Getting Granular – PPC Blog

Digital Marketing, PPC, eCommerce and Lead Gen

How I Rephrased 2 Words in a Headline & Improved Results by 34%!

I love new ways to think about how to create ad copy.  Looking back on my younger PPC management years, I definitely didn’t give enough weight to it from the beginning.  That’s probably because I’ve always been a numbers guy first.  But then I had a eureka moment when I said to myself…“You’re in advertising[…]

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Confluence Conference 2017

Joe Martinez, our Senior Manager of Paid Media & Community at Granular, just presented at Confluence Conference for his second year in a row. Marketers in attendance learned how they can utilize Google Tag Manager to build higher-converting remarketing campaigns. By tracking how users interact with your website, we can use event categories, actions, and[…]

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AdWords’ Price Extensions: 5 Powerful Techniques You Can Use

In the past when we’ve talked about pricing strategies in digital marketing, it’s mostly been a conversation about post-click conversion rate optimization.  Sure, we’ve always been able to put prices in ad text.  But with the release of 2 newer ad extensions in Google AdWords (and the presence of product listing ads), it’s becoming more[…]

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Optimizing for High Converting, Low CTR Campaigns

Editor’s Note: This post is an intro to our webinar for PPC Week by Unbounce. In the webinar on August 15th, we’re going to talk about the opposite scenario of improving low converting pages when you have a higher CTR. Every time I get high converting traffic for my clients, I want more. Besides adding[…]

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Easy Ways to Eliminate Wasted Ad Spend

Whether you have a massive ad spend budget or not, you always want to get the most out of your money. If you’re set to a limited budget, your effort in making sure every penny is being used wisely is even more important. Saving money in AdWords doesn’t have to involve a lot of difficult[…]

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BizExpo 2017

Joe Martinez just finished presenting on B2B digital marketing strategies at the 2017 BizExpo at Potawatomi Hotel & Casino. Attendees learned various ways they can grow their business online through online advertising, mobile optimization, video and more. Check out the slides below and download your own copy. Download the Slides

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The Summit on Content Marketing 2017

Granular was honored to be asked to be a part of The Summit on Content Marketing. The summit is on online event with over 100 speakers. Our own Joe Martinez was part of the lineup alongside industry veterans such as Rand Fishkin, Neil Patel, Andy Crestodina and many more. In his session, Joe showed attendees why[…]

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In-House PPC Blog Series: JD Prater from AdStage.io

A few months ago the CEO of an ad tech startup reached out and presented me with an opportunity to lead their user acquisition and growth marketing efforts. I decided to trust my gut and accept the in-house role at AdStage as their Head of User Acquisition and Growth. Leaving agency life behind was tough.[…]

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2 Tips to Avoid the Set It and Forget It Facebook Mentality

Facebook is a great advertising tool. The ads have the ability to be visually stunning, it provides a fabulous space to let your brand’s personality really shine, and the targeting is so intense that I often think of Facebook as the CIA of the internet. Facebook also has the wonderful capability of doing EXACTLY what[…]

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HeroConf 2017

Joe Martinez, our Senior Manager of Paid Media & Community, recently presented on YouTube advertising at HeroConf 2017 in Los Angeles. In the presentation, Joe showed attendees why YouTube advertising is important in addition to his favorite types of targeting options. You’ll also get an understanding of how YouTube ads can positively impact your brand awareness.[…]

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SMX West 2017

Joe Martinez, our Senior Manager of Paid Media & Community, recently presented at SMX West in San Jose, CA. In the presentation, Joe showed attendees a few of his favorite event tracking tags marketers should consider implementing. After implementation he then showcased how those events recorded in Analytics can help create unique marketing strategies to improve any[…]

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AdWords Using Product Recognition Technology to Show Shopping Ads on YouTube?

My boss, Jordon Meyer, was looking for help to perform some maintenance on a speedometer cable in his 1988 Range Rover Classic. As most people do nowadays, he searched on YouTube for an instructional video to help make the task easier. When viewing the video, everything seemed normal until he hit the 50 second mark. It was at[…]

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Stop Bidding Down on Mobile. Improve the Mobile Experience

Let’s see if this scenario rings a bell. When performing account analysis, you segment your AdWords campaigns or ad groups by device. Next, you notice mobile bids convert at a much lower rate than desktop. You pull out Google’s recommended formula for mobile bid adjustments (Mobile Conversion Rate / Desktop Conversion Rate) – 1 and[…]

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Startup Milwaukee Emerge at Granular in March

Emerge is a monthly meeting where Milwaukee startups can practice their pitches in front of a live group of local investors and entrepreneurs. Granular is proud to host the next event on March 15th from 8:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. This event is FREE and open to anyone. The current lineup of startups pitching will be Midwest[…]

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Gallery Night and Day Event at Granular

Gallery Night and Day in Milwaukee is back, and Granular is happy to be a part of the fun for the first time. If you’re not familiar with the event, participants can enjoy “an evening of gallery hopping and art viewing beginning Friday, January 20 and continuing during the day on Saturday, January 21.” Not only do[…]

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2016 Review and Exclusive New Google Partnership for Granular!

Granular has had an exciting year of new partnerships and growth within different search and paid social platforms in the digital marketing ecosystem. We’re heading into 2017 with a strong tailwind that will propel us to our lofty goals in the future. Back in July, Granular was selected to be a part of Google’s new[…]

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Granular Speaking at SMX West and HeroConf in 2017

Granular is happy to announce Joe Martinez, our Senior Manager of Paid Media & Community, will be speaking at two of the biggest conferences in our industry in 2017: SMX West and HeroConf. SMX West SMX West is held every March in San Jose, CA. This conference is put on by Third Door Media who runs[…]

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Failproof Way to Start Using AdWords’ Click-to-Message Extensions

On October 17, 2016, AdWords introduced click-to-message ad extensions to the public. This new ad extension allows users who see an ad on Google.com to click on a SMS icon to immediately contact the business using it. Here’s what it looks like… Not only do ad extensions help boost your ad rank, but this new[…]

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Importance of Attending Digital Marketing Conferences

I’ve been lucky enough to be able to go to at least one marketing conference a year for the past couple of years. I’ve heard from my PPC friends online a couple of times their boss doesn’t see the value of sending them to a conference. One common reason is the cost. Another reason is[…]

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3 Simple Ways to Increase Mobile PPC Performance

Don’t worry. I’m not going to waste your time with a bunch of stats on why mobile is important. You’re a smart PPC marketer and already know it’s important. But if you’re not seeing the engagement results you’d like from your mobile ads, here are three tips you can test to increase your performance! Make Sure[…]

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5 Ways to Avoid a Bad PPC Holiday

5 Ways to Avoid a Bad PPC Holiday (eCom and Retail) Set Annual Budgets and Plan for Higher CPCs Unless you’re selling water filters or diapers, there’s typically some seasonality baked into your eCommerce business. Make sure you plan out your annual SEM budget to coincide with increases in demand, sales and competition. Many people[…]

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3 Questions to Ask Someone Selling You PPC

Before I got into digital marketing, terms such as “quality score, CPC, CTR or match types” would have been foreign to me. The mentioned PPC terms are some of the simplest terms for any PPC marketer to understand. For someone not in the field, these terms make no sense at all. The lack of understanding paid search[…]

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In-House PPC Blog Series: Michael Henderson from SuretyBonds.com

Hey! I’m Mike Henderson, Digital Marketing Director at SuretyBonds.com where I manage our paid search and other online marketing initiatives. I started at SuretyBonds.com in October 2013. Prior to coming on, I was fresh out of college working at a small ad agency. I was hesitant to make the move to in-house, but like most[…]

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Confluence Conference 2016

Joe Martinez, our Senior Manager of Paid Media & Community at Granular, just got back from presenting at Confluence Conference last week in Oklahoma City. The full house at Will Rogers Theatre learned how advertisers should focus their ad content on the user experience. Building user trust, backed up by a great customer experience, leads to livelong users.[…]

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Growth Hackathon Event Announcement

The Growth Hackathon is a one day workshop for high-potential, entrepreneurial-minded individuals to turn their startup idea into a business with measurable traction by the end of the day. There are great startup ideas, but many fail to get the awareness and volume of customer feedback required to move from the idea stage to a[…]

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