Digital Marketing Strategies

The Ecosystem Approach If you have ever chatted with me about digital marketing, you have most likely heard me say (over and over again) that digital marketing is an ecosystem. Over the next few months, I’ll be writing about the ecosystem approach to digital marketing. I’ll tackle all the components of the marketing ecosystem, what[…]

We now live in the most over-communicated society in the history of the world.  It’s gotten so bad that it feels like people and companies are simply just constantly fighting for people’s attention.  I fight the fight every day in my own house.  Trust me, I’m not immune to this either.  But, I’m not quite[…]

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[…]

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[…]

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[…]

Just like us, Facebook is a data-driven company. They don’t make decisions lightly and rely on deep statistical insights to make business decisions. One of their latest decisions was to roll-out a new product that helps businesses chat with customers with the help of automation. The need for this and the supporting data behind the[…]

Last week, I got to attend HeroConf in Philadelphia. If you’re not familiar with the conference it is the largest conference in the world that only focuses on paid search. It was a great chance to catch up with my PPC friends from around the world, moderate a whole day of breakouts, and get to[…]

I’ve been implementing Gmail ads for all of my clients lately to test out an under-utilized way of getting in front of new users. With my clients at Granular, Gmail campaigns have been one of the most successful Display campaigns I’ve seen in driving new leads. We also still see many advertisers are still unfamiliar[…]

Remarketing isn’t anything new anymore. It’s become one of the most common forms of Display advertising within the AdWords platform. Creating audiences in AdWords is fairly simple and is good for creating basic audiences. Google Analytics, on the other hand, allows you to create several, layered audiences that can be used to make your remarketing[…]

As a digital marketer I’m always trying to implement new ways to connect with my target audience. I consistently see positive results from my campaign performances when I’m building visitors’ confidence every step of the PPC path. An easy way to build that confidence is through proof points. I look at proof points as evidence that backs[…]

I recently had a conversation with a client about expanding their reach and going after their competitors with paid search. Initially they weren’t sure about this because they were afraid the competition would start targeting their name in retaliation. The funny part was their competitors were already targeting them and we could prove it. Google gives advertisers[…]

RLSA campaigns, or remarketing lists for search ads, is a unique way to get your ads back in front of previous visitors. For example let’s say someone visited your website and left because they weren’t ready to convert at that moment. If you have the remarketing code set up on you site, you will have the visitor[…]

Results of Our Instagram Ads Test Start with a small budget when testing a new channel / ad format – that’s almost always our rule. This of course varies based on your company size. Testing a new channel at one of the universities I ran paid for was often in the $10s of thousands of[…]

Whether you’re involved with PPC, SEO, email marketing or social media, the landing page can make or break the odds of a campaign succeeding. You can drive a lot of traffic, but if your landing page doesn’t convert then what’s the point? A 25% CTR and 400% traffic increase doesn’t look great if the return[…]

If you own a restaurant, store, or any business requiring foot traffic for survival, then most likely people are finding you on Google Maps. Google Maps offers much more than giving directions. If you value digital marketing for your local business, then Google Maps must be a part of your strategy. Here’s why. Local Results Are Showing[…]

“Yeah, we can do that too”. Famous last words of the once-focused agency. Too many agencies and marketing contractors go the way of the cable companies, bundling their clients into massive contracts offering multiple services for one large fee. Marketing your company should be no different that your personal life. Do you LOVE your bundled[…]

Improving user experience is one of the many factors taken into account when working on conversion rate optimization (CRO). CRO is a necessity when driving PPC traffic to any website. Why? Because so much is on the line when you pay for traffic. By using CRO, you are often able to improve efficiency and stretch[…]

Are you an eCommerce business owner or have a PPC client that is a Google Trusted Store? You can now add the benefit of being a trusted store to your Review Extensions in AdWords! More ad real estate is ALWAYS a good thing; Google knows it, good PPC managers know it, now you know it.[…]