Since AI overviews decrease overall clickthrough rates, another consideration for some marketers may be getting their content into the AI overviews independent of whether the content is hosted on your website or not. In these situations, you should try to disseminate your content widely across high-reputation sources, particularly Reddit. While it is not cited in SGE as much as it used to be, having your content in multiple places still increases the probability your content will be used.

Product Companies: Don’t Forget Merchant Center Feeds

While our anecdotal data shows that shopping results aren’t yet being included much in the life sciences, they are occasionally included in other industries and it would not be surprising to see them included more frequently in the life sciences in the future. When shown, these shopping results are very prominent, so ensure your Merchant Center feeds are functioning, include as much of your product portfolio as possible, and are well optimized. (Product feed optimization is a topic for another day.)

Summary

If you want to improve the likelihood that your content will appear in AI overviews and those overviews will contain links to your website, start with SEO best practices. That will get you far in both legacy organic search, which still receives most clickthroughs, as well as in SGE. From there, ensure your content which is the target of optimization efforts cites sources and includes statistics and quotations. If you sell products, ensure you are making optimal use of product data feeds.

GEO is neither difficult nor rocket science. By taking a few relatively simple steps, you’ll improve the likelihood of being included in AI overviews.

As this is a complex and novel topic, we’ve included an FAQ below.

"Need to ensure you are found where scientists are looking? Contact BioBM. We stay on top of the trends, tools, and technologies necessary to ensure our clients can reliably be found by their target scientific audiences.

What are you waiting for? Work with BioBM and improve your demand generation."

FAQ

Is employing current SEO best practices sufficient for good ranking in generative search?

Helpful? Yes. Sufficient? It depends.

If your products and services are relatively niche, and the questions you seek to answer with your content are likewise niche, then current SEO best practices may be sufficient. If there is a lot of competition in your field, then you may need to incorporate GEO-specific best practices into your content creation.

You can think of this similarly to how you think about SEO. If you are optimizing for niche or longer-tail terms, you might not need to do as much as you will if competing for more major, high-traffic terms. The more competition, the more you’ll likely need to do to achieve the best results. If your terms are sufficiently competitive that you are not ranking well in organic search, you should definitely not presume that whatever you are doing for SEO will reliably land you in AI overviews.

If my website has high organic search ranks, will it perform well in SGE?

I’m not sure anyone has a clear answer to this, especially since the answer still seems to be changing rapidly. Many of the studies which exist on the topic are almost a year old (an eternity in AI time).

Taking things chronologically:

A January 2024 study by Authoritas using 1,000 terms found that “93.8% of generative links (in this dataset at least) came from sources outside the top-ranking organic domains. With only 4.5% of generative URLs directly matching a page 1 organic URL and only 1.6% showing a different URL from the same organic ranking domain.”
A January 2024 study from seoClarity looked at the top 3 websites suggested by SGE and compared them to just the top 3 organic results on the basis of domain only. In contrast with the Authoritas study, they found that only 31% of SGE results had no domains in common with the top 3 organic results, 44% of SGE results had 1 domain in common, 24% had two domains in common, and 1% had all three domains in common. This suggests much more overlap between generative and legacy organic results, but it should be noted that it was a much smaller study of only 66 keywords.
A January 2024 study from Varn Media, using a similar but less informative metric to Authoritas, they found 55% of SGE results had at least one link which was the same as a top-10 organic result on a given SERP. One result in the top 10 is a low bar. They did not publish the size of their study.
A February 2024 study from SE Ranking which looked at 100,000 keywords found that SGE included at least one link from the top 10 organic search results 85.5% of the time. I don’t like this very low-bar metric, but it’s how they measured.
A slightly more recent Authoritas study from March 2024 using 2,900 branded keywords showed that “62% of generative links […] came from sources outside the top 10 ranking organic domains. With only 20.1% of generative URLs directly matching a page 1 organic URL and only 17.9% showing a different URL from the same organic ranking domain.” Obviously branded terms are a very different beast, and it should be no surprise that SGE still references the brand / product in question when using branded terms.
SE Ranking repeated their 100k keyword study in June 2024 and found similar results to their February study: 84.72% of AI overviews included at least one link from the top 10 organic search results. Again, I don’t love this metric, but the fact that it was virtually unchanged five months after the original study is informative.
Another seoClarity study published in August 2024 found far more overlap between legacy organic results and SGE results. Their analysis of 36,000 keywords found that one or more of the top 10 organic web results appeared in the AI Overview 99.5% of the time and 77% of AI overviews referenced links exclusively from the top 10 organic web results. Furthermore, they found that “80% of the AI Overview results contain a link to one or more of the top 3 ranking results. And when looking at just the top 1 position, the AI Overview contained a link to it almost 50% of the time.”

The most recent seoClarity study, suggesting a much greater deal of overlap between organic web results and SGE links, tracks with my recent experiences. While I would ordinarily discount my personal experiences as anecdotal, in the face of wildly different and rapidly evolving data I find them to be a useful basis of reference.

How much could my organic search traffic be impacted by SGE?

No one has any reliable metrics for that yet. Right now, I would trust FirstPageSage when they say the impact of SGE is not yet substantial, although I view their classification of it being “minimal” with some skepticism.

A lot of people like to point to a “study” posted in Search Engine Land which found a decline in organic search traffic between 18% and 64%, but it should be noted that this is not a study at all. It is simply a model based almost entirely on assumptions, and therefore should be taken with a huge grain of salt. (Also, 18-64% is a not a narrow enough range to be particularly informative regardless.)

Is SEO still worth doing?

Absolutely, hands down, SEO is still worthwhile. Legacy organic search results still receive the majority of clickthroughs on SERPs. However, as AI continues to improve, you should expect diminishing returns, as more people get their answer from AI and take no further action. It is therefore important that whatever you need to get across is being fetched by AI and displayed in SGE – regardless of whether it leads to a click or not.

I heard there is a hack to get your products cited by generative AI more often. What’s up with that?

A paper by a pair of Harvard researchers originally posted to arXiv in April 2024 titled “Manipulating Large Language Models to Increase Product Visibility” generated a lot of interest by both AI researchers and marketers looking for a cheat code to easily generate demand without any unit cost for that demand. As the paper suggests, they did find that LLMs can be manipulated to inserting specific products when the LLM is providing product recommendations. It is unrealistic that this is going to be applicable by life science marketers, however. It is a trial-and-error method involving high-volume testing of random, nonsensical text sequences added to your product’s metadata. This means that it would be nearly impossible to test on anything other than an open-source LLM which you are running an instance of yourself (and therefore able to force the re-indexing of your own content with extremely high frequency).

Another paper submitted to arXiv in June 2024 by a team of researchers from ETH Zurich titled “Adversarial Search Engine Optimization for Large Language Models” found that LLMs are vulnerable to preference manipulation through:

Prompt injection (literally telling the LLM what to do within the content)
Discreditation (i.e. badmouthing the competition)
Plugin optimization (similar to the above, but guiding the LLMs to connect to a desired API from which it will then obtain information)

While preference manipulation is simpler and feasible to implement, the problem with any overtly black-hat optimization technique remains: by the time the method is found and published, LLM developers are well on their way to fixing it, making it a game of whack-a-mole which could potentially end up in your website finding itself on a blacklist. Remember when Google took action against unnatural link building and had marketers disavow links to their sites? That was not fun for many black-hat search marketers out there. BioBM never recommends black-hat tactics for both their impermanence, likelihood of backfiring, and ethical reasons. There’s plenty of good things you can focus on to enhance your search optimization (and generative engine optimization) while providing a better experience for all internet users.

Don’t Optimize for Quality Score in Google Ads

Carlton Hoyt 9:51 am , March 27, 2024

Sometimes you just have to let Google be Google.

Large, complex algorithms which pump out high volumes of decisions based in part on non-quantifiable inputs are almost inherently going to get things wrong sometimes. We see this as users of Google Search all the time: even when you provide detailed search queries, the top result might not be the best and not all of the top results might be highly relevant. It happens. We move on. That doesn’t mean the system is bad; it’s just imperfect.

Quality score in Google Ads has similar problems. It’s constantly making an incredibly high volume of decisions, and somewhere in the secret sauce of its algos it makes some questionable decisions.

Yes, Google Ads decided that a CTR of almost 50% was “below average”. This is not surprising.

If your quality score is low, there may be things you can do about it. Perhaps your ads aren’t as relevant to the search terms as they could be. Check the search terms that your ads are showing for. Does you ad copy closely align with those terms? Perhaps your landing page isn’t providing the experience Google wants. Is it quick to load? Mobile friendly? Relevant? Check PageSpeed Insights to see if there are things you can do to improve your landing page. Maybe your CTR actually isn’t all that high. Are you making good use of all the ad extensions?

But sometimes, as we see above, Google just thinks something is wrong when to our subjective, albeit professional, human experience everything seems just fine. That’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Ultimately, you shouldn’t be optimizing for quality score. It is a metric, not a KPI. You should be optimizing for things like conversions, cost per action (CPA), and return on ad spend (ROAS), all of which you should be able to optimize effectively even if your quality score seems sub-optimal.

"Want to boost your ROAS? Talk to BioBM. We’ll implement optimized Google Ads campaigns (and other campaigns!) that help meet your revenue and ROI goals, all without the inflated monthly fees charged by most agencies. In other words, we’ll deliver metrics that matter. Let’s get started."

Blog / Demand Generation / Digital Marketing / Search Marketing 9:51 am , March 27, 2024

Avoid CPM Run of Site Ads

Carlton Hoyt 7:16 pm , March 6, 2024

Not all impressions are created equal.

We don’t think about run of site (ROS) ads frequently as we don’t often use them. We try to be very intentional with our targeting. However, we recently had an engagement where we were asked to design ads for a display campaign on a popular industry website. The goal of the campaign was brand awareness (also something to avoid, but that’s for another post). The client was engaging with the publisher directly. We recommended the placement, designed the ads, and provided them to the client, figuring that was a done job. The client later returned to us to ask for more ad sizes because the publisher came back to them suggesting run of site ads because the desired placement was not available.

Some background for those less familiar with display advertising

If you are familiar with placement-based display advertising, you can skip this whole section. For the relative advertising novices, I’ll explain a little about various ad placements, their nomenclature, and how ads are priced.

An ad which is much wider than it is tall is generally referred to as a billboard, leaderboard, or banner ad. These are referred to as such because their placement on webpages is often near the top, although that is far from universally true, and even where it is true they often appear lower on the page as well. In our example on the right, which is a zoomed-out screenshot of the Lab Manager website, we see a large billboard banner at the top of the website (outlined in yellow), multiple interstitial banners of various sizes (in orange) and a small footer banner (green) which was snapped to the bottom of the page while I viewed it.

An ad which is much taller than it is wide is known as a skyscraper, although ones which are particularly large and a bit thicker may be called portraits, and large ads with 1:2 aspect ratios (most commonly 300 x 600 pixels) are referred to as half page ads. Lab Manager didn’t have those when I looked.

The last category of ad sizes is the square or rectangle ads. These are ads which do not have a high aspect ratio; generally less than 2:1. We can see one of those highlighted in purple. There is also some confusing nomenclature here: a very common ad of size 300 x 250 pixels is called a medium rectangle but you’ll also sometimes see it referred to as an MPU, and no one actually knows the original meaning of that acronym. You can think of it as mid-page unit or multi-purpose unit.

As you see, there are many different placements and ad sizes and it stands to reason that all of these will perform differently! If we were paying for these on a performance basis, say with cost-per-click, the variability in performance between the different placements would be self-correcting. If I am interested in a website’s audience and I’m paying per click, then I [generally] don’t care where on the page the click is coming from. However, publishers don’t like to charge on a per-click basis! If you are a publisher, this makes a lot of sense. You think of yourself as being in the business of attracting eyeballs. Even though to some extent they are, publishers do not want to be in the business of getting people to click on ads. They simply want to publish content which attracts their target market. Furthermore, they definitely don’t want their revenues to be at the whims of the quality of ads which their advertisers post, nor do they want to have to obtain and operate complex advertising technology to optimize for cost per view (generally expressed as cost per 1000 views, or CPM) when their advertisers are bidding based on cost per click (CPC).

What are Run Of Site Ads and why should you be cautious of them?

You may have noticed that the above discussion of ad sizes didn’t mention run of site ads. That is because run of site ads are not a particular placement nor a particular size. What “run of site” means is essentially that your ad can appear anywhere on the publisher’s website. You don’t get to pick.

Think about that. If your ads can appear anywhere, then where are they appearing in reality? They are appearing in the ad inventory which no one else wanted to buy. Your ads can’t appear in the placements which were sold. They can only appear in the placements which were not sold. If your insertion order specifies run of site ads, you are getting the other advertisers’ leftovers.

That’s not to say that ROS ads are bad in all circumstances, nor that publisher-side ad salespeople who try to sell them are trying to trick you in any way. There is nothing malicious going on. In order to get value from ROS ads, you need to do your homework and negotiate accordingly.

How to get good value from ROS ads

Any worthwhile publisher will be able to provide averaged metrics for their various ad placements. If you look at their pricing and stats you may find something like this:

Ad Format	CTR	CPM
Multi-unit ROS	0.05%	$40
Billboard Banner	0.35%	$95
Medium Rectangle	0.15%	$50
Half Page	0.10%	$50
Leaderboard	0.10%	$45

These are made-up numbers from nowhere in particular, but they are fairly close to numbers you might find in the real world at popular industry websites. Your mileage may vary.

One good assumption is that if people aren’t clicking the ad, it means they’re not paying attention to it. There is no other reason why people would click one ad at a much higher rate than others. Averaged out over time, we cannot assume that the ads in those positions were simply better. Likewise, there would be no logical reason why the position of an ad alone would cause a person to be less likely to click on it aside from it not getting the person’s attention in the first place. This is why billboard banners have very high clickthrough rates (CTR): it’s the first thing you see at the top of the page. Publishers like to price large ads higher than smaller ads, but it’s not always the case that the larger ads have a higher CTR.

With that assumption, take the inventory offered and convert the CPM to CPC using the CTR. The math is simple: CPC = CPM / (1000 * CTR).

Ad Format	CTR	CPM	Effective CPC
Multi-unit ROS	0.05%	$40	$80
Billboard Banner	0.35%	$95	$27
Medium Rectangle	0.15%	$50	$33
Half Page	0.10%	$50	$50
Leaderboard	0.10%	$45	$45

By converting to CPC, you have a much more realistic and practical perspective on the value of an ad position.

Here, we see those really “cheap” run of site ads are actually the most expensive on a per click basis, and the billboard banner is the cheapest! Again, even for more nebulous goals like brand awareness, we can only assume that CTR is a proxy for audience attentiveness. Without eye tracking or mouse pointer tracking data, which publishers are highly unlikely to provide, CTR is the best attentiveness proxy we have.

With this information, you can make the case to the publisher to drop the price of their ROS ads. They might do it. They might not. Most likely, they’ll meet you somewhere in the middle. By making a metrics-driven case to them, however, you’ll be more likely to get the best deal they are willing to offer. (ProTip: If you’re not picky when your ads run, go to a few publishers with a low-ball offer a week or so until end of the month. Most publishers sell ads on a monthly basis, and if they haven’t sold all their inventory, you’ll likely be able to pick it up at a cut rate. They get $0 for any inventory they don’t sell. Just be ready to move quickly.)

The other situation in which ROS ads are useful and can be a good value are when you want to buy up all the ad inventory. Perhaps a highly relevant publisher has a highly relevant feature and that all ads up to an audience you want to saturate. You can pitch a huge buy of ROS ads which will soak up the remaining inventory for the period of time when that feature is running, and potentially get good placements at the ROS price. Just make sure you know what you’re buying and the publisher isn’t trying to sell their best placements on the side.

Lessons

Run of site ads aren’t all bad, but novice advertisers can end up blowing a bunch of money if they’re not careful.
Regardless of placement, always be mindful of the metrics of the ads you’re buying.
Even if your campaign goals are more attention-oriented than action-oriented, CPC is a good proxy for attentiveness.

"Want better ROI from your advertising campaigns? Contact BioBM. We’ll ensure your life science company is using the right strategies to get the most from your advertising dollars."

Blog / Demand Generation / Digital Marketing 7:16 pm , March 6, 2024

The End Is Not Nigh (now let’s get serious…)

Carlton Hoyt 1:25 pm , December 15, 2015

People love to decry the end of marketing. It’s a good attention-getter. While those who shout about the coming of the end of marketing from their soapboxes are usually guilty of lacking realism or using poor logic, they do make us think about the future and that can be a learning experience. Let’s take an example…

Knowledge @ Wharton recently published an interesting, albeit narrow-sighted and overly apocalyptic article about the end of marketing and what, according to the author, will be the very narrow opportunities to engage audiences that will remain in the future. The author does a very good job of identifying trends but a very bad job of predicting what the future will likely look like, but both the good and the bad provide important lessons and highlight valuable opportunities.

First, the trends. No reason to discuss these much because most should be more or less obvious to anyone reading this.

People would rather listen to other people than brands.
People are going to greater lengths to avoid the onslaught of advertisement.
Marketing technology “cannot truly understand the complexities of consumer intent” and therefore hitting the trifecta of the right message on the right channel at the right time is exceedingly difficult. (This I would actually say is up for debate. It’s a gray area. A discussion for another time, perhaps…)
Marketers are overwhelming digital channels, further driving users to avoid marketing out of simple necessity. See point #2.

And here are the author’s four corresponding points of how he envisions the future:

“As consumers bypass media with greater ease, the social feed is the wormhole to the entire online experience.”
“As consumers outcompete marketers for each other’s attention, every piece of media contained in the feed is not only shareable, but shoppable.” – basically, he’s arguing that social channels become capable of performing transactions.
“As the individual controls the marketing experience, communication shifts from public to semi-private.” In other words, people move from things like Facebook to things like Snapchat, where there are fewer ads and more privacy.
Only two types of marketing will remain: discounts / sales and transparent sponsored content.

These predictions amount to a wild fantasy.

The most obvious flaw in the author’s reasoning is that somehow a completely shoppable social media ecosystem would evade the rules that everyone else has to play by – namely that when marketing becomes overwhelming, the audience will block it out or leave. This also ignores the plain fact that the large majority of the things that people buy are not found organically via social media. There is no shortage of people who shop. Decisions may be influenced in the social sphere, and perhaps some impulse decisions both begin and end there, but those are the exception; the overwhelming majority of purchasing decisions do not occur entirely within the social sphere and that would not change if social channels were empowered with transactability.

The real world contains a great deal of equilibrium. The ability to target people and their ability to tune it out is a balancing act. It is a cat and mouse game. Technology works both ways, and as new channels and technologies are born there become more ways to reach customers. However, as channels are flooded, the impact of each individual effort diminishes. Marketing self-regulates by decreasing its own ROI as utilization of any particular channel increases.

So What Will the Future of Marketing Look Like?

There are definitely many channels that will continue their trend towards ineffectiveness. It’s increasingly likely that audiences, fed up with maddening digital display advertising techniques, continue to adopt ad blocking technology and erode the potential of that channel. Email, while still rated as a high-ROI channel, is looking like it may have a perilous future as email service providers become better at filtering out promotions. Social media will certainly take on a larger share of permission-based marketing, but it will remain a risky business to rely too much on “rented” audiences. Increasing utilization of content marketing will continue to add noise and, in turn, increase its own cost by requiring better and better content to obtain the inherently limited resource it seeks to obtain: the audience’s attention. Increased use of social media may, if adoption increases as we project, fall victim to a similar effect, limiting brands’ ability to market effectively using social channels.

Not all developments will be bad. A decline in interruption tactics will lead to a fundamental shift in how marketing is viewed from a tool to generate demand to a mechanism to deliver value to audiences and a source of strategic advantage. Customer-centric resources and other owned platforms will proliferate as companies seek new ways to deliver value to customers while increasing the affinity level between customer and brand. These companies with strong brand affinities will create sustainable advantage for themselves as they shortcut and compress the customer decision journeys. Additionally, new and yet unknown channels will develop, and at increasingly rapid pace. Consider that until about 20 years ago, no digital channels existed at all. Accelerating technology development will continue this trend and also enable more personalized, coordinated, and targeted marketing in a manner which is more accessible and usable by companies of all sizes, budgets and capabilities.

I’m not going to try to pinpoint detailed specifics – I’m not claiming to be a psychic and it would be a waste of your time to read simple conjecture – but there are things that we can be fairly certain of given current trends, a bit of logic, and a hint of foresight. Marketing isn’t going anywhere, and while in the future it may not look quite like it does today, it will still be something that Philip Kotler would distinctly recognize.

"Marketing is a race, but unlike the 200 meter sprint there aren’t any referees that will call you for a false start. Get a jump on your competition, charge forward on the path to market domination, and start leveraging the next generation of marketing strategies today. Work with BioBM."

Blog / Branding / Demand Generation / Digital Marketing / Marketing Communications / Marketing Strategy / Social Media 1:25 pm , December 15, 2015

Personalized Experiences

Carlton Hoyt 2:52 pm , July 18, 2014

The image below is of a Target which is near me. It shows what you would see if you just walked in the exterior doors of the Target. Can you think of any problem with this?

You could walk in that Target looking for a sweater, I could be looking for toothpaste, and someone else could be looking for an end table. Regardless of our very different reasons for being there, however, we’re presented with the same initial experience. That’s not helpful.

Now Target is a little bit limited by the fact that they have physical stores. It’s not particularly easy – in fact it’s downright impractical if not impossible – to personalize a physical experience for every customer who walks into your store. You can’t exactly modify the physical store for every customer. However, you can readily personalize the experience in the digital realm. Despite this, even the largest life science tools and services companies fail to do so.

The world’s best e-commerce sites, such as Amazon or eBay, don’t have that problem. They use what they know about you, and also what they know about the products they’re selling, to try to get you from where you are to where you’re going as fast as possible. (Note this doesn’t only apply to personalization, although personalization is an important part.) However, you don’t need to be a billion-dollar company to personalize digital experiences. There are many tools that make website personalization accessible to mid-sized companies and even which make financial sense for small companies with a strong e-commerce focus.

As we’ve discussed in a previous report, research from the Corporate Executive Board has shown that increasing the simplicity of the buying journey can lead to an 86% increase in initial purchases of a product and a greater than 100% increase in the likelihood that a product or brand will be recommended. Helping customers solve their problems has been shown to elicit a more positive reaction than any other brand experience. Help your customers solve their problems in a simple, streamlined manner, and they’ll reward you with their business. Personalization is an important part of doing so.

"Looking to improve the performance of your life science company’s e-commerce site? Want to streamline your customers’ purchasing decisions and earn more of their business in doing so? Contact BioBM. We’ll help you implement practices which not only improve performance, but provide strategic advantage for your company over the competition."

Blog / Customer Experience / Digital Marketing 2:52 pm , July 18, 2014

New Paper: Superior Experiences

biobm 9:10 pm , May 28, 2014

BioBM Consulting has published a new paper entitled: “Superior Experiences – How Small Life Science Companies Can Out-Compete Large, Established Competition.” This paper describes why customer experience can be a comparative strategic advantage for smaller life science companies and why many large companies fail to provide excellent customer experience, details the foundation for strong, branded customer experiences, and discusses what makes for an experience which imparts value onto the brand. Life science marketers who read the paper should gain a better understanding of some of the fundamentals of branding, customer experience, and how the two are closely tied to one another.

Keeping with BioBM’s mission of providing resources to the life science marketing community, “Superior Experiences” is available free of charge. To learn more about the new paper, to preview it, or to request a copy, please visit: https://biobm.com/idea-farm/reports-papers/

News 9:10 pm , May 28, 2014

Why Remarketing Is Critical

Carlton Hoyt 11:26 am , March 13, 2014

It’s part of my job to be very familiar with the life science tools sector. The need for familiarity commonly drives me to the websites of a number of different manufacturers – this has been especially true recently. However, if you were to ask me how many of those manufacturers presented me with their brand again after leaving their website, there are only a handful. Within that handful, however, I could name 100% of the companies. The rest? Maybe 25% to 50%, off hand, and only that many because I make a note of knowing my market.

This illustrates two key things. 1) Your brand (and product line) is much more likely to be remembered if you present it to your audience repeatedly, and 2) there is a surprising underutilization of remarketing within life science tools. The former is an opportunity. The latter is a problem, but could be an opportunity.

Most buying journeys in the life sciences aren’t completed in a single instance. With the exception of commodity-like items and repeat purchases, most purchasing decisions involve multiple “sessions” of consideration. In other words, scientists by and large don’t just sit down and buy something. They take time to consider and evaluate their needs and their options. A purchasing decision is more likely to last days, weeks or even months than it is minutes or hours. However, most demand generation-focused marketing campaigns are geared towards a customer taking action in a single sitting.

For instance, say a customer finds your company through search. (If a scientist is proactively looking for a product, there’s about a 45% chance that they performed a search as their first action within their buying journey.) Unless that customer is then sufficiently satisfied with where they are in the buying journey to take the next step then and there, they will leave. Without remarketing, that customer is gone. You’re left to sit and hope that the customer remembers you. With remarketing, however, that’s not a problem. You can present your brand, product, and / or message to that potential customer multiple times, reinforcing your brand and message to that prospect. This isn’t only applicable to search, however. The same could be said for any type of marketing or advertising – email, social, print, etc. – where the potential is there for the customer to go to your website, view some information, then walk away never to be seen again. If you think about it, that potential exists for just about any type of campaign.

Does remarketing sound complicated? It’s not. Remarketing does not require any fancy software or tools. Anyone with a basic knowledge of Google Analytics, AdWords, and the ability to paste a few lines of code into their website can set up remarketing. Even video remarketing with YouTube is easy to set up.

As with most forms of advertising, remarketing should be as targeted as possible given the practical considerations of audience segmentation. For instance, ads targeted to specific product lines which a customer viewed will generally more effective than a single, broad message to anyone that’s visited your website.

Most companies are letting a lot of good prospects get away. These are prospects that have shown interest through the activity of going to your website and viewing particular content. These are prospects that can be targeted, but in most cases aren’t because companies don’t know who they are. By leveraging the power of remarketing, life science tools companies can stay in front of scientists who have shown interest in their brand and products, helping to ensure that they stay in consideration during the scientists’ buying journeys and, ultimately, increasing their conversion.

"Do you need BioBM to perform remarketing? I’ll be completely honest – you probably don’t. However, we make your remarketing better. We ensure your ads and messages are effective. We ensure your campaign is efficient. And we utilize all of our collective knowledge, skills, and passion to ensure that your remarketing efforts hit the ground running, to maximal effect. Let’s create value for your company together. Give us a call at +1 313-312-4626 or send us an email. We’re looking forward to sharing our knowledge with you."

Blog / Demand Generation 11:26 am , March 13, 2014

New Paper on Decision Engines

biobm 7:11 pm , February 24, 2014

BioBM Consulting has published a new paper which outlines the current problems facing scientists when attempting to make a purchasing decision, the negative impacts this is having on scientists, and how decision engines can be leveraged to create transformational change within life science markets. “How Decision Engines Will Reshape the Life Science Buying Journey” explains why information has become the enemy of purchasers and suppliers alike, explains what decision engines are and how they are already creating disruptive change in other markets, and outlines a general framework for creating decision engines.

All with all BioBM papers, “How Decision Engines Will Reshape the Life Science Buying Journey” is available free of charge to all those in the life science tools & services industry. To learn more about the new report, to preview it, or to request a copy, please visit: https://biobm.com/idea-farm/reports-papers/

News 7:11 pm , February 24, 2014

User Testing & Conversion

Carlton Hoyt 10:59 pm , October 3, 2012

Price comparison of Amazon Supply vs. other large life science distributors I did a small study earlier this week to compare prices across six major US life science distributors (you can read about it here). Because of that, I had occasion to go through those companies’ websites and look for products. All of these companies are, by industry standards, fairly large companies, and all of them sell online. For some of them, online sales is a very significant portion of their revenues. I would bet that for most it’s their fastest growing sales channel. Yet most had glaring problems in their website. One had search results that blinded the user with bright yellow highlighted terms all over the page. Another had a high percentage of products that were not identified by their model number. Yet another had an annoyingly persistent “featured product” box that showed up front and center in the search results but never had anything in it. There was a search that seemingly only used “OR” logic for every word in the term – the more terms you added, the less relevant the results became.

These are glaring errors that hurt user experience, and they could be easily identified if these companies did user testing. This is an important point, as anything that takes away from the experience of using your website decreases your competitiveness by driving users away from your website (and likely to your competitors websites).

For those who may not be familiar with it, user testing involves someone who is within your target demographic and recording their interaction with their website. You usually give them a generic task to perform on your site and they speak their thoughts as they perform the task. The output comprises a series of screencasts with voice recordings which are then analyzed to find problems with the user experience or more generally find things that users like and don’t like (there are other techniques and tools that can enhance the output as well).

User testing is very common in many markets, but seems to be relatively uncommon in the life sciences. That may, in no small part, be due to the inherent difficulty in getting a group of scientists to sit down and do a user test, but we find that to be more of an excuse than a reason. User testing may simply not be in the culture of life science marketing, contrasted to it being fairly prevalent in B2C markets. Whatever the reason that it isn’t used, there is no good reason that it shouldn’t be used.

Anything that adversely affects user experience will have a negative impact on the purpose of the website – be it lead generation, sales, or simply progressing users through the purchasing funnel. User testing, especially in conjunction with website analytics, can be a powerful tool to improve user experience and the overall performance of your life science company’s website.

"Even if you have a new website, it’s important to gauge user feedback of it in order to improve user experience and increase conversion. User testing allows you to do just that. Contact BioBM and we’ll help you acquire and analyze feedback from scientists that will help you improve your web properties – and your sales."

Blog / Demand Generation / Digital Marketing 10:59 pm , October 3, 2012