• 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.

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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