Paid Search & PPC

Expert Tips, Insights, and Analysis

PPC experts Anna Borchert, Emily Martin and Steve Kroll at conference

Welcome to your hub for Paid Search & PPC know-how. Uncover actionable tips and strategic insights, all scrutinized by industry experts. Navigate the intricacies of cost-per-click, ad auctions, and keyword targeting. Our goal is to turn the complex PPC landscape into a stroll through a well-lit park.

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Competitor Brand Terms

Pros and Cons – PLUS: 9 Examples Analyzing the Most Sophisticated Performance Marketers. The Temptation of Bidding on Another Company’s Brand Terms in Google Is it wise to bid on a competitor’s brand keywords in Google Ads? For anyone with experience utilizing strategy, it can feel a bit like taking a blow torch to your[…]

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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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YouTube Video Sequence Ads

Why Your Business Needs to be Testing YouTube Video Ad Sequences

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[…]

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prepare for iOS14 update

How To Prepare Your Facebook Campaigns For Apple’s iOS14 Update

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[…]

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A Festivus For The Rest Of Us (PPC Professionals)

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[…]

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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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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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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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