1. Successfully launched a six+ figure retail store in under a year with digital advertising.
2. Highly effective conversion tracking allowed them to immediately displace their competitors.
3. The expansion has allowed for planning another store location opening.

Overview:

We were approached by a retail store in the Jewelry vertical about digital advertising. They didn’t have a specific strategy in mind and we’re looking for the best source of immediate ROI. We immediately launched them on the GDM Grow Plan and Google PPC with a focus on Google Maps advertising. The results are a rapidly growing retail presence with goals for immediate expansion.

This growth primarily achieved through PPC has allowed their other channels (social media, organic, referral) to grow much more rapidly than using no paid mediums. They are already looking to open additional locations, based on the success of their first retail store.

Action Plan:

1. Starting with our very own “Grow” plan

Immediately upon setup of the customer’s account, we went to work developing the Google compliance of their website. Although built on a framework less effective for SEO, we were able to carefully place their site on the search engine with a narrow amount of competition. The keyword rankings we initially pushed for included people looking for the service components of their business, rather than the product sales. This SEO focus allowed us to define the sector (and our conversions) very effectively for the search engine, immediately returning ROI on the site development. This development (and launching PPC within the same timeframe) helped increase traffic from all sources by more than 200%.

2. Google Maps & Google Ads Synchronous Launch

Within the same week, as the initial site “Grow” completion, we set up and launched their paid advertising channels. With no competition for Google Maps ads, we were able to very rapidly acquire customers via the channel. This lead source, combined with our Search advertising, immediately helped their retail store achieve profitability. We expect to see well over 100% year-over-year statistics as well, with a static website development budget.

Conclusion:

While still in the first year of business, Giant Donut Marketing’s “Grow” plan and careful PPC spend management has allowed their retail store to double their first year revenue goal at a set cost basis. This allows their location to identify other advertising avenues to invest in their long term growth in tandem with their digital marketing strategy.

The post Retail Store Launch Case Study appeared first on Giant Donut Marketing.

1. Explosive 300% First year, then 150% second-year growth since launch.
2. Complete domination of entire regions rankings
3. Long term profitable acquisition strategy

Overview:

This client in the professional services industry originally approached Giant Donut Marketing due to lack of performance from their other marketing companies. Utilizing paid google search, television, and print advertising, they were unimpressed with the results from each different channel.

We approached them with a wide-reaching digital strategy that would provide immediate value in their vertical. In addition, we painted a large reaching geographical marketing plan that would facilitate the opening of several offices regionally to take competitive market share over the entire county.

The client was willing to allow us to experiment with some cutting edge growth techniques and authorized a significant paid budget. Over the next several months, we helped increase their customer acquisitions by such a large margin that they were limited only by their ability to onboard additional staff to handle the workflow. This acquisition continued and accelerated as we expanded the footprint of our digital advertising from one region to the entire county. Over the first year, this acquisition funded the rapid expansion of the Business from a one employee operation, to a 10+ employee firm within the space of a year. They continue to implement this growth strategy and have successfully opened three other locations within the county, effectively capturing a huge amount of the local market.

Action Plan:

1. Launch Paid Advertising

Initially, the customer had invested in several different marketing mediums with little success. We reallocated the funds into Google paid search, immediately putting the dollars to work in customer acquisition. By focusing on his personal area of expertise, we were able to monopolize an entire region of search results. Expanding this initial footprint into more varied service offerings allowed more employee on-boarding as the work proportionally increased with our online spending. Several months later, we were buying over 70% of the available online search impression share, increasing the leads into the firm by hundreds of percents.

2. Additional Digital Location Launches

Prior to the opening of physical locations, we built several new websites to capture specific regions of the county. This geographical targeting allowed us to increase conversions from hyper-localized advertising. This dropped our overall cost per acquisition and increased our ability to convert customers of other areas, by giving them a more local option for our services.

3. Physical Location Openings

In the following months, the client was able to open several retail branches, expanding on the digital successes of the past. These physical locations generated additional foot traffic and word-of-mouth conversions, allowing them to be immediately profitable. This further dropped our cost per acquisition and increased the overall company revenue. This also allowed to spread our risk profile across a much more varied region, allowing for very aggressive tactics of marketing penetration.

Conclusion:

Now one of the largest firms in the region, they have been able to dynamically grow their revenue as well as service offerings. This has enabled the firm to focus on capturing much higher value customers and offering very diverse services. They continue to dominate their market region and offer excellent services to all their clients.

The post Professional Services Case Study appeared first on Giant Donut Marketing.

• Doubled Organic Traffic With Takeover from Professional Industry Marketing Team
• Helped Practice Hit YoY goals beyond their expectations
• Aquire over 80% of possible clients in our target regions monthly and yearly

Overview:

The client initially approached Giant Donut Marketing with the desire to launch Google Ads. Their current company hadn’t been able to effectively help them position their company as the local leader, albeit a newer office. With excellent staff and a 3rd Generation Doctor, their revenue expectations were not being met by their existing team.

During this same time period, the client had the opportunity to buy out another dentist office, supplying a steady stream of new clients for a period of several months. They wanted to ensure those customers found their website effectively and were interested in doubling their growth rate from referrals and digital marketing.

We were able to successfully help them launch on paid advertising with a set cost per acquisition that made it possible for the practice to profitably scale their enterprise. The intake of new clients allowed them to hire several assistants, and revise their first-year company outlook very positively.

With a longer-term focus on their website’s organic positions, and dominance of their paid search rankings, they will be able to look forward to explosive growth into the near future.

Action Plan:

1. Launch Google Ads

Our first action for this client was to set up their Google Advertising Account. Focusing on high-value searches, and localized advertising near to their location, the proximity bidding allowed us to scale up the advertising very efficiently. Once we had obtained an affordable localized Cost per acquisition, we increased the range and amount of keyword purchasing drastically. This created a directly inverse relationship between the leads generated and the region we were targeting. A larger targeted region, while more expensive, allows the practice to control their amount of customer intake on a large scale, and gives ample time for Onboarding of new employees.

2. Organic Position Development

Once effectively utilizing their paid search space, the practice was able to focus on redeveloping their website. Initially, set up by a large marketing firm designed for dentists, the site architecture was dated and have severely limited site speeds. We were able to redevelop the website onto WordPress, create engaging content, and achieve over 100% more clicks in the first month, with a sustained 15-30% growth month over month for several quarters. This increase to their organic rankings allowed the practice to identify the necessary cap on their advertising spend, clearly illustrating the conversion values of the additional channel.

Moving forward, they continue to develop additional SEO value pertaining to their cyclical conversions from both organic and paid channels.

3. Additional Social Engagement

An active social media feed allows the practice to connect with people onto the social media space, helping define more multi-channel funnels, and increasing their overall conversions as well. Utilizing three channels of advertising helps the brand better connect with their target audiences, decreasing their cost per acquisition, standard attrition rates, and generating more revenue.

The practice is growing in line with their best case expectations. After their buyout of the other office book of business, we have been able to sustain their customer growth expectations with the other forms of advertising. This growth is in tandem with their excellent customer service and attention to detail, resulting in tons of positive reviews, and referral traffic for their local office. They will have no problem with profitably in the near future, and are currently setting even higher revenue targets for themselves as part of their success!

The post Dental Professional Case Study appeared first on Giant Donut Marketing.

1. 100%+ Year over Year Growth since launch
2. Profitable expansion across Google’s entire product suite
3. Long term growth strategy implementation

Overview:

“Customer” initially approached Giant Donut Marketing to launch their Google-based advertising. They were currently selling on Amazon and eBay and had just launched their own sales channel. With limited success from several PPC and SEO companies, they hadn’t been able to create any market penetration from their existing strategies.

Once engaged, GDM formulated a comprehensive action plan for acquiring customers at scale profitably. This plan included uniquely creating new Organic Keyword Space with targeted product brand traffic, Full attribution cycle marketing development, Full Google ads launch (Search, Display, Shopping), and campaign oversight.

This customer has developed from pre-revenue site launch to one of the largest stores in their sales vertical.

Action Plan:

1. Out Of Product Brand Keyword Development

Our first action strategy (branded organic traffic) included creating unique listings for out of production products. We build the keyword positions to support product sales for companies that were no longer in business, fulfilling a need for Google to effectively convert those customers. By selling a replacement product on our store, we were effectively able to claim the brand traffic for those out of Business companies. This attributed a 30% uplift to our first YOY statistics. We expanded this keyword footprint to additional product types while expanding brand coverage leading to an additional 30% uplift in the following year. This year, we have launched websites to fully capture pre-purchase keywords for those products, ensuring a larger overall pool of Google’s search impression share.

We have stabilized our ranking organic keywords across the entire spectrum of the branded product we carry, and we continue to acquire more sales revenue from this in-depth channel management. Organic Revenue makes up about 30% of our overall revenue and has continued to grow each year regardless of Google’s monetization strategy for the search engine. 

2. Full Attribution Cycle Tracking & Development

Within the last three years, Google has opened its analytics tools to include attribution cycling of conversions. From inception, we have utilized these tools to define which conversion events are the most effective and at which point of the attribution chain. By defining the events along the cycle, we found the best converting search keywords and used our remarketing audiences to push aggressive shopping advertising. This increased our overall conversion rate by 15% and helped drastically cut spending.

This also increased our overall conversion rate dynamically, by helping us create more effective conversion cycles throughout all our Google channels of marketing.

We continue to very carefully ascertain our best start and end cycle advertising mediums, ensuring our conversion rate stays extremely high. This gives us more revenue, and share of our vertical’s impression share, saving time and money in the sector.

3. Dedicated Paid Advertising Account Management

With over 50 campaigns and six figures in spend per year, we have instituted millions of campaign changes to this PPC account. Using our profitably established ROA’s we have tested over 50 different bid architectures, 15 different negative keyword list techniques, and fully add rotation testing, keeping our account profitable since inception.

Our dedication to paid management has allowed “company” to grow over 50% per year profitably in the last 3 years. On top of our other channel development (social, organic, email, etc.) this has lent to a top-level company growth rate over 100% each year. Having carefully established as one of the most dominant advertisers in the vertical, we are able to use our full domination of Google search results to launch new products, product types, and keyword rankings by identifying the most valuable digital real estate available. We continue to push the envelope of what is currently possible with full Google Product Suite usage.

Conclusion

With sustained years-long growth, effective paid advertising management, and systematically defined ROAS governing our strategies, we have grown from a small business launching a website to the second largest store in the vertical. This revenue growth has allowed our advertising to take a much larger role in our growth as an entity and provides strict controls on our longer-term ROI strategies. By using very detailed CPA (cost per action) management, we are able to control our profit margin variably and maintain and grow our online digital presence.

The post eCommerce Retailer Case Study appeared first on Giant Donut Marketing.

There’s only one problem: You’re not actually receiving any contact form submissions – but even worse, you don’t know it.

Now, what’s even worse than not getting customers is that you’re actually communicating to your new potential customers that they can’t count on you to respond to them. 

Yikes!

In our ever-changing world of technology, we’ve discovered that diligence and constant testing are the only way to ensure that contact forms on your site are continuously working. Without a game plan, your contact forms can stop working at a moment’s notice and there’s no one to tell you until a frustrated customer reaches out directly via email or calls your place of business.

All Giant Donut Marketing Monthly Site Maintenance plans include monthly testing of your forms to ensure they continue working for you!

So why don’t contact forms just – work? What’s going on behind the scenes?

Sending Via PHP Protocol

In the “old” days, any time a contact form was filled out on a website, WordPress would just utilize a fairly simple process via “PHP” to directly send that contact form submission to an email address your contact form plugin was pointed to and it would be sent “from” whatever email address you indicated. This was typically something like “info@yourdomainname.com” or something that used your domain name. There was really no configuration to consider. 

This is no longer the case.

Now, many web servers will no longer “spoof” the email address you’re purporting to send from on your behalf. So in our case, for example, we tell our contact form to show that we’re sending our contact form emails from the email address “wordpress@giantdonutmarketing.com” with a “Reply To” address of info@giantdonutmarketing.com. In reality though, our emails are hosted with Google, so Google is not actually sending this email – We’re kind of asking our web server to do us a favor and send the contact form via email on behalf of Google. But Google doesn’t like that either as too many people have historically abused this and any web service could pretend to be sending from your email address using this simple method.

Gravity Forms, SMTP, and SendGrid

SMTP (or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the preferred method employed to verify you as the owner of your email address so that you can allow WordPress to send contact form submissions on your behalf.

Here at Donut, we use the Gravity Forms plugin for all of our customers’ contact forms. Our agency purchased the Elite License which all our customers benefit from. Customers would otherwise pay $60/yr just so their contact forms would work.

We then validate these Gravity Forms via SMTP with another 3rd party application called SendGrid. SendGrid allows us to connect the dots with information we copy and paste into DNS settings with our clients’ hosting or domain registrar. For most people, we’re already speaking Greek, but just understand that it’s like pasting in a permission key where the domain’s info is registered to say, “yep, you can send email on our behalf”.

So now, after a little test, if all went well, contact forms should now send correctly.

Fallback Methods for your Contact Forms

Even though everything is now set up correctly and working, there’s no guarantee that your contact forms will continue working without issue into eternity. Every month, plugin changes, hosting or email requirements, or any other number of technology changes can affect your contact form functionality. Add to that multiple people touching a website, hosting, or domain settings with the possibility of inadvertently breaking a connection in SMTP validation. It happens more than you might think.

This is why Giant Donut tests our clients’ contact forms every month, but is also why it’s not a bad idea to test weekly if you depend on contact form submissions for business.

The added bonus of using Gravity Forms, is that even if your contact form submissions aren’t sending to your email, they still automatically save in the back end of your website. So, you can just compare these entries with what you’ve actually received in your email at any given time to verify that any given form is working correctly.

So, whether you take care of your own site, or have someone else do it, you’ll want to make monthly contact form testing a part of your business routine to make sure you aren’t missing customers who are trying to connect with you!

The post Are Your Contact Form Submissions on Your WordPress Site Getting to Your Email Inbox? appeared first on Giant Donut Marketing.

Facebook Business Manager is Facebook’s primary tool for marketing management. When you run ads that require specific conversion or audience targeting, business manager provides you with the tools to control your advertisings more complex components. Facebook Business Manager Accounts are a collection of services that includes Users, Accounts, Data Sources, Brand Safety, Registrations, and Integrations. The purpose of this guide is to provide the steps for setting up your Facebook Business Manager initially. For more information about specific usage of the platform, please check if your problem is directly covered in our index!

1. Log In To Facebook Business Manager

The Facebook Business Manager interface can be found at this URL: business.facebook.com. You will need to use your Personal Facebook Email Address to Register your Facebook Business Manager account. From the above page click create account to enter the Business Manager Create Account Wizard. This will walk you through the basic setup steps including first Business Account Setup. Once you complete the wizard, it will take you to the Facebook Business Manager Account Overview.

2. Using Facebook Business Manager Tools

Now that your account is setup, we will go over some of the most important functions of Facebook Business Manager

A. Facebook Page Management

Facebook Business Manager makes managing your business or client’s Facebook pages a breeze. From the Facebook Business Manager Account Overview click Accounts, then click Pages. There are several different ways to Add new or existing Pages to your Business Manager Account.

Option 1: Add A Page to Business Manager

If you are a single location business, or are setting up Business Manager for yourself, you will want to add your existing Facebook page to Google Business Manager by clicking the Add a Page menu option. This will send a request to the page you are asking to manager. Login from the Non Business Manager and confirm this request through your front end Facebook Page management platform. You can learn more about that process here. Once that request is confirmed, you will have access to that Page on Facebook Business Manager.

Option 2: Request Access to a Page in Business Manager

If you are an Agency, or have more then one Facebook page, you will want to send a access request to the page owner. This will grant your agency permissions to the page without taking over ownership of the Facebook Page. This is important in case the business owner and your agency part ways, since they will want to retain ownership of their Facebook page separate from your Agencies business manager account!

Option 3: Create a New Facebook Page

Choosing this option will guide you through the new page setup process in Facebook Business Manager. This process has several secondary steps.

1. Add A New Facebook Page: Local Business or Place

This option requires the most work. After choosing the Local Business or Place option, it will open the New Local Business Page Wizard. Once you have entered all the pertinent information, press Create Page to complete the setup process.

2. Add A New Facebook Page: All Other Types

When adding any other page, you will simply choose the Page Name, and the Page Category. Each category dropdown is different depending on which initial Page Type you chose. Once you have named the page and chosen the category, press the Create Page button to complete setup!

B. Facebook Ad Account Management

One of the most complex portions of Facebook’s advertising back end, Facebook Ad Accounts control several aspects of the Facebook advertising platform. Ad Accounts are linked to Pages, Pixels, and Billing, along with other ad type specific components. You will use this interface whenever you need to add/remove new users, change ads, or change billing information, so a good understanding of how to manage Facebook Ad Accounts is vital! Facebook Ad Accounts are accessed under the Main menu tab for Accounts. To add a new Ad Account click the blue + Add button.

Option 1: Add an Ad Account (For Existing Accounts Outside Business Manager)

Please Note: Once an Ad Account has been added to Business Manager, you cannot remove it, so make sure you want to complete the merger.

Adding an Ad Account to business manager allows multiple parties to manage the advertising campaign, rather then using the Facebook Page advertising interface. Ad accounts can only be added to Business Manager one time, and they should be owned by the business owner. Agencies that need access to Ad accounts should use the second Add Account option.

Option 2: Request Access to an Ad Account.

If you are not a business owner, and you need administrative access to their add account, you will Request Access to their account. All you need to request access to their Ad Account is the Ad Account Number. This is the blue number that appears directly below the Ad Account Name on the Ad Account Overview.

This will submit the Ad Account Request to the Business Manager Ad Account Owner, and they can grant your access from either the Desktop version of Business Manager, or the Business Manager App for mobile. It will typically popup under their notifications, and if not can be accessed from Page Roles on the Facebook Page itself.

Option 3: Create New Ad Account

The last option is creating a new ad account. This is for businesses new to Facebook advertising, as well as users who have been using the Facebook Page advertising platform instead of the Business manager ad account. You will setup the account name, time zone, currency, and payment method. You can setup the payment method later from the drop down at another time if you do not have the credit card present. Once you press Save this will take you to the new ad account!

Final Note: User Authorization

Once you have created the Ad Account, you need to make sure and assign users to that add account. This is done by clicking the Add Users button in the center of the page. This will give your users access to this ad account for creating ads, audiences, and billing.

The post Professionally Setup Facebook Business Manager appeared first on Giant Donut Marketing.

One of the more challenging aspects of facebook advertising setup is properly using the Facebook Pixel. We often have clients onboard that have no pixel, a misconfigured pixel, or several redundant pixels. Even once installed, the Facebook Pixel needs conversion tracking setup within event manager! Here are the basic steps to installing the Facebook Pixel on your website!

1. Log In To Facebook Business Manager

The first step to setting up Facebook Pixels is logging into Facebook Business Manager. You will need a Personal Business Manager account in order to setup a new Business Manager Account.

The Facebook Business Manager homepage looks like the above image with a grey Log In button, and a blue Create Account button. Clicking Create Account will take you through the Business Manager Account Setup process. You can learn how to complete that process here.

Clicking on the Log In button will take you to the login page. You use your Personal Facebook Account Email to log onto the Business Management Platform. Once you have logged in you will be taken to the Business Settings Overview Page.

3. Navigate from Business Settings to Data Sources

Currently (February 2020) Data Sources is the third tab from the top item on the Business Settings menu. Once you have located Data Sources, choose pixels to bring up the Facebook Pixels Sub Tab.

4. On the Pixels Sub Tab, Click the Blue Pixel + Button

Once you have clicked pixels, it will take you to the Facebook Business Manager Pixels Overview Page. This page will show all the pixels for which you have management access. Click the blue + Add button to create a new Facebook pixel! This will bring up the Facebook Pixel Setup Wizard.

Pixel Setup Wizard

A. Track Website Conversions Using Pixel Setup And Naming Pixel

Enter The Pixel Name, as well as (optional) your website URL. Entering your site url will help Facebook identify your website CMS and they try and cater learning materials.

B. Pixel Installation Code Snippet Setup Options

Option One: Add Code Using a Partner Integration

Facebook has over 50 partner integrations including the most popular website CMS systems like WordPress, Shopify, and Squarespace. Once you choose your Website CMS provider, another setup box will popup with the specific setup steps for your website. An example of this portion of the wizard is below. This is the WordPress Pixel Setup Wizard.

Option Two: Manually Add Pixel Code To Website

Following their Facebook setup guide, you manually install the base pixel code, and further events codes for the Facebook pixel. This process can only be completed if you are comfortable inserting code directly on your website!

A. Install Base Pixel Code in Asynchronous Header Section of the Website

First log in to your website. Then enter the header section of your website. How you complete this action depends on your site CMS, and feel free to consult with an expert first. Place the code snippet Facebook generates in the the header section of your website, close to the body tags.

Second, make sure you turn on advanced matching (helps get more consistent user data between Facebook and your website.

B. Test The Facebook Pixel Installation With The Pixel Test Tool (seen above)

Once you have confirmed the Facebook Pixel using the Manual Pixel Installation test, you will have completed pixel setup!

Option Three: Email Instructions to a Developer

This option brings up a window for sending the base code snippet, as well as advanced instructions for a website developer. Handy to send to your web team if you need help with Pixel Installation.

Once you have completed the above steps, and you successfully test the pixel in the wizard, you will have professionally setup the Facebook Pixel from Business Manager! The next steps in the process are setting up custom audiences and Pixel conversion events!

The post Professionally Set up The Facebook Pixel: Installation appeared first on Giant Donut Marketing.

Step One: Software Setup

The first step in configuring Google Search Console is to setup your account. Google Search Console is accessed at https://search.google.com/search-console. Upon successful Login you will be taken to the main Search Console Dashboard. You can add website properties by clicking the Add Property Button In The Top Left (Replaced in the below image with a site URL).

Please Note: You need to ensure the URL expression you enter into Search Console is the correct version of the URL that displays on your website. Google expects you to track all of your traffic through the same URL version, and you must maintain this expression throughout the Google Product Suite. Examples of issues include versions of URL’s that contain (or don’t contain) WWW, HTTP to HTTPS migrations, and incorrectly configured WordPress Url structures. Once correctly expressed, you will have finished the initial setup process and are ready for account verification!

Step Two: Account Authentication

Depending on your access permissions to Google Analytics (typically the first platform setup when launching the Google Product Suite) the property will auto verify. If you fail the Google Analytics check, you will need to verify your search console account with one of the following methods:

HTML Tag Verification Method

Our Preferred type, HTML Tag Usage adds a meta tag to your sites asynchronous header section. This method is great because it is not dependent on your Google Analytics account access level, and tends to have less errors.

Google Analytics Verification Method

Another way to verify your account is with Google Analytics access. You will be able to claim your Google Search Console account if the URL expression your trying to claim matches any existing Google Analytics Profiles. Prone to failures (due to often misconfigured URL expressions) this method can also de-authenticate if your Analytics permissions change, causing ranking loss and data continuity errors. We typically advise against using this verification method.

Google Tag Manager Verification Method

Another tracking platform from Google (used to setup complex conversion interactions) Google Tag Manager can provide Search Console access through the same method as Google Analytics. More dependable then the Analytics side verification, it does require you to already have an active Tag Manager account. This technique is usually best for experts who are already well versed in usage of the Google Product Suite.

Domain Name Provider Verification Method

With this method, Google allows you to claim domain ownership level access to your Search Console account. They will expect you to login to your Registrar account, and Provide access to the Google to put a permanent record on your domain name. This record then ensures ownership long term, and is very unlikely to de-authenticate. This method is the most thorough and effective, but also has the most time lag during setup, and can sometimes run into problems with certain domain providers.

Regardless of the method you use, proper verification will yield a congratulations message, and access to your new Search Console account!

Step Three: Sitemap Configuration

From the menu on the left, click the Index Tab, then navigate to the Sitemaps portion of the Index Tab. You will need to locate the sitemap file on your website. It can typically be found off your homepage URL with either sitemap.xml or sitemap_index.xml, depending on which SEO software your using. Also make sure you don’t include extra back slashes in the expression, that will cause it to fail the sitemap verification. Once you click on submit, it will push your sitemap to the Google Crawler, and the site ranking process will start! This will conclude the basic Search Console setup process!

Advanced Features

Successfully setting up your sitemap is just the first step towards improving your organic Google Rankings! There are several other components to Search Console that make it a phenomenal tool for managing your site’s organic positioning.

1. Search Console Performance Reports

Located under the Search Console Overview, the performance tab gives you deeper insights into your websites performance based on clicks, impressions, clickthrough rates, and organic positioning. With several default date ranges (including custom) you can use this report to identify high value keywords and positions, while also isolating areas where you can improve your lesser rankings.

2. URL Inspection Tool

Very useful for checking new pages, or troubleshooting indexed page issues, the URL Inspection Tool allows you to search the active index status of any single page on the website. You can also check for errors on the page, index status changes, and other valuable information.

3. Index Coverage Reports

This report shows you you all the actively ranked pages on your website, as well as any errors, or pages excluded from rankings. Using this report you can ensure that important pages are indexed properly and attaining more ranking, while also addressing any negative ranking errors.

4. Mobile Usability Enhancement Reports

Along with several other products listed in Search Console as Enhancements, the Mobile Usability Reports give you deeper insights into the websites responsive characteristics. Often website fonts or buttons will be too small, certain images won’t scale right, and other various issues will arise. This report gives you access to any outstanding errors with your enhanced features within Search Console!

Conclusion

Google Search Console is an extremely powerful tool, and every website needs it configured properly. Once you have harness the power of this platform, you will be able to more accurately identify results of your website, find conversion drivers, and improve your website’s organic rankings!

The post How To Professionally Setup Google Search Console appeared first on Giant Donut Marketing.

One of the most common problems a digital marketing agency faces is incorrectly setup Google Analytics Accounts. As the software platform has aged, the menu and management structures have become extremely complex, making proper setup more vital to site performance. Improper setup can lead to traffic losses, missing keyword reporting, and other negative ranking characteristics. Below are the steps our agency uses for setting up Google Analytics properly.

Step 1.

The first step when setting up Google Analytics is Business Account Creation. You can access this setup/login screen from the link google.com/analytics. As of October of 2019, this is the latest screenshot of Google’s site’s interface:

Step 2.

Once you are logged in, depending on your property permissions (you either have access to one property, or multiple properties) you will then see the Google Analytics Overview Page.

If you do not have any existing properties, you will be taken to the website Property Setup Page within the Google Analytics Admin Menu. This menu system is designed with experienced users in mind, so it can be difficult to navigate without some Google Analytics platform knowledge.

The basic Structure breaks down into three components: The Account Level Access, The Property Level Access, and the actual Website Data Access.

Account Level Access

The first column on the left list is the Account Level Access Menu. These options relate to users that have access to but don’t own your business’s Google Analytics Account. Similar to domain names, this information is vital to the long term success of your business, and you need to verify your ownership of the Account level property.

Property Level Access

The rest of this guide will explain how to use the Property Level Access Tools within Google Analytics, but for this section we will summarize. This column in the middle of the above is where you configure your specific Google Analytics Properties. This can be one website (if your a local small business and have 1 website) or several (100’s of properties if you are a full scale agency) and helps to keep coherent track of all the tracking scripts and Google Product Linking information.

Website Data Access

More of the advanced user features are included in the website data access filters. You can create data experiments, view certain types of users, manage your audience lists, and other complex features that require more controls of the specific Google Analytics Property. This is also where you enable more enhanced Google features such as E-Commerce tracking, Search Reporting, and Google Analytics Goals.

Step 3.

Property Settings

Initially, when you first open the Google Analytics Account (or property) the software defaults to the Property Settings Page. This page is where you name the property, setup the correct URL Expression, and Connect Google Analytics to Google Search Console.

When you press ‘save’ for the information, that then processes the new property, and forwards you to the Tracking Info Tracking Code Installation page.

At this point in the software setup, you will need to copy this tracking code into the Asynchronous Header section of your website. If you are unfamiliar with your websites internal functions, make sure and email this information to your developer for properties installation.

Tracking Code Testing

After the script is installed on your website, we need to test the connection to Google Analytics. The testing tool is conveniently located on the Tracking Code Installation Page. After clicking the Send Test Traffic Button and refreshing the page, you will see the verification of your visit to the website. Alternatively, you can visit the website in another browser, then visit the Realtime tab on your analytics account. In this section, you will see yourself on the report, with your related user information.

Key Performance Tweaks

Once you have verified the traffic from your website is reporting properly to Google Analytics, there are a few features you want to enable within the Google Analytics interface.

     1. Demographics and Interests Reports

From the Google Analytics Overview (or using the navigation menu on the left-most portion of the screen) navigate to the Audience Overview Page by clicking the Audience Heading. Under the Audience Heading, navigate to Demographics. This will pull up the below screen, that needs some extra permissions to track the information about your site’s users. Once enabled, this report gives you more insights into your user’s age groups, geographical locations, and other user related metrics.

       2. Enable Organic Keyword Reporting

Vital to any internet marketing strategy, properly linking Google Analytics to Google Search console enables the processing of your organic ranking keywords through both properties. This allows you to check your search queries rankings, impressions, landing pages, and other organically related traffic metrics. You can learn more about this process in our article about linking Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

       3. Enhanced Conversion Reporting

The largest focus of our agency for the past several years, conversion tracking allows you to use your own metrics within the Google Analytics system. These conversions flow throughout all of Google’s properties, allowing more efficient lead tracking across their advertising platforms. If you are planning on using Google Ads, or tracking audiences, you will benefit greatly from Conversion Tracking reporting.

        4. E-Commerce Tracking Setup

Applicable only to E-Commerce stores, E-Commerce Tracking enables Google’s Revenue Reporting and is one of the requirements for Google Ads to function properly. After updating the tracking code on your website (this step is explained on our guide for E-Commerce Tracking Code Setup) you then label your e-commerce conversion funnel process, and this flows your sales data into the E-Commerce reporting section of Google Analytics.

Step. 4

Troubleshooting

If any of the above steps doesn’t work for your specific needs, or you are unable to get certain functions working, Google offers help support via live chat, email, or phone service. These services are accessed by clicking the Question Mark in the upper right corner of the screen. Problems can often include traffic not reporting, malformed or incorrectly installed tracking codes, and disconnected Google Properties.

Thats It!

This concludes our Google Analytics setup article! If you have other questions or would like some help with your Google Products, please reach out to the Donut Team!

The post How To Professionally Setup Google Analytics appeared first on Giant Donut Marketing.

There are a few other components of digital marketing that are less understood than Attribution Modeling. In this article, I will provide a brief description of attribution modeling, its purpose in digital advertising, and the most typically supported models used today. My goal throughout this article is to demystify the process of defining attribution, while also providing guidance to start using its power in your digital marketing!

Part One: “What Is Attribution Modeling?”

Attribution Modeling is the process of identifying conversions as they happen across different mediums. In today’s digital marketing landscape, conversions do not happen linearly. The process of someone finding your website, reviewing your offerings, and then purchasing (of completing a sales funnel) happens across a multitude of channels. Each of these channels provides their own analytics data as their attribution “source of truth.” However, in the interest of showing value, these different channels often create and define metrics that are SKU-ed to their benefit. We see this conversion cycle reporting problem all the time in e-commerce websites, especially with Facebook and Google.

Facebook and Google traditionally require websites to install tracking scripts and pixels on the commerce sectors of websites. They use these scripts to track their user’s entries and exits from your website. Because they both are tracking their users and events separately, they aren’t able to correctly credit each other with conversion action as it happens on the site, creating an overlap. The most effective way to compete with this overlap in data is proper Attribution Modeling.

Attribution Modeling is best described as the timeline that happens each time your website experiences a conversion. That user has a start point (top of funnel entry) and endpoint (conversion or bounce) to every single interaction they have taken with your business. This timeline follows users across each different channel as they engage with your website from their computer, phone, or tablet. 

The goal of attribution modeling is to clearly define the conversion start and endpoints, while also crediting internal steps (or touchpoints) with the appropriate conversion value. This process is definable in several different steps (or models) that are typically broken down in this grouping: last interaction, last non-direct click, last ads click, first interaction, linear, time decay, position-based, and custom attribution modeling. Each of these models allows you to apply your conversion cycle credit to different components of your sales funnel, using these different expressions. I will include explanations for each model here:

1. Last Interaction Attribution Modeling

Last interaction Modeling is simple to define. Whichever channel (organic traffic, paid traffic, social traffic, etc.) and medium (Google Organic, Google Ads, Facebook, etc.) generated the actual conversion event gets 100% of the conversion credit. Almost entirely out-dated as a model (a holdover from days before tracking users between websites), last-click gives the least conversion value to only one click. In over 90% of use cases, this model generates lower conversion efficiency than any other model. Google’s (the originator of attribution modeling) Agency Partners and internal Ads Specialists will all recommend switching this attribution model to one of the other options. Avoid it!

2. Last Non-Direct Click Attribution Modeling

Not utilized directly in conversion tracking funnels, Last Non-Direct Click Attribution allows you to remove direct (or branded) channel engagement from your conversion modeling. This helps provide more insightful reporting of the effectiveness of your website by separating out direct or brand-related traffic and relies more heavily on your advertising channels. This lets you get a clearer picture if your secondary channels are helping or hindering your marketing efforts. It also allows you to clearly check your most monetized channels’ impacts on your conversions overall, removing the filter of your brand’s highly convertible traffic.

3. Last Ads Click Attribution Modeling

Exactly like it sounds, within an advertiser’s ecosystem, it allows you to filter conversions by paid conversion point. This means you can source the account, campaign, ad group, and creative/keyword that was last utilized prior to the conversion metric. Used most heavily as a model in Google’s Product Suite, this model is more for internal advertising research than specific conversion funnel targeting.

4. First Interaction Attribution Modeling.

The opposite of Last Click, this Attribution Model credits all conversion value to the first interaction of an associated conversion event. This model is very rarely used, however, it is great for extremely long sales funnels were tracking the internal attribution steps typically won’t provide more value to the marketing effectiveness. The first interaction also allows you to very clearly value the initial outreach of the client more-so than their followup steps or experiences. Except in special cases like defined above, this model isn’t typically used other than for research purposes and trying to more effectively gauge your cost per acquisition values.

5. Linear Attribution Modeling

This attribution model is typically used for applications with large amounts of conversions. When you get into 10K+ conversions per month, you want to gauge the overall effectiveness of your marketing, rather than particular funnel steps. This allows you to segment your conversion revenue into funnel steps that more closely align with your ad spend. This model is not intended for typical advertisers, and by this point, most users will be better off with a custom attribution model at this scale level.

6. Time Decay Attribution Modeling

This attribution model is designed for retail verticals. Typically, retail online marketing is powered through brand identity, and this attribution type rewards more value to conversions getting completed over time. This allows advertisers to recoup more of the advertising cost based on the customer lifetime value, instead of the immediate initial conversion metric.

7. Position Based Attribution Modeling

Most effective for lead-based businesses, position-based attribution modeling applies most of the conversion value to the first/last interactions, then applies a little conversion value to the internal steps. Position Based Modeling is most generally used in lead-based digital marketing because it allows you to attribute conversion value between the top and bottom points of your conversion funnel. This allows you to view your lead generation approach including all the funnel steps utilized throughout the conversion event. This data then allows you to weigh more accurately the value of your entire marketing approach, rather than a specific channel or medium. If your business goal is to generate leads online, use this attribution model exclusively!

8. Custom Attribution Modeling

Custom attribution modeling allows you to build your conversion value in direct alignment with your business goals. This includes the specific % you want for each interaction step, different values per channel/medium, and complex multi-stage value associations. Not for the faint of heart, Custom modeling lets you really control your conversion funnel flow, and define the most valuable individual characteristics of your conversion funnels. 

Part Two: “Now What?”

Now that I’ve explained the usage process for basic attribution modeling, I want to break down how the different models will impact your sales funnel conversion performance. 

1. Professional Services

One of the most competitive industries in terms of base advertising costs are professional services. This vertical should use the Position-Based Attribution Model for their Conversion Tracking. This model attributes the conversion value to the first and last interactions primarily and allows you to target two distinct conversion events within your sales funnel. Effectively, you are reporting more targetable conversion points for each lead you generate, and this model aligns with machine learning models more effectively than other lead-based methods.

2. Ecommerce Companies

Depending on the scale of the enterprise, eCommerce companies will typically use Position-Based, Linear, or Custom Attribution Models.

A. The Position-based model works best for eCommerce stores with hybrid conversions that are split between online and offline sales. Typically, phone calls generate a larger amount of revenue than online purchases. Using Position Based Modeling helps connect digital interactions (like ad clicks) with real-world interactions (phone calls) by separating those conversion actions into 2 conversion points.

B. Linear Modeling allows you to view conversion metrics equally throughout your entire digital property. Rather than focusing on the costs associated with advertising, this model helps identify your digital brand power. It also helps companies in high growth mode more aggressively target conversions with less regard to spend.

C. Custom models are catered specifically to the business-specific sales funnel. This functionality is much more complex than the average marketer will want to undertake, and you will want to look at several use cases before attempting a setup on your own.

3. Retail Stores

Retail stores will typically track conversions with the Time Decay Modeling. Retail stores typically drive revenue by acquired customer lifetime values. This model makes repeated long term conversion events more valuable since those customers are less expensive to retain for longer-term revenue. It also helps gain more context for the time lag between promotional events, specials, or digital channel creative. content.

Part Three: The bright future of attribution modeling as the source of truth.

Attribution modeling provides a ton of digital marketing power, however most companies use models that are self advantaged. Google and Facebook use their conversion tracking engines to track their conversions on your website, not the reverse. We need to start using our website in the process of attributions, rather than relying on the platforms belonging to large companies that hold user data hostage, filtering results that generate profits rather than positive user experiences.

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