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Jul 29, 2020 In 2020, it is no secret that all things change. This is now as apparent as ever. While there are some things in today’s society that are currently the prime example of needing to change, how people consume entertainment is not an exception to the rule. People are changing the way they consume content like watching television. While it may seem like Traditional TV and OTT should be bloodthirsty competitors, in reality, they should be paired like the best of friends. What is OTT? What is Traditional TV? You see those three letter marketing acronyms all over the internet these days (and to be honest it’s hard to keep track of them all), but perhaps the most important is known as OTT. Over-The-Top Television is more commonly understood as ‘streaming television’. When you watch Hulu, or Netflix, or any other internet TV, you are essentially watching OTT. Traditional Television, also known as Linear TV, is how people would watch TV before streaming services were available. All shows and channels are pre-programmed and follow a specific schedule. A huge difference between Linear TV and OTT is with streaming, you get to choose your own programming whenever and wherever you want. OTT allows you to no longer be limited to what is on at any given time, and gives you the ability to finally watch 20 episodes of The Office in a row. While OTT Streaming and Traditional TV can be seen as very similar things with few differences, on the marketing side they are greatly different. Most people are familiar with how Traditional TV works: ad space is bought and sold manually. This leads to a very long process and an inability to have a quick turnaround time. On the other hand, OTT ad inventory is usually bought and sold programmatically, meaning that digital ads are bought and sold in an automated manner through designed software. This opens a whole new world of possibilities in marketing on the big screen! Transition from Traditional TV to OTT OTT subscriptions have seen some absolutely astounding growth in the past 10 years. Think about how you used to watch TV in the early 2010’s. You were probably still flipping through channels, while Netflix and Hulu were just getting started. In 2014, there were 150 million online streaming services subscriptions. In 2019, this number has grown to over 600 million, a 300% increase! Subscribers are also expected to almost double to 1.1 billion by 2021. Researchers also found that about 70% of US citizens are subscribed to at least one OTT service, while the average user subscribes to 3.4 different services. In addition to the average user being subscribed to multiple OTT services, it’s also been reported that the number of households with two or more OTT subscriptions has increased by over 130% in the past five years. In 2019, 46% of US households subscribe to multiple OTT services, as opposed to 33% in 2017 and 20% in 2014. This proves that once users try one of the big guns like Netflix or Hulu, they are likely to expand on their OTT capabilities and subscribe to other services! It’s getting easier each year to reach a vast number of people using OTT! You can read more about the evolution and future growth of OTT in our OTT Advertising During The COVID-19 Outbreak! Pushing the Growth of OTT Now you may see the numbers from above and think “how it is even possible to achieve that many new users over such a short amount of time?” The thing to know here is that these new users probably aren’t just discovering television for the first time, they are most likely just adapting with the newly available services. These people are most commonly referred to as Cord Cutters. A ‘cord cutter’ is simply someone who figuratively ‘cuts the cord’ on their cable in favor for internet streaming. Between 2019-2020, there were 120.6 million homes in the US that used some kind of TV service (that is about 94% of all homes in the US). This equates to about 300+ million people in the US. Of these people, about 39.3 million were cord cutters. eMarketer is expecting this number to reach 55.1 million by 2022, following the trend of huge growth. Who Are Cord Cutters? According to a study from PwC, 90% of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 access TV content via the internet. Also, 87% of surveyed people between the ages of 18-25 are cord cutters, while 78% of people ages 35-49 and 63% of people between the ages 50-59. This shows that cord cutters aren’t just millennials, they come from all different age ranges. Families with a parent 35-54 years old with two or three children are a huge part of the cord cutting demographic. The families claim that cord cutting is a way to save money and watch more content on demand. Cord cutters are value-focused but not averse to paying for entertainment. Benefits of OTT While OTT and Traditional TV seem to be very similar in their general definitions, the biggest difference has to be the targeting and tracking capabilities of OTT. With Traditional TV, you are most likely casting the biggest net you can, and can really only attempt at reaching an ideal audience by choosing what shows or times people are choosing to watch. These things are still possible with OTT, but your marketing campaign will also be able to target relevant audience segments. Using advanced demographic information and internet cookies OTT can take advantage of users’ behaviors and serve your ads to the right people at the right time. At Conduit, we are even able to target people based on the physical locations they recently visited! As for tracking and reporting, your Conduit OTT campaign will be able to tell you how many users saw every second of your ad, where your ads have been served, and exactly what streaming service or tv application your audience is using. Why OTT is a Perfect Extension of Traditional TV If you are already running an ad campaign on Linear TV, there is absolutely no reason to not also be running an OTT campaign! By only running one or the other, you are severely limiting the potential reach of your campaigns. It is easy to confuse the two and see them as rivals, but in reality, they should come hand-in-hand with each other. With a huge population of TV watchers moving from Traditional to Streaming, it is getting more and more imperative to open up your capabilities and start targeting every potential customer, instead of just the ones watching one type of television! We believe OTT is only going to continue to grow as the world switches to a more mobile first society, especially with the rollout of 5G. As our internet becomes faster and more reliable, people will find themselves streaming video and movies on their mobile devices, which allows marketers like us to place our ads in front of them wherever they go.

Jun 5, 2020 Retargeting is a strategy that nearly every successful programmatic marketing campaign needs to be utilizing. If your website is seeing a lot of traffic but very low conversion, you may want to try this strategy out. It is uncommon for first-time visitors to convert, which is where retargeting becomes a highly valuable, cost effective way to close the deal. In fact, average conversions via landing pages are 2.35%. So how do you capture the attention of the other 97% of users who bounced from your website? Keep reading to learn how to recapture these users and ultimately increase your ROI. What is Ad Retargeting? Before you even begin implementing our steps into your digital marketing strategy, you should know all the ins and outs of what ad retargeting encompasses. Ad Retargeting is exactly what it sounds like: an online marketing strategy that retargets users who bounced from your website without making a purchase. How Does Ad Retargeting Work? With good old cookies, that’s how. Not chocolate chip cookies (although, that wouldn’t be a terrible way to get the attention of some of your target demographic. Writes that down for later..). Retargeting utilizes cookies to essentially “follow” your audience around on the web. By placing a small, unobtrusive piece of code (or pixel) on your site, your ads can be served up to those same users after they leave your site. The code places this cookie in every new user’s browser, so your retargeting provider knows when to serve up an ad to this user. Using this method also ensures that your ads are only served to users who previously visited your site. Retargeting Is The Answer So, for the users who clicked through to a client’s homepage but didn’t make a purchase, didn’t look into available auto inventory, or didn’t look up how to contact the company -programmatic retargeting is the answer. Say a user clicks through to an auto dealer’s homepage, absorbs enough necessary information about the brand, and leaves without looking into the dealer’s inventory. Since it’s already known that this user is interested in the brand, it’s beneficial to retarget them to a page of the website that brings them further down the conversion funnel (i.e. the inventory page). This can work particularly well when paired with a separate set of incentive-based ads aimed directly at previous website visitors, as it may further entice them to engage and make a meaningful conversion. In this particular example, an ad with a call-to-action could be something related to a certain percentage off the MSRP of a vehicle for new customers. By linking this ad set to the inventory page, users who are already familiar with the brand will be much more likely to convert (i.e. visiting the contact page, calling the dealership, visiting the dealership, etc.). Ad-Frequency Another imperative aspect of a programmatic retargeting strategy to keep in mind is the frequency of which the ads are served. While spamming users with ads could certainly hurt a brand’s image, it may take more than one ad to entice a user to come back to your website. If you’ve ever shopped on Amazon, you’re likely very familiar with their retargeting strategy. You may even be able to ignore that 120-pack of Yoohoo you were looking at if you only see the ad one more time. However, if it keeps appearing, you may just decide that you really should treat yourself to 120 Yoohoos. According to Social Media Today, the ideal frequency rate is from one to four ads per day per user, depending on the campaign and industry, and anything above this will typically result in a diminished conversion rate. So while it’s essential to capture the user’s attention, the line between optimal and annoying needs to be clearly defined. Is Ad Retargeting Effective? Retargeting is extremely effective. It helps increase conversion rates and keeps your brand top-of-mind in situations where a user could be shopping around for other brands. Web users who are retargeted are more likely to convert by 43%! When it comes down to it, it’s really all about getting into the mind of the user, and if properly executed, it can be one easy way to increase your client’s ROI. 3 Steps For A Successful Programmatic Advertising Campaign With the variety of constantly-evolving targeting options programmatic advertising companies are utilizing: Geo-Fencing Behavioral Native Advertising Site Retargeting Whitelisting 3rd Party Data Targeting Event Targeting Addressable Geo-Fencing Cart Abandonment Retargeting the list goes on – just figuring out how to set your campaign can seem like a daunting task. However, there are a few fundamental aspects that will ensure your campaign crushes it for your client! 1. Place The Campaign Pixel This may seem obvious, but we cannot understate the importance of placing the campaign pixel on your client’s website! Not only does this allow us to Site Retarget people who have engaged with their website – which leads to people coming back to your website 3x as often – but this also allows us to track campaign engagement in much greater detail than just clicks. Where the pixel placement process used to be a bear – we previously had to place individual conversion pixels only on the specific pages we wanted to track. YIKES . We can now set up your conversion tracking internally once the pixel is placed on all pages of the site. This means we can track how many people saw the campaign’s ads and then visited key pages on your client’s website, like the Contact Us or Locations page. Perhaps even more intriguing, for applicable e-commerce websites, we can retarget only people who have an item in their cart but haven’t checked out yet! 2. Provide A List of Competitors There are several different ways in which we can get your client’s ads in front of their competitors’ customers. You may already be familiar with Geo-Fencing, where we can build a digital fence around a competitor’s physical storefront and retarget anyone who enters that fence with your client’s ads, and then track how many people actually visit your client’s storefront. BTW – in 2018, people who saw our Geo-Fencing ads were on average 175% more likely to actually visit our client’s locations! But did you know we can also serve ads to people who have searched for your competitors across the web, and even people who have searched for your competitors’ websites? And with our integration with some of the industry’s top Data Providers, we can even serve ads to people who have been identified as a customer of several National Brands! 3. Provide All Necessary Creatives This may also sound obvious, but one of the most common hindrances we see comes from only running one or two ad sizes. By providing each of our recommended ad sizes (300×250, 320×50, 728×90, 160×600, 300×600 and 300×500), as well as a .mp4 for Pre-Roll, your campaign will be set up to knock it out of the park right from the get-go! This will allow us to analyze performance data on each ad size and format, and then optimize accordingly by maximizing your top-performers! Conclusion Ad Retargeting is one of the best ways to ensure your programmatic campaigns see incredible success. By following these simple steps and understanding the importance of programmatic ad retargeting, you can ensure your clients’ campaigns grow to the moon!

White label SEO services are an ideal solution for agencies wanting to expand their offerings without diving deep into the intricacies of SEO. But with this solution comes the critical component of reporting - presenting results to clients in a comprehensible manner. So, what should you anticipate when you unbox one of these reports? In this gudie, we'll cover everything you need to know about white label SEO reports so that you can know what to expect when you prepare to present them to your clients. First Time with White Label SEO? Here’s What It’s All About White label digital marketing refers to digital marketing services provided by one agency under another agency’s brand. This allows the client-facing agency to offer these services without having to develop them in-house while still maintaining greater control over their own brand and the deliverables they provide to their clients. Specifically talking about white label SEO, this service refers to search engine optimization campaigns performed for your clients on your behalf. This can include services like link-building, keyword research, auditing, content optimization, and technical optimizations. White label SEO provides the most benefit to agencies that specialize in other digital channels and want to activate an SEO division for their business without having to develop an in-house team. Conversely, it’s also a scalable and efficient option for successful agencies to manage their volume of client work without needing to hire more team members internally. What is a White Label SEO Report? Any type of marketing performance is justified through reporting. A white label SEO report refers to a holistic recap of all the work performed for your client within a span of time by your white label SEO agency partner. Usually, these reports are provided on a fixed frequency, such as weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Within the report itself, an analyst at the white label agency will break down everything that your agency needs to know about the work that was done. This can also include sharing any interesting insights, opportunities for improved performance, and suggestions for tailoring the strategy to better drive qualified organic traffic. This deliverable, along with any others provided by the white label partner, can then be rebranded under your agency or client’s name. That decision is ultimately up to you, but the easiest way to decide whether to brand it under your agency or client is how you plan to use it. For example, you might keep it branded to your agency if you want to only use the report as an internal reference document. Most white label reports are developed with the agency as the end user in mind. If you want the report to be developed in a more client-facing manner, this can usually be done with a simple request to modify the way the content is written in the report. What’s Inside White Label SEO Reports So now that we’ve covered what white label SEO is and what these reports entail, let’s open the box and see what’s inside. Here’s what you should expect from white label SEO reports: An Executive Summary of the Actual Work Performed To start any report, the white label SEO team should supply you with a quick summary of the actual work performed on your client’s site that month. This can be written as a quick paragraph, a bulleted list, or a slightly longer rundown depending on the needs of the website and the scope of work. Deeper Dives Into the Data Next, the analyst should go deeper beyond the surface summary. How has their work affected the organic search performance of the website? This could include valuable data points such as: Keyword rankings: Where are the largest jumps in keyword rankings? Is there a pattern that can be identified? How have these improved month-over-month? Organic traffic analysis: Have performance metrics changed in a significant way, such as an increase in page views to specific parts of the website that align with campaign goals? Has organic traffic taken a larger share of the site’s overall traffic? On-Page analysis: This would entail a summary of major improvements like a shorter load speed, or opportunities for improvement like unminified javascript or CSS. Content overview: What content has been produced that month for your client and what pieces of content are currently performing best on the site? Local SEO (if applicable): This section would include any updates to Google My Business performance and any updates made to other local directories used as part of a local strategy. Of course, this doesn’t encapsulate everything that would be in a deeper dive, and not every agency may want something as detailed. Maybe you may want a few highlights and data screenshots that you can share to your client to maintain their confidence in your SEO services. This all depends on the personal preference of your agency and how you present your information to your clients. Putting Everything Into Context Okay, so you have this killer white label SEO in-hand and you’re ready to send it to your client. You take one look at it, and then you ask yourself: “What does any of this actually mean?”. A high-quality SEO report should include real insights from the analysts working on the campaign. These notes should put the information presented in the report into its proper context in a more narrative-driven format so that you can easily summarize it to your clients. Notable Wins for Your Client Are there any standout performance improvements that deserve more attention? A report should help you easily identify these so that you can highlight them to your clients. These could include examples like earning a top-3 keyword ranking, a piece of content being used as a Featured Snippet on Google, or a significant uptick in organic traffic to the site or specific pages. Where to Go Next After you’ve reviewed what happened, where do you go next? The report should end with an overview of where the analysts recommends concentrating SEO efforts for your client’s website in the upcoming month. For example, if missing metadata for multiple pages was identified in the report, the analyst may recommend filling adding this data as a priority in the upcoming month’s work. Get Better White Label SEO Reports for Your Agency At Conduit Digital, we’re proud to serve as the elite white label SEO partner for established North American agencies looking to scale. As one of 17 digital channels, our SEO team gives your agency the communication and performance structure to say “yes” for new organic search campaign opportunities that present themselves. To learn more about partnering your agency with Conduit for white label SEO, schedule a call with us today.

May 28, 2020 As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept across the country, businesses everywhere have had to rethink their marketing strategies. As advertising agencies, it is our duty to guide these clients in the right direction when it comes to their advertising strategies and marketing platforms. Recently, the team at Conduit Digital sat down with our Google Agency Partner, Ann, to discuss the changes in the digital marketing industry during COVID-19. In this edition, we are going to break down the biggest differences between Facebook and Google CPCs, CPMs, and more. The Difference Between Facebook and Google Ads When your agency runs ads on either one of these platforms, it’s important to know the difference between the two. Knowing this will help you develop a better strategy for capturing leads for your clients. The biggest difference between Google and Facebook ads is search intent. When users are using Google it’s because they are looking for a specific thing, so you can target ads based on the keywords they use. Whereas with Facebook, users are shown ads based on their interests. You can attribute Google to having more of a pull marketing strategy where Facebook is great for building brand awareness. So when you are meeting with your client on the best way to reach their goals, it’s crucial to know the different strategies that go behind each platform. Now that we had a refresher on the differences between these two platforms, we can go into what the best practices are for running ads during COVID-19. What Are The Data Points? When discussing the shifting strategies across digital channels, it is important to differentiate between your data points. Identify the KPIs that you would like to study. For example, in discussing these trends with our Google Agency Partner, we noticed particular volatility in both CPCs and CPAs on Facebook and Google. Here is a breakdown of some of the most important data points during COVID-19. 1. CPCs Cost-per-click is a metric that changes based on the bids of the target keywords. Your client only pays for a click on their ad. CPCs on both Facebook and Google are very volatile during COVID-19 and it is not recommended that you put too much stock in CPC performance during this time. 2. CPAs Cost-per-action is a metric based on qualifying actions such as sales, form fills, or registrations. CPAs may also be currently volatile due to the pandemic. When discussing data points, you should encourage your clients to look away from metrics such as CPCs and CPAs due to the volatility of the market due to the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, encourage your clients to focus on clicks-to-site, ROI, and CLVs. 3. Clicks-To-Site While not normally a key metric, many businesses have shifted their focus to draw as many clicks to their site as possible. Especially if your clients aren’t selling right now, a brand awareness campaign with clicks-to-site as a metric could see huge dividends for your clients. 4. ROI Return on investment may be the single most important metric when it comes to digital marketing, especially during this pandemic. Our Google Agency Partners stress that focusing on ROI as a metric for your clients will help them to see the value that your agency brings and continue marketing during this difficult time. 5. CLVs Consumer lifetime value is the amount of money a customer is predicted to spend with your business for the duration of your relationship with that individual. By focusing on calculating their CLVs, your clients can begin to hyper-target individuals who provide their business with the highest value. What Google Suggests During our sit down with Conduit Digital’s Google Agency Manager, we wanted to dive deep into the most pressing changes in metrics and data. They explained to us the increasing volatility of CPCs and CPAs on Google platforms, which may not exactly come as a surprise to most people in the industry. However, one notable difference was found between verticals. In fact, week over week, there have been many different and interesting shifts. When looking at your clients’ campaigns, it is important to note whether these shifts are week over week trends, or if they are part of a larger pattern. With the volatility of KPIs like CPCs, it is important to have your client assess their 6-month goals. Is their CLV increasing? Where are the profits coming from per channel? Develop a 6-month plan with their full-marketing mix. In an ideal world, that includes all of the platforms they are currently running on including Google and Facebook. If your client has been seeing strong end-KPI efficiencies, then keeping up a strong mix of marketing will help them to separate themselves from their competitors. What We Have Seen On Facebook Facebook has been very interesting for our analysts to watch and test. While usage of the Facebook platform has skyrocketed in countries hardest hit by COVID-19, those same countries have contributed to an online-advertising pullback that undercuts results. With the combined additional usage on the platform and the wildly varying advertising strategies, traditional Facebook advertising methods have seen volatile KPIs. As with Google, Conduit Digital recommends straying from traditional data points on Facebook. Instead, look for ways that your clients can take advantage of the shift in usage. Focus on brand awareness, your clients’ COVID-19 response, and informational tools for consumers. What Google Says To Do In order to drive sales, your clients need to seize emerging consumer needs: Bid, Budget, Keyword, & Targeting. Here is how Google recommends adjusting your campaigns in search. Adjust Unused Budget In The Account To Capture High Traffic Campaigns Get more traffic by moving unused budgets to the ads that need it most. This helps to avoid losing potential traffic of where the demand is. Check the “Move unused budget” recommendations from Optimization Score for more actionable details tailor to your account. Leverage Automated Bid Strategy To Achieve Your Current Business Goals Your business goal might change as online traffic presence becomes more important, using Google’s auction-time signals help you to bid more effectively for your main business goal. Activate Dynamic Search Ads Show your ads on searches relevant to the business that you may be missing with your keyword-based ad groups. It is important to get incremental traffic and discover new keywords especially the online searching queries behavior might be different during this time. Use Keywords Identification To Show Your Ads More Often To People Searching For What Your Business Offers Check “Add new keywords” recommendations in Optimization Score, analyze your previous keyword performance to keep performing terms, and explore search term reports to identify high potential keywords. Raise Your Budget Where There Is Demand Fixing your limited by-budget campaigns can help you not to miss out on more potential traffic which could lead to potential online/offline sales. Check the “Raise your budgets” and “Raise your budgets for upcoming traffic increases” recommendations from Optimization Score. Empower Customer To Take Action With Your Ad Copies Be creative with your ad copies messaging for a unique selling point, i.e. special promotion, free delivery, next day delivery, in-store discount. Leverage Sitelink Extension To Make Your Ad Stands Out And Be Helpful Take people to specific pages on your site i.e. a specific product, store hours, specific online stores, store location. Leverage Promotion Extension To Show Special Sales And Offer With Your Ads It makes your offer stand out so potential customers can spot great deals and generate new sales for your business. Activate Responsive Search Ad To Show More Relevant Messages To Your Customer By adapting your ad’s content to more closely match potential customers’ search terms, responsive search ads may improve your campaign’s performance. If you want more PPC tips and tricks to effectively run your campaign, our expert analysts wrote an extensive guide to help you crush your next ad campaign. The Issue With Lead Quality Lead qualification has become a huge issue for many businesses during COVID-19. With spikes and surges in volatile online activity, it can be tough for your clients to know they are reaching the most qualified leads and not wasting their precious ad spend budgets. It is important to work closely with your clients to ensure they are prepared on their end to reach the right customers. The good news is that API integration and tracking has become much more streamlined, enabling you to easily assist your clients in setting them up with the tools they need for success. Conclusion Now is the perfect time to help your clients set themselves up for post-COVID-19 success. By following these tips from Google and Conduit Digital, you can ensure your agency is in a position to grow revenue for you and your clients. Remember to focus on data points that matter during this time and stray away from those that might be more volatile. Understand that Facebook and Google are still two of the best tools available for helping your clients reach their goals. Focus on qualified leads, track and measure every ad encounter, and shift goals to reflect ROI, ROAS, and CLV. By following these tips from Google and Conduit Digital, you will set up your agency and your clients for success. For more assistance on running your clients’ PPC ad campaigns during this crisis, contact Conduit Digital today to see how a White Label Pay Per Click Partner will be there to help you during this difficult time.

Aug 31, 2020 OTT or Over the Top Television has changed the way people view and consume content, 71% of US broadband households have at least one OTT entertainment product, such as a smart TV or streaming media player. With traditional television, there is set programming and advertisements with little to no customization available. Now that’s where OTT has come in and has flipped traditional television on its head. With OTT you have the ability to choose the content you want to consume, making for a more immersive experience. No more just putting something on in the background because “there’s nothing on” to watch. This also makes for a better advertising experience when it comes to watching the content of their choice. Pairing over the top television with traditional tv advertising is the perfect way to get your message to your target audience, no matter where they watch. Not every impression is created equal. Without specific targeting the odds of your advertisement reaching the best possible audience is slim. Over the top television targeting capabilities gives advertisers the ability to reach potential customers with their ads in a very granular way, something not obtainable with traditional television advertising. OTT has the ability to target users based on a magnitude of different categories from: Geographic targeting Whitelists Site Retargeting Email Retargeting Demographics Individual interests The list goes on and on. This alone makes over the top television impressions extremely valuable to your brand. But that’s not the only thing that sets OTT apart. It also provides different levels of user experience across multiple different platforms. Every platform is different and can provide each user with a unique viewing experience. This is where we will dive in and dissect two different OTT platfoms: Hulu and Pluto TV to see what makes them unique in their ad delivering abilities. “Not all impressions are created equal” Hulu Hulu has one of the most unique approaches to advertising when it comes to their platform. With most platforms, users will get served an ad before the TV show or movie of their choice followed by a few ads throughout the duration of the show or movie. This is where Hulu differs from its competitors. By utilizing an ‘Ad Selector‘ this allows the user to control their ad viewing experience. Users are given the option to choose between two or three different ads. This tactic ensures the user watching the ad is fully engaged and therefore more likely to have a better brand recall and overall viewing experience on the platform. Taking this approach to ad serving has brought Hulu to the top of the premium OTT ad placement realm. Allowing user to select the ad they want to watch without the option to skip has lead to Hulu boasting an extraordinary 96% completion rate of ads. This gives your OTT impressions on Hulu that extra value other platforms can’t guarantee. When you compare the different ad experiences users have across different platforms you start to see not every impression is equal. When comparing a free platform such as Pluto TV to a premium platform such as Hulu you can see where the benefits from each come from. Pluto TV Pluto TV provides a low barrier of entry making their inventory more available and easy to access.  Because Pluto TV offers free content, users are subject to more ads throughout the duration of the content they choose. This tactic helps Pluto in terms of making for more ad spots available to advertisers than Hulu. Users are more willing to sit through more ads on Pluto TV because why? Simple, it’s free. But this also has it’s hangups. With more ads being served during a show, users can become disinterested and exit out of the ad or switch channels. This isn’t due to a lack of content on Pluto, Pluto provides a fast range of content from live TV to on-demand content giving users the freedom to choose what they want to watch when they want. This gives advertisers the opportunity to find their target audience anywhere on Pluto. Conclusion When it comes to what platform you should choose to serve your ads on there or pros and cons to every single one of them. Hulu provides users with one of the most unique ad experiences when it comes to OTT and you can see it works with its 96% video completion rate. But it can be challenging for some advertisers to break the barrier to serve on Hulu with it being considered premium inventory and having limited availability. Platforms such as Pluto TV have a low barrier of entry making it easier for most advertisers to serve on Pluto. But don’t provide much of a unique experience for users, users experience ads more frequently and don’t get the choice to choose the Ads they would like to watch. In conclusion, a healthy mixture of premium inventory along with lower grade inventory should always be practiced in OTT campaigns to ensure you are reaching your target audience no matter where they are consuming content and you are getting the most “bang for your buck”.

Apr 17, 2020 Pay-Per-Click marketing is one of the most popular and effective forms of online advertising available today. In a nutshell, advertisers bid on keywords that are relevant to their business and they only pay when a searcher clicks on their ads. The problem with running a Google Ads campaign is staying up-to-date. With Google and Microsoft constantly updating their platforms, it is very easy to fall behind by running outdated strategies and it’s your results that suffer. Thankfully, Conduit has you covered! We took a deep dive through the Google Ads and Microsoft Ads platform, asked experts and reviewed all of our historical data to compile a comprehensive list of tips and tricks for building a highly-effective Google and Microsoft Ads campaign. In any given month, we manage 1,400 campaigns over 90+ Nielsen markets so we know what it means to run a successful PPC campaign. Want to crush results for your clients and drive even more ROI for their marketing dollars? Keep reading to learn our google ad tips and tricks to better optimize your campaigns. Google Ads Tips & Tricks 1. Select Your Campaign Goals To Match Your Marketing Goals You can’t create the perfect local search campaign without choosing the right goals. Are you looking to increase sales? Drive more leads? Obtain more website visitors? Knowing your goal is half the battle. Remember to choose the right goal that fits your business needs! 2. Start With a Search Campaign To Garner The Best Results In order to boost your business to the top of the search results page when someone searches locally for one or more of your services, start off with a basic search campaign. These campaigns are the bread and butter of the Google Ads platform. According to Blue Corona, 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine, and 47% of people click on one of the first three listings. 3. Implement Search Remarketing Into Your Campaign In order to effectively retarget people who previously visited your website, choose an RLSA (Remarketing List For Search Ads) campaign. If someone leaves your site without buying anything, this campaign type will help you reach these potential customers when they continue looking for what they need. Using an RLSA campaign has been proven to increase KPIs. Conduit Insight: A plumber in Kentucky saw a 38% conversion rate increase leading to an increase in sales after the addition of an RLSA campaign! 4. Try Out Dynamic Search Campaigns Quickly direct potential customers to what they want by using a dynamic search campaign. If you have a well-developed website or a website that hosts a large inventory base, you should use a Dynamic Search Campaign to fill in any gaps that may exist in your keyword-based campaigns. If someone searches for a product or service that you offer on your website, Google will use this content to select a relevant landing page while creating a clear, relevant headline for your ads. Conduit Insight: An automotive dealer in Louisiana was looking to move used vehicle inventory off of their lot. A dynamic search campaign was implemented into their strategy which focused on the used vehicle inventory on their website. This local dealership saw a 200% increase in conversions! 5. Generate More Phone Calls Using a Call-Only Campaign If your main business goal is to keep the phone ringing, make sure you’re utilizing a call-only campaign. These campaigns are built to only show on mobile devices and will guide your searchers to call your business after they tap on your ad. Remember, you can set your call-only campaign to show during your business hours so you don’t miss any opportunity to connect. Conduit Insight: A local plumbing company in Virginia added a call-only campaign to their strategy and saw a 53% increase in phone calls driven to their business in over just one month’s time! In addition to this, there was a 54% drop in cost per lead making the call-only campaign a success! 6. Don't Be Afraid To Bid On Branded Keywords To Claim Your Name There are many advantages to baking a brand campaign into your strategy. Most local clients who are running a tight SEO strategy question whether or not they are wasting money by bidding on their brand name since they are already appearing at the top of the search results page anyway. This topic has been debated for years. In short, the answer is no! The more real estate you claim on the search results page, the better. Not only is bidding on your brand name cheap, if you don’t, your competitors will (if they aren’t already). By running a brand campaign, you can craft ad copy that promotes all of your latest deals and grab the attention of your searcher which is something that you won’t be able to do organically. Because of the relevancy between your branded keywords, ad copy, and landing pages you’ll also watch your account KPIs increase! Not only will you grow your brand equity, but you can also evaluate just how people are searching for your brand online and quantify those searches. Just sit back and watch your CTR (click-through-rate) and Quality Scores skyrocket! Conduit Insight: After analyzing the data of a local cleaning company in Idaho, the incorporation of a brand campaign increased their conversion rate by 32% and decreased their cost per lead by 41%! Not only did their brand awareness increase significantly within their targeted area, but they also saw their phone ring off the hook! 7. Fulfill Your Customers Needs By Showing Up When They're Looking For Your Products Or Services The main purpose of your local search campaign is to fulfill your customer’s needs. Whatever services or products you’re offering, you want to make sure that everyone knows it! Building out a search campaign that is tailored to your customers’ needs is your top priority. If there is one service or product that you’re looking to focus on, separate it from your services campaign and build it out on its own. By doing this, you can control how much budget you put toward that particular campaign. If you already have a Google Ads campaign running and you’re looking to optimize, you can break out high converting keywords into their own campaign for this same reason. It’s all about budget control. 8. Place A Bulls-Eye On Your Competition By Bidding On Competitor Names Overthrowing your competition by running a conquest campaign is a no-brainer! Bidding on your competitor’s brand name is an effective way to steal their potential traffic, leads, and hard-earned sales. There is one caveat, though. Your competitor’s brand name must not be trademarked. In order to avoid any massive penalties or legal issues, don’t mention your competitor’s name in your ad text. Also, keep any mention of your competitor’s name out of your display URL. For example, if you’re a local burger joint you don’t want the display URL attached to your ads to say “www.mysite.com/better_than_McDonalds.” Ad Group Tips 9. Create The Perfect Ad Group Structure Although ad groups are nothing more than containers that hold your keywords, structure matters! Get the perfect organizational structure by creating a tight-knit system that combines your keyword groupings, ad copy, and landing pages and ties them all together. It’s also important to be consistent. The message in your ad copy and the landing pages you’re driving searchers to need to be relevant. Doing these things will lead to more conversions and lower your cost. The reason you’ll generate more leads is simple. For example, if someone is searching for “duct cleaning near me” and you’re an HVAC company that offers these services, you should have an ad group for duct cleaning. Your ad copy boasts about your latest duct cleaning specials which entices the searcher. You then land the searcher on a landing page offering your latest duct cleaning special. The odds that this potential customer will call you is much greater due to the relevancy between all of these things. You’re giving the client exactly what they’re searching for. Creating ad groups that are well aligned will also lead to a higher quality score which in turn will lower your keywords cost per click. Paying less is something we all strive to do! Conduit Insight: A pest control service in Indiana had a rather good average quality score of 6.5 out of 10. After making improvements to this client’s keywords and ads, their average quality score increased by 37% to 8.9. Year-over-year, their overall cost per click dropped by 45%! 10. Group Your Ad Groups By Similar Themes A good rule of thumb when creating ad groups is to group them based on a common theme. For example, let’s say you are a general contractor that offers home remodeling services. You offer flooring, home repairs, painting, room additions, and complete remodels. While it may be easier to create one ad group and dump keywords for all of your service offerings in there, it’s not a good idea. Someone searching for hardwood flooring wouldn’t benefit from seeing ads mentioning painting and vice versa. In order to create an effective organizational hierarchy of ad groups, you should create at least one ad group for each service. That way you can write your ad copy to be more relevant to the searcher who is looking for a specific service you offer. 11. Show The Right Ads To The Right People By structuring your ad groups properly, you will maximize the effectiveness and profitability of your ads. Google looks closely at your ad groups when deciding who should see your ads and when. The more specific and focused you build out your ad groups, the more effective they will be. By doing so, you aren’t only pleasing Google but you’re also creating a more user-friendly experience for your potential customer by giving them exactly what they’re looking for. The key is to keep your messaging so highly targeted that the searcher has no choice but to convert! 12. Try Out Multi-Keyword Ad Groups (MKAGS) In the PPC world, it’s all about customer intent. Although this is a controversial topic, most agencies will agree that SKAGs (Single Keyword Ad Groups) are a thing of the past. It’s been thought that using one keyword in each ad group will allow for a more targeted approach and a more organized structure would be created. The thinking is that if you build your ad groups to only focus on the exact keyword that someone is searching, chances are that your money would be well spent and lead to a conversion. This is more than likely not going to be the case. Nearly a year ago, Google announced a change that was made to close variants of exact match keywords. This change means that when someone is searching for a keyword or phrase, it no longer has to exactly match the keyword in your ad group. Variations of your keyword, including implied words and paraphrases, are now taken into consideration. Function words such as “the” and “for” can also be included. Ever since then, Google has gotten better at breaking down more complex long-tailed keywords. If searches are now more based on intent, it only makes sense to build out your ad groups with that same mind frame. If not, you could end up bidding against yourself due to the new rules of close variants. For example, ‘auto dealership’ and ‘auto dealer’ are now considered the same and many SKAG ad groups are just variants of other keywords already in the account. By using multi-keyword ad groups, you will not only save time and money but also reach your intended audience based on their intent. Conduit Insight: A restaurant owner in Florida had an existing Google Ads account which was transferred over to Conduit. This account was structured using an extreme amount of SKAGs (single keyword ad groups). After restructuring the account into more manageable MKAGs (multi-keyword ad groups), we were able to eliminate excessive waste by 33% over the course of two months. In addition to this, the conversion rate increased by 54%! 13. Implement Three ETA's And One RSA Per Ad Group According to Google’s best practices, all of your ad groups should contain at least three ETA’s (expanded text ads) and one RSA (responsive search ad). Doing so will allow you to test ad copy to see which ones are more relevant to your users’ search queries. Ads & Copywriting Tips 14. Utilize The Character Limits Within Your Headlines and Descriptions Effectively reaching your target audience with relatable and actionable ad text is crucial, but ensuring you aren’t a blip on the radar is also important. Make sure you are maxing out those character limits and taking up SERP real estate! 15. Always Include A Second Description Increased screen-real estate means increased visibility, especially on mobile devices. Based on data collected by Wordstream, just by adding ad extensions, CTR has been seen to jump by 12% meaning that expanding your exposure further down the SERP will only help to increase awareness and engagement. 16. Include Numbers In The Ad Text, While Being Specific Using exact numbers when referring to price points or customers served is more believable when not using a generic-rounded number that blends in. For example, “Over 1,000 Satisfied Customers” doesn’t quite tell the story that “1,546 Satisfied Customers” does. Conduit Insight: Conduit used this tactic when setting up Callout Extensions in a lawyer from Florida’s campaign, and we saw the conversion rate increase by 39% in the ads that showed the specific extension! 17. Utilize The Keywords Throughout The Ad Text Using a keyword throughout the headlines and descriptions of an ad boost relevance in the eyes of Google and searchers. This will improve Quality Scores and help to reduce your cost per click. 18. Understand Need Recognition When Writing Ad Copy Unless searching for Branded terms, consumers are looking to alleviate a need they have. Focusing on writing ad copy from the perspective of why the searcher is there in the first place is a great start. 19. Get Local With Ad Copy Especially for brick and mortar stores, proximity and convenience are huge factors in a customer’s choice. Identifying yourself as a member of the local community creates a level of comfort and familiarity as well. 20. Don't Over-Pin Headlines In Responsive Search Ads The beauty of Responsive Search Ads is in the freedom that Google has to mix and match your headlines and descriptions for the best performance. Wordstream states that pinning headlines reduces this freedom, thus reducing the potential for the algorithm to find the optimal ad text combination. 21. Use One Responsive Search Ad Per Ad Group Based on how Responsive Search Ads work, it is optimal to max out the headlines and descriptions in one ad than to have multiple ads. Also, as mentioned earlier, utilizing Responsive Search Ads always advertisers to take advantage of Google’s algorithm which finds the best ad creative match up. Ad Extension Tips 22. Include All Extensions Relevant To Your Business As previously stated, and according to Google, adding more ad content in the form of extensions increases the visibility and often the number of clicks your ad receives. However, do not get ad-extension fever and add extensions that don’t offer any value for your business. Conduit Insight: From looking at our data, campaigns that include call outs, site links, and structured snippet extensions see an increase in CTR of 45%! 23. Add Extensions At The Relevant Level Within The Account Extensions can be added at the Account, Campaign, or Ad Group level. For example, say you are running a campaign for an Electronics Store that has ad groups broken out by product types offered with one ad group focusing on ‘Televisions’. Using a Structured Snippet specifically listing the Brands of televisions at this ad group’s level to make the ad hyper-relevant to the searcher’s need. Sitelinks Extension Tips 24. Include Relevant Sitelinks Reassuring the fact that more ad content leads to more engagement, Google states that including sitelinks increases the click-through rate by 30%. 25. Use Sitelinks To Direct Traffic To Relevant Pages Deeper In Your Website Sitelinks allow you to cast a wider net out to your target audience. Let us give you an example. If a campaign is selling sweaters, adding additional links to different types of sweaters will help increase the likelihood that you are displaying a solution to a specific consumer’s specific need when they are served your ad. 26. Add Descriptions To Your Sitelinks Google allows the option to add descriptions to your Sitelink extensions to include additional information about the page. These descriptions also make each Sitelink extension more prominent on the SERP, in turn increases the visibility of your overall ad. Conduit Insight: We used Sitelink Extensions for a client trying to sell newly-constructed condominiums in Florida giving users the option to go directly to the Contact page, see the basic blueprints of the units offered, and jump right to images of the residences. When analyzing the data, we saw that ads that included Sitelink Extensions increased by click-through rate by 20%! 27. Highlight Your Unique Selling Points Using Callout Extensions Use Callout Extensions to highlight additional unique selling points of choosing your business, whether overall at the account level or more specifically at the ad group level. Conduit Insight: When the campaign for a plumber located in Indiana was launched by Conduit, we originally used campaign-level generic Callout Extensions. We eventually broke the campaign into campaigns focusing specifically on ‘Installation’ and ‘Repair’ keywords respectively, and while doing this we created specific Callout Extensions to showcase the offers in these specific service areas. Where you can, it is beneficial to showcase USPs that will give you an edge over the competition. 28. Using Structured Snippets Will Provide More Valuable Information To The Searcher Structured Snippets allow you to create an extension centered around choosing a header or category, and showcasing what your business has to offer within that category, known as values. For example, if you were advertising for a shoe store and creating a structured snippet at the account level, you may choose ‘Styles’ as the header and ‘Running’, ‘Casual’, ‘Dress’, and ‘Sandals’ as the values. 29. Ensure That Headers And Values Are Aligned You want to make sure that the values you plan on showcasing align with the header you choose to go with. This could create a mismatch and confusion in the eyes of the consumer, but the ads could also get disapproved by Google altogether. 30. Include Call Extensions Google reported that 70% of mobile searchers make a phone call to a business directly through the ads. This ties back to the shorter path to conversion, as one less action needs to be taken. This is also more pertinent to Local campaigns, as a higher percentage of visitors will traditionally be searching from mobile devices. For Local Businesses that are tied to a consumer’s need for a higher level of immediate contact and a sense of urgency, supplying them with a number to call as soon as they search can be a huge help to them and your conversion rate. 31. Get Local With Call Extensions As often as possible, try and create a Call Extension using a number with a local area code as we have seen this familiarity increase the CTR. Conduit Insight: A tow truck service in Indiana saw a 40% conversion rate when only looking at conversions generated by the call extension using a local area code. 32. Use Lead Form Extensions To Generate Leads Although still in beta, Lead Form extensions can be a great way to collect consumer data and generate leads. By customizing the extension, lead form itself, and the submission message that users see after submitting their information, your ads can be set up to collect leads right from the SERP. 33. Set Up A Webhook To Easily Manage Leads From Your Lead Form Extension You’ll most likely want to attach your Lead Form Extension to a webhook, as the other option is a CSV download of all the submissions get wiped after 30 days, stated by Google. To set this up, simply input your webhook’s URL and key under ‘Lead Delivery Option’ when setting up your Lead Form Extension. 34. Utilize Message Extensions To Make Customer Contact Easier Like Lead Form extensions, Message Extensions allow users to contact a business, or convert, directly from the SERP. Decreasing the path-to-contact and increasing the size of your overall ad, CTR’s have been seen to increase by 50% when Message Extensions were included by Wordstream. When setting up, you can choose to have messages sent directly to a phone number in the form of text messages. The other option is to have the messages sent to an email address, and then your responses will get sent back to the customer in the form of a text message on their mobile device. 35. Make Sure That You Link To A Text-Friendly Number When Using Message Extensions This is pretty self-explanatory, but if you choose to have messages sent to a phone number when setting up your Message Extension, the phone number you use must be able to receive and send text messages. 36. Utilize Ad Scheduling As Message Extensions Are More Time Sensitive Like other ad extensions, you can use ad scheduling to dictate when your Message Extensions can accompany your ads when they are served. If the business has limitations during certain days of the week or hours of the day in terms of being able to respond, make sure to schedule this while setting up your Message Extensions to ensure that leads are not being missed and inquisitive customers are not messaging a non-responsive number in their time of need. 37. Make Sure To Have Message Reporting Turned On Make sure to enable ‘Message Reporting’ to ensure that you are able to track and report on the data that your Message Extensions collect. 38. Always Link Google My Business Listing To Set Up Location Extensions Location Extensions are set up by linking a Google My Business account to a Google Ads account. By simply linking these accounts, the business location, as well as the contact information, will automatically display underneath your search ads. 39. Take Advantage of Google Map Ads By Linking The Google My Business To Google Ads Enabling a Location Extension, your ads will become eligible to show in search results of Google Maps, which becomes more crucial when reaching a user who has shown local intent. Not sure how to link to your Google My Business listing? Look no further. Conduit Insight: When running a hyper-local and mobile-focused auto body shop campaign in Alabama, Conduit saw that pairing mobile bid adjustments with the Location Extension generated a conversion rate of over 50%! 40. Ensure That Your Google My Business Information Is Cleaned Up Before Linking Your Google My Business Account To Google Ads Make sure that the Google My Business account information is cleaned up and accurate, as Location Extensions give the advantage of including a clickable business address and phone number, which get pulled directly from the Google My Business listing. These provide users with additional ways to convert and gain information about your business, especially those with more local intent. Having your business information up to date on the listing is one of the quickest ways to optimize it to increase organic traffic! 41. Location Extensions Make You Eligible To Show Ads In The Local Pack SERP visibility has been linked to CTR increases in a multitude of these tips, and additionally serving ads in the Local Search Ads pack adds to this. Following a local search, Google will showcase eligible ads paired with ‘Get Directions’ and ‘Call Buttons’ underneath a map of where your business is located relative to the searcher. These listings are shown amongst organic ‘local results’, but being eligible to serve ads here is one more point of visibility with action items that local searchers can take towards contacting or choosing your business. 42. Set Up Price Extensions To Show A Local Competitive Advantage Price Extensions allow you to include a carousel of snippets under your ad text containing the associated prices of up to 8 of your individual products or services. As price is arguably the largest competitive advantage one can have, utilizing price extensions so showcase this can play a great role, especially in local markets. Conduit Insight: When running a local summer-vacation destination’s campaign in New Jersey, we found that including price extensions tied to the activities that visitors would be able to find there (and more importantly that local competitors were also offering) specifically drove a click-through rate of 28%! 43. Qualify Your Price Extensions For Easier Upkeep By Using The Price Qualifier Google allows you to set up a ‘Price Qualifier’ to accompany the price you advertise per product or service. These qualifiers include ‘From’, ‘Up To’, and ‘Average’ that allow you to dictate how these prices are presented to searchers. They also allow for a tad more freedom in terms of constantly keeping your Price Extensions contingent with the exact prices you are offering in-store. 44. Link Price Extensions To The Most Relevant & Conversion-Friendly Page While being able to include individual final URLs per product or service being showcased, you want to make sure that users are being taken to a relevant one. A click on a specific price within the carousel implies more intent than a more general click on overall final URL, so you want to make the client’s path to conversion as fluid as possible. 45. Use Promotion Extensions To Showcase Sales And Discounts That You Have Running Promotion Extensions are designed to advertise any enticing sales or discounts that a business is currently running and separates these out under the traditional ad text where they can blend in and get lost. Google gives you the option of using ‘Monetary Discount’, ‘Percent Discount’, ‘Up To Monetary Discount’, or ‘Up To Percent Discount’ Promotion types. You also have the option of using ‘On order over’ or ‘Promo Code’ Promotion details if there are certain requirements associated with the promotion being offered. 46. Use Promotion Extensions Rather Than Updating Ad Text Promotion Extensions can be set up with start and end dates, meaning that you can very easily ensure that these extensions are not running outside the life of your sale or discount. Conduit Insight: The account managers at Conduit have found it much simpler to use this method over the more-time-consuming and messier approach of duplicating ads, swapping out promotional headlines and descriptions, and applying automated rules to enable or pause certain ads when sales or discounts begin or end if the promotional ads are not driving to their own landing page. Promotion Extensions give you the freedom of not worrying about promotional ad text running at inaccurate times, while also providing a very visible and enticing spot on the search results page to reach users. 47. Create App Extensions To Drive App Downloads If you are advertising for a business that values app downloads, utilizing App Extensions is a surefire way to increase exposure and generate conversions. By linking to a page on an app store, you can create a direct link under your text ad accompanied by a call-to-action that you create. 48. View Your App Store Page The Same Way As A Landing Page You would never send traffic to an irrelevant, unenticing landing page, right? Right, you wouldn’t. So why send users to a poor page in the respective app store that doesn’t promote the path to conversion? View these pages as any other traditional landing pages, that is, as the next important step to securing a conversion. Not sure how to create the perfect landing page for your ppc campaign? We’ve got you covered. Landing Page Tips 49. Drive To Specific Landing Pages To Increase Quality Score If your campaign is segmented by ad groups focusing on specific service areas or products that you offer, ensuring that your ads drive to hyper-relevant landing pages that match the keywords you are bidding on can impact ad performance immensely. User experience is the driving force behind Google Quality Scores, and Landing Page Experience is one of the three pillars that impacts it. Driving to a relevant Landing Page will increase Quality Scores which will, in turn, increase your click-through rate and help you drive more conversions. 50. Drive To Specific Landing Pages To Reduce Path To Conversion Piggybacking off of the previous tip, creating specific ad groups that drive to pages that are as relevant as possible to the keywords that you are bidding on will reduce the path to conversion, which will, in turn, help you drive more conversions. The more you require users to navigate to where they ultimately are most likely to convert, the more bounce opportunities they are provided with. An ad that shows when someone searches for “foam top surfboards” should drive to the page showcasing all of and only the foam top surfboards that you offer. Conduit Insight: When optimizing the campaign for a Plastic Surgeon in Florida that had been running for some time, Conduit made the ad groups more granularly-focused while driving to procedure-specific subdomains on the site. After analyzing the data for a month, we saw the conversion rate increased by 17%! 51. Making Landing Pages Local-Friendly Local intent is incredibly powerful, and understanding that nurturing this can help your business will go a long way. Creating familiarity by using phone numbers with local area codes, showcasing business locations on maps, and using local imagery are all ways that you can relay your locality to page visitors. After all, in a survey taken by Uberall, 82% of smartphone shoppers use “near me” while searching. 52. Keeping Path To Conversion Above The Fold Driving users to a relevant landing page is crucial, but making conversion points clear, at the forefront, and above the fold of the other aspects of the page can have a major impact on optimizing your campaign’s conversion rate. Any additional step required by the user has the potential to be the point at which they bounce, so why drag out the path to conversion? Conduit Insight: While running a campaign for a hospital in Kentucky, we A/B tested where the lead form and phone number were located on the landing page relevant to the statistics and informative text. We found that pushing the lead form and phone number to the uppermost right corner of the landing page resulted in the conversion rate doubled! 53. Request Only The Necessary Information Revisiting the idea that you want to make the conversion path as seamless as possible for the user, requesting impertinent information or including a tedious form that takes a long time to fill out will almost always result in a lower rate of conversion. Especially with elastic services and products where the user has many options to satisfy their need, elongating the conversion process will negatively impact the user experience. According to Wordstream, eclipsing 7 fields of information on a form results in a steep drop off. 54. Continuously A/B Test Your Landing Pages Like anything else, there is always room for improvement. Even what may appear to be the obvious right choice in content or page-layout can be tested and will often times surprise you. A/B testing one aspect of your page at a time over the life of your campaign will hone in on the most optimal landing page to drive to. This is a slow process, but one that surprisingly most marketers fail to utilize. Conduit Insight: Conduit has been running a PPC campaign for a hospital specializing in cancer treatment in Tennessee, and while slowly A/B testing the landing page, we have been able to hone in on a page that has driven a 106% increase in conversions compared to the initial page! Keyword Tips 55. Bid On The Brand Name Bidding on the brand name comes with a multitude of benefits that outshine the belief that users would reach your site and convert anyway. While your organic listing will be in the search results as well, making sure that you have an ad in the #1 spot takes up more Branded space on the search results page and will also ensure that you stay listed above competitors who may be using conquesting keywords (i.e. bidding on your brand name.) Also, being able to dictate the copy within the ad (unlike an organic listing) allows you to utilize current sales and promotions to pre-qualify searchers who are most likely further down the path to purchase relative to users who have not searched for branded terms. 56. Use The Landing Page And Overall Website As An Initial Keyword Guide To start, familiarizing yourself with and clicking through the subdomains of a website will help you hone in on an extensive list of products or services offered. 57. Using Keyword Modifiers To Make More Relevant Ad Groups Keyword modifiers allow you to create additional ad groups with keywords more relevant to their respective ads. To put it simply, modifiers create longer-tailed keywords with each modifier that is added. Searchers on mobile devices have shown a lot of local intent, which is why “near me” has been an immensely common modifier that marketers tend to include in their local campaigns. In this case, structuring an ad group around this modifier would allow you to test creating geo-based ad copy, increasing bid adjustments on mobile devices, and creating ad extensions with a larger focus on your proximity. 58. Regularly Comb Through The Search Terms Report Regularly utilizing the power of the Search Terms Report is the backbone of finding new keywords, match types you should be including, and keywords or phrases that are eating up a budget that you should be negativing out of your campaign. Having a scan through this report as often and as granularly as possible at the ad group level will be in your best interest. As search terms build up over time, the list of search terms that you are paying for can get very expensive in a hurry and difficult to analyze. Also, looking through the Search Term Report at the Campaign level can be difficult for this same reason, but more so because of the fact that you need to see which ad group pulled in each search term. Analyzing the report at each ad group’s level is the best approach, as the list is smaller, you will know exactly what keywords you are bidding on relative to the search terms you are looking at, and optimizing right in that same ad group becomes easier. LEARN MORE: What Google’s First Price Auction Bidding Model Means For Your Agency Negative Keyword Tips 59. Use Negative Keywords To Reduce Wasted Ad Spend Getting ahead and staying on top of implementing negative keywords can have a massive impact on the health and success of your campaigns. Bidding on the ‘right’ keywords ensures that your ads are being served to your target audience, but negative keywords are equally as important because they ensure that your ads are not being served for the ‘wrong’ search terms. Let’s look back at the shoe store example. If you were advertising men’s boots, but the business did not specifically sell waterproof men’s boots, then you would want to include “waterproof” as a negative keyword. Plain and simple, when used effectively, implementing negative keywords is a surefire way to increase your campaigns’ ROI because you dwindle down your wasted ad spend from users outside of your target audience as you keep adding them. 60. Use The Search Term Report For Negative Keywords The Search Term Report can be used to find keywords to bid on that you aren’t taking advantage of, but you can also use the report to see search terms that triggered your ads that you don’t want to be paying for. Similar to using it to find keywords, you’ll want to stay on top of implementing these negative keywords by scanning over the Search Term Report as often as possible at the ad group level. You also could be wasting ad spend at any moment. 61. Use The Correct Match Type For Negative Keywords Understanding match types will go a long way in terms of how your negative keywords impact your campaign. Like regular keywords that you bid on, you can choose to make a negative keyword Broad Match, +Broad +Match +Modified, “Phrase Match”, or [Exact Match]. The differences between these match types and how they dictate how your negative keywords function will determine what search queries will serve your ads. 62. Make Sure Ad Groups Aren't Cannibalizing Each Other If you have created similar ad groups having keywords that are similar and maybe one modifier away from one another, it is important to make sure that they are not competing and cannibalizing each other. You may see that a variation of a keyword is performing very well and decide to separate it out into its own ad group or campaign. When you do this, it is imperative to use this longer-tailed keyword as a negative in the other ad group. Using the ‘waterproof men’s boots’ example yet again, when creating the ‘waterproof men’s boots ad group, also be sure to include “waterproof men’s boots” as a negative keyword within the “men’s boots” ad group. Otherwise, these two ad groups would bid on the same keyword and compete with one another whenever a user in your location targeting search for “waterproof men’s boots”, in turn increasing your cost per click and your cost per conversion. 63. Start Your Campaign Off Right With Negative Keywords Many digital marketers view negative keywords as the go-to when looking for ways to optimize a PPC campaign, so why not launch a campaign that is already ahead of the optimization curve? Including a negative keyword list into a campaign prior to going live will limit wasted ad spend from the start and make sure that the campaign is putting its best foot forward. Many times, product or service campaigns can benefit from a generic list of negative keywords to start with. Very common baked-in negative keywords include employment keyword modifiers like “jobs” or “hiring” for non-recruitment campaigns and informative keyword modifiers like “do it yourself” or “how-to” to negate users that aren’t looking for meet a need with your product or service. 64. Include Negative Keywords With Care That all being said about how great negative keywords can be for serving your ads to your target audience and boosting ROI, they should be handled with extreme care. As you can imagine, a poorly placed negative keyword can flip the performance of your campaign upside down as it could hinder your ads from getting served to a portion or all of your target audience. This could have a devastating blow to your conversion rate and leave you scratching your head asking yourself, “Why has my conversion rate dropped 50%?” All the while, a negative keyword was blocking your ads from serving! We recommend taking the time and adding negative keywords at the ad group level, as adding them at the campaign level increases the risk of including a nagging negative keyword in an ad group that it shouldn’t be. Also, if negative keywords are being added in bulk at the start of a campaign or down the line, they should always be heavily vetted for any negative keywords that would negate valuable traffic. Conduit Insight: Having a major impact on campaign efficiency, negative keywords filter out traffic outside of your target audience which can lead to drops in cost-per-click and cost-per-conversion. This was the case for a home remodeling company in Idaho, as while we were continuously adding negative keywords that we found by looking through the Search Term Report over a 6-month period, we saw the cost-per-conversion drop by 53%! Audience Development Tips 65. Boost Your Campaign's Performance With Audience Targeting Adding audience targeting to your PPC strategy has been proven to boost a search campaign’s performance by reaching people who are browsing websites, using apps, or watching videos. You can add audience targeting at the campaign or ad group level. Doing so is a good way to reach people based on who they are, what their interests and habits are, or by how they’ve previously interacted with your website. 66. Be Strategic And Creative With Your In-Market Audience Lists Don’t just add random audiences to your campaigns just for the sake of adding them. Be strategic! If you’re looking to add in-market audiences to a campaign keep in mind you may sometimes be limited based on the categories provided by Google. For example, you’re looking to add relevant in-market audiences to a funeral home campaign. There is no specific option in Google to choose anything slightly related to this industry. You can get creative and add in-market audiences to people who are actively searching for flowers in your area. Since the two may go hand in hand, you may be able to reach people who are also looking for your services. Conduit Insight: A weight-loss company in California was unable to add in-market audiences to their campaign due to the limited audiences listed in Google Ads. After adding in-market audiences for food, baked goods, and chocolates, this company saw a 21% increase in conversions over the course of two months! Don’t be afraid to be creative! 67. Turn Your Non-Converters Into Converters Create a remarketing list that targets people who’ve visited your website but didn’t convert. There’s only one caveat. Your remarketing list must contain at least 1,000 visitors before you’re able to add it to your search campaign. Let’s say you’re a shoe store owner looking to target customers who previously interacted with your business. If, for example, you have a user searching for running shoes, who then showed an interest in your website by looking at prices of the latest pair of Nike sneakers, this person may have left your website to continue comparing prices because they were only in the research stage. If you have a remarketing tag on your website, cookies would be used to track this person and they would be added to your remarketing list. Since they are in the research phase, they would more than likely be searching for shoes again and will get served your ad. Google’s best practice is to write ad copy that entices this person, boasting about specific savings given to first-time customers, for example. Your odds of hooking them into the sale will be greater than someone whose ad is geared toward having a large inventory selection since the searcher’s intent is deeper down the funnel. Not to mention, they already showed interest in your product or services. Also note, due to privacy concerns, there are some verticals in which remarketing is restricted such as in the healthcare industry for example. Don’t let that stop you. Instead of using remarketing lists, try adding relevant in-market audiences to your campaigns. 68. Re-Engage Your Customers Using Customer Match You can use your online and offline data to target your customers in order to increase conversions or drive brand awareness. Start off by building a customer list using information your customers already shared with you. The list may contain customers’ names, phone numbers, email addresses, and zip codes. This data can easily be downloaded to an excel file from your existing CRM system. Don’t forget this list must consist of 1,000+ members. After uploading this list into your Google Ads account, you will be able to target ads to those specific customers and other customers just like them. 69. Target What People Are Actively Searching For Using In-Market Audiences Choose from audience lists compiled by Google which consists of customers who are actively searching for products or services like yours. These lists are categorized so you can easily choose them based on a consumer’s general interests and behavior. Google uses machine learning to compile these lists based on billions of search queries and browsing activity to predict purchase intent. Because of this, you have the ability to target people who are lower in the purchase funnel and are closer to converting. 70. Only Add The Amount Of Audiences You Can Manage You can layer in-market audiences with other audience targeting options for a more granular approach. According to Google, there is a limit of 5,000 audience lists you can add to an account but there’s no need to go above and beyond. Make sure you are adding an amount you can test and manage. 71. Expand The Reach Of Your Best-Performing Audiences In order to reach new users who are similar to your already existing, top-performing remarketing audiences, focus on similar audiences. These lists consist of new users with similar characteristics to your website visitors. Using these lists will help you reach new potential customers. The Google Ads platform will look at the millions of people searching on Google and compare this information to the aggregated data collected in your current remarketing lists in order to build similar audiences. Google will then automatically update your similar lists as your original remarketing lists evolve. Conduit insight: An appliance store in Alabama saw a 23% increase in conversions after adding similar audiences to their campaigns. A remarketing list was created which consisted of users who purchased refrigerators. Similar audiences analyzed the existing remarketing list and then gathered data from new users searching for terms such as “buy new refrigerator” and added them to this list. Because of this, we were able to reach pre-qualified users searching for refrigerators who have never visited the website. 72. Get A Predefined Fix Using Affinity Audiences Implement Google’s affinity audiences to reach people based on their passions, habits, and lifestyles. These audiences are created by Google based on browsing and search history. The targeting can be a bit broad so make sure to implement these lists into a well-thought-out strategy. For example, if you’re looking to implement affinity audiences for a sporting goods company, consider adding the Sports Fan affinity audience. 73. Target Your Audience Based On Specific URLS Get your creative juices flowing by building your own highly tailored custom affinity audience lists. With custom affinity, there are several unique advantages to choose from compared to the other targeting methods offered by Google. First, you have the ability to target audiences based on specific URLs based on recent web activity. Let’s say you have an auto dealership whose main focus is to sell used vehicles. More than likely, they have a website with a used vehicle page. With custom affinity audiences, you’re free to target only those searchers who’ve visited the dealership’s used vehicle page. Remember, after inputting your variables, you’ll be able to preview the estimated size of your audience list! 74. Actively Go After Your Competitors Use custom affinity audiences to target users that visit your competitor’s website. All you have to do is build your list to include all of your top competitors by inputting their name of business or website URL and you’re off to the races! 75. Target Specific Keywords And Search Terms Build a list that targets specific keywords and search terms based on people’s interests or places they might frequent. For example, if you’re looking to create targeted lists that target surfers, consider entering places that an avid surfer might be interested in like gyms, a sporting goods store, or a health food store. Use these terms to build out your audience list. 76. Remember To Use The Correct Targeting Option When building out your lists, it’s important to choose the right setting based on your campaign goal. When implementing an audience, you can either choose to set it up as targeting or observation. Choosing the wrong setting is one of the most common mistakes people make as it’s a crucial piece of the puzzle that will either make or break your campaign. If you’re running a remarketing campaign, for example, be sure to set your RLSA audiences to “targeting.” This means your ads will only be shown to people on that specific list. If, for example, you’re looking to implement in-market audiences into your search campaigns, be sure to choose the “observation” setting. Doing so means you are not limiting your ads to only be shown to a specific list. If you accidentally set up your remarketing lists as “observation” you will see a lot more traffic coming in and costs will be a lot higher. Because your search terms are broader, you could end up spending a ton of money on an audience that was meant to be limited. 77. Be Sure To Bid Adjust Your Audience Lists After some time has passed and you are able to analyze how the lists are performing, you can introduce bid adjustments. This will allow you to bid a bit higher on top-performing lists while attempting to bring in more conversions! Conversely, if you want to bid more on one list, but less on another, you can always decrease your bids on a specific list. Demographic Tips 78. Layer in Demographic Targeting Strategically reach your targeted audience using demographic targeting. Google collects demographic data from users based on their settings and their activity within your Google Ads account. Because of this, you can target specific users based on their gender, age, household income, and parental status. Conduit Insight: A cancer center in California was looking to schedule consultations for potential prostate cancer patients. By layering in demographic targeting to reach men aged 50+, based on the fact that the risk for getting prostate cancer is greater after that age, the conversion rate increased by 18% in just one month! 79. Get To Know Your Customer Base Reaching the right audience and continuously testing is imperative to improve your campaign’s performance. If you have CRM data available to you, it would be beneficial to analyze this data to get to know who your customers are. You can then take this knowledge and apply it to building audience lists in your local search campaigns. 80. Don't Forget To Use Audience Exclusions Use demographic exclusions to omit specific demographic targeting. This function is similar to adding negative keywords to a search campaign. There’s no need to waste ad spend any longer on people who don’t fit your demographic! 81. Bid Adjust Based On Demographic Performance Once you’ve gathered data from your demographic targeting, you can segment bids based on the performance you’ve analyzed. For example, implementing a bid modifier to your highest converting audiences can not only help you reduce wasted ad spend but also increase ROAS. Account Setting Tips 82. Track The Performance Of Your Campaigns Be sure to enable auto-tagging under your account settings tab to ensure proper tracking is implemented. By choosing to turn this feature on, Google will automatically place a tracking parameter to your URLs to help you track offline conversions and report on your performance using tracking platforms such as Google Analytics. The information that’s gathered can help you see which keyword drove traffic to your website, which particular campaign the keyword came from, and the cost of that keyword. Conduit Insight: Since enabling auto-tagging is one of Google’s best practices, we’ve made it one of ours as well! Unless we are provided a specific URL that’s already UTM tagged by the client, we turn on auto-tagging every time! Doing so allows us to go a step further in the customer journey by analyzing what happens after the ad click. 83. Enable Message Reporting To Get The Most Of Your Message Extensions If you’re utilizing the message ad extension in your ads, make sure you turn on message reporting so you don’t miss an opportunity to gather detailed information about messages triggered by your ads. According to Google, a forwarding phone number will be assigned to your ads which will allow for the tracking of messages. What this feature will do is allow you to view reports that you can analyze and then make campaign optimization decisions. 84. Enable Message Reporting To Get The Most Of Your Message Extensions Boost the performance of your local search campaigns by enabling ad suggestions. Google will take variations of your existing ad copy and create text ads and automatically add them to your campaigns. According to Google, research has shown that ad groups with 3 or more high-quality ads can get up to 5% to 15% more clicks or conversions than ad groups with only 1 ad, provided ad rotation has been optimized. Not only will you save time by not having to create different variations of your ad copy, but you’re also taking advantage of Google’s savvy artificial intelligence. If you don’t like a particular variation, all you have to do is edit or dismiss the suggestion! Ad Scheduling Tips & Tricks 85. Use Ad Scheduling Around Business Hours And Days So You Don't Miss Out On Leads If your business hours and days that you are open dictate when a customer can contact you, then it will be beneficial to use ad scheduling in your campaign. If you’re advertising for a restaurant or a plumbing company that has off-hours where no one would pick up the phone, a click-to-call would result in wasted ad spend, and the customer would have a bad user experience. Utilize Ad Scheduling so your ads only serve during times when someone is sitting on the other end of the phone to ensure you aren’t missing out on leads. Understanding this can be extremely beneficial for Local campaigns and local intent, as you wouldn’t want users who are looking to visit your location to be served an ad when you are closed and potentially ruin customer relations. 86. Use Day-Parting To Make The Most Out Of Your Budget Dayparting refers to using Ad Scheduling to only run your campaigns and ads during certain hours of the day. Especially with a limited budget, dayparting allows you to schedule when your ads are running to optimize towards generating maximum conversions. This may not be an actionable tactic for every campaign, but using it where it can help will help you squeeze every last drop out of your budget. 87. Use Bid-Adjusted Ad Scheduling To Bid More Aggressively Another tactic that is similar is to utilize the bid adjustments within ad scheduling to bid more or less aggressively during certain times of the day or week. This could be beneficial for a campaign that competitively cannot afford to not have ads running, but has actionable trends to take advantage of. In these situations, you would essentially create a schedule to run all day with the bid adjusted portion of the day separated out so that you can increase or decrease bids within those hours, and run the rest of the day normally with no changes. 88. Use The "Time" Pre-Defined Reports To Analyze Opportunities Within Google’s Pre-Defined reports in the top-right of the Google Ads platform, the ‘Time’ section gives you the option to see campaign data broken out by day, day, week, month, quarter, year, and hour of day. For the purposes of setting up ad scheduling and dayparting, you will mostly only need to analyze the ‘hour of day’ and ‘day of week’ to get the data you need to make an analytical decision on if ad scheduling is a good option for you and when to set it up. 89. Use Ad Scheduling To Drive Certain Conversions Noticing that your campaign drives many more phone calls during the evenings would be a lay-up if you were familiar with using Ad Scheduling. Being able to run a call-only campaign from the hours of 4 PM to 11 PM would help you take full advantage of this analytical data! Conduit Insight: A Conduit client who is a plumber in Missouri reached out to us to let us know that they would be getting more limited in terms of being able to answer lead phone calls. So, we created ad schedules strictly around their business hours, and bid more aggressively during the morning hours as we saw the most conversions being generated then. By utilizing this strategy, we were able to generate a 99% increase in conversions compared to the previous month that we were not using ad scheduling! Device Targeting Tips 90. Target Devices In Google Ads The Google Ads platform allows you to dictate what devices your ads can get served on. Using bid adjustments in the “Devices” tab within a campaign, you can manipulate how your campaigns bid on mobile devices, desktops, and tablets. By decreasing a device’s bid by 100%, you can restrict your ads from serving on that device entirely. Conduit Insight: By using a hyper-local tactic of targeting a small radius around the location and only serving ads on mobile devices, we were able to target the local audience and drive foot traffic to an auto body shop in Alabama resulting in a conversion rate of 51%! 91. Set Up Device Bid Adjustments Based On Device Reporting Using Google Ads Reports, you can segment campaign data by ‘Device’ under the ‘Targeting’ section. By analyzing your campaign’s data in this view, you’ll have the tools to make data-driven decisions on what device bid adjustments to make to your campaign to boost your conversions and make the most of your budget! Advanced Bid Adjustment Tips 92. Increase Bids On 'Call' Interaction Types If Calls Are Highly Valued If you are advertising for a business that places a lot of value on phone call leads, then increasing bids to generate Calls within the ‘Advanced Bid Adjustment’ tab will be a useful feature. Google explains that making these Advanced Bid Adjustments increases or decreases the frequency with which one of your ads is shown with the click-to-call Call extension. This feature allows you to manipulate how often your number is shown, which can make all the difference for local businesses who place more value on users clicking to call. Keyword Planner Tips 93. Use The Keyword Planner To Expand On Initial Keyword List After familiarizing yourself with a client’s website or just compiling a complete list of your own service areas and products offered, take advantage of the Keyword Planner in Google Ads. By using the ‘Start With A Website’ option, Google will crawl the pages of your website and return a list of keywords based on search volume within the geographic and time parameters that you set. The ‘Start With Keywords Option’ allows you to input keywords that you have already compiled to see other related search terms and their respective search volume in Google. This tool allows you to vet your list of keywords prior to launching a campaign to ensure that you are not missing out on any potential searches that would fall within your target audience. 94. Use Keyword Planner To Discover Negative Keywords Prior To Campaign Launch Using the Keyword Planner in the same way as finding keywords to bid on, the tool can also open your eyes to related searches that you may want to make sure do not trigger your ads. There may be some niche keywords that fall within a product or service category that you do not offer, and the Keyword Planner can help you identify them if you have not done so already. Conduit Insight: As an example, Conduit manages a PPC campaign for a storage facility in Florida that specifically does not allow customers to store their automobiles on-site. Using the keyword planner while searching for self-storage keywords, we were able to discover that “car storage” gets quite a lot of searches. Using this in our negative keyword list, we were able to filter budget-wasting traffic prior to the campaign even going live. 95. Take A Broad Approach When Using The Keyword Planner While using the Keyword Planner for the purpose of ‘discovery’, it is important to do so with a wide-net approach. You’ll want to use ‘root’ or ‘parent’ keywords in order to widen the scope of relevant keywords that the tool will return. Although the Google Keyword Planner is quite adept pulling a vast list of keywords, having this approach in mind will aid in making sure you have the scope necessary to start your campaign off on the right foot. Ad Preview And Diagnosis Tips 96. Use The Ad Preview And Diagnosis Tool To Determine Why Your Ads Or Ad Extesions Aren't Showing The Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool allows you to gain insight into whether or not your ads are showing, what your full ad looks like on the search results page if it is showing, and why it might not be if it isn’t. If your budget has run out for the day, a negative keyword is interfering, your Quality Score is too low, or your ad isn’t showing for other reasons, the Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool is useful in determining this. 97. Do Not Search For Your Ads On Google The Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool returns the exact same search results that you would see if you were searching on Google, so why wouldn’t you utilize it? Searching on Google will only harm your campaign by inflating the data, and also wouldn’t provide the additional insight that the Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool offers. Automated Rule Tips 98. Use Automated Rules To Cut Down On Manual Changes Managing a PPC campaign can be a lot of work, but utilizing Automated Rules can help you with monitoring aspects of your campaign and scale changes based on criteria that you set. Rules can be set within campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, audiences and demographics which you can get pretty granular and creative with. You have the option of setting Automated Rules to enable, pause, or send you an email (and change keyword bids and final URLs at the Keyword-level) based on conditions and a time that you set. So, for example, you can automatically pause certain keywords if their Avg. CPCs eclipse a certain amount. Prior to creating rules, it is best to think of your daily or semi-daily ins and outs within an account and determine how automation could assist you. Conduit Insight: Some clients will utilize landing pages specifically created for a certain finite promotion. So, in this case, Conduit uses rules to pause ad groups to ensure that ads driving to promotional landing pages don’t run past the promotion end date. 99. Make Sure You Are Using The Corect "Apply To" Setting When creating rules, the second step is to determine what your rule applies to. Make sure that your rule is set to the correct campaign data that you intend it to be. If not, changes that you expect to be made will not be. GOOGLE ADS SCRIPT TIPS 100. Take Control Of Your Campaigns By Using Scripts Use scripts to automate specific functions within Google Ads to save yourself time so you can focus more on the things that matter most, like optimizing your campaigns and analyzing how they’re performing. There are a variety of scripts available that you can implement into your account. From running scripts that track your quality score to scripts that will pause keywords that have zero impressions, there are many options available that will give you back some time to focus on your next strategy. Since Google Ads can spend up to twice your daily average budget, it makes managing your monthly budget a tedious activity. To ensure you don’t exceed your allotted monthly budget, implement a simple script that will stop Google from overspending your budget. This script can be set up to run every hour and pause any campaign that goes over the threshold you set. Conduit Insight: We implement a budget script on all of our campaigns as a safety feature to ensure the monthly budget is never exceeded. Conversion Tracking Tips 101. Track The Right Leads Like A Pro Based on your marketing goals, it’s crucial to track the proper conversions for your local lead generation campaigns. Not setting up conversion tracking or having an improper set up can completely destroy your campaign. All of the hard work you put into the account structure, doing your keyword research, and writing your ad copy will be useless if you can’t properly analyze your data. There are a few options available for set up. You can either implement the conversion tracking code onto every page of your website or use Google Tag Manager (which is Conduit’s choice). You can also go a step further and import your Google Analytics Goals into your Google Ads account after linking the two. 102. Make The Phone Ring Off The Hook Be sure to track phone call conversions using the call extension in your ad. This conversion type is referred to as ‘calls from ads’ and will track just that. Every phone call received from someone who clicked to call from your ad. If you’ve implemented call-only ads, it will allow you to track those as well. Don’t forget to set up conversion tracking to track the calls on your website! Every missed call could be a potential opportunity lost. 103. Track Lead Generation Forms Make sure you know what your searchers are doing after clicking on your high-quality ads! Conversion forms convert traffic into leads and that’s something you can’t afford to miss. By properly tracking any lead form submissions on your website, you will be able to gather your potential customer’s information as well as monitor the performance of your campaigns. 104. Boost Your Conversion Rate WIth Live Chat/Text Conversions Consider tracking third party chat platforms as conversions if there’s one available on your website. A live chat box will pop up allowing for the communication between an operator and with someone searching for your products or services. Once the chatbox has been completed, more than likely your potential client will have provided their contact information which is then sent to your CRM. You also have the ability to track text messages if you have a third-party texting service implemented. Tracking these leads and knowing where they came from is extremely important in your marketing journey. Conduit Insight: An auto dealership in Ohio saw a 36% increase in conversion rate after implementing a live chat feature on their website! 105. Track Google-Hosted Local Conversion Actions Be sure to link your Google My Business account to your Google Ads account in order to allow Google to automatically track even more conversion actions for you. According to Google, these actions are created whenever someone completes an action that’s specific to your physical location (like a store) during or after interacting with your ad. These actions happen on Google’s products and services such as Google Maps. Google can calculate store visit conversions after a user visits your physical location within 30 days of interacting with your ad. This is one metric you don’t want to miss out on! Conclusion Thanks for checking out this extensive list of tips and tricks to optimize your Google Ads campaigns. With these tips you will be able to outrank your competitors and drive more revenue to your clients’ business. Learn more about how our white label Pay Per Click advertising team uses these tactics to create incredible success for our partner agencies and their clients.

Feb 17, 2023 The cannabis industry has emerged as one of the fastest-growing American consumer product verticals in recent years. States are continuing to permit legal medicinal and recreational cannabis use at an increasing rate. Last year, our home state of New Jersey officially allowed recreational cannabis on April 21, 2022. As more dispensaries open to the public, we can predict more opportunities for agencies to secure these businesses as clients. Statistics show that the North American advertising spend for the cannabis industry will grow to 3.39 billion dollars by 2028. However, these products are still heavily regulated and classified as illegal at the federal level. This can create some complications for your agency as your team develops a holistic digital strategy for cannabis retail marketing clients. That’s why we wrote this guide to help your agency master the ins and outs of compliant cannabis marketing and advertising. We’re going to cover: Important considerations for cannabis marketing and advertising campaigns The best channels to compliantly invest your client’s budget A channel-by-channel breakdown of cannabis-related restrictions Important Considerations for Cannabis Marketing and Advertising Campaigns Federal Legal Status Cannabis is currently not legalized at the federal level. Instead, its medicinal and/or recreational use is permitted by individual states. Keeping this in mind, regional and local campaigns are currently the most effective for paid media and organic channels that permit cannabis content when targeting by geography. Platform Rules and Guidelines Similar to the state-by-state legal status, each digital platform has its own advertising and organic content standards for promoting cannabis products. If these guidelines are not closely followed, your client’s campaign could fail to launch at the start or swiftly be removed from the platform. Content Liability Due to the industry’s heavy regulations, misleading or misinforming content could potentially create liability issues for your client. For example, making certain claims about the medical properties of cannabis could create legal complications Before you begin posting content for your client, you may want to consider consulting with an expert on cannabis marketing beforehand. For example, a cannabis-informed attorney or an experienced digital marketing partner can provide you with the necessary guidance to help avoid these pitfalls. What Are the Best Channels for Promoting Cannabis Clients? Cannabis-Specific Channels As the industry’s continues to expand its footprint, many cannabis-specific channels are emerging that agencies can capitalize on. These platforms are designed to specifically target the same audience your client is trying to reach. For example, there are digital map services that show users dispensaries near them, such as WeedMaps. Advertising on a channel like this one will not pose the same restrictive guidelines like Facebook or Instagram. Some industry publications like High Times also maintain a cannabis-focused news website. Here, a client that wants to reach more cannabis consumers can also advertise more freely than on a general-use platform. Paid and Organic Channels Paid digital media channels like Google Search and most social platforms place heavy regulations on paid cannabis content due to it being labeled as an “illicit” subject. To compensate for this, focusing on organic content can help drive engagement and quality traffic to your client’s website. Services like SEO and email marketing maximize the performance potential of the content that you can control on your client’s site to reach their ideal customers. For blogs, product pages, service pages, and informational pages on your client’s website, you can freely write content that objectively educates customers and builds authority. In most cases, it is recommended that you place an age gate on these pages so that the visitor can confirm they are over the age of 21 before proceeding. Because the client’s website is their wholly owned digital property, you have more creative freedom to market their cannabis products. However, this still requires a deliberate SEO strategy to draw the right traffic. Using high-opportunity keywords in your content, minimizing technical errors on the backend, and building a strong backlink portfolio are three vital tactics for generating the results that your client is expecting. Now, this is not to say that there are no paid media options available to agencies that offer cannabis advertising services. For example, some programmatic channels like pre-roll, OTT, and display may allow these campaigns, albeit with restrictions. A Channel-by-Channel Breakdown of Cannabis Restrictions Advertising Cannabis on Social Media Most social platforms do not permit any cannabis advertising. Though this may seem like a frustrating obstacle for your agency, this does not mean that all social media doors are closed. Cannabis companies can still promote their business on social media through organic content. However, they cannot create posts that deliberately entice people to buy their products. Examples of what not to post on your client’s profiles include: Product prices and price-lists Solicitations to buy a product or order one online Information on growing or selling cannabis Medical claims about cannabis Invitations to contact the client’s business about purchasing cannabis Instead, leverage your client’s accounts to build authority and credibility in their industry and link to pages on their website. Keep the content as educational as possible, advocate for the industry at large using reliable sources, and use visual content that showcases a product rather than solicits it to the audience. Keep in mind that most platforms do have some methodology for flagging certain organic content that could be considered non-compliant with their content guidelines. For example, posts that use certain hashtags could be identified as unsuitable for sharing. Posts can also display on users’ feeds in states where cannabis is still fully illegal, thus further emphasizing the need for more general informational content. Although most platforms do not allow advertising for cannabis, below is in order the least to most restrictive platforms with a quick overview of what is permitted and what is restricted or prohibited. For a full list of the advertising policies for each platform, feel free to utilize the links in their respective sections. Snapchat – Restricted but allowed (hemp-derived CBD) Snapchat is the least restrictive platform regarding cannabis, but unfortunately still has restrictions around it. Despite Snap’s Drugs & Tobacco Policy stating they “allow some limited ads for cannabis”, the advertising of cannabis on the platform is still prohibited. CBD is where Snap opens up its policies. Advertising hemp-derived CBD products is permitted as long as the ad contains no products with THC and targets users 18+. Ultimately, it seems Snap draws the line with cannabis and CBD targeting based on whether or not the product contains THC. If you have a Snapchat rep, you can reach out for specifics on a case-by-case basis to see if this is a feasible option for your client. Keep in mind that the platform “[does] not allow the depiction of smoking or vaping, except in the context of public health messaging or smoking cessation”, and whether or not an ad gets rejected or not can vary from reviewer to reviewer. Twitter – Permitted Where Legal In February 2023, Twitter announced it will be relaxing its policies for cannabis advertising, including both THC and other cannabinoids. This marks the first major social platform to permit paid advertising to directly promote these products. However, this does not come without restrictions. Twitter still enforces restrictions on cannabis advertising. These include: Advertisers must be credibly licensed and preapproved by Twitter to run Cannabis campaigns Advertisers can only target geographical locations where cannabis products can be legally bought and sold online Ads cannot promote or offer cannabis for sale (this includes CBD) All applicable laws, rules, regulations, and Twitter advertising guidelines must be followed Ads cannot be targeted at users under 21 years of age In terms of ad content, a few additional guidelines exist. Twitter prohibits any ad creatives that are not age-gated. Additionally, ads featuring public figures endorsing products, pregnant women, or minors cannot be used either. The rest of the content limitations pertain mostly to messaging, such as: Ads cannot promote claims about cannabis’s efficacy or health benefits Messaging cannot include any false or misleading statements Cannabis use cannot depicted in the ads Ads cannot encourage transporting products across state lines So, can your client qualify for Twitter ads? To distill the above, as long as the ads are compliant with Twitter policies and local government regulations, and the advertiser is approved by Twitter to run cannabis ads, you can launch a campaign. One of the major points that should be emphasized, yet could be easily overlooked, is that advertisers cannot promote the direct sale of cannabis through their ads. Avoid placing pricing information in the creative assets as well as using any CTAs like “shop now.” Instead, a safe bet would be to simply promote that your client’s business exists as well as where it’s located. For example, “Dispensary X, Located in Newark, NJ” will likely be deemed acceptable whereas “Cannabis Flower for $24.99 at Dispensary X” would not be. TikTok – Restricted (topical CBD allowed) Although one might initially consider TikTok to be more lenient here given their demographic, cannabis targeting is currently prohibited on the platform. However, topical CBD is permitted. According to TikTok’s Drugs and Drug Paraphernalia Policy, ad creatives and landing pages must refrain from displaying or promoting: Illegal drugs Controlled drugs Prescription drug abuse Recreational drug use Drug paraphernalia and accessories and their use Supplies and their use However, the company’s Hemp & CBD policy does go on to say that “…promoting hemp products and topical CBD products may be allowed subject to additional restrictions.” It is the advertisers’ responsibility to comply with local regulations of the regions they are targeting. Additionally, hemp products may not be advertised via the self-serve format. Meta – Restricted (topical hemp allowed) Meta (advertising on Facebook and Instagram) prohibits cannabis, topical CBD, and ingestible hemp products and CBD products (hemp seeds, ingestible CBD, etc.). According to their Unsafe Substances Policy, Meta prohibits ads that promote or solicit illicit or recreational drugs as well as other substances considered unsafe by the platform. Some examples o unsafe substances on Meta platforms include but aren’t limited to: Anabolic steroids Chitosan Comfrey Dehydroepiandrosterone Ephedra Humon growth hormones Additionally, drug paraphernalia like bongs, rolling papers, and vaporizers may not be advertised on Meta. Meta does, however, permit ads that promote non-ingestible products such as topical hemp oil. We learned this when reaching out to chat support to confirm the details of advertising cannabis-related products on their platforms. Like organic content, informative articles on hemp and CBD products, which must also direct to informative landing pages are also permitted. Pinterest – Restricted (topical hemp) Pinterest is quite restrictive in the CBD and hemp space, only permitting ads for topical hemp as of now. Per their Drugs and paraphernalia policy, Pinterest takes things one step further and does not even permit the informational material about the use or legalization of illegal or recreational drugs. Most specifically, the policy states “Products containing CBD or similar compounds are prohibited. We will allow ads for topical hemp seed oil products that contain negligible amounts of THC and no CBD and make no therapeutic or medicinal claims.” LinkedIn – Prohibited ❌ Last up is Linkedin and the policy is very straightforward. All ads for drugs (OTC or recreational) are currently prohibited on the platform according to the platform’s Drugs policy. Advertising Cannabis on Google Google adopts a strict “just say no” policy when it comes to advertising or marketing topics referencing cannabis, marijuana, weed, etc. There are no explicitly stated restrictions against targeting keywords related to these terms, but any ad copy or landing page that features this subject matter will be heavily scrutinized and regulated. Because Google has more ambiguous standards for advertising cannabis, you may occasionally see ads that are related to the topic. For example, you may see paid ads for a local marijuana dispensary if you enter the term “weed dispensary near me”. However, many of these listings will use vague references and innuendo to avoid a platform penalty. Trying to game the Google Ads system is not advised. In general, this can lead to a poor user experience and can fall under Google’s Circumventing Systems policy.Depending on the nature of the offense, this can potentially lead to your Ads account being suspended or terminated, which we believe is not worth the risk. To view other cannabis policies for paid search ads, also check out the guidelines from Microsoft and Baidu for their search engines. Advertising Cannabis on Programmatic Channels Programmatic advertising for cannabis clients used to encompass direct-to-publisher display ad buys and ad networks that leveraged cannabis-friendly websites which were sold to advertisers trying to reach consumers of the product. While both of these methods are still used, some DSPs are starting to loosen their restrictions on cannabis advertising to keep up with the evolving climate. This results in more robust and creative ways to reach cannabis consumers. Contextual Targeting DSPs that are embracing the new wave all offer a variation of contextual targeting – serving ads on websites that are categorically relevant or contain keywords or phrases related to cannabis. This can range from consumption in general to information as granular as insight into different strains. First-Party Data A desire to leverage first-party data has also increased for a variety of reasons ranging from having the highest likelihood of purchase intent to cookies being sunsetted in the near future. First-party data allows cannabis advertisers to leverage their list of existing customers, such as dispensary item purchasers, and reach them while they’re surfing the web, using their favorite apps, or streaming their binge-worthy shows at home on their CTV devices. In addition, first-party data allows for lookalike audience expansion. Lookalike audiences mirror the online behaviors of a client’s CRM list, for instance, and find users who aren’t already on that list that could be potential consumers. This provides a campaign with more scale and reach while maintaining its niche audience targeting. Third-Party Audience Targeting Additionally, advertisers can utilize the power 3rd-party audience targeting. Via trusted data providers, your client can reach people identified as cannabis users based on their demographic, interests, intent, etc. as a result of their online behavior. Dabble with competitive conquesting or hone in on physical stores/locations that a cannabis audience frequently visits with radius targeting or 3rd-party location data. This strategy is exclusive to a handful of DSPs right now, but it could expand in the future. Radius targeting also lets your client reach dispensaries down to the mile and serve them an ad on their mobile device once the user is within the radius. 3rd-party location data allows your client to capture historical data, via lookback windows, of users who visited specific dispensary locations across the US and Canada and deliver their ads to these highly relevant consumers. Site Retargeting Site Retargeting is another strategy that is offered universally and is key for all cannabis advertisers, but especially for eCommerce campaigns. Being able to drive awareness and bring users to a client’s site is great, but retargeting them after the visit keeps them in the funnel and increases the likelihood of conversions by about 70%. While programmatic advertising sits very high at the top-of-the-funnel and conversions shouldn’t be the primary way to measure campaign effectiveness, there’s no doubt that they’re still points of extreme interest. With that said, conversion tracking for cannabis campaigns is borderline universal for all DSPs that allow this type of advertising. However, the granularity of the conversion journey varies greatly. Most DSPs can report on a conversion just like any other platform, but others have the capability to show the consumer journey from ad click to last-click attribution and everything in between! Cannabis SEO Campaigns Because SEO is an organic channel that primarily leverages your client’s website, there are not the same restrictions compared to paid media. As your client owns their domain, they are largely free to publish whatever content best suits their business’s best interests. However, any organic content published on a client’s website should maintain compliance with state and industry regulations. All necessary consumer warnings, disclaimers, and other advisory information should be displayed where appropriate to help avoid any potential liability for the content on the site. Because SEO is one of the more permissible channels for marijuana topics, you can expect a large amount of competition for high-opportunity keywords. Working a team of SEO experts, you can prevent many of the common obstacles and challenges that can come with a cutthroat digital environment. Start Delivering Elite Performance for Your Cannabis Marketing Agency Navigating the often unclear waters of cannabis advertising is enough to make anyone’s hands shaky before pressing “live” on a campaign. We understand that, and that’s why we’ve invested the time and effort to provide your agency with the necessary tools, expertise, and performance to deliver high-performing campaigns for your clients. At Conduit Digital, we have delivered elite campaign performance across 125 verticals for successful agencies in North America leveraging our holistic digital product suite. Our team of U.S.-based, platform-certified expert analysts can build your own cannabis client’s campaigns to drive the ideal key performance actions that align with their business goals. To help keep your partnership confidential and profitable, we also offer a margin-friendly rate card along, custom-brandable deliverables, and full NDA compliance. Start saying “yes” to better opportunities to serve your clients in the cannabis industry today. Schedule a call with us to learn how we can help you scale profitably.

Aug 24, 2023 The world of advertising is constantly changing and becoming more competitive. Advertising agencies need to stay ahead of the latest marketing trends and techniques. However, this is often easier said than done. Many ad agency leaders face challenges such as turnover and hiring difficulties that often hinder their capacity for growth. When there are not enough people to work on new campaigns, client services and overall business operations can suffer. This is not an unusual challenge for agency leaders. In fact, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) estimated that the advertising agency turnover rate is over 25%. Doing some quick math, for every four people you hire, slightly more than one will leave. Obviously, this cuts against an agency’s ability to scale. How can you keep growing your agency when you’re worrying about losing members of your team? While keeping 3 out of every 4 you hire is a promising statistic, you could one day lose the only specialist you have serving a specific channel. After that, you might face the very real decision over whether to discontinue a service or outsource it to a platform or vendor that you’re not 100% confident in from a quality standpoint. It doesn’t have to go that route, though. Today, we’re going to cover some tips for what you can do at your agency to navigate through staffing obstacles and continue to scale when the opportunities arise. 1: Take a Proactive Approach to Recruitment Agency leaders must be proactive when it comes to recruitment. This means anticipating future hiring needs and starting the recruitment process before there is an urgent need. This approach allows for a longer lead time to identify suitable candidates and accommodate the often lengthy hiring process. Additionally, agencies can astutely preview the candidates' experience, skills, core values, and teams, ensuring a long-term fit. Finding the right candidate who is less likely to turnover at your agency can be a challenge. However, there are specific qualities you should look for when hiring, such as: Individuals who express genuine interest in your agency's mission, culture, and values. These individuals are more likely to stick around for the long haul because they believe in the company's vision. Candidates with a history of loyalty in their past roles. Someone who has stayed with previous employers for an extended period of time is more likely to do the same with your agency. Individuals who demonstrate a willingness to learn and grow with the agency. Those who are hungry for knowledge and progression are less likely to get bored and move on. By keeping these qualities in mind, you can hire the right candidate who will be loyal and committed to the success of your agency. Looking for these types of individuals will help you find the right fit for your agency. If you serve a specific industry or a small handful, you may also want to consider what industries a candidate has worked in in the past. They may feel more at-home serving a niche that’s the same or similar to ones that they have done so previously. 2: Encourage Employee Retention Employee retention is as essential as recruitment. Once the agency has hired the right person, it is vital to retain them. Attracting and keeping the ideal people is key to a successful and stable workplace. Encourage employee retention by investing in your employee's development needs, treating them equitably, valuing their contributions, and providing them with a positive work-life balance. When someone enjoys where they work, they are far less likely to search for another professional home in the future. 3: Elevate Internal Culture & Communication Internal culture and communication are key factors in employee motivation and engagement across your agency. As a leader, it is your responsibility to foster an environment where teams collaborate, promote diversity and inclusion, manage difficult conversations, and establish trust. Communicate frequently and transparently across all channels to ensure that employees are aware of the agency's direction and objectives. You could also hold weekly company-wide meetings where everyone can feel informed, contribute to discussions, and receive clarification from you on certain aspects of agency life that they are interested in learning more about. 4: Take Stock of Current In-House Utilization Utilization issues can be costly and can also make or break operations at an agency. If a member of your in-house team is underutilized, are they costing too much to retain? If they don’t have enough hours to spend on client service in their usual role, can their role be expanded to drive additional value? If someone on the team is underutilized, consider some options to boost their utilization such as: Having them focus on internal marketing to promote your agency to your ideal clients Having them learn a new digital specialty so that they can contribute to your team in new ways Cross-train to assist other team members that may be at full capacity or approaching over-capacity Similarly, overutilization does not help with hiring and retaining an in-house team. Employees that are burnt out, stressed, and spread thin cannot perform at the highest levels for your clients. This can lead to errors, miscommunications, and potentially damage the relationships that you build with your clients that trust you to deliver results for them. Beyond hiring, here are some other ways that you can solve the challenge of overutilization: Prioritize daily, weekly, or monthly tasks in order of most important to least important so that the person fulfilling them knows where they need to concentrate most of their attention. Reassess client expectations if the client is expecting too much for what was promised to them in their agreement with your agency. Ask your team if there are certain specific tools or types of tools that they can use to streamline some of their more time-consuming tasks that they perform on a regular basis. Encourage senior members of the team to delegate tasks more efficiently so that they can take more work off of their plate and allocate toward someone who might be underutilized. Establish clear communication so that the people struggling with capacity know that they can come to you as the agency leader to figure out a potential solution or more efficient path forward. 5: Look Beyond Your Local Market As much as most agencies prefer to keep their talent geographically close, it may make sense to consider hiring someone remotely if you are struggling to find the right expertise in your market. Look for remote workers who possess the skills that you need and have a track record of reliability in similar long-distance work environments. Remote workers may also help you save on staffing costs. You may find someone who asks for less money than your local market commands if they are based in an area with a lower cost of living and will not have to spend money on commuting-related expenses such as fuel, tolls, and vehicle maintenance. However, while fully remote workers may sound like a solid solution, finding the right ones should be approached with caution. According to the chief economist of ZipRecruiter, high turnover should be expected as a permanent fixture in remote working. 6: Activate a White Label Digital Marketing Partnership When you need a reliable team that can consistently deliver for your clients, where should you turn? While you can and should take steps to enhance the employee experience at your agency, there may simply be periods where the right people are not available to help you in your efforts to scale. That’s where a white label digital marketing partnership comes in. A white label ad operations team provides ad agencies with access to an extensive range of digital marketing services, allowing them to expand their suite of services without the need to recruit highly specialized and/or costly development teams. These partnerships also provide your agency with the ability to deliver better performance through a single partnership with access to experienced professionals with hands-on experience in diverse digital marketing fields. Beyond solving staffing issues, white labeling also enables you to expand the scope of services you offer in-house. For example, if you’ve never offered OTT advertising to your clients before, you now can offer white label OTT advertising through your partnership with the confidence that a certified expert is handling each aspect of the campaign. Overall, partnership is a win-win for your agency and clients. Better yet? White label deliverables can be rebranded to your agency or client’s branding to help you maintain more continuity and control over the materials that you provide to your clients. Solve Advertising Agency Turnover with a White Label Partnership Scaling an agency requires overcoming the hiring and turnover challenges that many ad agency leaders face today. Taking a proactive approach to recruitment, employee retention culture and communication, and leveraging contractors/freelancers are all wise steps to overcoming outside forces that impact hiring and retention. When you need to solve your capacity, bandwidth, and skill-gap issues, there’s a solution forward: white label partnership. At Conduit Digital, we partner with successful ad agencies in North America as their trusted white label adoperations team to help them scale higher than previously possible. With a single partnership, you can access 17 expertly managed digital channels all overseen and implemented directly from our team at our New Jersey headquarters. If you’re ready to solve your hiring and turnover challenges through the power of partnership, let’s talk.

Jun 16, 2020 In today’s digital world, the average person is exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 digital advertisements in a single day. Consuming everything from a new shoe ad that is scrolled past on Facebook to a quick 15-second video of a local car dealership that must be watched in order to watch the latest music video on YouTube. Even the top search results when looking for a new restaurant from Google is an advertisement. Considering the volume of advertisements consumers see daily, it is clear to see that it is no longer enough for a brand to just be seen. With that in mind, it comes as no surprise that most users will only interact with ads that provide some sort of personal interest to them. If there were not some form of internal filtering done by the user, then the majority, if not all, of their time would be consumed by clicking on ads. So with all the competing noise in the market, how can you tell if your digital marketing campaign is effective? Read along to learn how or you can jump ahead to each section here: Where To Begin S.M.A.R.T Goals Choosing A White Label Marketing Funnel Measuring The Effectiveness What Is A KPI Common Digital Marketing KPI’s Working With KPI’s Evolving KPI’s Key Take Aways Where To Begin & Factors To Consider The simple answer is by looking at the campaign’s analytics. However, there is much more that goes into a digital marketing campaign than just looking at numbers. More so, in an industry that is continually evolving with new technology, saturated with acronyms, and creating new ways to measure success, it can sometimes be difficult to make sense of the large amount of data. It can also be a very daunting and time-consuming task if not familiar with how to read the analytics. Similarly, brands may be able to read their analytics, but not be able to fully comprehend what exactly is being measured or what it means for their campaign. There is also a very good chance a lot of insightful measurements may be missed as it does not come from direct engagement, such as through a phone call or click on an ad, and will require the implementation of additional analytic tools. S.M.A.R.T. Goals Brands need to start from the very beginning. In order to measure the effectiveness of any digital marketing campaign, first and foremost, a brand’s goals need to be established. These goals should be provided prior to the start of the campaign and S.M.A.R.T, or more simply, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Not only does this avoid any ambiguity within the goals, but it also defines exactly how the campaign should run. Can a brand define exactly what they want to measure? Is it quantifiable and realistic to be met? Does it serve a purpose to the brand and the business model? Can a deadline be set? Setting a goal of “I want to double engagement” is much more interpretive and arbitrary than say “I want to increase clicks driving to our website by 50% in Q2.” Better yet, what purpose does a goal serve if you are not able to change it? In addition to being S.M.A.R.T., marketing goals should also follow the IPA rule. When establishing goals, brands should ask themselves, is this goal important and meaningful to the campaign, does it have the potential for improvement, and do we have the authority or the means to change it? If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” it may be beneficial to reevaluate what can be measured and improved upon, or enlisting in the help of a white label marketing agency. Choosing White Labeling In the planning stages of a digital marketing campaign, be sure to ask the question of “do we have the means necessary to execute this?” Running a digital marketing campaign requires extra resources, putting together a team, access to the right systems, and time to grow. An alternative to running in-house marketing would be to enlist in a white label marketing agency, such as Conduit Digital. Briefly, white labeling is the practice of offering rebranded products or services and passing them off as your own. Many brands will enlist in these services either for a specific product or as their complete digital marketing solution. White labeling has its benefits for not only the brands they partner with but also their goals. Some of the benefits include, but are not limited to the following: Boosts Brand Visibility By enlisting in the services of a white label agency, brands are not required to be specialized in each marketing product. This allows a brand to not only expand their campaign and visibility but also broaden their marketing portfolio. Utilizes Expert Work White label agencies have gone through beta testing, troubleshooting, and fine-tuning of each product they offer. Brands enlisting in white labeling have access to all the tried and true products without having to put in the work. Reduces Costs By white labeling, brands can save on costs associated with having a full-time in house marketing team such as salaries, trainings, and overhead costs. More Time to Spend on Other Aspects While the marketing aspect is being handled by trained specialists, brands can spend more time on other integral components of their business. If anything were to go awry in the marketing aspect, responsibility would fall on the white label instead of the brand. Partnering with a private label digital marketing agency leads to so many benefits tat you may want to consider before taking on a new client. Marketing Funnel One other factor to consider when establishing goals is where the brand falls in the marketing funnel. While the internet provides a plethora of variations of the marketing funnel, sometimes known as the sales funnel, it can best be broken down into three stages: awareness, interest, and conversion or action. While a simplistic example, think of the last purchase you made, whether it was a new sweatshirt or concert tickets. There is a fairly high chance you were aware of the clothing brand or band before you made the purchase. It is also fair to say you had expressed a bit more interest in them before making that decision, such as reading customer reviews or listening to more albums by them. Ultimately, your consumer journey resulted in the sale. It is important to note that a brand can fall under more than one stage of the funnel at a time, as well as switch stages later on. Think of if you were to open your very first restaurant. Initially, you may want to focus primarily on raising awareness in the area prior to your grand opening in order for customers to know you are there. Later on, if you decide to open a second location nearby, you may choose to focus on increasing awareness in the area and driving conversions as your brand has already been introduced. Measuring Your Effectiveness Now that the goals are established and the campaign is underway, a brand will want to ensure their campaign is being seen by the right audience and engaging. So how exactly do you determine that? There are a multitude of ways to see the effectiveness of a campaign, but for a “snapshot” of sorts, you will want to look at the key performance indicators, or KPIs for short. What Is a KPI? A key performance indicator, or KPI, is a measurable benchmark that demonstrates how effective a campaign is at achieving its goal. A quick data point to determine the progress of a campaign, KPIs vary for each campaign and are as versatile and unique as each brand. The limit to what can be considered a KPI is endless. When looking at the overall progress of a campaign, it is easy to become overwhelmed at the data and deciphering exactly which numbers are most relevant to the campaign. More often than not, brands can result in tracking almost everything, but not learning nearly as much as they could be. It is important to remember that every metric will provide insight, but every KPI should provide an impact. Whats The Difference Between KPIs and Metrics? Every KPI is a metric, but not every metric is a KPI. One of the common misconceptions of measuring a campaign is to focus solely on the largest numbers. Metrics such as impressions, email list size, and servable domains are typically larger numbers indicating the campaign is reaching a large audience. While these provide a promising outlook on the exposure of the campaign, these metrics, known as supporting metrics or “vanity” metrics, often provide very little insight on the overall effectiveness of the campaign. The campaign may be reaching a large audience, but is it the right audience? In the era of targeted advertisements and personalized recommendations, simply reaching large audiences is not enough for brands to run effective digital campaigns. If you are a school trying to increase enrollment for kindergarten, your messaging may not be well received by those who do not have children or by those who have older children. For that reason, while these metrics may make you feel good, they should not be considered viable KPIs. Relying on these metrics as your primary KPIs parallels the ineffectiveness of the outdated “spray and pray” marketing method. A common strategy used throughout print marketing campaigns, the “spray and pray” method involves distributing large amounts of marketing materials in the hopes that it will reach your ideal audience. It also heavily relies on the fact that no matter how much content is put out, at least some users will consume it. Despite the lack of insight in overall effectiveness, these metrics are not rendered useless or irrelevant to the campaign. The KPIs inform of the overall engagement relevant to your goals, but the supporting metrics do just that, support the KPIs and provide insight as to why. For example, if your KPI was to measure the open rate of your targeted emails and it suddenly dropped from 75% to 45%, further inquiry into the metric of successful email sends may indicate there was an issue sending to a particular email domain. Common Digital Marketing KPI’S So what then are viable KPIs to measure the effectiveness of a campaign? While KPIs could be almost anything, a brand will want to ensure their KPI is not only relevant in achieving their goal, but inspires actionable events. Some KPIs can measure direct engagement, such as the percentage of clicks or actions taken, or more indirect, such as website interaction. 1. Click-Through Rate (CTR) One of the most common and used, Click-Through Rate (CTR) is a KPI that can be tracked for virtually any type of digital marketing campaign. It is the percentage of clicks an ad or link receives in comparison to the amount of impressions served, or the number of times it has been seen by a user. One of the reasons CTR is a widely used KPI is that it takes into consideration the proportion of clicks to impressions. Think of it as if you were targeting the state of Texas and Vermont. Texas is notably larger in population, therefore, will most likely drive more total clicks than Vermont. However, Texas may have 100 clicks for every 10,000 impressions it served, producing a 0.01% CTR, while Vermont may have 100 clicks for every 1,000 impressions it served, producing a 0.10% CTR. CTR acts as a valid starting point in understanding effectiveness, but while useful, there are other measurements that provide greater insight into a campaign. 2. Video Completion Rate (VCR) and View Through Rate (VTR) With the rise of using video formats for advertisements, Video Completion Rate (VCR) and View Through Rate (VTR) are insightful measurements that are easily accessible and aid in gauging audience interest. Almost interchangeable, VCR is the percentage an ad was viewed in its entirety compared to the amount of impressions served while VTR is the percentage an ad was viewed until a certain point or in full compared to the amount of impressions served. VTR is a bit more flexible as its measuring points are determined by the brand. Either KPI can be used, it would just be within best practices to maintain consistency throughout the campaign. While VCR is the more commonly used KPI of the two, VTR does provide critical information into how long a user is engaging with the ad. If working as a supporting metric, brands could take a look into their VTR and see if and where there is a large drop off of users. If there is a significant dropoff around the 35-second mark, this could then serve to improve the campaign by introducing a shorter video that is maybe only 15 or 30 seconds long. 3. Conversions and Conversion Rate Similar to CTR, conversions and conversion rates are other widely used KPIs. They are also dynamic in the sense that they can be used to measure efficiency among all digital marketing products. Conversions will vary in what exactly they are measuring as dictated by the overall campaign goals. Depending on the nature of the campaign, this could mean measuring different actions such as how many forms were submitted, downloads took place, signups for a newsletter, appointments scheduled, or items purchased once a user visited the website. For campaigns that are running a geofencing tactic, this could also mean physical visits to a brick and mortar location. To narrow in on conversions at a granular level, brands could look at the Conversion Rate. The conversion rate is the percentage of actions taken in relation to the total amount of visits. Depending on the set up of the campaign, high and low conversion rates could mean many different things. For example, high conversion rates could mean a website is easy to navigate and provides enticing content for its users. Meanwhile, a low conversion rate could potentially mean the desired action is too off base, such as wanting to increase appointments scheduled but having the main action displayed be a newsletter signup, or that there is an issue completing the action. 4. Website Traffic and Device Source While not a single unit measurement like CTR or VCR, it is equally important to understand where traffic is coming from to further maximize a campaign’s effectiveness. Measuring website traffic sources does require the use of a web analytics service, whether it be Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Clicky, or another analytics service. While users can find ways to a brand’s website in a variety of ways, there are 4 main categories each way will fall under: direct, referral, organic, or campaign. Direct traffic is when users type the website URL directly into the browser. Referral traffic is when users visit a website after clicking on a URL from another website, such as clicking on a link that is embedded in an online news article. Organic traffic is when users visit a website after entering a keyword search on a search engine like Google or Yahoo and clicks on the listing. Campaign traffic is when users visit a website through a dedicated digital marketing campaign, commonly measured through the use of a UTM code at the end of a URL. (Example: www.conduitdigital.us?utm_source=Conduit&utm_medium=Blog) Building upon traffic sources, it would also be ideal to also measure which devices users are coming from. In Q3 of 2019, mobile devices generated 51.5% of all global website traffic. Measuring the device source can provide valuable insight into how an audience is interacting with a brand, as well as where it could be improved. If traffic from mobile devices is high, but overall engagement low, this could mean implementing a mobile-friendly website, adding an array of ad sizes to be read on various screens, or even creating a mobile app to better improve the campaign. 5. New Vs. Returning Visitors As with website and device source traffic, it is beneficial to know what type of users are visiting and engaging with a website. Measuring the type of visitors to a website will require a website analytic service. Just as it is important to gain a new audience and drive them to a website, it is equally important to ensure the audience is retained. The nature of each brand will ultimately determine which metric, if used as a standalone instead of a dual metric, is weighed more heavily. If a brand is looking to increase organic website traffic, they may want to focus more on increasing new visitors. If a brand would like to increase media consumption on their site, returning visitors would be the preferred of the two. The visitor type metrics can be used in conjunction with other website activity metrics, such as the number of sessions, or the engagement of a user on a website within a certain time frame, or the time of sessions to further evaluate the website’s relevancy for users. One of the challenges with measuring new and returning visitors, particularly with returning, is that if a user deletes their browser cookies, uses a different device or browser, or their device does not accept cookies, they will not be considered returning if they were to revisit the website. 6. Bounce Rate and Exit Rate Although they sound similar, the bounce rate and exit rate are not synonymous. While the bounce rate is typically associated with email campaigns as the percentage of users that did not receive the messaging due to being returned by the email server, it can also be used to analyze website traffic. For website traffic, the bounce rate is the number of users that visit a site then leave without navigating to any other page compared to total visits. The exit rate of a campaign, on the other hand, is the percentage of users who left the website in proportion to the amount of total visits that page received. So while a bounce can be an exit, an exit cannot be a bounce. A user who visits the homepage then leaves without navigating to any other page is considered a bounce and an exit. However, a user who visits the homepage, then catalog page, but then leaves the site once they get to the checkout page, they are considered an exit from the checkout page. Bounce rate provides pivotal information into how effective a website is at driving users to learn more. If the home page or landing page provides all the information a user will need, this may not be as impactful of a KPI as if the website required further exploration by the user. The exit rate can help a brand understand why users may be dropping off at pages that are intended to push them further through the marketing funnel, such as Checkout pages. Reasons for high exit rates could be due to a number of things, but most commonly slow loading speeds, distracting content, or even navigation issues from one page to another. Working With Your KPIS As daunting and intimidating as it may seem to have an endless list of metrics to choose from, the more metrics that are at a brand’s disposal, the better the brand will be at measuring their campaign’s effectiveness. As evidenced by the few above KPIs, measuring website engagement alongside direct engagement provided by the product platform is monstrously more informative. Referring back to the very first sentence, consumers see thousands of advertisements in a single day. The likelihood of each one receiving an engagement is very slim, thus making website analytics a huge asset in a campaign. This unlocks a whole new set of data points that can be used to not only improve how brands drive consumers to a website, but also how to improve their experience once they have arrived. It goes without saying that the KPIs used and the metrics deemed the most relevant to a campaign should be readable and easily accessible by all involved. Through the use of a dashboard, displaying on a television screen in the office, or report, not only does this increase the impactfulness of the KPI, but it also serves as a continual reminder to look for ways to improve. If working with a white label agency, a brand will want to ensure there is a form of transparency. This not only increases the partnership but also solidifies the brand making the right marketing decision. Context is Key in Branded Marketing It goes without saying but there is no one set way to measure a campaign’s effectiveness or strict list of KPIs a brand must meet to be considered successful. Context is key! While industry benchmarks can aid in gauging how a campaign stacks up to similar industries, all things are relevant. For starters, when considering which marketing product to use, some products are better suited for certain KPIs than others. Brands will typically use Audience Targeting (AT) to increase brand awareness as this product is not reliant on prior consumer engagement, such as account or subscription. While AT can produce conversions, they will be relatively lower in comparison to those produced by products such as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), where these are intended to drive that final consumer push. Similarly, while it is not enough for brands just to be seen, certain aspects of a campaign may appear to be underperforming but would do well to remain in the campaign. A good example of this would be through individual keyword performance. If a lawyer’s office was running a campaign in hopes of increasing their cases for worker’s compensation, keywords such as “workers comp lawyer” and “injured on the job” may be worth it to leave in the campaign even if they are not driving the most engagement. In this scenario, while these keywords may be driving low engagement, they are great for brand awareness and branded marketing. So while users may not be clicking on the ads if they see them four times a day, when they are in need of those services, they will remember the lawyer’s ads and directly search for them. So while direct engagement may be low, branded marketing will increase the overall direct website traffic. Just as highly relevant keywords are great for branding, so are premium domains. While there are thousands of domains and applications advertisements can be served on, some are more well known and regarded higher than others. Leaving a few premium domains with low engagement may be worth leaving as being associated with “household” name websites are always a step in the right direction. Evolving Your KPIS One thing to note about campaign KPIs is that they are not intended to be stagnant. As a brand evolves, so should their overall marketing goals. KPIs are intended to be checked regularly and used as a guide to further improve the overall campaign, moving audiences through the marketing funnel. Reiterating the importance of minding where a brand falls within the marketing funnel, this will guide which KPIs will be most important for each campaign. At the beginning of the campaign, a brand may want to ensure the ads are being seen and driving users to the website, thus focusing on CTR and New Users. Once these have achieved their intended goal, the brand may choose to evolve their KPIs to focus on conversion rates and returning users. From there, they could then choose to focus on increasing traffic from search engine searches or mobile devices. KPIs vary for each campaign and are as versatile and unique as the brand. No one wants to have an idle brand, therefore no brand should have idle KPIs and goals. Key Takeaways Posing the question once more, with all the competing noise in the market, how can you tell if your digital marketing campaign is effective? By now, the answer to that question should be more clear. By starting with defining S.M.A.R.T. goals that are important, have the ability and potential to be improved upon, and are being executed by the right team, whether in-house or through a third-party. Measuring the effectiveness continues with defining the right metrics and understanding them. Every metric will provide insight, but every KPI will provide an impact. It is great to drive users to a website, but it is even better to understand how and why they are being driven, and what they do once they arrive. Finally, measuring effectiveness should be blatantly clear and accessible in the form of either a dashboard or report that serves as a continual reminder to evolve as the brand does.

Jun 14, 2023 If you have been reading anything else that we’ve written recently, you’ll know one fact above any other: Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is here, and as of July 1, 2023 it will be the new and only standard analytics platform offered by Google. The previous standard, Universal Analytics, will stop processing data on July 1. While you’ll still have at least 6 months to view your previous UA data, eventually the interface will be depreciated until a point where these accounts are no longer accessible or viewable. Without exporting your UA data, your agency could lose a valuable historical perspective on your client’s campaigns. To maintain month-over-month and year-over-year continuity, having both UA and GA4 data in one place will be essential. As a digital marketing agency, you are responsible for the performance of your clients’ campaigns. This also includes measuring and reporting on the data to determine the effectiveness of the strategy you created backed by their investment. However, there are some definite challenges. GA4 is not some cosmetic swap of the UA interface nor is it just a few tweaks to the platform. It represents an entire paradigm shift for how campaigns are evaluated. Anticipated Challenges for Agencies After July 1 As we’re all creatures of comfort, this massive transition can seem like more of an obstacle than an opportunity. The specific challenges lie within access to your clients analytics reporting data in two locations, such as: Finding the Data You Need Does everyone still have the correct access permissions and correct properties in GA4 that they had in UA? Between ensuring proper access permissions to view the data and the proper alignment of properties between UA and GA4, knowing where to look for similar data can become time consuming, frustrating, and highly inefficient. Different Primary Metrics GA4 and UA collect data differently. Along with this, the primary metrics that they measure also differ significantly, with GA4 placing a heavy emphasis on Events. Comparing the two will never be an apples-to-apples situation, but highlighting the primary metrics in the new interface will be essential. Let’s note, though, that not everything between UA and GA4 has a one-to-one counterpart. Some metrics will translate with ease while others will not prove compatible at all. This will create a responsibility for your agency to put these new metrics into a relevant context for your client’s business when reporting on campaign performance. This also ties back to the importance of proper access and aligning properties correctly. With these pieces of the puzzle in place, finding the right data becomes a far easier task than jumping into GA4 headfirst on July 1 without a holistic historical view. Reporting Can Become Outdated If you’ve based your reporting on UA up until July 1, you will undoubtedly need to alter the way that you report on campaign performance to your clients. With primary metrics shifting, your reporting processes will need to adapt alongside this change. Take the time now to understand how GA4’s arrival will alter the way that you report for your clients. Build these changes into your documentation and prepare to explain why the change happened, what this means for measuring performance, and how it will change (and ultimately benefit) your client’s campaigns from a data perspective. UA is Dwindling Down As we mentioned above, UA stops processing data as of july 1st. However, GA4 is not retroactive - so how will you be able to keep track of histroical trends/data even if it's not a seamless comparison? If you have not already exported your UA data and migrated your clients’ to GA4, then you should export all of your data first and foremost after July 1. While we cannot give you a guarantee when UA will officially be discontinued and barred from public access, it’s best to do this as soon as possible so that you can maintain the integrity of your client’s data and avoid any surprises a few months from now. A Reporting System that puts both your Agency Client’s UA and GA4 Data at your fingertips The solution to overlay GA4 Data on top of UA data is an industry wide challenge that still needs to be solved. Having both in a single, holistic environment that simplifies the user interface and access are both instrumental advantages for any agency looking for a solution to navigate this shifting landscape. At Conduit, we’ve been assisting agencies with GA4 transitions since it was first introduced. More than a year ago, we made the decision to connect both UA and GA4 data into a centralized dashboard so that our agency partners could easily access both instances of data with a few simple clicks. This resulted in our one-of-a-kind Agency Performance Panel (APP) which brings together a complete view of your entire account portfolio as well as the ability to drill down to the most granular details for campaigns run on each channel. Building our tech stack to centralize your analytics data in a single location provides tangible benefits to your agency in multiple ways, including: Single Point of Entry Once you get the proper access no additional access is required, simple switching back and forth, and no guessing what reports/metrics are the most importan benefits of a Conduit APPt. You won’t need to spend time juggling multiple interfaces and risking something becoming lost in translation. Centralizing UA and GA4 Data Analysis With our dashboard, you can view UA and GA4 data in one location. This creates an easy single point of access for everything that you need to measure your client’s campaigns historically as well as performance in real-time. Identifying the Most Comparable Metrics Once we have access to your client’s data, our system organizes it in a way that highlights the most comparable metrics between UA and GA4. You’ll know exactly what to analyze, where to find it, and how to tell the best story for your clients. Beyond the pure metrics, we also provide unique insights and analyses from our analysts for each campaign that you’re running as part of your partnership with Conduit. Get Ahead of July 1 with an Elite Partner Our team at Conduit Digital serves as an elite white label ad operations partner for established and successful agencies in North America. Acting as an extension of your own in-house team, we outfit you with the communication and performance infrastructure to confidently operate your agency in a digital landscape that seems to change drastically by the second. Once you’ve exported your UA data and are ready to take your GA4 reporting to the next level, contact us to learn more about how our state of the industry APP.

Jun 21, 2023 Google Analytics A4’s full and permanent rollout is happening in less than two weeks! As we’ve mentioned in our previous pieces on the new analytics interface, it will replace Universal Analytics on July 1. After that, UA will no longer collect new data. While you’ll still be able to view and create backups of your UA data for 6 to 12 months after the fact, what really matters at this moment is how you transition your clients to GA4 and set them up for a new data frontier. If you have not joined the migration to GA4, the clock is ticking, and doesn’t have many ticks left. To help you cross the finish line, we’ve compiled a comprehensive cheat sheet to help you confidently enter this new era. Get Your GA4 Reporting Journey Cheat Sheet Now What’s Inside Your GA4 Reporting Journey Cheat Sheet? What’s Different About GA4 vs. UA In this section, we’ll cover a quick, but highly comprehensive summary of the most notable changes between GA4 and its predecessor. If your clients, or your team, have questions about the most significant changes that they need to pay attention to, it’s all here! Reporting Journey Overview What is GA4’s most notable contribution to its new interface? Reporting with Google Analytics is now far more simplified and streamlined than it was with UA. Rather than navigating a large menu of tabs, you can more intuitively find the reports that you need. Finding Specific Types of Reports To find reports that are most impactful for paid and organic campaigns, we provide you with a quick roadmap to accessing common reports offered by GA4 so that you can find the data you need. Use this cheat sheet as your compass to maintain your reporting continuity! Still Need Help with GA4? Let’s Talk At Conduit Digital, we partner with established and successful agencies to equip their operations with elite performance, communication, and reporting capabilities to scalably deliver better results for clients and confidently say “yes” to any new opportunities. If you’re still preparing for GA4, we can help you set your agency up to enter this new data collection and reporting era with the assurance that you have a partner in your corner with extensive experience in the new interface. Using our unique APP dashboard, you can view your clients’ UA and GA4 data all in one place to maintain ultimate continuity throughout your reports. Schedule a call with us today to learn how you can scale your agency with Conduit across 17 different channels in a single partnership.

Jun 11, 2020 Conduit Digital offers a complete white label digital solution for our clients, believing it is the best way to help them achieve success in their ROI and marketing goals. When talking about a complete solution, it starts with marketing. Regardless of the platform or channel, if you are a marketer, you will find ways to ensure that delivery vehicle executes for your clients. Our CEO Tim Burke, Director of Client Experience Tim C. Burke, and Director of Products Rob Burke sat down to discuss the ways offering a complete digital marketing solution has enabled us to become one of the fastest-growing agencies in the world. How We Got Started Regardless of whether you are advertising in traditional channels or digital channels, we are all still marketers. If you are a marketer, you will be able to ensure the delivery vehicle executed, regardless of the channel. As our CEO Tim Burke was working with media groups across the country, he noticed a need to marry traditional and digital marketing. That idea is what helped to start Traffic Builders, the predecessor to Conduit Digital. Noticing a lack of a complete digital solution in the traditional marketplace, Traffic Builders was founded to provide that solution. The ability to keep your clients in one place and offer a full-funnel digital solution is at the heart of everything that we do at Traffic Builders and Conduit. Whats The Difference Between Traditional and Digital Marketing No matter what channel we work in, how many people we have, or where our office is located, it is still about one thing for us: marketing! The main difference between traditional and digital marketing is in how the message is delivered to a client. Traditional Marketing can be thought of as: Magazines Newspapers Billboards Whereas Digital Marketing delivers an advertisers message through: Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc) Websites Google Ads Our team constantly keeps up with the Googles, Facebooks, and DSPs. However, it wasn’t always so easy. When we started, we aggregated a lot of experts in their fields from all over the digital space. As we grew and expanded our team, these experts started working together to create comprehensive campaigns for our clients. This evolution has enabled us to offer the complete full-funnel solution we set out to offer in the beginning. Regardless of whether you are dealing in traditional media, digital media, or a combination of the two, the important thing is how those products work together to create a successful campaign for the client. With so much to juggle in the air, it can be hard to successfully land these campaigns. The Key to Success As we went from spray and pray methods to attribution models, we were able to see where every data set or metric was coming from. When you are offering a complete solution, and all of the products are working together, you are able to see the breakdown of how your clients’ customers move through the marketing funnel. These tactics work together to create cohesive campaigns. By using this data, we can work toward that attribution model which will result in greater success for your campaigns. Having a complete, holistic solution is everything. It is not just about offering each product, it is about offering a complete solution where each product works together with the others to create success. Are Your Accounts at Risk? If your agency is not offering a complete solution, you are putting your accounts at risk. If your clients have to go elsewhere for the bottom of the funnel solution, you could end up losing the account altogether. It is not about offering the products. While we have teams of product-specific specialists that work on every campaign, that is just the “science” of it. The “art” of marketing comes when we tie the communication and ROI to these successes. If you work backward from ROI, you will be able to work together internally and with the client to ensure you are not only meeting but exceeding expectations. More than just product offering, the key to success is communication, expectations, and the optimization of the campaign. The Best Way to Create ROI The best way to create ROI for your clients is to have that complete solution. Having products work together, looking at conversion funnels, conversion paths, seeing the best way it is working, see what is not working, and optimizing toward that path is how we create success. One question we get a lot is, “As a digital marketing agency, can I offer that complete solution or do I need to be involved in digital as well?” What digital marketing has done is not replace traditional media, but it has augmented it. There is such a benefit in destination viewership and destination listenership that there is no more spray and pray. It’s not about hope or guessing. It is about targeted viewership. Finding that target, making sure the message reaches them all throughout the funnel. As marketing evolves, there will be less and less of a difference between traditional and digital marketing. Everything will become more targeted. Eliminating The Risk of Client Churn Client churn is the risk that we all want to avoid. There is so much that goes into gaining a clients’ trust and confidence. By outsourcing individual products, agencies could be putting themselves at risk of churn. You don’t want to fill the top of the funnel and then have someone come in at the end and take it all. If you have experts in products, you need to have communication and synergy. If you do not offer the product your client is looking for, they will look elsewhere. By providing a complete solution, you are eliminating that risk. We’ve dived deeper into the topic of client churn and ways to combat it in a previous Agency PainPoints series if you want to learn more. Conclusion When you are not offering a complete solution, your clients are at risk of going elsewhere. Only by offering a complete solution, having clear and honest communication and expectations, can you reduce your risk and provide your clients with a full-funnel solution. Using this method has enabled Conduit Digital to eliminate risk and decrease client churn!