Paid Search

Digital Marketing Agency RFPs: April is High Season For a Reason

Suzy Sandberg Digital Marketing General , , , ,

There may still be snow on the ground from this past winter in some parts of the country, but with digital marketing, Holiday prep for next winter should start in Spring. This is especially true for brands who are launching their marketing efforts for the first time. 

For larger brands and/or brands already running digital marketing campaigns, the months from late Spring and Summer through to Q4 are when account health checks are done. Best practices are implemented, new interface features are tested and put in place, and other efforts are tried such as new copy, promos, etc.  By testing and iterating in the months leading up to Holiday, when Q4 arrives, these accounts should be running their A game.  This is why April is RFP season in digital marketing.  Brands want to give themselves and their new agencies ample time to get their marketing campaigns in the best possible shape for Holiday.

For brands who are new to digital marketing and Paid Search, though, there are different considerations for why it is critical to launch well in advance of Holiday.  All have to do with particulars in the Google Ads interface which work quite differently for new rather than existing advertisers.  Here are some examples:

Continue reading →

Best Practices for Retargeting (Part 1):  Are you reaching new customers or just annoying your best ones? 

Suzy Sandberg Digital Marketing General, Display, Programmatic Display, Retargeting , , , , , ,

retargeting best practicesJohn Wanamaker once said he’s wasting half his advertising but not sure which half.  In today’s programmatic buying, this sentiment can be updated to “I’m only buying the good half and annoying half of them with the wrong ad.”

Creative seldom has a seat at the table when planning a programmatic buy.  Media planners are more focused on the media logistics such as which audience to target and what to do in the platform itself to make it all work.  Continue reading →

Google Launches Customer Match: How to Maximize the Opportunity

Suzy Sandberg Digital Marketing General , , ,

Google's Customer Match and finding look alikes in Paid SearchGoogle’s Customer Match announcement earlier this week is welcome news to advertisers who have run successful first-party digital advertising campaigns with other media partners such as Facebook, Twitter, and the DSPs.  Google’s new product will enable advertisers to target their first-party data in search, You Tube, and Gmail. Advertisers upload their email files into the AdWords interface, and then Google matches it to their log-in data. From there, ads show to matched individuals.

Google has enabled first-party targeting with RLSA for some time but never before allowed it for search, which they said was due to privacy concerns. Continue reading →

Holiday 2015 Paid Search Best Practices: Bid Indexing

Suzy Sandberg Digital Marketing General , , , , , ,

Bid indexing will improve paid search performanceNow that it is officially Fall and Holiday is fast approaching, it is time to dot every “I” and cross every “t” to make sure paid search campaigns are in top shape.  A surefire way to improve year-over-year paid search results during the critical six-week period from mid-November through December is to index daily bids based on prior year performance.  There are two reasons why indexing can help.

First is that there is always a crush of new entrants trying to win Holiday impression share on key terms.  Continue reading →

SEM Best Practices for Voice Search

Suzy Sandberg Digital Marketing General , , ,

Best SEM practices for voice searchA look through search query reports reveals more than a few obvious voice search queries.  These searches originate from Siri, Google, or Cortana. When you spot these, they remind me of how someone sounds when speaking to an automated attendant: the communication is abrupt, different, and slightly rude.

The most obvious voice search queries appear with the word “Google” before them, such as “Google steakhouse in Muncie.”  Even without “Google” in the search term, they are still fairly easy to identify.  Continue reading →

How to get Google Certified for Paid Search

Suzy Sandberg Paid Search ,

testing

Having just re-upped my Google Certification, I thought it might be helpful to pass along some tips.

Google offers three different certifications: SEM, Display, and Analytics. All three require passing 2 exams: A single Fundamentals test that is taken for all three certifications and an advanced exam that is specific to each certification area. For a search marketer, the Fundamentals exam is not difficult. You are allotted 90 minutes: I finished in about 30. I have not taken the Analytics or Display exams (yet) so the information covered in this post pertains only to the Fundamental and Advanced Search Exams. Continue reading →

6 Ways to Say Goodbye to Last Click Tracking

Suzy Sandberg Attribution, Digital Marketing General, Paid Search, Programmatic Display , , , , ,

Last Click Attribution causes channel overlapUsing last click attribution to evaluate the success of a digital campaign is an antiquated system. Most online marketers acknowledge this but use the model nonetheless.

If you break down the reasons why, they usually include some form of the following:

– CMOs are not in the day-to-day nor may they be digitally savvy depending on from where in the ranks they ascended. Continue reading →

What is a Paid Search Restructure, Anyway?

Suzy Sandberg Digital Marketing General, Online Retail Marketing, Paid Search ,

Paid search campaign restructureMany paid search advertisers turn over the keys of their campaign to an agency to manage it and don’t typically get under the hood too often to see how the campaign is structured. There is a lot of minutia in the search tools, and if someone is not a regular, taking a look now and again exposes a world that is potentially too complex from which to draw any meaningful, actionable conclusions.

However, there is much industry buzz right now around the campaign restructure and the belief that it could be the magic bullet that improves paid search performance. Continue reading →

Troubleshooting Paid Search Performance

Suzy Sandberg Digital Marketing General, Online Retail Marketing, Paid Search , ,

Identifying a decline in paid search performanceWhen sales from paid search suddenly spike in the wrong direction, it can be a nightmare figuring out how and why. It shouldn’t have to be, though. There is always a reason, and it can be found. If conversions from paid search suddenly fall off, here are some ways to troubleshoot.

Contribution: If the paid search channel typically makes up a steady percentage of total online sales, check web analytics to see if the percentage is the same or has fallen.  Continue reading →

Staffing for Digital: More Important Than Ever to Get It Right

Suzy Sandberg Digital Marketing General, Online Retail Marketing , , , , ,

Hiring good staff for digital marketing is importantBefore talking about present-day staffing needs in digital, here is a quick look back at the evolution.  For a time, digital marketing was a sexy new career choice.  People in offline businesses were jumping ship to digital.

Now, though, for any company who sells something, digital marketing is a means to an end:  customers need to be followed and serviced in the channel in which they have chosen to interact with the business.  First it was offline, then it was the internet, and now it is shifting quickly to mobile.  People are choosing digital careers because it is where the jobs are.  Continue reading →