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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

IP vs. Cookie Based Targeting Methods: Pros & Cons

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Targeting and communicating with your best consumers digitally is essential to achieving many companies’ goals.  The tools and techniques available to identify relevant consumers are continuously becoming more refined.  Which targeting strategy is the right one to maximize your campaign’s effectiveness and minimize waste? Well, that deserves some serious thought, and maybe a conversation about your goals and target consumers.

Let’s start with some pros and cons for two commonly used digital targeting tools; IP based, and Cookie based targeting…. 

IP based targeting is based on the idea that each online device has an IP address, which is in turn tied to a physical location…

There are some pros and cons with this type of location-based targeting:

Pros:

  • If you know a user’s location, you can also cross reference lots of other data about them and refine your targeting…
    • Personal information becomes available…
      • Things like Household Income
      • Children in the home
      • Education levels

There is a multitude of consumer demographic data available based on physical location in most developed countries. This compilation of data allows marketers to customize ads to consumers based on that available data, which can be used for both online & offline media and communication.

Cons:    

  • Physical locations often have more than one device, and each device can have more than one user, and multiple users often can’t be separately identified through IP address alone
  • Offices often share one IP address for all company devices…
    • These devices may also route through a corporate IT central hub, which may be in a completely different city or country.
  • User data may be encrypted or shielded for a “wee bit of anonymity,” but with enough attention to detail and additional data sources, there are valid concerns for individual privacy.

Cookies… you’ve probably seen those little notifications and consent forms pop up on your phone or device informing you that a site uses cookies… but how exactly do we use them? Well there are many types of cookies, with different functions, but they are basically lines of code to collect user data from an online device.

Pros:

  • Cookies functionally improve the online experience for consumers in many ways.
    • They help recognize users from site visit to visit
    • They store user form fill data
    • They keep track of what you put in your shopping carts
    • They personalize offers which can be beneficial too, as those abandoned items in your cart often come back to you with a discount. 😉
  • The data collected by cookies can be used to categorize a user and their interests for behavioral targeting, which allows more relevant ads and content and an improved overall online experience.
  • Knowing consumers’ historical interests, and the timing of those interests, can drive efficiency in digital ad targeting and lead to a higher return on each marketing dollar spent.

Cons:

  • The data starts as device specific, and multiple users on family computers or devices may share cookie data. Which may muddy the water on a user’s interests and behavior and lead to irrelevant content and offers.
  • Cookies expire, or can be cleaned out based on user preferences and settings, which may eliminate relevant, actionable targeting data
  • Some cookies slow page load times and reduce the quality of a web experience
  • Again, there are concerns for user privacy (hence the request for consent to cookie use appearing on many sites you use and visit)

Given the right circumstances, both of these targeting strategies can greatly improve the performance of a marketing campaign. Properly executed, both tactics can help you to reach or exceed your campaign goals. The real key is in the art of knowing when and how to use them. If you would like to talk strategy or need help ensuring you are reaching and influencing your target consumers effectively, on the right devices, at the right time, with the right message… please contact Brand Ranch Media and we can ensure you’re using the correct strategy to get the best return on your marketing investment.

  1. https://www.herosmyth.com/article/who-took-cookie-science-behind-targeted-advertising
  2. https://www.vicimediainc.com/ip-targeting-direct-mail-internet/
  3. https://ppcmasterminds.com/b/cookie-based-vs-ip-based-remarketing-methods/
  4. https://www.signal.co/blog/cookie-based-marketing-not-relevant-impactful/

Google Reviews: How to Get More and Why They are Important

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People looking for goods and services have become accustomed to reading online reviews of a business before making purchase decisions. A whopping 97% of customers look to reviews before buying while 85% of those are looking more closely at the negative reviews. It only takes one bad review to drive business away. Reviews are also on the list of Google’s Search Ranking Factors in 2019. Google is more likely to show businesses in search results with more, as well as higher reviews. All of these factors combine to make online reviews all the more important.

So how do you collect more reviews from your customers? There are many different ways of obtaining more reviews. There are processes that you may consider implementing in order to boost your brand’s reputation. At the end of the day, one good review could be the difference between earning a customer’s business or losing out altogether.

Provide Great Service

Providing great customer service might be a no-brainer but you might be surprised to find that the customer experience needs to surpass expectations at every single interaction and an upset customer is far more likely to write a review in order to tarnish a brand. Team members need to be on the same page so that when and if they do interact with the customer, they do their independent job function to the best of their ability and to the customer’s satisfaction.

Ask!

Why not just ask for a review? If you know that your team has provided great service and the customer is happy, they are likely willing to write a good review. They just may need a little guidance. It is 100% acceptable to request this of a satisfied customer. It also benefits you as the business owner.

Collect in the Field

Let’s say you have a business where service is provided at the home of the customer. Train your service technicians to collect reviews onsite. Give them a script to follow when asking for an online review. Offer incentives to customers that leave good reviews.

Utilize a Custom Review Link

Simply posting reviews on your website isn’t going to satisfy search engines or potential customers searching for reviews. Many times, Google reviews are shown in search results. You can create a custom link for customers to write reviews and it will go straight to your Google My Business page. Place this link on your website or send out in an email.

Interact and Respond

If someone writes a review, interact with them. Respond to their feedback directly no matter whether the review is good or bad…especially if bad! Often times, a customer is willing to remove their bad review if they feel that you have done everything to rectify the issue. This is the only way to remove bad reviews and is well worth the effort. For a good review, simply respond with a “Thanks, we appreciate your business!”

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 of your marketing goals!

Ad ROI: Track and Measure Your Success

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When it comes to marketing and growing a business most of us know the importance of specific and measurable goals.  Perhaps you originally set out with goals in mind.  You had a plan and were going to achieve your goals and conquer the world!  However, you learned quickly that the path to success is long and winding with many variables.  Maybe you found that interacting with ever-evolving consumers is difficult to keep up with.  Or, perhaps you learned that influencing consumer behavior to attain your business goals has proven to be a long and difficult task.

Measuring your success is crucial to know whether you are on the right track to attain your goals, confirm that you’ve made progress or decide if it is time for a change.  The most common term for measuring marketing performance is Return on Investment (or ROI), but it is not the only term.  Most marketing campaigns have several measurement terms and abbreviations specific to each media used.  Specific campaign goals can quickly make things more complicated as well.  There’s CPA (cost per acquisition), CR (conversion rates), CPC (cost per click), CTR (click thru rate) and KPI (Key performance indicators), just to name a few.  What do all these terms mean?  What do you need to know to ensure your marketing campaigns are successful and provide a high return on investment?

There are many ways to track return on investment and monitor marketing efforts.  If you are not seeing the response you desire, or enough of the responses you desire, it may be time to compare marketing tactics and methods to obtain a better ROI. 

Past marketing performance doesn’t guarantee future performance or repeatability.  Failure to have an exploratory budget to try new marketing methods, new target audiences, or simple changes to imagery and/or offers can be detrimental to marketing efforts.  How consumers interact with media, how they are impacted by a message and/or offer will ALWAYS continue to change.  Without the ability to try new marketing methods or messages, you will likely fall behind competitors that do experiment and continue to optimize their efforts. 

If you are using multiple marketing tactics and media to reach and modify consumer behavior, you are likely facing an additional challenge – how to attribute responses to specific marketing efforts.  There are many advanced measurement tools on the market today which can help measure and track responses from each media or message in your campaigns. 

If your campaigns aren’t performing as you intended, it is time to ask yourself a difficult question- WHY!  There are often multiple factors impacting the performance of campaigns.  If you need a helping hand or a marketing professional to brainstorm with, Brand Ranch Media is here to help.  Call us and together we can help evaluate your campaign goals, strategy, and responses to ensure your marketing efforts are on track and getting you the best ROI possible!

Google My Business Listing Optimization

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Google recently rolled out new features in Google My Business designed to help businesses better promote themselves and provide additional information that may interest users. Since 2014, Google My Business has been a free application available to business owners in order to showcase information such as location, phone number, business hours, website URL and more! With this announcement, Google is also going to start to reward business with the top 5% Google My Business profiles in each category by assigning them a “Local Favorite” badge. In some instances, Google My Business listings have been removed altogether for “poor quality issues”.

The Basics

So, what can you do to ensure that your business listing is up to snuff? There are a few basic pieces of information you want to add to your listing. These include business name, business category, service area (if you provide business services away from your location), address, business hours, phone number, website URL, business description, profile image, and other photos. If your business listing has all these components, you’re most likely safe from having your listing removed by Google.

Advanced Categories

There are ways to really make your listing stand out from the competitors and razzle-dazzle! The platform allows businesses to add services and products to listings. In the services module, you can enter service category, item name, item price and item description. You can even add multiple items per service category. In the products module, you can enter a product collection name, product image, product name, description, product price or price range, and add a button with an external link to the product on your website.

Customer Feedback

One of the most important features of a Google My Business listing is the ability for customers to leave reviews as well as directly message the business. These are two-fold as the business owners can also respond to customers who have left reviews or sent a message. In the ever-growing digital world, it is important to interact with customers in any way possible. Increasing these interactions can help grow your business and also help with damage control.

If you think that your Google My Business listing needs a little work or have any other digital marketing needs, please feel free to contact us today!

Podcast SEO: How to Grow Your Audience with Search Engine Ranking

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You have a great podcast. You’ve spent hours coming up with topics, recording, and editing different episodes. Now, you want to publish the podcast on the Internet and you want people interested in your topics to be able to find those episodes. The question is: how?

In a recent announcement, Google stated that they are going to start including podcasts in search results. Through the Google Podcasts platform, podcast creators have a place to post their episodes directly or through an RSS feed. It is very important that creators add their podcasts to this platform so that their episodes are included in Google’s search index. Google Podcasts also has the ability to transcribe each episode which will create metadata utilized by search engines to help with the indexing process.

Just like other forms of content, podcast SEO is important. There are a few important, basic tactics to follow when adding each episode online. Following these steps will help ensure that, over time, people will be able to find your content.

Podcast Title

The title of each episode is very important. The title should contain keywords that users may search for when looking for various topics online. These keywords can be a short phrase or a longtail phrase. The title can also assist with click-through-rates. It should entice the listener to click the episode link in order to hear the content.

Podcast Transcript

The transcript function of Google Podcasts is not perfect. It is a good practice to have each episode transcribed so that the search engine can crawl the text for keywords and content. In a sense, transcribing your podcast will act similar to blog content and blogs are a great way to help with SEO.

Podcast Metadata

Metadata is what search engines use to assist in the ranking process of content. With podcasts, there are two types of metadata: description and tags. The podcast description should include keywords along with a summary of the podcast content. Search engines will be able to crawl the description to better link the episode to search terms. Tags should be utilized in order to link the episode content to search terms as well. Tags should include related keywords and phrases that users might be searching for on search engines.

Linking to Social Media

Social media can offer a big boost in both the distribution of the podcast as well as backlinks linking directly from social media posts to each episode. Every episode should be posted on social media with a link for users to click and listen. Boosting posts can also help with reaching a larger audience than just your social media followers. Post engagement campaigns are perfect for reaching this type of audience.

Following these general guidelines when publishing podcast episodes can really help improve the SEO of your podcast in the long run. Leave us a comment below if you have any additional podcast SEO tips. If you need help with podcast production, send us a message and we would be happy to help!

You down with OTT?

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Yeah you know me, I’m into everything marketing, including OTT.

OTT, short for Over The Top video, isn’t a new concept, but its relatively new on the local marketing scene. How new? Well even the label of what OTT is isn’t agreed upon by everyone.

For simplicity, its video content served over the internet… Some claim it must be watched on a TV screen, like a smart TV, Roku, or similar internet connected device. Others argue it can be seen on any screen digitally serving video including your tablet, phone, or that refrigerator door with the screen embedded in it. It can be free/advertising based, subscription, or transition based.

Either way the OTT ads served must be watched to completion and can’t be skipped to get straight to the video content the user is seeking. 98% of OTT ads are watched to completion according to ZypMedia.

Services like AppleTV, Hulu, Amazon Fire, Chromecast, Roku, TubiTV and of course NetFlix have all experienced growth.

So why does OTT matter, and how can it help my campaign?

OTT typically excels in Targeting & Reach as a broadcast or cable extension. The cord cutting/cost saving movement is nearing its 15th year now and those audiences that were previously being pushed content over the air were segmented by cable, and have now been segmented even further though channels with custom content that the viewer now seeks out and chooses to watch on their own terms.

If you wanted to reach the masses with broadcast or cable to share your message and offers, the masses simply aren’t as large as they used to be, and you may want to pick up some additional eyes and ears that fit your target audience digitally. And OTT does have additional targeting capabilities because of the digital data available through user devices. Better targeting means the ads are often more relevant,

According to Zypmedia, 53% of “local streamers” find streaming ads are “more relevant to them.” 51% of free, ad supported streamers say the same. And it turns out, nearly 60% of streamers would rather spend time watching commercials in order to watch TV content for free, as opposed to paying money to watch commercial free content. Viewers of OTT are open to receiving ads…

Perhaps much more importantly, advertisers can create unique and interactive shopping experiences for consumers interacting with their smart TV screen or an app serving the video! An OTT campaign can also prioritize viewing on devices that are easy to shop from and help attain a campaigns ecommerce goals in a way that traditional over the air ads never could.

Imagine a video ad showing models in the newest fashion styles flowing in the wind, and upon a click, the viewer can go straight to the ecommerce site selling the same styles shown in the ad. That consumer path to purchase was clean and free of roadblocks, and because OTT is digital, data should be readily available for near real time reporting and campaign transparency.  

If you aren’t staying on top of the fast-changing capabilities of new marketing tools like OTT, then partner with an agency that does! If you’re looking to increase your video marketing’s local reach for your targeted audience… if you want your entire ad to be seen for full impact… or would like to customize the interaction with your audience towards a specific goal… contact us today about your campaign goals and OTT. Call our offices directly at 713-309-6380, or leave your comments below.

Voice Search Optimization and the Future of Voice Search

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“Hey, Alexa! What’s the phone number to Best Buy?”

“Hey Google! What time does the pharmacy close?”

“Hey Siri! What’s the address to a car wash near me?”

There are many different types of questions you can directly ask a voice-enabled device that will utilize search results to provide answers but how does this relate to a local business? It is estimated that by 2020, nearly half of all searches will be a voice search. If your online assets are not optimized for voice search, you will eventually lose out on roughly 50% of searches!

Here are a few facts about voice search in its current state of usage:

  • 40% of adults utilize voice searches at least one time per day*.
  • According to Google, 20% of all mobile searches are by voice*.
  • 3 months after Windows 10 launched, 33% of searches were coming from voice*.

*Source: https://socialtriggers.com/voice-search/

The question that SMBs (small/medium sized businesses) should have is, “How can we keep our company relevant and optimized for voice searches?” We have a few suggestions that could help as voice searches become more utilized by consumers.

  1. Keep your Google Business Listing up to date. The Google Business listing might be the most important asset a company has online. It provides vital information such as address, phone number, business hours and other information that Google shows in traditional search results and is now utilizing the data in listings to respond to voice searches.
  2. Utilize long-tailed keywords on your website. Long-tailed keywords are keyword phrases that are 3-4 words. They are more specific compared to 1-2 word keyword phrases. Say, for example, that a person is searching for furniture. Most people are not going to just be searching for furniture in general but rather for more specific furniture items such as “kids bedroom furniture”. When adding long-tail keywords to your site, it is important to try to keep in mind how an average person would search for specific goods or services.
  3. Have a mobile-friendly website. Since many voice searches are performed on mobile devices, it is recommended that you have a very mobile-friendly version of your website. This not only includes the content but also the speed at which the page loads. The average voice search results page loads 52% faster than the average web page. Customers want results and they don’t want to wait for them.

As search engines in general continue to evolve, it is fair to say that voice search will evolve as well. If your SMB is not prepared, you could risk being left out of search results in the future. If you would like to consult with our team regarding voice search or any other digital advertising needs, send us a message and we will be happy to help!

Facebook Reporting Changes

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Effective April 30, 2019, Facebook is changing some ad performance metrics with the goal of improving their actionable insights. There are a few notable changes that apply to some popular types of ads. These include Relevance Score, Messaging Replies, and Cost per Messaging Reply.

Relevance Score

The relevance score of an ad is being replaced with a new set of diagnostics that are designed to be much clearer and more actionable. The new metrics are Quality Ranking, Engagement Rate Ranking, and Conversion Rate Ranking. These metrics should be easier to gauge the effectiveness of each ad depending on the audience reached. These metrics are best utilized together in order to understand ad relevancy and will be available for ads that ran after March 19.

Messaging Replies and Cost per Messaging Reply

On Facebook Messenger ads, it is important to understand exactly how users contact the business, the number of times they contacted, and if they are a new contact. In comes New Messaging Connections and Messaging Conversations Started. New Messaging Connections will show the number of new users that have messaged. This data is a bit more valuable compared to the total number of messages sent. Messaging Conversations Started will measure each new conversation after an original conversation is inactive for 7 days.

As advertisers, it is good to see Facebook continuously tried to improve the metrics it provides. As user expectations and ad space changes, it is only natural for metric to evolve with it. If you need help with any of your digital advertising needs please feel free to contact us.