Understanding Google Ads RSA and Dynamic Campaigns

Responsive Search Ads (RSA) allow advertisers to input multiple headlines and descriptions, which Google tests and optimizes automatically to match various user queries. This flexibility helps improve the ad’s relevance and potential conversion rate.

Dynamic ad campaigns go a step further by automatically creating ads based on your website’s content, targeting specific categories with precision. This ensures that your ads are highly relevant to the users who see them, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion.

Implementing Strategic Bid Management

Starting Low to Manage Expectations

Starting with lower bids is crucial when setting up your Google Ads campaigns. This tactic is not just about saving money; it’s about avoiding setting a precedent with Google Ads that you’re willing to pay high costs per click (CPC). If you start high, Google’s algorithms may continue optimizing for higher CPCs, expecting you to be comfortable with such spending levels.

Gradual Increases Based on Performance

1. Monitor and Analyze

• Start by closely monitoring how your ads perform at lower bid levels. Look for metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and cost per conversion. This data is fundamental in understanding the effectiveness of your ad copy, targeting, and initial bidding strategy.

2. Incremental Bidding

• Once you have baseline performance data, increase bids on keywords and ad placements showing potential incrementally. This method allows you to test the waters without committing a large budget upfront, adjusting only based on successful outcomes.

3. Focused Bid Adjustments

• Target your bid increases on segments that are performing well. For instance, if certain times of day, geographic locations, or specific devices yield better results, adjust your bids to capitalize on these high-performing factors.

4. Set Upper Limits

• Establishing maximum bid caps that align with your overall budget and conversion goals is essential. This prevents any runaway spending and ensures that your bids do not exceed a cost-effective threshold for your business.

Benefits of Strategic Bid Management in Google Ads

• Cost Control: Starting with lower bids and only increasing based on performance keeps your CPC low, preventing budget depletion.
• Improved ROI: By optimizing your bids gradually, you invest more in areas that are proven to work, thereby improving your overall return on investment (ROI).
• Enhanced Learning: This approach allows you to understand better which aspects of your campaigns are driving results, giving you deeper insights into practical strategies and areas for improvement.

Conclusion

Combining the power of Google Ads’ RSA with dynamic campaigns and implementing strategic bid management can significantly enhance the efficiency of your digital advertising efforts. By starting with lower bids and carefully adjusting based on performance, you ensure your advertising budget is spent wisely, driving more conversions without overspending. This method maintains your CPC at a manageable level and leverages Google’s sophisticated ad-targeting capabilities to effectively reach the most relevant audiences.

Want help maximizing your Google Ads performance for the lowest cost per conversion? Contact us for a free Google Ads audit.

The post Strategic Bid Management with Google Ads: Using RSA and Dynamic Campaigns for Cost-Effective Conversions appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

The client is a large wide-area network (WAN) software optimization company, XYZ Software (not the real name). The sales process for this category of product is complex. It’s not made any easier by the fact that XYZ sells to IT professionals, who are extremely busy and difficult to reach. The pain point for these professionals is slow-running networks. But, isolating the speed issue is often difficult and easily trumped by fire-fighting situations that demand immediate attention.

XYZ Software had been IT marketing with email campaigns, webinars, pay-per-click (PPC), and trade shows. As is often the case, there was no process in place for tele-qualifying inbound leads or generating sales appointments or demos. This resulted in a large number of unqualified “warm” leads in the sales funnel. As a consequence they either dropped out of the funnel or remained in the funnel without further attempts to qualify them. Furthermore, Sales was not following up on the majority of leads because they were not sales-ready.

Turning “Warm” Leads into Prospects, then Customers

XYZ called us in to figure out how to turn more “warm” leads into prospects and turn more prospects into customers. Our recommendation was a multi-touch, multi-channel lead nurturing program. The program integrated a tele-qualifying process owned by Marketing, which resulted in Sales appointments and demos. We tested two offers: a Gartner Magic Quadrant report versus an on-demand webinar/seminar featuring a Gartner analyst. We also tested three lists.

1. The house lead file.
2. A rental list of the primary competitor’s customers.
3. Lastly, a webinar/seminar attendee list.

Later, as the program rolled out, we included webinar attendees and inbound responders in the lead nurturing program.

Test 1: a Gartner Magic Quadrant report.

Interpreting Metrics to Generate Revenue

As it turned out, both offers performed equally well, splitting nearly 50/50. All of the lists were productive. Because we tracked the metrics, we were able to determine that the webinar list outperformed the others.

We tracked the number of attempts to reach IT titles for each list. The number of touches required to convert a prospect into a sales-ready lead ranged from two to nine touches. The an average was 7.51. Webinar attendance outperformed the other outbound marketing techniques with an average of 2.5 touches, moving prospects through the buying process more quickly than other efforts.

Test 2: On-demand webinar/seminar featuring a Gartner analyst.

Implementing the Winning Campaign

We started out with campaign messaging provided by a product manager, but after a week of tele-prospecting, we realized the messaging was off. When conversion rates don’t manifest at a satisfactory rate fairly early, it’s time to make a change. We addressed this quickly, listening to prospects and revising the messaging to suit. Also, we provided more training to the tele-qualifiers, improving their product knowledge and training them on different ways to overcome objections.

We also changed the messaging about XYZ’s prime competitor. Instead of talking about the competitor as such, we repositioned XYZ’s technology as a solution to problems encountered by users of the competition’s product.

As part of the lead nurturing program, the calling team followed up with prospects by sending informational material such as white papers and case studies as well as invitations to on-demand webinars designed to refine the sequential touch points, improving the quantity and quality of dialogue with prospects. This helped to establish a sequence of nurturing by educating prospects on the viability of XYZ’s offerings.

We cannot share the actual numbers that resulted from this multi-touch, multi-channel program, but we can say that the program is still in place at XYZ Software, and the competing company has experienced some loss of market share as a result.

Author

Laurie B. Beasley

Laurie B. Beasley is co-founder and president of Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. Beasley Direct is a Silicon Valley direct marketing agency that has managed search, email, online, and demand generation campaigns for nearly 100 companies. Ms. Beasley serves as President of the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California. Laurie manages the eMarketing Roundtable for the BMA Northern California. She is also an instructor of online marketing at UC Berkeley Extension and teaches for the Online Marketing Institute. Ms. Beasley frequently speaks on online marketing and demand generation topics for marketing organizations, including the DMA, BMA, AMA, Tech Council, and the Online Marketing Summit.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. The company provides services in email marketing, search engine optimization, social media, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, website design, media planning, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. helps clients in both B2B and B2C marketing. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb, Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to www.BeasleyDirect.com or call Laurie Beasley, President, at 408-782-0046 x21 or email lbeasley@beasleydirect.com.

The post How We Executed a Meeting Maker Campaign for a Network Software Company appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

The ABC Glove Corporation (not the real name) is a leader in the field of industrial gloves. The average value of a new customer account to ABC is high -— around $50,000 per customer per year. The target contact is a decision maker in safety, operations or purchasing within metal manufacturing industries.
ABC’s ambitious goal was to gain $2.5 million in incremental sales. The corporation’s marketing department tried everything: pay-per-click advertising, email, tradeshows and more -—-but could not acquire enough qualified sales leads to hit this target. ABC called us in to help them take a fresh and more productive approach that would result in more appointments for the sales department.

First, we identified the sales-ready “A” lead criteria based on their selling process and marketplace. Then we did some simple, back-of-the-napkin analysis of the needs of the lead-to-sales funnel. Based on the estimations of the vice president of marketing, we found that achieving an incremental $2.5 million in annual sales at $50,000 per sale meant they would have to close 50 new sales in a year. At a 20% proposal close rate, they needed 250 qualified sales opportunities in the proposal stage. At a 25% conversion rate (qualified sales-ready A leads to proposal rate), ABC needed 1,000 “Qualified A” leads in the sales team pipeline. And the conversion rate of marketing inquiry level (MQL) leads to sales-ready A leads is 10%. The bottom line: ABC Corporation needed 10,000 MQLs in the top of the demand generation funnel process to be able to hit their incremental sales target.

Why Wouldn’t Email Alone Work?

The VP of marketing estimated that on the high end, the available universe of contacts in companies in metal manufacturing was roughly 7,500. If ABC emailed all 7,500 and got a 1% inbound response, that would equal 75. If 50% of those leads filled out a form, that would result in 35 marketing-level MQL leads. ABC would have to email to this list at least 285 times to get the 10,000 marketing-level leads in the pipeline. (But it is unlikely that every email would result in a 1% inbound response as the response rates from this small audience would decline over time.) So email alone could not achieve the sales goals.

Multi-Touch and Multi-Channel Solution

Under the conditions of this small but highly valuable target market, we determined that ABC needed a much higher lead-to-sale conversion process to meet their sales goals. We recommended a multi-touch and multi-channel sequence of email and tele-prospecting. This would result in actual appointments being made for the sales department.

We normally recommend testing different approaches with a small sample of prospects to see which approach stimulates the highest response level. In this case, we tested two offers. A book about physical safety in the metal manufacturing environment versus the offer of a free pair of gloves. The VP of marketing suggested the offer of a free pair of gloves because in his experience, the prospect would request a sample pair in any case, so he felt this would short-circuit the process to some degree. We were less certain, as we have found in the past that a free sample sometimes feels like too much of a commitment early in the relationship. We also tested two lists, an in-house list versus a rental list.

The test showed that the appeal of the offer was about equal between the gloves and the book. (We went with the gloves for the roll out campaign). Both lists performed equally well.

The Multi-Touch Lead Nurturing Process Involved:

Initial email campaign.

• Initial call (left voice message or in some accounts we must be directed to proper contact).
• Call to engage new contact in the value prop and offers.
• Email to the correct contact, and or email content as requested to support our dialog.
• Call to complete the value prop and offer conversation, listen to needs and pain points and gather those critical data points into the lead qualification script-record, and if qualified, close on ABC sales rep appointment.

Marketing collateral for Glove Company campaign.

We often find it takes seven to thirteen touches to deliver a sales-ready lead. In this case, the average number of touches was 4.28. Why did our campaign for ABC require so few touches? The answer is embedded in our multi-touch best practices:

Have a good list (few incorrect contacts).

• Develop creative that captures hearts and minds and have follow up content and dialog to support it.
• Offer something of high perceived value.
• Optimize the value proposition delivery by adding tele-prospecting to the mix. This creates a personal relationship with the prospect. Remember: people buy from people, and prospects don’t share their qualifying pain points on lead forms.

We were able to generate enough qualified sales appointments to help them meet their additional $2.5 million sales goal, and we taught them how to sustain this level of growth year over year.

Laurie B. Beasley

Laurie B. Beasley is co-founder and president of Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. Beasley Direct is a Silicon Valley direct marketing agency that has managed search, email, online, and demand generation campaigns for nearly 100 companies. Ms. Beasley serves as President of the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California. Laurie manages the eMarketing Roundtable for the BMA Northern California. She is also an instructor of online marketing at UC Berkeley Extension and teaches for the Online Marketing Institute. Ms. Beasley frequently speaks on online marketing and demand generation topics for marketing organizations, including the DMA, BMA, AMA, Tech Council, and the Online Marketing Summit.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. The company provides services in email marketing, search engine optimization, social media, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, website design, media planning, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. helps clients in both B2B and B2C marketing. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb, Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to www.BeasleyDirect.com or call Laurie Beasley, President, at 408-782-0046 x21 or email lbeasley@beasleydirect.com.

The post How We Helped an Industrial Glove Manufacturer to Schedule New Sales Appointments that Resulted in $2.5 Million in Incremental Sales appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

This is a successful meeting maker campaign that includes an appeal to emotions, multiple touches, and a carefully designed offer. The call to action was to set up an appointment for Sales. We were marketing to engineers — always a tough sell because of their skepticism. We sought to persuade them to consider replacing a tried-and-true instrument with something they may not even have heard of. Our team did this not by leading with product features. Instead, we pulled on their heartstrings — reliving a recent event in which engineers were heroes because of the quality of their instruments and their work.

Background:

Anritsu’s VectorStar Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) is used to measure microwave and mm-wave frequencies in design, testing and manufacture of electronic components where extreme accuracy is required. A new model leapfrogged the competition in features and performance, providing the opportunity to generate sales leads through a multi-channel marketing campaign.

Electrical engineers (EE) are the primary audience for this campaign. They think in a methodical way and demand proof of product claims. Engineers require detailed specs and technical information to make a buying decision. They are not at all impressed by marketing copy and claims unsubstantiated by statistics.

The Challenge: Marketing to Engineers

Anritsu’s predecessor company, Wiltron, invented the modern VNA tester in the late 1950s. While Anritsu continued to improve VNA high-performance technology, several well-funded companies have entered the market and developed similar versions of Anritsu’s products, taking the lead in sheer sales order volume. We needed to get Anritsu back on our buyer’s “short list”.

Electrical engineers are process-oriented. Consequently, if they are comfortable with a tool and that tool satisfies their requirements, it’s difficult to get them to switch. VNA testers start at $100K and have a long sales cycle because they are considered a capital equipment investment.

Campaign Objective:

Our goal with the campaign was to bring Anritsu to the table with new customers that the sales force had not yet penetrated, creating awareness of the Anritsu VectorStar solution and ultimately generating face-to-face consultation meetings with qualified firms. A consultation requester who met key budget, purchase authority, need and timeframe-to-purchase criteria was considered an “A” category sales lead. In addition, the “B”-rated leads are prospect contacts with proven interest that opted in to future communications, but were not yet qualified.

Creative and Marketing Strategy:

The creative focused on the Mars Curiosity Rover, which had made a spectacularly successful landing on Mars about the time this project began. Engineers are inherently interested in the accomplishments of other engineers and how they solved tough problems. The Mars Curiosity Rover landing was one of the toughest, with thousands of measurements and calculations that had to be coded into the landing and could not be altered during the “seven minutes of terror” during which the Curiosity Rover descended to the planet’s surface. To quote from our letter to prospects:

Marketing creative focused on the Mars Curiosity Rover.

As it descended through the atmosphere of Mars, the spacecraft carrying the Curiosity Rover fired its rockets 79 times, went through five configuration changes, and slowed from 13,000 mph to a standstill. In the final operation, a “sky crane” was used to gently deposit the Curiosity on the surface since retro rockets would stir up too much dust.

We pointed out the extreme precision this required, and then made the transition to the reader: we think of the NASA and JPL engineers as heroes, but you are required to make equally exacting measurements every day. That’s why you deserve an instrument like the VectorStar.

The Campaign’s Focus

The centerpiece of the campaign was a direct mailing in a transparent tube containing a poster. An artist’s rendering as a constant reminder of the Curiosity Rover’s descent sequence was on one side (NASA has done renderings but the client did not want to violate any potential copyrights so we commissioned our own) with Anritsu product specs at the bottom. Our hopes were that engineers would mount these in their cubicles, thus providing a constant reminder of the VectorStar, complete with a call-to-action. In addition, we followed this up with an email on the same theme, and then began the telemarketing campaign.

Personalized direct mail envelope with Mars Curiosity Rover.

Twenty-four to forty-eight hours after the email delivery, the calling team began to engage email and direct mail recipients. As a result, this multi-touch process had the effect of increasing the number of contact presentations and shortening the lead generation cycle. And, most contacts recalled receiving the direct mail piece or email. Many were familiar with the offering and willing to engage. Program metrics are indicative of the effectiveness of this process with the high volume of completed call scripts as partial evidence.

Call-to-Action

The call-to-action was a free gift when a prospect completed a VectorStar sales presentation. We tested two offers: an Anritsu-branded backpack (appealing because our target likes to carry lots of gadgets around) versus a VNA technical manual valued at $50. Because of concerns about accepting gifts, government and government contractors were offered only the book.

Additionally, all prospects that registered their contact information were immediately provided a free download link for a relevant white paper.

Because the price of the VectorStar VNA is $51,000 and up, we knew that repeated contacts—and often multiple contacts—within the same company would be necessary to close the sale. The goal of the multi-touch approach was to start the process by gathering as much information as possible. At the same time we gained initial commitment to enter the lead pipeline.

Results:

Overall, the campaign was highly successful. Based on the sales CRM reports, the program generated over $2.8 million dollars in the sales pipeline during the three-month campaign window. Furthermore, many high sales potential leads are still being nurtured.

The campaign had a specific goal of developing 69 “A” leads that were considered opportunities in the CRM system. Through direct response and follow-up calling we developed 115 leads, which put us at 167% of the goal. In addition, the Calling Team gathered 426 opt-in contacts for continued nurturing and development.

Personalized email for Anritsu VectorStar with Mars Curiosity Rover.

In conclusion, the VectorStar campaign shows best practices for an effective multi-part B-to-B nurturing campaign: start with a memorable contact sequence, then follow up with multiple touches that develop the prospect into a sales-ready lead. Because so many recipients remembered and engaged with the mailing and follow-up email, it was easier to get them on the phone and easier to complete an initial sales conversation. Because of this effective warm up approach, calls were completed faster, allowing more contacts to be made within the allotted time and budget. The result: more leads and sales opportunities.

Marketing collateral for Anritsu VectorStar campaign.

Laurie B. Beasley

Laurie B. Beasley is co-founder and president of Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. Beasley Direct is a Silicon Valley direct marketing agency that has managed search, email, online, and demand generation campaigns for nearly 100 companies. Ms. Beasley serves as President of the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California. Laurie manages the eMarketing Roundtable for the BMA Northern California. She is also an instructor of online marketing at UC Berkeley Extension and teaches for the Online Marketing Institute. Ms. Beasley frequently speaks on online marketing and demand generation topics for marketing organizations, including the DMA, BMA, AMA, Tech Council, and the Online Marketing Summit.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. The company provides services in email marketing, search engine optimization, social media, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, website design, media planning, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. helps clients in both B2B and B2C marketing. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb, Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to www.BeasleyDirect.com or call Laurie Beasley, President, at 408-782-0046 x21 or email lbeasley@beasleydirect.com.

The post How We Helped Anritsu Exceed Lead Goals 167% With a Meeting Maker Campaign appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Anritsu is a leader in electronic instruments used by the wireless industry. The instruments are used to test and troubleshoot cellular tower transmission lines and base station transmitters. However, BTS Master Base Station Analyzer market penetration lagged other Anritsu products. And, Anritsu had been unable to penetrate the executive suite at top cell phone companies because competitors were strongly entrenched.

We had to convince decision makers our instrument was so much faster, more accurate and more compact that they would buy it the next time they needed a base station analyzer. But, before we could do this, we had to get their undivided attention with a multi touch marketing door-opener campaign.

The First Touch: life-size box, letter, brochure and response card with invitation to a custom microsite for an in-person demo and iPod shuffle.

The First Touch:

The life-size box showed off how compact the new instrument is in comparison to competitor’s large and heavy products. Inside were a letter, brochure and response card. We invited prospects to come to a custom microsite where they could sign up for an in-person demo. Additionally, demo participants would receive an iPod Shuffle preloaded with BTS Master technical material. All components were personalized. Not only with the recipient’s name but also with technical benefits which differ from carrier to carrier.

As a second touch point, we executed an email to the same lists with the same offer including personalization. Finally, in the third touch point, we followed up with outbound telemarketing setting up appointments with responders. And, to increase conversion from prospects who had not responded we contacted them.

The Second Touch: an email to the same lists with the same offer including personalization.

Goals:

We had two goals for this multi touch marketing campaign:

• Firstly, meet or exceed a projected initial response rate of 2-5% (people who received the mail or email and went to the landing page).
• Secondly, of these, prequalify 10% to meet the internal criteria of “sales ready leads”—i.e., a prospect who is ready to sign a purchase order if the product meets their needs. (This goal equates to 0.2%-0.5% of the initial mail/email quantity.)

Actual Results:

• 7% of total target contacts visited the landing page.
• 4% of total targets filled out the contact form.
• Of these, 49% were qualified as “sales ready leads” during the follow-up call to set up their in-person demo appointment.
• Through additional telemarketing, a total of 8% of ALL contacts were qualified as “sales ready leads”— a result 1,000%-4,000% better than the original projection.
• Over $3,000,000 of potential sales have been added to the pipeline and more are anticipated as the leads were being followed up.

Best of all, we won an International ECHO^TM Award for this campaign.

We won an ECHO Award!

The ECHO Awards honor the world’s best marketing campaigns, that have raised the bar in terms of strategy, creativity and results.

Laurie B. Beasley

Laurie B. Beasley is co-founder and president of Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. Beasley Direct is a Silicon Valley direct marketing agency that has managed search, email, online, and demand generation campaigns for nearly 100 companies. Ms. Beasley serves as President of the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California. Laurie manages the eMarketing Roundtable for the BMA Northern California. She is also an instructor of online marketing at UC Berkeley Extension and teaches for the Online Marketing Institute. Ms. Beasley frequently speaks on online marketing and demand generation topics for marketing organizations, including the DMA, BMA, AMA, Tech Council, and the Online Marketing Summit.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. The company provides services in email marketing, search engine optimization, social media, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, website design, media planning, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. helps clients in both B2B and B2C marketing. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb, Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to www.BeasleyDirect.com or call Laurie Beasley, President, at 408-782-0046 x21 or email lbeasley@beasleydirect.com.

The post How We Beat Goals by 1,000% and Won an Award for Anritsu with a Meeting Maker Campaign appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Tip for more complete Brand Guidelines: Remember all your media

For marketers and their designers, well-done Brand Guidelines are a godsend. They help establish the ground rules that protect investment in the Brand. In today’s world, many companies communicate using electronic visual media and every year, less is done in print. So just as with a business that may not do a lot of online marketing and forget about setting standards for graphics and color for Web or video, it’s easy to overlook print media that may not be used very often. But leaving the task for later can become a headache that doesn’t have to happen.

Your designer who’s establishing color palettes for your brand is the first and best person to think of to help you make sure all your brand colors are specified for all media: RGB, Hexadecimal, 4/color Print, and Pantone PMS spot colors. In creating brand guidelines documents for you and providing specifications, they have already established color families, hierarchies and rules of use in your most top-of-mind media. You’ve already invested in their time and skill. Save time, and possibly your Brand integrity, by making sure all media and color systems are included in your Brand Guidelines document.

Why is it worth taking the time for colors you’ll hardly use?

Sometimes, if left unassigned and unspecified, the color of one project can create a big black eye.  A vendor may choose a color for medium such as silk screening or solid spot color that they think is ‘close’ to the example in a PDF guidelines document that specified color in other media, but not spot print color. “Best Guess” is not an accurate way to specify color. It’s a far better investment of time at the front end of brand guidelines creation if you include complete color specifications in your Brand Guidelines documents that list different additive and subtractive color systems and the most common ink and color mix systems.

What gets left behind most often, and what does it take to specify colors well?

The world of color in marketing communications continues to change at a blinding pace. As little as a decade ago, the color system most alien to veteran graphic designers was the hexadecimal color system.  The new science it involved and the lack of control in web viewing devices scared the heck outta most, frankly. Now, since so much design work has shifted to Web, and the lion’s share of paper printing has gone digital and toner-based, the one-time standard for color, the PMS (Pantone Matching System) spot color, is often overlooked and left out of brand guidelines documents. And it’s no wonder — fewer projects are printed using spot inks. Digital printing most times renders a spot color unneeded.

To specify spot colors, it takes online tools that help you compare digital colors to CMYK (four-color process) by formula, and a good set of PMS print swatch books is important. But it’s worth taking two steps:

• First, for CMYK color checking, the extra step of having digital proofs with swatches of your brand colors on paper, produced by a professional print-proofing house.
• Second, for spot color checking a set of PMS ink ‘draw downs’ on paper from an ink house or lithographic printer for your brand colors.

The swatches, paper proofs and ink draw-downs, when viewed along with your designer’s most calibrated computer monitor, you will be able to confirm that your brand colors pass muster for consistency across media.

Sleep better at night, and dream in color (or black and white if you prefer).

Even with standards to follow, color can be a touchy subject. People (read: decisionmakers and customers) have visceral reactions to color that can be unpredictable (Remember the white/gold vs. black/blue dress meme a while back?). Why go through the trouble of editing and adding to color standards more than once if you don’t have to.

So just as other aspects of branding should go through vetting and approval, color should not be overlooked and should be specified in your guidelines as completely as possible. No one wants to make the choice between getting stuck with boxes full of unacceptable branded merchandise, or going back through the entire brand approval process just to get OKs on a color. Time is money, so the decision to take care of color details in advance when setting up brand guidelines would seem to be rather black and white. Or Black and Blue.

What part of your brand creates the most frustration for you? Share in the comments below!

This article first appeared on the PerezWorks blog.

Carlos Perez, Creative Director, Beasley Direct & Online Marketing, Inc.

Carlos Perez has 28 year’s experience as an advertising art and creative director, with more than a decade concentrating on direct marketing and branding. Carlos Perez enjoys working on both general and direct creative projects, and he frequently acts as a consultant on the marketing strategy development team. His clients have ranged from automotive and financial to hi-tech, including American Isuzu Motors, Bank of America, CitiFinancial, Diners Club, eHealthInsurance.com, Intuit, Microsoft, Network Associates, Pacific Bell, Southern California Edison, 3Com, United Airlines, and CBS Television. Carlos has worked for major general and direct response advertising agencies including Grey Advertising, Brierley & Partners, Bates Worldwide Advertising and J. Walter Thompson Recruitment Advertising.

The post Creating Brand Guidelines? Don’t Shortchange Yourself When It Comes to Color. by Carlos Perez appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

News Facts:

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. (www.BeasleyDirect.com) of Northern California has been appointed as the search marketing agency of the Center for Elders’ Independence (CEI) (www.cei.elders.org) of Oakland, CA.  The initial work will be search engine optimization (SEO) to increase qualified inquiries into the health services offered by CEI.  Specific SEO services strategy will include optimizing the website architecture for better search visibility, keyword and key phrase research, and website content and copy optimization.

About Us:

 
Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. (www.BeasleyDirect.com) is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing for B2B and B2C clients. Beasley Direct provides services in email marketing, search engine optimization, print advertising, social media, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, website design, media planning, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb, Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to www.BeasleyDirect.com or call Laurie Beasley, President, at 408-782-0046 x21 or email lbeasley@beasleydirect.com.

The Center for Elders’ Independence (www.cei.elders.org)  is a non-profit program of all-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) health plan for seniors age 55 and older who prefer not to move into a nursing home but whose health problems make it impossible for them to stay at home without the help of caregivers.

Contacts:
Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc

Laurie B. Beasley

President

Ph: 408-782-0046 x21

lbeasley@beasleydirect.com

Center for Elders’ Independence

Dianna Garrett

Director of Communication & Planning

(510) 318-7135 – direct line

www.cei.elders.org

The post Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. Becomes Search Marketing Agency for The Center for Elders’ Independence. appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

AdWords Quality Score

When Google first started its pay-per-click (PPC) advertising business, they did not want to create a strict pay-for-position marketplace. Google firmly believed that the ads they served up should be relevant to the search being performed to mirror the reputation for quality that Google built with its organic search results. To deliver this, AdWords first started measuring an ad’s quality by looking at its click-through rate (CTR). Google assumed that the higher an ad’s CTR, the more likely it was the ad was delivering what the searcher wanted. AdWords would serve these ads more often, giving more exposure and traffic to the advertiser.

Over time, Google AdWords expanded and refined this concept of “Quality Score.” An ad/keyword combination that has a high Quality Score will appear more often, be higher on the results page and have a lower cost per click than a lower Quality Score ad/keyword combination. This gives advertisers incentive to take advantage of this by creating good, relevant ads for their keyword selections.

Google measures Quality Score starting at the keyword level, looking at the keyword, how relevant it is to the ad it triggers, and the landing page it points to. Quality Score is a dynamic factor that changes on a second-by-second basis and is impacted by many different factors. The AdWords interface reports on a subset of these factors for the advertiser and the results are not real-time, sometimes reflecting the keyword status of five to 10 days earlier.

Before we look at the major factors of Quality Score, let’s take a moment to review how it impacts your ad’s position and cost per click (CPC). When an advertiser bids on a keyword to trigger an ad’s appearance in the Google results page, they are participating in a real-time ad auction for the top spots on the page. These top spots drive more traffic that is often better qualified for the advertiser’s goal. Its “Ad Rank” determines the position of any advertiser’s ad on the page. Ad Rank is a score that AdWords calculates using two elements; the maximum PPC bid that advertiser is willing to spend, multiplied by the Quality Score of the desired keyword. The higher the Ad Rank, the better the on-page position for the ad.

An Example

Let’s look at an example of three advertisers that are all bidding a maximum of $5.00 per click for their ad to appear. And, see how their differing Quality Scores will impact the ad position and eventual CPC:

Advertiser – Alpha

QS 7 multiplied by a max bid of $5 CPC

Ad Rank = 35

Advertiser – Baker

QS 8 multiplied by a max bid of $5 CPC

Ad Rank = 40

This advertiser’s ad will appear higher on the page

Advertiser – Charlie

QS 6 multiplied by a max bid of $5 CPC

Ad Rank = 30

This advertiser’s ad will appear lowest on the page

Consequently, a higher Quality Score will also influence how much the advertiser eventually pays for the click. Using the same scenario, let’s look at another example:

The actual cost per click that the advertisers will pay will be determined by the Ad Rank of the advertiser appearing in the position below them divided by the Quality Score of the winning advertiser. For our example above, advertiser Baker was the winning advertiser with a higher Ad Rank (maximum CPC bid x QS) of 40 versus Alpha’s Ad Rank of 35.

# 1 Position on the page:

Advertiser – Baker

Ad Rank = 40

Actual CPC = $3.89 (Alpha’s Ad Rank divided by Baker’s Quality Score)

#2 Position on the page:

Advertiser – Alpha

Ad Rank = 35

Actual CPC = $4.28 (Charlie’s Ad Rank (30) divided by Alpha’s Quality Score (7))

#3 Position on the page:

Advertiser – Charlie

Ad Rank = 30

Actual CPC = Minimum Allowed Bid for the auction

The illustration above seems fairly straightforward. But in reality, the ad auctions are complex, with tens or hundreds of advertisers bidding on any specific word and automated bidding tools rapidly changing the scenarios. The thing to remember is that having a high Quality Score will make your ad dollars go further.

Improving a Keyword’s Quality Score

So how does one go about viewing and improving a keyword’s Quality Score? Let’s start by understanding where Quality Score reporting lives in the AdWords interface.

While Quality Score is reported at the keyword level, it isn’t one of the metric columns that appear in the default view within the AdWords interface. You can add it by going to the “column” dropdown in the keyword view and adding it from the display. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. Adding Quality Score to Your Google AdWords Program

Source: Google

Now that you can see your Quality Score for your keywords, the next questions are, “What should it be?” and “How can you improve it?”

Firstly, Quality Score should be targeted for improvement at any level below a seven out of 10. An ideal score is 10, but that is hard to attain except for highly branded keywords for your own products. Living in the seven-to-10 range will help to keep your CPC down and your share of impressions up.

To improve your Quality Score, focus on three attributes for your keyword/ad combination: CTR, the relevance of the ad text to the keyword, and the relevance of the keyword and ad text combination to the target-landing page

.

Improve your Quality Score by Improving Your Click-Through Rate:

This will have the biggest impact on Quality Score by far and is the easiest one to understand.

• First of all, use your keywords in your ad text.
• Write compelling ads with benefit statements and strong calls to action.
• Finally, use your display URL to add more text to the ad. This is an ideal place to put a call to action.

Improve Your Quality Score by Placing an Ad That Is Relevant to Your Target Audience’s Expected Search Queries:

• Especially relevant: make sure that your ads are addressing the needs of your audience. If the ad does not answer their need, the audience will click on your competitors. Google looks at your ad much as they evaluate organic search results. The ad needs to address the search with a relevant message.

Finally, Improve Your Quality Score by Creating a Relevant Landing Page Target

• First of all, the landing page must make a clear payoff to the ad’s promise in an easily visible part of the page.
• Secondly, the landing page must not be swarming with ads.
• Furthermore, the time your visitor spends on the landing page is vital to AdWords viewing it as a relevant landing page. This is measured by quickly “pogo sticking” back to the search results page on Google, looking for better results, and/or by Google’s tracking how much time is spent on the page when the visitor is logged into a Google account such as YouTube, Gmail or Google Drive.

As was previously stated, Quality Score is measured by a variety of factors in real time. The three mentioned above have a significant impact on your Quality Score and are the easiest to manage.

In addition, you can find out more about the details of Quality Score measurement and improvement at the following links:

• Video: How the PPC Auction Works and Quality Score

• Google AdWords Help Article on Quality Score

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The Author

This post was authored by John Thyfault, Vice President of Search & Social Strategy, of Beasley Direct & Online Marketing. Contact John at jthyfault@beasleydirect.com.

John has more than 19 years of marketing, sales and product development experience, and he brings a proven track record of successful campaign, program and product development expertise. His knowledge of search engine optimization and marketing, combined with an in-depth understanding of customer identification, market analysis and segmentation, allows him to deliver high returns on our client’s marketing investment for both business-to-consumer and business-to-business markets.

Prior to working with Beasley Direct, John was Senior Client Services Project Director at ThirdAge.com, a first wave baby boomer lifestyle and community website. At ThirdAge he successfully led major client sponsorships for Fortune 100 companies in healthcare (Tylenol), financial services (American Century), technology (Intel & IBM) and consumer products areas (Revlon & Viactive). He was responsible for strategic and tactical goal setting, project management, new product creation and web site production. John previously worked in Channel Marketing and National Account Sales for IDG Books Worldwide, the publishers of the immensely popular “…For Dummies” book series. Additionally, he managed the wholesale distributor sales channel for Tor/Forge Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

John is active in local marketing associations, including the Direct Marketing Association, the Business Marketing Association and is currently serving on the board of directors for the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association.

John has taught search engine marketing fundamentals extensively. He has led workshops for the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association, Northern California Direct Marketing Association (DMAnc.org) and the Business Marketing Association. He also teaches Search Engine Marketing at UCSC Extension (UCSC Silicon Valley Extension).

The post Understanding AdWords Quality Score and How It Can Lower Your Cost Per Click appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Google Ad Extensions are offered in AdWords as a set of extensions intended to make your advertising more effective by refining reach and targeting. Google ad extensions also allow extra information about your business to display with your Google ad. This extra information may provide prospects with more reasons to contact your business.

The first thing to understand about Google ad extensions is they display automatically. But, only when your ad and keywords’ Quality Score allow you to appear in the top two positions in the search results. These extensions include seller ratings, consumer ratings, social extensions, and previous visits to the business’ site. Advertisers don’t have to do anything for automated extensions to appear.

Second, some Google ad extensions do not show unless your ad has achieved a high enough Ad Rank. This allows your ad to appear high enough up on the Google search results page. You earn this spot by making sure that your keywords have a high quality score. And, you are bidding enough per click to be competitive for the first two spots on the page. We’re going to cover each of the ad extension types here, and briefly discuss how to use them.

Ad extensions are available at no additional charge beyond your cost per click. So, you may as well take advantage of them. Google is not providing these tools out of charity, of course. The more successful your pay-per-click (PPC) ad is, the more money Google makes.

Google Ad Extensions

Site Links Extension

Site Links Extensions are designed to provide additional relevant links to your website beyond the one associated with the ad. One of our clients uses Site Links to point to catalogue and product support pages. This is one of the extensions you can take advantage of, But, only if you have a high quality score and appear in the first two ad spots on the search results page. Site Links show additional resources from your website, which increases click through significantly because the user may be looking for a variety of things. Furthermore, Site Links help you to showcase more of your offerings.

Figure 1: Example of Site Links Extension

Source: Google

Location Extensions

Location Extensions are designed to boost the effectiveness of local search. This is done by tying your ad to Google Maps, making your ads more relevant to the local searcher. Type in your retail locations and Google will serve up information on these locations along with the ad when somebody is searching nearby. Location Extensions are effective at driving traffic to local stores. Store location will appear within Google Map searches and help with positioning in locally based searches.

Figure 2: Example of Location Extensions

Source: Google

Call Extensions

Call Extensions allow you to add telephone numbers to your ads on an ad-group-by-ad-group basis, allowing people to call your business directly through the ad (particularly on mobile devices because of the click-to-call function). When you have a live salesperson interacting with your prospect, it makes for a more efficient sales cycle with fewer touches.

Call Extensions also allow you to collect details on length of call, area code of the call, time of day, and which campaign is associated with each call.

App Extensions

App Extensions allow you to promote your mobile app and drive customers to the website, to GooglePlay, or to the App Store for a download (note that this works with Android, but not with the Apple Store). You can use App Extensions to start the app download immediately by taking the purchaser directly to the appropriate page on the App Store or Googleplay, accommodating impulse buys of your new app.

Review Extensions

Review Extensions display reviews with your ad (but not from all sources). The best source of reviews (from Google’s perspective) is from your Google+ page, but many major ecommerce review vendors are also accepted as legitimate sources such as BazaarVoice. (Yelp! doesn’t share reviews with Google, unfortunately.) Additionally, Review Extensions can be powerful because they provide third-party endorsement of your business. Ratings stars can boost click-through.

Callout Extensions

Callout Extensions include additional descriptive text of 25 characters in standard text ads. The Callout Extensions have some restrictions with respect to trademark requirements, depending on the preferences of the trademark owners. For instance, if you sell athletic shoes and you want the callout to say, “Lowest cost Nike shoes,” your ability to use the phrase is gated by Nike’s willingness to allow their trademarked brand to be used in that context. Google enforces by exception. If somebody complains about an ad based on trademark violation, the trademarked word or phrase is removed from the allowable keyword list.

Callout Extensions are great for short-term offers or special promos. You will need to create multiple callouts for a campaign to give Google choices. The more specific the callout, the better. Be concise; two words are better than four. Google gives the example of using “Free shipping” instead of “We offer free shipping.” When composing a Callout Extension, use normal sentence case structure. The descriptions cannot feature excessive hyperbole, all caps, or exclamation points, and cannot duplicate the ad text.

Structured Snippets.

When you activate Structured Snippets, Google will review your site and look for snippets of information that apply to various sections of your site. They automatically generate these along with your ad. You have less control here than over other Ad Extensions. You can turn it off if you don’t like what Google does, but generally Google does a good job of pulling out the key points. Structured Snippets do increase click-through rates, and they also Increase the conversion percentage once prospects arrive at your page.

Figure 3: Example of an Ad with Structured Snippets

Source: Google

Why You Should Take Advantage of Ad Extensions

Ad Extensions help to improve the visibility of your ad in various ways, and you can use more than one extension with every ad, customizing these additional functions to suit the purpose of your campaigns. The extensions often appear above the search results, rather than along the sidebar. If your ad is in competition with another ad and your ad has extensions with it that add to impact and meaningful results for the user, your ad will appear higher than your competitor’s.

Ad Extensions have demonstrated higher click-through rates than ads without extensions, increasing traffic to your site by qualified customers.

Finally, Google Ad Extensions are free. This makes them one of marketing’s rare great opportunities to improve performance without increasing expenses. Who could resist a deal like that?

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John Thyfault

This post was authored by John Thyfault, Vice President of Search & Social Strategy, of Beasley Direct & Online Marketing. Contact John at jthyfault@beasleydirect.com.

The post Google Ad Extensions and How To Use Them appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Facebook is one of the largest social media sites with more than 936 million daily users worldwide. With such a large user base, Facebook marketing strategies are a great avenue for marketers to promote their company’s brand, products, services, and build up a following of loyal fans. In fact, 42% of marketers report Facebook is a critical part of their business. A large part of successful posting and marketing on Facebook is accumulating the largest number of user interactions possible, such as views, likes, comments, or even shares. We’ll share how you can get the most out of each of your Facebook posts by optimizing the timing, content, and frequency of posts. (https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/)

Timing Is Everything

Every minute on Facebook about 510 comments are posted and 293,000 statuses are updated. Every day over six million likes are accrued by daily active users. One would think that with all this activity, any time would be a good time to publish a Facebook post. According to statistics published by Track Maven in their guide “The Marketing Mavens Guide to Facebook,” this is not exactly the case. (https://trackmaven.com/resources/facebook-advertising-budget-report/)

Most marketers post during the weekday, with Thursday being the most popular by a small margin, and then the number of posts drops nearly in half over the weekend, with only 9.04% of posts being published on Saturday. Post interactions, on the other hand, have a completely opposite trend. Facebook post interactions actually decrease during the weekdays and then increase sharply upward during the weekends. According to Track Maven, posts that are published on Sunday have 25% more interactions then posts made on Wednesday, making them significantly more effective.

(https://trackmaven.com/resources/facebook-advertising-budget-report/)

Of course, you don’t want to only publish posts only on the weekends. Good Facebook marketing strategies maintain a healthy posting schedule throughout the whole week. So is there a best time slot to get the most out of the weekday posts? The answer is yes. The majority of weekday posts occur during the workday, 9:00am-5:00pm. The highest average peak of interactions, however, is found during after-hours from 5pm-1am with an average of 2.49 interactions. This means that posts that are made during, or close to, 5pm-1am are more likely to receive the highest number of views, likes, or comments.

(https://trackmaven.com/resources/facebook-advertising-budget-report/)

Words, Words, Words

Now that you know the best time to publish a post, you have to write one. Since Facebook has no limit to how many characters can be in a post, the writer has the freedom to make a post as long or as short as they desire. Most writers go for the “‘simpler is better”’ approach, but is that really the best policy for Facebook writing?

(https://trackmaven.com/resources/facebook-advertising-budget-report/)

More than half of all Facebook posts consist of fewer than 20 words. Posts that consist of fewer than 10 words were the next most common number. However, it may surprise you that posts with a word count under 20 receive the least amount of daily user interactions. What may surprise you more is that Facebook posts consisting of 80 words or more will receive twice the amount of user interactions than posts with a smaller word count. Several theories exist about why this happens, but most seem to agree that people are more willing to interact with a post that requires a time investment.

Call-to-Action

The goal of a call to action is to cause the reader to take a specific action that helps increase the viewership of a post. Track Maven examined four of the most common call-to-action words (Share, Please, Like, and Now) used on Facebook to determine how effective they were at increasing user interaction. All four of these call-to-action words increased the interaction of posts compared to posts that did not have a call to action, with Share garnering twice as many social interactions than the other three words.

When marketing on Facebook marketers must bear in mind there is a potential pitfall attached to using a call- to -action word. Facebook changed its news feed algorithm to penalize pages that engage in like-baiting. Facebook defines like-baiting as “when a post explicitly asks News Feed readers to like, comment or share the post in order to get additional distribution beyond what the post would normally receive.” (https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/04/news-feed-fyi-cleaning-up-news-feed-spam/) The best way to avoid being penalized by this algorithm change is to use call to action terms sparingly, and find alternative ways to encourage interaction from readers.

What Is a Picture Worth?

Words are only part of creating an effective post. Most marketers prefer to add an image to increase the power of their chosen message. Facebook has one of the largest collections of online photos in the world, and as of February 2014 350 million photos (on average) were being uploaded to Facebook every day. Over 88% of all Facebook posts include an image of some kind, but does including an image in your post increase the frequency of user interactions? The answer is yes; posts that include an image saw 2.35 average user interactions per post while those that did not include a photo only saw 1.71 interactions.

 (https://trackmaven.com/resources/facebook-advertising-budget-report/)

How Many Hashtags Are Too Many?

Hashtags are a relatively new part of Facebook, with their use starting to pop up in June 2013. (https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2013/06/public-conversations-on-facebook/) Facebook decided to make hashtags a clickable part of a post in order to allow people to indicate they were a part of a larger conversation or group, and find others who were posting similar content.

About 83.93% of posts do not include hashtags, so it is not the most popular addition to posts. However, posts that do include one or two hashtags saw a user interaction increase of 60%. Posts that had three or four hashtags also had a larger user interaction than posts without hashtags, but the percentage was lower than the posts with only one or two hashtags. Posts that included seven or eight hashtags experienced the largest amount of user interactions, but it is good to note that posts using a lower number of hashtags usually contain better content and do not need to rely on so many hashtags.

Putting It All Together

Posting on Facebook is one of the key ways a company can build and maintain a powerful social media presence. By planning a healthy posting schedule during peak viewing hours, and keeping in mind the different aspects of a post such as word length, image use, and additions such as hashtags, a marketer can greatly increase how much attention they get out of each of their Facebook posts.

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This post was authored by Elizabeth A. Beasley, Account Manager, Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc.

Elizabeth Beasley serves as an account manager at Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc www.BeasleyDirect.com.  Elizabeth manages new client on-boarding and accounts, social media, corporate presentations, corporate website, and database maintenance. She also serves as an account manager for the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California www.DMAnc.org, managing event logistics, registration and promotion. She holds a B.A. in Communications from National University.

The post How to Get the Most Out of Your Corporate Facebook Marketing Strategies appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.