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Sep 3, 2021 Get the Most Out of Your New PPC Advertising Product If your agency is considering partnering with a white label PPC advertising provider, you may be wondering how you can effectively resell these services to your clients? In this ultimate guide, we’re going to show you how you can effectively resell PPC to that client you’re looking to land or expand.  How to Communicate the Value of PPC Advertising to Your Client As an agency leader, you’re probably familiar with this scenario: Your client clearly needs to take their digital marketing strategy in a new direction, but there always seems to be a disconnect when you try to sell them on the idea. Instead, they are either happy to continue doubling down on current campaigns or they start to consider scaling back their marketing investments. When you speak to your client about PPC advertising, one of the questions you will probably have to answer is “Why should I spend money on that?”. Without a thorough and authentic answer, your attempt to expand the account can fall dead in the water. Here are some unique selling points of expert-managed white label PPC campaigns that you can offer to your client. Jump to the Top of the SERPs PPC campaigns place your client’s website at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). This occurs when a search user enters a term relevant to the keywords that your client is bidding on. Rather than hoping your website ranks organically for that keyword, you can cut right to the front of the line and get your business in front of desirable eyes. Only Pay for the Clicks You Receive It’s in the name: Pay-Per-Click advertising means the client only pays for the clicks their ads generate. This method results in an invest-as-you-go structure that only costs the client when it is producing results. Target the Most Likely Conversion Prospects Unlike text-based newspaper classified ads of old, PPC ads allow you to target specific audiences that are most likely to convert on key performance actions (KPAs). Beyond matching users’ search terms, you also can tailor campaigns to reach specific people based on factors such as location, demographic data, and much more. Rather than broadcasting your ad to any and every set of eyes, you’re putting it in front of the right sets of eyes. Multiple Types of PPC Ads to Choose From Beyond simple text ads, there are many other varieties of PPC advertising formats that you can take advantage of. You can use a single ad format or a combination that best suits your client’s business goals. For example, Google offers ones that include, but are by no means limited to: Shopping Ads – Promote a product that your client is selling on their website and pay when a user clicks through to the landing page. Local Services Ads – Professionals in select industries can advertise verified service listings to search users. For example, a local personal injury lawyer can create an LSA ad that targets people who search terms like “personal injury attorney near me.” Click-to-Call Ads – Ads specifically designed to drive phone calls for businesses. These display only on devices such as smartphones where the user can place the call instantly. Expert-Managed Campaigns When you connect with a white label PPC advertising partner like Conduit, you have access to a team of certified experts that apply their expertise to your client’s campaigns. This ensures that the campaigns: Are designed based on your client’s desired KPAs Feature high-opportunity keyword strategies Implement effective ad copy compliant with PPC best practices Of course, you do not have to disclose that your agency works with a white label digital performance partner if you do not want to. In our experience, about half of the agencies in our network actively promote that they work with Conduit’s team of certified Google Ads and Bing Ads partners. Some prefer to call our PPC advertising team their own, which we are equally excited about! That’s the beauty of a white label partnership. Track Your Campaign Performance in Real-Time We believe that successful white label performance partnerships are built on transparency. When considering a PPC advertising partner, look for one that offers transparent data reporting on each of your client’s campaigns. This allows you to show your client how their campaigns are performing in real-time. This may inspire your client to invest more in PPC in the future or can open a productive conversation about adjusting strategy if the campaign is underperforming. It’s All About ROAS All of PPC advertising’s unique selling points are moot if the performance doesn’t align to drive return on ad spend (ROAS) for your client. However, with an expert white label partner, you can ensure that your client’s campaigns are set up for the most success possible. At Conduit, we help successful agencies across North America scale to the summit with a full suite of digital products. If you’re interested in adding white label PPC to your arsenal of solutions, contact us today to learn more about white label partnership.

Sep 13, 2021 Leverage These Insights to Turn Your Agency Team Into Local SEO Rockstars  Local SEO requires a different approach than general search engine optimization campaigns. To become a true rockstar among other competing agencies, you have to apply global-sized thinking to local execution.  As a digital performance partner for digital marketing agencies serving many local markets across the United States, we’ve learned quite a bit about local SEO along the way. We’re going to share some agency insights to help you best leverage your white label digital partnership to become a truly major player in your client’s local market. 1. Gather as Much Local Intel as Possible Research the general region where your client’s business is located. Then, conduct research on their municipality, county, the other surrounding counties, and eventually the state. Be sure to also read up on local government regulations that may impact the way your client conducts their business. Other aspects of local intel you might want to research can include, but are not limited to: Seasonal climate conditions that may affect business Proximity to major cities and local economic hubs Median household income of the local population Other demographic data of local residents (i.e., Age, race, education level, etc.) Top local employers where potential customers might work 2. Research Local Competitors In-Depth Perform a local search related to your client’s business. For example, if your client is a medical provider in Ocean County, New Jersey, you can search “doctors office in Toms River” and view a variety of local competitors’ websites and Google MyBusiness listings. Perform a thorough review of these competitors’ websites. Look for aspects of these sites that might be outperforming your client’s digital presence. Look for factors like: Do the competitors have more content on their pages? Do the competitors have better quality content? Do they have a more intuitive user experience design? Are they using links more effectively on their website? Do they have more consistently optimized meta descriptions and headers than your client? These surface-level aspects of a website can provide you with a detailed initial overview of your client’s competitors. This will aid you in developing a strategy to elevate your client’s own website to remain viably competitive in their market. You can also use site examining tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to take a deeper look into competitors’ websites to gather more granular data. These tools can provide you with advanced intel like: A website’s text-to-HTML ratio Number of broken links found on the website Instances of duplicate on-page copy Keywords that competitors are currently ranking for on organic search 3. Make Sure Your Client’s Digital Presence Has Updated Location Information Businesses that target local audiences often have their information displayed on a variety of different digital channels. These can include their own website, social media profiles, Google MyBusiness listings, directory portals, and more. Take an inventory of each channel that lists your client’s business information. Ensure that all of their contact information, address, and business hours, and website URL are up-to-date on each property. If one or more are inaccurate, be sure to address this immediately. 4. Identify Directory Opportunities Your Client is Missing Out On Online directories with local listings dominate local organic search results. These portals are considered of the highest authority by search engine algorithms, which means they face little difficulty achieving a top-3 ranking. Directories generate a large amount of organic referral traffic for your client’s website. If their site is not in the top-5 organic results for a specific keyword, but their Yelp listing is, this can result in many Yelp visitors clicking through to your client’s website if they want to learn more about their business. If your client is missing key directory listings for their local market and general industry, take inventory of them and plan to add their business to these channels as soon as possible. This will play an instrumental role in supplementing your organic traffic generation with referral links. 5. Build a Local Keyword Strategy “(Product or service) near me” is the king of local SEO keywords. Whenever a user includes the qualifier “near me” in their search term, Google leverages the device’s location function to provide local results. On your client’s website, be sure to tastefully call out specific locations in their content. This will indicate to Google that the business serves local customers in that specific area. For example, the H1 heading on a physical therapist’s homepage in Lincoln, Nebraska might be “Top Physical Therapy Center in Lincoln, NE” with the focus keyword being “physical therapy Lincoln NE”. 6. Be A Digital Neighbor People often support local businesses because they are owned and operated by their neighbors. In a similar vein, operate your client’s online channels like a digital neighbor. On their Google properties, social profiles, and directory listings, perform regular actions like: Respond to reviews from all customers, no matter the rating. Post notices of any changes in business hours, unusual closures, holiday schedules, etc. Link to new content on the client’s website, such as blog posts, to channels that allow you to post updates like Facebook and Google MyBusiness. Respond to questions, comments, and messages on these properties and provide links to the client’s website if the page can help satisfy a user’s needs. Share images of the business to the client’s Google MyBusiness profile, directory listings, and social media channels. These will also aid your client in ranking for image results on search engines. Scale Your Agency To True Local SEO Rockstardom Local SEO is a far more nuanced variation of search engine optimization that requires consistent experience to become a true rockstar. At Conduit, we’ve built a team of expert certified SEO analysts and managers that have built countless local SEO campaign strategies for agency clients all across North America and around the globe. As digital performance partners, we help agencies scale by meeting their needs with a full suite of services to round out their own in-house core offerings. If you’re ready to scale to becoming a true local SEO rockstar, contact us today to learn more about our white label SEO services.

Jul 28, 2021 Use SEO Audit Services to Build a Strategic Digital War Chest. An effective search engine optimization campaign requires more than new content and some flashy keywords. To generate desirable organic traffic for your client, you need to account for their website’s technical health. An SEO audit can provide this critical insight and help your team develop a tangible strategy.  How Does an SEO Audit Benefit Your Clients? Clients often want to know what you have done for them lately. They are trusting your agency and investing a significant portion of their budget in your team’s expertise. When you are able to show the fruits of your campaign, this leads to greater transparency and a healthier account relationship. With an SEO audit, you can form a detailed, insightful, and long-term plan of attack for the client’s campaign. It will provide you with a full view of their website’s health, opportunities for new quality keywords, and a full lay-of-the-land when analyzing competitors. You can put all of this information into a monthly plan that demonstrates tangible value. From the financial perspective, an audit also allows your team to accurately price campaigns and ensure profitability. This ensures that the client receives the maximum possible return on their investment and boosts their satisfaction with your services. How Does an SEO Audit Benefit Agencies? SEO audits also benefit agencies in a number of ways. For starters, it becomes your team’s strategic war chest when forming your strategy. Each day, week, month, or quarter, you can use the audit as a central launchpad for your client’s campaign. Similar to the client-side, the audit also allows your team to forecast a more accurate picture of cost, revenue, and profit. Instead of estimates, you can provide a quote designed to both maximize the client’s budget and generate the most profit for your business. Components of an Excellent SEO Audit If you search for “SEO audit” on Google, you will find many third-party companies promising extravagant results for a cheap, one-time service. In many cases, these offshore providers import an SEO tool’s Manual and Machine Analysis A high-quality audit should contain points of analysis collected from both human SEO experts and industry-leading digital tools. Combining artificial intelligence with human-level insight allows your agency to offer clients a more complete, effective, and long-term strategy. Website Content Quality When it comes to SEO, content should accomplish two main goals: 1. Establish your client’s authority in their industry 2. Introduce and optimize for new keywords with high organic traffic potential Beyond this, the content should also engage the client’s target reader. After reading a blog post or landing page, the visitor ought to feel inspired to engage further. This supports the website’s overall lead generation and conversion goals. Technical SEO Health When search engine algorithms crawl through your website, they do not see all the incredible designs and bright colors. Instead, they read its HTML code. If the website is plagued with technical errors, the algorithm will likely determine the site offers a poor user experience and not rank it highly for desired keywords. Two examples of common technical errors an audit might uncover include pages with a low text-to-HTML ratio and slow page load times. After identifying errors like these, an SEO analyst can compile an action plan that corrects these issues on an ongoing basis. By noting all technical errors and warning signs, you can plan to address these problems and prevent them from further impacting the website’s organic search performance. As you continue to add new optimizations to your client’s site, these technical issues will not impede your progress over time. User Behavior Stats How are organic search users interacting with the website? Are they dropping off before making it to the desired point of conversion? During the audit, tools like Google Analytics can analyze user behavior like bounce rate, the average time of on-site, and behavior flow to help your team identify any disconnects between strategy and intended results. Optimization Information Does the client’s website already feature some basic SEO elements like focus keywords and optimized metadata? If not, these should be noted and addressed as soon as possible. This provides your team with the opportunity to introduce immediate campaign deliverables that deliver a noticeable impact. Essential SEO elements like the ones above tell search engine algorithms what your page’s content is about. Along with strong content and high technical health, your website stands a much stronger chance of ranking highly for desired keywords. Link Profile Is your client’s website receiving links from reputable online sources relevant to their industry? During an SEO audit, an analyst should examine these links and score their quality. If they are irrelevant, spammy, or toxic, they can impact your organic rankings. Search engines will note these links and if they do not align with your client’s content, they will likely assume your website does not have an authority level that merits a higher ranking. Any “bad” backlinks can be disavowed and better ones can be obtained through the course of an SEO campaign. These should be noted and cataloged during the audit phase. A Tangible Action Plan After the client has received an audit, your agency should provide them with a tangible action plan. Provide a list of high-level, ongoing deliverables as well as a plan to address any immediate issues. White Label a Better SEO Audit Today Looking to provide a better SEO audit for your clients? Consider an agency partnership with Conduit! Our team combines over 20 years of hands-on experience with industry-leading tools and a custom audit that covers over 80 criteria – all white-labeled under your client’s brand. To learn more about our SEO services that can benefit your agency, view our agency partnership page.

May 5, 2021 We recently discussed Google embracing FLoC over third-party cookies in a previous blog post . Now, this reality is inching closer and digital advertisers will have to shift their approach to campaign management.  Similarly, Apple announced that, with the latest iOS update, users can opt out of cross-web tracking on an app-to-app basis. When you first open an app after installing the update, it will allow you to opt in or out of cross-platform tracking.  Most digital advertisers have relied on these longtime tools like third-party cookies and holistic web tracking to reach target audiences. Now, where does this leave the industry? Fortunately, the ad landscape will not descend into a barren wasteland.  John, Jay, and Kwasi Discuss FLoC and the iOS Update in-Depth What Does the FLoC Model Mean for Google Ads? Third-party cookies collect data on specific users and their behavior across the entire web. This allows advertisers to tailor this individual’s ad experience wherever this person might visit. If you’ve browsed for sports equipment online and then saw ads for new running shoes on your Facebook feed later, that’s an example of third-party cookies at work. Now, Google will be eliminating third-party cookies from its tracking and replacing this with the Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLoC model. Instead of tracking data user-by-user, FLoC creates groups based on holistic user behavior on a website. Is FLoC Better than Third-Party Cookies? Like any comparison, each side will possess a unique set of advantages and disadvantages. However, there are a few notable advantages FLoC has over third-party cookies: Google can now capture more usable group data This shift results in better group-level targeting at the expense of less usable individual user data iOS Update 14.5 Introduces App Tracking Transparency Apple has always placed a priority on safeguarding its customers’ privacy. This commitment extends far enough to where they have refused to unlock passcode-protected phones for FBI investigations. They build their brand on user experience and this latest iOS update is intended to further accomplish their main objective. Now, iOS update 14.5 will allow users to opt out of cross-app tracking on an app-to-app basis. Now, when an application is opened for the first time after installing the update, the user can select whether or not they wish for it to track their cross-platform data. This level of transparency brings unprecedented privacy protections to users. However, advertisers that relied on this holistic, cross-app view will have to adapt and rely more heavily on first-party data instead. What Are Some Major Changes with Tracking Transparency? Any major shift in the digital advertising world will require some degree of evolution and adaptation. With iOS update 14.5, some major changes advertisers should note include: First-party platform data will dominate Less sophisticated targeting due to limited amounts of cross-platform data available Can no longer attribute conversions to cross-channel behavior Should Advertisers Worry? Though some agencies may face initial bumps in the road as they adapt, this should not cause an overall worry. For example, this change will not affect Google Search Ads in any significant way, but it will have a much larger impact on social media platforms in the near-term. As John, Jay, and Kwasi discussed in the roundtable, many users may also opt into tracking than opt out. Why? People have come to expect targeted ad experiences. A significant majority will still want ads tailored to their interests rather than being served random, irrelevant messages. Are You Ready to Join the FLoC? The advertising world shifts frequently, but on occasion, major transformations occur like what we’re seeing with Google implementing FLoC over third-party cookies and iOS tracking transparency. To help you survive, thrive, and scale during this seismic moment in digital advertising, we want to help you develop a proactive solution to keep delivering winning ad campaigns. If you are interested in learning more, check out our partnership page or schedule a call with us anytime using the calendar below:  Want to Be Ready for These Big Changes? At Conduit Digital, we tackle issues like the one you saw above on a daily basis. Our goal is to become the digital performance partner for successful agencies all over the world and be your secret weapon when seismic shifts rock our industry. To learn more about how we can help you scale, schedule a 20-minute call using the calendar below. We look forward to hearing from you!

Feb 10, 2021 Social Media Marketing Trends in 2021: The Ultimate Guide Social media marketing trends are always evolving, and as one of the world’s fastest-growing digital agencies, we are always researching new ways to meet these demands. More than ever, people are connecting with each other via platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and the up-and-coming Clubhouse app.  2020 Was Huge for Social Media Marketing, 2021 Will Be Even Bigger  Many people spent more time at home during 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This also resulted in an increased amount of social media activity this past year . When unable to connect with others in person, interacting online is the next-best option.  As pandemic-related restrictions still linger for brick-and-mortar establishments, office environments, and public gathering spaces, reaching people via social media campaigns will play a more significant role than ever. Simply put: If your brand is not alive on social media, you won’t thrive.  To help ensure you do thrive in 2021, here are some social media trends you need to look out for:  Instagram Reels Are Here to Stay  Short form video content dominated 2020. People were introduced to this by the platform TikTok, but when Instagram’s Reels emerged as a viable alternative, it exploded.  Prior to Reels, Instagram’s primary engagement driver was their Stories feature. Similar to Snapchat, Instagram stories presented users with quick pieces of timely content that would disappear within 24 hours. Since Reels were introduced, Story reach has declined as Reels are on the rise!  Reels took off to the point where they have now replaced the Discover tab as the center-spot on the app menu. Now, accessing and engaging with your favorite creators is more streamlined than ever.  Instagram Reels are short videos lasting between 15 and 30 seconds. Content creators can edit clips together, add visual elements, and share them with the rest of their other posts.  Instagram’s Discover algorithm also regularly introduces new audience members to your content based on user behavior. These elements firmly cement the platform as the gold-standard for visual social media marketing.  You might be wondering: Can I import my TikToks into my Instagram Reels? Instagram just released their latest algorithm update which no longer allows for promoting Reels that have a TikTok watermark on them . This makes TikToks less discoverable on the Instagram platform, but they can still be seen in the regular feeds.  If you want to share your video on both platforms, we recommend creating the content on Instagram and then uploading it to TikTok. Instagram does not generate a watermark on Reels.  (Short Form) Content is King The long-held “content is king” marketing mantra has applied to social media since its inception, but in 2021, short form content will take the spotlight. Videos that are only a few seconds long, like what we see with TikTok and Instagram Reels, are the new elevator-pitch to sell audiences on your brand’s value propositions.  While you may not be able to present a detailed product description using these formats, you can maximize visual appeal. This means brands need to spend less time explaining and more time showing.  Beyond sharing short videos via Reels and TikToks, here are some other ways to introduce short form content to your marketing strategy:  Graphics & Infographics Create graphics and infographics as social posts that share valuable insights and information about your brand, industry, or other relevant subject matter with your audience. Here, you can add text to your posts and make snackable content that people can consume on-the-go.  Memes & GIFs Who doesn’t love a good laugh? Share memes and GIFs that promote your brand’s sense of humor and give your content a viable chance to go viral within your industry or across a broader general audience base.  Saves Reign Over Comments and Likes Whether you are running a paid social campaign or creating organic content, you should encourage your audience to save your posts on Instagram and Facebook. Saving a post acknowledges that the user intends to further engage with your brand at a later time.  We are going to see a shift in engagement metrics that matter to the algorithm, saves and sends will be the most valued among them, followed by comments and likes. Likes will still remain important, but the days where likes hold the highest value are no more. Saves are transforming into the most powerful engagement metric as it tells the algorithm that you are building authority on the platform.  The Trend That Will Dominate it All: Humanizing Your Brand In 2020, we saw that many brands relied on social media to connect with customers. Whether sharing updates to their business hours or posting specials, they turned to social platforms . This year, in addition to those routine update posts, we can expect to see brands becoming more humanized and authentic. In order to humanize your brands, you need to balance showcasing personality and maintaining professionalism. Here are some ways to do that:  Showcase your team – Put faces behind your brand. Highlight employees, their birthdays and accomplishments, and don’t forget to promote employee-created content to inject some fresh personality!  Go behind the scenes – Utilize stories to give your customers a glimpse of the day-to-day operations.  Storytelling – One of the most effective ways to humanize your brand and become more authentic, is to tell stories. Whether you are sharing your successes or failures, you are being human, showing transparency, and giving your audience the chance to relate to you. Answer everything – Acknowledge and answer every single comment that comes your way, whether on a paid advertisement or a social post. A simple thank you can go a long way. For engagement that requires more thought and detailed responses, you should have a team to manage this type of engagement as your response can influence how people view your brand.   Social Media Shopping – The New Digital Mall  Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer eCommerce portals for brands to sell products directly to users through their own accounts. Instead of having to navigate off-app to your own website, a person can engage in social shopping directly from where they currently are.  With social media’s targeting capabilities, brands can also advertise their products and services directly to those most likely to purchase them based on demographic, interest, and behavior data. This allows you to drive more revenue through more qualified buyers seeing your listings in their feeds and taking action without ever leaving the app of their choosing.  The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the way that people shop online. With more brick-and-mortar retail locations becoming less accessible, small and large businesses have leaned heavily on digital. Customers that wish to stay home have also engaged more with eCommerce platforms .   Harnessing the power of social shopping provides a unique opportunity for small businesses to survive, or even thrive, during a tumultuous period in economic history. Once users transition to a post-pandemic society, we can expect many will continue to shop via social as it will become what they are now accustomed to. Similarly, we can anticipate that many more brands and entire industries will shift to social shopping than ever before. The New Frontier: The Clubhouse App  Launched in 2020, the new Clubhouse app is emerging as the latest challenger to the established social media landscape. Completely unique, the audio-based platform operates on an invitation-only model where like-minded people can discuss topics relevant to their interests.  Think of Clubhouse as a hybrid between a live podcast and a virtual chatroom. Users can jump in and out of conversations they’re invited to. Unlike other platforms, however, you cannot sign up for Clubhouse. You must be invited by another user. As the app expands its reach, you will see it be made more accessible to a broader pool of users, but for the time being, its exclusivity is driving user interest.  Ready to Take these Social Media Trends by Storm?   You’ve heard it here first: these trends will dominate the social media landscape in 2021. If you’re looking to elevate paid social and organic content capabilities this year, contact us to learn more about how we can form an agency partnership to help you scale.

Feb 17, 2021 SEO Writing 101: A Guide for Traffic-Driving Content High-quality SEO writing has never been more relevant. Competing in today’s digital ecosystem requires deploying a suite of strategic tactics to ensure your content ranks as high as possible with search engines.   Why? According to Hubspot, 75% of users never scroll past the first page of a search engine result. Simply put: If you’re not ranking highly, it’s almost as if you are not ranking at all.  While nothing in SEO is guaranteed for certain, there are some best practices you can put in place to ensure your writing is positioned for greater success. Here, we’ll cover each of these aspects in-depth to show you how proper SEO writing can generate immense value for your brand.  Main Types of SEO Content Typically, SEO content is written for your or your client’s blog as well as cornerstone pages on your website such as your about, home, and products/services pages. If your industry relies on directory sites to drive traffic, optimizing your listing information on key destinations can also help since many of them compete for high organic search rankings.  Why You’re Writing  Build Authority – Establish your credibility for other sites to link back to your own Organic Search Rankings – Rank highly on relevant search engine results pages (SERPs) Match Search Intent – Position your products/services directly in front of people looking for them to drive conversions.  Before You Write, You Must Understand Your Brand  Whether writing for your own brand or a client, you need to understand its voice, message, and identity. Review all the brand’s existing content on their site, social media, and anywhere else they are sharing it. Look for recurring words or phrases that appear in the copy and take note of them. Distill these consistencies to their essence and you’ll have the brand’s core identity figured out!  Who Is Your Audience and Why Should They Care?   SEO writing puts the reader first. Look at places where your brand’s followers are engaging. Are they leaving reviews, asking questions on social posts, or commenting on your blog? Use this valuable free intel as you build your content strategy.  When developing your content, match it to search intent. Why would someone search for your product or service? You can use online keyword research tools to also see what questions are commonly asked about the keywords you are targeting.  How to Do Keyword Research for SEO Writing Understand Types of Keywords Generally, there are six types of keywords you should remember when writing:  Focus keyword – the primary keyword that you are planning a piece of content around. It should relate to the central topic of your page or blog post.  Secondary keyword – a keyword that is also relevant to the focus keyword and may help add additional context or increase the content’s rank potential for other user searches.  Keyword variations – Variations of your focus keyword that you can use instead of repeating it verbatim in your copy. For example, a search engine algorithm can interpret “writing a blog” and “blog writing” as virtually identical when retrieving results.  Seed keywords – short, broad-topic keywords you might use to find inspiration for higher-performing ones. An example would be “coffee” which you could then use to find longer ones like “coffee shop near me” or “best coffee in NJ” (Hint: that one’s Perk Cafe ).  Long-Tail keywords: Keywords that are 3 or more words that are designed to match specific user searches like “How to repair your dishwasher at home.”  Branded keywords: Your brand is its own keyword! If you’re not owning it with your content, your competitors might be.  Keyword Research Tools There exist a number of great keyword research tools to use when developing content ideas. You can choose from a variety of paid and free options.  With these tools, you can enter a keyword into a search field and gauge its performance potential, discover real search terms related to that keyword, and ideas for variants. This allows you to plan your content around ones that you have a better chance to rank for organically.  Our personal favorite premium tools are Ahrefs and SEMrush for their immense data reporting capabilities. If you prefer to start keyword researching with a free tool, try Google Keyword Planner. Though mostly used for Paid Search campaigns, this alternative can help you understand the basics as you’re venturing into SEO writing.  What Makes a “Good” Keyword?  When researching keywords, you should look for one with high organic ranking potential. This means it has a low keyword difficulty and a high search volume. Strive to use focus keywords with a score under 40 and an organic search volume of over 600.  Writing Content Others Want to Link Back To As important as using the right keywords, you also want to write content that others will link to. Create copy that is informative, entertaining, and relevant to your target readers to help increase the likelihood of generating more links from websites.  When another website links to your own, that is called a “backlink,” and the more that you have from relevant other sites, the more credible search engines view you. If you have accrued a large amount of “toxic” backlinks from spammy or un-secure websites, you can manually disavow them with search engines so that you are not penalized.  Content Writing Framework Okay, we’ve made it. Time to actually write some SEO content.  Start with Creating an Outline Create a bulleted outline that details the blog or page title, the content’s primary message, and the headings that you will feature on each page. Under each heading, jot down the key points for that section and plan to fill that in with full sentences when it’s time to execute!  Ensure Your Focus Keyword Covers all Technical Elements without Stuffing When you are writing for SEO, you must ensure that your focus keyword or similar variant covers all technical aspects of your content. This includes the page title, metadata, headings, and body text. However, you should not do this in excess. “Keyword stuffing” is easily detectable by search algorithms and they will penalize your page with lower organic rankings as a result.  Determine Your Word Count How long will your piece of content be? You should determine a wordcount before writing to fully understand your scope of work. Do not use this number as an arbitrary cap. Instead, think of it as an approximate goal to strive for. Search algorithms do not prioritize short or “thin” content, but keywords can also lose their effectiveness when placed in content that is too long. At Conduit, we find a 1000-word benchmark works best for our own blog posts, even though we often pass that goal!  Write the Ending First Before writing an introduction or body text, you should write your ending first. Knowing how your content will end will help draw a better road map from start to finish for your SEO writing process.  Fill in the Blanks!  You’ve created an outline for your content. Start filling in the spaces between the headers! You don’t have to work in order. Start with the sections that you feel the most comfortable with writing and go from there.  Creative Best Practices when Writing:  Mix long and short sentences  Avoid using words that require a dictionary to understand Write as clearly as possible  Write for your target audience, not yourself  Strategic Writing Tips:  Avoid keyword stuffing Use keywords across all technical elements Use secondary keywords and variants to support the focus keyword  Have Someone Review it Before Hitting “Publish”  You should never write in a silo. Ask someone with at least a working knowledge of SEO to give it a once-over before it goes live. This will help ensure you are not missing any important details that could improve or derail content performance.  Share it!  Be sure to post your content on all brand channels, such as social media, Google My Business, and any other platforms you use. The more eyes on it, the higher the chances someone will link to it or share it themselves!  Make Content Optimizations Down the Road (If Needed)  Both your brand and Google’s algorithm experience changes over time. If you need to update creative copy, change keywords, or make other optimizations, you can always do this later. Make sure any altered pages are re-indexed with Google Search Console when you’re done! Improving Your Agency’s SEO Writing with Partnership  At Conduit, we partner with countless agencies around the world to deliver a better standard of content for their clients. If you are looking to elevate your own SEO writing, learn more about how you can partner with us .

May 19, 2021 Digital marketing agencies are the frontline of the economy. Driving successful campaigns produces measurable benefits for your clients and helps them sustain and grow their businesses.  However, it’s no secret that the past year has left a devastating impact on various sectors of the global economy. Restrictions placed on business owners as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted revenues and limited resources. This resulted in many businesses closing or reducing external expenses.  Agencies feel this pain, too. Can a client afford to continue running their campaigns? Will they be able to renew their contract? These questions can keep anyone up at night.  Fortunately, humans are resilient creatures. We find ways to move forward. As COVID-19 vaccines become more widely available and more businesses are gradually reopening, we are seeing signs of economic recovery in many sectors. As of May 2021, trends are showing that layoffs have dropped, hiring rates are increasing, and unemployment claims have steeply declined.  In a recent interview with Velocitize’s Andy North, Conduit Digital CEO Tim Burke spoke about scaling your agency in a turbulent economy. Check out his full interview below:  Tim Burke’s Tips for Scaling Your Agency  Prefer to read about these tips rather than watch a video? We have you covered:  Reduce Expenses without Reducing Quality  Agency owners can reduce expenses without sacrificing the quality of their work. Three key ways to do this include:  Streamline your arsenal of digital tools. Quality always trumps quantity and reduces the number of platforms you’re paying monthly fees to.  Standardize your pricing for each service. This can help you forecast revenues directly based on quotes you send to clients.  Adopt airtight processes for your digital products. This streamlines the workflow and allows your team to better manage their time.  Create a More Predictable Business Model  The agency industry moves at lightning speeds. A day’s schedule can change by the hour and clients often reach out with urgent needs at a moment’s notice.  By adopting a streamlined, airtight process structure, you can create a more predictable business model. Support this with transparent and proactive communication so that everyone knows what needs to be done now and what priorities are coming next.  Use sophisticated project management software to help thread your operations together. At Conduit, we highly recommend Teamwork. We use their platform for everything from tracking time to client communications and sharing important campaign files.  Offer a Complete Suite of Digital Solutions  Offering comprehensive digital marketing services both draws new clients in and expands those you’ve already landed. If your agency cannot scale to meet your client’s changing needs, they may start to look for someone else who can and will.  Lean Into Purpose-Driven Marketing The digital ecosystem bombards audiences with countless ads and organic content. To cut through the boilerplate noise, your campaigns need to lead with purpose and value. Make your mission meaningful to your clients and tell their authentic stories through campaigns. When authenticity resonates, consumers will react.  Support Your Internal Team with a Digital Fulfillment Partner Many agencies excel at a handful of core competencies. For example, your team might dominate social media and paid search campaigns but struggle with SEO or programmatic video advertising.  Partnering with a digital fulfillment provider can successfully run these campaigns for you. This results in more satisfied clients and gives your in-house team the ability to double down on their strongest skill sets.  If you’re interested in a digital fulfillment solution, we invite you to view our partnership page and reach out if you have any questions about how we can help you scale.

Aug 16, 2021 Helping Agencies Scale to New Summits Introducing Project Denali When you picture a successful agency, what do you see? Proving you’re the best agency in the market. Landing and expanding a longstanding client roster. Offering the most complete and innovative suite of digital solutions. Deploying the highest-performing team to manage your clients’ campaigns. You see your agency at the top of the summit. However, on the way to reach your destination, as the slope becomes rockier, the path can seem less clear. For you to reach that summit, it takes drive, planning, and grit. This requires having the right expertise, tools, and resources to not only help you get there but also get through the obstacles along the path. The Conduit Digital Team shares that drive and vision with you. That’s what we and our agency network are all about: Reaching the summit and gearing up to climb to the next one. That’s why we’re proud to introduce you to Project Denali.   What is Project Denali? Over the past year, we have spoken with nearly 1,000 agency leaders about their pain points on their journey towards scalability. We’ve taken that feedback, digested it, and used it to refine our product offering, processes, and reporting capabilities to drive a better partner experience. Literally thousands of combined hours later, our team has built new infrastructure to help you reach where you want to go more effectively. We decided to name this initiative Project Denali after Mount Denali – the highest mountain peak in the United States. This best reflects our shared vision to help your agency reach new heights and continue to scale from there. By offering world-class products and services, backed by refined processes and enhanced reporting, we believe this will effectively support this goal. World-changing brands like Apple, Google, and Amazon do not settle for “good enough,” and neither do we. We will never stop innovating or improving what we can do to offer your agency a better experience as our partner.  How We Made it Happen The Most Complete Product Suite for Today’s Clients As part of launching Project Denali, we are excited to offer two new products in addition to our existing suite of digital solutions: Programmatic Audio and our new Landing Page Library. Want to reach listeners on digital audio channels like podcasts, music streaming services, and internet radio? We’ll ensure that your ads are reaching audiences on podcasts relevant to your client’s industry by leveraging advanced targeting tactics you’ve come to expect from other programmatic campaigns. From location to online behavior, demographic data, and beyond, we can align your campaign execution with intended end goals seamlessly. Our Landing Page Library features a broad range of dynamic landing page layouts, designed in-house by our Catalyst Creative Team. Each one can be customized and completely white-labeled to your client’s business. Want us to write the copy for the page? We can do that too! With a more engaging landing page that prioritizes user experience, you can ensure that your campaigns are better communicating the unique value of your client’s business to drive the key performance actions that you measure success by. Also in the new creative library we have ready to use examples for not only landing pages, but also display and social ad templates to complete and support your holistic campaigns. More Seamless Campaign Onboarding We’re just as excited to launch your campaign as you are. From your initial insertion order with Conduit to onboarding more clients in the future, we have improved this process to ensure everyone is better aligned at launch. Engineering Campaigns from KPA’s Rather than operating from a perspective of what your client’s campaign “should” do, we are building campaigns to meet your client’s specific business goals. We will begin with the end in mind and build a roadmap that drives audiences toward their intended outcome. You tell us what your client wants to accomplish, and we’ll custom-build a campaign that supports it. Enhanced Data Reporting and Transparency Our signature 24/7 Live Reports have received a major overhaul as part of Project Denali. We have improved our internal processes so that our analysts can provide you with more data and insights than ever before. This will allow you to more easily and thoroughly track granular performance metrics tied to your client’s specific business goals with real-time commentary from our expert product analysts with an updated user interface design for an optimal experience. Project Denali is Here. Let’s Get Started. Project Denali is our new standard for continuing to innovate, and we are excited to roll it out across all of our agency partnerships. To learn more about what we can bring to your own agency, visit our partnership page or schedule your agency growth call today.

Mar 24, 2023 The Ultimate Primer for the Google Analytics 4 Paradigm Shift This month, Google revealed that they will be replacing Universal Analytics and Universal Analytics 360 products with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) starting in mid-2023. Because digital marketers like ourselves consume data as a vital nutrient, this presents a significant paradigm shift in the way that campaigns are launched, monitored, optimized, and reported on. For agency leaders, we cannot stress enough the importance of being ahead of major platform updates like these. If or when a client asks about the new GA4 rollout, you can establish greater authority and trust with them if you are already prepared to brief them on the coming changes and what to expect from them. To help you provide your clients with the information they need, we’ve put together this GA4 primer to help you more easily understand what changes are approaching over the next year. We’re going to cover: What is Google Analytics 4 anyway? What makes GA4 unique? How to prepare your agency and clients for GA4 Prefer to skip the read? Start equipping your agency to deliver high-performance campaigns on Google products before these updates and book a 20-minute call with us at your convenience: So, What is Google Analytics 4 Anyway? Google Analytics 4 was designed to address today’s measurement and reporting needs for digital campaigns on Google platforms. According to Google themselves, the Universal Analytics products were designed for an era where desktop sessions dominated and third-party cookies drove the majority of tracking strategies. As we move to a cookieless digital era and mobile search continues to outpace desktop devices, the Universal Analytics framework becomes less relevant and less useful by the hour. What Makes GA 4 Unique? According to Google’s announcement, several key differences that GA4 will bring include: Cross-Platform, Event-Based Data GA4 provides advertisers with a holistic picture of the customer journey using event-based measurement to present data across platforms and multiple sessions. For example, if your client operates a website and a mobile app, your agency can use GA4 data to identify any disconnects in the user experience. From there, you can perform optimizations to one or both properties to improve the funnel and increase conversion rates for desired key performance actions (KPAs). Data-Driven Attribution The new Google Analytics framework will leverage data-based attribution to provide advertisers with a comprehensive view of cross-platform customer behavior. Attribution will credit more than just the user’s most recent clicks for more intelligent optimization insights and opportunities. The data can also be ported into Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform so that you can maintain continuity across the tools that you use to manage these campaigns. Cookieless Tracking Instead of relying on third-party cookies, GA4 will generate more sophisticated first-party data with deeper insights than previous cookie-based models. Your agency will be able to generate greater performance and reporting capabilities directly from Google itself. Better User Privacy In an effort to minimize the gathering and storage of user data, GA4 will not store IP address information. For advertisers that serve clients with heavy privacy restrictions (i.e., medical practices) or for brands that do not want to risk compromising user data, this proves an advantageous feature. Google campaigns can now foster greater trust between advertisers and audiences with a mutual assurance that IP addresses remain anonymous. Maximum Data Value GA4 leverages Google’s industry-leading machine learning capabilities to offer predictive insights into audience behavior and likely conversion activity. This gives your team the necessary information to prioritize specific audiences and double-down on serving ads to those who are most likely to engage. Advertiser-Specific Customization With GA4, the structure of your Google Analytics account can be fully customized to satisfy your agency’s data policies. For example, if you or your client wish to restrict access to certain information from other external partners, this can easily be done directly from the platform. How to Prepare Your Agency and Clients for GA4 Get Your Team on the Same Page Now that you’ve been briefed on GA4, share this information with the rest of your team – especially those that serve your clients using Google products. Campaigns like SEO , Paid Search , Programmatic Display , and YouTube Advertising will be among those most impacted by these updates. As your team interacts with your clients, they will have the necessary knowledge to provide more complete and thorough answers to any questions or concerns that arise ahead of the Google-wide rollout. Install GA4 ASAP To maximize the most value from GA4, you should implement it across all of your clients’ Analytics accounts as soon as possible. The data that GA4 collects only starts generating after installation, so if you want to start seeing year-over-year data for most of 2022, install it now.  Save Your Clients’ Historical UA Data With the Google-wide July 1, 2023 rollout of GA4, no new data will populate in Universal Analytics. It will be fully sunset after at least 6 months following this, and afterward, you will not be able to access its data any longer. 360 Universal Analytics properties will be able to still take advantage of a one-time processing extension that ends in July 2024. To save your clients’ historical data, you will have to export it before GA4 becomes the permanent and only analytics solution. Simply migrating UA to GA4 is not possible . They do not use similar data models, so merging them will not be something that you should plan for. The fastest and least-complicated way to save your UA data is to: 1. Open the UA report that you want to save 2. Add any customizations that you need to, such as geographical region 3. Click “Export” in the upper-right-hand corner to begin the process 4. Select the type of file format that you prefer. These include PDF, Google Sheets, XLSV, and CSV Keep in mind that you can only apply two dimensions when exporting historical UA data and that it may be samples rather than a full readout of every single metric. If a green check symbol is visible on the report, this will indicate that no sampling occurred. Share This Information with Your Clients Gatekeeping does the opposite of fostering trust with clients. Let them know that GA4 is coming and that they can expect: Better data collection and attribution for Google campaigns Advertiser-specific customization Increased user privacy for greater brand credibility and audience trust More valuable data for your campaigns By sharing this information with your clients ahead of the rollout, you can establish greater authority and credibility with your accounts. This positions your agency and your team as true experts on the Google campaigns that your clients entrust your business to manage for them. Revamp Your Measurement and Reporting Processes Ahead of Time The best time to prepare your measurement and reporting processes for GA4 is yesterday, but now also works. Thankfully, GA4 is already available to any and all advertisers, so you can start building your new reporting infrastructure as well as familiarize yourself with its user features before it becomes the set-in-stone standard. Deliver Better Performance with a White Label Google Premier Partner If you are looking to deliver true performance at scalable volumes for your client, it may be time to enlist a partner’s help. Look for a white label digital marketing partner that holds a Google Premier Partner designation, meaning their team is certified at the highest levels to drive elite performance for your client’s campaign. Say “Yes” To Better Opportunities with a White Label Partnership Today At Conduit Digital, we enable your agency to say “yes” to better opportunities of any scope by equipping your team with a holistic product suite , access to a team of Google Premier Partner analysts, and 24/7 live reporting – all tied together with single point of contact communication. If you are ready to dominate a GA4 world, schedule your 20-minute call with us today.  This article was originally written on March 16, 2022 and updated on March 24, 2023.

Jun 7, 2021 Over the past month, the world finally feels like it has reopened in significant ways. Fans are back in the stands. Demand for agency services continues to grow. People are looking to actively engage in the economy once more. Agencies are facing a line-in-the-sand moment. Clients are seeking to double-down on digital campaigns, and with that, comes a greater opportunity for scale. After speaking with over 400 agency owners this past year, our CEO, Tim Burke, has noticed a consistent pain point. As clients are looking to ramp up their campaigns, many agencies are struggling to staff their businesses with the right people to meet these demands. As the economy recovers, qualified candidates are hired at record paces. Others have not chosen to re-enter the workforce just yet. Though we’re seeing light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, the light still feels just beyond an arm’s reach in many parts of the world. This raises a critical question. During such a flashpoint moment, how can agencies scale to meet demand? Tim, Rob, and TCB Discuss Agency Scalability in Our Latest Video:  Don’t want to watch a video? Keep reading! People. Process. Partnerships. Investing in the right people, airtight processes, and strengthening partnerships can equip agencies with the foundation needed to dominate campaigns in this digital frontier. Balancing each one effectively will result in a greater return on investment for both your agency and your clients. Let’s Start with People A demand for agencies is a demand for people. As Tim puts it in the video, “Your agency is the people that work there.” Right now, the challenge is not only finding the right people, but also finding enough of them. With hiring challenges at the forefront of almost every industry, agencies need to staff ahead of the volume coming around the curve. We see this on the client side as well. At Conduit, we have noticed many clients are bucking tradition and gearing up for running digital recruitment campaigns. Where hiring initiatives were originally reactive, many businesses are adopting an innovative and proactive approach. Now, more recruitment ads are running on non-traditional platforms like TikTok and Snapchat. Process Prepares for Scale As your agency gears up to scale, you need to have an airtight process structure in place. When you land new clients or expand existing ones, you can add new campaigns into your operations with little-to-no friction. This means that, once the order comes through, you can fulfill it with confidence. How do you know if your current process can meet demands for scale? The mindset we share with our Conduit agencies is to say “work backwards from the desired result and GPS the most efficient way there”. Look internally and identify opportunities to streamline and fortify. Are there any unnecessary steps that can be removed? Do some need to be added or modified? Ask your team for their input and work to tighten these aspects of your operations to ready yourself for volume. As the old business saying goes, time is money. When you implement efficient processes, you position yourself for more profitable scalability. How can you activate a more efficient process structure at your agency? It starts with time tracking. Integrate a non-cumbersome time tracking methodology so that your team leaders can review elements of your processes consistently and make appropriate course corrections as needed. Digital Performance Partnership Takes Care of the Rest So far, we’ve established that your agency requires enough of the right people and a “work backwards from an effective outcome” process in order to scale. What happens, though, when you’re short-staffed or cannot add certain services in-house that your clients are demanding? The answer is simple: Create true partnerships. We understand this might sound self-serving because we are digital performance partners with agencies throughout the US and Canada. Did you know, however, that we have our own partners as well? Whenever we incorporate a new platform into our operations, we turn them into partners. We cultivate relationships with their teams and ensure we have the support and insight from them that we need to deliver for clients. This is where a digital performance partnership comes in. At Conduit Digital, we partner with agencies. It’s what we do and we love doing it. In our daily talks with agency leaders, we hear some consistent reasons behind why they’re looking for a digital performance partner. Some of these reasons include: Changing landscape – The ever-changing digital marketing landscape is near impossible for small, localized teams to stay on top of in isolation.  Ongoing training – Hiring and training a top-performing team takes years. Even then, finding enough of the right people can become a challenge. When you need a turnkey solution, a partnership connects you with a team of other skilled professionals. Specialization – Hiring a few “digital generalists” used to be the industry standard. Today, we live in a specialist’s world, and having a team of specialists to cover every digital service is not always doable for many agencies.  Scope – Agencies need both deep and broad teams. Tactics such as  SEO , OTT , PPC , Social and Display can all impact a client funnel. They require dedicated specialists to analyze and optimize performance across your client’s campaigns.  A true white label digital performance partnership can help you fill the skill gap and expand client campaigns profitably. This gives your agency differentiation where simple platforms cannot. It also allows your agency to pursue clients at a much larger scope and scale than with an in-house team alone. How do you determine the right digital partnership for your agency, though? Begin with the end in mind and visualize what a successful partnership looks like for your business. Vet potential partners as if they were an internal employee and ensure they align with your strategic goals. We do this at Conduit with our own partners. We closely vet platforms, turn the ones we use into true partners, and double down on them. Whether this is making the most of Teamwork, Google, Hubspot, or any other of our many strategic alliances, we believe having a partner in your corner gives you a greater secret weapon than any simple platform ever could. If you are looking for a digital performance partnership please don’t hesitate to reach out to us here at Conduit, we help successful agencies scale. Visit our partnership page to learn more and see if we are the right fit to help you grow your agency.

Aug 19, 2022 Since Google AdWords launched in 2000, paid search (also known as pay-per-click or “PPC”) campaigns have remained a staple of digital marketing, and for good reason! These ads are designed to connect people with valuable products, services, and resources that align with the needs behind their searches. Are you looking to start or improve paid search advertising at your agency? If so, you should familiarize yourself with some of the most essential core concepts behind the product. That’s where we come in. Today, we’re going to break down some of the top 10 most essential core concepts of paid search marketing. If you need to add paid search to your own product offering and want to start it off with a team of experts, you can skip reading and book a 20-minute call with us today: Need Help with Paid Search Now? 1. Ad Formats Major paid search platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising offer multiple ad formats to best suit your client’s goals. For example, Google offers multiple ad formats, such as: Responsive Search Ads: Text ads that can conform to the specific dimensions of a screen or window for a better user experience. They contain a clickable headline and a description and can be enhanced with extensions. Product Shopping Ads: Feature a product’s image, a description, and a link to the product page along with customizable extensions. Local Service Ads: Advertise a business’s services to their local demographic when relevant search terms are entered by the user. Call-Only Ads: A phone number is provided in the ad for convenient calling and you can also click through to the website. For Microsoft campaigns, you can also create Audience Ads within the Microsoft Audience Network to serve impressions beyond the search engine results page (SERP). 2. Budget Pacing Pacing refers to the concentration of a client’s budget spread out over a specific period of time. For example, if you are spending over 50% of a monthly budget during the first week, you are over-pacing the campaign. Conversely, under-pacing may be only spending 30% of the ad budget by week 3. How you spread out the budget depends on the nature of the client’s business and their goals for the campaign. For ongoing, month-over-month advertising campaigns, having a budget that is spread evenly across a full 30 or 31-day period would be considered ideal pacing in most cases. There can be some exceptions to this rule, however. For example, if your client traditionally receives the most business during the beginning of the month, you may decide to over-pace at those times or even under-pace if you prefer to spend more during periods where traffic and conversion are lower. 3. Cost-Per-Click (CPC) The cost-per-click or “CPC” metric refers to how much it actually costs for a user to click on your search ad. For keywords that more businesses are competing for, as well as ones that are highly targeted to a distinct niche, the CPC is typically higher. This does not mean that you cannot allocate some of your client’s paid search budget towards higher CPC keywords. In most cases, having a mix of both high and low-CPC keywords can prove an effective strategy for any business or industry. A CPC model works excellently for clients that want to increase their sales. You are only paying once a user clicks through to your landing page where they can then convert into a lead or customer. 4. The Search Terms Report Once a user clicks on your ad, the Search Terms Report enables the analyst to see what other searches they have performed in Google or Microsoft. This incredibly valuable data provides insights into the exact queries that are leading to conversions and those that are not. In turn, this information can be leveraged to double down on what is working best and what is underperforming. 5. Key Performance Action (KPA) Key performance actions (KPAs) refer to specific actions that users take when interacting with your client’s campaign assets, such as ads themselves or their associated landing pages. Unlike key performance indicators, which are static metrics used to measure the success of a campaign, KPAs account for all actions taken that could tell a more complete story. By implementing a KPA-driven strategy, you can more accurately optimize your campaign to match how your client’s ideal audience interacts with their business. For example, if the audience is clicking to call the phone number on the landing page more than filling out a form, you may want to suggest revising the form on the page or adding Call-Only Ads to their Google arsenal. 6. Keyword Competition Keyword competition means how difficult a keyword is to rank for. This concept can be applied to both organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and paid campaigns. In the context of paid campaigns, the competition rating indicates how many advertisers are all bidding for the same keyword. While some of these keywords may be worthwhile depending on your client’s business model, you can also apply some basic keyword research to discover alternatives with lower competition ratings which also often feature a lower CPC or CPM. 7. Landing Pages The landing page is the destination on the other side of the ad headline. This can be an organic page on your client’s website or one that was specifically constructed and designed for the campaign itself. A successful landing page, at its most basic level, should contain an attention-grabbing headline above the fold along with a form or clickable button that the user can interact with. Below the fold, focus on highlighting some of the essential customer benefits of your client’s product or service. Landing page copy should focus on the customer benefit, read concisely, and include statements that inspire users to take the next step. These elements will move them from visitors to leads or customers by providing an excellent and convenient experience. 8. Long-Tail Keywords Long-tail keywords refer to highly specific search terms designed to target qualified users. Rather than allocating a local doctor’s office’s budget toward the general keyword “doctors office”, you could include one with a “long tail” like “doctors office in Ocean County NJ”. To find the right long-tail keywords for your client, start using a seed keyword like “doctors office”. From there, you can see what other similar terms are being searched for using a tool like Semrush, Ahrefs, or Google Keyword Planner along with valuable additional insights like CPC data. 9. Negative Keywords In a paid search campaign, negative keywords are keyphrases that you add to your account which prevent your ad from being triggered by those terms. For example, if you’re selling women’s shoes, you might add “men” as a negative keyword so that your ad doesn’t show up when someone searches for “men’s shoes.” Why would you want to do this? Primarily, serving ads for irrelevant queries can waste budget if someone clicks on them and immediately bounces because it is not aligned with what they are searching for. Someone searching for men’s shoes will not find ads for women’s shoes beneficial and will likely not click on the ad. Excluding negative keywords helps to protect the quality of the keywords that you are bidding on and maintain a more desirable click-through-rate (CTR). The lower your CTR, the lower your “expected CTR” is also, which can impact the quality score, which can also increase your required bid amount to remain competitive within an auction. 10. Search Intent A keyword’s search intent refers to what a person is actually looking for when they perform a search. It’s the reason behind why they opened up that new browser window or tab in the first place. We want to show up in searches when we’re relevant and likely to be useful to the searcher. So, let’s say someone searches for “pencils.” Their search intent might be to buy some pencils, learn how to sharpen pencils, find out which type of pencil is best for drawing, or a million of other possibilities. As an advertiser, it’s our job to figure out which one of those possibilities our product or service can help with and target our ads accordingly. Search intent is just one piece of the puzzle, but it’s an important one. If we understand what people are really looking for, we can be there for them with exactly what they need. Here, long-tail keywords can also play an instrumental role. If you are managing a budget for a local office supply store, a term like “buy bulk pencils near me” reflects a commercial intent for someone looking to purchase a large amount of pencils. Meanwhile, “what is a mechanical pencil?” reflects an informational intent for someone looking to understand more information about that topic but may not be ready to purchase one. Elevate Your Client’s Paid Search Marketing Performance with a White Label Partner At Conduit Digital, we partner with successful agencies to provide 100% North America-based white label PPC solutions for your clients. With each campaign directly managed in-house by a certified expert analyst, we equip your team with the ability to say “yes” to better opportunities. Whether you need to expand capacity, integrate a service to your internal offering, or you need to scale profitably, we are ready to partner with you. Schedule a 20-minute call today to see if your agency is ready for the power of partnership.

Oct 6, 2022 As a digital marketing agency leader, you understand the importance of continuous growth to sustain a successful business. Having a steady pipeline of new prospective clients and a long-term plan for building an ad operations team each play critical roles in an upward trajectory. What does that look like to you? Perhaps you want to establish a boutique agency with a small but dedicated team and a solid foothold in a niche that you’re passionate about. Conversely, you might prefer to become the largest and most sought-after agency in your local market. There is no “right” or “wrong” end goal for your agency. Ultimately, you control its destiny. However, there are still some universal pain points that agency leaders face when scaling upwards to accomplish what they have set out to achieve. At Conduit, we speak with hundreds of agency leaders like yourself each year. Based on these conversations, we’ve distilled 4 common pain points associated with growing agencies, and we’re going to break them down in-depth here. We’ll also offer our tips for overcoming them.  Need help with growing your agency right now? Schedule a 20-minute call: 4 Common Pains with Agency Growth 1. Stabilizing Capacity Does it ever feel like you are one account away from under or overutilizing your team? For example, if you lost one client tomorrow, would your team suddenly feel like its one or two people too large? Building a team for a high-capacity client roster requires an effective business development strategy to support it. Without a steady influx of new leads that could turn into potential new accounts for your agency, you may start to feel the capacity squeeze sooner rather than later. 2. Hiring and Growing a Team Similarly, if you need to grow your team, you might find that hiring in your market proves difficult. Traditionally, a large majority of digital marketing talent is located within large metropolitan areas or in communities that are home to large universities. Still, that does not mean that you can open an agency in New York City, Los Angeles, or Chicago, and expect an endless roster of candidates to fill your vacancies. Where more remote areas may have a smaller pool of candidates, the larger metros pose the opposite challenge of a more competitive job market with more opportunities for talented individuals to launch or continue their career. It can feel like either finding a needle in a haystack or a constant bidding war to attract and retain the talent that you need to grow your agency. Beyond struggles with hiring the right team, retaining them also proves another challenge. It may feel like that the team becomes more difficult to manage as it grows or you are experiencing high turnover once someone has received training to go elsewhere. No one wants to feel like their agency is nothing but a stepping stone. You have real, tangible goals that you want to achieve, and building an engaged team that shares your vision likely complements these objectives. 3. A Limited Suite of Services Alongside capacity and hiring challenges, a limited suite of services can often become the Achilles heel for many agencies; especially ones in highly competitive markets. If you do not have a team that has the bandwidth or expertise to land and expand new accounts, this can quickly become a roadblock. As we have said many times before: If your client asks for a service that you do not provide, they often seek out a competitor that can and will fulfill what they’ve asked for. While you might absolutely dominate paid search and programmatic campaigns, if the client wants SEO and TikTok, they will find an agency to provide them with SEO and TikTok. Continuously investigating, testing, and expanding your service offering will allow you to create a more diverse team with a wider range of strengths to serve your clients. This also can help to more effectively streamline your internal capacity and bandwidth and create lanes where your team is made of specialists in specific product categories. When many agency leaders arrive at this point, one of the first reactions is to seek out vendors that can help expand their services for a fee. However, with vendors, they can quickly become expensive, only operate in specific silos, and it will soon feel like you need to hire another person just to manage these relationships and ensure they produce at a level of quality you’re satisfied with. 4. Utilization of Your Team Lastly, whether you have a team that operates over or under capacity, any agency can become bogged down with tactical work. When you want to serve as your client’s strategic partner, many of the day-to-day operational tasks can quickly consume valuable business hours. When agency leaders have more free time and are spending less time in the digital weeds, they can use that bandwidth for growing and strengthening their business. This can include building better client relationships, focusing on the health of your internal team, and finally carving out enough time to take that vacation you’ve wanted to go on for the past 3 years. Growing your agency requires a massive investment of time, effort, and capital to launch in its early stages. At some point, returning to a more stable work-life balance probably sounds like the preferred way to live. When you are able to stay afloat and continue growing with the right infrastructure supporting you, you will find that you do not need to sacrifice nearly as much of your personal time to operate a successful agency.  Get help with these pain points now: The Solution to Growing Your Agency: White Label Partnership Before you decide this is an ad and stop reading, hear us out. We know that we’re a white label digital marketing agency, and that this may sound self-promotional at first. However, we believe that finding the right partner for your agency is not speed-dating. Deciding to entrust your client’s campaigns to an external team is a major investment of trust, and you should treat it as such. We aren’t attempting to bait-and-switch you with some puff piece about how amazing we are (though we are fans of our work). Instead, we just want to provide some space here to offer some more information on how a white label partner can benefit your agency in general. If you decide that you want to schedule a call with us after reading this, great! We’ll have a link for you at the end, but until then, we’ll do our best to keep it even-keeled. With what we just said above in mind, we want to highlight how, in general, a white label partnership can help your agency address and overcome many of the pain points we mentioned previously. If you want to learn more about how a partnership differs from a platform or vendor, check out our Ultimate Guide to White Label Digital Marketing . So, now that you’ve learned more about white label, let’s talk about how a partner can assist you in overcoming your pain points on your journey toward sustainable agency growth. 1. Stabilize Your Capacity and Expenses Partnerships typically involve a monthly fee along with a percentage-based service fee for managing digital campaigns. This allows you to scale your spend upwards and downwards as your client roster evolves and strategies pivot. Your team remains stabilized and you always have a team ready to assist you with any overflow that could compromise your internal bandwidth. 2. Immediate Access to an Expert Team White label partners build their reputations on expertise and performance. Look for a partner that’s made of highly certified analysts so that you can ensure that your partner has vetted and trained their own team to meet the standards for quality that you would expect from your own in-house ad operations. 3. Become the Most Complete Agency Overnight A distinguishing feature of a white label partner compared to a platform or vendor is that they offer a holistic suite of digital marketing services that you can integrate into your agency’s offering. Overnight, you can become the most complete agency in your local market or target industry. If a client wants to launch a campaign that you do not offer in-house, you can confidently tell them “yes” to this new opportunity. 4. Get More of Your Time Back Essentially, joining forces with a white label partner is like hiring an entire team instead of a single individual. This removes much of the hiring, training, mentoring, and operational oversight involved with a large in-house team and you will only need to manage a single source for all of your external ad operations instead of multiple vendors. Instead, you can spend more time doing what you love about running your agency (and maybe finally take that vacation). Is Partnership the Right Fit for Growing Your Agency? While there are multiple paths that you could pursue toward growing your agency, we believe that partnership provides the most complete and scalable solution from a single source. You do not have to keep the ship afloat in isolation. In fact, you do not have to “keep the ship afloat” at all. With the infrastructure that your partner provides, you can continue growing and building a stronger client base that supports your short and long-term goals. If you’re interested in exploring opportunities with a white label partner, we would love to speak with you more about how we could help your agency scale. At Conduit, we provide a complete suite of white label services from our headquarters in New Jersey with a team of U.S.-based, certified analysts to enable you to say “yes” to whatever opportunity arises next. Your accounts, data, and clients all stay yours – we just help you serve them better. To learn more, schedule a quick 20-minute call today.