Things I've Been Wrong About: A Non-Exhaustive List

Any experienced digital marketer knows that there’s a constant flow of new opportunities, ideas and tactics that emerge as ad platforms change and best practice develops. They also know that with a constant flow of new information they’re bound to make mistakes and focus energy on things that just don’t work as expected.

Ultimately this is a good thing. Without calculated risk taking, accounts start to stagnate and competitors pull ahead. Even if a test doesn’t work, there’s still opportunity to learn from it and gather valuable information for the next roll of the dice.

In the spirit of learning from our mistakes, here’s a list of some of the ideas I’ve had that didn’t quite pan out as expected. More importantly, I’ll also share what I learned from each of them and what I’d do differently next time.

1) Smart Campaigns

Partial credit for this one - the general idea was OK but it came at the wrong time. Smart Campaigns were a precursor to automated campaign types like Performance Max and Demand Gen where broad targeting was used to serve a mix of creative types to a wider audience than pure Search campaigns.

The problem? The technology wasn’t quite there yet.

Ad platform machine learning was still in the early stages which resulted in less relevant traffic, overlap with existing campaigns and poor results. Now that these campaigns have been replaced with PMax / Demand Gen and there’s been years of development in AI powered campaigns, it’s a much safer time to hand over control to Google.

With the benefit of hindsight, I would have run Display & Video campaigns rather than trying to make Smart Campaigns work.

2) Rushing Results

Ironic given I have an article specifically talking about this but, like all marketers, I’ve been guilty of moving too quickly and calling results prematurely rather than making sure there’s been enough time allocated for a definitive answer. There’s a couple of reasons this can happen.

The first is to do with the context that we operate in. Everyone is under time pressure in this industry from the marketers running campaigns through to our clients who are facing internal questions about performance. When everything needs to be done yesterday and results are viewed at a daily, weekly or monthly level, sticking to a long term roadmap and emphasising patience can be a hard sell.

As marketers, we need to clearly communicate what our strategy is and the timeframe that we need to see results. To make life easier, we can identify milestones throughout this period where we can provide updates on performance and answer any questions that are coming in. Hopefully, this will help to give us the time we need and ease the pressure on everyone involved with the account.

The second reason is slightly more positive. As marketers, we should be excited about our accounts. We have so many things that we want to try as we learn more about our accounts and spot new opportunities. The problem with this comes when those things overlap with existing tests and strategies.

Imagine this - you’ve built a new test and everything seems to be going well. Results are starting to pick up and you’re learning about a new way that you can drive performance for your client. All of a sudden, Google releases a new campaign type that you think would be absolutely perfect for your account goals.

In this situation, the temptation is to call your test early and go all in on the exciting new thing. After all, you’ve seen some positive early results so surely that’s enough to call the test a success, right? Not quite.

Take the time to learn more about new developments and build them into your roadmap. There’s nothing wrong with changing a roadmap to accommodate a new development but we (hopefully) have a good reason for every test that we run and it’s important to see things through to their conclusion. Who knows - sticking with your current plan could give you some extra insights that help to push that next test even further.

3) Broad Match

Another controversial one here and evidence of the sometimes strained relationship between agencies and their counterparts at the ad platforms. From 2021 onwards there was a major push to reintroduce Broad Match keyword targeting into accounts and move away from the classic Exact Match / Phrase Match split.

Marketers were rightly skeptical of this. It’s rare to find someone in Paid Search who hasn’t been mystified by the search term report and some of the phrases that their Broad Match keywords have matched to. This led to significant pushback and frustration as marketers stuck to what they know and the platforms pushed even harder.

Like automated campaigns, this was a case of technology catching up to the sales pitch. In the early days of Paid Search, Broad Match was exactly that - a very broad interpretation of keywords with wildly varying relevance depending on the account and targeting options at play.

However, targeting signals have improved dramatically since then and the volume of available data means that platforms can better understand the intent and motivation behind a search which has led to Broad Match becoming an integral part of the modern search approach.

Like anything digital, this comes with some caveats. It’s still on the marketer to make sure that their account is well set up and targeting is correct. Without audiences and negative keywords, Broad Match will still throw up some unusual matches so getting the basics right is crucial for success as we move into an audience first period of Paid Search.

As marketers, we’re never going to get everything right. The goal isn’t to be perfect - it’s to make new mistakes as we learn from the old ones and to try approaches based on where digital is at that moment. These are just a few of the things that I’ve learned and I know there’s plenty more to come in the future.

For forward facing Paid Search, get in touch.

Staying Safe: Content Suitability For Automated Paid Search

2023 has seen automated campaign types become one of the most important parts of Paid Search. After a shaky start for Performance Max in late 2021, the algorithms have rapidly improved to the point where most marketers can’t imagine their strategy without the inclusion of automated campaigns.

Whether it’s Performance Max being used to drive sales for an ecommerce account or the introduction of Demand Gen & Video View campaigns for brand awareness, marketers are finding new and innovative use cases for these campaigns and for their clients.

While the performance of these campaigns isn’t in question, there are still concerns about transparency and brand safety. How can marketers be sure that their ads will appear in the right places when the specifics of targeting & ad placements are left up to the ad platforms? We’ve all had emails from clients asking why their ad appeared next to a particular piece of content and, in the worst cases, businesses can choose to pull their spend completely when ads are placed next to content that risks destroying the credibility of their brand.

There are already strong controls in place for Display & Youtube campaigns. Marketers can exclude content themes and categories & they can even restrict their campaigns to only show on specific placements. These tools have been in place for years and they’re an invaluable tool for avoiding irrelevant impressions and awkward emails from clients.

Since the launch of Performance Max, marketers have been looking for similar assurances in terms of content restrictions. These concerns are focused around lack of transparency and control and always come back to protecting the best interests of their clients. The common consensus in the Paid Search space is that there’s no workable solution to this and all we can do is wait for Google to introduce these options in the same way as is already available for other campaign types. It’s a shame because automated campaigns can unlock entirely new sources of performance and significantly expand the scope of an account.

There is an answer though, you just need to go looking for it.

The Content Suitability Tool is hidden in the account level settings of your Google Ads account. To access it, click on Tools and settings > Setup > Content suitability

From here, marketers can choose exclusions that will be applied to all campaigns running on the Display & Youtube network in their accounts, including Performance Max, Demand Gen & Video View. Whether it’s the exclusion of content types, themes, keywords or even specific placements, the Content Suitability tool gives marketers all the control they need to ensure their automated ads are just as targeted as their existing campaigns.

There are a few limitations to keep in mind here. This tool is about exclusions rather than inclusions, so we’re still not able to restrict automated campaigns to only show on specific placements. The Excluded Placements list should be regularly reviewed and updated as new placements are identified along with updates to the Excluded Keywords list depending on current events, brand updates and other factors. As with any marketing activity, staying on top of things and making regular adjustments is the best way to maintain performance.

By definition, marketers will have less control over automated campaigns than what they’ve been used to in the past. While this can be a daunting prospect, if managed correctly these campaigns are one of the best ways to open up new opportunity and stand out from competitors. Smart, strategic use of the Content Suitability tool can benefit every business and with automated campaigns here to stay learning how to use it to your advantage is a must for 2024.

For effective automated Paid Search, get in touch.

Quick Wins: Low Effort Changes For Incremental Gains

As marketers, we’re constantly making time to think about the bigger picture. Whether it’s meeting with senior decision makers to understand the strategic direction of the business, analysing years of past data to find patterns we can exploit or doing deep audience research to build more effective customer profiles, we’re always looking for the next major project to drive the account forward.

Luckily, it’s not always that difficult.

Any account needs a well built out strategy behind it to ensure that things are moving in the right direction and the activity that’s running is supporting both the immediate goals of the campaigns and the longer term goals of the business. However, there’s also the opportunity to find quick tactical fixes that can immediately improve account performance.

The best part? These require almost zero effort to implement and they’re almost guaranteed to lead to a bump in performance, especially for smaller accounts where spend is limited.

1) Ad Scheduling

Managing budgets is a constant battle, especially for smaller accounts. Overspending by even a few percent a day can quickly add up, leading to stretched budgets as the month comes to an end and difficult decisions about where to allocate spend.

Often you’ll find that the bulk of your performance is centred around a specific time of the day or week. For ecommerce accounts, people often do their shopping after work or on the weekend. For B2B accounts, you’ll see your leads coming in during the working day with interest significantly dropping outside of working hours. With this in mind, why waste spend during the times when your customers aren’t converting?

It only takes an hour to review day & time information for your account and you’ll immediately be able to identify the periods when your ads should be active. Scheduling ads to only appear during the times customers are proven to convert means that you won’t be wasting spend outside of those times leading to improved account efficiency. Whether it’s through the platform interface or in your site analytics, taking the time to review this information and make the necessary campaign changes more than pays off in the long run.

2) IP Exclusions

Everyone loves seeing their ad “in the wild”. Whether it’s an online ad, a billboard or a TV commercial, seeing the end result of your work out in the world is always satisfying. There is a problem with this though - every time you or your client see your online ad, that’s registered as an impression on the campaign which over time leads to a lower clickthrough rate and a less efficient account. In the worst case scenario, someone involved with the ad can click on it - meaning that you’re now paying for internal traffic that has no value.

Setting up IP Exclusions in your account is a simple way around this problem. Adding your IP address, your client’s office IP address and the IP addresses of those who work from home helps to ensure that your ads won’t appear to anyone involved with the campaign and will ensure budget is spent on your actual customers.

To help get this across the line, it’s important to remind your clients that IP addresses aren’t personally identifiable and they’re still able to check in on ads via the platform ad preview tools or third party sites like ISearchFrom.

3) Account Level Negative Keywords

We all know the importance of Google’s Search Term Report in helping you identify irrelevant searches that your keywords are matching to. This is a routine part of optimisation to make sure that each campaign is bringing in the highest quality traffic possible.

While campaign level negative keywords are crucial, the importance of account level negative keywords can often go overlooked. Applied at the top level to the entire account, these are negative keywords that are applicable to most campaigns and should be excluded from the day the campaign launches.

Here’s a list of 400 common account level negative keywords, split out by category including;

• Academic Terms (Classes, Courses, Enrolments)

• Careers (Job Openings, Hiring, Applications)

• Informational (Articles, Posts, Stories)

• Competitor Sites (eBay, Amazon, Wikipedia)

Reviewing and applying these terms is a simple and effective way to make sure you’re paying for the right kind of traffic and it only takes a few minutes to do.

Digital marketing is hard with every day bringing a new challenge and something new to learn. However, keep your eyes open for the quick wins and you’ll find that sometimes effectiveness doesn’t have to correlate to effort. With Q4 well underway, making sure that the small things are done well will help to ensure that results stay positive whatever peak period throws at you.

For more quick wins, get in touch.

Back To The Future: Forecasting For Success In 2024

Coming towards the end of the year, most digital marketers are hard at work getting their accounts ready for peak period. Black Friday & Christmas are on us before we know it and one wrong move can mean the difference between celebrations or awkward conversations in January.

In a way, it’s nice. Peak period is so all-consuming that marketers have the chance to block out the outside world and entirely focus their energy on the success of their campaigns. When conversion rates are soaring and revenue is flooding in, there’s nothing else to worry about, right?

Well, not quite.

The end of one year means the start of another and in between all the peak period hype marketers will find themselves facing the task of building out an accurate, forward thinking forecast for 2024. It’s this forecast that teams will be held to for the next 12 months and it’s crucial that it’s given the attention it deserves. While it’s tough to carve out the time that forecasting deserves, getting it right pays off in the long run and there’s a few simple things to keep in mind to ensure that there’s no nasty surprises as Q1 2024 comes to an end.

1) Find The Patterns

Most industries have a fairly predictable cycle. If you’re an ecommerce store you know that Q4 is where the real sales volume is. If you’re selling home insulation, it makes sense that you’ll be pushing your budgets as autumn comes to an end. If you’re a university, the day exam results are released is the day you start pushing your spend.

Breaking down your annual cycle to understand the patterns of when your customers are searching and when they’re converting is the first step to accurately forecasting the year ahead. The budgets might change but the percentage split between months will stay similar and give you a strong guide as to where you should be focusing your attention. Unless something dramatically changes in your industry, previous data is your best source to start your future planning.

2) It’s Not All About You

It’s easy to get laser focused on your account and forget the bigger picture. When you’re working with national or global businesses, your marketing channel is just one piece of the wider marketing mix.

Understanding the strategic priorities and marketing goals of your business is critical to accurate forecasting. If you’re working in Paid Search but your business is significantly pushing Paid Social & Display for brand awareness in 2024, you need to factor in that you’ll see increasing search volume as the year goes on and more customers find the business.

Similarly, the business could be releasing a new product line or pivoting their entire operation into a new market or industry. Without accounting for this change and the impact on your channel, the forecast will quickly become inaccurate, leading to the need for a whole new plan just a few months into the year.

As with any planning piece, asking questions and getting the full story is crucial to making sure that channel specific planning is as accurate as possible.

3) What’s New?

By December, the digital marketing landscape looks completely different to how it appeared in January. New campaign types are released, tools are launched and the marketing community comes up with increasingly innovative ways to get the most out of their campaigns.

Performance Max is a great example of this. First launched in late 2021, this year has seen mass adoption of this campaign type and a complete change in Paid Search strategies to account for greater automation options and new opportunities.

Accounting for potential new campaign strategies and the implications that this will have on your account will help to make forecasting as accurate as possible. Even if you’re not running a particular campaign type at the moment there’s any number of case studies available that will give clear benchmarks of what to expect as new tactics are introduced into marketing plans.

No forecast is ever 100% accurate and there’s always adjustments to be made as the year goes on. However, keeping these points in mind will make reforecasting an opportunity for learning rather than a mistake fixing exercise while helping to build trust between marketing teams and businesses. Whatever the strategy for 2024, using past data, available case studies, research on opportunities and your own knowledge will help set your account up for the most successful year yet.

For a clear picture of the year ahead, get in touch.

More Money Less Problems: Why PPC On A Budget Is So Hard

As marketers progress through their career, there’s a tendency for the budgets that they manage to increase in line with their experience. It makes sense - larger budgets tend to correlate with larger brands and you’re only given responsibility for those budgets if you have the skills to match.

While this is true, it only tells half the story. As strange as it sounds, larger budgets don’t always equate to more difficult accounts. Sure, larger accounts tend to have more campaigns to keep track of, but many marketers find the actual work of managing them is far less complex than what they faced when they were running accounts with a fraction of the spend.

In a previous post, we looked at the challenges that marketers face at different account spend levels. With Q4 fast approaching and businesses getting their accounts ready for Black Friday & Christmas, now is a good time to revisit the challenges faced at lower spend levels & give a shoutout to our marketing friends doing the hard work on smaller accounts.

1) Choosing Your Priorities

On a small budget account, you simply can’t do everything. One of the first challenges marketers have to deal with is deciding what is and isn’t possible within the available spend.

When building out the account structure, this means making tough decisions about what products or business categories get promoted. Often, there’s simply not enough spend to give everything the budget it needs so prioritising one or two focus areas is likely to drive better results than spreading budget thinly across three or more.

At the campaign level, this can mean that more experimental tactics need to be put on hold in order to spend the majority of the budget on tried and true approaches. While best practice is best practice for a reason, digital marketing moves quickly and new ideas can often lead to incremental gains that wouldn’t have been possible with a more traditional approach. This puts marketers in a tough position where they have to experiment to get the edge on competition but if those experiments don’t work it could tank the whole account.

There’s no easy answer to this problem. However, as always, doing your research and making decisions backed by data is likely to lead to the best results. When deciding on categories to promote or experiments to try, look at past data and case studies to get an idea of potential performance & the challenges to be aware of.

2) Beating The Competition

By definition, there can only be a handful of top players in any industry. Unfortunately for marketers, if your account has a very small budget it’s unlikely that you’re one of them and it’s up to you to work out how to compete and win in the auction space.

Directly competing against online giants like Amazon is a very effective way to eat up your entire marketing budget with little to show for it at the end. Rather than going head to head on competitive keywords, smart marketers will instead look for gaps where competition is lower or try cheaper campaign types to stretch their budgets further.

Another competitive option that’s been forgotten in the era of automated ads and character limits is the idea of storytelling through marketing. When every other ad on the results page is shouting about the range of products available and the discounts on offer, smaller budget accounts can cut through the noise by using their ad copy to tell a story about their brand and how it fits into their ideal customer’s life.

Instead of simply increasing spend to mitigate competition, taking a measured approach is likely to lead to better results. Gap analysis and well written ad copy is a time investment that will pay a far better ROI than an additional budget investment.

3) Knowledge Gaps

As account budgets increase, a marketer’s point of contact tends to change. On a high budget global account you’ll tend to talk directly to a marketing manager within the business who has experience of digital marketing and can have high level conversations about strategy and tactics. On smaller accounts, particularly when freelancing, you’ll often be working directly with the business owner who may have a very different level of experience and understanding.

This knowledge gap can be be challenging as ideas need to be communicated in a way that gets the overall point across while avoiding complex or high level details that will cause confusion. It can also be an opportunity to build a stronger, more productive working relationship as the business owner develops their own digital marketing knowledge and is able to share business insights and context to drive strategy forward.

The key here is patience and a willingness to ask and answer questions. Recognising that all parties in the conversation are on the same team and are working towards the same business goal is a useful approach and, over time, increasing knowledge and trust will mean that marketers are given more autonomy to run activity in the way that they would like.

Small budget marketing isn’t easy and there are considerations to be made that aren’t relevant at higher spend levels. Managing larger spends doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a better marketer and there are some outstanding talents who choose to focus on the challenge of getting the best out of a restricted budget. Whatever spend you have throughout Q4, taking a well thought out & measured approach will give the best odds of success.

For expert digital marketing advice & management, whatever your budget, get in touch.

Big Decisions: Choosing The Right Freelance Digital Marketer

Any business owner will tell you there’s not enough time in the day to complete everything that’s asked of them. Depending on the day, a business owner can be everything from an accountant to an office manager while still having to stay on top of their own daily task list. With so many things competing for attention it’s tough to stay focused and make sure everything is being done to the required standard.

In the early days, business owners will often take responsibility for marketing as a priority task. It makes sense - without sales & revenue you don’t have a business at all so keeping these coming in is crucial. However, over time, owners can realise that their knowledge of specific marketing platforms and wider marketing strategy isn’t where it needs to be to continue driving the business forward.

The question is - what do business owners need to look for to make the right choice when outsourcing their digital marketing to a freelancer?

1) An Honest & Realistic Approach

The single biggest red flag in digital marketing is a guarantee that a specific result will be achieved. We’ve all received cold emails from prospective marketers promising unbelievable results with no downside;

“Position #1 On Google Or Your Money Back”

“We Will 10x Your Traffic In One Month”

“Here’s How To Triple Your Online Sales In A Week”

The bad news for business owners is that results like that are difficult to achieve at all, let alone guarantee. The good news for business owners is that they can filter out dishonest marketers simply by looking out for claims guaranteeing results that seem to good to be true.

The truth is, there are too many moving parts in digital marketing to be able to claim with 100% certainty that a specific result is going to happen. Rather than making guarantees with no context, honest and experienced marketers will work with business owners to identify specific goals before tailoring a long term marketing strategy aimed at reaching them in a realistic way. Of course, marketers have benchmark figures that are useful for estimating performance, but these should always be viewed and communicated as a guide rather than a guarantee.

2) General Knowledge, Specialist Skills

We’ve all been to a restaurant where the menu is just too big. Flipping through multiple pages containing a variety of different dishes (and sometimes cuisines), the same thought always pops up - surely they can’t be great at making all of this? To some extent, it’s the same with digital marketing.

In an increasingly splintered field with new strategies, tools and platforms emerging every month, skilled marketers tend to focus on honing their expertise in a particular area. In some cases this can be relatively broad, for example a marketer focused on Facebook & Instagram. In other cases, a marketer can build an entire career around being an industry specific expert in one campaign type, for example Google App Campaigns in the Wellness space.

Narrowing down to a specific skillset allows freelancers to deliver high quality, expert work to the businesses that engage with them. However, it’s also important for these freelancers to have a broad base of general digital marketing knowledge to give extra insights and guidance that can help drive a business forward. A working knowledge of wider digital marketing platforms, tools & strategies is invaluable information to share with an ambitious business owner and helps to create a deeper, more productive working relationship.

3) Communication & Education

Every industry has its jargon and digital marketing is no different. CTR, CPC, CRO & ROAS are all everyday acronyms for experienced marketers but can be indecipherable for the average business owner viewing a freelancer’s monthly performance report. In a previous post, we’ve discussed how marketers can work to bridge the knowledge gap between themselves and businesses that they work with and these principles all still apply.

When choosing a marketer to work with, pay attention to how they communicate complex concepts in a way that respectfully acknowledges a gap in expertise. As Einstein said, “if you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself”. A skilled marketer will be able to filter complex marketing strategies and challenges to their most basic elements, ensuring everyone involved understands the core of the conversation and what actions need to be taken to drive performance forward.

Along with clarity of communication, a marketer with a business’s best interests at heart will also welcome questions as part of building a strong ongoing business relationship. The best marketers will look beyond the direct question being asked and follow up with extra information that answers the obvious follow-up questions as well.

Choosing to bring in external marketing help is a nerve wracking decision for any business. However, making the right choice can lead to sustained, long term growth and a productive working relationship based on expert knowledge & skills.

For honest & transparent freelance digital marketing, get in touch.

Planning Ahead: Maximising Ecommerce Performance In Q4

If you're not in digital marketing, you might think there's a typo in the headline. Why would you be focused on Q4 when Christmas is a full five months away and summer sale campaigns are still running? On the other hand, if you are in digital marketing, you’ll understand exactly why Q4 is the focus from August onwards and what can happen if you leave it too late.

With the ecommerce advertising space becoming more competitive every year and marketers seeking out increasingly granular ways to get the edge on their competition, there’s no substitute for time and forward planning when it comes to building out the best possible strategy for maximising ecommerce performance in Q4.

This week, we’ll look at strategies retailers can use over the next few months to ensure that their accounts are in the best possible position to maximise performance throughout Q4.

1) Introducing High Quality Data

If you’ve been on the internet in the past year, you’ve heard about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. You’d be hard pressed to find an industry that hasn’t adopted AI in some form and digital marketing is no exception with ad platforms investing heavily to drive better results for advertisers and consumers.

At the heart of success with AI is the quality of the input that the system receives. We’ve already spoken about the importance of input in relation to using tools like ChatGPT to write effective ad copy, however there are other sources of information that can be added to an account to improve performance.

Introducing responsibly sourced 1st Party Data and highly relevant interest & intent audiences to your account well ahead of Q4 will give the ad platforms time to analyse this data and determine how to use it most effectively. By the time Black Friday and Christmas comes around and budgets increase, the ad platforms will know exactly who to show ads to leading to stronger ROI and overall performance.

2) Reviewing Past Performance

The complexity of modern digital marketing means it’s no longer possible to simply repeat what worked last year. Increased competition, new ad formats and changes to platform policies mean that the tactics from last year aren’t guaranteed to drive the same results. While it’s no longer a case of simply re-enabling the same campaigns, the data can still provide valuable insights and a foundation to build this year’s peak period activity from.

Quality data analysis takes time and making space for this in Q3 will ensure that high quality, usable insights can be discovered in time for peak period. Information from the previous year can be layered with insights from 2023 to develop a customised, real time strategy that accounts for historical trends along with recent account performance to ensure the best chance of success.

3) Seeking Approval

The worst case scenario for a digital marketer is looking at their account at the peak of a sale only to find that campaigns and ads have been disapproved. Cue frantic adjustments to assets, ad copy and campaign settings followed by a nervous wait as activity is re-reviewed while revenue is lost with each passing minute.

One of the most effective and most underrated uses of Q3 is uploading and troubleshooting the campaigns, ad copy and assets to be used during the Q4 sales. Uploading these well ahead of time ensures that they’ll go through the review process with any disapprovals able to be flagged and fixed well ahead of the campaign start date. As an added bonus, the upload process itself ensures the team managing the campaigns will be very familiar with the structure and setup making optimisation simple.

In a perfect world, you’d have your campaigns ready to go a month before the sale. Realistically? Two weeks before is fine as long you’re on top of the account and clear on what needs fixing.

Q4 is stressful enough for marketers without running into unexpected issues. For guidance on how to plan for successful ecommerce performance and strategic advice, get in touch.

Extending Your Reach: Strategic Use Of Google Ads Sitelink Extensions

Over time, the definition of what constitutes an effective Google Ads account structure has significantly changed.

In the early days before widespread machine learning techniques, the focus was on account structures with tight keyword lists that could be manually optimised. The introduction of smart bidding strategies allowed marketers to loosen the reins, trusting Google to interpret a broader keyword list and automatically increase bids for searchers with high conversion intent. In recent years, the Hagakure Structure has become the preferred method for advertisers with a mix of Broad Match keywords, automatically generated ads & URL based targeting allowing Google’s machine learning techniques to do the heavy lifting.

While the structure of accounts may have changed significantly, the overall goal hasn’t - ensuring that searchers have the best experience possible when seeing an ad by including information that’s relevant, timely and related to their query. Along with ensuring the ad itself is as high quality as possible, Sitelink Extensions are an extremely useful element of any account that can significantly boost performance and the likelihood of a conversion. A well run account will strategically use sitelinks to highlight the most relevant aspects of a business for each search and in this week’s post we’ll look at a few examples of how these can be used for success.

1) Moving Searchers Down The Funnel

Whatever the business, sitelinks should be implemented across an account to allow searchers the opportunity to visit additional pages that are also relevant to their search. These can be implemented at the account level or applied to specific campaigns to show pages related to that keyword grouping.

When using sitelinks, the best approach is to think one level down the funnel from the keyword itself. Using Nike as an example, a user making a branded search sees sitelinks for the different product ranges that Nike has - Men’s, Women’s, Kids & Nike Training. This allows Nike to hedge their bets on the intent of the search, ensuring that a user can easily navigate to the category that’s right for them despite not knowing their gender, age or specific category interest.

At a branded search level, this is great. A user can easily navigate to the page that’s relevant to them and browse through the range. What about if they already have a clear idea of what they’re looking for beyond just searching the brand name?

Here, we can see how this strategy is applied for a higher intent search where the user is specifically searching for Men’s Running Shoes. Linking to the general Men’s page wouldn’t be appropriate here as it contains non-shoe products while the Women’s and Kids page is no use as the search is specific to Men. Instead, Nike has applied campaign level sitelinks to highlight shoe category pages such as Running Shoes along with links to the product pages for specific models such as the Vaporfly 3.

2) Increasing Ad Size

It sounds obvious, but it’s important to remember - using extensions increases the physical size of your ad on the results page. In the examples above, Nike’s sitelinks add an additional eight lines of text below their main ad, pushing the next highest competitor further down the results page and making them less visible to searchers. For mobile searches, this can often result in the next competitor completely disappearing from view, ensuring that the top ad is the only business visible to searchers.

In competitive spaces with high CPCs, physically pushing competitors off the page can make all the difference between a high performing account and one that’s struggling for conversions, particularly when other competitors also have well written ads and are using their own extensions.

Of course it’s important to have well written, relevant sitelinks and, all things being equal, an ad with high quality sitelinks will outperform one with poor versions. However, the benefits of implementing sitelinks to simply increase the size of your ad can’t be overstated and are another key reason to ensure these are running wherever possible.

3) Following Google’s Best Practices

Ask any marketer their thoughts on Google’s Account Optimisation Score and you’ll understand why there’s a healthy level of cynicism in the industry. The automated recommendations can range from somewhat useful to flat out dangerous for an account and the optimisation score percentage is almost entirely dependent on how many of these recommendations are enabled.

While the majority of the recommendations are open to interpretation, some of them are easy fixes that will help to improve optimisation score and lead to higher account performance. One that continually comes up is the recommendation to implement sitelinks and other extension types within an account.

Google (along with other ad platforms), tends to reward advertisers who follow best practice in their accounts with lower CPCs and better long term account performance. Implementing extensions is a simple way to boost optimisation score, signalling to Google that an account is up to standard and providing users with an engaging, high quality ad experience. Along with improving optimisation score, these changes will also boost account performance leading to long term sustainable gains from a relatively low effort change.

While some recommendations should be taken with a grain of salt, implementing extensions isn’t one of them and should be a priority action when the recommendation comes up - if it hasn’t been already done.

For strategic, sustainable Google Ads optimisation & management, get in touch.

Quiet Time: Strategic Optimisation During Low Activity Periods

When we think of a career in digital marketing there’s a tendency to imagine an account manager who’s rushed off their feet trying to complete a hundred tasks at once. With new campaign builds, optimisation of existing activity, building out reports and getting ready for the next promotion, having space to breathe is a precious commodity.

However, every now and then you’ll find yourself in a situation where all your tasks have been completed, the campaigns are ticking along nicely and, just for a second, there’s no looming crisis on the horizon. It’s a rare occurrence and it’s definitely not going to last forever but when that time does come around it presents an opportunity to work in a way that’s not possible during day to day management.

This week, we’ll look at a few ways this downtime can be used to effectively drive performance by discovering opportunities and insights that can be missed during routine optimisation.

1) Relax & Recharge

The fact is, if you weren’t doing a good job at managing the account you wouldn’t have this downtime in the first place. Account performance is driven by consistent, high quality management and a well run account is a direct reflection of the quality of the person running it.

Digital marketing can be a high stress career and it’s important to recognise this during periods of less activity. Making space to relax and give the brain a chance to recharge is an excellent use of this time as it helps to rebuild mental energy for the next busy period which is always just around the corner. Whether it’s taking a walk or scaling back optimisation to focus on the basics for a few days, a temporary reduction in stress will help ensure that the quality of work remains consistent whatever the account throws at you. Often, you’ll find that you’ve been subconsciously thinking about problems and potential solutions over this period which will mean you come back with fresh ideas as activity begins to ramp up.

2) Develop Deeper Business Context

During day to day optimisation, managers can be so wrapped up in campaign performance that they forget to see the bigger picture. Campaign data is useful, but the business being advertised has a huge amount of additional information that can be used to build more effective marketing strategies for long term performance.

During periods of less activity, speaking directly to your client contacts about the state of the business, other marketing activity that’s live and long term strategic focuses is a very effective way to use time. Not only will these conversations give valuable information that will help to drive account performance forward, they’re also a useful way to build deeper relationships and create trust between businesses and the people running their marketing activity.

3) Lower Priority Optimisations

Any account manager will be able to give you a list of tasks they’d love to take a look at on their account, if only they had the time. These tasks aren’t critical to account performance but they’d drive incremental gains and ensure that all activity is running according to best practice.

These lower priority optimisation tasks can cover things like negative keyword list reviews, analysis of audiences applied to the account, demographic & time segmentation data and even a strategic review of ad copy that’s been continually pushed back as more urgent tasks take priority.

Focusing on a few of these “nice to have” optimisation tasks is an excellent use of downtime when all the crucial optimisations have been taken care of. Taking the time to properly review these areas leads to the discovery of opportunities for optimisation and helps to ensure the long term stability of the account.

Prioritisation will always be a crucial part of managing an account and during periods of high activity it’s understandable that some things will be forced to take a back seat. Noting areas that could be improved is a great start so that when those quiet periods do come around there’s already a list of potential tasks in place to ensure that the period is spent productively and effectively. Along with a focus on the account, it’s also important for managers to focus on themselves and ensure these periods are used to relax and recharge, ready for the next busy period.

For world class digital marketing strategies during peak & quiet periods, get in touch.

Trust Me Bro: Google's Ads Transparency Centre & Its Marketing Applications

Anyone working in marketing would have noticed the increased push towards ad transparency and user verification over the past 18 months. Platforms are actively working to build a more informative, transparent ad offering for both end customers and the advertisers themselves.

One aspect of this is account verification, with advertisers now required to provide information about their business & the individuals who’ll be running the ads in order to ensure that any activity is safe, well run and set up according to best practices.

On the other side, users seeing ads are now able to get more information about the business that’s doing the advertising along with information about why they’re being targeted and examples of other ads that are in market at the same time.

For users, this is great. It’s building digital literacy as information about ad targeting and how it works becomes readily available while also creating trust as users can easily discover who is running an ad and where a click will take them.

What’s not so obvious is the benefit for advertisers. For smart marketers, the increase in available information opens up opportunities that weren’t there previously to discover new trends, deep dive into competitor tactics and understand the landscape in a way that wasn’t possible just a few years prior. This week, we’ll look at Google’s Ad Transparency Centre to understand how marketers can use this to their advantage.

1) Ad Copy Research

Writing ads is tough, particularly when you’re operating in a crowded market alongside global brands. With so many ways to promote your products, how can you be sure that your offer is as compelling as your competitors?

By entering the name of key competitors in the Ads Transparency Centre search bar, you’ll see all the ads that they’re running across Google properties. By reviewing the messaging your competitors are using, you’ll be able to tell if your own copy is up to scratch or if it needs to be updated. This doesn’t mean directly copying messaging but rather taking inspiration from the way that offers and brand messages are phrased to create your own compelling ads.

After all, global brands are likely using professional marketers to write their ads, so why not use some of that knowledge for free when creating your own?

2) Ad Format Research

At the start of a new campaign, one of the most important tasks is identifying the mix of different channels to use and how budget should be weighted between them. When you’re working on a global brand you’ll have the budget to push Search, Shopping, Display & Youtube all at the same time. Unfortunately, smaller advertisers don’t have this luxury and have to make choices between formats based on the expected return from each. Once again, the Ads Transparency Centre can help with this.

By looking up specific competitors, you’ll be able to see not only the messaging that they’re using, but also the different ad formats at play. Through entering a number of competitors as part of your research, you’ll understand the general marketing mix being used and be able to identify coverage gaps and areas of opportunity for your own campaigns.

If your research reveals that none of your competitors are using Google Display it could mean two things. Either it’s an underutilised channel that presents a strong opportunity for cheap traffic & performance gains, or they’ve all tried it in the past and it just doesn’t work for the product on offer. Like any other tool, the information from the Ads Transparency Centre needs to be analysed and looked at as part of marketing planning rather than being the only factor in where budget is allocated.

3) Market Research

Your campaigns are up and running, great! In fact, they’re running so well that you want to expand the reach of the campaigns to additional countries. It’s an exciting opportunity but one that presents new challenges & luckily the Ads Transparency Centre can help with this too.

In the same way that you can filter for ad formats, you can also filter by country to see the specific markets where businesses are running ads to help understand the ad landscape in that area and avoid wasting budget.

As an example, you have a UK based client who’s looking at launching ads in several European countries. The process here would be to review the list of competitors, filtering by each country to understand where the majority of budget is going. If all goes well, you’ll identify an underserved market, allowing you to launch your ads there and gain market share in the absence of competition.

There are a few things to watch out for here.

First, the Ads Transparency Centre lists businesses by their verified location and some businesses may have country-specific verification to run ads in different regions. In the example below, Adidas has many different verified locations for individual countries so it’s important to check you’re looking at the right location before doing country specific analysis.

Secondly, just because competitors aren’t running ads in a location doesn’t mean they won’t do so in the future. When a new competitor appears with a goal of gaining market share, major brands are likely to start advertising as well in order to maintain visibility. It’s important to communicate this as part of competitor gap analysis so that everyone involved understands that the landscape may change over time.

Increased verification and ad transparency is only a good thing for the digital marketing landscape and it shows no signs of slowing down. Understanding how to use these tools from a marketing perspective will give advertisers an edge on the competition and lead to improved performance across their accounts, whatever the industry.

For quality digital marketing advice & analysis, get in touch.

The New Gold Rush: AI & Parallels To The Dotcom Boom

With the digital space increasingly monopolised by a small number of companies it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always this way. Not so long ago, the internet was far more decentralised with a wide array of providers all vying for market share as millions of new users dialled up to the internet for the first time.

Excite, Hotbot, WebCrawler, Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, AltaVista, Lycos, Infoseek, Netscape & MetaCrawler. At one point these were all major names in the search engine space, now you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who even remembers they existed. What happened? Google invested in user experience, prioritising page quality, number of links & ad relevance in order to become the world’s most used search engine with 90% of global search share in 2022 despite stiff competition from Bing.

Search engine technology saw a wide playing field eventually narrow to contain only a few dominant competitors. Market preferences, smart use of technology and a deep understanding of user needs meant that Google was able to rise to the top of a crowded field and become the main name in search. This wasn’t just limited to search engines either with web browsers, ecommerce businesses and streaming services all seeing a competitive landscape eventually come to be monopolised by just a few winning companies.

Looking at the current AI landscape, it’s hard not to draw parallels between the two time periods. Rapid technological expansion and user uptake couple with a vast number of companies all vying to be the leader in their field is setting up the digital space for another gold rush followed by a significant contraction as the clear winners emerge. With this in mind, how can marketers set themselves up for success with AI in a turbulent, uncertain period?

1) Embrace Change & Uncertainty

Accepting the unknown is tough, but in digital marketing it’s almost always a useful strategy. When no one knows what the landscape will look like in six months, choosing the best solution in the current moment is a winning strategy. Smart marketers will embrace new AI technologies and be willing to experiment with new platforms and marketing strategies that incorporate AI.

While it’s true that a particular AI tool may not be around in a year’s time as competitors come and go, using that tool to its full capacity while it’s available will ensure that your campaigns have a competitive edge & you stay one step ahead of the competition.

2) Test & Learn

A particular tool might not be around in a year’s time, but the learnings and experience that you’ve gained from it will be. Whatever AI tool you’re using, take note of the features you like and the things that could be improved.

As an example, there are currently dozens of AI tools that automatically join meetings, take notes and provide a summary of actions listed by the people responsible. They all achieve this in slightly different ways so test several and work out the one that’s best for you. If your preferred tool doesn’t end up making it through the competitive contraction, you’ll still have a clear idea of the features to look out for in the next iteration of your AI strategy. Along with looking at features you like, work out what’s missing from your favourite tool. When it’s time to pick a new one, you’ll be clear on what additional features to look out for.

3) Transparency & Communication

When working with a new client, open and transparent communication is always a winning strategy. No one knows what the AI landscape will look like in a year’s time, let alone further down the road, so being open about the potential for change and the necessity of an evolving AI strategy is crucial for a positive client relationship.

When recommending a specific AI tool, or a general AI based approach, be clear about the potential for change and the possibility that tool won’t be around forever. Clients will appreciate the honesty & be more willing to adopt an iterative approach as new opportunities emerge. Expertise isn’t about predicting the future, it’s about being open to change and making the best possible decisions based on the currently available information.

To learn more about AI solutions for marketing & business problems, get in touch.

B2B Search Strategy: Using LinkedIn Targeting For Microsoft Search Ads

B2B marketing is tough, whatever the platform. High competition levels, long purchase cycles, expensive service offerings & a narrow set of potential keywords makes generating conversions much more difficult than lower funnel B2C campaigns targeted directly at individuals.

Paid Search best practices still apply, but there’s a very different way of thinking and performing optimisation that needs to be understood in order to drive the best possible results from a B2B focused account. Taking a patient, long term approach will lead to long term success but, in the meantime, there’s an effective tactic that can be used to boost performance and ensure ads are shown to relevant, highly engaged users.

Microsoft has made significant progress in the past few years with heavy investment in Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing Ads) starting to pay off. Previously seen as a clone of Google Ads and a Paid Search afterthought, Microsoft Ads now leverages information from other Microsoft owned platforms to improve campaign targeting and efficiency. One of the most exciting developments first emerged in 2018 and has since been improved on to make it one of the best tactics to use for B2B Paid Search - leveraging LinkedIn’s targeting for Microsoft Ads campaigns.

When setting up a campaign in Microsoft Ads, or optimising an existing campaign, advertisers have the ability to create audiences based on a specific company, industry or job function. Just like any other audience, this can then ben added to a campaign or ad group to generate specific data to assist with optimisation. Building out audiences based on the specific job function of your target user means that keywords and messaging can be continually optimised based on actual performance data to ensure that results continue to improve and campaigns are reaching the most relevant users possible.

To find this targeting option, navigate to the Settings tab of a specific Campaign or Ad Group. Once there, you’ll find Company, Industry & Job Function as options in the Campaign Targets section. Selecting any or all of these options will create a new targeting block at the bottom of the section where specific information can be entered for each category. The usual rules of audience research apply here - look at other data sources to determine the most relevant targeting options and apply them to your search campaigns for the best chance of success.

As with all Paid Search tactics, there are a few things to look out for. Most importantly, this targeting option works as an audience signal, rather than as a specific audience by itself. That means that ads may still show to users who aren’t working at a company or in a role that you’ve specified. However, Microsoft Ads will take this targeting into account and, over time, should begin to prioritise impressions towards users who fit into the LinkedIn targeting criteria. In the meantime, you’ll be able to filter data specific to these users, allowing you to make smarter manual optimisation decisions while the automatic optimisation gets up to speed.

There are also some geographic restrictions at play here. While this targeting option can be implemented by marketers located anywhere in the world, for now it’s only available in campaigns targeted to the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, France & Germany. Over time this is likely to be expanded out but it’s a point worth keeping in mind when planning any new campaign activity for advertisers located outside these countries.

Despite being available since 2018, LinkedIn targeting remains a very underutilised and unappreciated benefit of Microsoft Ads. When used correctly it’s a powerful tool for any B2B marketers looking to get the edge on their competitors and, as Microsoft Ads grows in popularity, should be built into every B2B Paid Search strategy. As incremental tactics go it’s hard to beat and is further evidence of the work that Microsoft is doing to break Google’s grip on the Paid Search landscape.

For B2B marketing guidance & tactics to help get ahead of competitors, get in touch.

Keeping It Simple: Why Maximise Conversions Is Always A Good Choice

When setting up a new Google Ads campaign, one of the most important decisions is choosing the right bid strategy to maximise the chances of success. From Target CPA & Target ROAS through to no bid strategy at all via Manual CPC, there’s a wide range of options to choose from. However, for a new campaign with no previous data to learn from, Maximise Conversions stands alone as the best choice to get the ball rolling. What makes it so useful?

1) Simplicity

Maximise Conversions does what it says on the tin - it tries to generate the most conversions possible from a given daily budget. With this bid strategy, you don't need to have any specific knowledge of your Target CPA or ROAS. Instead, Google will automatically adjust your bids to get the most conversions possible within an assigned budget. This makes it an excellent choice for new advertisers who do not have enough information to set a specific CPA or ROAS goal and would be risking underperformance by assigning one so early in the campaign.

No bid strategy is truly “set it and forget it”, but Maximise Conversions simplicity makes it an excellent choice for advertisers in the early stages of a new campaign or account who are juggling any number of tasks as things get up to speed.

2) Flexibility

Of all the options out there, Maximise Conversions is one of the most flexible bid strategies available to advertisers. It works with all conversion types and optimises based on a range of factors including ad placement, time of day, and audience. Given that it’s not restricted to value-based conversions like Target ROAS, this means that Maximse Conversions is an effective bid strategy for nearly any campaign looking to generate strong early performance.

3) Crossover With Other Strategies

Because Maximise Conversions works to get as many conversions as possible within a given budget, there’s already significant crossover with the Target CPA & Target ROAS strategies. By definition, achieving as many conversions as possible within your budget will give you the best possible CPA, so rather than artificially restricting a campaign with a CPA goal, why not let Maximise Conversions do the work for you?

Similarly, when all conversions are of a similar value, Maximise Conversions will drive ROAS just as effectively as a specific Target ROAS strategy. Of course, when conversion values can vary significantly there’s an argument for introducing Target ROAS, but early on in the lifetime of a campaign Maximise Conversions is almost always a better option.

There are any number of bid strategies to choose from when setting up a new Google Ads campaign and ongoing optimisation and management is just as important as making the right choice of strategy. Over time, more specific bid strategies will almost always give campaigns an edge over their competitors, but in the early days Maximise Conversions is a great choise. It’s simple, flexible, and will provide valuable data for future campaigns.

For more information on bid strategies and simple, effective digital marketing approaches, get in touch.

Broad Match: Proceed With Caution

Get talking to any experienced digital marketer and you’ll notice they all have one thing in common.

Whatever platform, industry or business they work in, every single one will have developed a healthy level of cynicism over the course of their career. It makes sense - constantly adjusting activity based on unannounced platform changes, market trends, and the motivations of the major advertising platforms would create doubts for even the most optimistic marketer.

In Paid Search, one trend has stood out from the pack as a focus for skepticism over the past year. That trend? The heavy push across multiple advertising platforms towards the use of Broad Match keywords as a solution for all your account problems. You’d be hard-pressed to find a marketer who’s unwaveringly enthusiastic about Broad Match given some of the historical challenges with this keyword type and the most recent push has been met with all the cynicism that would be expected from experienced marketers.

So where is this skepticism coming from? Let’s look at some of the key challenges Broad Match creates.

1) Broad Means Broad

Broad Match does what it says on the tin. Advertising platforms will take a Broad Match keyword and apply it to searches that it considers related to that keyword. The search may contain some of the actual words in the keyword, it may contain synonyms for those words, and in some cases, it may match to something completely unrelated. For example, if you're targeting the keyword "running shoes" with broad match, an ad could appear for searches like "tennis shoes" or "workout gear", which are only somewhat related to the product on offer.

While the relevance of clicks will improve over time as the platform learns which search terms to match to, many accounts don’t have the budget to spare on irrelevant clicks while the algorithm learns. This is particularly challenging for accounts with a smaller budget as it’s a chicken and egg scenario - more data means the algorithm can learn faster, but generating more data means spending more budget on irrelevant search terms early on.

2) Lack Of Transparency

Irrelevant search terms are frustrating, but smart use of negative keywords can help to minimize the impact these have on an account, right? Well, not quite.

Google Ads now collates up to 50% of clicks into a single line on the search term report called “Filtered Search Terms” with no option to expand this to see the individual search terms driving spend. While the announcement of this change mentioned that it would only consist of search terms without significant data, even one irrelevant click is too many and marketers are rightly skeptical of how quality optimization can be done without full access to search term data.

Given the choice between a well-built out Exact Match keyword list where marketers know exactly what terms users are visiting the site from compared to optimizing based on 50% of Broad Match traffic volume, it makes sense that uptake has been lower than anticipated.

3) Questioning Motivations

The relationship between marketers and advertising platforms has been increasingly fractured in recent years, with marketers feeling the platforms are increasingly pushing automation and giving recommendations based on increasing spend rather than increasing performance.

The recommendations tab in Google Ads often contains strange suggestions that even at a glance would obviously decrease performance while pushing up spend. These automatic suggestions, combined with recommendations from Google’s own reps that don’t align with an account’s goals, have created a lack of trust between marketers and platforms. As one marketer pointed out, if widespread adoption of recommendations leads to an average monthly increase in account spend of $20, when multiplied by the total number of Paid Search accounts that’s a significant increase in monthly revenue for the advertising platforms.

So, what’s the solution? The key idea here is trust and mutual information sharing. Marketers are rightly skeptical of the push towards Broad Match and the impact it might have on their accounts. After all, we all want to run the best activity possible for our clients.

If the platforms want to encourage adoption of this tactic, they need to make concessions such as giving marketers full access to the search term report rather than hiding up to 50% of information. Automatic recommendations need to be continually improved with a focus on account performance rather than spend. Finally, reps should acknowledge the historical reasons marketers have for hesitation about Broad Match and address these concerns specifically, rather than continually pushing a product without room for conversation - that’s what true sales is about.

For more information on Broad Match & how to run a well optimised account, get in touch.

Custom Segments: Google's Most Underrated Targeting Option

“I trust Google’s default audiences to reach the most relevant users for my campaigns while minimising wasted spend.” - No one, ever.

In a perfect world, we would all be running accounts that fit neatly into Google’s default audiences. Targeting would be as simple as selecting the relevant audience, applying it to the campaigns and then watching the conversions roll in. Unfortunately for many marketers, while Google’s default audiences are useful, the categories are too broad to ensure that they’ll only contain the users who are most relevant to their specific business.

So what if there was a better way? Enter, Custom Segments.

One of the most underutilised and underrated targeting options available in Google Ads, Custom Segments allow marketers to create their own Interest & In-Market Audiences based on chosen search terms and even create audiences of users who browse competitor websites. These can then be applied to campaigns to create highly relevant audiences and drive better performance across an account.

To find the Custom Segments tab, select Tools and Settings in the top menu in the Google Ads interface, followed by Audience Manager and Custom Segments.

So how does it work?

Search Term Audiences

Custom Segments allow marketers to build their own audiences based off specific search terms they select. Whatever the industry, building an audience around customised search terms will help place ads in front of the most relevant users possible and drive more conversions. What’s more effective for a high end casual clothing brand - Google’s default Men’s Clothing Interest audience, or a custom segment built using search terms specific to the style, type and material of clothes on offer?

Even better, you only need to add a single search term to get started before Google will provide additional suggestions based off related searches for that term. While your own audience research is always useful, Google’s suggestions help to fill any potential gaps in coverage based off other searches they know users are likely to make.

Website Audiences

Along with search term audiences, Custom Segments also give the option of entering URLs potential customers might be browsing. Building this audience allows campaigns to be restricted to users who have visited those, or similar, URLs. As always, the definition of “similar” is slightly vague but 10-15 URLs will provide a strong base for Google to build a user profile from and will essentially allow marketers run a remarketing campaign for their product to users who have visited competitor’s sites.

Competitor analysis is a routine part of any account, so there should already be a list of competitor URLs available to add into this field. However, if that data is missing, the Auction Insights report is a great tool to identify competitors URLs for upload into a custom segment. Splitting the Auction Insights report by product type is an even better idea as it will allow you to build Custom Segments with competitors specific to each area, further increasing the relevance of targeting and increasing the likelihood of success.

Custom Segments are an incredibly useful tool and their effectiveness, coupled with their simplicity of setup, makes including them in any account a simple decision. Whether it’s highly specific In-Market audiences or a special offer running to potential customers who’ve visited competitor’s sites, there’s always a place for this targeting option in a well run account.

For more information and to learn how to reach high quality customers, get in touch.

Setting Priorities: Optimising A Low Budget Account

Over the course of a career, you’ll be fortunate enough to work on accounts across a variety of industries, platforms and regions. Each presents their own challenges and opportunities but one thing that stands out is the complexity of an account doesn’t necessarily scale with spend. In fact, accounts with smaller budgets can sometimes present the biggest challenge as there isn’t scope to run all the tests and campaigns you’d be able to with a larger spend.

This week, we’ll be taking a look at the optimisation of low budget accounts and how to set priorities effectively to drive the best results possible with a limited overall spend.

1) Identify Your Core Conversion Metric

Most accounts will have a number of conversion points they’re working towards with some, like sales, leads & revenue, focused on direct performance while other conversions are focused on brand goals like overall visibility. On a larger account, this isn’t a problem as there’s scope to optimise towards many different goals simultaneously. For smaller accounts this presents much more of a challenge as optimising towards many different conversions will spread budget too thin and lead to poor performance across all metrics.

Luckily, there’s a simple solution. When taking on a new account with a limited spend, identify the primary conversion and build the account around that metric. If it’s an ecommerce account, visibility isn’t as important as sales & revenue while an event promotion account should entirely focus on registrations & bookings. That’s not to say that the secondary goals aren’t important and they should be factored into overall performance but with a limited budget it’s crucial to gear all activity around the most important metric.

2) Focus On A Single Key Area

Whatever the industry, most businesses have a number of different products or services to promote via paid ads. In an account with a large budget, marketers have the freedom to build out many different campaigns for each business area with distinct strategies and goals for each. With a lower budget, marketers don’t have the same freedom and need to be smart when allocating spend.

After identifying your core conversion metric, identify the business area that’s likely to help you reach that goal. For an ecommerce business, this might be a particular product line that consistently generates sales. For an event promotion, focus your efforts on driving registrations for the next event rather than trying to spread budget across many different events in the future.

Focusing on a single area will allow you to narrow down your attention and optimisation efforts for the best results. This attention will lead to increased performance resulting in more conversions and is a surefire way to increase the available budget as the account sees success.

3) Be Ruthless With Low Performers

On a large account, time is your friend. With monthly budgets in the tens or hundreds of thousands, you have time to let low performing campaigns and focus areas respond to optimisation. When you only have a few hundred for a particular area in a given month, you don’t have the same freedom.

Optimisation should always focus on low performing areas first with a mixture of tactical and strategic changes made to boost account performance. However, if you’re not seeing any uplift after a month, take the decision to pause that activity and reinvest into areas that are working. This allows you to double down on what’s working while making space to build a new plan for activity that hasn’t worked as expected.

4) Test, Learn, Repeat

With a limited budget, the importance of every click is magnified. Every piece of activity should have a structured testing and optimisation plan in place to quickly identify successful tactics which can then be implemented elsewhere in the account. While larger, more mature accounts can get away with month on month optimisation, small budget accounts should be optimised daily to ensure that all spend is actively being used to push the account towards the primary conversion goal.

Long term optimisation and planning is important too. Along with the daily optimisation to maximise performance against spend, ensure there’s a monthly and annual roadmap focused on account growth. As you narrow down the account to what works, you don’t want to left without a plan for how to continue pushing the account forward in the future.

Small budget accounts are challenging, but not impossible. In order to achieve the best results, marketers need to be skilled at tactical & strategic thinking while also having the courage to quickly make decisions when things aren’t going to plan. Speed is essential for account performance as one quiet week can disrupt an entire quarter’s results and any optimisation should be focused around this way of thinking.

Whatever your budget, Scope Digital can assist with driving the best results possible. For more information, get in touch.

Balancing Visibility & Spend: Why 100% Coverage Isn't Always The Goal

In theory, having your ads appearing 100% the time and being the most prominent brand in the space sounds great. You’re visible to everyone who wants your services, competitors are being pushed down the search results page and you’re getting more conversions every week.

The question is, can you have too much of a good thing?

While there are major benefits to such comprehensive coverage there are also significant drawbacks and challenges that come with it. For every percentage point of visibility gained, CPC & spend dramatically increases as your campaigns work harder to dominate the market. There are a few global brands that can absorb this as just another line on the budget sheet but for everyday advertisers those costs can become unmanageable.

In this week’s post, we’ll look at some situations where 100% coverage is appropriate along with strategies to more efficiently work towards visibility when budgets are limited.

1) Branded Campaigns

For most advertisers, it makes sense to target 100% Impression Share on their own branded keywords. Unless your business name is a common word or shares a name with a much larger brand, working towards 100% Impression Share is usually the best approach. With CPCs so low for branded terms & high expected CTRs & conversion rates, even a large volume of branded traffic can make up a small fraction of total marketing spend.

Despite the relevance of brand campaigns working in your favour, there are still tactics that can be employed to reduce costs. Smart use of Exact Match & negative keywords will ensure that branded traffic is as relevant as possible while optimising towards Google’s recommendations will drive down CPC even further.

2) High Intent, Low Volume Keywords

Maximising visibility on generic keywords can quickly become expensive, even with the best optimisation possible happening within the campaigns. For many generic terms search volume is simply too high for advertisers to comfortably appear for all searches without quickly blowing through their budget.

Rather than competing for space on these terms, a visibility strategy focused on very specific high intent keywords can ensure that visibility is maximised along with the chances of a successful conversion. Sure, CPC will be higher for more specific keywords, but this is easily balanced out by the much lower search volume, leading to strong visibility on the most effective keywords for your goals.

3) Identifying The Point Of Efficiency

As with all marketing challenges, a test and learn strategy is your best friend when understanding how far to push visibility before it pushes back. Often, the increase in spend will outpace any increase in performance above 90% Impression Share and the smartest move is to pull back to the last point where the campaigns were performing to an acceptable level.

Taking a phased approach is the simplest path to success with steady, measured increases to visibility each week while keeping a close eye on your key performance metrics. Change won’t happen overnight and there will be a noticeable downward trend in efficiency as Impression Share and spend rises. By plotting this data over time, you’ll be able to identify the tipping point between visibility and performance and set targets to ensure campaigns are operating at peak efficiency.

4) Assign Audiences

Sometimes 100% visibility doesn’t mean reaching absolutely everyone. Effective use of remarketing and interest audiences can decrease the total pool of available impressions while also increasing relevance, leading to reduced costs and higher quality traffic through to your site.

This is particularly true for generic keywords that may have multiple meanings and intentions for any given search. Assigning audiences to your campaigns will ensure that keywords are only showing to users who have a demonstrated interest in your service, allowing you to narrow down your focus to a pool of users a fraction of the original size while driving better results for your campaigns. The most important thing here is remembering to set those audiences to targeting rather than observation to ensure you get the most out of this strategy.

For an ambitious business, more visibility is always a positive. The goal is to get that visibility in a way that’s efficient, cost effective and moves the business towards their goals. Whether it’s adjusting keyword types, doing data analysis to understand efficiency points or focusing in on audience targeting, thinking about maximum visibility in a different way is sure to lead to better results.

For effective & efficient digital marketing advice, get in touch.

Why Can't I See My Ad? Bridging the Knowledge Gap Between Agency & Client

Why can’t I see my ad when I search for it?

Why aren’t my ads always at the top of the results page?

What is a good CPC?

Over the course of a digital marketing career, we’ve all seen these questions and others like them. Seemingly simple requests for information with complex answers that require information from multiple sources to answer correctly and with full detail.

What’s interesting about these questions is they’re the most visible layer of a wider problem that, if not addressed correctly, can lead to challenges and friction down the line. That problem - the knowledge gap between a client and the agency or freelancer that they’ve hired to run their activity. How can someone with years of experience and a deep understanding of their marketing platform communicate complex, technical information to a contact who only has surface level knowledge?

1) Give Clear, Concise Definitions

Like any industry, digital marketing has its own language that takes years to become fluent in. Without even realising it, every day marketers hold conversations with acronyms, abbreviations and technical terms that are unintelligible to someone outside the industry. Without understanding the language being used, how can two people with vastly different knowledge levels effectively communicate and work together?

Luckily, every platform provides resources that give clear, easy to understand definitions of commonly used terms. Meta & Google have comprehensive glossaries that are useful to refer to & ensure that everyone in the conversation understands what’s being discussed and how it relates to the point at hand.

2) Keep It Personal

Along with working on these platforms, we all use them in our day to day lives. Linking the conversation topic to a user’s personal experience helps create a level of understanding not possible from purely theoretical discussion.

Take remarketing for example. Someone with a basic knowledge of digital marketing may not understand cookies, audience creation and a purchase funnel, but everyone understands what you mean when you refer to “those ads that follow you around the internet”. Linking a tactic or strategy to your client’s own experience will help bridge the knowledge gap and get to the core of the conversation.

Similarly, when you’re discussing technical conversion tracking and lookback windows, the details can get lost in translation. Instead of going into specifics, ask your client about the last purchase they made online and the journey they took to get there. Reflecting on their personal experience of researching a product, returning to the site at different times and on different devices before finally completing the purchase will help them conceptualise the conversation in a way that technical detail can’t.

3) Ask Your Own Questions

For someone with a basic knowledge of digital marketing, sometimes even knowing what question to ask is a challenge in itself. Taking a step back and asking for more detail can ensure that you give the most useful answer possible.

If a client isn’t seeing their ad when they search, you need more detail on how they were looking for it. Maybe there’s campaign scheduling in place that meant it wasn’t live at the time of the search. Their office IP Address could have been excluded to ensure that budget wasn’t spent on accidental impressions and clicks. They could even have made a search on a keyword that you’ve decided not to use in the account.

Whatever the question, getting more detail will allow you to get down to the root of the issue and help your client deepen their digital knowledge. The role of the account manager is increasingly focused on strategy & education so having a client who understands the input that goes into a successful strategy will help set any account up for success.

Like any relationship, communication is key to a strong & successful marketing partnership. Recognising the knowledge gap and actively working to reduce it through smart, simple communication helps to give your account the edge over your competitors by ensuring marketing expertise and business knowledge is shared as effectively as possible.

For clear, transparent marketing guidance, get in touch.

Garbage In, Garbage Out: Working With AI To Write Effective Ad Copy

At this stage, nearly everyone has heard of OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform. Thousands of articles have been written on the topic, predicting everything from mass layoffs as AI makes human creativity obsolete through to ChatGPT and other tools like it being nothing more than a brief flash in the pan.

While I don’t think millions of people will be out of a job next week, the emergence of readily accessible & high quality AI generated creative is likely to have a huge impact on society and working culture moving forward. These tools are here to stay, but for now there’s still a major role for humans to play in guiding and overseeing the automation process to ensure the output is as effective as possible, whatever the end goal is.

So how can digital marketers use ChatGPT and tools like it to take their work to the next level? By remembering that output can only be as good as the input and if you put garbage in, you get garbage out.

Let’s look at an example.

Here, we’ve asked ChatGPT to write us an ad on the Google Ads platform. The input is very top level, all we’ve told the tool is the character limits for the ad, that it’s a retail business and their main product is athletic shoes. So what did we get?

As ads go, it’s OK. We’re within the character limits (assuming two description lines for 180 characters total), it’s calling out athletic shoes and has a decent CTA. I think we can do better though.

What if we gave more information about our target audience? How would it change if we let ChatGPT know that these shoes are made for men in their 30’s who have a goal of running their first marathon?

Now we’re getting somewhere. We’ve identified our target customer’s main goal and are calling that out both in the headline & in the description line. There’s still some improvements that we can make, for example mentioning that they’re men’s shoes, but a shopper seeing this ad will feel that it’s much more tailored to their specific goals.

We’re still not done though, at any given time there’s plenty of people training for a marathon. What other information can we give to create an automated ad that will set us apart from the other competitors in the search results?

After talking to customers, we know that a lot of new runners struggle with injuries as they build up to the marathon distance and it’s a major concern for them. What if we include that in the input?

Compared to the first ad, the difference is night and day. With just a few additional pieces of information we’ve gone from simply saying that we have athletic shoes for sale all the way to calling out how these shoes will solve a specific problem for a customer looking to reach a specific goal. The system itself didn’t change, the only difference was the quantity and quality of the input that we gave in order to create the ad.

ChatGPT has done 90% of the work here and now a human can step in to provide the final touches. We’ve already discussed making tweaks to specify that they’re men’s shoes and we can also use our own contextual knowledge to choose the best URL to send the page to along with the most relevant related products to associate with the ad.

Even with something as basic as athletic shoes, the difference in quality between a low input & high input automated ad is huge. As product complexity grows along with the value of a successful sale, ensuring input is of the highest quality possible becomes absolutely crucial to success. Without a human working to guide the process, any automatically generated ad will be lost among dozens of others in the search results.

Understanding this helps us understand the future of digital marketing and the ongoing shift from tactical to strategic thinking. Why spend time manually writing ads, when you can spend time building out the best customer profiles possible? Leave the tedious work to the machines and use human intelligence & creativity to design the process.

For automated creative, there’s ChatGPT, for everything else there’s Scope Digital. Get in touch.

Long Term Management Or Short Term Projects? Picking Your Freelance Style

Moving away from permanent roles into freelance digital marketing is an exciting time. You’ve spent years at agencies or in-house learning the ropes and understanding what goes into making an account successful. With those skills, you’re ready to branch out with your own business, taking on your own clients and working in the way that you want to.

Of course, it’s never as easy as it sounds. Shifting to a freelance working style brings up all sorts of new challenges to navigate and obstacles to overcome. One of these is defining your working style and whether you want to focus on taking long term clients where you’re responsible for ongoing optimisation and management, or if you’d prefer to base your business around short term projects where you audit, set up and troubleshoot existing accounts.

Below, we’ll take a look the pros and cons of each approach.

Short Term Projects

Project work is a great way to build up a reputation as a solid, dependable freelancer. Taking on projects exposes you to a variety of different industries & challenges while also introducing you to new contacts with every piece of work. Reputation is everything and building up a strong contact list will help to bring in future projects as the clients you’ve helped refer you to other business owners inside or outside their industry.

For many marketers, a new challenge is one of the most exciting parts of the industry. By its nature, project work will always present you with a new challenge and an opportunity to test new tactics or apply lessons from previous work. There’s nothing better than seeing your recommendations driving a huge performance uplift and each new project gives you the chance to do this.

Of course, it’s not all upsides with project work. The most obvious challenge freelancers face here is creating a pipeline of leads large enough to sustain their income. A lack of projects for even a month or two is enough to create cashflow issues so freelancers need to allocate time to marketing their own business & ensuring that leads continue to come in.

Another problem you can face with project work is pricing & the perception of value. As marketers, we understand that a few smart decisions can have an outsize impact on performance, but a business owner who’s not as familiar with digital marketing may struggle to see this potential from a proposal alone. With sites like Upwork & Fiverr allowing business owners to hire skilled marketers for low rates, it’s crucial to spend time working out how to define & communicate the value that only you can provide.

Long Term Management

On the other side of the coin, there’s the option to build your business around long term account management where you’ll be responsible for setting up, running and reporting on your client’s digital activity.

A key benefit to this style of work is the increased security it gives you. Long term account management means that you’ll be able to plan how much revenue you’ll have coming in each month and identify when it’s time to scale up. In the event a client gives notice, you’ll have at least a month to generate new leads or upsell existing clients to maintain revenue, compared to project work which is over very quickly.

Along with the increased security, long term management gives you the satisfaction of seeing your recommendations in action and the performance uplift they can achieve. Project work is often focused around auditing and troubleshooting, so it’s easy to miss the chance to see your hard work in action.

However, with the positives come the downsides of this style of work. While you have increased security in terms of monthly revenue, a client leaving at the wrong time can change the short term outlook of your business very quickly. Lead generation & conversion can be more difficult for long term projects so you’ll have to quickly find the time to move back into marketing mode for your own business in order to secure new work.

Long term management can also create challenges as your clients succeed and grow their activity. More activity requires more management time and with multiple long term clients, you’ll have to prioritise to fit everything into your day. As your business grows, your focus may shift to higher priority clients requiring you to restructure contracts with, or even let go of, smaller clients who aren’t generating enough revenue.

For most freelancers, you’ll start out with a mix of work types and naturally gravitate towards one. Whatever style you pick, the key is to identify your niche and your main selling points so you can effectively and efficiently win new business. With so many businesses out there looking for digital guidance, becoming an expert in your field is the best path to success.

For long term management or short term project assistance, get in touch.