Blog
Guidance from our Digital Marketing Experts in Seattle
In manual bidding you tell Google how much you’re willing to pay for each click, automated bidding adjusts bids on your behalf to optimize for your goals. Automated bids are tweaked by Google in response to their performance and other insights, which in theory should make them more efficient. Within the automated bidding category is the further optimized Smart Bidding option. This is an automated bid setting that optimizes specifically for conversions or conversion value — that means it’s more specialized and better-suited to some goals, but you shouldn’t use […]
It’s easy, with how everything feels online now, to forget that the vast majority of purchases are still made offline. You’d be forgiven for feeling like everything is happening online, but the reality is that still over 80% of purchases in this country are in-person. So then why does so much of the online advertising sphere seem to talk like the offline world straight up doesn’t exist anymore? If that’s you, one of the first steps to “un-forgetting” the real world — and how to include it in your digital […]
When designing your ad campaigns, it can be easy to overlook your attribution model. After all, many people running ads don’t even really know what an attribution model is. Of course, it could slip under the radar! There are six attribution models available for Google Ads, and each one is a different way of deciding which ad (or ads) get “credit” for when a user converts. Obviously, each user doesn’t fill out a survey saying “this ad made me buy your product more than this other ad,” so the attribution […]
As a business owner, you’re probably well-versed in advertising online with help from many different platforms. If you’re like most, the one you’re most familiar with is probably Google Ads. However, here is the latest scoop, Google is part-way through transitioning its Ads users towards an upgraded version of its platform, called Performance Max. This might not be so much of a secret, as you may have already noticed your own local campaigns might have recently upgraded automatically to performance max during August and September, which was precisely when Google […]
What is an ad schedule and why does it matter? While the general idea of a Google Ads ad schedule is self-evident, the specifics aren’t necessarily so. The most basic feature of the ad schedule is letting you control which time periods your ads are shown, but you can also use it to increase or decrease your bids for an ad during a set time. Say, for example, you’re finding that your ads are most successful on weekdays from three to five; in that scenario, you might want to decrease […]
When running search ads, it can be a bit tricky to decide which approaches will give you the best bang for your buck. The amount of options can be overwhelming, and you don’t want to waste your time, energy, money, and other resources on ad approaches that won’t give you the results you need. One tool that can be extremely useful and well-rounded is Google Ads’ “similar audiences,” which will help you not just increase your visibility, but increase it among users who are more likely than average to be […]
One of Google’s automated bidding strategies is target impression share (“IS” for short). It’s a strategy that’s often misunderstood and underutilized. Target IS has earned a reputation as being inefficient and subsequently too expensive, hence many SEM managers have come to view its algorithm with skepticism or at least apprehension. And while it’s always smart to not get too gung-ho about any one bidding and marketing approach — especially one that can be expensive — target IS can be very useful if you use it right. We’re here to go […]
When you’re running a paid search campaign for your business, there’s a lot of angles to take and factors to consider. Improving your campaign’s efficiency to reduce overall ad spend while improving results should always be in the back of your mind; one step to achieve that is through mining new keywords, either to add or negate. For this reason, we recommend that every marketer should be completing a search query report (SQR for short) at least twice a month! Today, we’ll talk you through why and how. First off: […]
To make sure your business’ online marketing efforts are bringing in the right results, you really have to have access to a baseline level of data. We’re not talking any creepy, big tech dystopian kind of stuff, but just some understanding about how internet users are interacting with your content, ads, etc. Towards that end, one tool that’s incredibly helpful is the UTM parameter. As a reminder, what are UTM parameters? If you haven’t read our original post on UTM parameters, you can check it out to get a deeper […]
What is call reporting and why does it matter? Businesses that most effectively generate leads tend to have multiple ways for a potential customer to contact them. Calling is just another touch point — but it’s also the quickest form of communication and, through extension, the most efficient. Call reporting is a mechanism that allows you as an advertiser to track phone calls received to a phone number of your choice. Specifically, you’re able to track duration, user location, and, if your Google account features multiple phone numbers, which of […]
