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What Can Online Reviews Do for You

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In August of 2019, we wrote a blog, Google Reviews: How to Get More and Why They are Important in which we addressed, you guessed it, how to get more reviews on Google and why it’s important for your business. We focused on Google, but you can apply the concepts to any review platforms such as Facebook, Yelp, and Amazon just to name a few. The bottom line is no matter what type of industry you are in, reviews can make or break your business. In most cases, they are the difference in whether a customer will even consider buying from you. c

The Good

Everyone wants good reviews, but they don’t just come automatically. A customer who is angry is two to three times more likely to write a bad review than a customer who had a great experience. Because of this, it is important to nurture good reviews. To do this, you must know when a customer is having a good experience (it should be most of them) and simply ask for a positive review and let them know where they can write one, i.e. Google, Facebook, Yelp, etc. Once you receive a review, take the short amount of time to write a friendly response directly on the review platform. This adds a personal touch that customers love.

The Bad

A bad review is inevitable. At some point, they are going to happen. This is when you must step up your reputation management game. It can take 12 positive reviews to cancel out a negative one. The first step is damage control. You must reach out to the customer either through the review platform or direct contact. Listen to their concerns, see if you can come to a mutual resolution, and kindly ask if they would please revise their review. The worst-case scenario is that they won’t revise their review and then you will need to continue to ask other customers for some great, 5-star reviews. This could be you, your staff, or even your friends and family. Hopefully, you will always get great reviews and won’t have to worry about the bad!

The Ugly

Sometimes, there is that one person who decides that they want to ruin someone’s day, life, career, or whatever it may be! They have a personal vendetta against someone. They’re mad and they want everyone to know it! They take to the internet (with clearly too much time on their hands) and do anything they can to bash the reputation of a business or even an employee of that business. We call these “Internet Trolls”. Here’s an example:

“John Doe, who works for your company, made fun of me in high school for an ugly haircut. I just thought you should know the quality of the character of your employee. I give your company 1 star!”

We have seen this happen before. The review is not relevant in any way to the services you offer. John Doe might have been a jerk in high school but that’s not going to ruin your business and you don’t need to fire him just to please the angry troll. In these cases, you can appeal the review directly to the review platform admins. In most cases, they will take it down. The second step is that you might need to block this person from access to leaving reviews which may also involve contacting the platform admins. Problem solved!

If you or someone you know needs help with collecting reviews and review management, contact us or give us a call at 713-309-6380. Brand Ranch Media is a full-service advertising agency. We would love to help you achieve all your marketing goals!

Does Your Google Analytics Have A Glitch?

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Having accurate data is the most important asset when analyzing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. When making data-driven decisions, you must ensure that they are based on what really occurred. When data doesn’t match between different management platforms, you could spend a great deal of time trying to figure out what went wrong. Today, we will discuss some common data discrepancy issues related to Google Analytics and some solutions to help avoid them.

A recently written article addressed a disparity of data in Google Analytics and a 3rd party system that was tracking demo requests for their product. This company created an event in Analytics as well as a Google Sheet where the demo requests were stored. They noticed that there was a significantly higher number of demo requests recorded on their Google Sheet vs. the number of events in Analytics. The article goes on to suggest that a possible cause of the discrepancy could be the use of ad blockers. Ad blockers don’t just block ads, but they also will block anything that tracks a user, such as cookies, including Google Analytics. In this case, user events with ad blockers were not being recorded in Analytics, but they were able to collect the accurate data with their 3rd party system. At Brand Ranch Media, we suggest finding and using 3rd party software the seamlessly integrates with Analytics. We utilize the call tracking software, CallRail, that has an integration built specifically for Google Analytics so that we can track phone calls for various campaigns.

Another common data discrepancy that can occur is inflation in the Analytics Traffic report. This report displays user data for different traffic sources such as organic, paid, referral, etc. Traffic inflation can occur when spam and other type of bot activity is recorded in this dataset. It is not uncommon to see thousands of visits each month from spam and bots. This causes a huge headache when trying to report accurate numbers. Luckily, there is a way to block all known spiders and bot traffic through the Analytics Admin section. Navigate to the View Settings and scroll to the bottom where you can check a box to exclude all known bots and spiders.

If you are running a Google Ads campaign and the data in the ads manager platform does not match data in Analytics, there could be an issue with URL tagging. By default, a Google Ads account is setup with manual tagging enabled. If you don’t manually tag every potential final URL, you could end up with huge data discrepancies in Analytics and Google Ads. To avoid this, the ads platform has an auto-tag setting that you can select when linking Google Ads to an Analytics property. The benefits to auto-tagging is that you avoid potential human error by telling the system to tag every final URL automatically. It will import goals and transactions from Analytics to Google Ads conversion tracking. You will also receive more detailed analytics in your account.

Having an experience team to guide you through all of the data from marketing campaigns is important to the overall success of those campaigns. If you want to learn more, please feel free to contact us or call 713-309-6380 to speak directly with an expert.

Holiday Marketing Trends

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We are in the heat of the holiday season (pun intended) and as shoppers frantically run to the stores or shop online, retailers hope that their holiday marketing plans will be a success. If you happen to be a retailer and feel as though your efforts fell short in 2019, we have some tips and trends to consider for next year’s holiday shopping season.

The Early Bird Gets the Worm

Taking a look at Google Trends, searches for holiday gift ideas started to spike as early as late October. One assumption could be made that as soon as the Fall holiday events begin (starting with Halloween), consumers get bit by the holiday bug and start thinking about gifts for their family and friends. Setting up holiday ad campaigns early can help you stand out above your competitors. It’s also a good idea to create a sense of urgency utilizing limited time offers as well as flash sales that offer large discounts over a short amount of time.

I Didn’t Come All This Way for a Bad Time

If you are driving customers to your website, you want to be sure that when they get there, they have a good user experience. With more and more web traffic coming from mobile devices, users are much less patient with sites that don’t load quickly and are hard to navigate. You cannot afford to have a poor user experience on either desktop or mobile devices. A bad experience can lead to less customers driving down holiday earnings for your business.

Don’t Just Sit Back and Relax

It’s relatively simple to choose ad copy/creative and drive traffic to a website utilizing proper audience targeting, but how can you stand out above the competition in the modern day? Facebook provides messaging ads that help bridge the gap between ad, website, and purchase. Utilizing the Facebook Messenger platform, customers can click an ad that will open a dialogue directly with the business. This is a very strong form of lead nurturing and can be exponentially beneficial for retailers that take advantage of this platform.

Pile into the Car, We’re Going Shopping

Nothing beats the good, old fashioned holiday shopping grind. Businesses are finding that customers still love going to the store to pick out their items. Whether it be for items that people want to physically touch (such as clothing) or experience for themselves (such as furniture), shopping in-store is still relevant. Digital marketing platforms can help to drive more engagement by capturing consumers during the decision-making process. When it comes to making a final decision, many consumers will make the trip to the brick-and-mortar location to make that purchase and have the gift already in hand.

Brand Ranch Media helps retail clients design and implement successful marketing campaigns. We know this holiday season is coming to and end, but if you need help with your marketing plans for 2020 please feel free to contact us or call 713-309-6380.

Google Political Ad Policy

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In the wake of the recent elections in the U.K. and upcoming US elections in 2020, Google announced that they are making some updates to their political ads policy. The changes reflect Google’s intent to provide the most relevant information, specifically pertaining to elections and candidates. Let’s take a dive into how some of these policy updates will affect the paid ads that we see this election season.

First off, we should mention that these updates are in no way designed to favor any one political party but rather are intended to eliminate what Google calls “deep fakes,” misleading claims about the census, or ads and website destinations that clearly provide false information, potentially causing distrust in the voting process. Essentially, Google wants to ensure they are not providing false and misleading content on their platform which is what they strive to do in their search algorithm.

Political advertisers are still able to utilize the different ad formats: Search, Display, and YouTube. The updates, however, will eliminate targeting based on public voter records and political affiliations. Instead, they will allow targeting by age, gender, and postal code locations. Advertisers will also be able to target contextually which will allow them to target specific issues. Google’s goal here is to better align with other sources of traditional media like TV, radio, and print. They also want ads to target more of the masses so it can generate public dialogue.

Finally, Google wants to be more transparent in the way they provide political ad information. They are going to provide “transparency reports” that will provide the public with information such as who paid for the ad, the content of the ad, how many people saw the ad and so forth. They are also going to include state-level election data in these reports and include all ads in their search results network.

If you or someone you know would like to discuss your political digital ad strategy, please feel free to contact us or call us at 713-309-6380.  

SEO Trends for 2020

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Search Engine Optimization. SEO. Google Algorithm. Core Updates.

These are phrases we often hear when talking about websites and how they rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). Does anyone (other than the folks at Google who write the algorithms) really understand how algorithm updates are going to positively or negatively affect every individual website that exists? Probably not. Considering that Google announced they roll out about 500-600 algorithm updates each year, it would be a boisterous claim! There are, however, studies and SEO practices performed that help identify what works and what doesn’t. As 2020 soon approaches, we look into the future and what we think is important to consider for your SEO campaign.

Mobile Friendly is Our Friend

First and foremost, if you do not have a mobile friendly website, why bother? Not only does Google look for this as a ranking factor but it is important for the end user as well. In some cases, we saw 60 – 70% of all website traffic in 2019 come from a mobile device. This is crucial functionality for a website and if you don’t have it, you’re not even a player.

Website Content for You and Me

When writing content, it is important to think about the search intent of a user. What are they looking for? Are they looking for general information or looking into services related to their search query? If you are not thinking about the content from a user’s point of view, then you might consider re-thinking your content strategy. Consider the user, and not the search engine, when writing content. One terrible SEO practice is adding keyword phrases on a page for the purpose of trying to rank for that phrase. Most of the time, these phrases make no sense to the reader and have poor readability.

Shoot a Video

Video content is starting to be more effective at providing key information and helping to increase leads. The average user today would much rather watch video content than read. This is one reason why YouTube has gained in popularity over a short period of time. Videos also rank much faster than textual content. Placing your videos on a branded YouTube channel and embedding them onto your website is a big win.

Do You Even Convert, Bro?

You can drive all the traffic you want to your website, but at the end of the day, how many visitors are converting to customers? There are a few things that help consumers make choices such as reviews, case studies, and simply explaining how your company is different/better than the competition. Place strong calls-to-action and make it easy for them to contact you via contact form, email, or phone. Utilize conversion tracking on your website and link it to your Google Analytics to see where your conversions originate.

These are some very basic concepts of SEO that one could perform on their own site if they have the time and know how to operate their website’s CMS. We suggest you also keep up to date with any changes to Google’s Algorithm. There are many other more advanced SEO concepts that are best to utilize on your website. If you find yourself needing some help, we are always here!

If you or someone you know would like to discuss your digital ad strategy, please feel free to contact us or call us at 713-309-6380.  

Digital Marketing Forecasts for 2020

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In our last post, we pointed out some Digital Marketing trends that we saw in 2019. We continued to see increases in overall digital spending and with digital platforms changing the way companies advertise, we should expect to see new innovations (as well as continued old strategies) in digital marketing in 2020 and beyond. So, let’s get right into it!

SERP Position Zero

Remember when everyone was trying to get to position one in search engine results? There’s a new ranking that everyone will be vying for coming out of Google headquarters and it’s called “position zero”. You have probably already seen examples of position zero on SERPs (hint: it’s the one with an automated snippet that shows an exact answer to your query). According to new data, 61.8 percent of search results in Google are zero-search results. These will appear above any paid ads as well. You can be certain that this will be the ultimate goal for SEO moving forward.

Voice Search Optimization

Do you ever ask Siri, Alexa, or Google Home a question? You’re not alone. Google says that 20 percent of their search queries take place through voice search. Another report points out that 71 percent of mobile users ages 18 through 29 use voice assistants on their smartphones. Large enterprise companies have already started in the voice optimization game but it’s not time for smaller companies to make their content conversational.

Video Content

We are still waiting on the numbers from 2019 but in 2018, YouTube ad revenue increased by 11 percent. This has become an ever-increasingly popular way to deliver ad content and should continue to do so through 2020. Another way that brands can reach their followers is through Facebook Live or Instagram Live. On average, live videos keep the audience watching 3 times longer than recorded videos. Live video should definitely be considered by brands moving into 2020.

Social: Shoppable Posts

If you have a social media account such as Facebook or Instagram, chances are that you have seen ads that allow you to shop for products. You may be surprised to know that 72% of Instagram users have purchased a product through the app. Facebook (who also owns Instagram) has changed their ads platform tremendously in favor of e-commerce stores offering them more ways to sell their products directly from ads. Do not expect to see this trend die out anytime soon. If fact, it will probably increase.

Even More Chatbots

In an effort to interact with online shoppers while they are actively looking at products, brands have looked to chatbots. As chatbots become more sophisticated, it is expected that retailers will cut costs by $439 billion a year and increase sales by $112 billion by 2023. Smaller businesses can utilize automated chatbots as well to help turn an average website visitor into a potential lead.

If you or someone you know would like to discuss your digital ad strategy, please feel free to contact us or call us at 713-309-6380.  

Digital Media Trends in 2019

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Well folks, 2019 is slowly winding down and we saw some interesting trends unfold in the world of digital media. Digital ads spending reached an important milestone, social media users shifted the way they view content, and video ad spend continued to favor specific device types. So, let’s dive right in and break down what really happened!

Digital Ads for the Win!

This year marked the first time when digital ad spends surpassed traditional ad spending in the US with an estimated 54.2% of total spending going towards digital. Though revenues continued to grow for digital monsters Google and Facebook, 2019 is the first time digital spends decreased for both. Taking a leap in digital spend was Amazon which was estimated to grow more than 50% this past year in the US market. In traditional ad spend, the biggest two losers were directories (like Yellow Pages) with a 19% decline and print (including newspapers and magazines) with a 17.8% decline in spend.   

Social Network Device Preference

Another trend we saw in 2019 was the device type that social media users accessed their accounts which continued to shift towards mobile devices and away form desktops and laptops. This shift comes as social platforms continued to develop more mobile-friendly features to their apps and as more users tended to use desktops/laptops for school or work purposes. With this trending throughout the years, it’s easy to see why Facebook advertisers spend 94% of their ad budgets on mobile.

Video Ads Making Moves

In 2019, 45.6% of all digital video ads will be placed on mobile devices. This increasing trend continued from past years as advertisers are trying to capitalize on the shift towards mobile usage. Advertisers in the US were expected to spend two-thirds of their digital budgets on mobile ad placements. However, video ads are still the only format where more marketing dollars are spent on channels other than mobile. This is partly due to the OTT ad spend on streaming services such as Hulu and other connected TV sources.

I hope we haven’t weighed you down with too many statistical insights, but it is important for businesses and advertisers to know emerging trends in order to best utilize marketing budgets. Stay tuned for part two of this article when we discuss some forecasts in digital media for 2020!

If you or someone you know would like to discuss your digital ad strategy, please feel free to contact us or call us at 713-309-6380.  

Source: eMarketer

Google Bans Elective Medical Ads

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Google recently announced that they will no longer show ads promoting speculative and experimental medical treatments starting on October 1, 2019. The list of treatments banned include stem cell therapy, cellular therapy, gene therapy, platelet rich plasma, bio-hacking, and gene therapy kits. This list appears to encompass any non-FDA approved treatments. Google explains that the main reason for disallowing these types of ads is because these types of treatments are “unproven” and lack significant and formal clinical trials to justify widespread use. They also cite that the use of these treatments can “lead to dangerous outcomes”.

So, what can one do now that they are not able to promote these types of treatments on Google Ads?

First off, we hope that your marketing provider has not recommended a one-sided marketing strategy. You should never rely on just one marketing method. It is important to use a diverse marketing strategy that includes multiple avenues for advertising your services – not just in the medical field, but for all industries. In the digital world, it starts with a great website. This is the foundation. Your website should be visually pleasing, mobile friendly, provide great content, and have specific calls-to-action.

The next step in your digital strategy is how to bring potential patients to your site. If you are solely relying on Google Ads, you may want to rethink your strategy especially if you are only advertising these newly banned treatments. Think about all treatments and procedures your clinic provides. You should consider choosing a few different ones and create Google ads for each type of service. Just like you can’t rely on Google Ads as your sole marketing platform, you shouldn’t rely on just one type of medical treatment to advertise.

Another type of marketing strategy to employ is an organic approach. By writing two to three blog articles per month and adding to your website, you can really improve your search engine optimization (SEO) which helps users to help find your website organically through non-paid methods. Other types of initiatives to consider are Facebook Ads, Display Advertising, Email marketing, or even your own Podcast.

Google’s banning of these specific types of ads doesn’t mean the end of the world for a clinic that practices these specialties. There are many other digital marketing options available. If you or someone you know has a health clinic and need expert advice, please feel free to contact us or call us at 713-309-6380.

Are Your Ads Annoying?

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It’s happened to everyone. You’re scrolling through news article headlines online and you click one that piques your interest. The web browser navigates to the website with said article. You start to read and 3 seconds later, it happens: a video ad pops up, starts playing, and the volume is turned up all the way because you were just listening to your favorite band on Spotify! More than two-thirds of people surveyed regarding internet ads they find annoying would agree that this is in fact, the most annoying type of ad!

By now, you’re saying to yourself, “But my business relies heavily on digital ads. Are my ads annoying people???” We’re here to offer you some peace of mind.

Not all digital ads annoy people.

Digital ads are a cost-effective way to reach your target audience when promoting your goods and services. They also work and provide a great return on investment.

According to a July 2019 study that included both people who utilize an ad blocker application and those that don’t, the following percentage of respondents found different types of digital ads annoying:

  • Video ads that play automatically on websites with sound – 66.7%
  • Video ads that play automatically on websites without sound – 55%
  • Audio ads (on music streaming services or podcasts) – 47.4%
  • Ads that show up based on my online searches – 42.4%

Of the remaining ad types, less than 60% of respondents found digital ads annoying. This includes ads that appear during a web search (search ads) and ads that appear on websites for products of services that they had or hadn’t bought (display ads).

Overall, those that use an ad blocker were more likely to find ALL ad types annoying. This should go without saying. The takeaway is that knowing your customer is extremely important when choosing a digital ad strategy. Some types of ads just don’t appeal to everyone.

If you or someone you know would like to discuss your digital ad strategy, please feel free to contact us or call us at 713-309-6380.

Hitting the Brakes on Google Accelerated Ad Delivery

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Who doesn’t want to use their marketing budget to its fullest potential? We all want to reach as many relevant consumers as possible with every ad dollar spent, right? When Google announced it was ending Accelerated Ad Delivery many people’s first thought was, “No problem. I’m using Standard Delivery.  I’m not impacted.” BUT are there potentially unforeseen implications to this change for the CPC ad model and market?  

Accelerated Ad Delivery has front loaded the priority of auction style bidding toward the early part of the day or campaign schedule. This made since for some business models… Like that guy who ran the little lunch joint around the corner, who’s restaurant is too small for family dinners, who needed morning ad performance in order to fill his tables for lunch. Or the lube shop manager who needed to keep the bays full in the morning to ensure he’s profitable every day.

This increased competition in the early hours of the day, which does make since for a few businesses, lead to increased morning CPCs, and a faster overall spend of their ad budget.

Google will switch a multitude of Accelerated Delivery campaigns to Standard Delivery in October.  Standard Delivery is a much more prevalent strategy for bidding for relevant ad space, and it aims to evenly spend an ad budget throughout the day. This typically returns a more efficient overall CPC and uses marketers’ budgets to their fullest potential.

That improved overall ROI for most campaigns would be a win, right?  That is exactly why Google is hitting the brakes on Accelerated Ad Delivery at the end of this month (Oct. 1st). It’s a trade of morning priority for overall effectiveness.

Google warns that the change from Accelerated delivery to Standard delivery may result in an underspend of your budget if you were previously using Accelerated Delivery. But, consider what happens to the number of bids throughout the rest of the day. If Google takes the “morning rush” and spreads it throughout the day, will that be a significant amount of bid pressure? Will Advertisers be impacted by this leading to higher average CPCs across the entire day?

Google is the Goliath in the CPC bidding, and swinging even a small portion of their customers into another delivery strategy could carry significant weight and affect ROI for the larger portion of advertisers and marketers bidding for ad space every day. Could this little change, this removal of a customer option for the improvement of their own ROI, ultimately result in decreased ROI and effectiveness for most of the campaigns that were already running standard delivery ads?

Only time, and analytics reporting will tell… Maybe, I’m right and forward thinking, or maybe I’m just a little paranoid because I’m always looking out for my customers’ ad dollars like they’re my own… If you are looking for advice on how to best set up your Google campaign for optimal performance, contact Brand Ranch Media, and we will treat your ad dollars just as we would our own.

Source: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2404248?hl=en