Is It Time To Include Google Ads in Your Marketing Plan

Google advertising, or paid search, has become a common component of many marketing programs. Google ads are structured as an auction where we bid on keywords. They’re free until someone clicks on our ads—thus, the term “pay-per-click advertising” (PPC). The cost of the keyword determines the cost of the click.

Effective way to drive traffic to your website, increase sales and brand recognition

PPC is fairly complex. I’ve been working with a client for the last year doing YouTube and Google ads, and I continue to learn. A lot of marketers throw their money at this without properly understanding, monitoring and adjusting their campaigns, so it may not be the best use of their marketing dollars. Google rakes in something obscene like $100M/day on digital advertising. Like Las Vegas, the house wins. 

My goal is to drive a slow steady stream of traffic to our website

Our Google ad campaigns have been successful, according to our conservative goals. I’m careful to watch my keywords because the associated costs can change. One week a word can be worth $4, then the price can climb to $8 or more. I’m okay with $4, but not $8+. I watch our billing summary, and if it’s starting to get too expensive, I sometimes pause one of our campaigns to manage overall costs. 

Increased traffic has resulted in more click-throughs and calls

The Google ad activity has translated to new business. We could do more, but ad campaign pricing can quickly start ballooning. Your impressions, clicks and calls may increase, but so do your costs. You decide how much you want to spend.

Here are some guidelines for creating a Google ad campaign

1. Set a clear objective . What are your overall business/ad goals? Are you selling a product or a service? If signing up for your newsletter is your goal, this can be a tough sell.
2. Create your ad infrastructure. The fields for campaign details, including location, are fairly robust. Key are audience demographics–gender, age, interests, industry, etc. Think about how your audience spends their free time, what they’re likely to be interested in. 
3. Keywords. The more words, the more specific the potential response. You’re qualifying your buyers. Fewer clicks, but a greater chance that users will meet your desired client profile. 
4. Identify your budget. How much do you want to spend? The billing for Google ads is confusing, though Google has just rolled out a new program that gives you more control of your spend. 
5. Conversion. If users are purchasing a product, it makes it easy to determine the effectiveness of your campaign. If you’re selling a service, it’s more difficult to quantify. Calls and clicks can be harder to measure. 
6. Landing page. You will need to create and optimize a landing page on your website. A strong call to action drives users to act. 

Are you considering adding digital advertising to your marketing plan? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and digital marketing specialists. 

A Facebook Popup Takes on Misinformation

It’s been six months and counting, and an estimated 50M Republicans still believe that Trump won the 2020 election. That the January 6 rioters who stormed the capitol with the intent to hang the Vice President and kill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were “really just behaving like normal tourists”. According to Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the Capitol attack was largely a “peaceful protest.” Really?

Like it or not, our social media platforms are where we gather, and they’ve inherited the responsibility for both spreading and controlling the growing problem of misinformation.

Facebook steps up with informational alerts

Facebook is taking another step to reduce the spread of misinformation that includes increased user penalties. Facebook has partnered with independent, third-party fact-checking teams, and it touts its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to automate the fact-checking process. 

A Facebook popup warns users about the possibility of misinformation

Facebook has launched a new popup alerting visitors to a Facebook Page that this page may be sharing false information, as per fact-checkers. The popup clearly communicates that because a Page has shared questionable content in the past, there is the distinct possibility that current content may be incorrect. 

“We want to give people more information before they like a Page that has repeatedly shared content that fact-checkers have rated. You can also click to learn more, including that fact-checkers said some posts shared by this Page include false information and a link to more information about our fact-checking program. This will help users make informed decisions about whether they want to follow the Page.”

Upping the penalties for distributing misinformation

“We will reduce the distribution of all posts in News Feed from an individual’s Facebook account if they repeatedly share content that has been rated by one of our fact-checking partners. We already reduce a single post’s reach in News Feed if it has been debunked.”

Limiting the News Feed reach will stir up the Facebook conspiracy theorists and those who believe the platform has no right to stop their sharing whatever they like on the platform. What happens is pretty dramatic: Facebook and Instagram networks–more than 4B users/month, will stop seeing their posts if they keep sharing phony conspiracy theories and misinformed reports. These users likely will perceive this as censorship and loss of their freedoms, with big brother controlling the flow of information. 

Facebook is right to act

Their fact-checkers ensure that false information is being flagged and removed where possible to reduce its spread and stop the use of the Facebook/Instagram network to amplify misinformation and its hateful, violent narratives.

Misinformation has become even more unrelenting of late

Misinformation about the Covid vaccine is slowing the broader recovery efforts. Facebook and Instagram are operating the largest interconnected, most influential network of humans in history. It’s important that they assume a leadership role, take action and attempt to disrupt and manage the flow of misinformation. 

Time to talk about digital ads? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and digital marketing specialists. 

Will Google Really Put an End to Third-Party Cookies by 2022?

You may have heard that Google is eliminating third-party cookies by 2022. What does this mean for you—or your marketing? It’s important to understand that there are first- and third-party cookies. It’s only third-party cookies that are being eliminated.   

So what are cookies?

Cookies identify online users and have become a mainstay of digital advertising. As web servers have no memory of their own, cookies make websites remember our actions. In this way, they’re not asked to perform a task over and over again. In their simplest application, they help provide a better user experience. 

Ever wonder how our favorite sites remember our login information?

Or how they remember the languages we speak, the items in our carts, and other key things that make our online experiences seamless? They’re using cookies to remember these details. I’m in Istanbul right now, and when I go to sites I use all the time, sometimes they’re in Turkish. My laptop auto-adjusts to Turkey time—not PDT. All the ads are in Turkish. A little bit creepy, but also amazing. It’s cookies, hard at work. 

First-party cookies

A first-party cookie is a code that gets generated and stored on your website visitors’ computers by default when they visit your site. A first-party cookie will provide information about what users did while visiting your website–how often they visit it and other basic analytics that you can use to help develop an effective marketing strategy. 

Third-party cookies

Third-party cookies are tracking codes that are placed on a web visitor’s computer after being generated by another website other than your own. When a web visitor visits your site and others, the third-party cookie tracks this information and sends it to the third-party who created the cookie–which might be an advertiser. 

A great example of the power of third-party cookies

Let’s say you’re getting married and start shopping for wedding paraphernalia–caterers, dresses, flowers, shoes, jewelry, photographers, etc. You pull up Amazon to start researching availability and costs, viewing a lot of items and spending time on a number of product pages. Exhausted from this effort, you pour a glass of wine, purchase a pair of shoes and take a break. Now you start receiving emails and ads for dresses, flowers, caterers, bakeries and jewelry that you looked at on Amazon but didn’t purchase. For any vendor in the wedding industry, having access to this kind of rich information–a user’s browsing history–is powerful. This is what third-party cookies are able to deliver. And this is what the data wars are all about. 

If you’re an advertiser, third-party cookie data allows you to learn about your web visitor’s overall online behaviors and create comprehensive retargeting strategies to reach them. There is a timeline—some time in 2022, third-party cookies will be eliminated. We’ll see. Frankly, I think they’ll find a workaround—there’s just too much money involved.

Time to talk about digital ads? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and digital marketing specialists.

Leveraging the Power of Google Business Page

How many times a day do you Google something?

We’re constantly turning to Google for help—for directions, a correct spelling or definition, the weather, bus and train schedules, baseball scores and restaurant reviews. It’s hard to imagine life without this versatile tool. 

Yet many business owners still haven’t created a Google My Business page 

Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool for businesses to manage their Google presence–Search, Maps, Ads, etc. GMB can help your customers find you, increase your reach and drive traffic.  

With GMB you can:

• Manage information: Contact information, address, products and services. Businesses that verify their information with GMB are twice as likely to be considered reputable by consumers. 
• Interact with customers: Customer reviews, photos that show off what you do. Businesses that add photos receive 42% more requests for directions on Google Maps, and 35% more clicks through to their websites than businesses that don’t.
• Understand and expand your presence: You’ll receive a monthly report that details activity. Find insights on how customers searched for your business, and where those customers are coming from. 

Useful GMB page features

• Posts and Events. Share offers, updates, event information and other details with your customers. I post blogs to this section—title, a few paragraphs, a Read more and a link back to the blog on your website. My monthly report shows a surprising number of views and interactions with these posts. 
• What’s New:  COVID-19 updates. For one of my clients, we’re staying the course on our Covid protocols, and we want our clients to be reassured that we’re taking their safety seriously. 
• Offers: Having a sale or promotion? This is the place to share this information.
• Products: List products and services. Keep in mind that there are always character limits. Use your keywords and be strategic. Make sure you’ve communicated your value proposition, what makes you unique.

Creating your GMB page: Verify via U.S. Mail

• As with all Google tools, you’ll need to create your login using a gmail account. Don’t have one? Go to Google Gmail and create a new account with a login and password.
• You also will need to verify your GMB page. Most businesses are verified by mail with a verification postcard from Google. Yes. That really is the U.S. Postal Service. Google believes you need a street address to be a valid business—it’s also a Google Map dependency. A PO Box won’t work. Send this off to Google and watch for your code in the mail. Log back in to your GMB page and insert this code to complete the GMB process. 

But that really shouldn’t be the end of your GMB activity

Update your page with changes to your business, with new blog posts and events. Treat your GMB page like your other social media sites. Post your blogs to this page, add photos. Don’t let it stagnate.  

Need help making the most of Google tools? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing specialists. 

Apple Rolls Out New App Privacy Controls

Data privacy is back in the news, and this time it’s Apple that’s stepping up to protect our data. They’re scheduled to roll out their new Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) this spring. IDFA is assigned by Apple to a user's device, and it means that every app has to ask us upfront whether it’s okay to share our data with third parties. Note that this is Apple users only—not Android.

So what does this mean for you?

I’m not a big app user, and I don’t ever download games. However, I just took a look at my phone. I’ve got apps for my banks and some stocks, Uber, Lyft, the New Yorker and The NYTimes. For the subway in Buenos Aires from my trip there a few years ago. You get the idea--these apps add up. For our expanding app accumulations, we’ll now be able to decide whether/not we want anyone tracking our online behavior and using it to market products to us. 

This is your chance to quash data tracking in all Apple apps

Why, after all, would we want anyone tracking our behavior to sell us more stuff? With the new IDFA, we’ll get a prompt asking for our consent to track us--known as app tracking transparency (ATT). These prompts that will be displayed in all iOS (Apple) apps are expected to see many users switching off data tracking altogether. If you’re doing online advertising, this could have serious consequences. 

Digital advertisers are wary about the effects of this change

“Privacy means peace of mind, it means security, and it means you are in the driver’s seat when it comes to your own data,” said Apple Senior VP Craig Federighi. “Our goal is to create technology that keeps people’s information safe and protected.”

Under settings dubbed the “Privacy Nutrition Label,” users will be able to see which apps have requested permission to track their data and can either grant permission or deny it. App makers will have to honestly explain how they plan to use the data.

• When you use a new app, a notification will explain what the tracking will be used for, and then it will ask if you want to opt into tracking. 
• You can toggle IDFA data sharing on an app-by-app basis. 
•  You can turn off app tracking altogether and no apps can ask you to be tracked.

Apple's IDFA change has been highly controversial

Facebook actively opposed the change, arguing that it will negatively impact small businesses by driving up the cost and decreasing the effectiveness of their digital/PPC advertising. Apple is also contending with a group of Chinese companies that has banded together to launch an alternative data-tracking tool for their apps. These apps will essentially bypass IDFA, likely in violation of Apple's terms. That could put Apple in a tough position on the broader rollout of the new prompt. Worth watching.

Time to talk marketing strategy? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketingspecialists. 

 

YouTube Ads Increase Sales

I’ve been doing YouTube advertising for one of my clients for six months, and it’s increased our business by an estimated 10%. While I had done Google and Facebook pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, I was new to video. Viewers are now spending up to six hours/day watching video, so the time is right. 

Be prepared for a learning curve 

The YouTube ads creation tool is the same as that for Google ads. But there are significant differences and some subtle nuances. I did a lot of reading as I was working on this. It’s also helpful to watch videos that explain processes. 

We created a series of explainer videos

Our videos were about 60 seconds or less. I wrote the scripts, and this is key—keep them crisp and focused on a single topic. A quick how-to that explains a process or, in our case, the benefit of using a product/service. 

Professional-looking videos can get expensive, but I turned to Fiverr—a website that hosts contractors offering a wide range of services. I found a graphic designer from Pakistan who created our videos for between $100-200/each. The quality of these is excellent. We’ve developed a good working relationship, and it helped that he’s creative and clearly takes a lot of pride in his work. Turnaround time is generally a week or so. 

I also made a few of my own little videos using Promo.com

I love this little application. Easy to use, you can produce a polished video with music and three-five frames in a couple of hours. Keep your message simple and focused. 

Keywords are critical to the success of our ads

This is where it starts. Keywords are fundamental to a successful campaign. I use Google’s Keyword Planner. You want to use words and phrases for which there is a significant amount of search, but relatively little competition. Identify how much you want to spend per day and per view. 

Your keywords/phrases need to be grouped into adgroups.

Ad groups  organize your ads by a common theme—the types of products/services you’re advertising. An ad group contains one or more ads that share similar targets. Set a bid, or price, to be used when an ad group's keywords trigger an ad to appear. 

Identify your target audience

Really think about age, gender, education and interests. Think about where your audience is hanging out. These will be the websites where you place your ads. You can also create custom audiences based on these values. 

Measuring success: Make sure you’re tracking your website traffic with Google Analytics

I created a landing page to sign up for our newsletter, monitored Google Analytics and watched our numbers increase for our range of services. We were clearly driving traffic to our website. By synching your Google Ads account with Google Analytics you can see the effectiveness of your campaign from a single sign-in that streamlines your effort.

Interested in YouTube/Google advertising? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing specialists. 

Clubhouse: The Hot, New Audio-Only App

Clubhouse is the hot new social app that’s generating buzz from those who suffer from FOMO-disease (Fear of Missing Out). This invite-only, audio-based iPhone app is like listening in on someone else’s phone call. After a year of Covid privation, Clubhouse fills a need by creating community. 

What sets this social app apart: It’s audio-only 

Clubhouse has gotten some media attention from celebrities who’ve joined the Clubhouse rooms and immediately drawn big crowds. The biggest draw was uber-rich Elon Musk, whose Clubhouse appearance broke the 5,000-person limit for a room. Users tuned in to secondary listening rooms and live-streamed on other platforms to follow the Musk conversation. 

Clubhouse lets you listen in, or you could get called on as a participant in the chat. But this is a virtual clubhouse; each discussion takes place in a different room of the house. You can host chat rooms, browse the discussions going on in each room, look at who’s participating in each, and pop in and out of chats.

Clubhouse has also hosted a live reading of The Lion King, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg recently joined a Clubhouse chat. Other Clubhouse celebs include Oprah, Kevin Hart and Chris Rock. California Congressman Ted Lieu and retired Yankee pitcher CC Sabathia have also joined the Clubhouse discussions. 

At the Clubhouse, it’s celebrities who draw attention

Clubhouse hype and its audience continue to grow. Some stats that will get your attention

This app is still in its infancy—it will celebrate its first birthday in April 2021. 

• Clubhouse has about 2M weekly active users, as of the beginning of March. 
• Clubhouse has just nine employees.

The app was initially valued at $100M. How is this possible?

• It began with 1,500 beta users in April 2020.
• Clubhouse’s owners haven’t done any significant press; it doesn’t have a real website. 
• Yet Clubhouse was valued at $100M in May 2020 after an initial round of Series A funding with a $12M investment from VC Andreessen Horowitz.
• Clubhouse has a large population of celebrities and elite users—exclusivity is, of course, a large part of its appeal. As it grows, it will lose some of that exclusivity. How will it continue to set itself apart? 
• Clubhouse remains invite-only. New users can allocate a select number of invites to whomever they choose. Some are selling Clubhouse invites on eBay for up to $125 each.

Join in the after-hours house party

At 10ish every night, there’s a group of 30-50 people in The Back of the Bus room. What goes on there? A host makes sure there’s no tech talk. Topics can range from dating advice to tarot card readings. 

Further contributing to the app’s exclusivity: No Android version yet

Given the app’s rapid growth, it’s easy to see why investors are watching Clubhouse closely. The app recently raised a new round of funding on a $1B valuation. As Rachel Maddow says, “Watch this space!”

Time to talk marketing? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing specialists.