Digital Marketing: Your Guide to Online Success

On September 23rd, our Co-Founder Bernat Tirado had the opportunity to speak at Google Partners University in Madrid. Google Partners University is a training program exclusively for Google-certified agencies . It delves into different aspects of Google AdWords and helps certified agencies improve their skills with the tool. The talk lasted four hours, during which Bernat discussed: - Flexible bidding strategies - Google Shopping campaigns - Remarketing - Similar users - Ad extensions - Gmail Ads. Some of these features were unfamiliar to most agencies attending the event since they are still in beta and @ClickOnline360 has access to them. Other, more well-known features were discussed by @Bernat_Tirado , who explained both his experience and some tips for getting the most out of them. A day marked by a positive atmosphere and a desire to improve their Google AdWords skills left the more than 140 agencies invited to the event satisfied with the experience. We want to thank Google for the trust placed in our agency, and in particular in @Bernat_Tirado . Undoubtedly, part of the success of these events is due to the fact that Bernat is a Google AdWords instructor at Clickformacion360 and draws on this experience for his presentations.

The keyword configuration of your Google AdWords ads is the key to making them effective and receiving clicks. Therefore, if you want to get the most out of your ad delivery, it's worth learning how to configure them correctly. To start, it's recommended that you group your keywords from similar product lines. This way, you can create ads that fit a single theme, which will correspond to the keywords you target. Furthermore, if you want to maximize the profitability of the matching options you invest in, it's important to periodically analyze their performance. How can you know how the match type you choose for your ad keywords performs? If you use the View Search Terms report, you can see how your ads perform in different search types and modify the match type based on the results. Keep in mind that a narrower match type will be much cheaper, but you'll also get fewer clicks. Therefore, you need to take both factors into account. Additionally, when choosing keywords for your ads and their match criteria, you should consider the geographic segment you're targeting. The broader the segment, the more you'll need to fine-tune your use of highly specific keywords. To help you make informed decisions about the use of keywords in your Google AdWords campaign ads, you should consider using effective tools like Keyword Planner . With it, you can obtain the most relevant keywords for your goals, estimate traffic, and find synonyms and variations that will help you improve your results.

Creating the objectives an online campaign should focus on is essential for assessing whether it's on track in a concrete and quantifiable way. If you need to set your campaign objectives , you must take into account certain basic requirements that will allow you to incorporate them into the reports generated during campaign monitoring. The first, although it may seem obvious, is to assign them a name that allows you to easily recognize them. The second basic aspect to keep in mind is the definition of conversion funnels , which will allow you to understand the journey users take on the page until they decide to abandon it or achieve the established objective. For each conversion funnel, you can define up to 20 pages. Finally, the third factor to consider is the assignment of values to calculate ROI and average score, among other things. A value that you can't miss in your account is the frequency with which users who achieve a goal become customers. How do you set objectives? If you want to edit your campaign objectives , you need to access the AdWords Manager tab, where you can click on Objectives and create an objective. If you follow the steps outlined in the following screens, you will successfully complete the project. However, you should keep in mind that Google Analytics offers pre-designed templates for setting up useful objectives, which are also editable for customization. To use them, note that they are based on four main categories, depending on the objective you want: Revenue, Acquisition, Inquiry, and Engagement. Choose the one that best suits your company's needs.

When planning our Google AdWords campaign, we must also take into account the information provided by Google Analytics, which will be key to understanding our website traffic and, consequently, how we can optimize our campaign to further improve the number of visitors and conversions. One of the most notable features of Google Analytics is automatic tagging, which allows us to understand the results of keywords in relation to clicks, conversions, and costs. In detail, it generates a report showing the clicks , the keywords that led the user to our website, the campaign to which those keywords were associated, and the cost per click. However, automatic tagging is not a panacea, as some addresses do not support it, either due to a redirect or server configuration. Furthermore, some parameters will be omitted, resulting in fairly inaccurate traffic tracking data. This is the case with the gclid, an ID added to destination URLs, which can generate errors. If the link you enter fails for this reason, you can always disable the automatic tagging option. Simply log into your AdWords account, click on My Account, and select the Preferences tab. Then go to Tracking and click Edit to find the Automatic Tagging of Destination URLs option. Also, keep in mind that you can only view AdWords visits with automatic tagging, otherwise, all visits received will be shown as coming from Google organic searches, ignoring specific sources.

When we plan a marketing campaign, we set a series of objectives we want to achieve. These objectives, essentially, represent some type of interaction established between our website visitor and the page. These objectives can be of any type, from a purchase to a registration, and are what are known as conversions. When we measure the conversions achieved by our marketing campaign, we are obtaining effective data on its success and, especially, on the quality and relevance of what we are offering our customers. In other words, tracking the conversions achieved by our campaign allows us to know which ads, campaigns, and keywords bring us the most revenue and, therefore, where we can focus our investment to achieve a higher ROI . When we analyze the results of the measurements made, we can determine whether we have achieved our main objectives with the conversions achieved. To begin with, we will know if the keywords used help us get visitors to take the desired action and which ones are related to each specific action. This way, we can focus on investing in those that generate the most profit. Likewise, if we want to know how effective our planned campaign is, we must consider cross-device conversions . These are the result of a process in which users click on our ad on one device and then make a purchase from another. These conversions can be found in the estimated total conversions column of the Google AdWords account. With these results, we'll know how profitable it is to adapt our campaign to multiple access devices, beyond just the computer.

When creating the ads that will be part of your next online marketing campaign, you must take into account the advertising policies governed by Google AdWords , which may result in the system not publishing the ad if it does not fit its established guidelines. These policies take into account aspects such as format, content, and links, and it is important to keep in mind that they are not imposed for no reason. Google AdWords applies them when publishing the ads for a campaign to ensure better and more effective achievement of advertising objectives for both advertisers and clients. Google AdWords' editorial and format policies focus on the first three lines of the ad text to be published. They impose a specific number of characters for the title, text, and URL, among other formal aspects. For example, free or deeply discounted prices offered in one of these ads should be clearly stated and easily accessible, with one or two clicks. Likewise, it's important to avoid the incorrect use of exclamation points, which cannot appear in the title and can only be used one at a time in the text. Regarding Google AdWords' content policy , it's important to clarify that they refer to the type of products or services being advertised, avoiding certain ones in particular. It's worth noting that the promotion of certain weapons or resources for passing alcohol or drug tests is prohibited. Finally, we emphasize that your Google AdWords ads must adhere to established link policies , which essentially focus on the need for a specific visible URL and links that facilitate access to and exit from the page.

If you're preparing your next Google AdWords campaign and need to write the text ads you're going to use, it's important to know AdWords' editorial policy when publishing them. Here are some practical tips. To begin with, be careful with the use of punctuation marks, letters, and numbers in your writing. As much as you want to grab the attention of your potential customers, an ad with an excessive combination of exclamation points, numbers, and letters won't be validated. Of course, Google AdWords has certain spelling and grammar requirements, which means you must use well-constructed, clear, and correct sentences. Of course, you can only use capital letters when it's legally correct, even if you want to grab the customer's attention with words like BEST or FREE. Google also pays special attention to the format of your ads. Thus, you can't repeat a word three or more times in the same line or use superlative claims to emphasize the quality of your product. These expressions can end up deceiving the customer. The same applies to competitive claims. You can't claim that your product is better than another without proof. You can only say so if you support the claim with table comparisons or a competitive analysis. Of course, it's important to be careful with your language. Messages that don't contribute anything to the product, for example, "click here," and offensive or inappropriate language are completely prohibited in Google AdWords ads, which must pass the validation filter. By following these tips when writing your campaign's text ads, you'll have no problem getting them validated by the system and allowing them to be published without problems, following your editorial line.

Accurately measure the quality score of a word   It will help us see its influence on various elements of our Google Adwords account, conditioning its development.

To begin with, having a good quality score makes it much easier for the keyword we're interested in to enter the ad auction and also makes it cheaper for us. But this isn't its only advantage. Continuing with the economic theme, it's worth noting that a high quality score will result in a lower actual CPC . In other words, the higher the quality of the keyword we're interested in, the less we'll pay for each click on our ad.

And the benefits continue. Achieving a good quality score also gives us another key opportunity for our campaign, as it will also help our ad appear at the top of the page, with all the benefits this entails for the campaign. Likewise, being able to boast a good quality score means we'll be able to position our ads much better, and proportionally higher on the page.

In conclusion, whenever we consider the influence of the quality score, it's important to be very clear about its positive effect on the cost of our campaign and its effectiveness in achieving good positioning and, therefore, greater effectiveness. If, in addition, the ads are relevant to what the user is searching for, we will see even greater benefits, thanks to the increase in clicks and the consequent better positioning we will achieve. Therefore, a good quality score is one of the pillars of a campaign's success.

If you're not a Google AdWords professional and want to manage this system to run a successful campaign, you should be careful not to fall into the most common mistakes most advertisers make.

Keyword overuse is one of the biggest mistakes you can make when trying to manage your Google AdWords campaign. To begin with, you should be aware that relevance is a key factor. Therefore, it's important not to use broad match keywords, as they will never provide you with relevant traffic .   This is the keyword you're interested in to maximize your campaign's profitability. Similarly, it's recommended that you don't create an overly long list of keywords for a single ad group, as this will make managing them much more difficult.

Likewise, a campaign's CPC is another key factor that can lead to significant errors in a Google AdWords campaign. If you think increasing the CPC will increase your Quality Score, we regret to inform you that you may be mistaken.   and carry out an ineffective strategy. Are you tempted to lower your campaign's CPC right away? This is also one of the biggest   mistakes you can make in Google Adwords, since you won't give the system time to analyze the campaign and increase the Quality Score.

Another mistake you should avoid? Not conducting tests . If you really want to get the most out of a campaign, you must constantly test its results so you can try new locations and keywords to improve its profitability. Additionally, if you test based on the time of day, you'll be able to determine when the CTR was highest or when the greatest number of conversions occurred. Of course, this information is essential for the final result of your campaign.

And you? Do you identify with any of these mistakes?

Last week we already explained that Clickonline   360 was present at Retail@Google in Dublin , which we attended as an AdWords agency for a retailer. In this post, we want to explain a little more about this event, which we can say focused on three basic points: how to attract multi-screen users and understand their experience across various online channels; and finally, how to build a brand image that    make our product the first thing that comes to mind when consuming.

The different presentations that were offered to us had as their main objective to analyze how a company can connect   with online consumers, taking into account their usual habits and behaviors. Furthermore, special emphasis was placed on the need to adapt website design to mobile devices, given that smartphones are becoming one of the main connection channels for users.

  How do we reach the users we're truly interested in? This was undoubtedly another of the key themes of the Retail@Google event in Dublin, which addressed factors such as user segmentation and the need to work closely with suppliers to ensure the success of our online marketing strategies.

The truth is that summarizing all the events we were able to attend during these days in Dublin is impossible in a single post, but we don't want to forget the privilege of attending a demonstration of the famous and highly anticipated Google Glass and the workshops organized by the Account Management Team. A unique experience!