Digital Marketing: Your Guide to Online Success

Last Friday, Bernat Tirado offered an intensive Google AdWords session to all the startups that are part of Wayra Spain . These are digital startups made up of the best entrepreneurs whom Telefónica helps grow and build their successful companies. The session began at 12:30 a.m. and lasted approximately one hour. You can watch it soon at: https://live.openfuture.org/es/record-events Bernat offered fundamental theory, techniques, and practice of AdWords. He very clearly structured the concepts that must be taken into account before launching into the configuration of any campaign. These included the Search Network, the Display Network, how to segment and how to correctly configure campaigns, among others. Remarketing was also discussed, and of course, the latest developments were mentioned. To conclude the session, a Q&A session was held. This gave all attendees a firsthand look at this tool and analyzed how AdWords can fit into their projects. The session was highly rated. And Bernat was happy to introduce a powerful tool that will surely help them launch their projects. If AdWords is managed well... it can yield excellent results!

Normally, reviews of the best of the year are done around the end of December, when the Lottery and Christmas Eve aren't newsworthy. It's when New Year's Eve approaches that all the year's top charts hit the headlines. There's something for everyone. However, as of today, in April, we already have a ton of new developments regarding AdWords. Let's take a look back at everything that's happened to date. At the end of February, an AdWords news story broke that alarmed everyone, especially advertisers and digital advertising agencies. Google removed ads from the right side of the search engine. Panic spread on social media due to the resulting consequences. However, everything seems calm, and apparently we've all gotten used to staring at that empty space with no replacement. To date, we've created a more relaxing user experience and are distancing ourselves from other search engines. At Clickonline 360, our SEM experts have already successfully adapted to the new idiosyncrasy. The Drafts and Extensions tool , that great tool in testing, prevents catastrophes in your campaigns so you can rethink and modify them in time. Google has taken it upon itself to promote it and encourage us to use it. It certainly saves us from more than one upset. Another piece of AdWords news from the beginning of the year: Google announced through its Google+ profile that display ads will be exclusively in HTML5. With its decisions, Google always focuses on achieving the best experience and the greatest user reach; therefore, it announces that platform users have all of 2016 to make the necessary changes. These are wise decisions in a digital world that is beginning to revolve around mobile devices. Other minor news, such as the launch of the AdWords platform for iOS or the closure of Google Compare to focus on AdWords, are other minor but no less important news from this year, which has started intensely and predicts a 2016 full of excitement.

Google AdWords is going to save us a few surprises, perhaps pleasant ones, with the interesting feature it launched this week: Campaign Experiments and Drafts. In the coming days, we'll be able to try making changes to our campaigns and measure their results more quickly and easily. The draft option offered by Google AdWords allows us to prepare and review the changes you want to make to your campaigns before implementing them. You can make various adjustments without affecting the entire campaign you had previously designed. AdWords experiments are created from drafts. They give us the option to make changes to our campaigns in a controlled environment. Experiments allow you to compare the performance of the changes made with the performance of your current bidding strategy. You can decide the timeframe over which you want to run the experiment, as well as allocate the traffic and budget between the original and experimental campaigns. This optional feature offered by Google AdWords shortens the time required to make changes to our campaigns. This new process will save us time and allow us to test new bidding strategies until we finally find the optimal strategy for our client. Another advantage is that it allows you to measure the results of these ad group tests, interpret them, and make the necessary changes to the campaign. And most interestingly, it establishes a comparison between the original campaign and the test campaign. If you're satisfied with the performance, you'll be ready to implement it, or else you'll have the option to run a new experiment. At Click Online 360, we've already tested the benefits of the AdWords Drafts and Experiments tool because it's now available for Search Network and Search campaigns with Display Selection. The folks at Google AdWords provide more information in an instructional video or in their help center. If you haven't tried it, you're taking too long. Source: Official Google AdWords Blog

At this point, the reach of Google AdWords as an advertising platform, as well as the attractiveness of Display ads for advertisers, is unquestionable. Therefore, Google continues to make strides forward to improve advertising reach and user experience. For some time now, Google has been advising on the use of HTML5, in order to reach the widest possible audience on different devices and screens. Yesterday, Google AdWords published a post on its Google+ profile announcing that, starting this year, Display ads will be exclusively in HTML5. They warned web surfers that they must update their Display ads by converting them to HTML5. To achieve this, they have set two dates: Starting June 30, 2016 , ads built in Flash will no longer be uploaded to Google AdWords. And starting January 2, 2017 , Flash Display ads will no longer work. Google, in its attempt to make this transition to HTML5 easier for us, is giving us the necessary tips and tutorials to start converting our ads to HTML5 right away . If you currently use Flash Display ads in your campaigns created with Google AdWords, there are three ways to convert them to HTML5: Give Google AdWords permission to automatically convert Flash ads to HTML5, create the ads with the tools that Google itself provides, or upload your own pre-created HTML5 ads. Google Chrome, surprisingly, has already begun blocking Flash Display ads, thus increasing page load speeds. The controversy surrounding the negative effects of Flash has been going on for a long time, ranging from security concerns to extra power consumption by processors, which is inconvenient for mobile devices. So, don't wait to convert your Adobe Flash Display ads to HTML5. Source: Google+ by Google AdWords. Published: February 9, 2016. https://bit.ly/20NDwUR

January was a month of taking stock and reflecting, analyzing statistics and trends from the previous year, and, of course, looking to the future accordingly. At Clickonline360, we found it interesting to review two reports (Adobe Digital and EMarketer), which we believe will change the environment and our ideas when designing a digital marketing investment plan. According to the Adobe Digital report, we are witnessing a certain slowdown in the growth of search advertising. In the last quarter of 2015, pay-per-click continued to grow, but at a slower pace ; specifically, overall growth fell to 75%. While growth was 12% in 2014, it was 3% in 2015. Mobile searches grew 23% in the last quarter (a 12% increase over the previous year), allowing advertisers to act in line with consumer behavior. Two aspects must be taken into account: mobile pay-per-click is 26% lower than desktop pay-per-click by 26%, and the higher click-through rate, both decisive factors when allocating investment. Until now, display advertising received less investment than search advertising, however, the multiple possibilities of display advertising make it very attractive for advertisers. Therefore, we can speak of a forecast of growth in advertiser investment in display advertising, foreseeably surpassing paid search. But beware, this doesn't mean that search advertising will fall behind; it will simply experience a slight slowdown. Display advertising offers multiple possibilities, in addition to the established banners, including rich media, videos, and sponsorships. For the American market, investment in display advertising is on the rise, surpassing search spending. This was revealed by another study published by Emarketer. It would be good to consider this upward trend when designing our digital marketing strategies. These data, collected from various reports, somewhat alter the advertising landscape in the digital environment. The rise of display advertising and mobile searches is highly significant and should be taken into account when making investments. However, paid searches, or pay-per-click, have NOT begun to decline.

Google AdWords made an important recommendation in its blog this week, which we wanted to echo and not miss the opportunity to share. We talked about the importance of highlighting in your ad some feature that makes the product or service you offer different. With ad extensions, your customers and potential customers will have a clear idea before clicking on the ad. Site snippets contain diverse information that must have been provided by the advertiser. You should have done your homework beforehand and be very clear about what values fit with your company, the more personalized the better. This way, you could include them in the "Header." For example, if you are a car repair company that also sells spare parts, it would be good to include a site snippet for "Parts and Brands" and list the different brands and spare parts you work with. Highlighted text and site snippets have specific characteristics that make them different. Callouts should capture what makes your product, business, or service unique ("24/7 Support"), while the site snippet would capture a specific aspect of your services or products ("Original Pieces"). Ad extensions and callouts always help with positioning. And above all, they are decisive for ad ranking. The more ad extensions you provide, the better the auction will work and the ad's performance will be optimized. We'll explain some factors you should consider when defining your site snippets and callouts, as they have different characteristics. Keep the following in mind: There is a 25-character limit per value and per callout. It's advisable to offer between two and three values in the callouts, and in the site snippets, we would evaluate them based on the value length and screen size. Advertisers should also consider their callouts and define them. Thanks to ad extensions and snippets, we can give our ads a differentiating value by driving clicks. What are you waiting for? Source: Google Adwords Blog.

A few days ago, we celebrated AdWords ' fifteenth anniversary, and it seems like a good time to look back and explore some fascinating things. In this case, I want to talk about the customers and how they have evolved exceptionally, much faster than the tool itself.

Years ago, in a work meeting with a client, you could explain some metrics or not, you could give them more or less in-depth data, or in other words, you could be more or less technical depending on the knowledge of the person in front of you.

I'll go further, sometimes you could even be extremely cruel to your own boss to explain a campaign with data and technicalities that he was unable to understand.

Today, all this has changed, and a lot, and it has changed for the better, especially for Google AdWords customers.

This is because today, all clients control the metrics, KPIs or technicalities regarding the Google AdWords tool and this leads them to delve much deeper into what campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, ad extensions, tags, filters and everything related to them are in order to be much more perceptive. This, in addition, translates into greater demands on us and on the technicians who work on Google AdWords strategies.

And this is what we have to be grateful for. Our clients' demands are what drives us to improve; they prevent us from becoming complacent and allow our work to progress and improve day by day. Somehow, we've all managed to evolve—clients, AdWords , and technicians—to adapt and move forward.

I'm not so sure about the bosses ;-)

David F,

Do you monitor the progress of your AdWords campaign every chance you get? Do you follow the statistics practically minute by minute ? Now you can monitor how your campaign is performing without having to connect to a computer. With the new AdWords app for Android, all these tasks will be more convenient and easier to perform. Those responsible for Google AdWords are thus joining the bandwagon of the widespread use of mobile devices in most facets of both daily life and business . Smartphones aren't just used to connect to social media or browse the internet. They're also increasingly being used in the business world, and many companies even use them to manage orders. With this in mind, why not use mobile devices to manage an AdWords campaign? One of the great advantages offered by the new AdWords app is that you can use it anywhere in the world, without having to worry about finding a computer to view and act on any matter related to your campaign's ads. We can't forget that AdWords campaigns evolve very quickly and their profitability varies from one moment to the next. Therefore, having the ability to react when managing them is essential if you want to truly get the most out of them. This rapid response is now much more feasible thanks to the newly launched application, which allows you to access all the information and resources you may need at any time or place. Changing budgets, managing temporary ads... any adjustment you need to make to your campaign to modify it instantly and take advantage of its impact is now possible simply by installing the AdWords application on your Android 4.0 or higher. What does this application specifically offer? To begin with, an essential element for the proper management of any AdWords campaign: access to statistics. You can view both basic data (clicks, costs, and conversions) and more detailed metrics , making it much easier for you to decide what to do with your bids and budgets at any given time. And that's not all. The Google AdWords app also offers you the option to activate real-time alerts and receive action suggestions , which you can implement immediately after receiving them to optimize your campaign. Ultimately, having the AdWords app on your phone allows you to work on your campaign without having to go to the office and improve it second by second, to optimize it to the fullest .

Do we need to use hashtags? One of the most common questions when establishing an online marketing campaign is whether and, if so, how to use them correctly to optimize results . The truth is that they've been used for years, but even today, many companies hesitate when it comes to using them on Twitter, where they originated, and on other networks. Don't know if you need hashtags in your campaign? To answer this question, we must first understand their purpose. In reality, they're an excellent resource for grouping relevant messages that appear on social media , which are directly related to the product or service you want to promote and your target audience. Hashtags keep messages always visible to users on a specific platform and allow them to access them with a single click. Also, keep in mind that hashtags are used today on most social networks, so applying them to your campaign will help you unify your campaigns across different platforms. Can you think of a simpler and more effective way to impact your potential users? So far, we can deduce that hashtags can give you many advantages in an online campaign, but what can you do with them? If you really want them to have a positive effect on expanding the reach of the content you generate, you must be careful how you use them. To begin with, you need to do some prior research to ensure that the hashtag you want to use hasn't been previously associated with other concepts that could be counterproductive to your promotional objectives. In fact, there are tools that will allow you to know if the one you've chosen for your campaign has been used before , for example, to raise awareness about a natural disaster that occurred some time ago. Likewise , optimizing the hashtag you've decided to use in your campaign involves measuring its exposure. Keep in mind that associating several hashtags with the same post on social media can end up diverting your audience's attention to different areas and, therefore, preventing the content created from being as effective as you desire. If you use a maximum of three hashtags per post, you'll avoid confusing your users. It's important to remember what you're using them for: to make it easier for your potential audience to remember your marketing messages and find them as quickly and efficiently as possible. Therefore, for them to be effective, you need them to be easy to remember and perfectly summarize the idea you want to convey with your campaign.

Do you need an AdWords remarketing campaign? Digital marketing evolves very quickly, and strategies are constantly changing, but the essence of any campaign remains the same: the need to reach users and convince them to make the conversion we've previously set as our goal . But how many times have you seen how many of your users don't complete the process and fail to complete this conversion? Too many, without a doubt. AdWords remarketing is one of your best allies in these cases. What will you achieve with an AdWords remarketing campaign? The idea is very simple: re-engage those users who haven't completed an action on your site , encouraging them to visit your site again. This action can be converting to a lead or subscribing, although the most common is a purchase. Why will remarketing be effective for you? The truth is that these types of campaigns are easy to prepare and launch, are inexpensive, and offer the advantage of delivering a personalized message to a quality audience. Keep in mind that you're targeting people who have already visited your website, so they're already somewhat interested in the product or service you're promoting. Therefore, the impacts you send are much more likely to be effective. This applies both to customers who have left their shopping cart full without making a purchase and to those you know have visited the product listing for your campaign, even if they haven't taken any action, among many other possibilities. If you're thinking about running an AdWords remarketing campaign, keep in mind that they're typically set up on the Display Network and that they use cookies to provide basic implementation code for campaign optimization. With this and a well-defined conversion funnel, you'll be able to fully evaluate the results of your remarketing campaign. Of course, it's important to keep in mind certain basic aspects that will allow you to get the most out of your campaign, such as the need for good user segmentation, which will allow you to apply specific strategies for each type of user and, thus, reach them more effectively. This will also allow you to better allocate your budget by investing more heavily in users most likely to purchase, i.e., those who abandoned their cart full of products at the last minute before converting.