The key to success on the Google Display Network

(Cross-posted on the Google Inside Adwords blog.)

Small businesses are realizing that they can go beyond search ads with the Google Display Network, reaching new customers and leads with engaging and relevant messages. In the past year alone, the number of small businesses running ads on the Google Display Network has almost doubled, and this growth trend is just beginning!

To help propel other small businesses to win the moments that matter with display, we decided to learn more from our customers, highlight their success, and share the strategies they’ve employed to achieve successful display campaigns.

Making display work for you
The key to being successful on the Google Display Network is understanding the mix of targeting types you should use to achieve your marketing objective. While there is no one-size-fits-all strategy, we know there are recurring themes among businesses who have set up successful display campaigns.
We found three small businesses that are great illustrations of these different approaches to display: Julian Bakery, Legacy Learning Systems, and Bedder Way.

Let’s take a closer look at their successful display network strategies:

1. Drive sales online and in stores – Since ramping up their GDN campaign to drive online and offline sales, Julian Bakery has grown from 40 distributors and 100 customers to 1000 distributors and 300,000 customers nationwide.
2. Control and understand every dollar you spend – Legacy Learning System achieves, on average, 1M impressions per day on the Google Display Network and 150 online sales per month by maximizing their ad performance using conversion tracking data.
3. Harness the power of an image – Bedder Way has increased their display network conversions by 50% and decreased their cost per conversion by 25%, by using image ads on the display network to visually showcase their murphy beds.

To help inspire you, we’ve compiled these companies’ strategies into three short videos and downloadable guides on our revamped Google Display Network website. The videos provide an overview of each company’s strategy and the PDFs act as a guide to help you follow their lead, developing your own successful campaigns on the GDN.

Take a look, browse the site, and try out the Google Display Network for yourself!

Posted by Brad Bender, Director, Product Management - Google Display Network

Webmaster Academy: Connecting with Local Customers

If you’re looking to get found on Google, there’s a good chance your business isn’t just a website, but also a location. 20% of searches on Google are related to location, and 97% of consumers search online for local businesses. Lots of small businesses are looking to the web to boost the visibility of their brick and mortar establishments. We’ll outline a few essential steps to getting started.

It’s important that your business has its own website. Your website should include all the essential information potential and current customers would want to know about your business, such as your history, loyalty programs, unique events, or staff information.

Having a presence on social media is another great way to reach your local community. Social media allows you to engage with your customer base by sharing timely announcements and promotions, listening and responding to customer feedback, and giving customers an easy way to recommend your business to their friends.

A great place to start is with Google’s social network, Google+. With a Google+ business or brand page, you can share all types of information and content with customers, allow them to “+1” your business, and even video chat face-to-face with groups using a Google+ Hangout.

You can also use Google Places for Business to ensure that your business is easily discoverable online. Simply create a free listing for your business, or verify the existing listing already available. That way, when a potential customer searches on Google, Google Maps or Google Maps for Mobile with a phrase related to your service -- for example, [san francisco mexican restaurant] -- they’ll quickly be able to find the most accurate information right in the results. See this video for more info on Google Places:

Your website and Google+ pages are great ways to represent your local business online. If you’re looking for more ideas, the Webmaster Academy has additional information about how to connect with customers online. In next week's blog post, we'll discuss best practices for optimizing your site's discoverability and performance.

Posted by Garen Checkley, Search Quality Team

Help Desk Hangouts: Google+ Local

Editor’s note: Each week on the Google+ Your Business page, we’re putting you in touch with Googlers and users who can help you as a business owner get the most out of our products and features.


In our latest Help Desk Hangout On Air, we got an update on the new look and feel for Google Places, now Google+ Local. Local experts Dasha and Jade walk us through the redesign, what you need to know, and what’s coming next. They also answered your questions in real time. Miss the event? You can watch the whole thing on the Google and Your Business YouTube channel.

Check out the video description on the YouTube page for a minute-by-minute breakdown.

Some of the questions we answered during the Hangout:

What does this change mean for how business owners add and edit their listings? Do business owners need to have a Google+ profile?
It’s business as usual on this front. Verified business owners can edit the listings (now local Google+ pages) through the Google Places for Business dashboard, as always. Business owners just now looking to get verified can go through the process by clicking on the Manage this page button under Is this your business? header on the right of the page. Right now, business owners do not need to have Google+ profiles to verify and edit local Google+ pages.

Will Google+ Local pages and existing Google+ pages be merged?
Yes! If you’re a business owner that’s got both the local Google+ page (formerly Google Places listing) and a Google+ page that you made in Google+ separately, the current recommendation is to continue managing each separately. The plan is to merge them, so business owners have just one page to manage. We did a few early, and you can take a peek from the Google and your Business blog. We’ll post updates as they come, here, but you can sign up for email updates using this form. Already convinced? You can sign up to be considered for an early upgrade.

Can I attach a YouTube channel to my page?
No, but this is a piece of feedback we’ve heard often and are actively discussing. Eventually, you’ll be able to add videos directly to your “Videos” tab and post YouTube clips to your page’s stream, but that will only be available once Google+ Local pages are merged with existing pages and given the social functionality described above.

Where can I report a problem or send feedback?
Send feedback about Google+ Local like feature requests, or reports if you think something’s broken, through the gear icon on the top right, clicking on Send feedback. On local Google+ pages, the Send feedback link is on the bottom of the right column, under the big photo of the business. You can report incorrect data about a place, like the wrong phone number, by clicking on Edit business details on that right column.

Can a business owner manage reviews and photos uploaded by users?
Be sure to join us for next week’s Hangout at 11 a.m. PDT Wednesday May 2, when we discuss Business Photos for Google Maps. We’ll be taking questions early next week on the Google+ Your Business page.

Posted by Toby Stein, Google+ community manager

Letting go: Making sense of social magazines and news readers

Applications that aggregate articles based on what others in one’s social network are reading and reformat them into an attractive magazine and presentation formats are growing in popularity, but they are raising concern among some publishers.

The processes build upon the referral and curating functions of colleagues and friends in social networks and reduce the need for users to go to multiple sites for content on their own. Some of the best known social magazines are Flipboard, Newsmix, Currents, and Pulse. Some publishers are starting their own social reading apps, such as New York Times that has a Facebook app pulling together stories that friends have read in NYT.

Many publishers are fearful of these developments, however, because they represent another step away from publishers controlling when, where, and how readers use their content, reduce the impact of the publishers’ brand strategies, and diminish control over the presentation and marketing of their content.

But publishers really don’t have a choice whether or not social magazines and readers grow in importance. That ship has sailed. The real choices is whether publishers use them for best effect and whether they are willing to accept the benefits of having more readers driven to their content and reaching persons who haven’t used their content before.

In coping with this and other disaggregation of content, however, many publishers need to adjust their own ways of presenting digital content. Because readers from social magazines, other aggregators, and search engine are directed to individual articles, it becomes more important to think about how that material appears to these new readers and what can be done in its layout to attract the new readers to stay on the site and sample more content. They are not entering through the home page so greater thought needs to be given to what appears on article pages.

Social magazines provide another mechanism by which deliver content to new readers and to existing readers in new ways.  They are not the ‘silver bullet’ for solving publishers’ digital challenges, but they are another means by which benefits can be obtained and pursued. 

Focusing on what control social magazines transfer to users and their branding downsides is a distraction for publishers who are beginning to learn the value of letting go of the control in the digital environment. Digital media are now bringing 15-20 percent of the traffic to many publishers’ digital content and they are feeling the benefits of letting readers decide the means and uses of that content.

The Business, June 7th 2012, "Oh The Places We'll Go!" Edition

Congratulations, Business fans! Today is your day. You're off to Great Places! You're off and away!

The Business regulars want to congratulate our guest Sam Davidoff on his graduation. No longer will he have to eat his meat to get his pudding! This young man is not just a stellar student, he has been racking up the extra credit in his extracurriculars and is taking over top clubs before he can even open up a bar tab. He also co-produces his own tour, The Young Guns of Comedy. He is not aware of my plan to eat his heart and steal his youthful powers.

He'll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. He’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as he goes. Like the rest of our guests!

Utah born, Seattle based comedian Emmett Montgomery found the comedy stage in late 2004 and has been failing beautifully ever since. Emmett has been involved in a lot of things including critically acclaimed comedy collectives, post apocalyptic variety shows, underground wrestling leagues and family friendly comedy nights in pizza restaurants. Mr. Montgomery has been featured at the Bumbershoot, Bridgetown Comedy and Sasquatch festivals. Emmett tells jokes from his heart. His heart is usually full of hope but sometimes it is full of spiders.

We also welcome Jeff Kreisler, Winner of the Bill Hicks Spirit Award for Thought Provoking Comedy, radio host on PRN, regular on Showbiz Tonight & MSNBC, writer for Comedy Central, IFC, TheFinalEdition.com & TheStreet.com, cast member of Shoot The Messenger, author of the bestselling "Get Rich Cheating," exec editor of "My Wall Street Journal," and star of hit international festival shows, Jeff Kreisler explores politics, business, culture, and life with passion, absurdity, and hope. Jeff now lives in New York City where he enjoys his newborn son, naps, commas and run on sentences.

Your Business regulars will also be in the house, with the exception of our favorite curly fry Alex Koll, who will be back in our arms again soon.

GANG, WE'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

So... be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea or Blue Ivy, you're off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your burrito is waiting. So...get on your way...and bring $5!

Five keys to success for measuring your website

A few weeks ago, I shared some basic tips on how to measure your online marketing efforts. Today we’re taking a deeper look at how to measure the effectiveness of your website. Think of your website as your “Open For Business” sign on the web - but unlike your business, your website is open 24/7. So it’s important for you to measure how well your site is achieving your business goals. By using free tools like Google Analytics, you can see how visitors are finding and interacting with your site, which can help you improve your customer experience and potentially drive more sales.

Here are five things that every business should consider:

• Identify your goals and track them correctly: Think about the ultimate business objectives of your website and identify specific visitor actions that indicate success, like finishing a sale, signing up for a newsletter, or viewing an important page. Then set up goal tracking to see how visitors are reaching those goals. You can also assign a dollar value to each goal to see how it’s impacting your bottom line, or set up ecommerce tracking to integrate online sales data.
• Become a conversion detective: Businesses spend a lot of effort getting people to visit their site, so if your visitors aren’t converting or achieving your goals, it’s important to figure out why. There could be a variety of factors, like too many required steps to request a quote, call-to-action icons that are too small, or poor placement of your email list sign-up button. See what conversion metrics need a boost, and experiment with your site’s content and layout to see what works best.
• Get to the bottom of your bounce rates: Bounce rates represent the people who are visiting one page on your website and then leaving immediately afterwards. This could signal that they’re not finding what they need right away. Think about what information your customers might be seeking, like contact information or links to promotions, and make sure it’s front and center on your site. Bounce rates can also show you how effective your marketing campaigns are. For instance, if you’re running an email marketing campaign but find that they’re resulting in visits with high bounce rates, you could be wasting time and money.
• Discover important audience locations: The Internet can introduce even a small town business to potential customers around the world, so you might be surprised at what audiences are most interested in your products or services. Take a look at the countries, regions and provinces where your website visitors are coming from - it just might inspire you to run an ad campaign targeted to reach shoppers in France, or start a special promotion for your fans in Canada.
• Make the most of mobile traffic: More and more consumers are browsing the web on the go with their smartphones, so spend some time discovering how many of your site’s visitors are coming from a mobile phone. Are they viewing multiple pages, staying for a long time, or bouncing away quickly? A local restaurant might want to know whether mobile visitors are quickly finding information like hours of operation, menus and address - because if they’re not, they could be going elsewhere. If you need help making your website mobile, you can find a ton of resources at www.howtogomo.com to help you get started.

There are a lot of things that you can learn when diving into your website analytics, and I know that sometimes it can feel like an overwhelming amount of data. The important thing about measurement is to just get started and keep experimenting. You’ll begin to see what works for your unique site and business, and may even find unexpected areas for growth. Happy measuring!

Posted by Francoise Brougher, Vice President of SMB Sales and Operations

Help Desk Hangouts: Adwords for video

Editor’s note: Each week on the Google+ Your Business page, we’re putting you in touch with Googlers and users who can help you as a business owner get the most out of our products and features.

In our latest Help Desk Hangout On Air, we discussed video advertising using Adwords for video with Googlers Dori Storbeck, Courtney Pannell, Rob Warner, and Valentine Matrat. They taught us how AdWords for video can benefit business owners, how to set up and target campaigns, and how to collect metrics when evaluating your campaign’s performance. Missed the Hangout? Watch it on the Google and Your Business YouTube channel

Check out the video description for a minute-by-minute breakdown.

Here are a few of the questions you asked us to answer during the Hangout:

Is video advertising helpful for local businesses? Is there a way to choose people from a certain town or area?
Video advertising can be a huge help. Video helps increase awareness and create a relationship between the business and potential clients, ultimately reducing barriers to first-time visits and increasing chances for repeat visits to the store. Video advertising allows you to build a personality for your business and provide compelling arguments to your local audience as to why they should choose your business.

If you have a video you know you want to promote, is there a strategy for selecting which type of video ad format to choose or should you try all formats and evaluate performance?
We recommend that you always start with all four video ad formats. You want your ads to achieve a balance between engagement and traffic to your videos. In general, the best format for driving traffic to your site and brand awareness is the in-stream format (it also tends to be the cheapest). That being said, starting out with all four ad formats will allow you to make better informed decisions for your needs.

Is there a time limit or minimum time that a video must be in order to be a TrueView ad?

Your video ad can be any length, but you don’t want it to be too short or too long. We’ve found that the optimal time for a video ad is between 30 seconds to a minute and a half, which allows you enough time to market your business and help you stand out from the competition, but not too long that users lose interest and skip your ad. Here’s a tip: Try to get the main point of your messaging at the beginning of the video so that you capture the audience’s attention.

Can you use annotations offered by YouTube videos in your AdWords video ads?
The annotations that you set up on your video from your YouTube account will show on your video when it plays as a TrueView in-search or TrueView in-display format. However, it does not currently show when your ad plays as a TrueView in-stream ad.

Is analytics data provided for video ads?
You will get detailed performance reporting and video analytics data from the AdWords for video interface in your AdWords account. You should also check out the YouTube Analytics tool, found within your YouTube account. YouTube Analytics is a great resource for businesses on YouTube because you can access a rich set of data about who is watching your videos.

YouTube Analytics can capture the following data and more:

• Chronological and geographic distribution of your views.
• Demographic data about your viewers, which provides age and gender distributions.
• Traffic sources data that allows you to determine what external sites and YouTube features are generating traffic for your videos. This will help you determine how many views are generated by your TrueView ads vs other sources of traffic.

You can find more information on YouTube Analytics in the Help Center.

To learn more about how to get started with the Display Network, visit our Help Center or check out the AdWords Community forum. And remember to tune in to the live stream of our next Hangout at 11 a.m. PT Wednesday June 6 — topic to be announced on the Google+ Your Business page early next week!

Posted by Dori Storbeck and Courtney Pannell, Global Online Advertising Associates