We’re kicking off a series of posts to help people get started with Google Ads (also known as Google AdWords) since we can’t offer our in-person classes during this time (though we’re still doing training virtually). We’re going to start at the beginning with How to Set up Your Google Ads Account – The Right Way. Google Ads accounts are pretty straight-forward to set up but there are a few things you want to do to make sure you don’t have headaches down the line.
Account Set up Basics – First of all, you need a Gmail account so if you don’t have one or if you’re setting up a Google Ads account for digital marketing for a company you work for, we recommend setting up a generic gmail account that everyone at the company can access that’s not your personal account. For example “yourcompanyname”ads@gmail.com or demandquestads@gmail.com would be a smart one to set up.
Next, do NOT set up Smart Campaigns or Google Express Campaigns from Google (they’re the same thing). They make it very easy to set up but you can’t change your campaign settings from Smart to Basic down the line and you will not have as many options with the Smart Campaigns. Don’t do it!
Head over to ads.google.com and sign in. Once signed in you will be prompted with the question of “What’s your main advertising goal?” For best results with your Google Ads account, select “Switch to Expert Mode” at the bottom. Next you will be prompted to confirm your business information. It’s important that this information is correct because you can not change this in the future. Here’s Google’s advice on setting up a new Google Ads account: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6366720?hl=en
Here’s some more information on how to set up a new campaign in Google Ads
You’ll be prompted to set up an expanded text ads and to add keywords. Here are some tips on how to create ads.
Account Organization Video from Google Ads – This will help guide you when you set up your campaigns in Google Ads.
Lastly you’ll want to make sure you have a daily budget. We recommend starting with $5 a day with means around $150 a month to get started. You can adjust this anytime you want but be sure to start small because you can always increase your budgets after you’re sure everything is set up correctly!
“Setting up your budget” video – and yes, this video is for Google Express (also known as Smart campaigns) but will apply for regular Google Campaigns as well.
And there you have it – you should have a Google Ads (Google AdWords) campaign set up and ready to help you sell more online. As always, let us know if you have any questions. Happy digital marketing!
Did you know that improving site load times by just 0.1 second can increase conversion rates by up to 8%? Or that 77% of smartphone shoppers are more likely to purchase if they can find their way to checkout seamlessly? Providing a quality site experience can dramatically improve your results. Find out if your site is performing at its optimum level here: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/feature/testmysite/
We’ve posted this before and try and run our site once a quarter to make sure we’re optimizing our mobile speed.
We were asked by the MN Theater Alliance for some advice on how to keep their organizations relevant and engaged during the shutdown. We work with a number of theaters so we put together some ideas for how to recycle old content, engage your followers, and use Google Analytics to drive your content. The presentation was recorded and is here for you! While it’s aimed at arts organizations (theatres in particular), this can be applied to most social media strategies during Covid and beyond. As always, let us know if you have any questions!
Using Social Media to Maintain Your Online Presence During Covid
Presented by Prairie Pixel Brad Larson, Ted Kozlowski & Rachael Kozlowski May 27 2020
Agenda:
1.State of the world in social advertising
2. What’s your current social communications status? Quiet? Evergreen content? Bracing to re-open?
3. How and when to re-open / re-launch your messaging.
4. How to stand out – fundraising
5. Best practices for organic posts during the pandemic
6. Recycle/ update existing content
7. Boost or Business? Why they are different.
8. .Best practices for paid placements
9. Tricks to create unique audience profiles
10. Targeting audience through remarketing
11. Differentiate audiences by where they are in the buying process (sales funnel)
12. .Should I put all my marketing efforts into social advertising?
13. Analytics – friend or foe? Use Analytics to understand your audience, adjust content, increase ROI
14. New Chrome browser update – is it affecting my analytics/audience tracking?
15. Q&A
State of the world in social advertising – According to the New York Times, people have been using social media to connect and stay informed during Covid with facebook.com seeing a 27% increase in visitors and YouTube seeing a 15% increase. It’s a great time to use social media for organic posts and paid posts to keep your audience updated and engaged.
We work with a number of companies who use a co op program to encourage their retailers to manage online advertising campaigns through matched funds or company funds. Your retailers excel at knowing your products but they don’t always excel at selling them online, especially in the competitive world of online retail. We’ll take a look at your retailers online advertising efforts and make suggestions for how to improve their sales without competing with the parent company or nearby re-sellers. We can also look at your Co op set up and help you navigate fund allowances, reporting, management and optimization. Contact us today for a free assessment and talk about your co op strategies, efforts, and goals.
Upon conducting the audit, a report will be delivered with an assessment of the following key components of your account:
Overall account performance for your retailers
Overall account performance for your internal campaigns (if applicable)
Overlap of efforts
Relevance of keywords and search terms you’re bidding on
This is the first time in many years that we didn’t get the opportunity to host the Annual Grow With Google Small Business Week Seminars at Demand Quest. It’s an event that we generally love to host because we get to meet new small business owners and marketers, we get to learn about best practices from Google, and we get to see former students. While we were unable to host, we still want to share Google’s talk so here’s how to Manage Your Business Remotely in Times of Uncertainty from Google
If you have any questions about how to restructure your campaigns during these uncertain times, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We’d love to talk about what’s going on and how to stay relevant during Covid. You can reach me at rachael @ demandquest.com
We’re thinking about challenges you may be facing right now and how we can help. All of us at Facebook Audience Network are together with you, and we want to support you and your business in any way we can.
We’ve compiled a list of resources publishers have requested to help optimize their ad placements and improve monetization.
Get Revenue Optimization Tips: At Building for Better Revenue, our hub of monetization information, find tips and information including revenue basics, ad components, optimizing for engagement, and setting price targets.
Maximizing Earning Potential: We recommend taking a look at your CPM targets and optimizing mid- and low-level waterfall CPM targets at this time. Our Price Settings Guide shows how to adjust CPM targets.
Bidding Guide: If you are already testing bidding, consult our Essential App Bidding Guide for help in optimizing.
Gaming Growth Resources: Find the latest strategies, research and best practices to help you grow your gaming business at Supercharge Your Game.
Publisher Help Center: Search for common monetization topics and get answers right away at our Help Center. Discover ways to improve interstitial and rewarded video ad implementations, get information on using Monetization Manager, and search for topics on payouts.
Publisher Concierge: Reach us by email or chat with concerns or questions.
Webinars and Videos: Visit our YouTube channel to watch publisher success stories, webinars on monetization topics, and more.
We’re working to provide you with the information and solutions you need for your business, now and in the future. We hope you find these resources useful. Please let us know through the Publisher Concierge if there are any other resources that would be helpful to you.
