Paid Search & 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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

  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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

This past week, Google has introduced a change to their call-only ads. Previously, a call-only campaign would show on a mobile device with the only option being to call the business directly from the ad. With this change, while the primary action in the headline is still calling the business, there is now an additional[…]

Paid search is basically the stock market. They both boil down to making investments to maximize return hopefully with a minimum amount of risk. By investing more time into important economic theories, we can better figure out how to optimize returns and lower overall risk. Modern Portfolio Theory is one of the most important and[…]

“What is our competition doing right now?” “We don’t want to come off as tone-deaf or insensitive with our ads.” “We don’t want sales to tank, but orders are down due to COVID-19. I don’t think pausing all ads is the right thing to do, but we can’t keep spending what we were. What do[…]

With the advent of machine learning & automated bidding, you may be wondering what tools merchants can use to push their products for relevant queries.  Say for example, if every merchant is using automated bidding for a particular search query, how does Google choose who shows up and who gets their products shown first?  It[…]

If you work in digital marketing and create campaigns for Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc, you know that you can never check your work enough before launching campaigns. The worst feeling ever is thinking you may have forgotten to set your budgets or that you accidentally targeted the entire United States when you only meant to[…]

Granular’s Remote Work Tools / Tech Stack At Granular we’ve been setup to work remotely since day one. While most of the team is in Milwaukee, we were built to have a flexible work schedule and be able to be plugged into work from remote places. PPC doesn’t sleep, weekends and holidays need coverage sometimes[…]

Are you a work from home pro, or beginner? While more and more people are working from home, it’s important to remember that working from home can be very different from working in the office. Our office started to work from home this week, and while some of my coworkers are pros, some of us[…]

Ad Customizers Part 2 In part one of this three-part blog post, I shared how Ad Customizers are superior to DKI. We are still waiting on statistically significant data to prove our point. In the meantime, below is some helpful information on how to implement. How to Implement To implement these in your own campaigns,[…]

Do Google Gmail Ads Work for Restaurants? Most restaurants I’ve worked with seem to have tried Google Search Ads at some point, and although Search can be successful, common questions I hear are “what else can we do on Google?” and “how do we get new customers?” Surprisingly, I have found that most brands have[…]

The success of PPC campaigns is more than just what you see in the interface There are always challenges when running any successful paid search campaign. Most of the time, people will look at the data right in front of them when attempting to address a challenge they are facing. Sometimes, the answers can only[…]

In paid advertising, we all know the pains of quality score. We work incredibly hard with our clients to get their website to reflect exactly what their business does. Then we write ad copy based on those landing pages and our keywords need to be the most relevant to the user. But sometimes no matter[…]

Google Ad Customizers: Part 1 At a former agency, I worked on a PPC account that was so geographically segmented that we targeted such hot spots as Twin Falls, Idaho (population <50,000), and separated out Orem, UT from Provo, UT (a distance of less than 5 miles). This account was terribly under-managed, because most of[…]

Updated: June 30, 2023 It will be missed… If your business was in the right category (gas station, restaurant, coffee shop, bank, auto dealer, grocery store, or any niche business with an offline location) Waze was filled with amazing advertising opportunities, heck just look at some of earlier coverage of their features and updates. But[…]

I know a way to make your PPC ads out-of-this-world effective. Just make sure you show them to people that are going to buy anyway! 🙂 In this recent blog post, it was suggested that online advertising is a bubble, and that sooner or later people are going to figure out that all the money[…]