DaBrian Marketing Blog: News, Insights, and Digital Marketing

Data Import Tools Review

September 9, 2015 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

What is Data Importing?

Data Importing is a process that is extremely beneficial for your business. In this case, data importing is based on the concept of getting cost data from social media websites such as Twitter and/or Facebook into Google Analytics. These data import tools provide you an easier way to import your cost data. These tools can save you time and help your business grow!

How will these tools impact your business?

Do you know where your advertising spend is going? You should know the tools you can use to import data into Google Analytics, so you know where your advertising spend is going and know what ads and campaigns have positive returns. This will help you make quick and efficient decisions. Knowing what your options are, can help you decide what you need and what is important or best for your business. Although you can manually import data, there are other ways that can be less time-consuming, but costly. Each of these platforms are different and have special features, but which tool is right for your business?

Supermetrics

Supermetric is a tool that lets you import advertising cost data from any external advertising sources into Google Analytics. You can schedule automatic daily uploads from Facebook Ads, Bing Ads, Twitter Ads, and Linkedin Ads or upload CSV files from any data source. You can also connect Supermetrics to Bing Ads or Facebook Ads and set an outgoing daily upload.This way the information from Bing Ads and Facebook Ads will automatically connect to Google Analytics through Supermetrics.

This means less work is required and no formatting needs to be done, which saves time. The benefits of this tool include importing your cost data, seeing your advertising cost, and measuring advertising Return On Investment (ROI) in Google Analytics. Supermetrics combines your advertising cost data with Google Analytics ecommerce and goal conversion metrics to see if your campaigns are paying off. The only con for this tool would be the cost associated to purchase it. To schedule automatic uploads for each social media platform, the cost is separate, so the cost for Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, and file uploads are all different. Supermetrics has many things to offer, but is it the right fit for your businesses needs?

NEXT Analytics

NEXT Analytics is a tool that imports advertising cost data from external advertising sources such as Bing Ads and Facebook Ads into Google Analytics. This allows you access to the reports of all your advertising costs and their effectiveness. NEXT Analytics processes or formats the CSV file of the cost data for you, but it doesn’t do it for you completely. In order to format the data completely, you would need to filter or fix the data yourself. The good news is that you would only have to do this once because all of your actions are recorded, which can then be automatically reinforced each time you want to import cost data into Google Analytics.

With this tool, you can upload any number of accounts to a single license. In this case, a single license would mean that NEXT Analytics would be entitled to that one computer, but if needed you can always transfer the license to another computer. The one factor that needs to be considered is that there is a limited number of times you can transfer the license. One opposing factor would be that you can only upload seven dimensions and ten metrics, and another is the cost associated to purchase it. The cost depends on how much data you import. This can be purchased monthly or annually. The good news is that with NEXT Analytics, you can replace previous uploads. This allows us to add up to 19 more uploads to the original data set, this is useful if you have a lot of data to upload. NEXT Analytics is one tool out of many to import your data into Google Analytics.

Analysis Engine

Analysis Engine is a tool that helps you to import advertising cost data from external advertising sources such as Bing Ads and Facebook Ads into Google Analytics. It automatically syncs Bing Ads cost data into Google Analytics, and then automatically imports the cost data. In order to automatically import the cost data into Google Analytics, you have to connect Bing Ads to Analysis Engine and then connect Google Analytics to Analysis Engine. This tool can help you determine your ROI and Return on Assets (ROA), provide reporting on your cost benefit marketing efforts, and much more. The cost of the tool isn’t provided right away, but you can request a demo for more information. Analysis Engine has many features for you to use, could this be the tool you are looking for?

Analytics Canvas

Analytics Canvas is a tool that imports cost data from external advertising sources such as Bing Ads into Google Analytics. It allows you to check your marketing spend across multiple sources and campaigns. It can automatically link and import your cost data to Google Analytics if you have connected it to Bing Ads or another source. Analytics Canvas lets reports be automated, so it can be refreshed every day. This provides you with the information you will need, and it is easily accessible. One con of this platform or tool may be the cost. Depending on what features you may need, the cost will vary. Analysis Canvas has additional features that may interest you, but may hinder you because they are not needed or necessary for your business.

Analytics-Toolkit

Analytics-Toolkit is a platform that lets you import cost data from external advertising sources into Google Analytics. However, Analytics-Toolkit may limit your prospects. You have to manually get the cost data (CSV file) from the source (Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.) and then use Analytics-Toolkit to upload and format the data. One issue that can come up is that the data is limited to a 90-day time period. Additionally, the cost can vary, but is relatively lower than most tools that help assist with importing cost data. Analytics-Toolkit is one of many options to choose from, but is it your cup of tea?

The great benefit of having a tool to import your cost data is that it allows you to adjust where your spend is going. Knowing what tools you can use to import data into Google Analytics can help you decide what fits your business best needs and how it will help your business grow, gain sales, and customers.

Start using these tools to import your data, check and see which tools best fits your needs. Contact us today or leave us a comment below for more advice or information!

Are Your Wasting 25% of Your Pay per Click Budget?

September 3, 2015 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

Study shows that small businesses waste 25% of their Pay per Click budget! Learn how working with a PPC certified individual/agency could help you maximize the return from your PPC advertising.

Check out our Google Partners Profile Page and Bing Ads Accredited Company Profile Page

Read Transcript

Hi, Justin Miller here from DaBrian Marketing Group, and I want to talk to small business owners, and small businesses in general that are running pay per click advertising. There was a study done not too long ago, that shows that up to a quarter of their pay per click budget is being wasted, and how and why is this being wasted? It has to do with not being knowledgeable of the platforms, and how to properly target your ads, as well as just not having the time to properly manage them, and keep them up to date. So, how can you be sure that you’re not wasting 25 percent of your PPC budget? If you need help, looking for a certified agency, or individual, can help cut down that waste, and maximize the return.

What's Exactly Does PPC Certified Mean?

But how do you know who is certified, and what exactly does it mean to be certified? So, let’s look a little bit more into that. First off, if you want to run Bing Ads, you’re definitely going to want to look for someone that is Bing Ads certified. What does this mean? It means they’ve passed the knowledge based test.So Bing Ads has put together a test to make sure that these individuals have the knowledge of how to set up, how to run, maintain, and keep up with best practices using the Bing Ads platform, which reaches not just Bing, but also Yahoo Search, as well as Apple’s IOS, on mobile devices. So you can see here, I’m logged in to my account, and I have passed this test. I am one of several that are, Bing Ads certified.

What to Look for with a PPC Company?

And what you want to look for, as a small business owner, is this accreditation badge. If you see that badge on somebody’s website, that indicates that that individual, or at least that agency, has someone in house that’s employed, that has passed this test, and has proven that they’re knowledgeable and successful at running a Bing Ads campaign. Okay, so that’s Bing Ads.

What's Required to be Google AdWords Certified Individual?

Next up is Google. Google has a similar type of test, or series of tests actually. So for Google AdWords, if you want to be Google AdWords certified, you have to pass the fundamentals test, as well as one additional specialized test. The specialized tests include search advertising, display advertising, video, shopping, or e-commerce, as well as targeting mobile devices, and advertising via mobile phones. Again, to be certified in AdWords, you have to pass the fundamentals, which is just a high level basic AdWords, PPC advertising exam, as well as one specialized one.

What's with Value of Working with a Google Partner?

In addition to being a certified individual, companies can earn what is called a partnership, or a Google partner status. Here at DaBrian Marketing Group, we have earned, and maintained that status with Google. So the first step is having at least 1 employee that is certified. We have 2 that are currently certified on staff, and you can see that includes the search and display advertising, as well as some of the other ones that we’ve looked at. Next is, maintaining best practices. So, pay per click as an industry is constantly changing, there’s constantly new updates, and the best practices on how you use these new features, constantly changes along with them. So you have to maintain these accounts, your client accounts, and make sure that you’re keeping up to date with best practice. So here you can see that there’s a minimum requirement, and then the average Google partner’s, requirement, and then where DaBrian Marketing Group currently sits, as far as maintaining best practices.

Why Does it Matter if You Work with a Google Partner?

Next up is experience. You have to show that at least 60 out of the last 90 days that you’ve logged in, and you’re active on these accounts. As you can see, we’re well up and above that in staying active every day on our client accounts, as well as managing a minimum ad spend. There’s a minimum spend of 10K, over 90 days, and currently, we’re just shy of 20K. So, the partnership status shows not only that they have knowledgeable staff who can take and pass those tests and exams, but also the experience in managing a sizable amount of budget over the last 3 months, as well as staying up to date with best practices, and really minimizing that wasted spend, that no company wants to pay out money to see no return for.

Is Your PPC Company Certified?

So definitely you want to connect with a certified partner, whether it’s Bing Ads, and or Google Partners, or at least AdWords certified. So, the question now is, is your current agency certified? You can go to Google.com/partners and do a search for that agency, or whomever you’re working with, or if you’re looking for an agency. This is a good place to start, and search around, find a local agency, that fits your needs. Some will require a minimum ad spend, and tit shows the different certifications that they have. If mobile advertising is important to you, you definitely want to find an agency that has the mobile advertising certification. Or e-commerce, you definitely want to look for shopping, and such. So hopefully you have a better understanding of what PPC certified means, and how individuals, as well as companies can go about getting these certifications, and working with them, to really minimize that wasted ad spend. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment, or give us a call. The office number is 610-743-5602. Thanks. Have a great day.

Top 5 Technical Issues That Impact Your Organic Search

August 26, 2015 by Dabrian Marketing Group 1 Comment

Optimizing your site to perform well in organic search is not a set it and forget it process. There are several factors that go into determining your site’s positioning in the search engines. In fact, backlinko.com reports (and lists them for you) that Google uses over 205 different factors! While many business owners tend to focus on the visible on-page components such as content and keywords (which are very important), there are several technical issues that often go unnoticed because they are not visible to the end users. These issues listed below greatly impact your business’s organic search results and should be a top priority when creating and maintaining your site.

1. Navigation

Before your website appears in a search engine, it must be crawled, and then indexed. During this process, search engines will collect information about your site’s content. Just as users prefer sites that are easy to navigate, so do search engines.

If you wish to perform better in search engines, it would greatly benefit your business to create and maintain a sitemap. A sitemap is a document or a webpage containing all the pages on your site. Search engines evaluate sitemaps to understand the structure of the site. This is regularly done so it is a best practice to make sure this sitemap is being updated when new pages are created.

Your navigation bar is not just for the user either, search engines consider them into their organic search rankings. While (quality) links are always good for your site, not all links are created equal in a search engine’s eyes. Links placed in your navigation bar are deemed more important. Therefore your navigation bar should only contain links that are most valuable to your business. These are the links that generate more traffic and lead to more sales and conversions. Many website owners make the mistake of placing too many links in their navigation. This not only worsens the user experience (which worsens your position in organic search), but it also dilutes the authority/value of your links.

Having descriptive anchor texts, the text that appears highlighted in a hypertext link, is another factor associated with navigation. Having descriptive anchor texts means linking to your pages using content related words and not something generic such as “click here” or “read more.” These generic links tell search engines that the page should be about clicking things, or reading. This appears spammy and can negatively impact your performance in organic search.

2. Site Speed

One of the 200+ factors that Google and other search engines take into account is site speed, or how fast your site finishes loading. Search engines have become focused on providing the best user experience for those searching, so a faster load time to them, means a better experience and will correlate to the improvement of your rankings. Common mistakes that many site owners make that cause slow site speed are things such as large pictures, flash animation, bulky code, and external media. While some of these things may look nice, it would be wise to reduce or remove them in order to increase site speed. To evaluate your site’s speed, use Google’s pagespeed insight tool.

3. Mobile Capability

On April 21st of this year, Google released an algorithm change requiring sites to be mobile friendly if they wished to perform well in organic search on mobile phones. Before the update, a study from Adobe reported that 45% of business did not have a mobile friendly site. To be mobile friendly, search engines such as Google recommend using a responsive design. This means that all your site’s content will remain the same for all users, it will just appear differently depending on the device the user is using. For more information about the update, please read my blog on Google’s Algorithm change posted near the time of the release.

4. Duplicate Content

Most business owners are aware that copying content from other sites is not only unethical, but will result in a ranking penalty from search engines. However, many are not aware of the internal duplicate content happening on their site right now. When a user visits a specific page, a URL is generated based upon the path they take. For example, a user may search Amazon looking for a cellphone, and once there, they decide they want a smartphone so they click on the smartphone section. After going to that section, they click on their desired phone (let’s say an Iphone 6). Their URL will look something like this: Amazon.com/cellphone/smartphones/Iphones/Iphone6. Now let’s say another user knows exactly what they want. They go to Amazon and enter in the search bar “Iphone 6.” Their URL will be shorter and look something like this: Amazon.com/iphone6. While this is the same page, they have two separate URLs. Search engines will recognize them as two separate separate pages with duplicate content. Google lists solutions and explanations on how to deal with duplicate content.

5. Include a Robot.txt file

A Robot.txt file is used to direct search engines when crawling. It’s usually used to prevent search engines from indexing specific pages and files. So why would you want to prevent search engines from crawling any part of your site? Let’s say for example you are in the process of updating your site. You’ve began adding pages but they aren’t complete yet. If a search engine were to crawl those pages, they would not perform well in organic search due to lack of content. That places you in a uphill battle from the start. A similar issue arises when you are performance testing different layouts for pages. The pages have identical content, but you wish to see which layout users prefer. A Robot.txt file will tell search engines not to crawl these pages yet until you are finished or have picked a layout. Another reason would be to prevent search engines from penalizing you for duplicate content. For example if you have a print version of a page, you can tell search engines not to crawl it.

Learn more about Robot.txt files.

Performing well in organic search is essential for a business that wishes to improve digitally. A study done by BrightEdge shows that the majority of web traffic (51%) comes from organic search. That is a huge opportunity to miss out on. While having great content may be the priority in some business owners mind, none of that means anything if your website has the technical issues listed above.

Contact Us today to make sure your site is technically sound to perform well in organic search!

By: David McDowell

4 Ways Pay per Click (PPC) can Help Your Business Grow

August 24, 2015 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

Macquarie Research estimates that Google has approximately 4 million advertisers. Google has more direct advertising relationships in the digital advertising space than Facebook or Twitter. Is your business being hunted by the competition using Pay per Click (PPC) advertising or is your business hunting for new business with Google AdWords (PPC) and Bing Ads?

You’ve probably heard these terms before: Online Marketing, Online Advertising, Google AdWords, Search Marketing, Bing Ads, Paid Search, Cost per Click (CPC), Pay per Click (PPC). To the general public, these terms are used interchangeably and generally refer to advertising with Google AdWords or Bing Ads. These words are often associated with cost, but they should also be associated with opportunities for your business! Pay Per Click advertising can help you to increase your brand or product awareness, expand into new markets, generate leads, grow online sales, or even increase traffic into your stores.

Flexible Solution for Brand Awareness across the Internet

The opportunities to increase brand awareness through Pay per Click advertising are countless. AdWords & Bing Ads offer local, national, and global targeting with language settings. They also provide additional targeting settings to only show your brand when, where, and to whom you want to be shown. Businesses can even advertise on non-search sites like Gmail, YouTube, Forbes, MSNBC, and lots of other partners sites within minutes.

Lead Generation Tool that Controls Cost

Business Owners can generate leads such as calls, online form completions, and e-commerce sales while setting a campaign daily or monthly budget. Regardless of how a customer is looking for products or services, businesses are able to stay connected with them across a variety of devices (desktop, mobile, and tablet). No matter the target audience (businesses or consumers), Pay per Click can get your business quality leads to grow sales, while sticking to the set budget.

Drive in-store traffic and E-commerce/Online Sales

According to Google’s March 2015 case study, Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores used Google’s Local Inventory Ads (LIAs), which allows online visitors to see what their local store currently has in stock to bring nearby customers on mobile devices into stores. The results yielded a 122% higher store visit rate compared to online Product Listing Ads (PLAs) for shopping campaigns. Product Listing Ads allow you to include an image, title, price, promotional message, and your store or business name inside your ads, without the need for you to create unique ads for each product you sell. The local inventory ads generated in-store sales at more than 5X the rate of TV advertising for each dollar spent.

Diversify Marketing Channels with Pay Per Click advertising:

Pay per Click offers a diverse platform to deliver the exact type of content, specific to their device for exactly what potential customers are looking for and exactly when they’re looking for it. Most Pay per Click platforms have the capability to use text, video, mobile, banner or display ads, so your business has the ability to connect with potential customers regardless of the device.

See Advertising Formats for examples

Interested in a free no obligation consultation for your business? Contact Us for more details on Pay per Click opportunities today!

5 Best Practices for Better B2B Website User Experience

August 19, 2015 by Mark Mapp 1 Comment

It’s generally a good idea to start your web design project using best practices, especially if you haven’t accumulated any data to support a specific design change, or direction. Remember that you shouldn’t end your design solely implementing best practice solutions; however, you should use the data feedback, by use of analytics, to optimize and improve user experience. Here are five effective best practices that can help you get started.

1. Make Your Navigation and Visitors Location on the Site Highly Visible

Users should know where they were, and where they are on your site. This can be accomplished using elements like breadcrumbs, page-headers, highlighted menu options, progress bars, thank you and confirmation pages. Not using these elements can cause an unhappy user experience when they try to navigate deeper into your website or try to navigate through a purchasing process. Always remember that creating a smooth and comfortable user experience is your ultimate goal when designing your B2B website.

2. Match Your Content to Real World Language by Eliminating Jargon

The language used on B2B websites should be familiar to the visitor rather than using industry specific terms or jargon. Using jargon, or language that is too technical to comprehend can create a disconnect with the visitor. To find out what words and phrases your website visitors are using it’s best to do a little keyword research. This will help you define how you go after potential customers or leads using language they are comfortable with.

3. Allow Total User Control and Freedom From Automated Processes

Simply put, eliminate anything that takes control out of the user’s hands. If not implemented correctly, elements such as popups, auto-play videos, and automatic carousels can cause lack of user control and freedom, hence creating a bad user experience. If the user doesn’t want to subscribe to a newsletter popup, or watch a demo video they should have a way of exiting or navigating away from that element without any complications.

4. Create Your B2B Website Using a Minimalistic Design Approach

For the past several years, taking a minimalist approach seems to be the most effective way to create a B2B website. In a study conducted by Google, it was scientifically proven that minimalist design are more appealing to buyers. In addition, an effective use of white space can clearly guide buyers to the important sections of information. Cluttered websites don’t effectively allow this to happen and that’s why it is best to focus on the important information visitors are looking for.

5. Offer Solutions and Help Documentation

If designed correctly, your website shouldn’t need much of this best practice solution. However, offering help solutions is a big plus. Help solutions such as live chat pop-ups, FAQ’s, pricing tables, and microcopy, which are little words or phrases that enhance the subscription or buying process that helps to reduce friction and get people taking action. Usually, if you submit a form without the required information being entered, you may receive a prompt in the form of microcopy letting you know that the information for that field is needed to submit the form request.

Conclusion

Whether you are creating a new website, redesigning, or just optimizing an existing one, utilizing best practices will offer a great peace of mind. Although the best practices mentioned aren’t actual principles or laws of web design, they provide a good starting point in most cases. Also, remember that these best practices are backed by data which support their effectiveness.

What other B2B website best practices do you recommend not mentioned in the blog? Please provide your comments below.

We Partner with Google to “Get Your Business Online”

August 17, 2015 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

DaBrian Marketing Group Partners with Google to “Get Your Business Online”

Reading, PA-based DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC will hold a Google-sponsored event for local businesses along with showcasing their new office additions to the public on September 14, 2015 at 500 Penn Street, Suite 201, Reading, PA 19602. Get Your Business On the Map event begins at 4 p.m. and the Grand Re-opening will follow at 5:30 p.m.

DaBrian Marketing Group started utilizing Google’s services eight years ago through Google AdWords, Google Analytics, and more. DaBrian Marketing is one of the few certified Google Partners in Reading, PA. As a Google Partner, we have the knowledge, resources, and credentials to help other businesses in the community connect with their customers online.

Google, the world’s leading search engine, has committed itself to helping local businesses around the globe optimize their presence online since 2011. Their “Get Your Business Online” (GYBO) program offers business owners the ability to to grow their reach and visibility by showing up for local search results.

According to Google “Businesses that are online grow 40% faster than those that aren’t,” and they have already helped 1,342 businesses get on the map in the Reading area. If your local listing is not up to par, make sure to attend this event and see how DaBrian Marketing Group can assist you and make sure any potential customer can locate your business.

In addition to the GYBO event, DaBrian Marketing will reveal the new additions to their office space and provide food and refreshments and offer giveaways to those who attend.

For more information, contact DaBrian Marketing Group to find how they can help your business. RSVP for each event today on Eventbrite.