The Ultimate 2018 Digital Marketing Wishlist

The computerized promoting world is completely loaded with instruments. So full, indeed, it's frequently very difficult to perceive which devices are justified regardless of your chance and which aren't.

The following is the full rundown of innovation stack, which we use for both ourselves and our customers. Each program or administration is attempted and tried. Read through to get some awesome tips on which devices to add to your list of things to get for this coming year.


Website design enhancement Tools

Moz.com: Arguably, the most imperative gathering of devices in the whole SEO universe! Moz has been around since 2004 and has taken after the whole direction of SEO from early stages to the present development. Moz's Open Site Explorer measures a site's Domain Authority, their Moz Local apparatus is key for nearby SEO adjustment, and their blog is a profound well of profitable data.

Shouting Frog: The best site creep apparatus out there. Their SEO Spider is a work area program which slithers sites' connections, pictures, CSS, content, and applications for a speedy and profoundly safe assessment of on location SEO.

SEOquake: An especially convenient SEO tool compartment as a program module. The module furnishes you with key SEO measurements for a particular page, alongside other helpful devices, for example, SEO Audit device and the sky is the limit from there.

Ahrefs: A complimentary apparatus to Moz's Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs has practical experience in running on Big Data. Their instruments cover backlink checking, contender investigation, catchphrase research and the sky is the limit from there. Note: We've discovered that Ahrefs gives the most top to bottom backlink information for contender examine (better than Moz Open Site Explorer in such manner.)

Google My Business: The sibling of Google's disastrous informal organization Google+, Google My Business goes about as a SEO complimentary gift by enabling you to pick up perceivability in Google Maps and Google Search by making a free profile.

Google Search Console: Google Search Console is a regularly neglected fundamental. Made by Google, it enables you to check ordering status and upgrade perceivability of sites.

Reference Tools

Whitespark: Another fabulous instrument for Local SEO, Whitespark encourages clients to enhance rankings, drive business, and quick track your accomplishment in nearby hunt with its toolbox and oversaw reference administrations.

Splendid Local: A key nearby SEO apparatus alongside Moz, Bright Local gives rankings, references, surveys, investigation and Google My Business information by means of a simple to-utilize information dashboard. Furthermore, as Whitespark, BrightLocal additionally gives done-to you reference building administrations.

Content Creation Tools

WritersAccess: For a few organizations, composed substance advertising is a to a great degree compelling promoting apparatus. Authors Access interfaces you with 15,000+ US-based scholars, editors, and substance strategists to convey savvy content. This an extraordinary apparatus for private companies who simply don't have room schedule-wise or know-how to make it in-house.

Canva: Let's face it, Photoshop is hard and costly. Canva is a free and simple to utilize visual depiction apparatus for Web or print. Make extraordinary blog designs, introductions, Facebook covers, flyers, publications, solicitations, and all the more rapidly and effectively.

Advanced Advertising

Google Adwords: Google's primary publicizing stage and the focal center point for all Google PPC crusades. AdWords is intentionally a thick and confounded instrument, outfitted basically towards experts and submitted novices. In case you're simply making a plunge, utilize Google's examination instruments and take some of their AdWords confirmation tests (or experience some of our preparation materials). Increasing appropriate preparing will guarantee you don't squander a lot of advertisement spend taking in your way around the complex program.

Facebook Ads Manager: Facebook's primary promoting stage and focal center for all PPC battles crosswise over both Facebook and Instagram. Similarly intense yet just somewhat less confused than AdWords, Facebook Ads Manager offers incredible research devices, exceptionally solid remarketing capacities, and the greatly helpful Audience Insight apparatus.

Optmyzr: Optmyzr was made by an ex-Googler in 2013 who made it his central goal to make PPC simpler via computerizing dreary and redundant errands. Through the energy of machine learning, Optmyzr can significantly enhance the proficiency of battles while eliminating the measure of record administration.

Aquisio: Similar to Optmyzr, Aquisio utilizes machine figuring out how to advance PPC battles on AdWords, Facebook, and Bing. Consolidating self-enhancing offer and spending innovation with computerization to truly enhance crusade execution at each financial plan.

Bing Ads: With Bing holding around 7% piece of the overall industry, Microsoft's response to Google AdWords is an underutilized apparatus!

AdWords Editor: This work area customer is a fundamental instrument for overseeing vast AdWords crusades. It's difficult to exaggerate essentially how much time and drag AdWords Editor can wipe out. Combined with some Microsoft Excel abilities, AdWords Editor is a savage instrument!

Email Marketing

Mailchimp: In the independent company email showcasing wars, MailChimp has ascended to the best. Indeed, even some vast, corporate organizations have begun to change from their inconvenient heritage frameworks over to MailChimp. Moderate, simple to utilize, extraordinary plan apparatuses, solid incorporations, and capable examination have made MailChimp the business standard.

Infusionsoft: Do you give benefits and oversee customers? Infusionsoft computerizes your independent company deals and advertising, while at the same time consolidating your CRM, email promoting, lead catch and online business in one place. An exceptionally solid stage and tremendous help. Snap here to ask for a demo.

Aweber: A simple and moderate other option to Mailchimp which incorporates solid trigger email usefulness.

Campaigner: Good for little, medium, and expansive organizations alike, this stage has a wide assortment of value extents to oblige all financial plans. With effective mechanization and sectioning instruments, this is an incredible answer for entrepreneurs and advertisers alike.

Contender Research

SpyFu: The most grounded SEO and PPC focused research device out there by miles. Scan for any area and see each place they've appeared on Google: each catchphrase they've purchased on Adwords, each natural rank, and each advertisement variety over the most recent 10+ years.

Following and Analytics

Google Analytics: once more, Google's apparatus ascends to the best. Simply the best and most normally utilized web investigation apparatus out there. Basic for following advancement in relatively every aspect of computerized promoting, acknowledge no substitute!

Google Tag Manager: Google Analytics' pretty much nothing (however developing) sibling. Google Tag Manager is a label administration framework that enables you to rapidly and effectively refresh labels and code pieces on your site or application. Track extensive and shifted accumulation of labels, for example, those proposed for activity examination and advertising enhancement.

Convirza: If your business depends on telephone calls through the business procedure, you require Convirza. Their suite of items is all that you have to upgrade call following, measurements and call investigation.

Web-based social networking Management

HootSuite: An industry standard for a long time now, HootSuite is the main web-based social networking dashboard. Deal with numerous systems and profiles to quantify your battle comes about. The dashboard is an intense instrument and enormous help because of the web-based social networking planning abilities.

Affable Local: An online networking mechanization stage planned solely for the necessities of neighborhood business. The stage makes, improve, and deal with the online networking nearness of little or neighborhood organizations. An exceptionally solid point arrangement.

Conclusion

The street to our total innovation stack has a burial ground of fizzled programming endeavors on either side of it. We've attempted and disposed of huge amounts of promoting projects and administrations over years, at last touching base at this extreme list of things to get.

AdWords app-install campaigns to Sunset as Universal App Campaigns take over

Google propelled Universal App Campaigns (UAC) approximately two years prior to enable designers to drive application downloads. UAC has existed together with AdWords application introduce crusades since that time.

Presently the organization is moving all application introduce promotions under the umbrella of UAC. Google said that as of October 16, all application introduce battles will keep running as UAC promotions. All present application introduce crusades will quit running on November 15; so engineers and distributers need to change over their battles in like manner. (Google's blog entry has guidelines on the best way.)

The two sorts of versatile application crusades offered distinctive components and capacities, with some dissemination cover. AdWords application introduce advertisements offered more straightforward control over positions (single channel, multichannel) and offering (CPC, CPI et cetera) but at the same time were more perplexing to make and oversee.

UAC promotions are consequently dispersed over various Google channels (seek, GDN, YouTube, AdMob and Google Play) and utilize a CPA demonstrate. UAC fundamentally disentangles advertisement creation and enhancement with mechanization and machine learning. From Google's exchange of how UAC functions:

[Y]ou don't plan singular promotions for all inclusive application crusades. Rather, we'll utilize your promotion content thoughts and resources from your application's store leaning to plan an assortment of advertisements over a few arrangements and systems. You should simply give some content, a beginning offer and spending plan, and let us know the dialects and areas for your advertisements. Our frameworks will test distinctive blends and show advertisements that are playing out the best more frequently, with no additional work required from you.

Google said that 50 percent of all application downloads over its system are presently being driven by UAC. One factor behind UAC's execution is the capacity to offer and improve against a scope of objectives: CPI, CPA or ROAS and set up computerized Smart Bidding in light of those objectives.

Google is additionally observing a move from unadulterated introduce driven battles (download) to those that emphasis on engagement or particular in-application activities (inn booking, first ride et cetera). The organization said that advertisers who "advance for in-application activities with UAC, by and large, drive 140 percent a greater number of transformations per dollar than other Google application advancement items." This is at any rate to some extent since promotion creatives and CTAs are likely more convincing than plain-vanilla download crusades.

Google showed that one of every four versatile application related advertisement dollars is currently centered around advancing in-application occasions/transformations. The organization has 2 billion dynamic Android clients all around, and Google Play is live in 190 nations.

Past the relocation itself, what's likewise huge about the move to UAC is the thing that it speaks to about the fate of Google's advertisement business. It demonstrates that the organization intends to inject more robotization, objective based offering, machine learning and auto-streamlining over its different channels to rearrange promotion creation and enhance execution — for publicists and itself.

[AdWords Case Study] 33% Reduction in Cost Per Lead Using the Kaizen Approach

In today’s article, learn how we used the Kaizen approach of continual improvement to help our client reduce the cost-per-lead by 33%.

Kaizen is a Japanese word for continuous improvement. Ever since I studied Kaizen in a college Operations class (specifically how Kaizen has been a competitive advantage for Toyota), I've tried to apply the concept to different areas of my life. And looking back on recent successes, I've discovered that they were all the result of this idea of continuous improvement, or Kaizen. In our world of flashy marketing tactics like Twitter, Snapchat, mobile apps, Facebook messenger, and [insert the new latest and greatest tactic here], it's important to remember that strong marketing performance does not magically happen overnight. It's almost always the result of months and even years of, you guessed it, continuous improvement. With this in mind, I'm going to share a Google AdWords case study that exemplifies the Kaizen approach to AdWords optimization. I'm not going to share "the one secret that reduced our cost per lead by 36%." I'm also not going to share "the one trick." That's because there is no one secret or one trick... The reality with Google AdWords is that success is built on continuous improvement, month after month, and year after year. Let's dive in to the details so you can see this in action...

The Background Our client in this case study is a dentist in Georgia. When we started working together, our client had been advertising himself, but with no conversion tracking. That means he didn't really know if the ads were working or not... And even if the ads were miraculously working, he had no way to improve the ROI without conversion tracking. So guess what we did first? That's right, we set up conversion tracking. Since this is a dentist, the majority of the leads come from phone calls so we installed phone call tracking in addition to webform tracking on the website contact forms. Think of conversion tracking like a required course in college. In order to graduate, you have to complete the required courses. In order to optimize a Google AdWords campaign, you have to complete the conversion tracking setup. Of course, setting up conversion tracking does nothing unless you actually use the data to improve your campaigns. That brings us to our Kaizen process of AdWords optimization... Our Kaizen Process I'm calling this the Kaizen process because over the past 2 years we didn't just focus on one tactic; We focused on continuous improvement in all areas of the campaign. It's impossible to put your finger on the one or two activities that made all the difference because with optimizing AdWords campaigns you're dealing with a moving target. One day you need to adjust bids, while the next day you need to improve ad copy. So what exactly did we do? Below, in no particular order, are what I believe are the 5 most important edits we made that led to a 33% reduction in cost per lead. 1. Ad Schedule Optimization When you think of ad scheduling, you probably think of running ads during office hours. Or maybe turning ads off during holidays. Sure, that can make sense, but I'm specifically talking about ad schedule optimization here. With ad schedule optimization, we're looking at the conversion data for days of the week and times of day. There are reports in AdWords that will tell you which days of the week give you the lowest and highest cost per lead. There are also reports that tell you which times of the day give you the lowest and highest cost per lead. As you collect data, you can use this to refine your ad scheduling and adjust your bids so you're maximizing your budget during the best times. 2. Device Optimization This one is pretty straight forward, yet it's often overlooked in AdWords campaigns. There are reports in AdWords that will tell you how your ads are performing across different devices - Computers, Tablets, and Mobile. When you run those reports you will likely see a big discrepancy in performance across devices. This is especially true if you do not have a mobile optimized website! The reality is that people behave differently depending on which device they are using. You may find that your cost per lead is perfectly acceptable for Computers, but astronomically high for Mobile, or vice versa. Whatever the case is, you clearly need to adjust your bids accordingly to get the best ROI from your ad campaign. 3. Budget Optimization Unless you're familiar with how this works, the phrase "budget optimization" probably sounds strange. I mean, isn't your monthly budget simply your monthly budget? Well, if you only have one ad campaign, then the answer is yes. However, if you break up your advertising account into multiple campaigns, then you unlock the potential to optimize your budget. For example, our dentist has multiple different types of services like cosmetic dentistry, invisalign, sedation, implants, etc. Sure, you could have all of those services in one campaign, but that's not ideal. Instead, you want to break out all the individual services into their own campaigns with their own daily budgets. Then once you see your cost per lead for each service area, you'll be able to adjust your budgets accordingly. Obviously, you'll want to allocate more of your budget to the campaigns that drive the lowest cost leads and minimize your budget on the campaigns with higher cost leads. It's pretty simple, but only if you structure your account correctly. 4. Keyword Level Bid Optimization Most advertisers understand and are familiar with this tactic so I won't waste too much time here. If you know your keyword conversion rate is 5% (ex. you get 5 phone calls for every 100 clicks on the ad) and your target cost per lead is $50, then your max cost per click is $2.50 (conversion rate multiplied by the target cost per lead). Using that simple calculation you can adjust your bids to ensure you're hitting your target cost per lead. 5. Ad Copy Optimization I'm sure you're also already familiar with ad copy optimization. More specifically, the process of split testing two or more ad variations to determine which ad performs the best. But what does it mean to perform the best? That's a loaded question... One metric is certainly click-through rate. The higher the click-through rate, the better because that leads to higher Quality Scores. However, ads with the highest click-through rate are not always the ads driving the lowest cost per lead. With that in mind you must focus on both of those metrics. If you focus on click-through rate without any regard for cost per lead, then you'll likely be led astray. Likewise, if you focus on cost per lead without any regard for click-through rate, you may end up with low Quality Scores and in turn, higher cost per click. The Results Again, I can't emphasize enough that the above edits were continuously tweaked over 2 years. I'm not suggesting we made the edits above and then sat back and watched the performance improve. That's not how this works. The edits were made continuously, month after month. Remember the Kaizen process! Below is a graph showing the cost per lead and the number of leads per quarter over the past 2 years.

As you can see from the graph above, the cost per lead was $48 in Q2 2015. Then in Q2 2017 the cost per lead was $32. That's a drop of 33%! You'll notice the number of leads dropped in Q2 2017, but that's only because the budget was reduced for external reasons. To put the 33% reduction into perspective, let's compare the number of leads that you can get with a $5,000 per quarter budget ($1,666/month). With a 33% reduction in cost per lead, this dentist is now generating 51 more leads each quarter with the same exact budget! Obviously this didn't happen overnight, but I hope now you can see the power of continuous improvement in your AdWords campaigns.

Do Not Use Google AdWords Unless...

Do Not Use Google AdWords Unless You Answer ‘Yes’ To These 5 Questions 

If you’ve been following me for a while then you know I love Google AdWords. AdWords search advertising is one of the most targeted forms of advertising because you can show your ads when your prospects are in the act of searching for your product or service.  It doesn’t get much better or easier than that when you’re trying to match your offer to what your prospect is looking for.

 
AdWords also provides excellent reporting and tracking tools to measure return on investment.  Oh and there’s no minimum investment to get started, and you only pay when prospects actually click on your ads… See what I mean? AdWords can be an amazing tool to drive leads and sales for your business.
 

With that said, I’ll be the first to admit that AdWords is NOT right for every business.  Whenever I talk to a business struggling to profit from AdWords, then 9 times out of 10 it’s because they are not following best practices.  However, there are a handful of cases when AdWords is simply not a good fit.  So in this article, I’m going to walk through the 5 questions to answer to make sure AdWords is right for YOUR business.
 

1. Are Your Prospects Searching in Google?

This one should be obvious.  The only way AdWords search advertising is going to work is if your prospects are going to Google.com and searching for your product or service.  If no one is searching for your products or services, then no one is going to see your ads.  That’s pretty straight forward.
 
However, we need to take this one step further.  There are really two types of searches:

1. Searches to do research
2. Searches to do shopping

Since the #1 goal of advertising should be to get customers, we’re primarily concerned with the shoppers.  Researchers will click on ads, but they don’t tend to buy anything.  Keep this in mind as you’re using Google’s Keyword Planner Tool to find out IF (and then what) your prospects are searching in Google.com.
 

2. Do You Have a Compelling Offer?

Assuming your prospects are searching to buy what you have to sell, then the next step is to review the competitive landscape.  How does your offer stack up to all the other ads already showing in Google’s results?  Are you offering the same product or service at the same price?  Is there anything that makes your offer more compelling?  If not, then you’re going to struggle.
 
Think of your offer like the quarterback of a football team.  Even with a roster chock full of superstars, the team is going to struggle with a lousy quarterback.  On the flip side, a superstar quarterback can more than make up for a mediocre roster.  The same is true with AdWords advertising.
 
If you do everything else perfectly, but your offer is weak, then your campaign is most likely not going to work.  However, I’ve personally seen campaigns set up incorrectly, but they were still profitable because the offer was so strong.  So the key action item here is to review the competitors’ ads and offers for all of the keywords you found in the previous step.  Then make sure your offer is more compelling for your prospects.
 

3. Do You Have a Sufficient Test Budget?

Very rarely is an advertising campaign profitable right out the gate.  Usually it takes some tweaking to find the best search keywords, bids, ads, and landing pages.  So it’s best to think of the first couple months as your testing period.  If you can break even, then that’s a win because you’ll be able to optimize the campaign to make it profitable.
 
With that mindset, you need to set aside a test budget.  But how much?  That’s one of the most frequently-asked questions that I receive each month.  How much should you invest in Google AdWords?
 
It’s impossible to answer that question without first completing the keyword research using Google’s Keyword Planner Tool (see section above).  The Keyword Tool will give you the estimated cost per click for each of your target search keywords.  That tells you approximately how much you’ll spend when a prospect clicks on your ad.  Next we can use some basic math.
 
If you expect to convert 1% of your visitors into sales, then you’ll need 100 clicks on your ad to generate a sale.  100 multiplied by the estimated cost per click from the Google Keyword Tool will give you the cost per one sale.  For example, your budget to generate 1 sale from a keyword that costs $5 per click will need to be about $500 (100 clicks x $5 = $500).  Of course, this depends greatly on the estimated conversion rate of 1% so I recommend you calculate a range of budgets using different conversion rates.  This will give you an idea for how much you’ll need to spend to generate just one sale.
 

4. Do You Have a Shot At Being Profitable?

Now that you know how much you’ll need for a test budget, you’ll want to double check the numbers.  Do you have a shot at being profitable with your estimated cost per clicks and conversion rates?  Or are you setting yourself up to lose money even at the highest estimated conversion rates?
 
Unfortunately, this step is often overlooked and it can be painful to realize you have no shot at being profitable after you’ve gone through all the work of setting up and testing your campaign.
 

5. Do You Have Sales Tracking?

The final step is to make sure you have a system to track sales from your AdWords campaign.  The only way you’ll be able to measure success is if you track leads and sales generated directly from AdWords.
 
AdWords provides online tracking to see which keywords and ads are generating e-commerce sales and webform submissions (i.e contact forms).  AdWords also recently released offline conversion tracking that allows businesses to upload sales generated off of the internet.  Plus, I recommend phone call tracking so you can see how many calls were generated from AdWords, and how many of them led to sales.

Is Google AdWords Right for You?

If you can answer ‘Yes’ to all 5 questions above, then for the reasons I listed at the beginning of this article, I highly recommend you set up and test a Google AdWords campaign.  If you were shaking your head ‘No!’ to one or more of the questions, then it’s absolutely critical to get those areas fixed (if possible) before you advertise.  Remember, AdWords can be an amazing advertising tool, but only if you can answer ‘Yes’ to all 5 questions above!

  

Optimizing for SEO vs Google AdWords

Today I want to clear up a common misconception about your website.  Scroll down to learn why it’s a mistake to try to optimize the same webpage for both SEO and online advertising.

Why You Can Not Optimize One Webpage

For Both SEO and Advertising 

I realized as I was meeting with a client last week that there’s a common misconception about how to optimize your website for search engine optimization (SEO) and search advertising (i.e. Google AdWords).
 
For both SEO and search advertising, your website plays a critical, yet very different, role.  The misconception is that a single webpage can be optimized for both online marketing tactics.  This is simply not possible and in this article I’ll explain why you need separate pages for SEO versus search advertising.
 

The Many Roles of Your Website

 

The primary role of your website is to convert visitors into leads and customers.  It’s no different than a sales position in your company, and you should judge your website performance accordingly.  Sure, you may love your new, slick design, but does your “upgraded” website drive any more sales than the previous one?  That’s the all important question.
 
Next, assuming your prospects search for your products and services in Google, then your website must also have the appropriate pages for Google to display in the search results.  If your prospect searches for “huarache running sandals” and your website does not have a page about huarache running sandals, then guess what, Google is not going to show your website in the results.  The first step with SEO is to make sure you have a webpage for each of your target keywords.  That’s SEO 101.
 
Finally, if you’re going to advertise, then you need pages on your site that perfectly match the different offers you’re going to make in your ads.  For example, if you advertise a special buy one pair of sandals and get a free running shirt offer, then you better prominently display that on the ad landing page.  If prospects don’t find what they’re looking for within seconds of clicking an ad, then they’ll click back and go to a competitor’s website.
 
So let’s recap:

1. Your website should be designed to convert visitors to sales.
2. To optimize your website for search engines like Google, you must have pages that match the keywords you want to target.  These pages need to be set up properly so Google knows they are 100% relevant to the target keywords.  The goal of your SEO efforts is to first get ranked in Google so you drive traffic to your site.  If you can’t drive traffic, then there’s no one to convert into customer :)
3. To optimize your website for search advertising, you must have pages that match the offer in your ads (which also must match the keywords you’re targeting).  The sole purpose of these pages is to sell.  You’re buying traffic so all you need to worry about with your ad landing pages is converting the traffic into sales.

See how your pages optimized for SEO have different goals than your ad landing pages?  With SEO, your webpage must be set up to get ranked in Google.  Of course, you also need to convert the SEO traffic, but getting ranked is the primary goal.  With advertising, your webpage should be structured with only one goal in mind: get the highest conversion rate possible.
 

Why SEO Pages Do Not Make Great Ad Landing Pages

The temptation is to try to optimize your webpages for both SEO and advertising.  Sure, they are both online advertising tactics.  Plus, your website is an integral component in both.  But they really are different beasts.  A webpage optimized for SEO will typically not be the best landing page for your advertising campaign.
 
For one of my clients, the best ad landing page is simply a video that gives information and presents a compelling sales pitch to buy the product.  There’s no way we could optimize a video page like this for SEO.  On the flip side, the best pages for SEO typically do not convert high enough to be profitable on paid search advertising.
 
This is a very important concept to remember as you get started with online marketing.  Do not fall into the trap of trying to optimize your webpages for both SEO and advertising.  You must create different pages and optimize each tactic separately.

15 AdWords Stats That Prove It Works

15 Stats That Prove Google Adwords Is A Great Investment For Your Business 

 

Not sure Google AdWords is a good investment for your business?
 
Then consider the 15 stats below, which I organized around frequently-asked questions (FAQs) that I hear from business owners.

 
First things first, if you’re considering search engine advertising, then you need to answer this FAQ…
 

Are My Customers Really Using Search Engines To Make Buying Decisions?

Let’s take a look at some key stats:

• 86% of consumers use the Internet to find a local business (WebVisible survey)
  
  
• 72% of consumers prefer to find information on local merchants via search. (WebVisible survey)
  
  
• 29% of consumers search for local businesses at least every week (BrightLocal survey)

OK, so your customers are searching, but that doesn’t mean you should use Google AdWords.  That leads us to the next common question…
 

Why Use Google AdWords Versus Bing or Yahoo?

I’ll let the stats speak for themselves here:

• Google owns 71% of the search market share. (Netmarketshare.com).  This stat alone answers the question, but we won’t stop at just search.  Here are some stats about Google’s Display network…
  
  
• Google owns the world’s largest online display advertising network. (comScore)
  
  
• Google display campaigns reach 80% of global internet users. (Google Benchmarks and Insights)
  
  
• Consumers exposed to display ads are, on average, 155% more likely to search for brand- and segment-specific terms. (Specific Media)

Before we move on, here’s one more stat that is important to understand:

• About 97% of Google’s total revenues come from advertising. (Google Investor Relations)

Why is this stat so important?  It highlights the importance of Google AdWords to Google’s business.  Since Google depends so greatly on Google AdWords, that means Google’s focus and priority is on maintaining and continually improving the AdWords tool.  This is important, especially today when we see so many complaints about Bing and Yahoo support.
 
Now, if you’re familiar with search engine optimization, then you’re probably asking this next question…
 

Why Not Just Invest in SEO?

Unfortunately it’s not quite that simple, as the following stats highlight:

• 89% of the traffic generated by search ads is not replaced by organic clicks when ads are paused. (Google Research)
  
  
• For high commercial intent search queries, the top three ad spots take about 40% of the clicks on the page. (The War on Free Clicks)
  
  
• 98% of searchers choose a business that is on page 1 of the results they get. (BrightLocal).  This emphasizes the importance of ranking on the first page of Google.  If you’re investing in SEO (which I highly recommend for many of the same reasons listed here), then advertising is yet another way to get your business on the first page to ensure you in front of 98% of your audience.

And, of course, we need to address the most important question…
 

Do Google AdWords Campaigns Really Work?

When set up and managed correctly, then businesses can see strong return on investment from Google AdWords, as indicated by the following stats:

• Businesses make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on AdWords. (Google Economic Impact Report)
  
  
• 72% of AdWords marketers plan to increase their PPC budgets (Search Engine Watch).  This is a strong indication that those businesses were generating positive ROI, because if they were not, then they wouldn’t increase their budgets.
  
  
• 70% of mobile searchers call a business directly from Google Search. (Expandedramblings.com)
  
  
• 70% of mobile searches result in action being taken within an hour. (Mediative Labs)

Of course, there are a lot of factors that determine the success of a Google AdWords campaign so these stats should not imply that every ad campaign will be profitable.  The reality is that you must set up and manage your ads correctly to see positive results.

Online Marketing: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

 

I love old Clint Eastwood western movies.  They were always on TV when I was growing up and I would instantly get sucked into a ~3 hour movie, along with all those commercials.  Hey, I figure there were worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.

I've probably watched The Good, The Bad and The Ugly about 10 times by now.  To be honest I can't always tell which one of Clint's movies I'm watching until they reintroduce it after a commercial.  They all include gunfights, signature one liners from Clint, and some timely, precision tobacco spitting.  My kind of movie. :)

Even if you haven't watched the movie, you can probably guess there's a good guy, a bad guy, and an ugly guy.  I'll spare you the details and jump right into how this relates to online marketing.  In my experience, online marketing plays all 3 of those roles: Good, Bad, and Ugly.

 

 

The Good

 

The good is usually what draws businesses to online marketing in the first place: It's affordable.  In some cases, it's downright free.  For example, any business looking for local customers can set up and optimize a Google+ Local page and within about a month get free exposure in Google's local business results.  No upfront fees.  No ongoing fees.  No fancy software to learn.  Just free exposure when local customers are searching for you.  Hard to beat free when it comes to driving new business!

Even advertising is usually more affordable online versus offline.  With Google AdWords you only pay per click so there is no big upfront investment like there is with TV, print or radio ads.

Of course, affordability isn't the only reason online marketing is good, but I think that gets the point across just fine.  Now let's look at the bad...

The Bad

The bad news is that online marketing is always changing!  Just when you think you've mastered search engine optimization (SEO), Google will go and change their algorithm.  Or just when you've built up a hefty Facebook audience, Zuckerberg decides to tweak their EdgeRank algorithm so you have to pay to get your posts in front of your prospects and customers.

Scroll through this list of Google algorithm changes to see just how frequently the search engine landscape changes.  Trust me, it's nearly impossible to keep up, and I do this for a living.  There's just no way a business owner can stay on top of all the trends and best practices without help.

And Google is just the tip of the iceberg... Have you looked at all the options available with online marketing?  Talk about overwhelming.  There's SEO, local SEO, search advertising, display advertising, Facebook advertising, email marketing, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, press release services, website conversion optimization, tracking and website analytics.  I could go on and on but you get the point.

Now, let's turn to the ugly side of online marketing...

The Ugly

First, there's the glut of information available.  There are books, blogs, articles, videos, and podcasts published online daily.  Some of it is sound advice.  Some of it is applicable for certain types of businesses.  And some of it outdated, or simply inaccurate.  Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible for a business owner to know who or what to pay attention to, which leads to poor marketing decisions.

Second, there are many low quality (and even unethical in my opinion) online marketing providers.  For example, I've talked to many business owners who paid and lost thousands to an SEO company that guaranteed #1 rankings.   My spam folder is full of these prospecting emails so I know how tempting it can be for businesses.  However, the reality is that no one can guarantee #1 rankings. As soon as you see or hear that phrase, run away, hang up, or click delete. That's a red flag that you're not dealing with a reputable company.

Why Most Marketing Plans Fail

July marks the halfway point in 2015 so it’s a great time to review your progress compared to the marketing plan and goals you set in January.  Are you ahead of your projections? Behind? Or are you not sure where you filed your marketing plan? :)

We all know it’s important to set goals and create a plan of attack around January every year.  However, that activity will never have a big impact on your business unless you actually USE your plan.   This is counter to what we learn in school, which is why I think it’s so hard to break the habit.

Why We’re Programmed to Never Review Our Marketing Plans

In school, when we write papers and hand in reports, they are done.  If you were like me, then you probably NEVER read that paper or report again.  The teacher read it, gave you a grade, and you moved on to the next assignment.  That was the process for me in every single grade, including college.

Because of that “training” for about 16 years, we all tend to approach our marketing plan document the same way. We go through the grueling process to write the plan, maybe pull an all-nighter or two to hit our self-inflicted deadline, and then we mark that task complete.

What happens next?  The plan most likely sits on your desk, in a filing cabinet, or in a folder on your computer until half the year or maybe even the entire year has gone by.  Again, this is no different from all those papers you wrote in school and never read again.  It was good exercise to hone your writing skills, but a lousy way to execute and improve your marketing.

Your Marketing Plan Is a Training Program (Not a Report)

The solution to this problem is quite simple: don’t think of your marketing plan as a document or a report.  If you do, then you’ll naturally struggle to go back and review the plan throughout the year.  Remember, our brains have been programmed from school to believe reports don’t need to be reviewed after they are completed.

Instead, think of your marketing plan like a training program.  More specifically, I like to think of my plan like a marathon training program.  Here are a few of the reasons why this change in mindset will help you achieve more of your marketing goals in the remainder of this year.

You Must Continually Review Training Programs

If you have ever followed a training program, then you know that you have to continually review the plan to see what you are supposed to do each day, week, and month.  Personally, I find it’s easiest to print the program and hang it on my refrigerator so that I can quickly see when and what my workout is going to be for the week.  I know if I just stick to the plan, then I’ll be physically ready in November for the marathon.

I doubt many people reading this have their marketing plan hanging on their refrigerator. :)  But if you did have your plan more visible, then you would know what you need to do each day, week, and month to hit your goals.  In other words, you would stay more focused and ignore distractions that are not integral to the plan you already set.

Training Programs Have Clearly Defined & Attainable Milestones

When I was training for my first marathon, I had a real fear that I wasn’t going to finish.  I’m sure just about every first timer has that same fear.  26.2 miles almost sounds impossible unless you’ve done it before.

The beauty of a marathon training program is how it makes each milestone attainable.  By the time you need to run 10 miles, you’ve already run an 8 miler.  By the time you need to run 20 miles, you will have completed an 18 mile run.  Running just 2 more miles doesn’t sound too bad.

That’s exactly what your marketing plan should do as well.  Your plan should list incremental milestones that lead up to your ultimate goal.

Training Programs Are Created By Experts

Would you trust a marathon training program that was created by someone who never ran or coached an athlete to run a marathon?

I definitely would not.  Unless you’re trying to break a world record, someone has already done what you’re trying to achieve.  All you need to do is go find and follow that training program.  I’m not implying it’ll be easy.  It’ll certainly be hard, but at least you’ll be following a proven training program developed by an expert.

The same approach should be taken with your marketing plan.  There are no extra points for creating your plan completely on your own.  In fact there is no benefit at all to planning without expert advice. Find business owners and consultants who have already hit your goals.  Then follow a similar training program.  It won’t be easy, but you’ll have the confidence you’re on the right track!

Spy vs. Spy: 4 Tips to Use Auction Insights for Smarter PPC

Have your CPCs been rising, or your conversion volume declining overtime? If so, your competitors may be making moves. Tracking and analyzing your PPC performance is critical, and you can’t truly know how you’re doing without an account analysis tool like Auction Insights. This tool will give you a benchmark for your performance, and then show you how you stack up against competitors. 

This is information that can help you make smart decisions – and ultimately lead you to the "winning" side of things.

Today we’re looking at:

1. Where to find the Auction Insights tool, and which metrics (fields) in the tool will be most helpful
2. 3 tips to help you focus your efforts
3. An example of one advanced use of the tool

3 Sources of Change: Account, Search Behavior, and Competition

Driving performance in digital marketing is about learning from change. Be excited when metrics in your account change, because good or bad, it’s an opportunity to learn. Hopefully your tests are driving the change. Improved landing page? Should see an increase in conversion rate. Create a kick-butt ad? Hope to see an increase in click-through rate.
Before jumping into competitive analysis, it’s important to rule out the other sources of change. Good news, though there are hundreds of factors that can cause change, there are three fundamental sources of performance changes. And there are easy to use tools to troubleshoot each source.

Source of Change	Examples	Troubleshooting Tool
1. Account	Increase bids drive position and click volume Add keywords Change targeting settings Keyword disapproval	Change History
2. Consumer search behavior	Fewer searches due to weekend More searches due to seasonal event News event drives spike in searches Gradual shift in search or buying behavior	Top Mover Traffic in Bing Ad Intelligence
3. Competitors	Agressive bids Decreased budget showing fewer impressions	Auction Insights

Account changes are easy to undo. You can’t change consumer search behavior without significant investment. What about competition? You can’t control the competition, but you can react to it.

Symptoms of Increased Competition

The symptoms of increased competition can show up in a number of ways. The most common symptoms of increased competition are:

1. Higher CPC driving a higher CPA (if your conversion rate is lower that’s usually something else)
2. Lower position driving lower conversion and click volume

If you see one of these problems, that’s where Auction Insights comes in.

Where to Find the Auction Insights Tool in the UI

The tool is available right in your "Keywords" tab, under the "Details" menu in both the Google AdWords and Bing Ads UI. You can generate a report for keywords, ad group, or campaign, as long as you’ve met a minimum threshold of activity.

Now that you’ve found the report, let’s go through a few tips to help you get the most of it.

Tip #1: Use Auction Insights One Keyword at a Time at First

A common rookie move is loading the tool with all 3,000 of your keywords. More than a handful of keywords can be misleading – the data is based on impressions, a single high-volume impression keyword with a different set of keywords a cloud the data. Drilling into the top terms will give you a solid picture of the competitive landscape. Typically, you’ll want to analyze your top-performing or top-priority keywords from brand terms to keywords you just added because your CMO says it’s a must.

When possible analyze one keyword at a time.

Tip #2: Use Competitive Metrics for Identifying Your Top Competition

Now that you’ve picked your keyword(s), it’s important you know what you’re looking at. The two important competitive benchmarking metrics that show up in the auction insights report are Overlap Rate and Position Above Rate. Use them to monitor progress, but also to identify your competition.

• Overlap Rate – Tells you the percentage of time competitors’ ads showed up on the search results page when your ad was shown. The higher your overlap rate, the more competition you face from their competitor. Any competition that share an Overlap Rate of more than 25 percent, pay attention to.
• Position Above Rate – The percentage of time competitors’ ads showed up higher than your ads on the search results page. The more they’re above you, the more work you’ve got to do.
• Impression Share - One of my favorite metrics, Impression Share, will tell you what share of searches you’re showing up for. If your impression share is low pull a Share of Voice report to get specific details on what you should change.

Tip #3: Be Aware of Your Quality Score

And remember, a huge chunk of quality score is a competitive CTR benchmark – how well is your ad performing versus the competition. So combining quality score and auction insights is powerful.
If your quality score is 10/10 for the keyword, you have little room for improvement in CTR. Focus on bids and targeting. If your quality score is 2/10, focus on better ads, negatives, and potentially restructuring the campaign.

Pro Tip: Compare Different Time Frames on the Same Keyword

In addition to providing look in to the previously-mentioned metrics, the Auction Insights report can be a valuable tool in troubleshooting the occasional CPA spike at the Keyword, Ad Group, or even Campaign level. This is best done by identifying inflection points in your account performance- points where your CPA takes a noticeable turn for the worse, in this case.
Like so:


In this particular account, we’ve identified that CPA performance for this keyword has taken a jump starting on January 16. We see a brief relapse back to our normal CPA for this keyword, but as of the last seven days, it went haywire. There are no bid, budget, or targeting changes on our end to account for this, so what happened?

Here’s the Auction Insights report from before the CPA increase, looking at January 12 – January 18.

And after, looking at January 19 – 25…

And we see an immediate difference in our competitive landscape. While we see Competitor #4 dropping out of the marketplace, we have five new competitors entering the space to replace them.

In addition, several of our existing competitors have become more aggressive – Competitors #1, #2, and #5 all see an increase in both Overlap Rate and Position Above Rate – meaning that we’re competing against them more often, and they’re now showing above us more often, too. Recognizing what’s going on here helps us understand the CPA spike, and how we should or shouldn’t respond.
Combining Auction Insights in different time periods gives you incredible insights.

How Hard Should You Press The Gas Pedal In #Paid #Search?

The following post contains a number of metaphors strained to the breaking point; viewer discretion is advised.

An enduring truth in the paid search business is that paid search managers and marketing teams spend far more time thinking about tactical minutia than they do thinking about what are far and away the most important questions to the business:

“What is the ultimate objective of paid search for our company? And how do we measure success against that goal?”

If the goals and measurement have been thoroughly fleshed out, considered and analyzed, then it makes sense that attention be focused on the “how to” questions — but often, it seems that applying scrutiny to the goals themselves leads to changed success metrics that have far more impact on performance than any number of geeky tactical maneuvers.

Every company can articulate their goals, but sometimes scratching deeper reveals shaky rationale supporting them.

For companies that budget search spend, marketers need to ask:

• “Who determines the budget and what criteria do they use?”
• “Are these criteria the same or different than those used to determine the budgets of other marketing programs online and off?”
• “At that budget, do you expect a profitable ROI? Breakeven? Investment for long term growth? Brand exposure?”
• “Does the budget rise and fall with market opportunity or is it rigid quarter-to-quarter?”
• “How do you measure and think about the “R” in ROI?”

For companies that set efficiency targets for non-brand search and allow the advertising spend to rise and fall with opportunity, a different set of questions should follow:

• “Great! What’s the basis of that ROI constraint?”
• “How does that ROI relate to business profits? Screamingly profitable? Breakeven? Investment?”
• “How does the marginal ROI compare to your average ROI?”
• “Does your “R” factor in all relevant success metrics like cross-device, offline spillover, registries, email sign ups, catalog requests, etc.?”
• “Over what time frame do you think about getting the return: the first interaction with a customer, or is some notion of lifetime-value folded in?”

Much of this boils down to how aggressively a company can drive marketing without wrecking.
Google recently launched an initiative to help advertisers think more carefully about performance marketing objectives and asked me to do some evangelizing with them.

Maximizing Profit Vs. ROI

 Nicholas says that “the best way to increase profits from your digital marketing investments is to make profits your main KPI. It seems self-evident, but very few advertisers are actually doing this.”
His point is that too often companies take as their goal maximizing ROI — a ratio — rather than maximizing profit — which is what you put in the bank at the end of the month. Increasing bids may decrease ROI as a ratio, but may drive enough additional volume to more than make up the difference.

He is right, of course. Picking only the lowest hanging fruit yields great per-piece profitability, but not much total profit. If the goal is profit maximization, then the proper approach is to first pick the lowest hanging fruit (of course) but to also pick the fruit higher up the tree as long as the value of the fruit picked is greater than the time/cost of picking it.

Let’s look at the math of diminishing marginal returns and we’ll see this clearly. As spend levels increase, efficiency inevitably decreases because we buy wisely, grabbing the most efficient opportunities first leaving less-efficient opportunities left over to choose next.

Threshold 1 on the graph represents Observed ROI Maximization. Threshold 2 represents Observed Profitability Maximization. Threshold 3 represents Return Maximization at Breakeven Profits, and Threshold 4 Represents Return Maximization at Some Investment.

Putting The Pedal To The Metal

To switch metaphors, just for fun, Nicholas sees some advertisers putting the car in drive but hardly putting any pressure on the gas pedal. They’re content to idle forward and “save money” on gas, but they don’t see the opportunity-loss associated with going so slowly.

He advocates for moving from 1 to 2:

Moving from ROI ratio maximization to short term profit maximization is an unmistakable, indeed unquestionable win.

However, many advertisers already go well beyond that. Most of our clients spend at least to observed breakeven (position 3 on the graph) on non-brand search.

The marginal ROI (slope) is negative moving from 2 to 3, but the loss is justified on the grounds that the portfolio comes in at breakeven. This allows the company to generate the maximum observed return from search at a breakeven investment overall.

But how do marketers justify going beyond position 3? At that point, not only is each conversion coming at a loss on the margin, but the collective whole is underwater, as well.

How can that ever make sense? To many smart marketers it does, and the reasons for that perspective involve some combination of the following arguments:

• We don’t see all the conversions driven by paid search. There are cross-device effects, there is spillover to brick and mortar, people drop cookies reducing the observable conversions. Factoring in this hidden value makes the additional investment wise.
• The graph above only accounts for short-term ROI. The lifetime value of the consumers engaged is more than enough to justify additional investment.
• Growing the customer base is valuable in and of itself. It leads to more customers to market to via email, direct mail, re-marketing display ads, social media, etc. This increases the natural lifetime value of a customer.
• Growth gives additional clout with vendors. Volume discounts and co-op marketing dollars go to the companies that sell more product. Publishers can charge more for advertising on site. Insurance companies can spread risk over a larger base. Bigger is better.
• Broader awareness creates more buzz, more PR, more word-of-mouth marketing, more in-bound links and social mentions. One of the most under-appreciated components of customer lifetime value is the propensity of happy customers to spread the word to their friends, which is vastly more powerful given the connective tissue of social media, Pinterest boards, etc.
• There is brand value to prominence on the SERP, and visits to website and apps. Engagement and awareness has value even if hard to measure.
• The media buyers get to spend like drunken sailors, I should be able to, as well!

Okay, I haven’t heard anyone use the last argument explicitly, but they’ve kinda hinted at it, and vastly different ROI expectations between marketing channels is a bit hard to understand.

How Far Should You Go?

Nicholas at Google is certainly right that pushing from 1 to 2 is certain to be rational. Whether moving from 2 to 3 or even into 4 makes sense may depend on the shape of the curve.

If the marginal ROI drops like a rock, it could be that the channel is effectively maxed out, either because you’re at the top of everything that matters to your brand, or your competitors are being so much more aggressive it doesn’t make sense to chase them.

However, if bidding more aggressively generates material incremental returns, consider the extent to which the arguments for 4 apply to your brand. What’s the lifetime value of a customer for you? How significant could untracked spillover be? What is the Word-of-Mouth value of a customer?

To this last point — if the answer is, “I have no idea,” consider doing this down and dirty analysis:

1. Do a survey of 100 random converting new customers on your website who reached the site through a brand search or direct navigation and who had no prior interaction with other marketing channels as best you can tell.
2. Ask them: “Why did you come to our site that day?”
3. Tally up the fraction of these new customers who say something like ‘a friend/relative suggested I go to your site.’ Call that X. You might be startled at how large X is.
4. What fraction of all customers are new customers coming in via brand search or direct load? Call that Y.
5. Multiply X and Y and call that Z. Might Z represent the number of additional customers brought in by WOM of other customers? Would that materially increase the direct lifetime value a customer?

Hacky, yes — but sometime hacks are valuable enlightenment.

Whether 2 is right for you, or something more like 3 or 4, will depend on many factors. Ultimately, more aggressive advertising, into the world of untraceable effects, needs to result in a healthier P & L. If it doesn’t, maybe easing off the pedal is right.

Hope this is helpful fodder for discussion.

Drive carefully.

Stock image used with permission of Shutterstock.com