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    Tag: Pay-Per-Click Advertising

    How to analyze your Facebook ad results?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Running online advertisements through Facebook Ads Manager, also known now as Meta Ads Manager, is a powerful way to reach your target audience. However, to maximize the effectiveness of each ad, you must utilize the available data and spend time analyzing your results. Understanding these metrics and insights are the best way to help you fine-tune your digital campaigns, optimize your business budget, and ultimately achieve the best results. Let’s get started! 

    Get back to basics

    Strategic approaches work best when they begin from the ground up, which is why you should go back to basics when navigating how to approach future Facebook (Meta) campaigns. Start by taking a look at key performance indicators (KPIs) like reach, engagement, clicks, and conversions. These offer a broad overview of how well your campaign is performing. 

    Dive into the demographics

    Believe it or not, Facebook (Meta) provides incredibly valuable insights about your audience. Elements such as age, gender, location, and even the device used when viewing the ad can all be found in the data that displays demographics. Once you identify which segments are responding most often and most positively to your ads, you can tailor future campaigns to appeal to these audiences.  

    Assess engagement metrics

    Engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and click-through rates (CTR) offer great insight into whether your ads are doing well. High engagement means that your content resonates well with your audience. However, if these numbers are low, consider this a great opportunity to tweak your ads to be more creative or display a better message. 

    Conversion tracking

    Conversions for Facebook (Meta) ads refers to elements like the percentage of link clicks from website visitors that resulted in a purchase, signup, or any other form of lead generation. Tracking these types of conversions allows you to better manage the effectiveness of your ads and what’s driving desired actions. 

    Take another look at ad placement 

    Facebook (Meta) offers various ad placements, including within a user’s news feed and stories. Take some time to determine which spot will deliver the best results for you by running a campaign in each section and comparing. Then, allocate your budget accordingly based on these insights. 

    Cost-per-click versus cost-per-conversions

    Analyze your ad costs in relation to clicks and conversions. Calculate your cost for each click and cost for each conversion to understand how efficiently you’re spending your budget. This data will help you to make adjustments where needed to best optimize your ad strategy. 

    Review ad schedule 

    Spend some time examining which days and times your ads perform best. If you notice a huge difference between engagement and conversion rates during certain times, consider adjusting your schedule through Facebook Ads Manager to maximize results during those peak times. 

    Analysis is a critical part of revamping your advertising strategy. When you regularly review your ads results, you’re more empowered to make data-driven decisions, optimize your campaigns, and achieve a better return-on-investment (ROI) on your advertising spend. Trek Marketing can help you with all of the above and more.

    Are you ready with everything you need to better analyze your Facebook ad results? Drop a comment below if you have any pressing questions.

    How to allocate your digital marketing budget

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    While there is no universal strategy for small business budget allocation, successful e-commerce companies will invest in a mix of both paid and organic initiatives. With a wide abundance of marketing channels available in various sectors of online advertising, it’s important to know where your money can be wisely spent to yield a higher return on investment (ROI) and which activities will strategically reach your target audience. In this blog, we will walk you through some steps that you should take when appropriating your marketing budget and offer tips on how to better budget yourself in the future. 

    Making the most of your digital marketing budget

    Whether this is the first digital marketing budget you’ve ever built or you’re looking to give your process a little refresher.

    Here are some steps that can help you to determine where the money should go:

    • Use a budget tracker: All businesses need to track their expenses and analyze where cuts can be made to further the profit. Likewise, your first step to allocating a budget for digital marketing for a small business is to prepare data into a report that shows proposed spend, actual spend, and the results of your spend for future planning.
    • Review goals: Your organization’s top priorities and initiatives are things to consider when budgeting for the next quarter. However, when reviewing these goals, you also need to factor in new product launches, deals, promotions, and event signups.  
    • Select the right sales channels: What works for one business or industry may not work for another, which is why outreach, demographics, behaviours, and intent are elements to consider when choosing the right sales channels. This will not only help you to avoid wasting money but also build up your buyer persona. 
    • Paid search: Online ad campaigns like Google Ads may use up much of your budget because of the cost-per-click but if you secure the right visitors to your website, the investment is well worth it.  
    • Paid social: Popular choices include Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and LinkedIn ads, which show up for potential customers on their social feeds. Depending on the dollar amount you spend, your chances of acquiring new customers can become heightened. 
    • Content marketing: Content is king and since it can typically be put online for little to no charge, the only cost associated with the content is the time that it takes to write. If you can do that yourself, great! But if you’re one of the many who need to rely on freelance writers to produce awesome business content, be sure to budget what you can afford and post as much as you can. 

    If you allocate your budget based on data, you’re setting yourself up to be successful. Since Trek Marketing works with digital marketing for small business, we have all the services and expertise you need for allocating your budget. 

    What other strategies do you consider when depending on your business budget? Drop a comment below to share.

    3 effective digital marketing services regardless of your business

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    In online shopping, digital marketing is the most effective way for a business to advertise its products and/or services to the masses. While budget is often the only roadblock that stops a brand from investing in all digital marketing agency services, there are three effective ones that work best when learning to understand the needs and interests of the consumer. Let’s delve deep into the various techniques that can be used regardless of the type of business. 

    Service #1: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

    Since SEO is one of the most effective online sales techniques, it’s often the first service that businesses outsource. That said, since the SEO process relies on research and orchestration to gain results like a higher search ranking, it can also take a bit of time before visibility for particular keywords starts to generate more traffic. Be sure to remember that no matter where the user is in the buying journey, SEO possesses the power to target them while highlighting said products or services for a larger audience. 

    Learn more about Trek Marketing’s SEO service

    Service #2: Social Media Marketing (SMM)

    Social media is a realm where businesses can go to promote their products and/or services, but depending on the platform, it’s also a great way for brands to make personal connections, show off their personality, and increase awareness. Although the main goal of SMM is to create dialogue with new and existing customers, it seconds as a valuable opportunity to influence purchase decisions. Whether you choose to automate some marketing campaigns or promote a few pieces of content ongoing, SMM is a great and easy way to communicate across the social sphere. 

    Learn more about Trek Marketing’s SMM service

    Service #3: Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

    For those who may not know, PPC is a digital marketing technique that allows businesses to display ads on search engines and various other websites. While the goal of this service is to bring traffic and sales for the company, the return on investment can vary depending on how many clicks are made versus how many purchases are carried out. Since the business can choose how to strategically appropriate their campaign and bid within their budget, while more expensive than many other digital marketing agency services, PPC can be very effective across a wide range of industries. 

    Learn more about Trek Marketing’s PPC service

    Which digital marketing agency services have you tried with your business? Please drop it in the comments section below to start a conversation. 

    3 ways to get the best return on investment for your company

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Before you can work to improve your business return on investment you must first define what “return” means for you. This could include higher sales, increased revenue, bigger profits, reduced overhead or production costs, higher employee retention, better customer satisfaction, increased brand preference, or fewer government regulations. Once you select your “return” goals, you can work towards achieving them. However, for the purpose of this blog, we will discuss three ways to get the best return on investment for companies overall. 

    Increase revenue

    One way to increase your return on investment is by generating more sales. While the easiest way to achieve this could be to just raise your prices, this is not always the most beneficial. We recommend always looking at ways to improve your sales without affecting your current business practices. For example, you could increase your spending budget on advertising or host a sale. While this will cost money, the return could elate your profits, making an improved return on investment!

    Reduce costs

    Another way to improve your return on investment is to reduce your expenses. You won’t need to raise prices or increase your sales if you can reduce costs. Overhead and production costs vary between industries but there are ways for business owners cut these costs and get their best return on investment. For example, focus on reducing non-product costs like rent or having a work phone. If possible, you could focus on an online shop rather than a brick-and-mortar and have a responsive email instead of a work phone. On the other hand, you could focus on reducing production costs as well. Shop around and see if you can lower your cost of materials and labor. It may not be possible but it’s worth it. 

    Reevaluate your expectations

    Every investment doesn’t need to provide an immediate dollar benefit. In fact, many forms of digital marketing, such as search engine optimization or pay-per-click advertising, can take time to increase your sales. However, this shouldn’t stop you from considering these services. These types of marketing campaigns are not only valuable over time but they allow you to track insights like new customers, increased traffic, and increased awareness. Maybe it’s time that you re-evaluated your expectations. 

    Which ways do you plan to adjust to achieve the best return on investment? Drop a comment below to let us know.

    3 of the best PPC ad networks

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    In terms of access to pay-per-click ad networks, the choices have boomed in recent years, with an opportunity to choose between traditional search engine results pages, native advertising on popular websites, and a wide variety of social platforms. Since PPC ad networks are expansive, it’s important to consider all avenues before allocating your business’s marketing budget. Listed below is a selection of the best PPC ad networks to use to strengthen your digital marketing strategy.

    Google Ads 

    As one of the biggest players in the game, Google ads possess a huge market reach which includes the following PPC ads:

    • Search engine results pages (SERPS)
    • Display Network (ads and videos on partner websites)
    • YouTube advertising
    • Google Play app store advertising
    • Gmail in-app advertising
    • Google Shops advertising

    If you’re after one of the above ad placements, you will need to bid for it. Listed below are examples of some Google PPC bid options:

    • CPC (automated and manual cost per individual click)
    • Enhanced CPC
    • CPM (cost per mille)
    • Target ROAS (targeted return on ad spend)
    • Target CPA (targeted cost per acquisition) 
    • Maximize conversions
    • Maximize clicks
    • Target Outranking share
    • Target Impression Share

    Since the cost of Google ads can vary massively, you should first need to calculate your budget before considering this investment.

    Microsoft/Bing Ads

    Next to Google is Microsoft Advertising, also known as Bing Ads. Offering business owners a cheaper price tag than Google, Microsoft Ads are also associated with a wide assortment of formats, including:

    • Xbox
    • Windows App store
    • MSN
    • Outlook Email
    • Websites for display and native advertising managed by various sales partners

    Although not quite as comprehensive as competitor Google, Microsoft Ads also require bidding:

    • Enhanced and Manual CPC
    • CPM
    • MaxClicks
    • MaxConversions
    • Target ROAS
    • Target CPA 

    With the lower volume and less competition, your bids are bound to be cheaper, which offers a greater opportunity to stand out on the Bing Ad network.

    Facebook Ads

    With the ability to add some targeting potential, Facebook Ads is one of the best PPC ad networks on the market, especially with Instagram as an extension—offering marketers and business owners alike the potential to reach those with specific interests, demographics, education, age, and location data. 

    Facebook Ads can appear on:

    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Facebook Messenger
    • The Facebook Audience Network (apps and websites on the partnership network)

    Even cheaper than Bing, Facebook Ads pricing is based on cost per thousand impressions (CPM) or cost per click with the option to target CPA (cost per action) and Target ROAS. Moreover, since Facebook Ads aren’t activated by searching, businesses have an opportunity to get in front of their audience much easier.

    All of the best PPC ad networks can be managed by the PPC team at Trek Marketing. Comment below to get started!

    What did you find most interesting about this digital marketing service? Drop a comment below to get connected.

    Increase web traffic with these 4 strategic services

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Every online business wants to increase website traffic to drive sales and conversions. After all, an attractive website amplifies brand awareness and revenue. However, it isn’t easy to get noticed in the vast depth of organic search results, which is why we have four digital marketing services to strategically bring quality traffic back to your website. 

    Search engine optimization (SEO) 

    SEO encompasses a wide range of tactics for helping your website rank well in search engine results for relevant keywords and phrases. Since organic searches are most likely to begin via search engines, this digital marketing service has the potential to dramatically increase the quantity and quality of your website traffic by attracting users who’re interested in completing a sale.

    Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)

    PPC advertising drives traffic to your website through the use of paid advertisements. These ads are strategically placed on search engine result pages (SERPs), social media sites, and other websites. While digital marketers are in charge of creating and managing these ads, with PPC advertising, businesses only pay when the ad has been clicked, making this a cost-effective way to increase website traffic. 

    Social media marketing

    Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are an excellent way to grow your brand, expand your audience, and drive more website traffic. By creating a social media following you offer added opportunities for users to link back to your website, which increases traffic and incentivizes viewers to learn more about what your business has to offer. 

    Content marketing

    Blog post submissions, infographics, videos, and podcasts are all elements that fall under the realm of content marketing. Whether you choose to create and publish content that aligns with the interests of your audience or keep things simple by outsourcing content marketing to a digital marketing agency, it’s important that you be strategic to increase page session times and conversions.

    Did you know that the following content marketing is more likely to drive website traffic?

    • Long-form content (more than 2000 words)
    • Informational pages
    • Product and service pages
    • Guides

    Trek marketing offers all of the above strategic digital marketing services, so perhaps it’s time that you found out more?

    If you had to prioritize, which digital marketing service would you try first to increase your website traffic?

    Tips to managing a cookieless future

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Rest assured that we’re referencing third-party cookies being tossed aside and not the popular baked treat. After Google officially announced in 2020 that it was banning website cookies from its web browser Chrome—a platform that the digital advertising industry has used to monetize content—the future of data and analytics has become less clear. To help you ease the transition, listed below are some ways your business can strategically work to conquer a cookieless future.

    What are cookies?

    Known as website cookies, these snippets of code are unique IDs that is assigned to website visitors. Remembering each user, the first-party website cookies collect information to deliver a more personalized experience, whereas the third-party website cookies allow brands to re-engage targeted audiences across domains for digital advertising. 

    Why is Google killing website cookies?

    Following suit with competitors Firefox, Safari, and Apple, Google’s browser has been pressured to step back from the use of website cookies with ongoing concerns surrounding data privacy and regulations. 

    How do businesses and digital advertising companies manage a cookieless future?

    While website cookies helped to underpin audience-based digital ad campaigns to allow businesses to retarget and reach lookalike audiences in the hopes of completing a sale, there are other ways in which brands can contextualize and build their audience segments. 

    Listed below are some cookie-free techniques:

    • Use site lists for alternative targeting: Discover which referral sources account for the top sectors of your incoming traffic and build a whitelist to reach your target audience. Conversely, building a blacklist so your ads don’t appear on the wrong domains. 
    • Leverage the intelligence of your competitors: Cross-browsing behaviours can help to identify the top competitor audiences to convert to your own.
    • Monitor pay flows: Pinpoint channels that drive subscriptions to your competitors by monitoring pay flows. This will help you to allocate the budget between paid channels and search engine optimization (SEO). 
    • Power your pitch: Boost customer acquisition by optimizing your ad sales. You can harness granular traffic information and pitch to clients through ad sellers. 

    Do you have any other tips for business owners and digital marketers when Google gets rid of website cookies? Drop a comment below to share. 

    5 ways to grow your website traffic through digital marketing

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Many online businesses struggle to come up with innovative ways to increase traffic to a website. Since it can be challenging to know which methods work well to achieve positive results and which are tired strategies, listed below are some organic and paid options that yield great results when it comes to increasing traffic to a website. 

    Perform keyword research

    Keyword research is a practice that search engine professionals use to find terms that are often entered by users into popular search engines when on the hunt for products, services, or general information. The words related to these queries can then be harnessed and used within web content to target consumers and crawl search engines organically. Aside from using keywords in copy, they can always be used in meta descriptions, the page title, the URL, and headers. 

    Those needing help with keyword strategy should consider hiring an SEO expert to offer valuable insights by performing audits and identifying issues where your website can improve. 

    Create content that’s memorable

    While the posting of regular content is a great habit to get into, you need to make sure that your copy is memorable to cut through the expansive options available already on the internet. Not only does this type of noise help to increase traffic, but it also assists in establishing a better bond with your audience. 

    Keep active on your social feeds

    The use of varied social media platforms is a great way to attract visitors. However, website traffic relies on elements such as:

    • The sharing of posted content via social media platforms
    • The interaction of business to followers through replies and/or reposting of content via tagging
    • The use of relevant hashtags
    • The promotion of new content via links

    Advertise digitally

    Whether you endorse a new product through paid search, social media, or display ads, pay-per-click advertising is an efficient way to increase traffic to your website. While some users may block ads, since you only pay when your ad is clicked on, you can easily stay within a budget and attract the right audience to click and buy. 

    Send out newsletters

    Email marketing is one of the most effective means of increasing web traffic…especially if your company is hosting a sale or launching a new product. Here are a few practices that work well for those sending regular emails: 

    • Be sure to include enticing information in the subject line and body of your emails
    • Insert links and buttons to allow shoppers to click easily
    • Mobile-friendliness is essential 
    • Add touches of personalization
    • Take the time to ensure that your email is visually appealing and well-designed
    • Test each email before it’s sent

    Which of the above methods do you plan to use to increase traffic to a website? Drop a comment below to let us know. 

    Marketing analytics and why they matter

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    In every aspect of digital marketing, measurement can be a challenge. How does one know which campaigns and efforts are creating opportunities and generating the most sales? Aside from remembering to provide attribution to campaigns, you must also take the time to revisit those touchpoints and review the valuable data offer through marketing analytics tools. Not only do these tools take the guesswork out of allocating your marketing budget but they also enable you to be more proactive with your future strategies, and here’s how!

    What is marketing analytics?

    Marketing analytics is an umbrella term that’s used to describe the processes and technologies that measure a company’s activities through various sources of marketing mediums. 

    Marketing data includes some of the following:

    • Web analytics: This includes elements like website visits, traffic patterns, referral sources, and bounce rates.
    • Social media interactions: This includes elements like social engagements, follows, profile views, shares, and direct messaging (DMs).
    • E-commerce purchases and transactions: This includes online sales, leads, and signups. 
    • Paid ad campaign metrics: This includes ad views, clicks, click-through rates (CTR), cost per mille (CPM), cost per click (CPC), conversions, conversion rate, cost per lead (CPL), and overall performance. 
    • Customer data: This includes elements like feedback, behaviour, and purchase history. 

    Marketing analytics tools, software, and technologies are used to gather data and provide business owners and marketing professionals with content and visualizations that help them to better understand which tactics are working well and how to best optimize the budget. 

    What are the three types of marketing analytics models?

    Planning, managing, and optimizing marketing campaigns can be done using three models that assist in providing insight to better plan and allocate the budget. 

    • Descriptive: Descriptive models use historical data from previous campaigns to display what happened, which provides hindsight into which future actions might work better for the businesses’ marketing strategy. 
    • Predictive: Predictive models provide further insights than descriptive models, using past campaigns to predict customer behaviours. This approach is beneficial for providing more target marketing campaigns. 
    • Prescriptive: Prescriptive models use data from various touchpoints by weighing the impact of each interactive for the purpose of influencing more efficient customer behaviour. This model is highly targeted and will often focus on current trends. 

    Why do you need to care about marketing analytics?

    Whether you’re a digital marketing professional who’s working alongside clients or a business professional who’s looking to better understand their industry, marketing analytics works to surface insights and influence customer interactions. 

    Listed below are some of the many advantages of marketing analytics:

    • It provides tangible data around paid marketing initiatives
    • It informs how marketing campaigns over time and in real-time
    • It connects marketing campaigns to traffic and other metrics that impact customer behaviours
    • It influences future marketing and content strategies
    • It helps you to better spend advertising dollars on effective marketing channels
    • It provides valuable data on current and prospective customers

    What marketing analytics tools are trending right now?

    In a world where digital reach is vast, there are a variety of ways that marketers and business owners alike get the data that they need to plan, analyze, optimize and execute digital marketing campaigns—with access to so many free and budget-friendly marketing analytics tools!

    • Web analytics: Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and MixPanel
    • Campaign analytics: Semrush, Cyfe, and Klipfolio
    • Social analytics: Hootesuite and SproutSocial
    • Social listening: Brandwatcg and Falcon.io.
    • Customer journey analytics: Sprinklr, Thunderhead, and Pointillist 
    • Sales intelligence tools: HubSpot, Salesforce, and ActiveCampaign
    • Company financial data

    And so much more, since most marketers and businesses utilize an abundance of tools and platforms in conjunction with one another. 

    Do you need assistance in getting your marketing analytics in check? Trek Marketing believes that analytics hold the key to e-commerce success and we’re happy to teach you how to better understand them and/or utilize them ourselves to help your business thrive.

    What is your current e-commerce goal? Drop it below for advice on which marketing analytics tools can be used to help you achieve your vision(s).

    PPC vs. SEO: Which provides more value?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    While all digital marketing services have their purpose, there may be a route to take that’s more suited for your business. When it comes to PPC and SEO, more digital marketing services are strategic and possess the power to generate traffic and conversions. That said, before you decide whether one or both is more suited to your needs, you have to understand what they do and their pros and cons. 

    What’s Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)?

    Known most often as PPC, this digital marketing service uses targeted advertising to buy visits to your website. Business owners pay a fee every time someone clicks one of their ads—the cost varies depending on where the ad is placed (Google, Facebook, etc.) and your budgeted monthly ad spend—which is leveraged by search engine traffic or by bidding for keywords related to the products or services you’re selling. 

    What are some advantages of PPC?

    • This digital marketing service is known to produce quick results. Once your campaign is launched, you should see an uptick in traffic, clicks, and conversions. 
    • PPC is easily controlled. Business owners set a budget with a goal of how many leads they hope to get in return. 
    • You don’t need to worry about search engine algorithms when you use PPC because you aren’t trying to obtain an organic position. You bid for your spot!
    • PPC allows you to easily target potential customers based on keyword searches, their geography, and even the time of day. This cannot be done with organic traffic.
    • These types of campaigns allow visuals in addition to text. This can help a user to be more inclined to click on the advertisement, which increases the average click-through rate. 

    What are some disadvantages of PPC? 

    • It usually costs more than SEO to get good results, as some keywords have higher price points than others. 
    • The research required to know which keywords to target is time-consuming, on top of managed ad spend and measuring returns.
    • PPC only remains effective while you’re paying for it. Unlike SEO which continues to draw in traffic as a long-lasting method, the minute you stop your PPC campaigns to divert the budget elsewhere, potential customers won’t be able to find your site the same way. 
    • Click fraud is a problem that occurs when companies use manual clicks or damaging software to simulate human clicks from various IP addresses. This will rapidly increase your cost. 

    The best way to maximize and manage your PPC campaigns is to hire a specialist whose primary responsibility is to research and implement money-generating ads.

    What’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

    As one of the most common digital marketing services, SEO is all about optimizing your web pages to get them to rank higher in search engine results. This enables search spiders to understand your web pages and rank them above your competitors. Keep in mind that search engines like Google are consistently changing their algorithm to provide more helpful content to their visitors, which can affect your rankings if you aren’t on top of these new requirements. While cultivating inbound links from other sites dictates your “link authority” elements like blogging, social media marketing, and videos are other ways to effectively use your quality links. 

    What are some advantages of SEO?

    • This digital marketing service is cost-effective and is incredibly budget-friendly to set up and manage. 
    • Organic SEO is completed with long-lasting intention, meaning that when it’s properly optimized with good link authority, your site can continue to rank even if you step away from it for a few weeks.
    • SEO helps to build credibility and trust.

    What are some disadvantages of SEO?

    • When compared with PPC, SEO is a much slower process, as it can take months to start seeing results.
    • SEO is ongoing. Your site will never be 100% optimized so it will require continued work to reap the rewards of higher rankings.
    • SEO is very time-consuming.

    The best way to maximize and manage your SEO campaigns is to hire a specialist whose primary responsibility is to research trending keywords, write authoritative copy, and gain valuable backlinks.

    There is no one-size-fits-all approach to digital marketing, which is why the answer to the which provides more value depends on you. If you have the budget, a PPC campaign will offer you the fastest results. However, if a longer timeline is something you had in mind, SEO efforts achieve some of the best results and return over time. Either way, Trek Marketing can help get your digital campaigns launched! 

    Which of the two digital marketing services has proven better for your business? Let us know in the comments section below.