An early conversation that we have with all of our clients is whether they should invest in bidding (showing ads) on their own brand name using Google Ads. Many clients do not feel that they should “waste” money on paid clicks when surely they will get the same traffic anyway through organic search. Then the nest conversation is “If I bid on my own branded terms, should I also bid on my competitor’s branded terms?” This dilemma forms the crux of the brand bidding strategy, igniting debates among marketers. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the intricacies of this strategy, exploring its pros ..read more

Google Ads is competitive and making it run profitably takes work, unwanted clicks and irrelevant traffic can drain budgets and undermine campaign effectiveness. Negative keywords offer a solution by allowing advertisers to exclude specific terms and phrases that are not relevant to their business. By filtering out irrelevant traffic, negative keywords enhance ad targeting, improve click-through rates, and ultimately drive higher conversions. In this brief guide, we’ll explore the significance of negative keywords in Performance Max campaigns and show you how they can be leveraged for maximum ..read more

Google Merchant Center is a pivotal platform for e-commerce businesses to showcase their products effectively. One powerful tool within this ecosystem is the supplemental feed – a lesser-known yet incredibly valuable resource for optimising product visibility and performance. In this guide, we’ll delve into what supplemental feeds are, their key distinctions from primary feeds, their benefits, and how to set them up to increase your online sales. What is a Supplemental Feed? A supplemental feed is an additional data feed that complements your primary feed in Google Merchant Center. While the p ..read more

Google developed a great tool with Google Ads but they realised a number of years back that in order to keep growing their market share they need to make it more accessible to small business owners that may not necessarily be marketing professionals. After playing around with trying to simplify the platform wholesale they came up with the idea of specific campaign types that are much simpler to set up and manage – Smart Campaigns. These campaigns are a streamlined method to advertise on Google, utilising advanced AI technology to manage much of the process on your behalf. Particularly suited t ..read more

Have you ever looked at a conversion path report in Google Analytics 4? Here it is for one of our clients for last month: What this shows is the different patterns of visits that users take before completing a conversion action in the website. The path length varies by website but it is rare that we come across a website that typically has users converting on their first visit consistently. As you can see above there are many people taking 10+ visits to the website before making a commitment. So – this raises the topic of conversion attribution. If you are running paid ads and those ads are c ..read more

Are you running Display, Performance Max or Demand Gen ads across Google Display Network (GDN) and finding that a significant chunk of your traffic is coming from mobile apps, YouTube videos or channels which may not align with your advertising goals? Excluding irrelevant app placements and irrelevant video placements on YouTube is a crucial step to optimize your campaign performance and reach the right audience. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of excluding mobile app placements and YouTube placements on Google Ads. How to exclude App Placements? Option – 1 Exclude app placem ..read more

Firstly I will start with 3 qualifying questions to understand if you should read this post or not: Do you work in a business where people make a contract with you or pay you after a process/discussion takes place rather than a simple online transaction? Do you run Google ads and see the conversion data but lack visibility on which of those conversions turned into a paying customer? Would you like to tie your offline sales to the conversions you see in your Google ads account so that you can see the return on investment of your spend at a campaign, ad group and keyword level? If your answer ..read more

Most regular users of Google ads are familiar with the Google Ads dashboard. However, did you know that you can take your campaign monitoring up a notch by customising your dashboard experience? This article will guide you through the world of Google Ads Custom Dashboards, exploring their significance and how to set up your own personalised dashboard. Why a Custom Google Ads Dashboard? While the standard Google Ads dashboard provides a quick overview of key metrics, creating a custom dashboard tailored to your specific needs is a game-changer in terms of efficiency. This customisation allows y ..read more

In the realm of small business marketing, the efficacy of traditional models often comes into question. The traditional marketing funnel suggests a linear progression from Awareness to Action where a potential customer first becomes aware of your brand and then moves along their journey through being educated on your offerings, developing an interest in them and finally takes action to use your services or products. However, for the entrepreneur who values meaningful connections, sustainable growth and getting a good ROI, this model requires a more nuanced approach. Let’s explore a strategy th ..read more

This guide is designed with small businesses in mind – regardless of the country you are in this change will impact your digital marketing and you need to take a few hours to understand what is happening and also what you need to do to prepare. We put this off during 2023 as we knew that Chrome would not change until this year but now we all need to take action. We spent half a day reading and researching about the phasing out of 3rd party cookies on Google Chrome and are now clear on the process. This guide is a result of our research. The guide focuses mainly on the most popular Digital Mark ..read more