Are You Unknowingly Wasting Money on Google Ads?

Are You Unknowingly Wasting Money on Google Ads?

by | Jun 30, 2020 | Business Intelligence & Analytics, Insights

Are You Unknowingly Wasting Money on Google Ads?

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Did you know companies waste thousands of dollars a year on the wrong keywords?

According to Statista, Google’s ad revenue amounted to almost 134.81 billion U.S. dollars in 2019. The story that often doesn’t get reported, though, is how much of that revenue is from WASTED ad spend by companies.

Seer Interactive found that, on average, 12.5 percent of paid search budgets are spent on keywords or search terms that are either irrelevant to a company’s product/service, or aren’t converting (one of our clients had more than 30% of wasted spend!) Let’s say your monthly budget is $1,000 ($12,000 per year). That’s an estimated $1,500 in wasted spend (a month and half’s worth of budget!). What could you do with that extra $1,500? What if you could re-allocate it to search terms that have already proven to drive results? Think about how much more quickly you could achieve your goals.

How (if at all) are you monitoring your Google Ads spend?

Are you maintaining your account on a monthly, or even weekly basis to ensure that you’re eliminating terms that are eating your budget? More importantly, what are you doing with those savings to help you meet your goals more efficiently?  According to Hubspot’s State of Inbound report, companies that track their inbound marketing are 17x more likely to see a positive ROI than companies without good analytics in place. However only 57.7 percent of Google Ads accounts actually have tracking set up for their site and campaigns. 97 percent of accounts without proper analytics set up fail.

Companies have neither the time nor the know-how to leverage data the right way when strategizing and executing PPC campaigns. 

Google provides a wealth of data, but it’s often cumbersome to mine through it and generate actionable insights. Skipping this step, though, will taint your strategy, minimize your results and ultimately lead to an inefficient use of budget.

For example, according to Seer, it can take up to 250 hours to evaluate 6,000 search queries manually. It’s extremely tedious, as you have to export out search terms and keywords in excel, manually review them, and then optimize your ads (sometimes you have hundreds or even thousands of rows filtered by clicks and cost). Marketers often fall prey to the misconception that by following Google’s recommendations and SMART Bidding, they are automatically optimizing their accounts. They might notice a wasted click at $0.83 cents and not think too much about it. But, what happens if there are 20 clicks at $0.83? Google doesn’t need any more money, so stop giving it to them!

We have a solution: our free PPC inefficiency calculator 

&Marketing’s Business Intelligence and Analytics team created a free PPC calculator that will estimate how much of your monthly budget you are spending on irrelevant or low-performing keywords. No, the calculator isn’t an exact science, but it does give you a solid estimate of how much money you could be saving. All you need to do is input your monthly PPC spend, your average conversion rate, and your average cost per click, and voila! You can review your estimated monthly wasted spend, as well as the number of clicks and conversions you might be missing out on. 

Discover how much you're wasting on Google Ads with our free Calculator

Success Story: We recovered nearly 20 percent of one client’s budget!

A current client of ours – the leading supplier of Pool & Spa inventory and retail software services – engaged us to complete a Business Intelligence and Analytics project to understand their current paid search efforts and how they could be optimized. Through this process and the use of our calculator, we:

  • Discovered that 19 percent of their budget was wasted on expensive, low-performing keywords
  • Re-allocated that spend to higher-performing keywords 
  • Saw a 446 percent increase in conversions and a 93 percent lower cost per click

Want an even deeper dive into your PPC account? We’re offering a FREE comprehensive PPC audit!

For a more in-depth look, take advantage of our free PPC audit. Just follow the instructions to upload your search terms, and we’ll get back to you within one business day the amount of wasted spend your paid search account has. 

Request a Comprehensive PPC Audit From &Marketing
About the Authors

As a Marketing Director at &Marketing, Paul Ferguson uses his 16 years of B2B marketing experience to help clients develop fully integrated marketing solutions that make impressions and drive results. Whether it be design-oriented campaigns or digital market execution, Paul skillfully creates strategies backed by data, to effectively reach client’s desired audiences. Paul graduated from La Salle University with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and a double minor in Marketing and Business Administration. Visit Paul’s LinkedIn.

About &Marketing

&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.

Webinar: How to Digitize Your Business Post-Pandemic – With Rajat Kapur, Erica Quigley, and Bob Pozesky

Webinar: How to Digitize Your Business Post-Pandemic – With Rajat Kapur, Erica Quigley, and Bob Pozesky

by | Jun 30, 2020 | COVID Marketing, Events

Webinar: How to Digitize Your Business Post-Pandemic – With Rajat Kapur, Erica Quigley, and Bob Pozesky

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How is your business plan adjusting post-pandemic?

If you don’t know yet, ask yourself these two questions:

  1. How well have I adjusted my internally and externally facing systems?
  2. How well did your response to the pandemic stack up against competitors? 

Savvy business leaders know there is always room for improvement – especially when it comes to digitizing, creating better processes to streamline internal workflow and improving customer experiences. While making these types of changes can sound daunting and expensive, it doesn’t have to be. The long term benefits are worth the investment, and getting started on the right foot can make all the difference. 

Digitizing operations can improve all parts of a business, from sales and marketing to internal operations and cash flow. When HR, communications, project management, operations, supply chain finance, sales, and marketing all work together, the result is improved efficiency that  makes a tangible impact on the bottom line.

To help you get a clear understanding of what digitization can do for your business as you reevaluate your 2020 strategy, we hosted a webinar that you can view anytime. Our managing director, Rajat Kapur, was joined by Bob Pozesky of RKL and Erica Quigley of Poka-Yoke Solutions to discuss:

  • How technology can optimize your customer’s experience and internal operations

  • How to set a clear vision for digitizing key functions of your business

  • How to track progress towards digitization efforts

  • What risks and challenges you’ll face along the way 

  • How to tell what activities are driving revenue

Watch the full recording by clicking the button below. 

Watch The Webinar Now

About Rajat Kapur 

As the Founder and Managing Director of &Marketing, Raj strives to provide growing businesses of all sizes unparalleled marketing strategy and execution services. Raj brings two decades of professional experience in marketing, sales, and strategy development experience spanning B2B and B2C Fortune 50, mid-sized, and startups.

About Erica Quigley

Erica Quigley is the founder and managing director of Poka-Yoke Solutions and author of Business Process Flow Mapping, Succinctly. She specializes in creating cohesiveness across company departments through efficiency and technology. Erica was previously the Director of Global Supply at FreedomPay where she built the supply chain infrastructure to support their global expansion. For further information about Erica and Poke-Yoke Solutions, please visit https://www.ericaq.com/ .

About Bob Pozesky

Robert E. Pozesky leads RKL’s Operations Consulting Practice and the firm’s Manufacturing & Distribution Industry Group. Bob helps clients ranging from small family businesses to Fortune 100 companies accelerate business transformation and growth through improved execution.

About &Marketing

&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.

Content Marketing ROI: Are You Missing Out on Low-Cost Leads?

Content Marketing ROI: Are You Missing Out on Low-Cost Leads?

by | Jun 26, 2020 | Business Intelligence & Analytics, Insights

Content Marketing ROI: Are You Missing Out on Low-Cost Leads?

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Have you or your colleagues ever doubted content marketing and its ability to yield ROI through strategic search engine optimization (SEO)?

Or, perhaps you’re already a believer, as you’ve seen the data showing that SEO leads are 8.5 times as likely to convert than outbound advertising leads. However, you’re unsure which keywords will drive these results.

In either case, we have a solution: &Marketing’s Content Marketing ROI Calculator. With this tool, you can:

  • Predict the organic website traffic and conversions that your targeted keywords could generate in a content piece (based on the ranking you are aiming for)

  • Determine how much it would cost to achieve those same results via paid advertising 

Ultimately, this calculator will help you quantify the potential impact of your content, determine the keywords that will give you the most bang for your buck, as well as decide whether it would be more or less cost-effective to target those keywords via digital advertising instead. By marrying this data up with strong writing and a data-backed content promotion strategy, you’ll be well on your way to creating content that converts!

Try Our Free ROI Calculator
About the Authors

As a Marketing Director at &Marketing, Paul Ferguson uses his 16 years of B2B marketing experience to help clients develop fully integrated marketing solutions that make impressions and drive results. Whether it be design-oriented campaigns or digital market execution, Paul skillfully creates strategies backed by data, to effectively reach client’s desired audiences. Paul graduated from La Salle University with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and a double minor in Marketing and Business Administration. Visit Paul’s LinkedIn.

About &Marketing

&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.

Case Study: Using Webinar Marketing To Drive Sales

Case Study: Using Webinar Marketing To Drive Sales

by | Jun 25, 2020 | Business & Marketing Strategy, Case Studies

Case Study: Using Webinar Marketing To Drive Sales

 A recent MarketingProfs article quantified the impact of COVID-19 on marketing budgets:  88% of marketers expect to decrease investment in in-person events & conferences with a corresponding increase in virtual events and webinars.  &Marketing recently helped a long time client manage this very dynamic to leverage their offering of a timely service.

Business Challenge Summary

Our client is a well known IT security provider with a knowledge base of experts who have created a proven solution to a pending regulatory requirement that impacts many businesses.  However, a lack of awareness and understanding of the regulatory change, including the timing, requirements, and approval process, surrounds the need to become certified. An extra level of complexity exists because the certification has a range of “levels” based on the nature of the business.

Since the coronavirus pandemic became a reality in the early spring of 2020, the government has been emphatic that the timing and rigidity of these certification requirements will remain unchanged. This has caused further chaos with many impacted companies scrambling to become certified while working remotely.   Fortunately, our client has a strong brand name within their industry, belongs to many trade associations, and has deep relationships that span decades.

Their aggressive sales goal has become even more challenging because the usual paths to prospects (networking events or in-person meetings) can’t be completed due to stay-at-home orders that were put in place due to COVID-19. The business leader turned to &Marketing to develop a lead generation strategy and plan, all while working from home.

&Marketing helped him solve some thorny issues, such as:

  • How he can leverage his company’s strong name and network to build awareness about their solution to this particular issue.

  • How they can add value without being overly salesy.

  • How they can establish themselves as thought leaders and the go-to solution for those in need of guidance.

  • How all of this could be accomplished while most of the country was self-quarantining.

&Marketing’s solution to these issues? A webinar pilot.

Because this was a pilot, the client’s senior management identified a success indicator of 10 engaged and qualified prospects on the webinar.

&Marketing’s Approach

Our team had a challenge ahead of them, given the circumstances. We needed to execute the pilot webinar within one month from project kickoff, from idea to execution. Our cross-functional team, including copywriting, creative, email marketing, and technology, executed a turnkey process for our client where & Marketing handled all the details, including:  

  • The webinar technology, along with a “dry run” to ensure everyone could manage the tech and platform seamlessly 

  • Coordinating the speakers, the presentation, and the delivery  

  • Prospect invitations, signups, reminders, and follow-ups

  • Developing the content —which was fragmented across their organization— into a cohesive story both online and in a presentation format, through a mix of document review and expert interviews. 

  • Aligning a disoriented client team who was adjusting to a remote working environment. This team included subject matter experts, speakers, and those with networks we wanted to leverage.

Results

We had 71 total webinar registrants and 50 qualified prospects attendees for the webinar. That’s 5x the original goal of 10 qualified leads. In addition to attendance, the engagement during the webinar and feedback upon conclusion were both strong. We saw:

  • 70% attendance rate, which is 2x the industry average.
  • An average score of 8.9 in the post-webinar survey, with no response below a 5.
  • 80% of survey respondents want to hear more from our client on this topic, paving the way for more activity.
  • 95% of attended who responded felt “somewhat” or “much more confident” navigating the regulatory change than they did prior to the webinar.

Most importantly, the client received inquiries from four attendees immediately after the webinar to potentially engage in their services. Several outstanding questions and potential future topics provided the sales team with plenty of follow-up opportunities.  Additionally, a plan is in process with another webinar, along with a comprehensive content plan that puts our client’s expertise front and center.

The &Marketing team did a great job organizing this and keeping our team on track to deliver this webinar successfully as a lead generator. If we had done this internally it wouldn’t have gone as quickly or as smoothly. We ended up getting 5x our goal in terms of attendees and several meetings as a result of this webinar!

DIRECTOR OF SALES AND OPERATIONS

Are you facing challenges of your own in generating leads and meeting your business’s growth goals? We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how a webinar or webinar series could help take your organization to the next level.

Attendance Rate

Avg. Score on Post Webinar Survey

%

Want to Hear More From Our Client

%

Attendees Felt Confident Leaving the Webinar

Are you facing challenges of your own in generating leads and meeting your business’ growth goals?

We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how a coordinated marketing approach might help take your organization to the next level.

About &Marketing:

&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.

Is Your Nonprofit Organization Recession Ready? These 6 Things Will Help You Prepare

Is Your Nonprofit Organization Recession Ready? These 6 Things Will Help You Prepare

by | Jun 24, 2020 | Insights, Marketing Planning & Execution

Is Your Nonprofit Organization Recession Ready? These 6 Things Will Help You Prepare

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I was working in the nonprofit industry when the 2008 recession hit. If your nonprofit organization was like the ones I was working with, you probably didn’t feel the pain of that recession until 2009 or 2010. Nonprofits operate in a very cyclical nature — annual planning, giving cycles, recurring events, membership renewals, etc. — so by the time the economy started to recover, nonprofit organizations were still trying to understand what the true impact was going to be. All of the data indicates nonprofit organizations didn’t fare too terribly during that recession, because it was short by comparison. But at the time, difficult decisions and shifts in focus still had to be made.

When the economy is moving forward robustly, most leaders focus on growth and sales. But inevitably, when the economy slows and times get tough, that focus shifts. With so many people furloughed or laid-off during this time, they struggle to spend money in a way that keeps the economy moving in the right direction. 

Are we already in a recession? It depends on who you ask. Some economists liken it to a ‘medically induced coma’ while others say a global recession is imminent. Regardless of who you rely on for your economic outlook, history has proven that our economy has always expanded and retracted. As of December 2019, the U.S. economy has expanded for a record 126 straight months, the longest time period in the country’s history, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Put another way, the U.S. has avoided a recession for an entire calendar decade for the first time ever.

There’s no way to completely recession-proof your nonprofit organization but there are things you can do now to prepare for what’s to come. Whether the COVID-19 crisis drives the economy into the next recession or not, economists agree there will be another one, and it will be soon. Preparing for a recession takes work, but having those difficult conversations during a shrinking economy is much harder. Here are six things you can do today to be recession ready.

  1. Get back to the basics

    Return to your mission statement and prepare to focus your efforts on delivering on your core purpose. After all, it is what makes your nonprofit organization unique. In good times, many nonprofit organizations try new things, start new programs and services, and experiment with activities that may be nice to have, but not essential. When the economy contracts, focus on what is tried and true. Your stakeholders will be looking for value directly related to what they need.

    2. Stress test your budget

    Review your budget projections and start running scenarios in case you can’t host that one big event or you lose a major sponsorship or donor. Maybe your membership numbers will drop significantly because a particular industry has been hit hard by the recession. Many nonprofit organizations do not have diversified revenue streams, so one major hit to a program could be devastating. It is better to be prepared in that situation and see where you can cut expenses or increase revenue from other programs.

    3. Review and pivot your strategic plan 

    Nonprofit organizations rely heavily on their strategic plans, as they should. A lot of time and effort have gone into creating plans to help drive the organization forward. When economic downturns strike, leadership must act quickly but thoughtfully. In the face of uncertainty, it is not only okay, but prudent to pause on the activities outlined in the strategic plan. Your efforts can resume when the nonprofit organization is in a viable place, but not at all if you do nothing and lose too much ground by maintaining the status quo.

    4. Eliminate under-utilized programs and services

    Rather than making across-the-board cuts, prioritize core activities and focus on high ROI programs and services, but reduce expenses where possible. Take a look at all activities through a value and revenue lens to determine which should stay and which should go. You can reallocate some money saved to improve those high value core services and make them more profitable. I know it is hard to hear and even harder to do, but it’s okay to suspend and eliminate legacy programs that have outlived their usefulness and value.

    5. Fight the urge to cut marketing

    Typically, one of the first things considered as an easy elimination is marketing, but cutting marketing shouldn’t be the default reaction. Instead, during a time of economic downturn, you actually need more effective marketing to help you target with greater efficiency so that you are squeezing the most out of your marketing budget. It is a time to start marketing smarter and not harder. Smarter marketing efforts can help you drive more value and communicate the message more effectively at a time when it is critical to reach your audience. In times of uncertainty, your audience will be looking to you to provide value and guidance.

    6. Re-imagine your events

    Nonprofit organizations often rely heavily on events, whether for fundraising or trade association conferences and tradeshows. If we have learned anything from COVID-19, it is that things can change in an instant. Nonprofit organizations must begin to digitize their efforts. Maybe your nonprofit organization will return to in-person events as soon as stay-at-home orders are lifted, but you could be leaving money on the table by not incorporating some sort of digital component. Consider looking at how you can offer virtual experiences or hybrid experiences to draw in people that may not be willing to travel or want to stay involved and support your nonprofit organization, but can’t commit to an event.

    We’ve heard a recession is coming. We just don’t know when. The economy is on ice for the time being. Whether we’re just entering the recession or it is on the horizon, I encourage you to take these steps so you can weather the storm. Creating a contingency plan now is a lot easier than making decisions without data and under immense pressure. Once you have evaluated the possibilities, and you find yourself looking for help to recession-ready your nonprofit organization — sign up for a free initial marketing assessment (IMA) to get a no-commitment recommendation on what you can do to position your nonprofit organization for success.

Get Your Free IMA
About Amanda Cook

Marketing Director Amanda Cook helps clients develop sophisticated marketing strategies that drive brand leadership, increase sales and elevate the customer experience. With over 15 years of experience, Amanda has delivered successful campaigns with bootstrapped budgets to leading marketing organizations at $1B companies. Whether local or global, she enjoys the challenge of uncovering a client’s business objectives and helping them build a strategy to succeed.

About &Marketing

&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.