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For online retailers to make sense of this and align their marketing message to it, it may be necessary to backup a step or two, look at why the need has changed, understand what is no longer applicable and instead focus on emerging trends and new habits.

To illustrate the point, I have been looking at a shift in UK broadband market, when it comes to search behaviour. Instinctively, we all know that this service to home is taking on more importance with the advent of home working and video calling to stay in touch during these times. Yet are people following the same thought processes? Do they believe there is still a wide range of options available?

1. Understanding the new issues
2. The effect on existing strategies
3. New terminology and thinking

The issues

Dissatisfaction with internet connectivity/ broadband speed has always been a strong driver for change, but it is amazing how much this issue has increased. We can see that keyword usage around speed, download speed and a need to test have rocketed in lockdown. Hardly surprising given the number of people at home – especially during the day.

So, traditional logic suggests that after the dawning realisation (or speedtest results) show your internet speed might not be up to scratch, the tried and tested keywords people you use to source new broadband options should also have risen sharply too, right?

The changes

Here are the firm favourite ‘shopping’ keywords. They account for millions in Google Search Ad spend, and are hotly competed on by ISPs. And straight away, we are seeing a decrease in usage. Whats going on? Why are the many dissatisfied broadband users not shopping around?

The painful reason is, we no longer believe we live in a consumer based, open market. We no longer think in terms of deals, best, cheap etc. Even if we perceive (or know for sure) our internet is slow, we beleive it is one of the many symptoms of lockdown. More users at home especially during the day means slower speeds.

Further, we dont even want to look for deals. When even essential retailing for products such as food has changed so dramatically, it has completly changed our viewpoint. For instance, we are now opting to go to a supermarket based on safety and locality. Comparing how much money can be saved in your basket is a thing of the past. People are looking to optimise what they have around them.

New terminology

For the most part, many users may simply accept that slow broadband is now a fact of life in lockdown. However, hunting around has revealed that some phrases are inconsistent use (no drops) or even trending. Upgrading, improving or changing are some of the terms contained in phrases that are holding out well.

Your marketing message can now change accordingly. Having established that penny-pinching is not top-of-mind, your strategy could be to consolidate around terms that make life better for customers, and ensure you show this in your ads and landing pages. Safety for all (customers and staff) is priority, so ensure this is your primary message. In the broadband industry, upgrades can happen remotely without home visits so this can be an assurance made early on. If the original intention of your visitor is to improve or upgrade, align to this thinking instead of offering deals and super-saver bundles.

Hopefully you can translate this logic into your industry or sector. And dont forget, if you want to improve or upgrade your paid search/ SEO services, Goldladder are here for a quick video chat anytime. Stay safe and be well.

Get in touch with the Goldladder team

The recent changes to the Google Partners program point to a more automated way in which Google wants advertisers and digital marketing agencies to use their Google Ads system. 

As of June this year, in order for agencies to remain Google Partners, they will have to meet a new level of criteria. Not only has the spend threshold doubled, but it’s the changes to performance targets, wrapped up in Google’s new optimization score, which has ruffled a few feathers in the digital marketing industry. Many of the recommendations that come with this new score have been criticized for being too generic, too reliant on automation and most commonly of all, too focused on mindlessly increasing budgets.

When we dig into the acceptable optimization score more closely, Google is looking for a figure of 70% (or higher) across each account. The difficulty comes when you discover that in order for your accounts to reach this score, they will have no choice but to use Google’s automated recommendations. These recommendations are often automated and can include some adjustments that smaller advertisers could find quite restrictive; raising the target CPA to a level far beyond what historical performance would suggest is necessary, for example. 

There doesn’t appear to be an effective workaround for this issue and as Google has been quick to point out, simply dismissing these suggestions will not work, resulting in a low optimisation score and in turn, putting an agency’s partner accreditation at risk.

Digital marketing agencies are facing a moral dilemma: Keep the Google Partner badge (with all the problems it entails) and look great at a client pitch, or ditch it and face having to explain why you’re one of the few agencies not to have the accreditation. It’s not an easy choice to make, especially when you consider how integral Google’s paid search tools are to the digital strategies of many businesses.

It’s not just us who are concerned, however. I’ve checked out social media to see what people in the industry are saying about the changes, and it’s not great news for Google!

@gregfinn – Replying to @GoogleAds

You should be ashamed of yourself. Forcing advertisers to adhere to @googleAds recommendations instead of client needs. Despicable.

@krysmariec – Replying to @GoogleAds

It seems like the requirements weren’t thought through. Small businesses will lose their status (e.g. less people certified than you require) – unless we start asking clients to get certified. What benefits? I haven’t seen any benefits from the Partner Badge.

@BrettDixon – Replying to @GoogleAds

Must accept automated recommendations (that are often terrible) even if irrelevant to clients or lose your badge? You want 61 members of our agency to get qualified – we don’t employ 61 people! It REALLY looks like an exercise to maximise revenue from advertisers.  Not great.

What is clear from Google’s perspective is that these changes are now cast in stone, which means that for the foreseeable future, many digital marketing agencies are going to have to walk the tightrope between Google’s own optimization score requirements and the requirements of their clients. This becomes even more difficult when you consider that the majority of businesses who use Google Ads do so on incredibly tight margins, with no room for automated CPA experiments and budget increases. 

I’ve been running GoldLadder for nearly 20 years. We were one of the first SME’s to qualify for the Google Partner’s badge and in response to the recent changes, I thought I’d offer my unedited thoughts on the topic: Be honest and open with your current clients, explain what is happening and give reasons why you would not want to use some Google’s recommendations. If this means that as a company, we lose the badge, then so be it. I believe in delivering a tailored, cost effective search marketing strategy that fits the needs of each client, irrespective of what the optimization score might say.

So the metrics Google has earmarked over the last year or so in preparation for this are:

• Search top impression rate – the percentage of times that your ad is above natural search.
• Search absolute top impression rate – the percentage of times that your ad is at the absolute top of the page.
• Search top impression share – the impressions that you receive at the top of the page divided by the estimated number of eligible impressions.
• Search absolute top impression share – the impressions that you receive at the absolute top of the page divided by the estimated number of eligible impressions

Straight away you can see that establishing where your ads are showing is going to be a slightly more complex task than simply counting down from the top of the page! Bearing in mind average position is about as fundamental to paid search as clicks and cost, there are going to be a more than a few PPC old timers like myself wondering what the long term outcome will be – let alone how advertisers will reconcile the fee that they pay vs. position the ad is awarded etc.

But that’s for speculation further down the road. What is important to us here at Goldladder is that we carry out preparations in advance of the change, and have a roadmap ready for when we come out on the other side. Most of these steps are common sense and can easily be adapted into your plan too.

Pre-change actions (do it now!)

The tasks here concern data collection ready for comparative analysis of old metrics against new:

• Timeframe: 30, 90, and 365 day reports
• Components: keywords and ads, focusing on brand and non-brand, an prioritizing the tier 1 level KWs that make up majority of your sales
• Dimensions: time of day, location,
• Metrics: Average Position, all the above search impression metrics,  quality score + as many others as possible
• Identify any bid rules/ strategies based on position
• Setup 3rd party tools to independently scrape SERPs during the change period.

Post change checklist (ready to go in next few days)

These tasks seek to protect your search market share against immediate threats:

• Review 24hr & 1 week and 30 day data points against new metrics
• Apply analysis from historical data to indicate position fluctuations
• Be aware of bid changes from competitors looking to ”secretly” gain ground/ ad visibility
• Review ALL rule-based bid strategies, not just position-based ones

Follow up milestones

Results of tracking the changes and consultancy for business metrics going forwards:

• Week 1 report to client with impact observations
• 30 day analysis session to verify data against expectations and adjust for change
• Client dashboard updates and KPI additions
• Competitor analysis and audit the new search space market share situation
• Review of quality core algorithm changes 

Thanks for reading and best of luck with it all -as always, if Goldladder can assist you in achieving campaign success, do let us know!

The data from RivalIQ shows how bad it really is. In fact, Rand Fishkin sums it up best:

“….For most businesses, it’s literally better to have ONE email subscriber than ONE THOUSAND likes on your Facebook page”

Instagram seems to fare a little better than most, at around 1.6%, but to see Facebook dip below 1% is shocking.

So, why the decline? Pay-to-play on the social networks mean that reach and audience is throttled severely, even when communicating to existing followers. Also, consumer confidence in social ads and sponsored posts have been undermined by negative media coverage following scandals such as Cambridge Analytica. I guess those heartfelt pledges direct from Zuckerberg did little to quell the unease most people feel about how they are tracked by ads across social, and clicking on a social ad is being perceived as ‘risky’.

Does this mean that social should be abandoned? In truth the answer is no. The low engagement levels are really only a problem for those companies that exclusively focus on reach and acquisitions through organic social activity. If you utilize social as part of a balanced and coordinated set of channels alongside SEM and direct methods, Social will play it’s part well, as the trust will have been established prior to the user making that risky decision. And it’s also worth being realistic – reach and volume are monetized commodities on social. So unlike SEO, you will not be able to scale up your campaigns to significant levels without a media strategy and budget.

“I would never have imagined (in 2010) that I would be sitting here working to a target of a million one day,” she says. “The fact that it’s within our reach is really exciting.”

In this article, Fiona looks back at those early days, how they defeated the critics and what it means to reach this new milestone. Read it here

You may or may not be aware of a change that Google Analytics will be making to your account on the 25th May this year. It’s all about GDPR and your data retention settings. You have between now and that date to login and accept (save) the settings (or indeed select new ones) before Google will make them for you.

Not sure how to do this? (click the following images to zoom in)

Once you get to the User data retention page – review the settings and save:

Unsure about what option to take? We recommend selecting “don’t auto expire” – that way old reports that are run will not be affected by aggregated data. However if you are still unsure, talk to GoldLadder today and we will set you on the right track.

I am a new recruit here at Goldladder and whilst needing to be certified in both Adwords Fundamental and one other section, in my case the Google Shopping Certification, I have been studying on Academy for Ads for the past couple of weeks. Here are my completely unbiased thoughts about it.

I shall ironically start by concluding that overall for its intended target audience and purpose, Academy for Ads is a great tool for helping ‘newbies’ learn the ins and outs of Adwords.
I was surprised to find out it was a new feature and that the only option before was the mundane looking Google Partner site. Upon realising this and having a brief look at what the Google Partner site looked like I understood how useful of a tool Academy for Ads actually is.

Firstly, showing how to setup things step by step is by all means a great feature because it is getting people to actually learn about Adwords rather than purely using it to become certified. However, I can’t help feel a lot of people are using it wholly as a revision source to pass the exam and the focus of the questions in the exam are not really about the setup of an Ad etc. I believe having 2 sections; one aimed at people whose focus is on purely becoming certified, and one aimed at people learning what they need to know about setting up a campaign, for example, would be a good solution.

As with anything, there were a few minor errors such as misspellings, little glitches and one piece of text replacing all apostrophes with ‘@’. There was also a tutorial which wanted me to type a piece of text – which for the life of me I can’t remember, and due to my unwillingness to go through every page I used to find it we’re going to have to settle for- “something” which I had to type character for character. However even after immaculately checking for a good 5 minutes longer than I needed to, consulting my colleagues to see what was wrong and exiting the course many times, it still wouldn’t except the piece of text which I have no doubt was 100% correct. So with that I exited the course for a final time and it was left incomplete.

Page of Site Showing Ease of Use.

The ease of use was great and apart from the few minor errors I’ve mentioned there really was no problem. The type of language and vocabulary used was something that at times could be worked on, as there were a few instances when a course went from being somewhat patronising in the detail of explanation to then expecting a high amount of previous knowledge about something else that I can only assume most users have never come across. Finding a steady balance is key for this type of structure and would definitely be something I’d like to see improved in future.

This brings me nicely on to my next point, consistency. Throughout, the consistency was something that struck me as great when thinking about user experience. For example, if you were studying for the AdWords fundamental exam, after you completed the first couple of pages of the revision tabs you could pretty much work your way round the rest of them with little to no trouble. I feel like this would apply for the rest of the courses as well.

The Google Support page links at the bottom of each course were very advantageous once I started using them. There could be a case there to make them a bigger part of the course, but in reality I put not using them down to a regrettable lack in curiosity on my behalf.
Since I discovered them, in the Google Shopping exam I have been using them to my advantage.

Links and Site of Google Support Page’s.

Having persuaded myself out of making a whole point about how the site could be more concise, due to my understanding that there are people even less in-the-know than I. I should say that the Google Support pages are definitely recommended if all you’re looking for is concise information and if the Academy for Ads courses are becoming understandably condescending and tedious.

Overall, the site was a great asset to my learning and is recommended for anyone starting out in Adwords.

https://landing.google.com/academyforads

By now, you are probably hearing about the General Data Protection Regulation in relation to lead generation, web processes, design, direct marketing – the list goes on. Non-compliance is not an option, but as an SME, you can’t help feeling that an entire industry of consultants and audit experts are raking it in, trading on scare tactics and high-end legal services.

Acting now would be a good step in ensuring you do not have to throw yourselves at the mercy of such organisations. But for a small business, just getting hold of a decent GDPR checklist is tricky. Fortunately, you can go to the source and get a great plain speaking paper. The UK based Information Commisioner’s Office (ICO) is the place to start. This organisation is:

The UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.

And you can download a straight-forward GDPR checklist and advice sheet PDF here

To introduce GDPR to your teams, it can be helpful to get them thinking about what data protection and privacy really means. Establishing this thinking from the outset will add context to the upcoming tasks, and get everyone on board. Some areas you can cover are:

1. Document the personal data your company has, challenge yourselves why you have it, and ask where it came from. Look carefully about who you share it with, and if it’s still relevant and necessary for your current marketing/ CRM initiatives.
2. Can you effectively process and service citizens’ data requests? GDPR allows EU citizens to request that personal data is deleted, amended, or moved to a different organisation. It’s your responsibility to make it possible for someone to complete these requests within one month – and ideally it should be there and then at the time of asking. And from a resource point of view, making such facilities available could save you a lot of time further down the line.
3. Opt-out boxes aren’t good enough anymore. GDPR requires you to establish a lawful basis for collecting data on the individual. You will also need to ensure an option is given for the data to be processed for a limited period of time, and for a specific purpose. Make the option to withdraw consent readily available too.
4. What are your responsibilities if there is a data breach? Draw up contingency plans to notify the data protection authority of any data breach within 72 hours of becoming aware of it.

Finally, have a single point of contact by appointing a Data Protection Officer. It may sound like overkill for an average SME, but it shows you take GDPR seriously, and your own compliance tasks on the GDPR checklist can be scrutinized and challenged internally before any issues arise.

Hopefully this article has helped you breathe a little easier at the thought of GDPR. Although we do not profess to be experts in the field, at Goldladder we are looking closely at digital marketing services in relation to GDPR, so we are always happy to talk if you have any questions along these lines.

When it comes to successfully marketing an event, there are few tools more potent in a planner’s arsenal than Facebook. It allows you to send invites en masse, promote your key vendors or attractions and above all, engage with brand new audiences. Perhaps even more importantly than that, Facebook’s unique social atmosphere can be leveraged to promote a sense of community around an upcoming event, allowing guests to talk to the host and each other, ask questions and discover key information ahead of time.

It is crucial therefore, to squeeze every drop of marketing goodness from your Facebook event! In this handy guide, Goldladder’s experts will take you through a series of essential steps and top tips, whilst ensuring you avoid some of the more common pitfalls of marketing an event on Facebook.

Constructing A Facebook Event – The Basics

For this guide we will use a Wedding Fair as an example

• Write a clear title that is unique to the event (EG: “Winter Wedding Fair @ Charingworth Manor 24.01.17”)
  This title will appear in people’s feeds in various different formats so it’s important to be as concise yet descriptive as we can be.
• Double check venue & event details
  Correct date? Which part of the hotel?
  Make sure the venue is properly linked in the “Location”
• What time will it occur? From & til?
  Even if it’s only rough, it helps people to plan around your event.
• Is there an entry fee?
  If not, make that clear as people will wonder.

Create A Unique Cover Image

There are plenty of free online resources at your disposal that will help you create a great cover image.

1. Start by selecting a relevant photo from your Facebook page or other photo resource. In our case, we’re using the corporate Flickr account.
2. Now visit Fotor, Canva, or Bannersnack and create an account. Next, upload your photo into an existing template (Facebook Cover Image should be available).
3. Now simply add your details (hotel, date, time) and download your unique cover image!

Make Each Event Description Unique

• Don’t copy and paste the same bio from your last wedding fair. Take the time to write a unique description about your event. It doesn’t have to be long, just make sure it’s unique to the event and gives people a reason not to miss this one! (EG: “Looking for Winter wedding inspiration? We are having a Winter wedding fair on this date.”)
• Now you could go further and talk about what makes a Winter wedding unique compared to a Summer or a Springtime wedding.
• What will be at your event?
• If it’s a wedding fair: Research your exhibitors.
  Write a short blurb about what each one does, or better yet: ask them to write their own! Post links to their websites and facebook pages so guests can look into them ahead of your event.
• Will there be refreshments? If so, what? Will they be free?
• Give your guests a clear idea of what to expect from your event.

Promoting Your Event

• Allow your exhibitors to co-host the event (shown right).
  This will massively expand the reach of your event as you gain access to your exhibitors followers too!
• Make sure exhibitors are all using your event and aren’t inviting their followers to a duplicate event.
• Update the event with posts.
  Generate a buzz around your event by sharing links and videos which will enter guests’ feeds and remind them to attend.
• Allow guests and exhibitors to post on the event page.
  This will encourage buzz to generate organically. Guests can ask questions, exhibitors can post promotions and offers, which will all boost your event’s attendance.
• Share the event on your hotel’s Facebook page at regular intervals (but be careful not to annoy your followers by sharing too often, once a week is fine).
  Encourage exhibitors to do the same and any other organisations that your hotel is affiliated with.
• Offer an incentive for people to RSVP and share your event (free fizz on arrival?).

Done all this? Now it’s time to boost it!

If you run your own business Facebook page you will already know about how aggressively Facebook market their paid click service. Facebook page boosts are a great way to reach a wider audience and bump up attendance figures for events, but it’s no good promoting an event without making sure the event is as good as it can be.

Once you’ve follow the steps above, and if your event requires further promotion, then the next step is use Facebook paid event boost feature, which is a topic of itself.