Congratulations! You’ve taken the big leap of launching your first digital advertising campaign. After a month or so, you’ve likely received a report with all types of metrics and charts. But what metrics are the most important? What metrics specifically indicate campaign success, vanity metrics, or ROI-based metrics? Let’s explore the differences between vanity metrics and ROI-based metrics and identify examples.

What are Vanity Metrics?

Vanity metrics look great on paper but lack clear guidance for subsequent actions.

Vanity metrics appear in almost any digital marketing report. These metrics look great on paper and are typically easy to track. However, they don’t tell the whole story and thus can’t be used to make campaign decisions.

Impressions, clicks, followers, likes, video views, and email opens are vanity metrics.

Here’s an example:

An optometrist hires a media buyer to run banner ads promoting a back-to-school eye exam special. They receive 200,000 impressions, but they cannot associate any booked appointments with their advertising efforts. On paper, 200,000 impressions look great. However, the optometrist is disappointed because they didn’t book any appointments. The vanity metric (impressions) only told part of the story.

You might be asking yourself, why track vanity metrics at all? Sometimes vanity metrics can be helpful, especially if the campaign goal is awareness.

Take our optometrist example. These banner ads were getting high impressions, which means the optometrist was increasing brand awareness. Their business will be top-of-mind when people served their ad are looking for an optometrist in the future. However, the optometrist’s goal was to book appointments for their back-to-school promotion, not increase awareness.  It’s Likely, this tactic wasn’t a good fit for their goal, leaving both the optometrist and their media buyer disappointed. Therefore, clarifying expectations and setting clear goals with your media buyer is crucial.

What are ROI-Based Metrics?

ROI-based metrics inform decisions by measuring means relative to ends

ROI-based metrics (also called actionable metrics) should appear in every digital marketing report. Sadly, they are often left out. This is partially because they require some setup and team buy-in to track accurately.

While tracking this ROI-based metric requires some setup, it helps the company make insightful decisions. For example, A business published a whitepaper on their website a few months ago. They are considering writing another, but they don’t know if their website visitors are downloading the content. They can set up a conversion goal in Google Analytics to determine if their visitors are interested in this type of content before they dedicate resources to creating another whitepaper.

Likewise, the lifetime value of a customer can help businesses make a multitude of decisions. But before they can make these informed decisions, the company must dedicate resources to tracking the components needed to calculate this KPI accurately.

You’ll find that the time spent setting up ROI-based goals is well worth it when your team can make informed decisions based on actionable metrics.

As a business owner, you must wear many hats: Sales, Finance, Coach, R&D, Marketing, and the list goes on. It’s challenging for the best of us to have deep knowledge and understanding in each one of these specialties, let alone all of them! The good news today is that you do not NEED to have a deep knowledge of marketing if you understand the value of analytics and your marketing firm appropriately utilizes this tool.

Analytics is the use of data or statistics to make decisions. Analytics in marketing is taking those metrics and stats to discover and interpret how consumers are receiving the message from your ads.

There are various tools available to you that can and will provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your advertising efforts. Some are paid tools, and many are available for free. A few of the most common analytics tools are Google Analytics, a free and widely used program. Another great option is MOZ, a top-rated program that helps you identify your visibility in search engine ranking results (SERP), track your positioning by specific keywords, and monitor your competitors.

Once set up as intended, analytic tools give you the ability to view your prospects’ and clients’ actions from the very first ad view all the way through to conversion.

Let’s take a closer look at what analytic analysis tells us and why it matters to your bottom line:

ONE: Paid Ad Analysis

Paid Ad Analysis allows us to interpret the effectiveness of each ad placement, blog post, or social media offer beyond an initial ad impression or video view, yet provides real ROI metrics by linking individual ads, ad copy, or keywords to REAL results – leads or a sale.

This insight then provides the ability to focus your paid ad dollars on those areas that are driving returns for your company.

TWO: Organic Analysis

Here, we are talking about all those efforts you invest time and attention to outside your paid ad campaigns.  These include building up your website, adding blogs, being published, claiming your GMB listing, trade show sponsorships, and more. All of these efforts increase the likelihood of your company showing up on the first page of SERPs without you having to PAY to be there.

Your analytics will tell you how people are navigating to your website and company through these efforts; and, more importantly, how valuable these visits are to your bottom line goals.

THREE: Customer Insights

This is where I get a little more excited! Your analytics will provide a wealth of insights into WHO your PAYING customers are, their behaviors and interests, and the types of messages they respond to positively. This information will help inform your larger strategy – from where to allocate ad spend, the message you develop, the timing, and even when and how to deliver them.

Additionally, you will be able to view the activities that lead up to a sale or lead form – both direct attribution and conversion paths, as well as assisted conversions.

FOUR: Bench-marking

Over time, your analytics will provide benchmark metrics in which you will be able to see trends. This can include trends in traffic – both volume and quality – as well as trends in average cost per acquisition.

In conclusion, It’s essential to have analytics about your company and its marketing efforts to understand better if your marketing is working.  What does ‘working’ mean? It could be one of two things:

• You can use Analytics to measure your marketing efforts against your industry’s standard.
• You can also use your own historical analytics to define what success looks like for your company based on previous results.

If you would like to learn more about using your analytics to your best advantage, contact us today! Our digital marketing experts are ready to help your business grow!

Sources: https://www.trustradius.com/marketing-analytics#toprated

Marketers in the Business to Business (B2B) space continually struggle to consistently see results and Return on Investment from their marketing efforts. We all know consumers more and more are turning online for research, advice, and ultimately purchasing, but B2B buyers follow this trend as well.

It’s reported that 94% of B2B buyers conduct online research before buying a business-related product. Also, the majority of the buying process (80%) occurs without any direct human-to-human interaction and over half (57%) of the purchase process is complete before buyers contact suppliers directly. On top of all that, 95% to 99% of website visitors leave your website without filling out a form or contacting you.

The number one marketing challenge we hear from businesses today is how to efficiently and cost-effectively reach potential customers. We are dedicated to providing solutions to meet the needs of our clients. Enter MasterKey ATA by KeyMedia Solutions.

Identify Invisible Traffic

As a B2B marketer, how awesome would it be to continually provide a list of warm leads to your sales team?!? Not only that, but you can also tell them what products or services these leads are interested in.

Your sales team works their tails off calling on potential customers, and your marketing team pushes your message out to try to stay top of mind. Without a doubt, your potential customers are looking at your website, but probably not reaching out to you or your team.

Using MasterKey ATA, we can provide company info to match with accounts, opportunities, and/or clients when they come to your website and leave without making contact. We are also able to provide the following for this “invisible” traffic on your website: company name, company website, SIC and NAICS industry group, employee range, revenue range, and more. If your team has a watchlist or hotlist, territories, categories, specific sales representatives, etc. we can report on this invisible traffic as well.

Programmatically Adjust Campaign Bidding

With standard digital marketing campaigns, your budget is spent on people who may be a bad fit, not in the market, or not even a real person! With MasterKey ATA, we can programmatically increase or decrease your paid search and retargeting bids depending on the quality of each user individually.

Let’s say your ideal clients are medium-sized businesses within the health care industry with $5 million in revenue, with MasterKey ATA, you can only show your ads to people who are searching for your products or services and fit that profile. If someone searches for your products or services but is from a small business, we can adjust the bid lower or even not show that person an ad at all — in real-time.

Why is this a big deal? MasterKey ATA can provide full B2B attribution for all campaigns, keywords, etc. Wasted ad spend will be reduced or even eliminated. You will win more bids on high-value accounts. And you will see increased conversion rates.

Want to find out more? Contact us today!

Whether you call them display ads or banner ads, the burning question most marketers have is do they work? According to Comscore, the average person is served more than 1,700 banners per month. It’s even more if you fall into the coveted Millennial generation (25-34). They get served more than 2,000 banners a month. Which brings us back to the question do display ads work? We say yes. With a little bit of extra love, display campaigns can and do work.

Set Your Expectations

The first banner ad was launched by AT&T on October 27, 1994. It had an amazing 44% clickthrough rate (CTR). Today, it’s a little different.

• Average CTR: 0.35%
• Average CPM: $2.80
• Average CPC: $0.75

While CTRs have decreased, display ads can be hyper-targeted to reach your audience so the clicks you do get are more likely to be quality clicks. Here are a few other tips for using display ads effectively.

Start with Retargeting

Go after the warm leads. These users have been to your website and left without converting. They are already interested in your product or services so your banner doesn’t have to work as hard. Retargeting to them with an offer or stronger call to action will help you get some banner wins.

Create Every Size Banner. DON’T FORGET MOBILE

It’s easy to think that the bigger the banner the better the CTR. That might be true in some cases but you also have to remember that not all websites support all sizes. If you only make one or two sizes, you are limiting the number of places your ad can be served. While it might be easy to forget mobile ads, don’t. More than 50% of web traffic comes from a mobile device.

Keep it Simple

Think of your display ads as online billboards. You only have a few seconds to catch the attention of a user. Keep your banners simple with a strong call to action. Tell the user what you want them to do – click, download, explore, etc. When you drive by a billboard you probably don’t notice the ones full of text. It’s the same with an online banner. Use striking visuals to catch the user’s eye and keep text to a minimum. Let your website do the heavy lifting. Your banner just needs to get them there.

Don’t Set It and Forget It. Optimize.

To get the most out of your digital campaign, spend time each week evaluating your account. Look at the data. Are you getting the exposure you want? Are the right customers seeing your ads? Are you getting any clicks? If not, make tweaks to your budget and placement. Look at underperforming ads, can you change the image or the CTA? Sometimes changing just one or two words or even a color can make a world of difference.

Be Smart with Targeting

Don’t simply target everyone. You’ll get lots of impressions but few conversions. Instead, go for quality clicks by really thinking about the audience you want to reach. What kind of customer do you want to attract? What do they like? What parameters do you want to set? For example, if you’re a car wash, set targeting to not show ads when it’s raining. Exclude mobile games so you aren’t wasting impressions on accidental clicks and kids.

What it comes down to…

• Display ads work when you show ads to the correct people at the correct time.
• Simple is better. Keep your ads clean, visual, and with a clear CTA.
• Be sure to create all the top ad sizes — don’t forget mobile.
• Optimize. Optimize. Don’t set it and forget it. Spend time evaluating the data and make enhancements to get the results you want.

Don’t miss our Marketing Myths Podcast available on your favorite platform. You can find an archive of our past episodes here.

Creating a Display Advertising campaign in AdWords can be challenging. One of the most difficult parts of starting a Display campaign is trying to decide what you can do to set your advertisement apart from all the others. Luckily, there are some simple steps that you can take to make sure your ads look great and catch the attention of your customers.

Most Common Ad Specs

There are multiple sizes for banner ads you can use for your Display campaigns. Here are our recommendated ads sizes:

Top Display
160×600 – Wide Skyscraper
300×250 – Medium Rectangle
728×90 – Leaderboard
300×600 – Half Page Ad

Top Mobile
300×50 – Mobile Leaderboard
320×50 – Mobile Leaderboard
336×280 – Large Rectangle
1024×768 -Tablet Interstitial Landscape
768×1024 – Tablet Interstitial Portrait

You can have as many ads from each category type as you would like. You can also have only one category type of ad. However, in order to help your campaign show ads whenever there’s a chance, it’s recommended that you have a nice variety of all four categories.

#1 – Find the Right Design Program

The first step in creating great Display advertisements is find the right design program that works best for you. There are free design programs like Canva that offer some good ad templates you can use to build ads for your Display campaign. If you’re will to invest a little more into your campaign, you can also purchase design programs or hire creative agencies to develop a customized advertisement specific to your business and industry.

If you tried to create your own ads, but still don’t think ad creation is the right thing for you, some platforms have ad creation feature that you can use for your campaigns. These are limited in what you can customize but it can serve as a bridge to get your campaign started until you can get the perfect ads created for you.

 #2 – Creating Compelling Ad Content

After you’ve decided which design type you want your ads to be, it’s time to start thinking about content. Good performing ads should have an explicit call-to-action somewhere in the ad. A call-to-action is a phrase that will inspire potential customers to click to your website and complete a desired action. This could be text located in a button or somewhere else in the ad. If your ad blends in well with the website that it’s being displayed on, a call-to-action can help your ad stand out from the websites design.

Call-to-actions

Let’s take a look at a few different call-to-action buttons and how different Display ads will use them to encourage customers to take action. Notice that the call-to-actions in these ads are profound and noticeable in each ad. A customer’s attention should be drawn to the button or item telling them what to do.

Learn More or Try One – Give the consumer an opportunity to learn more about your product before they buy it or encourages them to take an action on your ad.

Buy Now – If you want to send them directly to the shopping page, a buy now call-to-action button gives the consumer an easy way to purchase your product.

Get a Quote Now – If there’s an application you would like consumers to fill out, this type of call-to-action lets them know clicking your ad will start that application.

Special Offers

When you’re running a special promotion, you should place that offer somewhere in your ad that can help people who are searching for something make the final decision to purchase your product or service. Using keywords like special offers, discounts, and promo codes are great ways to let consumers know of the deals you have going on.

Balance

You want to be sure that you have a nice balance of text and images in your ad. Too much of one can draw attention away from the overall message of the ad.

You want to be sure that the images are clear and easy to recognize. They should also fit perfectly within the dimensions of the ad. You don’t want to have parts of your images cut off.

All of the text in the ads should be easy to read and understandable. This includes making sure that the sentences are complete and lines of text aren’t being cut off.

#3 – Test, Test, Test

It’s always a good idea to test different things to see what performs the best. While you can have as many ads as you like in your ad groups, a good way to test which creative is performing the best is putting three to four per ad group. Then, you can have different messages that go along with different images. After at least two weeks to a month, you can check the key performing indicators that you’ve set for your campaign to compare ads and decide which set of creative performed the best for you.

Start Your Display Campaign Today

An effective Display campaign will not only generate leads and more business for you, but also expand the visibility of your brand to new customers. You can choose the correct audience that makes sense for your business model and show them your products while they’re searching the web.

Remember, when you’re creating ads to test different sizes and creatives to see what performs best for your business. After you’ve created your ads and chose the audience you want to show them to, you’re one step closer to having a successful Display campaign.

Did my blog inspire you to get your Display campaign off the ground? If you’d like to talk more about what you can do with your Display Advertising, make sure and contact us today with any of your questions.

One of the first things you have to realize when working with an online advertising firm like KeyMedia Solutions is that technology can change overnight, and it often does. Google AdWords is Google’s online advertising platform that lets you reach new customers and grow your business. AdWords is also frequently changing and updating their website. Whether it’s new reporting options, different types of campaigns, or new marketing objectives, AdWords is constantly adding new features to optimize customers’ ability to effectively manage their advertising strategy.

Marketing Objectives

Earlier this summer, AdWords released new features for creating display campaigns called marketing objectives. These are goals set by a business when promoting its products or services to potential consumers that should be achieved within a given time frame. In other words, marketing objectives are steps in a business strategy to promote the current standing of their brand and increase the impact of their products or services.

The purpose behind AdWords’ new features are to save time and allow customers to create better campaigns. They also ease the decision-making process by guiding users to the specific features designed to work best for their particular goals.

Google’s announcement included three new types of marketing objectives: Build Awareness, Influence Consideration, and Drive Action.

Build Awareness

What it is: The purpose behind the Build Awareness objective is to increase the number of people that see your ad. Your business might not be a well-known brand now, but with the Build Awareness objective, you’re able to spread your brand across the web and have people recognize your brand, logo, or product. This type of campaign emphasizes impressions over clicks.

How it works: Image you’re a new business and you’ve just invented a great new product. Because this product has never been seen or heard of before, your advertising goal for this new product will be to have people see your ads and learn more about your invention.

In order to do this, you’ll need features like the Build Awareness objective to help you reach a broad consumer audience and maximize your exposure. This marketing objective uses demographic targeting and affinity audience targeting to send your ad to specific customers who would be interested in your product.

Benefits: The Build Awareness objective is a good marketing objective if you’re starting a new business or have a new product that is not widely known to the public. If you’re expanding your business to a new area or introducing customers to what you offer, Google AdWords’ Build Awareness objective could drastically benefit your business.

Influence Consideration

What it is: This objective is broken up into two tactics: increase customer engagement and increase customer traffic to your site. You have to ability to choose which of these tactics you want to implement into your advertising strategy.

How it works: The Influence Consideration objective includes in-market audience targeting and engagement ads. The in-market audience is consumers who are actively researching or comparing products across Google Display Network.

Engagement ads give customers more information about your business by displaying information in different ways. Hovering over the ad would expand an ad, customers could scroll through multiple pictures, or customers could click the ad to direct them to your site.

Benefits: The Influence Consideration objective is for businesses who have to differentiate from similar products of their competition. This feature allows you to educate your customers about your specific product or service in order for them to understand why they should be buying from you.

Drive Action

What it is: The Drive Action objective uses remarketing and conversion optimizer bidding to push potential customers to make a purchase with you. Remarketing is used to show your ads to people who have already visited your site or completed an online form.

How it works: Imagine that you’ve found a customer who has completed a contact form or downloaded a whitepaper. With this objective, you’re able to continue serving ads to this particular individual so they will keep your business top of mind.

Benefits: The Drive Action objective is most effective if you want to find customers that are very close to making a purchase. If you’re trying to close a sale or keep a conversation going with customers who are ready to act, the Drive Action objective can maintain the influence of your business and produce more engagement.

More Coming Soon

As of today, these are the only marketing objectives available for display campaigns in AdWords, but that might not last long. Since Google is always looking to add more features, there it is a likely possibility that AdWords could be rolling out more marketing objectives. Follow KeyMedia Solutions on Facebook or Twitter to get all the latest information on Google AdWords’ new features.

At KeyMedia Solutions, it’s our intention to stay up to date on all the latest technology in the online advertising industry. We believe that every business deserves the chance to manage its marketing strategy using the most effective advertising tools. If you’re interested in learning more about these new AdWords features or any of our other services, contact us at any time.

If you’d like to learn more about Google AdWords or if you want to start your own AdWords campaign, download our free whitepaper by clicking the image below.

When I first heard the words Real Time Bidding or “RTB,” I thought it was synonymous with Google’s AdWords. I was on the right path, but I wasn’t exactly correct. Although they can both be used to accomplish the same goal; they complete those goals in different ways. This is how I was introduced to Digital Advertising.

I’ve learned that the Digital Advertising world is always evolving. There are several different platforms that do almost the same thing; most of them just have a few slight differences. When I learned about both platforms, I decided to categorize Google’s AdWords into one group; while I separated RTB into a different group. I found the one of the major differences between these two groups is how narrow their targeting ability can be.

There are different targeting tactics we can use to reach our desired audience. To find out our target audience, we have to understand their locations, devices, and behavioral characteristics.

Locations

Location targeting helps local businesses to compete and thrive. There are small differences in the targeting ability of both platforms. That difference is just how specific of targeting some of the location modifiers can go. i.e: Zip Code, IP Address, Radius, City, State, Country

Devices

Google’s AdWords uses a simple system to target different mobile devices. You can now place your ads across all of the different device platforms by simply selecting the option. RTB gives you the same option, except it allows you to take it a step further and target specific mobile operating systems, device model types, and even which browsers they use.

Behavioral

Targeting behavioral data like interests, demographics, and household Income is a targeting feature in AdWords that can be used to a certain degree. Businesses can use it to segment which gender, age group, and even a household income sees your ads. However, it can’t be the primary targeting tactic. In order to further your advertising experience, RTB platforms allow you to have first and third party data options.

It’s up to you to analyze your target audience and discover which tactic would work best for the goals of your company. A mixture of both Google AdWords and RTB Advertising would yield the best results for anyone looking to take their campaign to the next level.

We often associate companies with particular colors and images—they serve as distinguishing characteristics, reinforcing unique aspects of a brand. Color is important from a marketing and branding standpoint, William Arruda, a Forbes contributor, emphasizes, and using it effectively can help boost the success of your online marketing solutions.

Color is a component of your personal brand identity system (PBID), argues NYU Professor Adam Alter and author of Drunk Tank Pink. In effect, your PBID system is the packaging surrounding your brand. It may include logos, pictures and special fonts, and color represents the most important part as it influences our psychology and emotions. It can evoke emotions and also past experiences, making it a persuasive tool for connecting with your audience.

Arruda encourages companies to use color effectively as part of their internet marketing strategy.

“Color can be extremely powerful, especially on the web where you need to convey your brand without the benefit of being there in person. Develop a strategy for using color on all your communications and apply it consistently. You’ll become memorable and you’ll stand out from others who do what you do.”

Consistency is the principle you want to follow. Arruda explains that it’s more effective to stick to a couple of shades, instead of trying to use many. Choosing a color that best represents your branding is important to your marketing efforts.

“Select the one that conveys your authentic and differentiating brand attributes,” Arruda says. Then use this color across your different marketing channels, including your website, company powerpoints, Twitter, YouTube channel, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

If you are interested in learning more about effective internet marketing solutions, consider an internet marketing agency such as KeyMedia Solutions. We offer a range of options, including banner advertising services and display.

Programmatic Advertising is a fairly new trend. However, it is quite surprising how many people from the digital marketing industry underestimate it’s power.

Through Programmatic Advertising, a business is able to target extremely specific individuals; as of this post there is no other online tool able to get as specific as Programmatic.

Using traditional media as an example: if you think of a billboard or a magazine ad you will be targeting by reader demographics or interests. This reaches a huge audience that may or may not be relevant to the product advertised. If an individual fits perfectly into the ideal audience, you can’t be sure if that the reader will actually notice the ad and are unable to easily track responses and sales resulting from it. Same thing happens with a billboard – people have less than three seconds to read the ad, and tracking web visits and sales is nearly impossible.

Programmatic buying can add dozens – if not hundreds – of targeting parameters in order to serve an ad to the right person when they are more likely to engage and respond. It allows you to know how many people actually saw the ad, interacted with it through a click, and even converted with a purchase or subscription. Through Programmatic, you can easily measure the cost of each view, interaction, and conversion.

Here are a few targeting options for Programmatic Advertising:

• Audience is the sum of many data points that allow us to identify and serve ads to a specific individual online. This can include demographics, income, job/career, and education.
• Behavioral utilizes past purchase data, for example, to make enable us to target individuals that have recently purchased a certain product or service. This is helpful if you are selling bed liners to recent truck buyers.
• Day-parting data can be specific to the day of week and time of day. For example, your ad copy may vary to be shown during business hours or from midnight until 6 am for after hour services.
• Device type targeting allows us to serve ads to desktops only or just mobile devices, or even a specific operating system like Android or iOS.
• Geographic targeting can be by country (U.S. and international), state, DMA, city, or by zip code in order to target your specific trade are.
• Interest targeting is more specific to individual hobbies and interests – for example “traveling”.
• Contextual targeting enable us to serve ads across multiple websites based on keywords or vertical categories such as college sports.
• Site list buying target specific websites or site categories using defined domain names. This is helpful when you know your audience frequents a specific website or you want to serve ads on local media pages.

In order to effectively perform Programmatic Adverting, it is necessary to partner with companies that provide the data data, inventory, and specific industry information. The partner must also be able to serve ads through a RTB (Real Time Bidding) platform.

Here is a sampling of the always-evolving list of partners that help us enhance our services as a digital agency.

Data provider partners:

• Experian
• MasterCard
• Forbes
• BlueKai
• Expedia
• Experian

Inventory partners include:

• Google
• iAd
• Facebook Exchange
• RightMedia from Yahoo
• Microsoft Ads

Another advantage of Programmatic Advertising is the cost, billing, and the ability to get a campaign started quickly. KeyMedia Solutions has the ability to start campaigns within a few hours of receiving the targeting parameters and creative elements. Another advantage of Programmatic is the fact that you can start as low as $1,000 a month.

If you have questions about Programmatic Advertising or how to do it, contact us anytime.

[bestwebsoft_contact_form]