Business & Marketing Strategy

Articles to help you start thinking about turning business goals into marketing strategy

Edge out competitors & maximize your marketing reach by leveraging the experience & advice from industry experts at Granular. From social media specialists all the way up to Granular’s leadership, you’ll find a wealth of perspectives offering lessons and marketing tactics to help your business advance in this curated collection.

Refine article topics: Business Tactics | Marketing Strategies | CRO Tactics | Display Ad Strategies

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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Q4 Holiday Planning: It Never Ends, And Why You Should Think About it Early

While it might seem early to be thinking about the holidays in the middle of summer, now is the time to begin your advertising plan for the upcoming holiday season. Black Friday and the 2024 holiday season are fast approaching and you don’t want to be caught off guard with any part of your media[…]

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Punctuation and Symbols in Google Ads Keywords for Digital Marketers

Often, questions arise between PPC managers along the lines of “Can I bid on my client’s brand name with a dash in it (For example: Harley-Davidson, Molson-Coors, etc.) or will that be a duplication of my keywords?”  As you may or may not already be aware, having the same keyword twice in a Google Ads[…]

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Google Marketing Live 2024: Key Updates and The Impact on Marketers

The 2024 Google Marketing Live event was a lot to take in, as Google unveiled several updates allegedly designed to supercharge our advertising efforts. From AI-powered creative assets to immersive shopping ads, there’s a lot to unpack… Now this is where you would normally find our in-depth blog post about everything you should and would[…]

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Minimum Ad Spend Blog Banner

Minimum Ad Spend Guide: Navigating Budgets for Digital Success

Are you struggling to decide how much to spend on digital advertising and where to allocate your budget for the best ROI? In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, understanding the nuances of advertising spend across different channels can significantly impact your strategy’s success. Whether you’re a small business owner, a marketing professional, or simply[…]

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Agency Red Flags_Blog Banner

Five Red Flags to Look Out For When Working With Agencies

Working with agencies can be a game-changer for businesses looking to expand their online presence. However, not all agencies are created equal, and it’s important to be aware of potential red flags before entering into a partnership.  Take a look at the five warning signs that an agency might be hiding and find out how[…]

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Navigating Crucial Requirements in Google Grant Accounts

Google Ad Grants provide eligible non-profits the opportunity to receive up to $10,000 per month in ad spend on Google search. Yes, that’s up to $120,000 a year in free ad spend! Granular has helped non-profits secure and spend over $1,000,000 of free ad spend in Google. To help make sure you’re getting the most[…]

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The Importance of First-Party Data

First-party data is crucial for marketers everywhere. With privacy updates changing frequently, marketers are slowly losing access to the wild west of data we analyze to make informed marketing decisions. So, what is first-party data? First-party data is information you collect directly from your customers’ consent on your own channels. It can stem from customer purchases, support[…]

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Enhancing Performance with Advanced Audience Targeting in Programmatic Advertising

One aspect of programmatic advertising that excites us here at Granular is the advanced audience targeting it offers. Publishers from every nook and cranny create audience segments, down to super niche personas that can be overlaid onto the different channels. Through a demand-side platform (DSP), you can access audience segments by searching for a word[…]

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Find Your Break-even Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) For Lead-To-Sale Journeys

Are you confident that your lead-gen advertising campaigns are profitable? If you’re not 100% sure, there’s no need to worry, we’ve got you covered!  You need to learn about your break-even customer acquisition costs, and the key is to identify the threshold between unprofitable and profitable advertising. I’m going to use a fake catering business[…]

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Three Quick Tips For Advertisers Who Are Not Graphic Designers

It’s a weekday afternoon at 4:45 p.m. You get assigned a last-minute campaign. You upload the provided creative and get an error message about the image size being too big or the wrong shape for the ad. Your client isn’t responding with new creative and it’s down to the wire, your ad needs to go[…]

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Website Sucks Part I, II, and III Blog Banner

Advertising When Your Website Sucks

Table of contents Jump to Part I: My Website Sucks. Should I run digital ads? Jump to Part II: My Website Still Sucks. Can I run digital conversion ads? Jump to Part III: My Website Still Sucks. How do I show customers what they need? 8/2/2023 Part I: My Website Sucks. Should I run digital[…]

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Webinar | ‘Tis the Season to be PPC Planning for the Holidays

It may only be August and currently in the triple digits here in Milwaukee, but it’s that time of the year to dive into digital media planning for the holidays (Q4) and start looking into 2024. To help get you started Granular’s founder and CEO, Jordon Meyer alongside President, Steve Kroll tap into their 25+[…]

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RIP Twitter. Hello X 

Ding Ding Ding, the digital boxing match Musk VS Zuck continues this week!  A few days ago, Elon Musk, the owner of the platform formerly known as Twitter, announced through a series of tweets that he would be renaming the platform to “X.” The CEO of X.com, Linda Yaccarino, later tweeted (xeeting?) explaining what the[…]

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Beyond Assumptions: Using Demographic Data to Find Your Audience

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, staying ahead of the game means understanding which platforms your target audience uses most. With emerging platforms constantly vying for attention, it’s easy to fall prey to misconceptions about social platforms: Is TikTok exclusively for Gen Z? Do Millennials still use Facebook? Is Instagram reserved solely for young[…]

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Battling Banner Blindness

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, advertisers are continually seeking new ways to capture the attention and engage with their target audience. However, one persistent challenge that marketers face is the phenomenon known as “banner blindness.” This term refers to the tendency of internet users to subconsciously ignore or overlook banner advertisements on websites.[…]

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Webinar | Programmatic: The Granular Way

Join us as we explore the world of Programmatic advertising, The Granular Way. Our expert speakers will share their insights and experiences on how to start or optimize your digital campaigns with Programmatic to achieve the best results. Whether you’re a marketing wizard or just starting out, this webinar is perfect for anyone looking to[…]

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Add Competitor Brands to Your Negative Keywords

How it can Improve ROAS & Lower CPCs To ensure effective ad spend when managing PPC campaigns, it’s important to exclude certain audiences and keywords that are not likely to engage with your ad or lead to a conversion — this is where negative keywords come in.  Negative keywords are search terms (and phrases) you[…]

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How to Lose an Account in 10 Days

As a millennial, I have a love for romantic comedies from the early 2000s. One of my favorites is How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. I’ve owned the movie on VHS, DVD and now Digital, and have probably watched it over a hundred times. A few of the Granular folks were recently talking[…]

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LinkedIn Business Manager

In recent months, LinkedIn has rolled out its own version of Business Manager similar to Meta. This is designed for a more streamlined approach to managing and sharing all of your LinkedIn assets (page, ad account, etc.) both internally with your team and externally with agency partners. Setting up your company in Business Manager as[…]

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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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four easy steps for communication between agency and client

Four Easy Steps for Successful Communication Between an Agency & Client

Successful communication is a skill that can be hard to learn and harder to teach but is extremely valuable. Good communication between two parties can help make tough situations easier and good situations great. This is especially important when communicating between an agency, like Granular, and a client. Both parties have different backgrounds and different levels of knowledge of digital advertising and the client’s business.

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GA4 Webinar: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Your current Google Analytics is going away – but don’t fret, GA4 experts from Granular hosted a webinar to share all of the relevant information you need to know about the switch from Google Analytics to GA4. Check out the webinar below, followed by more in-depth information on key slides and helpful resources. If you[…]

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B2B Industrial CPC Trends

Industrial B2B Conversion Rate and CPC Trends

When reporting on campaign data, especially with newer clients, we often get some form of the question “Are these numbers good?” or “How does this performance stack up compared to other people in my industry?” These clients, while all in the industrial/manufacturing space, vary greatly in account size & scope. Their ad spend ranges from[…]

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How Brands Leverage Digital Advertising To Give Their 2023 Super Bowl Ad Extra Yards

I enjoy watching football and consider myself semi-knowledgeable about the sport (cough cough, 2021 Granular Fantasy Football Champion talking here) but I couldn’t have cared less who won the Super Bowl this year. So, if you’re anything like me, you watched the Super Bowl for one or all of these three reasons: #1 – The[…]

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AI for PPC

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s latest space-and-time bending artificial intelligence program, is a free-use dialogue tool allowing one to submit a series of variables or questions, from which the machine will source its seemingly limitless knowledge base for an answer. Ask it anything from the mundane (“what’s the best chicken parmesan recipe?”) to the outlandish (“give me a[…]

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