Getting Granular – PPC Blog

Digital Marketing, PPC, eCommerce and Lead Gen

consider programmatic

Why You Should Consider Programmatic Advertising In A Digital Strategy

The word programmatic has been thrown around more than normal over the past seven months, especially if you are in the marketing world. When you run a search for “what is programmatic advertising,” you’re hit with dozens upon dozens of search results that may or may not give you an exact clear answer. The simplest[…]

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Persuasively prepare ppc audience

How To Persuasively Prepare PPC Audiences For Offers Prior To Asking

There’s a saying in marketing and sales that goes something like this… Some people will buy from you no matter what you do.  Some people won’t buy from you no matter what you do.  It’s what you do with the rest that determines how successful you’ll be. Since this is the case, it’s our job[…]

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Maintaining culture through pandemic

Maintaining Culture Through a Pandemic

Employee perks don’t make you one of the best agencies in town, but they sure do help make work seem a little less of a drag. These extras have always been a focus for me at Granular. Having worked for other agencies and in-house I mentally bookmarked everything I wished they offered me when I[…]

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Is Ignoring Lead Quality Causing Your Digital Marketing To Suffer?

As the holiday season is in full swing, I imagine all the Halloween candy, Thanksgiving mashed potatoes and stuffing, and Christmas cookies; followed by a New Years resolution to be healthier. As many people do when trying to lose weight, we often use other goals to help us get there. We count calories, track physical[…]

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higher-education webinar with Google

Granular + Google EDU Webinar Recording

From the start, Granular has been a trusted digital marketing partner for colleges and universities around the country and tapped to help drive enrollment, improve efficiency, and bring new students in a measurable and scalable way.  We’ve worked with for-profit and non-profit institutions ranging from small regional colleges to large universities. We have also worked[…]

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Why Google’s Responsive Ad Strength Tool Is An Idea Factory

Why Google’s Responsive Ad Strength Tool Is An Idea Factory I have no doubt, one of the most challenging parts of digital marketing is creating quality search ad copy that both stands out from the competition and motivates searchers to click. Not only do you have to know the product/service, offer, and company well to[…]

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This Facebook Tool Can Solve Your Ad Performance Frustrations

You’ve got all the campaign settings right.  Your target audience is exactly who you want to target.  You believe you have a great offer for that audience.  You know how much you want to pay per conversion.  But still you’re getting high CPMs with low CTRs and your results aren’t acceptable or what you thought[…]

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How to Share Access to Your LinkedIn Campaign Manager Account

So, you want to grant someone access to your LinkedIn accounts so they can manage your ads for you? Well, you are just in luck! This easy how-to guide will get that expert PPC professional into your Campaign Manager account and creating eye-catching, lead-generating Sponsored Content and In-Mail ads before you can say “Man, this[…]

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Try My Dynamic Search Ads Strategy & Build Long-Term Search Success

Here I’m going to suggest an approach to using Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) campaigns in mid-to-large ecommerce Google and Microsoft Ads accounts that is likely not what you’d hear from the typical account manager. From what I’ve heard and read, most account managers use DSA campaigns to fill in the missing holes in their accounts[…]

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5 Advanced Tricks & Tips for Mastering Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is a tool that can bring highs and lows. It can lead you down a path of troubleshooting that will take hours for you only to realize you forgot to hit “submit” for your changes. It has the capacity to put you on the top of the world when you set up[…]

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What The NFL Draft Can Teach Search Advertisers About Quality Score

The pressure to win and be #1 is crucial in sports. Athletes and coaches spend numerous hours training, reviewing playbooks and perfecting their skills to be better, stronger and faster than their competitors. For instance, during a football combine, athletes’ skills are judged using key performance indicators like speed during a 40 yard dash, vertical[…]

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3 Things The Pandemic Has Changed In Higher Education PPC

At Granular, we are fortunate enough to work with colleges and universities across the nation. We work with both public and private institutions targeting both traditional and non-traditional students. As such, we’ve been able to gain a lot of insight into higher ed trends during the coronavirus pandemic. Here are 3 insights we’ve pulled from[…]

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Link Your Facebook Pixel To Your Ads Account For Better Management

As a follow-up to a recent blog post by my colleague, one issue that sometimes arises after you have linked your Facebook ads account to your agency is that the pixel is not properly connected. The Facebook pixel is an essential part of tracking all of your website visitors’ activity from page views to conversions[…]

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Google Shopping Annotations: 7 Options That Make Product Ads Stand Out

A constantly moving task and target in Search marketing is making your ads stand out from the crowd. In crowded search results pages where multiple companies (including you) are selling similar products and services, how do you best communicate what you have to offer and put your best foot forward to earn a click and[…]

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Improve Virtual Event Attendance With LinkedIn’s Sponsored Message Ads

Social media news feeds are crowded and noisy and people scroll through them quickly. While they can and do work for advertising, it’s not exactly a captive audience. But LinkedIn has an ad type that allows you to avoid that. Reach people’s message inbox directly LinkedIn Sponsored Message Ads (formerly InMail) are ads that are[…]

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increase shopping roas

Quickly Increase Your Shopping ROAS With a Script for Trending Queries

Wouldn’t it be great to know faster what users are currently searching for this week compared to the last week and year to year? You could optimize your inventory, bidding and even campaign structure. You’d not only save time for yourself, but could save your clients money!  You may be thinking, “Well I already use[…]

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How I Cut CPCs By -40% In 2 Weeks With Expanded Text Ads

In his book Digital Marketing in and AI World, Frederick Vallaeys makes the point that there are some things machines can do better than humans and there are some things humans can do better than machines. It’s in using the combination of these strengths that we find the best results.     One area where[…]

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How to build a competitor bidding strategy

Google Ads Competitor Bidding: How to Build a Winning Strategy

As a marketing nerd, I love reading about Wendy’s tweets. Why? Because they are always bashing McDonald’s and other fast food chains (and they’re pretty good at it when they do). Wendy’s has mastered using their competitors (and trolling) to get attention. Luckily, you don’t have to master trolling to use your competitors in your[…]

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how to link your facebook account to your agency

How to Link Your Facebook Account With Your Agency’s Business Manager Account

Linking an advertiser’s Facebook account with an agency’s Business Manager account can often be challenging, especially compared with the other common self-serve advertising platforms like Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or LinkedIn. Often, the linking process happens during the onboarding phase of a client-agency relationship, making any fumbles or false starts even more noticeable as this[…]

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5 New Features That Has LinkedIn Advertising Stepping Up Its Game

If you haven’t noticed yet, the LinkedIn advertising platform has been stepping up its game. Out of all the major digital ad platforms that we deal with (Google, Bing, Facebook, etc.), LinkedIn’s platform and capabilities has historically been the worst in my (and many others) opinion. This is of course outside of the vastly superior[…]

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Micheal Jordan's return

3 Simple Things Michael Jordan’s Return Can Teach Facebook Marketers

  On March 18, 1995 Michael Jordan shocked the world when he faxed the simple and effective press release: “I’m back.” This went viral, before viral was a thing, and perfectly got the message across that he was setting down his baseball bat and rejoining the NBA. The success and simplicity of “I’m back” is[…]

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Insourcing and Outsourcing: What You Should Know About Industry Trends and Patterns

To insource or to outsource? For many businesses, that is an ongoing question. In the past few years, the benefits of outsourcing have been highly touted and embraced by companies of all sizes and in all industries. But insourcing also has a certain appeal. So, how can you choose which option is best for your[…]

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search formats you competitor isn't using

3 Search Formats Your Competitor (Probably) Isn’t Using

As PPC Marketers we are constantly testing new ways to stand out on the SERP. As you probably already know, this involves extensive keyword research, manual bid adjustments, and sometimes even a little luck. But now Google has gifted us with three new awesome formats to make your search campaigns stand out vs your competitor[…]

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How To Organize Your Tasks For Maximum Productivity

In the field of analytics, the great Avinash Kaushik has said “data in aggregate is crap.” Why did he say this? Because when you aggregate numbers, things become blurry. To say your website got a million visits last month might mean something to you, but breaking it down into how that is spread out among[…]

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Be More Productive: How To Deal With Everything On Your Plate

One of the biggest hindrances to productivity is how we feel at any given time. We’ve all said it – “I don’t feel like doing anything today” or “I don’t feel like going to work.” And it’s true, we all need time blocked off to do nothing or do only what we enjoy. But sometimes[…]

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