In any given year, there are a lot of changes in paid media. The pace of change in 2019 was every bit as brisk as in previous years. For the third year in a row, we assembling a panel to look back at a shortlist of the changes that are the most significant. Then we weigh their impact on B2B companies and what can be done either to minimize downside or capitalize on the upside. Our Panel this time features PPC professionals Olga Gladycheva as well as Pierre Levasseur and yours truly. 

The changes we discussed in the show include:

• LinkedIn adds Interest targeting options 
• Apple Rollout of ITP 2.x 
• Google Ads sunsets average position 
• Click share metric available in Search Campaigns 
• Google Ads Audit rules inside the desktop editor 
• Microsoft Ads rebrands, keeps pace with Google Ads and deepens features brought by their relationship with LinkedIn   
• Google rolls out Campaign-level conversions 
• Google softens Location settings to people REGULARLY in my target 
• Google puts same-meaning words in an auction on all types of Keyword matches 
• Google Ads Retiring Accelerated Delivery 
• Google lowers ‘15 conversions in 30-days’ as a minimum bar for Target CPA
• Google Analytics reports both dates of click and date of conversion

People/Products Mentioned:

• Google Ads Editor
• Microsoft Advertising
• LinkedIn Ads
• Google’s Danny Sullivan, John Mueller, Matt Cutts
• Microsoft’s John Lee
• Frederick Vallaeys

Reboot:

Stay to the end of the episode to hear our picks for the best and worst changes of the year. 

Whether you look at traditional or digital media, there’s a growing expectation that brands be more human. Those that use technology as a spamming tool or a way to hide from their buyers are being ignored or worse, heckled by their audience on social media. You may not be experiencing this problem right now, but just because you aren’t, doesn’t mean you don’t have this problem.  

Buyers may be at a breaking point where they’ll stop tolerating company messaging in their media feed. We have saturated our audiences with so much sterilized corporate-speak, they don’t even hear us anymore. This is a sure-fired way to lose, and the only way we can win is to be more human. Listen to my conversation with Eric Collard (here are his Twitter &  LinkedIn profiles) who knows a lot about how to communicate in a human way.

Items talked about in show:

Funnel Reboot Episode 15 – Ad Fraud and what you can do about it

People & Products Mentioned

United Airlines

Mathew Sweezey 

Douglas Rushkoff

“The Marketing Rebellion” by Mark Schaefer

Quote attributed to Anthony Robbins (originally by Jim Rohn) “Success leaves clues.”

Image Eric likes depicting the journey:

We can all agree that websites should persuade visitors to buy our products & services, right? There is a whole field that focuses on how websites do this, called User Experience (UX). 

To find out what marketers need to know about UX, I talked with Farhad Khan, an Ottawa-based expert on UX. He started out working as a software engineer for high tech companies and then formed a Web development agency called Grype Solutions in 2009. He has since received Ottawa Business Journal’s Top 40 under forty distinctions and has also started a podcast called The ButterFly Effect. 

Listen for his description of how design impacts a site’s marketing effectiveness, what jobs your website has, using your analytics tool to see how visitors flow through your site, making each page on your site interesting, and where sites are going when it comes to personalization.

Shownotes

• User Experience
• Form factors
• Information Architecture
• Sanke diagram (shows how visitors flow through a site)
• Dynamic Web Pages
• Hamburger Menu

People & Products Mentioned

• WordPress vs Drupal as CMS
• Leadpages.net
  Grype Solutions – Farhad’s agency

Disclaimer: The company featured here is not a sponsor of the show, nor have I affiliated with them. They simply bring a perspective that I think you’ll get some use from.

This episode takes us through the case of a company that seized the chance to market their product using content, tailored to each buyer’s vertical and funnel stage. Hear how they:

• Implemented the email communications and marketing content into their Marketing Automation tool.
• What kind of marketing resources they needed to build and maintain the platform
• How to customize content for different audiences, without making too much work for yourself 
• How to present dashboard data such that management understands how you use the budget to create content and what business-related numbers that influence.

Shownotes:

Ideas and Products mentioned in the episode:

• IntouchInsight
• An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
• Buyers Journey
• Content Strategy and Content Audits 
• Marketing Automation

People mentioned in the episode:

• Lindsay (Sykes) Oliver
• HubSpot

Reboot:

If you haven’t yet built content, use the attached Content Planning Template

If you have content on your site and you are auditing its marketing effectiveness, use some of the templates shown here: