When I was first hired at FSC Interactive, in 2014, I was beyond excited.  Everything I had read and heard up to that point was that FSC Interactive was a great place to work and they ran exceptional campaigns.

Today, as I wrap up my 10th year at FSC, I still love working here and know we help our clients grow revenue for their businesses.

In 2020, like most of the country, we went fully remote.  As an extravert, it was a hard move for me.  I miss the office.  I miss grabbing lunch randomly with someone I don’t often work with.  I miss ending up on the back porch working in a group on the same project.  I did not know, at the time, how we would rebuild the same culture online.

Now, five years later, I would never go back.  We’ve created a similar space online.  Better yet, our employee retention has increased.

Here are the pillars of our culture that bring success:

Technology

Since we are not paying for an office, we invest in our technology. I’m not saying we spend the equivalent of an office lease on technology, but it is a large investment that is well worth it. Does our Microsoft license come with Teams for instant messaging and video calls? Sure, but the team prefers Zoom and Slack.

Do we need 24/7 online tech support? Probably not. But Courant, our IT company, ensures no matter the issue, every employee can do what they need no matter where they live.

My goal is to foster effective communication via technology.  Therefore, we prioritize using technology to keep the team connected and able to do their jobs easily without issue.

People Engagement

When we were in an office, we used to run fitness challenges.  Now that we are fully remote, we continue to run fitness challenges but have expanded to mental health challenges, financial health challenges, and more.  All challenges are optional.  They usually come with a small financial benefit, like $100, if you complete the financial challenge.  And there is always an opportunity to earn PTO.  By making them optional, team members can pick and choose the challenge they are most interested in and skip the ones they care less about.

We also have two weekly time slots dedicated to people engagement: virtual coffee on Wednesday mornings and Social Hour on Thursday afternoons.  Similar to our challenges, both are optional.  If you choose to participate in virtual coffee, you are randomly paired with someone on the team to have coffee over Zoom for 15 to 30 minutes.

For Social Hour, team members can volunteer to run the hour.  Those who want to can show up and hang out. Sometimes we play a game.  Other times, someone will take us on a tour of a favorite destination via Google Earth.  Whether we are crafting or gossiping about reality TV, we engage virtually.

Both are loosely structured and create casual opportunities for conversation outside the job.  They create bonds and empathy across teams and locations.

In-person all-agency meetings one a year are crucial.  For those, we usually start with a volunteer session.  We have farmed, sorted Mardi Gras beads, and bagged oyster shells.  The volunteer sessions are great for casual bonding and force a mix-up of the team.  Most team members feel good about the impact, and we get to support a non-profit in our hometown, New Orleans.

Post volunteer sessions, we typically take part in a strategy day and end with a fun event like a cooking class or evening out.

Systems of Managing the Person and the Output

Our systems for managing a person and their output involve multiple people and processes, which is imperative for success. Dumping all of this on one person, typically the manager, was unsuccessful for FSC Interactive. Instead, we created layers with checks and balances.

First, every team member has weekly one-on-ones with their manager. Like all our meetings, the camera is on unless someone is eating.  Weekly check-ins create a great system for immediate feedback and adjustments.

Next, by nature of our business, monthly client reports are sent to all clients by the 15th of the month at the latest. Those reports give insight into each team member’s individual contributions to each client and are reviewed by their Account Manager.  They highlight work done and changes made, included in the client report insights.

Our HR Manager does a separate quarterly check-in and yearly goal-creation session.   Our HR Manager is set up to inspire and motivate the team members to meet those goals and strive for growth.

Lastly, Account Managers run regularly scheduled stand-ups for clients over a certain billing threshold, ensuring team communication and project management for each client who needs the extra level of care.

All of these layers create accountability and empower our team to do the best work possible.

RTO – Not for FSC Interactive

Every quarter, we see more and more headlines about RTO.  My perspective…they can have it.  While running a remote business has its challenges, like paying unemployment taxes to multiple states, remote work works for FSC Interactive.

If you’d like to work with FSC Interactive on a project, give us a call or fill out the form in our footer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a business owner, even with our own digital marketing, we often wonder:

• Is it working?
• Is it worth the investment?
• How do I know?

If you are spending money on digital marketing, your agency or marketing professionals will discuss impressions (eyeballs on your ads), clicks (to your website), CTR (the number of people who saw your ads who clicked on the ad to go to your website), and CPC (the cost to get a user to your website).

Benchmarks for Digital Marketing

But what does it all mean?  At FSC Interactive, we often discuss needing to decode the data for ourselves and our clients.  If you’ve ever been a client of FSC Interactive, you’ll know we often measure against benchmarks.

A new update of Google benchmarks for 2024 came out recently in May.

We Beat Benchmarks

Our goal as an agency is to beat benchmarks.  Every time.  Why does that matter to us, and why should that matter to you?  Because marketing is expensive.  It is an investment into your business, and it is important to understand if that investment is wise.  Every dollar matters.  If you are beating benchmarks, you are using your dollars as efficiently as possible.

Beating benchmarks means you get a lower cost per click to your website than your competitors, who are also advertising.  Beating the CTR (click-through rate from your ad to your website) means your messaging is more compelling than your competitors.

Every Dollar Equals Impact

At FSC, our goal is to make your dollars go as far as possible.  As I always say, the platforms we operate on, like Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Pinterest, are built to spend your money as quickly and wastefully as possible.  Our job, as well as the job of your agency or marketing professional, is to protect your investment.  We steward your investment to produce the most for each dollar spent.

Other things we’ve noticed lately online:

• Our Meta cost per clicks are the cheapest they’ve been in years. If you are considering adding Meta to your marketing mix, now is a great time.
• Click-through rates on Google search ads are going up! This is likely due to Google’s de-prioritization of organic. They need that coin, so they are pushing ads like crazy. As a result, paid ad website traffic is on the rise.
• Performance Max is getting junkier. If you are B2B, go ahead and exclude those Gmails. And make sure your CAPTCHAs are on point and working.

If you are interested in discussing your current results and reviewing them against FSC’s benchmarks, feel free to reach out to info@fscinteractive.com or fill out the form in the footer.

*We interpreted the Google Help articles so you don’t have to: a guide to Google Ads creative assets. 

 

Importance of Effective Creative in Google Ads

 

In the fast-paced world of digital advertising, crafting impactful, visually appealing, and structurally sound creative assets is not just a matter of aesthetics—it’s a strategic imperative. Ensuring that creative assets are optimized from the outset can streamline the ad creation process, maximize campaign performance, and ultimately drive better results for all stakeholders involved. 

 

BOTH clients & agencies stand to benefit significantly from getting it right the first time. 

 

Creating high-quality creative assets upfront can streamline the ad creation process, eliminating the need for costly and time-consuming revisions down the line and enabling agencies to launch campaigns more quickly and efficiently. For clients, this means getting their ads in front of their target audience faster, leading to faster results and a quicker return on investment. 

Adhering to creative best practices, ads are more likely to resonate with audiences, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates. Conversely, overlooking creative guidelines & best practices can have detrimental effects on campaign performance. Poor image quality, incorrect dimensions or file sizes, CTAs being obscured, text that lacks contrast with the background, or images that are pixelated or stretched can diminish the impact of an ad and undermine its ability to drive desired actions. These mistakes stain the brand’s reputation and can result in lost conversions and missed opportunities for results. 

 

1. Performance Max (PMax) Ads  
2. Traditional Display Ads
3. HTML5 Ads
4. Responsive Display Ads 

Performance Max (PMax) Ads

PMax is a Google campaign type with a large inventory of placements at its disposal. Including text, photos, and videos will ensure ads are shown across Google’s properties, including Search and Display Networks, YouTube, Gmail, Pinterest, and more. 

As PMax campaigns tend to target a broad audience, it’s recommended to tailor creative assets to highlight selling points and brand messaging. Incorporating asset groups based on unique/curated audiences is a better tactic for implementing drilled-down creative assets.  

Image Asset Types

Performance Max ads must include at least one photo asset and will accept up to 20 images. This can be any combination of landscape, square, or portrait images; regardless of aspect ratio, the max file size for each image asset is 5120KB. 

• Landscape Image:  
  • Aspect ratio: 1.91:1 
  • Recommendation: 1200 x 628px 
  • 600 x 314 min required 
• Square Image:  
  • Aspect ratio: 1:1 
  • Recommendation: 1200 x 1200px 
  • 300 x 300 min required 
• Portrait Image:  
  • Aspect ratio: 4:5 
  • Recommendation: 960 x 1200px 
  • 480 x 600 min required 

Video Assets

As Performance Max utilizes YouTube placements, providing video assets can prevent Google from spending precious ad budgets on a dreaded automatically created video asset. This leads to poor brand quality control, and when overlooked, automatically created assets can throw damper even the strongest brand sentiments. 

PMax allows up to 5 videos per asset group, and you can choose from three different aspect ratios: horizontal, vertical, or square. Note: Google allows videos in landscape format to be automatically resized to square (1:1) or portrait (9:16) format, depending on the platform’s requirements. 

Videos must be uploaded to YouTube and found by entering a YouTube URL or searching for the video or channel. Pro Tip: If you do not want the video uploaded for all users to see on your page, you can publish and leave the video “Unlisted” and then share a link with your ad manager. 

• Format: .MPG (MPEG-2 or MPEG-4) 
• Maximum File Size: 256GB 
• Recommended Resolution (all aspect ratios): minimum 1080p (Full HD) 
• Recommended Pixels (px) by Aspect Ratio:
  • Horizontal 16:9  — 1920 x 1080px 
  • Vertical 9:16 – 1080 x 1920px 
  • Square 1:1 – 1080 x 1080px 

PMax Video Asset Best Practices

• Incorporate Audio and Subtitles for better video engagement.  
• Select video assets that are at least 10 seconds long. Include long and short-form videos to test what works best for your audience. 
• Don’t forget about the thumbnail. As the first point of contact for viewers, this small change can impact overall ad performance.  

PMax Ad Text Guidelines

• Headlines:  
  • 30 characters max per headline. 
    • One additional headline, 15 characters or less. 
    • One additional Long Headline, 90 characters max.  
  • 3 Headlines are required; up to 15 headlines are allowed; 1 long headline is required; up to 5 long headlines are permitted.
• Descriptions: 
  • 90 characters per description. 
    • One additional Description, 60 characters or less.  
  • 2 Descriptions are required; up to 5 are allowed.  

Ad Text Notes

1. Character limits for ad text include punctuation and spaces. 
2. Similarly to other responsive ad types, unless pinned, Google will automatically decide which headlines and descriptions are combined based on the user and the placement. 

 

Traditional Display

Across different websites and apps, Display ads will meet your users wherever they browse. Keeping in mind the endless combination of placements where your target audience will see your ads, it is crucial that your ad’s messaging is clear and concise. 

Display campaigns allow for two different ad types: static images and animated banners, which we will refer to as traditional and HTML5 ads.

Maximum File Size:  

• 150 KB (traditional display) 
• 600 KB (HTML5 ads)  

 

Display Ad Creative Best Practices:

• Find a balance in “white space” 
  • Minimalism is the goal of Display ads 
• Use brand colors
• Include your logo 
• Use a simple font – text should be easy to read with clear contrast between text color and background 
  • Sans-Serif font preferred 
  • Limit to two different fonts, maximum. 
• Include a call to action 
  • If you opt for a “button” style CTA, be mindful of “cushioning” and do not make the button too large.  
• Utilize high-quality images. 
• Create different styles in multiple formats; variety is your friend.  

 

Most Popular Display Sizes: (Traditional & HTML5)

• Large Leaderboard / large banner 970 x 90 
• Leaderboard: 728 x 90 pixels 
• Banner: 468 x 60 pixels 
• Large Rectangle 336 x 280 
• Mobile Half Page 320 x 320  
• Large Mobile Banner 320×100 
• Mobile Leaderboard: 320 x 50 pixels 
• Large skyscraper / Half page: 300 x 600 
• Inline / Medium Rectangle / Medium Banner: 300 x 250 pixels 
• Mobile Banner 300 x 50  
• Square: 250 x 250 pixels 
• Small Square 200 x 200 
• Wide Skyscraper: 160 x 600 pixels 
• Skyscraper: 120 x 600 pixels
  

NOTE: Double-check your creative assets are exported in the correct file size and aspect ratio. If resized by Google, you may see a decrease in image quality.

 

HTML5 Display Ads

Considerably more complicated to create, HTML5 ads can be an engaging and dynamic way to reach your audience.  

NOTE: Before considering if HTML5 ads are right for your campaign, it’s important to determine whether your account qualifies. To upload HTML5 ads, your Google Ads account must have spent over $9K USD and be over 90 days old. 

HTML5 ads must be uploaded as ZIP files and may contain up to 40 files within the folder. The ads can be run through Google Ads’ validator to ensure everything will upload correctly – https://h5validator.appspot.com/adwords/asset.

Within the file, the following file types are permitted:

• HTML, style, and script files: .html, .htm, .css, .js 
• Images: .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .png, .svg 
• Font:.dfont, .eot, .otf, .tte, .ttf, .woff, .woff2 

Keeping in mind the above-mentioned best practices and most popular dimensions for HTML5 ads, below are a few optimizations you can take that are specific to HTML5 ad creation:

 

HTML5 Display Ad Creative Best Practices

• Produce formats for both desktop and mobile 
• Focus on the product and CTA 
• Your viewer should identify and understand your brand, offer, and message immediately. 
• Write simple and concise copy – 50 characters (including spaces) is preferred, 90 characters max. 
• Create multiple versions 
• Stick to 15 seconds or less to keep users engaged 
• Focus on selling points, differentiating factors, and seasonality to capture your audience 

Recommended HTML5 banner sizes:

• Leaderboard: 728 x 90 
• Mobile Leaderboard: 320 x 50  
• Medium Rectangle: 300 x 250 
• Wide Skyscraper: 160 x 600 

Responsive Display Ads

Like PMax ads, Responsive Display ads show combinations of uploaded photo, video, and text assets. Up to 15 image assets are allowed, and up to five 30s long videos are accepted, also uploaded through YouTube, like PMax video assets. 

 

Maximum File Size: 5120KB (5MB) 

Accepted Aspect Ratios: 

• Landscape:  1.91:1, minimum 600 x 314 px 
• Square: 1:1, minimum 300 x 300 px 

Responsive Display Ad Creative Best Practices:

• Focus your image and video assets on the product/service 
• Highlight any new product announcements, deals, sales, and giveaways – sales or promotion-related copy tends to perform better than slogans 
• Upload at least five photos per aspect ratio 

Google Recommends Brands Avoid Images That Are: 

• Blurry or Unclear 
• Color-Inverted 
• Over-Filtered 
• Outlined with a border 
• Upside down or visually skewed 
• Collages or composited backgrounds 
• Overlaid logos, text, or buttons 

 

If Responsive Display Ad Text is an asset you provide, it’s important to note the following ad text guidelines: 

• Headlines:  
  • 30 characters max per headline. 
    • One additional Long Headline, 90 characters max.  
  • 3 Headlines are required; up to 5 Headlines are allowed, and one long headline is required. 
• Descriptions: 
  • 90 characters per description. 
    • 2 Descriptions are required; up to 5 allowed.  

Ad Text Best Practices:

1. Character limits for ad text include punctuation and spaces. 
2. Similarly to other ad types, unless pinned, Google will automatically decide which headlines and descriptions are combined based on the user and the placement. 

 

Conclusion

Prioritizing effective creative from the onset prevents the loss of time and ad dollars for clients and agencies. Investing in high-quality, well-thought-out creative assets augments a campaign’s overall effectiveness and positively impacts a user’s brand resonance when translated across touch points. In today’s competitive digital landscape, getting creative right the first time is paramount and necessary for driving meaningful results and getting the most out of your ad spend.  

Want to have this guide on hand? Download your complimentary copies:

1. Performance Max (PMax) Ads  
2. Traditional and HTML5 Ads
3. Responsive Display Ads 

 

5 Key Differences Every Marketing Account Executive Needs To Understand About GA4

We all know it’s coming. In its benevolent overlordship, Google has decided to phase out Universal Analytics in favor of a new and improved platform, GA4. But we don’t like change! We know how to use UA! We know how to interpret and explain the information UA gives us!

So let me help. Here are 5 key differences in how GA4 works compared to UA:

1. User Based Tracking

Instead of UA’s session-based metrics that track a period of user interaction on your website/app, starting with the first “hit” and ending after a period of inactivity, GA4 will track a single user across multiple sessions and devices. GA4 will give users a persistent User ID and track that on its merry way across the internet, providing a more holistic view of user behavior rather than just a series of actions per session. This change, in addition to the next two points on the list, will dramatically improve what we know about our audiences and provide next-level insights to fuel our data-based decisions.

2. Event-Driven Data Model

One of the major changes from UA to GA4 is the elimination of UAs “goals” and “hits,” and the reframing of them as GA4’s “events.” This seemingly semantic shift allows for much more granular data, giving Account Executive’s like us the possibility of much more depth in reporting, while slightly changing the definitions of terms we’re used to working with. Events are the fundamental unit of measurement in GA4. They represent user interactions with your website or app, such as button clicks, form submissions, video plays, or any other custom user actions you choose to track. Events capture both automatically collected data (like pageviews) and custom data that you define.

3. Enhanced Cross-Device Tracking

Google is making this shift in part because of privacy laws in the EU, and the transition of tracking away from cookies. It’s important to note that GA4’s cross-device tracking is dependent on users being logged in or identified consistently across devices, as well as their consent for data tracking and privacy settings. GA4 will give every unique property a Measurement ID, which serves as the lynchpin enabling cross-device tracking, as it tracks User IDs interactions with the property across mobile devices, desktops, or wherever the User ID is logged in. GA4 will also provide specific reports that offer analysis about how users interact with a property differently across devices.

4. Machine-Learning

GA4 will leverage machine-learning to identify trends in user behavior and automate drafting insights, develop predictive metrics of future behavior based on historical data, and has introduced a new “Exploration Report” that is supposed to uncover hidden insights within the data. Additionally, there will be smarter audience segmentation, grouping users based on similar characteristics/behaviors

5. Term Definitions Changing

Many of the terms that we currently use in reporting will be slightly redefined as the above changes are applied. Here is a short list of familiar keywords taking on new meanings:

• “Users” will now mean unique users, since repeat sessions will be tied to User IDs
• “Bounce Rate” will now be determined by the % of sessions that are “not engaged.” An Engaged session is 10+ seconds on-site, has 1+ conversion event, or 2+ page/screen views. If any of those are not triggered, it will count as a bounce.
• “Conversions” in UA were classified as one of 5 goals: destination, duration, pages/session, smart goals, and event goals. GA4 will only support “Conversion Events,” which may not be a precise duplication. Additionally, GA4 will be able to track multiple conversions per session of the same goal, whereas UA only counted one conversion per session for each goal.

The transition from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) may seem daunting, but understanding the key differences can unlock a wealth of new opportunities for marketers. Embrace the change and unlock the potential of GA4 for your marketing strategies.

What is Performance Max?

Performance Max is a relatively new ad format that allows users to create ads that use machine learning to automatically optimize for performance across Google’s advertising channels including search, display, YouTube, and more.

Some of the benefits of Performance Max are the ease of setup, the flexibility of the different channels to reach audiences, and the power to optimize for conversions across those touchpoints.

The idea from Google was that Performance Max campaigns would act in harmony with your current search campaigns to fill in gaps your keywords didn’t fill to increase conversions and revenue. Sounds great, right?

Not for many marketers.

When Performance Max campaigns first launched in November 2021, many marketers were skeptical of these campaigns, fearing that it was another way that Google was taking away control and transparency, shielding them from results, data, and optimizations. While some of these gripes are merited, to their credit, Google has listened and made some improvements to Performance Max.

How is Performance Max Changing?

First, marketers wanted to be able to have some level of control with account-level negative keywords and campaign-level brand exclusions, over their brand to exclude that from campaigns.

This is a big improvement as it doesn’t always make sense for companies to advertise on brand searches but these would likely be the first place where people would see ads. Additionally, companies that devote budget to brand campaigns, they don’t want any cannibalization from PMax campaigns.

Additionally, Google is allowing for Page feeds that allow for flexibility to send traffic to specific pages on their site rather than just a single page or any page at Google’s discretion as campaigns are currently set.

Next, they’ve unveiled a video creation studio that makes YouTube advertising easier, even if you don’t have video assets.

Finally, they are giving more detailed data into how different assets are performing by adding asset group-level reporting and budget pacing insights.

All of these optimizations are in the process of being rolled out at this time in March/April 2023.

How to Know if Performance Max is Right for Your Business?

So, how do you know if PMax is right for you? In reality, Performance Max campaigns are an ad type that any business advertising online can potentially take advantage of. However, there are a couple of things that make it more likely to be the right channel for you.

First, having a solid conversion set-up that is essential to your business’s success is essential. Obviously, if you have an ecommerce shop or sell tickets, that is the best, but we’ve had clients see success in lead-generation campaigns as well.

If you aren’t ready to fully take the step or make a larger investment in Performance Max, you can set up an experiment to see how a campaign might incrementally help your account to drive additional conversions and revenue.

What Are the Keys to Success for Performance Max campaigns?

We’ve run performance Max campaigns for a variety of clients in a number of different verticals, and while we haven’t seen success 100% of the time, we’ve seen the most success when there were four things solidly in place.

1. Quality Assets

People aren’t going to click on your ad if your assets are unprofessional. If you don’t have a clear selling proposition, great creative and imagery, you might not be ready for a PMax campaign.

2. Quality Landing Page

It’s not enough to get people to your site, you have to set the page up in a way that will turn visitors into customers. A landing page that has seen proven success at turning visitors into customers is essential.

3. Quality Signals/Conversions

One of the keys to success, when you are using machine learning and AI to power your marketing, is to feed in the correct data. This is where signals or conversions come into play.Since there is no specific targeting for PMax outside of maximizing your conversions, when you set up a campaign, Google asks for a signal or signals that you can enter into the campaign as a hint as to who your audience is.

If possible, we use past converters as that is the best signal for future conversion.

The other important detail here is the conversion itself. The key is to get as close to revenue as possible for your conversions. Ideally, a lead in a lead-generation campaign (or a completed sale) or a sale for ecommerce.

We have run into issues with spam leads or calls from lead generation campaigns in the past, but you can’t fake a sale so setting sales as the conversion is ideal. That said, we have seen success in other lead generation campaigns and even in accounts that initially saw spam and were remade with new signals and have been successful.

4. Compelling Product or Service

Performance Max (or any paid ad for that matter) isn’t going to magically work if your product or service is half-baked. If your product or service is priced too high, not as feature-laden, or has other disadvantages to your competitor, you can’t expect PMax to work wonders.

Performance Max can be a powerful tool for businesses looking to improve their online advertising performance. With its use of machine learning, it can optimize campaigns across multiple channels to reach the right audience at the right time. However, it is important to have a solid foundation of fundamentals in place.

Having assets, landing pages, conversions, and your product in place are essential to seeing success.

If you are considering it for your business, it’s best to start with a small test campaign to see how it performs and then scale up your budget if it’s successful.

Additionally, it’s important to acknowledge that Performance Max isn’t a silver bullet that solves all ills. It is one tactic that should be part of a larger digital strategy.