Business & Marketing Strategy

Having your Facebook ad account disabled can be extremely frustrating, especially when Facebook gives little-to-no detail on what policy was violated to trigger the disapproval! We at Granular have found, more often than not in recent days and weeks, the reason that our clients’ ad accounts get randomly shut down is because they have not[…]

Do you have a go-to conversation starter? Something that always gets people talking? At Granular, our team has spent hours debating if a hotdog is a sandwich, if cereal is soup, and more recently – if a Pop-Tart is a ravioli. Another way to get a group of PPC experts to start a conversation is[…]

Employee perks don’t make you one of the best agencies in town, but they sure do help make work seem a little less of a drag. These extras have always been a focus for me at Granular. Having worked for other agencies and in-house I mentally bookmarked everything I wished they offered me when I[…]

  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[…]

If you manage Google Shopping ads and Google Merchant Center product feeds, especially for ecommerce websites that have price changes and dollar- or percent-off sales, then there is a good chance that you have ran into an issue where your Google Shopping Ads display the incorrect price. This can be frustrating if you are counting[…]

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[…]

I wanted to start this blog series off (check out part 1) talking about one of the most underutilized and misunderstood digital marketing mediums: email. Email marketing is much more than just sending a newsletter or sales to your consumers. There are many secondary benefits from running an email marketing program, most of which can help[…]

PPC Management Takeaways From Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2018 With another Black Friday and Cyber Monday PPC season under our belts, it’s time for us to exhale with the rest of the retail and marketing world. As we take a second to catch our breath, we wanted to look back at the crazy week[…]

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[…]

Joe Martinez, Director of Paid Media & Community at Granular, just finished pulling double duty at SMX West. Check out the slides Joe presented on below. How to Use Feeds to Improve DSA Campaigns and Ads DSA feeds will help accounts easily set up new ways to target their pages. Websites with poor URL structures will[…]

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[…]

It hurts when you realize that the thing you believe is good, is actually not good at all. Like when I play pick-up basketball in my 30’s with a memory of what my body could do in my early 20’s. Sometimes the truth hurts, but it’s what makes us better. ANYWAYS – let’s talk Facebook[…]

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[…]

Let’s see if this scenario rings a bell. When performing account analysis, you segment your AdWords campaigns or ad groups by device. Next, you notice mobile bids convert at a much lower rate than desktop. You pull out Google’s recommended formula for mobile bid adjustments (Mobile Conversion Rate / Desktop Conversion Rate) – 1 and[…]

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[…]