Paid Search & PPC

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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,[…]

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[…]

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,[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

Where can you Learn How To Kickflip In 5 Minutes, take a seat in a Harvard MBA classroom, or even make a Disney Princess Cake all in the same place? YouTube! And, guess what? In 2021 the amount of opportunity to reach audiences when they are watching or searching for videos on YouTube is essentially[…]

Note: With more and more information being released, this topic is changing quickly. We wrote this blog post & recorded the podcast at the end of January and will do our best to keep it updated as Apple and Facebook release more information. Facebook vs Apple. It’s a new chapter in an ever-growing data showdown…so[…]

The content you are about to read is satire, and as with every good piece of satire, is grounded in real life experiences. It is not meant to offend – we love our platform partners and hold web developers and designers in the highest of regards (Lord knows I certainly am not capable of doing[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]