Getting Granular – PPC Blog

Digital Marketing, PPC, eCommerce and Lead Gen

Employment Ads Channels

Employment Ads Benchmarks: Which Digital Ad Channels Perform Best?

Here at Granular, we’ve had the privilege of working with over 50 different companies in multiple countries to assist with their hiring needs over the last few years. We have been able to drive nearly 150,000 applicants to these positions in the past year alone. There has been a lot of testing through various ad[…]

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Tips for Google Ads housing campaigns

4 Tips For Optimizing Google Ads Campaigns For Housing

In October 2020, Google updated their Personalized advertising policies to include new targeting restrictions that directly impacted advertising for Housing. Advertisers can no longer target users based on age, gender, marital status, parental status or ZIP code.  This makes it difficult to reach the right audience with your ads, (especially for those 55+ communities). Fortunately,[…]

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TikTok Advertising: The Why & The How Of Getting Started

Disclaimer from the authors Jessica Busalacchi & Emily Martin – Since TikTok is growing at a rapid pace and their advertising platform is so new, a lot of features are continuously changing. We will do our best to keep this guide updated!  Over the past year, TikTok has taken the world by storm with its[…]

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linkedin event ads

How LinkedIn Ads Is Supporting The Virtual Events Trend

Chances are by now you’ve either organized or attended an online event you might not have prior to the pandemic. In LinkedIn’s Best Practice Guide for Events, they mention… 65% of B2B marketers are planning to reallocate some or most of their live event budgets to online events due to Covid-19. The types of online[…]

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Programmatic - OTT vs CTV

Programmatic Video

Since COVID-19 hit the world in 2020, more people have been at home watching streaming content than ever before. This has increased programmatic video advertising opportunities. The main two avenues for distribution are Connected TV (CTV) and Over the Top (OTT) advertising.  When first hearing about CTV, most people equate it with something like running[…]

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improve digital attribution

3 Basic Ways to Improve Your Digital Attribution Quickly

Detailed and accurate attribution is key to driving digital marketing performance. If the data that your decisions are based on is inaccurate or not detailed enough, then you’re at risk of not making the most optimal decisions. Often, we find that clients are aware that what they’re tracking isn’t a complete picture of all their[…]

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responsive search ads

My Satisfying Approach For Making Quality Responsive Search Ads (RSAs)

I have some issues with the approach of creating Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) as soon as you start a new campaign in a Google Ads account. First, RSAs use the headlines and description lines you input. How do you know if those inputs are any good? Until you have data that proves it to be[…]

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Drive Online Revenue

6 Ways To Drive More Online Revenue Using Your Customer Data

As a business, one of the most valuable things you have is your customer data. There are several different ways you can utilize your customer data in digital marketing to both re-engage current customers and find new customers. First, let’s talk about the type of customer data you will need and how you can collect[…]

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Facebook Ad Account Disabled

Facebook Ad Account Disabled?

Having your Facebook ad account disabled can be extremely frustrating, especially when Facebook gives little-to-no detail on what policy was violated to trigger the disapproval! We at Granular have found, more often than not in recent days and weeks, the reason that our clients’ ad accounts get randomly shut down is because they have not[…]

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Content Grouping

A Feature Of Google Analytics Content Creators Shouldn’t Overlook

To me, it seems like an overlooked feature that’s been a part of Google Analytics Universal since it launched is Content Groupings. Content groupings are clusters of pages defined by common identifiers, like URL, metadata or website purpose.  By using them, a company can better understand the growth of its website over time through more[…]

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Increase Conversions with Smart Bidding

How Google Ads Smart Bidding Increased My Conversions By +171%

Do you have a go-to conversation starter? Something that always gets people talking? At Granular, our team has spent hours debating if a hotdog is a sandwich, if cereal is soup, and more recently – if a Pop-Tart is a ravioli. Another way to get a group of PPC experts to start a conversation is[…]

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Google Ads Grants: Important Requirements & Helpful Strategy Tips

I forget what the psychological effect is called, but something happens to people when they get free money.  They tend to be more careless with it.  “Oh, I just got a bonus in my paycheck?  Yippe ki yay!  I’ll go blow it on a doodad I’ve been wanting for a while,” we think.  “Oh, I[…]

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5 YouTube Ad Placement Types You Need To Watch Out For

It’s true. There are some really bad placements for your ads on YouTube. For the unsuspecting advertiser that follows a basic campaign set up and uses some broader targeting options (like topics and keywords), they may just find that they’ve been serving ads before and during videos that either don’t deliver any value, or worse,[…]

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how to move a facebook ad account

How To Move A Personal Ad Account Into Facebook Business Manager

At Granular we believe it is critical for companies to own their own digital ad accounts but every so often we come across a client whose Facebook Ads Manager account was set up under an employee’s personal ad account instead of under the business. This can become a real pain…especially if the employee no longer[…]

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The Unbelievably Easy Way To Compare Your Products’ Prices In Google Shopping

I have a huge flea market not too far from my house.  When I go there and find something I want to buy, I make sure I cover the whole market first because I regularly find multiple vendors that are selling the same thing.  And while the first vendor that carries the product may be[…]

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When to switch to GA4

Should I Switch To GA4? – The Question Marketers Are Asking Themselves

In the past few weeks, I’ve been asked by clients and internal team members a very smart question; “When should we start using GA4 (Google Analytics 4)?,” and I didn’t really have a clear answer. In the past few months since being released in October of 2020, GA4 has been throwing many digital marketers and[…]

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Own Digital Ad Accounts

Why It’s Critical For Companies To Own Their Digital Ad Accounts

Recently, I got a new client and ran into a major obstacle in the onboarding process that left both the client and I frustrated. Not only that, it delayed launching new campaigns and made not only the onboarding process more difficult, but all management for the ad accounts moving forward more complicated. As a standard[…]

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How To Use Chatbots To Generate Leads On Facebook

Have you ever felt that the audience in your Facebook lead generation campaign has gone dry? You may have started to see your Cost/Conv. and Frequency rise, or maybe people just aren’t converting as they did initially. Well, it might be time to try out a chatbot instead of a lead gen form.  Never used[…]

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Google Ads Keyword Match Types Have Changed. Here’s What You Should Do.

Ever since Google used the phrase “don’t be evil” as its motto and in its corporate code of conduct, people have been using the phrase to judge every action they take as evil or not.  With the latest change to their advertising platform, people are asking themselves again – is Google being evil?  Some think[…]

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4 Ways To Find The Right YouTube Videos To Target With Your Ads

YouTube can be kind of a dangerous place to advertise if you don’t know what you’re doing.  Why is that?  Well…consider this… As of this writing, there are about 720,000 hours of new video content uploaded to YouTube every day(!!!), and that content varies widely.  What’s more, the audiences watching that content varies wildly.  Personally,[…]

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Shopping Trends

A Pandemic Update on Trending Search Terms

Last year changed a lot in retail – with limited capacities at stores due to COVID-19, retailers started pushing for more online driven marketing and focused on store pickups. Google introduced the Curbside Pickup tag (see image below) earlier in the year, with Microsoft following shortly after. Retailers began to train their customers to shop[…]

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13 Paid Search Ad Techniques To Try For Relatively Unknown Products

A new client recently started with us and brought with them a sort of unique situation when it comes to Paid Search.  I had heard about examples of this situation before but had never directly worked with it. The unique part of working with this client is people don’t search for what they offer. Huh,[…]

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5 Tips for Better Digital Marketing Writing

WUT YOU SAY? 5 Tips Guaranteed To Better-ize Your Digital Writing

Every day, one of my best friends and I started our conversations with “how are you?” Of course, the next person gives the obligatory “good, but tired/busy/stressed. How about you?” AND IT’S DRAINING. I love talking to this friend, but this opening takes all of the interest out of our conversations. And then I remembered[…]

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Google Data Studio - Mistakes

5 Beginner Google Data Studio Mistakes We Wish We Hadn’t Made

At Granular, we used to use spreadsheets for our client-facing KPI reporting. This involved downloading data for every account we had, then molding it into charts and graphs that would be readable by a client. As our number of clients grew, this task became much more difficult. We had to find an automated solution that[…]

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How To Grab & Hold Attention With YouTube Video Advertising

Some people are calling the last few years “The Goldfish Era.”  Why?  Because studies are showing the human attention span has become about as long as those of a goldfish.  Actually, the data is showing that they’re shorter! According to Microsoft research, which has been quoted numerous times, human attention span dropped from 12 seconds[…]

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