How to retain clients in PPC

The world of PPC management is changing faster now than in years past. New automation, economic shifts and developments in reporting capabilities are changing the role of a PPC agency. 

When I started out in PPC in 2012, I spent much of my time making manual bid changes. The work of a PPC agency was skewed more toward execution than strategy. Today, businesses seek different support: strategic guidance, proactive recommendations and cutting-edge tool/technology integration and targeting. 

Not delivering on these will result in poor client retention. There are plenty of other causes for client churn, such as:

• Budget changes.
• Poor campaign performance (not meeting client goals/expectations).
• Misaligned communication styles.
• Change in client contact or agency team.
• Change in CMO or primary decision-makers.
• Changes to company goals.

Businesses are rethinking how they work with agencies today.

Some are looking for new agency support for the reasons above, others are consolidating to single agencies across all their digital marketing needs and a few are taking things in house to save money.

How can you retain your clients and continue to be an invaluable part of their marketing mix?

Understand your client’s needs and expectations

The first, and what would seem the most obvious, thing to do is to know your client’s goals. Their real goals.

If you are confident in the work and results you are driving, you should be able to speak to them and tie them back to the business’s goals. When I say their “real goals,” I mean diving deeper than CPA or even ROAS goals. 

A client may have a specific ROAS target to which they are holding you – but what does the CMO care about? They likely think about things through a wider lens, like profit and revenue.. 

Getting embedded deeply enough in your client’s business to reach goals like this can be challenging. Still, if you can close the loop with offline conversion tracking, you can begin to truly show the agency’s value and make parting with you a bad business decision for your client.  

Having more information like this and feeding it back into Google will help you optimize your campaigns and impact your client’s business more significantly. 

Where many agencies fall short is around goal setting. Having unclear or mismatched goals and expectations can be a problem. They think they are hitting goals and delivering, but they may not understand what the decision-makers really care about – whether it’s growth, increased profit, market share, etc.

Regularly schedule deep dives

The next thing you can do to retain clients and keep engagement high is to perform audits on your own work with a specific and predictable cadence.

Auditing your own work is your opportunity to take a step back, think about the larger strategy and present your findings to your client. 

As the saying goes, it’s hard to see the forest through the trees. Auditing can allow you to think about the big picture and ensure your strategy is tied back to the client’s goal. 

I recommend auditing accounts quarterly. This type of quarterly business review (QBR) is also a great way to get higher-level executives involved. They might not get the opportunity to see the value of your work as frequently because they aren’t in weekly meetings. But a QBR is a great time to get face time with them and ensure you are meeting their expectations. 

Another side note: other agencies will likely be doing these types of audits in the background. As a business works to ensure it drives the best results possible, it will likely allow others to review your ad accounts. It’s important for your trust with the client that they feel your audits are addressing the same types of concerns these other agencies are raising. 

Dig deeper: PPC management checklist: Daily, weekly and monthly reviews

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Educate your clients

One of the biggest recommendations I can share as you work to create long and healthy relationships with your PPC clients is to educate them. 

Create a culture of teaching by sharing recommendations, optimization opportunities and your overall process. There should not be a secret sauce you need to hide away.

Be open and teach them the “why” behind your recommendations so they can fully understand your expertise. When you make it clear to the client what you’re doing, why you’re doing i, and how you came up with the idea, they will understand the complexity of your work.

Keeping your process and strategy hidden may leave them uncertain, making it more likely they’ll be impressed by someone who showcases their work clearly. Lead regular training sessions with their team to help them truly understand PPC performance, rather than relying on reports.

Beyond sharing your strategy, do your best to share the latest trends and tactics, too. They will see you as a partner if you are consistently sharing context on industry updates.

Dig deeper: 3 steps for effective PPC reporting and analysis

Integrate tools to work smarter

Consider the tech stack you provide clients as part of your management, and don’t be shy about showcasing it. Implementing advanced tools and technologies will help demonstrate for your clients that you’re on the cutting edge. 

Clients who see PPC as a primary driver of their business are looking for the next big thing to test. Highlighting your use of new tools, automation and AI-driven analytics tools will help clients feel confident they aren’t behind the curve. 

Ask for feedback regularly

Finally, ask you clients how you are doing. Successful agencies encourage feedback often and in different ways. Some ways to consider are:

• A standing placeholder in meetings for feedback on any specific work.
• Client surveys annually or semi-annually.
• Outreach from executive sponsors on the account who are not involved in the day-to-day.

Collecting this feedback is important, but acting on it shows you are listening and willing to work on getting better. Most clients are reasonable.

People have different working styles, and it may take time to get the right rhythm, only to have an individual leave the organization and cause things to change.

Changing contacts is a primary cause of poor client retention, so ensure you collect feedback as often as possible without being annoying. 

Striving for a lasting agency-client relationship in PPC

Client retention is a core objective for my teams every year at my agency. There are significant benefits to having long-standing client relationships, such as:

• Increased likelihood of executing a successful strategy.
• Saving on costs of acquiring new clients.
• More predictable business forecasting. 

That said, clients have every right to expect the most from their PPC agency. They want an agency that challenges them, understands their business and regularly tests new things. Work to embrace that and build long, lucrative client relationships where both sides win. 

Dig deeper: How to improve PPC campaign performance: A checklist

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How to build a resilient digital marketing agency in 2024

Starting a business can be daunting. Only about half of businesses make it past the crucial five-year mark, per the U.S. Small Business Administration.

As an accidental entrepreneur who started a digital marketing agency seven years ago, I’ve learned first-hand what it takes to achieve longevity while navigating periods of rapid growth and economic uncertainty. 

Over the years, I’ve seen many agencies struggle and even shut down – including long-time players and heavily funded startups. Between an impending recession, sluggish sales cycles and clients looking to cut budgets, 2024 poses fresh challenges for agencies looking to thrive.

Let’s explore key strategies I’ve learned about how to future-proof your digital agency, adapt to changing conditions, and foster resilience regardless of external factors. 

Differentiation and diversification

Although many consultants advise you to focus on agency specialization to drive higher efficiency and valuations, I think it can create risk in terms of long-term resiliency. Specializing in a segment or platform that experiences a pullback or recession can threaten the survival of your agency.

Client portfolio balance

To mitigate risk, you’ll want to consider diversifying client size, sectors, and channels as best as possible, provided that your team has the knowledge to service these areas. That last part is critical. For the agency to thrive, you should only take on work that you can be great at. 

Don’t rely one or two clients. Ideally, your top client should represent 10% or less of your business. Things happen; if you’re diversified enough, you can survive losing a client or a client pulling back.

From a size perspective, we think in terms of a bell curve: 

• A few very large clients.
• A lot of mid-size clients.
• A few small ones that either fill in capacity or have the potential to grow. 

The small accounts should ideally be strategic. Use them to gain experience in a new channel or industry.

Small, medium, and large will all mean different things to different agencies. What’s large for one may be small for another, so you’ll want to define your own thresholds.

The big accounts can create risk if you’re hiring against them. That’s often what drives the layoffs you hear about in agencies.

Again, this doesn’t mean you should take on work you’re not staffed to manage appropriately. As you’re growing or trying to weather a storm, you may say “yes” to a lot. But in stable times, you want to be good at saying “no” to work you’re less skilled in or that is less profitable.  

Work with your teams to help them understand that excellent client service doesn’t mean saying “yes” to everything a client asks for. It’s one thing to jump in to help with board slides; it’s another to do projects that are outside of scope of your engagement for free. 

Differentiation through values

There are thousands of digital marketing agencies in the U.S., many offering the same services. So, how do you remain resilient when companies are pulling back marketing spend? 

You obviously need to deliver expected results by having a great team, but I believe there’s truth to Maya Angelou’s quote: 

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

When agencies are navigating difficult times, it’s important to remember that clients are likely hurting, too. 

Protect your client relationships by being transparent and even occasionally over-delivering when it makes sense. Be a partner. Make it clear that you actually care about helping clients grow.

One person from a private equity team told me that we won their business because we led off the pitch meeting by saying that we didn’t want to scale their account until tracking was in really good shape, even though that could take months. He saw that as a high-integrity move and said it was clear that we wanted to be a partner and weren’t just after a quick buck.

People will remember how you made them feel in the pitch, weekly meetings, and daily interactions.

Dig deeper: How to build a values-based agency that drives results

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Culture of adaptability and learning

One of the most important things is to hire people who adapt to changes in marketing – whether new channels, new technology, or beta programs – and changes in your company. Your job as a leader is to foster a culture that embraces acceptable risks and continuous learning.

To thrive and become resilient, it’s also important to remain flexible to client needs. 

Sometimes, they will need to pause or adjust budgets for a short time, or sales cycles may not move as quickly as you’d like. While that can be difficult to swallow, it’s better to be flexible and retain the business than lose a relationship permanently.

By showing a commitment beyond profit, you can build deep relationships in your organization that last beyond downturns or technological changes. Think about how you can help your clients best sell ideas to their managers; help them build business cases or empower them with tools.

Hiring for grit and a sense of humor

Although I wasn’t an athlete in a “traditional” sport, I grew up surfing for 3-4 hours a day. That said, I’ve always loved hiring college athletes. These individuals often bring grit, mental toughness, and the ability to push through tough times – which make them perfect for fast-growing agencies and those experiencing adversity.

It’s also important to hire for the values you prioritize. Humility is one of ours. A sense of humor is probably an unofficial one. A sense of humor and even a little mischief can help foster relationships and bring people together in a remote world.

On the flip side, cut ties quickly with people who aren’t a good fit. Even great workers may prove toxic to the organization if they’re not culturally aligned with others in the company.

They may get the job done but be negative and complain constantly, or they may be incredibly analytical but not partner well with colleagues and keep information close to the vest. Keeping these types of employees around can impact morale and lead your top performers to wonder why you are permitting the behavior.

There’s a great quote which we’ve tried to keep in mind throughout our journey:

“Culture is not like a mission statement; you can’t just set it up and have it last forever. There’s a saying in the military that if you see something below standard and do nothing, then you’ve set a new standard. This is also true of culture – if you see something off-culture and ignore it, you’ve created a new culture.”

That doesn’t mean that everyone has to be a shining example of each and every value on your list, but the closer the fit, the more likely it is that they’ll be part of your team for the long haul.

Use just-in-time hiring when it’s feasible

If you’re bootstrapping, you may be using contractors for a while before hiring full-time employees. Just-in-time hiring can be stressful when you’re out pitching business and putting your existing team under some strain, but it also can help keep you from laying people off, making your company more resilient. 

Hiring just in time doesn’t mean waiting until you’ve signed a contract or your team is struggling. It can mean hiring when there’s only capacity left for one or two more medium accounts.

Transparency with your team

To build a resilient agency, you must care for your people – even in tougher times. The best people have choices on where to work, so make sure you’re transparent about how the business is doing. Sharing what’s really happening limits the likelihood that team members will invent worst-case scenarios.

Similarly, during high growth periods, you also want to be transparent about how you’re navigating growth and where they may experience some pain points as you mature.

Strategic operations and strong financial acumen

Lean and agile management

Salaries, benefits, and contractor fees are generally the highest expenses for digital marketing agencies. But in order to build a high-quality agency, you need to have great people. To be resilient, you need to be mindful of a payroll that can’t support the business. 

So, how do you balance the two? In our case, we used contractors and part-time employees to limit expenses, especially as we scaled the business. By maintaining a flexible staffing strategy, you can afford to have part of a really talented person’s time rather than settling for all of a more junior person’s time.

As your business changes, talk to your team about how their career aspirations may have evolved. You may find that some of your staff is interested in moving to a part-time role or becoming a contractor. This happens when individuals like the idea of freelancing but want to maintain benefits or just prefer a change to their work-life balance.

Part of remaining resilient requires not getting too top-heavy but surrounding yourself with great leaders. You’ll need that great leadership team to navigate adversity and change that tends to happen among managers/senior manager-level employees.

During periods of high growth, using a combination of FTEs and a trusted pool of contractors can help you adjust to growth or new clients who need to get started immediately – especially if you are doing just-in-time hiring.

Closely monitored financial oversight

Regardless of whether you’re growing or weathering a change in the business, it’s important to know your numbers and watch your P&L. This includes understanding profitability at the account and line of business level, and employee utilization rates. 

Focusing on these measures enabled us to grow a $5 million business without taking investment or debt.

Avoid long-term agreements on software, especially if it’s not core

There are a few lessons I learned through the years, especially as they related to our second largest expense – software.

We’ve purchased some software that we liked but didn’t make much financial sense when we slowed down hiring. It seemed worth the cost when we signed the agreement, but then we felt trapped. Similarly, there’s been software that seemed great, but we found it didn’t meet our needs.

Try to avoid year-long terms when you can. The exception is on things you know with certainty that you don’t plan to move away from, like Slack.

It’s OK to pay month to month, even if it’s not the best price

As we scaled the business, we had a lot of software on month-to-month pricing to protect cash flow. While it wasn’t necessarily the best price, it kept things flexible in case we wanted different software or knew we might pull back or switch to a different tech stack. This is especially relevant where you’re paying by the seat.

Have a process to review by-the-seat licenses monthly or quarterly

If you use a lot of contractors or freelancers, have a process in place to review the roster of licenses each month or quarter at a minimum. Paying for seats for inactive contractors can get expensive if you don’t keep an eye on it.

Negotiate renewal terms upfront or get a month-to-month auto-renewal

A few months ago, I was caught off guard when I asked to pay an annual contract with a vendor in semi-annual installments, as we had done in the first year. Apparently, it was in the original agreement that the auto-renewal would require upfront payment on this five-figure-a-year software.

When we asked about it, they offered to let us pay semi-annually for a 6% markup on the contract. It’s something that I should have caught in the original work order, but it also makes me feel like “just a number” to them.

Running a successful digital marketing agency long-term

As you navigate periods of growth and downturns, it’s important to set yourself up for success past the one-year or five-year mark and even longer.

By hiring appropriately, adapting to a changing environment, having strong values, and keeping tabs on your finances, you can run a successful digital marketing agency in 2024 and beyond.

Dig deeper: Scaling an agency: Lessons of growth and change

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Google patent describes how the Search Generative Experience works

A patent granted to Google may describe how Google’s new Search Generative Experience works.

Google applied for the patent, “Generative summaries for search results”, on March 20, 2023. It was issued on September 26. The full version can be read here.

Abstract. The patent’s abstract reads:

“At least selectively utilizing a large language model (LLM) in generating a natural language (NL) based summary to be rendered in response to a query. In some implementations, in generating the NL based summary additional content is processed using the LLM. The additional content is in addition to query content of the query itself and, in generating the NL based summary, can be processed using the LLM and along with the query content—or even independent of the query content. Processing the additional content can, for example, mitigate occurrences of the NL based summary including inaccuracies and/or can mitigate occurrences of the NL based summary being over-specified and/or under-specified.”

Dig deeper. Juan González Villa wrote a very detailed and extensive deep dive on this patent. In the piece, The Patent Behind Google SGE, he writes “The patent, which describes how to “selectively use a large language model (LLM) to generate a natural language summary in response to a user query,” matches what we see and know about SGE today,” he wrote.

Diagrams. Here are some select diagrams from the patent:

Why we care. Reading this patent may help you better understand how the Search Generative Experience works. Keep in mind just because Google has patent, it doesn’t mean it’s used. Googlers apply for and receive approval on patents all the time.

This one is probably worth a weekend read, but don’t expect to find any SGE ranking secrets within.

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Take back your ROI by owning your data by Cynthia Ramsaran

Other brands can copy your style, tone and strategy — but they can’t copy your data.

Your data is your competitive advantage in an environment where enterprises are working to grab market share by designing can’t-miss, always-on customer experiences. Your marketing tech stack enables those experiences. 

Join ActionIQ and Snowplow to learn the value of composing your stack – decoupling the data collection and activation layers to drive more intelligent targeting.

Register and attend “Maximizing Marketing ROI With a Composable Stack: Separating Reality from Fallacy,” presented by Snowplow and ActionIQ.

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LinkedIn rolls out new ad performance measurement features

LinkedIn has introduced new tools and upgrades to assist marketers in measuring their ad campaigns more effectively:

• New Conversions API (CAPI).
• Website Actions.
• Document ads upgrades.

Why we care. Accurate measurement of campaign performance enables advertisers to make informed decisions, allocate resources efficiently and demonstrate the value of their efforts to clients.

CAPI. LinkedIn’s new campaign performance measurement promises “more precision and clarity” as there is no need for cookie tracking. This allows LinkedIn to provide better insights into how users respond to ads on the platform. You can choose how to connect your online and offline data from two options:

• API integration
• Partner integration.

The ability to connect both online and offline data enables you to track the impact of your campaigns on website actions, phone sales, and in-person event leads.

LinkedIn asserts that its new Conversions API is designed to be “privacy-compliant and future-proof.” This means that it adheres to current privacy regulations and is built to adapt to future changes in data privacy laws.

Website Actions. This new feature simplifies how marketers track conversions in advertising campaigns as there is “no need for complex event-tracking installations”. Website Actions can measure actions based on CTAs, page visits, and data without the need for additional on-site code.

Document Ads upgrades. LinkedIn is rolling out three new upgrades to this ad type:

1. Retargeting: This function provides the ability to engage with customers who have previously interacted with Document Ads. 
2. New metrics: You can now monitor objectives like website visits and website conversions for this specific ad type.
3. Local Area Network (LAN) distribution: There is now an option to opt in for this feature, which could help improve delivery and cost-efficiency.

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What LinkedIn is saying. Nicholas Hassebrock, Product Marketing Manager at LinkedIn, said in a statement:

• “If you’re currently focused on measuring the deeper impact of your campaigns, these new enhancements to LinkedIn Ads are worth your attention.”
• “In a study involving nearly 850 beta campaigns, CAPI delivered a remarkable 31% increase in attributed conversions and a 20% reduction in the cost per action.”
• “Early results for Website Actions users include a remarkable 33% CTR lift for Conversion Tracking campaigns, and a 31% CTR lift for Website Retargeting campaigns.”
• “Retargeting campaigns using Document Ads have seen CTRs approximately 2x higher compared to retargeting campaigns using lead gen forms.”
• “B2B marketers are under pressure to drive results and demonstrate impact. They need to be confident in the tools and platforms they are using to achieve their goals. At LinkedIn, we continue to innovate and enhance our product offerings to meet these needs.”

Deep dive. Read LinkedIn’s announcement in full for more information.

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The rise of Google followership: Unlocking visibility on Google’s surfaces

Google is no longer just a search engine. It is adopting social signals that increasingly impact content visibility across Google surfaces like Search, News and YouTube.

This shift requires brands to rethink what it means to do SEO today and beyond.

The article explores how Google is expanding into a surface ecosystem, why followership matters for visibility, and some initial ideas for brands looking to increase followers on Google.

Google’s shifting focus: From search to discovery

In the past four years, Google has undergone fundamental shifts: 

• From answers to journeys.
• From search queries to queryless search.
• From text to visuals. 

Google has transformed itself from a search engine to a surface ecosystem that focuses on anticipating and satisfying users’ needs, enabling it to reach and influence people before they need to search.

Think of the number of influential surfaces beyond the traditional SERPs. Google is now a:

• Ecommerce player with Google Lens, Shopping and Buy on Google functionality.
• Business directory with Google Maps.
• Aggregator in multiple industries with Google News, Google for Jobs, and Google Travel.
• Personal assistant, especially with the upcoming integration of Bard into Google Assistant.

Yet, the key functionality with the potential to greatly impact every brand and shape future visibility across all surfaces is Google’s hidden social networking feature.

Google is a powerful social network

The Perspectives tab may highlight other social network content in search, but I doubt this is Google’s end game.

Despite the failure of Google+, I believe Google still intends to become a leading social network.

Think about it: Google already offers every feature of its social media competitors.

• Vertical video through YouTube Shorts.
• Stories on the open web.
• For You Page (FYP) with Google Discover, which treats webpages as social posts.
• Likes with the heart button in Google Discover.
• Comments with the new Notes feature in Search Labs.
• Shares through Google Chrome.
• Personalization algorithms based on topical engagement, especially with the new website visit frequency ranking feature, which feels like Google’s version of “Trusting the algorithm to bring me back.”
• Creator details such as social handle, social follower count or content popularity included in search results, and the recent avatar guidance.
• Chat, albeit to an AI, with Bard and the converse feature in SGE.

But Google’s main social weapon is Discover.

In terms of monthly active users (MAUs), YouTube’s 2.7 billion is only exceeded by Facebook’s 3 billion. And with Discover’s last MAU reporting in 2018 at 800 million, it’s likely competitive with TikTok’s 1.1 billion or Instagram’s 2.3 billion. And certainly beats X’s 528 million and LinkedIn’s 310 million.

Moreover, Discover can provide significantly more value to brands. Unlike many of its social counterparts, Discover is not an area for doom scrolling or click hoarding.

There is a limited number of posts highly personalized to each user with the primary aim of getting users to click through to read more.

This is how Discover delivers its value. This means being featured in Google Discover can be highly impactful and highly targeted.

Now, Google is promoting a way to optimize for Discover and many rich experiences with surface followership.

Google followership: The next frontier

Google has begun rolling out the Follow button in search results. This allows you to subscribe to topics with Google, adding it as an interest in your Google profile.

Doing this increases the likelihood of seeing content related to those topics in various places like Discover and search results. You may even receive push notifications from the Google app if there is relevant news.

But this is just one of many follow features available across Google surfaces.

Google News

In Google News, I can click the follow star to show in the sources box in News and Discover, in the recently redesigned Google News following tab and the “From publishers you follow” SERP feature.

Google Shopping

In Google Shopping, I can favorite a brand, which gives more visibility to that brand’s offerings.

Google Maps

I can follow brands and local guides in Google Maps to receive updates on their activities in the maps following tab.

Google Chrome

I can follow any website with the Chrome Browser follow button, which adds it to the following tab. The content of which you can influence through a compatible RSS feed.

Google mobile app

In the Google mobile app, I can follow my favorite sporting teams to get game reminders and result updates, which also impact Discover personalization.

Knowledge Panel on SERPs

Or I can follow an entity by clicking the bell on its Knowledge Panel in Google Search to add it as a topic of interest, similarly influencing Discover and other surfaces.

Clearly, Google needs to consolidate. Yet, it’s evident that the company is heavily investing in encouraging users to follow content on Google surfaces, with more developments on the way.

In Chrome flags, you can enable enhancements to the Following and the New tab page.

These enhancements spell the end of Google’s desktop homepage as we have known it for 20 years.

It won’t just be a search box on a white background anymore. It will include Discover and other cards like its mobile counterpart, becoming a space for people to begin their journey through search or discovery.

To get on this Google homepage on mobile (and soon desktop), engaging your audience and growing a strong followership on Google surfaces will be key.

As Google increases followership numbers, it will potentially:

• Double down on the visibility of content from followed brands across all their surfaces.
• Use it as a more general visibility signal to support the algorithmic understanding of E-E-A-T. 

Followership is a factor in many other existing social algorithms, after all. 

Google recently added followership numbers as rich snippets accompanying social media profiles. What’s to stop them from displaying the domain followership numbers for your brand website?

No matter their motivation, Google is headed down the followership path. But SEO strategy is not adapting to these changes.

Why are “ranking factors” still in our vocabulary? Why is budget invested in keyword tracking tools? Traffic from Google isn’t driven primarily by blue links anymore.

The goal should not be just to rank in the SERPs. You must get your content in front of your target audience to drive engagement, which, if done well, will lead to conversions.

Do you talk about ranking in a social network like Instagram or TikTok? No. You talk about visibility. You know it’s hyper-personalized. What you publish this week matters because it impacts next week’s post reach. 

It’s the same on Google. Google has finally owned up to site-level signals influencing visibility. What is in the index influences the performance of future pieces.

And just like on social media where engagement and followers boost visibility, the same goes for Google surfaces.

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How to boost followers for Google surface visibility

So, how do you drive up followership on the relevant surfaces for your brand? While only you can answer that for your audience, here are some ideas for inspiration.

1. Add a ‘Follow Us’ button

This can lead to a Google News publication from your article pages. It’s worthwhile to test a button vs. a banner or a combination of the two, as is done here on Search Engine Land.

2. Write up a subtle ‘how to’ piece

If you are in a relevant space, you can create content about the new following capabilities on Google.

Informing your audience how it benefits them, with a convenient call to action showing how to try it out on you, like what 9to5Google did.

3. Cross-channel promotion

Adding posts, stories and videos on relevant social media channels, sending a push notification or adding a link in an email newsletter can all be effective ways to drive up Google followership numbers.

Don’t forget about the social power of Google surfaces. For example, Google Maps allows posting, which will show up for the brand query in the SERPs.

Optimizing for visibility beyond Google search

Google is expanding beyond just search and moving into content discovery and social media functionalities. 

As a result, Google should no longer be viewed solely as a search engine but rather as an influential network of interconnecting surfaces like YouTube, Maps, News, Discover, and more. 

Aside from optimizing for search traffic, brands must consider visibility and followership across Google’s ecosystem of products. 

Whatever your tactics, it’s time to acknowledge the lines between search and social media are increasingly blurry. Be a first mover and optimize for followership on Google.

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Key takeaways from the UK’s most effective holiday ads in 2023

Most Americans have spent November watching Black Friday ads. But on the other side of the pond, most of their British cousins have been watching Christmas ads (a.k.a., “adverts”).

Yes, Black Friday sales have become common in the U.K. over the past decade, but Brits don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. So, right after Halloween, most digital marketers in Old Blighty launch their Christmas ad campaigns.

If digital marketers in the U.S. want a sneak preview of creative effectiveness in December, then they should find a quiet moment during the current shopping frenzy on this side of the pond to analyze and evaluate what are the most effective Christmas ads for 2023 over in the U.K.

Measuring advertising effectiveness

In this article, I utilized DAIVID, an AI-driven creative effectiveness platform, to analyze and evaluate advertising effectiveness.

DAIVID has created a Creative Effectiveness Score (CES), a composite metric that combines the three main drivers of effectiveness: attention, emotions and memory. 

Ads are evaluated using facial coding, eye tracking, and survey responses to determine which had the biggest emotional and business impact on viewers. Altogether, 3,600 respondents took part in the study, which analyzed 24 Christmas campaigns.

The UK’s most effective Christmas ads this year

Using DAIVID’s methodology, here are the six most effective Christmas ads from Great Britain that should have the biggest impact on Christmas shoppers’ hearts, minds and wallets during this year’s festive season (unless you’re into Festivus).

1. “The World Needs More Santas | Coca-Cola,” with a creative effectiveness score (CES) of 7.61 out of 10.

2. “The LEGO Group Holiday Hero,” with a CES of 7.55

3. “Boots Christmas Advert 2023 | #GiveJoy | Boots UK,” with a CES of 7.27.

4. “Duracell | Bunny Saves Christmas”

5. “Good as Gold | Shelter,” tied with a CES of 7.11.

6. “Snapper: The Perfect Tree | John Lewis & Partners | Christmas Ad 2023,” tied with a CES of 7.11.

Dig deeper: 3 key trends reshaping YouTube marketing today

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What makes these ads effective?

I asked Ian Forrester, CEO and founder of DAIVID, for his take on this year’s most effective holiday ads: 

• “Coke certainly brought the Christmas fizz with its ‘The World Needs Santa’ campaign, which generated one the strongest emotional reactions of any Xmas ad this year. But the spot did more than just pack an emotional punch.”
• “Like LEGO and Boots’ ads, which make up the rest of the top three, it grabbed people’s attention by trying something different from the usual festive fare and combined it with strong branding.” 
• “Other ads, such as Shelter, also did well, but missed out on the top three because of poor brand recall. With so many festive ads coming out at the same time, advertisers need to do everything they can to wrestle attention away from their competitors by doing something different and memorable.”

Now, I’ve known Forrester since 2012, when he worked at Unruly. And over the years, we used to discuss the most shared Christmas adverts each year, until he left that company in 2019.

Back then, the retailer, John Lewis, and its ad agency Adam & Eve/DDB often created the Christmas advert at the top of the chart. This included “Monty the Penguin” in 2014, “Man on the Moon” in 2015, “Buster the Boxer” in 2016, and “The Boy and the Piano” in 2018.

But they seemed to have lost their magic formula for creating tear-jerking (but festive) ad fare somewhere around “Edgar the Excitable Dragon” in 2019, “Give a Little Love” in 2020, and “Unexpected Guest” in 2021.

Digital marketers on this side of the pond can guess what happened next. John Lewis changed agencies. Saatchi & Saatchi and production company Megaforce, which took over the creative reins this year for the first time, produced “Snapper: The Perfect Tree.”

Forrester’s ad research company had taken John Lewis’s Christmas campaigns from the last 13 years and ranked them using their CES yardstick. Altogether, 1,950 respondents took part in the study.

What did DAIVID discover?

Well, “Snapper: The Perfect Tree” was among the top four (or five) most effective John Lewis Christmas ads, behind only “Buster the Boxer” with a CES score of 7.4, “Man on the Moon” with 7.3, “The Boy and the Piano” with 7.2, and tied with “Monty the Penguin” with 7.1.

So, what does that mean?

Forrester said: 

• “While this year we saw a new agency at the helm, Saatchi & Saatchi didn’t mess too much with the winning John Lewis formula, but still elevated itself above the sea of sameness. ‘Snapper: The Perfect Tree’ looks and feels like a John Lewis Xmas ad.”
• “That includes wheeling out many of the tried-and-trusted John Lewis emotions – including warmth, aesthetic appreciation and joy – to good effect. These emotions played a huge role in driving overall effectiveness.”
• “The ad also scored well for attention, the second strongest we have ever seen from a John Lewis Christmas ad, and decent branding resulted in a strong brand recall score. Yet strong negative emotions, most notably confusion, prevented the ad from finishing higher up the chart.
• “This was largely down to its portrayal of a Venus flytrap as a Christmas tree. This surprised people and many found it funny, with 14.7% of viewers finding it hilarious, but it also confused almost as many people (14.0%). High levels of boredom (11.2%) also held the ad back from finishing in the top three.”

There you have it: Critical data and strategic insights.

And that’s a winning combination, no matter what month it is or what side of the pond you’re on.

Dig deeper: Top video marketing trends for 2023 and beyond

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Google Search adds Organization markup to add name, address, contact information, and various business identifiers

Google Search’s Orgranization markup now supports name, address, contact information, and various business identifiers; in addition to the original support for logo and URL structured data fields. “Today we’re expanding our support for organizational information by extracting additional administrative data,” Irina Tuduce and Alex Jansen, Google Shopping software engineers announced.

What’s new. Google updated its developer documentation for Organization structured data to now support new fields including name, address, contact information and other business identifiers. The fields include name, alternate name, legal name, description, sameas, address fields, phone, email, number of employees, founding date, DUNS, NAICS, tax ID and other ID numbers.

The old and existing fields were logo and URL and are still available. The logo documentation was merged into the new organization documentation.

How it is used. Google said it can make use of this markup in Google Search knowledge panels and other visual elements, such as attribution). Google said this should help searchers “more easily find your organization’s details on Google Search.”

Here is the illustration of how it looks:

Reporting. Google has updated the reports within Google Search Console to support validation of these new fields. Google also updated the rich results testing tool to support validation of these new structured data fields.

“The existing logo report in Search Console and validations in the Rich Results Test are now replaced with more extensive organization validations in the Rich Results Test,” Google wrote.

“You can test your organization structured data using the Rich Results Test by submitting the URL of a page or a code snippet. Using the tool, you can confirm whether or not your markup is valid instantly,” Google added.

Why we care. This new Organization structured data should help you communicate to Google the proper attributations for your business or organization. It will help Google Search show the right phone number, right address and other business attributes that you set for your business.

So maybe give it a try.

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2024 PPC budgeting: How to plan and secure your ideal budget

The pressure is on for marketing leaders as we round out the year. The directive is to end 2023 strong and prepare for 2024 long before it’s started. Although the new year is still weeks away, budget planning shouldn’t be a last minute shot in the dark. 

Budgets are created from company goals, historical data and forward-looking considerations. To make budgeting more difficult, CMOs face challenges going into 2024, including:

• Higher inflation rates than in the recent past and economic uncertainty.
• Pressure to do more with less budget and headcount.
• Urgency to realize the productivity gains promised by AI and other new technologies.
• Messy data and lack of measurement made worse by third-party cookie deprecation.

“Global advertising spend is set to grow […] 8.2% in 2024, a boost that will see the market top $1 trillion for the first time ever,” according to WARC’s Global Ad Spend Outlook 2023/24.

Despite this prediction, budget cuts are common. Competition for ad inventory will continue; CPCs will rise, making improving efficiency all the more necessary.

Current events like the Summer Olympics and US presidential election will create opportunities for brands to grab the spotlight. Advertisers should avoid pulling back on spend if they can afford to and take advantage of these high-profile events. 

With that in mind, the ideal PPC budget begins with your targets.

Setting goals

To set achievable goals, start with the big picture and get more granular. Not all channels will achieve the same outcomes, so platforms must work in tandem. Targeting, ad formats and costs per action differ from platform to platform, so a solid cross-channel strategy is crucial to achieving business objectives.

For example, suppose the organization’s goal is to increase revenue. In that case, marketing channels might support that by:

• Improving efficiency in cost per acquisition to stretch dollars further.
• Decreasing sales cycle lengths.
• Increasing brand awareness and/or competitive differentiation.
• Generating higher-ticket sales. 
• Decreasing churn, upselling current customers and/or increasing retention rate.

How can each channel play to its strengths to work toward goals? Pull in your platform managers for brainstorming. Create a roadmap to keep objectives and tactics clear among media and consider how success will be measured differently across channels. 

For example, if your goal is to decrease sales cycle lengths, you will need to add touchpoints to your buyer journey to drive users to make quicker decisions. A roadmap might look like this:

Evaluating the opportunity

Once your goals are established, it’s time to estimate what’s possible. Tools like the Google Performance can help.

However, measuring available market share on channels like display, social and YouTube is not as simple. Each channel has its own performance forecasting tool to help you gauge a rough estimate of what you might get in return for a specific budget.

For example, Google Performance Planner uses a slider to show what’s possible within the current campaigns. Compare it with your current/past spend.

Think about how much you are willing to pay per result. You will eventually hit a point of diminishing returns. How far are you willing to push the efficiency envelope?

Assessing cross-channel media mix

Analyzing the success of past performance by channel is important, especially when faced with budget cuts. A superficial examination may suggest a channel is underperforming, but a deeper dive could reveal that you haven’t accounted for the incremental value it provides.

For instance, you may find LinkedIn’s cost per lead to be higher than other advertising channels, but ask yourself:

• How does the lead quality compare? 
• Is there value from a brand perspective in serving ads to users you know are within your desired B2B targeting, even if they aren’t ready to convert?
• Is the time from opportunity to close shorter in this channel?
• Does this channel achieve high-ticket sales than others.

Multitouch attribution is ideal but tricky. Investing in an attribution tool can clarify what channels are performing best and allow for informed optimizations. A marketing team is only as good as the data it has to inform campaigns.

Data cleanup will be a priority for many in 2024. Data clean rooms will continue to see adoption increase in the new year as a way for organizations to standardize their data and allow marketers to have a single source of truth for performance. It will be more important than ever to hold your team accountable for using appropriate tracking measures, i.e., platform conversion tracking, UTMs, proper CRM routing and attribution.

Understanding what has worked or not worked in the past helps you move toward a cross-channel media mix for the coming year. Make adjustments as necessary to work toward meeting your ROAS goals. Turn off what truly isn’t working and reallocate dollars where they will go further.

Dig deeper: Google’s attribution model shake-up: 3 solutions for advertisers

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Allocating budget for testing

Advertising is always changing. New features are always coming down the pike for PPC channels.

Advertisers should prepare to allocate a portion of their budget to testing in the new year, setting aside at least 10-15% of their budget to test. Often, incremental budgets are put toward testing in a last-minute effort to boost results. Avoid the scrambling by planning for tests upfront.

When considering a testing budget, think about the audience sizes.

• Hold-out tests don’t require a large budget because the sample size is smaller.
• Tests that run to a broader mass audience will need more to reach statistical significance.

Give your tests enough time and budget to understand the true incrementality.

Dig deeper: Efficiency vs. volume in PPC: 4 tips to strike a balance in incremental conversions

Forecasting outcomes

Once you’ve evaluated the opportunity, identified your channel mix and planned the tests you want to run, tie it all together to forecast the outcome. Consider the following:

• Historical metrics.
• Variance for increasing costs.
• Point of diminishing returns/market saturation.
• Seasonality.
• Changes outside of digital advertising (i.e., product launches, upcoming attribution changes).

Net-new launches are more difficult to forecast, but most platforms have their own forecasting tool to leverage based on audience size and budget. Take historical KPIs for similar campaigns/channels into consideration.

Try reaching out to channel reps for industry or competitor benchmarks and/or poll your network on the KPIs and trends they’re seeing. Additionally, if you work with an advertising agency, lean on them for estimates and industry insights.

Dig deeper: A guide to effective PPC projections

Asking for more money

As those budget conversations begin to happen for the next year, make your case for additional budget compelling. Asking for additional funds requires:

• The art of storytelling.
• Historical data.
• Forecasted return. 
• Industry trends.
• Competitive insights. 

Company executives set objectives, and they may need help understanding what to expect from digital marketing channels and how success is measured. Not everyone speaks the marketing language. Some executive-level training can help set expectations.

Build an executive view for measuring performance as well. This can help your team think bigger and answer different questions the C-suite cares about.

Decision-makers must understand why you’re asking for a budget increase. Explain what’s being left on the table at the current budget. The more data you have to back up your claims and forecast outcomes, the better your chance of securing that executive buy-in.

Dig deeper: How to deliver PPC results to executives: Get out of the weeds

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How to evolve an SEO strategy: Key elements to review

An effective SEO strategy must evolve over time to account for changes within your company and the broader digital landscape. An annual review is key to keeping your approach up to date and results-driven. 

This article outlines critical internal and external elements you need to assess when refreshing your SEO plan, from website changes to competitive shifts to algorithm updates.

You can evolve your SEO strategy with continuous shifts of priorities and changes that are reflected in a dynamic SEO roadmap, or you can develop a more defined annual or semi-annual process.

For this article, we’ll work under the assumption this is an annual review to determine if priorities have changed in the last year (i.e., waterfall, rather than agile, for those who think that way).

Internal elements to review

A year is a long time, and things can change internally, whether they are processes or priorities.

Before we shift our SEO strategy based on an external factor, we want to make sure the brand and the company can support it – and that it matters to the business. 

Your SEO strategy implementation

Start by auditing what has successfully been implemented or what projects have been approved – from the first iteration of the SEO strategy translated into tactics through an SEO roadmap – and what has struggled.

If possible, you’ll also want to see what impact that resulted from those changes. This will allow you to start mapping out the particular elements that impact your website and potentially your industry.

Your website

As one of the key elements of your SEO strategy, you must understand any changes on your website’s backend.

If you’re lucky, you’ll be familiar with this anyway, because you’ll either be embedded as a part of the development team or across their workflow and on good terms with the product or program owners. 

You also need to understand what’s changed on your website from a content perspective. A number of enterprise-level SEO tools have change records as a part of their software, or you could use tools like: 

• Visual Ping
• Hexomatic
• Sken.io

Otherwise, you may be able to use the “Last modified” or “Last edited” history within your CMS if those fields are recorded.

Your products/offering

Your product and your company go through changes as well. Maybe this year, there was a fundamental shift from focusing on product A to launching and supporting product B. 

Or maybe the goals, targets and mission of the business have shifted, and it’s less focused on gaining new customers, but about retaining existing business. 

That fundamentally could shift both the content strategy and the technical focus of the website and should inform an evolution of your SEO strategy as well.

Your processes

Maybe a process has been improved and unblocked a lot of work you couldn’t get done in the last year, or potentially the reverse. 

While not exhaustive, these are good places to start understanding how things within your control have changed in the last 12 months and how they’re likely to change in the next 12. 

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External elements

Understanding external changes involves assessing factors beyond your control. Determine whether immediate action is needed or if it’s better to address the issue before it becomes critical.

This may lead to a broader business discussion requiring leadership’s approval, so be prepared for a potentially time-consuming process.

Google algorithm updates or feature changes

This is an obvious one, but it’s worth stating: SEO strategies, to a certain extent, will always be reactive.

While a good SEO strategy will be near-impervious to shifts in Google’s algorithms, the evolution comes in anticipating and acting toward future changes in how people search. It’s seeing things that may be a small consideration now, but you see the threads becoming bigger, like the “Experience” in E-E-A-T or Google’s SGE. 

What your competitors are doing

While I’m a follower of the infinite game in business, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention to what happens in your market. Instead, it means not measuring your success by it. 

If you find that most of your market has shifted to writing long-form, thought-leadership content, that’s at least worth tucking away in the corner of your mind. But whether you evolve your SEO strategy to address it depends on your wider goals. 

Understanding the market landscape is different from reacting to it, and any evolution of your SEO strategy needs to be informed by an accurate, timely understanding of the market where you operate.  

Chaos

One recommendation that has always stuck with me from Ian Lurie’s various strategy documents is to consider the chaos. 

• What would happen if a new channel came in and disrupted the market? 
• What if there was a global pandemic? 
• What if you get fantastic media coverage? 
• What if the iPhone had a split launch? 
• What if Samsung had to recall its phones? 

This thought exercise stretches your strategic muscles. It also helps you understand the edge cases and assess how resilient your processes and tactics are. Note how these edge cases would require you to shift or entirely change your strategy. 

Look to the future

The evolution of the SEO strategy should include: 

• Updating SEO goals and targets.
• Shifting any strategic pillars that are either internal or external reactions.
• Adding new strategic pillars based on the market landscape.

Armed with this up-to-date information, you’re well-positioned to evolve your SEO strategy and future-proof it by keeping the document live and loved. 

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