Tag: digital media

What is Google’s New Marketing Platform and What can it Do for You?

Earlier this week, Google hosted a live web broadcast announcing their new ad service rebrand. AdWords has become Google Ads, DoubleClick has become Google Analytics 360 and they all fall under Google Marketing Platform. A lot seems to have changed but, being a copywriter, I don’t interact much with the backend of advertising and most of the broadcast went right over my head. I sat down with our Director of Digital Strategy, Eric Lucas, for a simplified breakdown of Google’s new services.

What exactly is the update?

Google’s new “Google Marketing Platform” will act as an umbrella service to house: Google Ads, Google Analytics 360, and Google Ad Manager. This is a one-stop-shop for all the front-end and back-end marketing services that Google already had in place including: the research, setup, measurement and optimization of a campaign. Now, marketers won’t have to integrate the separate features to make them work together, but, instead, Google Marketing Platform will allow them to easily toggle between features and allow the features to “talk to each other.” In addition to the bundling of their services, Google Ads will now have “smart campaigns” which use machine learning to optimize ad headlines and descriptions (which are getting a character boost too).

What does this mean for marketers?

Marketers like Eric will now be able to do their job better and faster. With all of Google’s suite of marketing tools in one place, the research, set up, measurement, and optimization will all be in one place. Google Marketing Platform will cut down on set-up time so that marketers can start delivering reports faster and be able to see how effectively your ad budget is being used. There will be better visibility of where the budget is going and what returns on investment are coming back to you.

What does this mean for brands?

Ad campaigns will be much more effective. The new platform will cut down on set up time which and reduce errors that could have occurred before from integrating separate platforms. Measuring and attribution will be easier because the services are better connected. The clarity of results will also improve significantly. For smaller businesses who don’t have a huge ad budget, they may require less long-term professional help. If you don’t have a marketing background, you still might want to consult an agency like Fortress. Business owners will be able to more clearly see what the results are saying about the success of their campaign. The responsive ads that use machine learning will help you to optimize your budget by more quickly assessing which campaigns are working and which ones aren’t. While the platform is more streamlined, if you don’t have a marketing background, you still might want to consult an agency like Fortress.

Will consumers see any change in their ad experience?

The biggest change will be the ability to turn targeted ads on and off. Google will still show you ads, but your data won’t be used to decide which ones you see. Eventually, search ads will become more relevant to you (if you allow targeted ads). Google is allowing marketers to use more characters in the headlines and descriptions which will give you a clearer idea of what the ad will lead you to. This may result in search ads giving you more relevant results than before.

 

Overall, Google’s marketing rebrand will make life much easier for marketers by integrating all their services into one platform. And, although Google has streamlined the process of paid ad marketing, you should still consult an agency. We’ve taken over several campaigns where the client started it themselves and couldn’t clearly see their results or wasted their budget trying to figure it out. In either scenario, we could quickly overhaul and revamp the campaigns to run more efficiently and maximize their budgets. Google has been the leader in paid digital advertising for a long time and is only getting stronger. Check out the recording of the broadcast here if you want to learn more in-depth about the changes happening in the world of Google Ads.

Five Benefits to Working With FCG

We often hear “bigger” and “better” in the same sentence. Dream for bigger and better things. Every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation. Bigger is always better.

But when it comes to finding the right integrated marketing company for you, smaller definitely has its advantages.

If you’re on the fence about what type of digital or integrated marketing firm to choose—corporate or boutique—here are five reasons why choosing a boutique firm could mean bigger returns for you in the long run.While the ideologies are geared toward us, the same principles apply to other independent digital marketing firms.

Partnerships — If you partner up with a boutique agency like FCG, it will not only happen at a faster rate than corporate (mainly due to the fact big companies require several sign-off processes), but consider the SEO advantages you could have. Being able to start a new campaign more quickly means that we’re able to start helping your rankings increase more quickly as well. We create cost-effective ways to advertise your business, we give lasting results in your competitive niche market and reach new ones, and we uphold a steady flow of leads to your cyber doorway.

No Middleman — Working with an independent company means more direct and clear communication between you and us. Without a middleman, you not only save money, but the ideas and messages you want to communicate won’t get lost through a game of telephone.

Personalized Attention — We are a growing company, but we believe that specializing in a few things thoroughly is more important than spreading ourselves too thin. We work hard for our clients and, through our expertise in digital media, advertising and web services, we build and support brands that are made to last.

Creativity — Large corporations are naturally risk-management-minded because they have far too many stakeholders to consider. On the other hand, boutique agencies like ours have the advantage to create original and compelling ideas. We embrace our individuality and look for clients who are open to new ideas and fresh ways to develop their businesses. We believe that making our clients shine will help us shine as a byproduct.

Customized Quality — We assess your wants and needs and provide you with high quality work, constructing unique plans to further your business instead of having a couple of standardized strategies to get by. And it’s within an affordable budget.

We bring decades of experience to the table. Above are just five of the many insights we’ve witnessed as an independent integrated marketing company. What are some other benefits? We’d love to see your comments!

Don’t Be Everything to Everyone

Very early on in business there is a struggle to provide anything a client may ask for, even if it lies outside the realm of your expertise. We were no different. We were hungry (and still are, under the right circumstances) for any piece of business that we could get our hands on. You need a call center set up? We can do that. You need your network security tested? We’ve got this. Even though those requests were well outside our core competencies, we still figured that we could get the job done, add a new client to our list, and help—our bottom line.

As our client list grew, and we could show some selectivity with the projects we took on, we learned an extremely valuable lesson: it’s better to do a few things exceptionally well than do several things average. Clients want to work with exceptional people that do exceptional work and have an exceptional knowledge of their craft.

Our experience in advertising and marketing along with our expertise and technical capability in digital media provides us the ability to do exceptional work for our clients. There are plenty of digital media and web service firms that do great work. There are also a plethora of ad agencies hungry for your business. What we found to be exceptional (and our clients can attest to this) is the ability to bridge the gap and go beyond simply launching a website. We actually help create viable and sustainable brands.

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