The holiday season is upon us. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, fall clearances, winter specials, end of year liquidations, and so many more names are given to the various sales that companies will have to incentivize consumers during the holidays. And why not? Consumers spend on average over $1,000 on gifts and non-gift holiday purchases. One-third of shoppers report holiday purchases are driven by promotions. What can you do to cut through the clutter? How do you reach your prospects when it seems like their inboxes are jammed with promotional offers from a multitude of companies? The answer is zeroing in on your prospective customer.

Targeting

Who is your ideal customer? Someone who visits pages about computers? Homeowners or people that rent? A couple with children interested in toys or a single female interested in women’s clothing or cosmetics? Where do your prospective customers live and what time of day are they more likely to purchase from you?

Most digital marketing platforms have a multitude of targeting options. You can really cut out a large portion of consumers who would not be interested in your product in order to better focus on those who would. Why waste spend trying to reach everyone, when you can use that spend to reach more relevant consumers who are more likely to purchase your product?

Creative

However, targeting is just one piece of the puzzle. Next, think about what differentiates your product from other products on the market today. Try to put yourself in the consumers’ shoes. Is your ad clear and direct? Furthermore, is it enticing enough to click on? Be sure to emphasize any sales you may have or new products you just got in stock. If you can make product recommendations, this is an ideal way to boost sales.

Channel Distribution

If your company is not as well-known and you want to increase awareness of your product, try using digital marketing platforms that focus on impressions. If your product is well known and people may search for it, search ads can be great. Display ads on websites, apps, social media through banners or other ad formats can be another great way to reach target customers. Regardless of which ad type you decide to use (you can also use multiple) you can target your ads to your ideal audience.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re a popcorn company selling in only one state and your average customer typically visits a certain set of websites and is in a specific age demographic. You have competitors in the area that are larger than you. In this scenario, search ads may be a bit expensive to run. Display ads would be a great option. You can target your ads to the specific state or even city/zip code you are able to sell in. You can also target specific age demos. Lastly, you can target people who have visited your competitors’ websites or websites like their websites. This way, when someone is searching for popcorn and happen upon a similar site to your competitors, they will potentially get served a display ad for your popcorn later.

Targeting can save you money – money that is better spent when it presents ads to consumers that are more likely to buy from you.

When fighting the holiday clutter of ads, remember: You don’t need to compete against every competitor for every ad space. You just need to compete for the most relevant ad space for your business and target customer. Set up takes a bit longer, but this makes things much more manageable and cost effective for you in the long run.

How Can Apogee Results Help you?

Do you need help figuring out the best way to promote your products this season? Curious about paid digital advertising? We have proven results in digital advertising over 20 years across a broad range of businesses. Request your complementary assessment of your digital advertising strategy and results, with recommendations on how to get the most from your ad dollars.

Lena Sidhu is a part of Apogee’s paid marketing efforts. She has previously managed multi-million dollar per month campaigns with positive results. Lena worked in-house at a large insurance company prior to starting her career at Apogee. In her current role, she is responsible for developing strategy for clients and the subsequent implementation of that strategy.

To get updated information about the team at Apogee Results, please follow us on your favorite social media channels.

It’s no secret that the world of Paid Media Marketing is growing faster than ever. This is especially notable within everyone’s favorite necessity, Google Ads. With all the platform changes and constant shifts in best practices, it can become overwhelming for a small marketing team to keep up with. It is in this state of confusion that most businesses turn to a digital marketing agency to help them stay relevant in a space where it is so easy to fall behind. Let’s face it, we all turn to Google for answers these days, and if your business is not showing up for your key search terms, you’re losing customers to the person who is. While there are lots of really great agencies working honestly and passionately every day, there are also a lot of really bad ones (really, really bad ones). These are the type of agencies that give digital marketing a bad rap because they not only waste their client’s time, but they are also wasting their ad dollars. Below are 8 common ways your agency is mishandling your ad dollars.

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Search Partners

Did you know that not every click/ad dollar in search campaigns go toward searches done within the actual Google Search Engine? Whenever a search campaign is created, Google will automatically opt you into their Search Partner Network. This means your search ads could be shown on any one of the thousands of Google Search Partner sites, often wasting ad dollars on very low-quality clicks and conversions. When was the last time your agency spoke to you about the amount of money spent within the Search Partner Network and how they have performed?

Automatic Placements

Whether you have created a Display, Remarketing, or Search with Display campaign, Google, by default, will opt you in to automatic placements that will serve your ads beyond what you are actually targeting in hopes they can show your ad to users similar to your audience. Unfortunately, similar to Search Partners, we have found very poor performance from these settings and Google Ads does not make it easy to turn off. How much of your yearly ad spend went to poor performing placements?

Location Settings

Do you know where your ads are actually being served? Did you know that even if you are targeting specific cities, states, or countries, you can still end up spending a large portion of your budget outside of these regions? I can’t count how many times we looked at an agency run account and found, due to mishandled settings, that their ad dollars were being spent in areas they do not even serve. The fix is simple, but is your agency utilizing it correctly?

Faulty Tracking

It is very important to make sure the metrics your agency is reporting to you are correct. Whenever they report “conversions” and “cost per conversion,” what are they actually reporting? I can’t count how many times I have audited an account and saw faulty tracking resulting in double-counted conversions or unimportant actions such as button clicks being attributed as conversions. This can greatly mislead the direction of the account and result in wasted ad dollars.

Keyword Malpractice

Using correct keyword match types and regular addition of negatives are some of the most basic common practices amongst agency beginners. Even with that being known, this is still commonly overlooked. Either the agency has assigned someone very junior to the account who has not grasped the importance of keyword management, or the account manager is simply too busy to take their time and show each account the attention it needs to run most efficiently. This can result in thousands of dollars in wasted spend if not fixed over a long period of time.

Not Using Advanced Bid Adjustments

While most people understand device bid adjustments (although, you’d be surprised how many don’t), there are a ton of other useful places where bid modifiers are commonly overlooked. Whether it’s location, demographics, time of day, or specific audience segments, Google provides in-depth data about the users interacting with your ads, and if that data is not being utilized properly, you could be far overspending what you should be.

Inefficient Bid Strategies

There is a constant pressure to turn over bidding strategies to Google’s automated bidding strategies, but is it the right decision for your specific business? We see a lot of agencies toss one of Google’s automated strategies on an account without much thought given to it. However, these strategies are not one-size-fits-all and can leave much on the table if not utilized correctly.

Baseless Campaign Strategy

It seems like each month Google unveils a new campaign, ad, or bid strategy, and then there’s a rush to be a part of the latest trend. While it’s crucial to stay up to date with industry trends, not every campaign type is for every business. I’ve done countless account audits where thousands of dollars were being wasted on poorly set up video, Gmail, display, remarketing, search with display select, and more, campaign types. While these campaign types have their own place within the marketing funnel, depending on your budget, there may not be room to be in all of these spaces and it is important to focus your ad dollars on what is driving the most success.

The world of paid digital advertising can be mystifying. Do you need help figuring out if your digital marketing dollars are being spent effectively? Would you like an expert opinion on how your campaigns and analytics are currently set up, and what you could do to improve your results?

Apogee Results offers a complimentary Paid Search Report Card. We look at a half dozen key metrics and provide you with our analysis and recommendations at no cost or obligation – simply a 30-minute debriefing to help you better understand where you are and where you might be able to improve.

Patrick Dunn leads Apogee’s Paid Search department. His team is responsible for the strategy, implementation, and growth of all Paid Marketing efforts. He has experience working both in-house and at agencies in both Houston and Austin. He has successfully managed campaigns across multiple industries including several multi-million dollar a month campaigns.

To get updated information about the team at Apogee Results, please follow us on your favorite social media channels.