20+ of Our Best Vertical Marketing Guides Across 14 Industries

How helpful are best practices? Well, I guess it depends on several factors as in – what they are? Who are they coming from? How relevant are they to your business?

But don’t you sort of despise that phrase? As marketers, we hear it on a day to day basis, we spend our mornings scrolling through article upon article studying the best practices for SEO, paid search, social media, and the list goes on.

But is following these so called “best practices” enough?

Absolutely not!

At WordStream, our clients and brand followers span across every vertical you could think of, from travel to healthcare to SaaS companies. Our audience holds expertise in a variety of areas, so not all of the so-called best practices are relevant for every business.

Google is even placing a stronger focus on vertical specific functionality within the SERPs, like automotive carousel ads and hotel ads, so advertisers need to be aware of what’s going on in their industry to stay up-to-date and ahead of their competition. This is why we’ve decided to build a collection of guides for marketers in almost every industry! As time goes on, we’ll continue to create even more industry-specific content (and include a recap in this library list below).

Find your industry below, and start exploring the “best practices” that are actually relevant to your business.

#1: Real Estate

• 35 Radical Real Estate Tips: Did you know that 92% of buyers use the internet to begin their house hunting quest (according to the National Association of Realtors)? This guide provides 35 out-of-the box marketing tips for those in the reality business. It includes everything from tips to stay ahead of competition to details on how to build a Google My Business Page.
• Guide: How to Use Google Ads for Apartment Marketing: This guide was written by a guest author who happens to be the marketing director for a real estate marketing agency so his tips are spot on since his background is rooted in the industry. He starts off by discussing the challenges apartment marketers face, and then dives into some paid search specific tactics to capture the relevant audience looking to rent or purchase an apartment.

#2: Food & Beverages

25 Restaurant Marketing Ideas: Tips & Strategies to Win in the Food Business Aw, my favorite industry! Who doesn’t love food? I’ve always dreamed about being a restaurant marketer, but have learned that it’s lot harder than one would suspect. Why? Because competition is incredibly stiff. You need to have a full-proof method of being found, have stellar reviews and provide mouth-watering content. This guide provides some creative steps that’ll make your reservation list fill-up in no time.

#3: Startups

The Complete Guide to PPC for Startup Marketing: 9 Tops to Grow a Startup with Paid Search: The idea of working for a startup is trendy and thrilling in theory, but in reality it can be stress-filled and frustrating. Budgets and bandwidths are stretched thin, and every marketing dollar spend needs to be spent wisely. This guide is here to help startup marketers profit from paid search rather than join the 90% of startup companies that fail.

#4: Travel & Hospitality

• 7 Tips to Get Vacation-Worthy Return from PPC in the Travel Industry: Did you know that the internet accounts for over 74% of both leisure and travel planning? Yup! It’s a big deal for travel marketers to be online, and with the majority of travelers starting the booking process with search, having a robust paid search strategy is critical. This guide dives into seven specific paid search tips to implement and entice travelers to book with you over your competitors.

• Google Ads Hotel Ads Improve How You Reach Guests: There are so many sweet things hotel marketers can do on Google now, including the ability to show detailed information to compare hotels in a region right on the search results page. Check out this post for details and instructions on how to get ahead of the game.
• Travel Is Trending: 5 Data-Driven Travel Marketing Tips: New data from Bing should give you some great marketing ideas. For example, most travel companies should be most aggressive with their advertising during summer and winter.
• 4 Travel Marketing Trends You Need to Act On: Travel marketers are faced with a whole slew of challenges. Firstly, searchers do a TON of shopping way before they’re actually ready to buy, resulting in tons of dirty data and mixed signals for marketers. To make matters worse, the market is super saturated and the big guys have an insane cash flow, allowing them to offer crazy deals with absurdly low margins. So, how can the average travel company compete? It’s all about understanding the market trends and finding creative ways to leverage them to your advantage.

#5: B2B & Software

• The PPC Guide for B2B Professionals: B2B ain’t easy! With longer sales cycles, fierce competition, and niche markets, getting leads from Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords) can seem somewhat impossible. Fear no more! This guide will walk you through all you need to know to succeed in this challenging space.
• 3 Lessons Learned from PPC Advertisers in the B2B Software Industry: Are you working in a niche B2B software industry attempting to generate leads through PPC? Well, you’re also likely on the verge of throwing a baseball at your computer. DON’T DO IT! These 3 lessons gathered from WordStream customers will set you back on track to PPC success so you can breathe easy.
• 3 Game-Changing PPC Tips to Attract Qualified Leads to Your Un-Glamorous SaaS Offerings: The average worker spends 46.7 hours a week working, and I’d be willing to wager that a large chunk of employees spend a majority of their time in the trenches of a software system. Yet, generating qualified leads in PPC in the SaaS space is insanely challenging! This guide provides three action-oriented tips to attract qualified leads to your un-glamorous SaaS offerings.
• 6 Marketing Strategies to Speed Up a Longer Sales Cycle: Whether B2B or B2C, longer sales cycles are downright frustrating. This article provides 6 strategies to reduce your longer sales cycles and escort more leads down the funnel faster.

#6: Home & Garden

3 PPC Strategies to Out-Sell Your Home & Garden Competitors: Staying on top of sales, promos, and weather fluctuations is not easy if you’re in the Home & Garden biz. Tweaking each ad for a special offer can eat up hours upon hours of your work week. Luckily, this guide details some industry specific tips that will save you time and leave your yard flourishing.

#7: E-Commerce

• Content Marketing for E-Commerce: 3 Great Examples: We all know content marketing is a critical component of your marketing ecosystem, but for e-commerce companies the content put out needs to be truly remarkable. These three examples with inspire, motivate, and push you to improve your e-commerce content and gain more brand ambassadors.
• 9 Tips to Dramatically Increase E-Commerce Sales with Killer Product Pages: If you’re anything like me then you have major online shopping ADD, and have no problem abandoning a shopping cart. This is why often product pages can make or break an e-commerce transaction from occurring. These 9 tips will help you dramatically increase e-commerce transactions on your product pages.
• Looking for Love in All the ROI Places: Winning at E-Commerce PPC: A big reason e-commerce sites lose conversions is because they cast nets that includes users who can’t afford to buy their products or aren’t ready to make a purchase. Use this guide to better target those ready to buy.
• The WordStream Guide to Product Marketing: How to Make People Want What You’re Selling: Product marketing is a complex and multifaceted discipline, but that doesn’t mean that small businesses can’t leverage the tried-and-
  true techniques used by larger companies to find new audiences for their products and launch successful product marketing campaigns. Learn how here!
• 5 Tips for Dominating Your E-Commerce Keyword Research: Finding new keywords for an e-commerce account can be tough, but you’ll be well on your way these five clever strategies.

#8: Local Businesses

4 Ways Local Businesses Can Get More Out of Google: If you’re running a local storefront Google might be the last thing on your mind. You’re more concerned about inventory, in-store transactions, and foot-traffic. Well, if you’re not easily found on Google, then you’re probably losing about 80% of your potential sales. Honestly, brick and mortar businesses need to start taking their organic and paid search strategies seriously or their local competitors are going to be sweeping away their business with a few simple searches. These 4 steps will help store front owners get their Google presence on track.

#9: Healthcare

Need a Stronger Prescription for PPC? 6 Paid Search Tips for Healthcare Marketers: Yikes, healthcare is somewhat of a mystery to me, with fields within fields, and dictionaries of medical terminology that are unrecognizable to the non-healthcare worker, like myself; healthcare is by far one of the most challenging industries to be in when it comes to paid search. This in-depth guide details the specific PPC challenges faced by healthcare marketers, and then dives into six actionable steps to take in order to succeed with paid search.

#10: Agencies

• 7 PPC Agency Strategies to Save Time and Get Better Results for Your Clients: So you’re an agency trying to juggle multiple PPC accounts simultaneously? Or perhaps you also manage PR, video production, and social ads for your clients? Agency life is tough! Follow this seven step guide to save time and get better results for your clients.
• How to Get New Clients: Top 6 Tips from Successful PPC Agencies: WordStream’s, Erin Sagin, reached out to a seasoned group of SEM agency experts to gather these six tips on getting more clients. From Ginny Marvin to David Szetela, these tips are worth reading if you’re an agency looking to grow.

#11: Services

Content Marketing for Service Professionals: 3 Great Examples: Quality content marketing is critical for service businesses. Why? Well, if you’re able to position yourself as an authority on the topic related to your business, then you’re also greatly upping the chance that leads will turn to you when they need your services. This is what content marketing is all about, and these three companies are killing it with content. Check them out and steal their strategies.

#12: Law

Law Firm Marketing: 9 Tips for Winning More Clients with PPC: Law-related keywords are some of the most expensive on Google, competition is fierce, and getting qualified searchers is challenging! These 9 tips will guide law firm marketers to making better decisions with their PPC efforts to help them stop wasting tons of money and start gaining more high-profile cases.

#13: Higher Education

7 Super-Smart PPC Tips for Higher Education Marketing: Education is a universal desire and often requirement to survive and thrive in today’s society. With search engines playing a huge role in the research phase for potential students, higher education marketers need to be competitive. This vertical comes with its unique challenges, like expensive keywords, longer sales cycles that are hard to predict and control, and regulations that marketers need to be aware of. This guide dives into the seven strategies higher education marketers should be leveraging to get the best results possible with their PPC efforts.

#14: Retail

9 Money-Making PPC Tips for Retail Marketing: 60% of people begin shopping by using a search engine to find the products they want, and 81% of shoppers conduct online research before they make a purchase. Google has changed the way we shop! Learn how to stand out from the competition and make the most of new ways of shopping.

Additional Resources:

Curious how your Google Ads performance metrics measure up compared to other businesses in your industry vertical? Check out our full study of average Google Ads benchmarks for 20 popular industries:

How important are phone calls to your business? Explore the top 10 industries that MUST be using call tracking.

Are you curious if your industry falls into the high spend category on Google. Check out the top 10 industries that contributed most the Google’s earnings.