My Digital Insight

When I was in the U.S., I only used WeChat for chatting and sharing photos in the friend circle. Until I was back to China, I realize I can’t live without WeChat because I need to use it all the time. Start from morning, I must show the Health Code from mini program to enter the building to work. In the noon, I order my lunch from KFC mini program and then pick up from nearby KFC. After work, I spend some time to read news from novel mini program. Basically, I spend 90% of time on WeChat, the rest 10% is on Farm Hero every day. My Most Recent Used Mini Program: top two-health code & KFC~ What Is WeChat Mini Program? WeChat Mini Program is an application that can be used without downloading and installing. It realizes the dream of “At Your Finger Touch”. Users can open the application by scanning QR code or searching program name on WeChat. Users can read, listen to music, shop, play games, find locations and etc. By using WeChat mini program, we can save both phone storage space an...

Remarketing is one of the most effective and popular ways for advertisers.  It is only advertising to people who have previously interacted with the brand via an app or a website.  There are five types of remarketing inside the Google AdWords: #1: Standard The standard remarketing is the display network and display network apps. Someone came to your website to explore some information and then left, then you want to show your ads on the Google display network like Bloomberg as that person continue to browse the website. #2: Dynamic The dynamic remarketing is specifically useful for e-commerce. It allows you to show ads for that specific product as that person continues to browse the web. For example, I went to the American Eagle website and find a new dress and then left the site. Then, I went to other websites, the American Eagle ad is on the corner of the site, and most importantly, the dress I just viewed is on the ad. For advertisers, it is an aggressive way to ...

The negative keywords are very important for the campaign because we don't want to spend extra money on irrelevant clicks. Therefore, we need to research and find negative keywords from the search report.  There are two important concepts to find keyword ideas from the search report: (1) From Data: the course instructor suggests that we filter out all the keywords with over 100 clicks, any keywords with less than 30 clicks are not valuable enough to analyze.  (2) See Conversions: if the keyword has a lot of clicks but a low conversion rate, it's better to add it to the negative keywords because of the high CPC.  Once we have done all the research, how to organize those keywords? The point of the negative lists is to create collections of negative keywords that you want to reuse for multiple campaigns, so you don't have to keep adding the same negative keywords to each of the different campaigns. According to the Google Ads instructor Isaac, the mo...

Once we have done the campaign level settings, it's time to start thinking about ad groups. It's important to keep in mind your overall campaign structure ideas when you are structuring ad groups. A really good way to generate ad group ideas is to follow the navigational structure of the website. There are three great ways to structure your ad group introduced by the course: theme, match type, and top performers. Themes The first thing you need to think about is the theme of your campaign and your brand. The theme could be product categories, subcategories, locations, brands, colors of your product, services, event, and etc. Each of these categories represents a theme because there are a bunch of different keywords that are similar under the top-level category. You could do some competitor research by searching specific or certain keywords on Google and explore how your competitors are potentially breaking out their ad groups.  The most important thing to think about...

According to Google research, mobile already has more searches daily and more clicks on ads than desktop. But, it doesn't mean you must run your campaign on mobile. Desktop campaigns still work better than mobile campaigns in many businesses. The conversion rate is higher on the desktop because the sites are well optimized and giving users a better user experience.  If you want to run a mobile campaign, you should ask yourself four important questions: 1. Is your site mobile optimized? If your site is not mobile-friendly, you really SHOULD NOT advertise on mobile. It will potentially hurt your brand reliability because the users feel bad about their mobile experience. And, you are also going to be penalized by Google and have a very high cost for click. Before you advertise on mobile, test your website on the site evaluation tool such as MobileTestMe . Paste your website URL and to see whether it displays well on different devices. 2. Where are your customers when they s...

When will my ad show in order to get a higher conversion? It is a very common question to ask ourselves when we begin to schedule our campaign. In general, you could choose to run your ads throughout the entire day or throughout certain hours.  Image From Google By default, Google sets these ads to run 24/7. For a new campaign, it is a good default because you do want to learn how ads are performing at different hours of the day. In order to generate more data, it is better to schedule your ads to run 24/7. Then, you could go to the Google Ads dashboard to pull out the ad schedule report. The report will show the detail data about how your ad performs at different times. You could break out in segment hour of the day, day of the week, and the week of the month. By analyzing the data, you can make some bid adjustments based on the report. In most cases, it's worthwhile to bid on good traffic throughout the day at least. In order to make a rational bid adjustment, you n...

Location Extension If brick and mortar awareness is important, then location extension is good for local businesses such as fast food, fashion store, bakery and etc. If you have one location or multiple locations, you could get those multiple locations showing up in your ads . Even if you're trying to generate online sales, having an actual physical location will make people aware that you have a store nearby, so it also offers the users in-store shopping experiences and can drive in-store sales potentially. Parts of your location extensions will include business hours, Google reviews, directions, whether or not you are open or closed, and peak time. Unfortunately, you don't have control over what elements are shown. However, if you don't add a location extension, Google is going to automate that extension by showing a linked address associated with a business account. You can use filters at the campaign level based on your targeting location. You could select...

Structure Snippet Extension Structure snippet extensions are very similar to callout extensions but structured with a parent category. For example, Stitchfix's ad extensions are structured with a parent category "Styles", and it lists some main subcategories under styles.  Using this extension will give potential visitors more context and information about your product. Google actually does favor this extension over the callout extension because it is more organized and structured. It is better to use the structure snippet extension for practical product and services information. Save the callout extensions for benefits and promotions. App Extension If you are advertising apps and trying to get app downloads, the app extension is a good choice. You can use the app extension to send clicks directly to the app in the App store.  For example, when I search "book hotels" on Google, it shows me the Expedia ad which has an app extension. It has a call t...

If you want to reach people who speak other languages, you could use the language setting. It is default in English since this is an English Google Ad account. You could select multiple languages. For example, if I want to promote my Chinese blog in the United States, I definitely will target users who can speak and read Chinese.  If someone in the U.S. and his Google interface setting is Chinese, my ad will be eligible to show.  However, if a Chinese speaking person is searching on Google in Chinese, but his settings have defaulted to English, then my ad will not show if I only target Chinese speaking people.  Therefore, it is important to include English with other languages together in your setting.

There are different ways you could treat your targeted locations and also different ways to treat your excluded locations. How you treat location settings differently are matters because it will significantly impact your ad show and who sees your ad. There are five addition location options under basic location settings. It is very important to know what each of these options means in order to run your campaign effectively. Target Option One: People in, or show interest in, your targeted locations When you choose this option, it means people from any locations can see your ad no matter what your targeted locations are.  For example, your keyword is "rent apartment", and your target location is "New York". Someone from Seattle or China or Japan searches for "New York apartment" on Google, your ad will show up.  In addition, "show interest" is up to Google to decide. The data could be collected from many sources. Someone may type ...

For the local businesses, if you only service certain areas, it is better to consider location settings when you plan a Google Ads campaign. It does not only save your budget but also reaches the right customers effectively. For E-commerce companies, sometimes it doesn't mean you have to target the whole country. Before you run your campaign, these things you have to think about: which areas will have a higher conversion rate will your shipping cost be less how're people shopping behaviors in a different location If you don't know which areas you should target on, you might need to find answers from: Historical data : you could check your sales performance report, CRM, Google trends, or ask your co-workers.  Major cities : it would be more expensive, but they also have the most volume. The higher cost per click is not necessarily a bad thing. High CPC means more people are advertising on this keyword in this place. They are willing to pay more because they know...

As my last post said that we can set up multiple campaigns under one Google Ads account, so thinking about how to separate out campaigns is your first task to start with. Many brands like to create campaigns by advertising on products or services. Unfortunately, it is wrong because it is not effective. You want to start off thinking about the CORE GROUP  of services or products. They could be your best sellers or top-rated services. Concentrating on the core group shows what's the most important thing or the best products (services) directly to the users. You could also focus on LOSS LEADERS. Loss leaders are the products or services that might not generate profits on the first initial sale, but you know from your own data that typically those customers will come back and buy more later on. You have to build that into the lifetime value of your consumer calculations. There are different ways to set up campaigns.  The most simple way to separate out your campaigns is t...

When you plan to run Google Ad campaigns, you need to understand how Google Ads account is structured. There are four levels in the Google Ads Account structure: Account, Campaign, Ad Group, and Keywords & Ads.  Image From Pathwaysdigital.com Top Level: Account In order to have a Google Ads Account, you need to sign up for a Google account. If you already have a Gmail account or Google account, you can just link your current account directly to the Google Ads account. Under the account level, you can set up your email, time zone, billing information and billing cycle, and user access setting.  Second Level: Campaign You could set multiple campaigns under one account level. You could set campaigns based on location targeting, product categories, or other marketing goals.  Under the campaign level, you can set up your location targeting, ad scheduling, device targeting, and etc.  Third Level: Ad Group Each campaign can have different ad gro...

No matter you are small or large brands, Google Ads is a very effective and popular place to run ad campaigns. Before you decide to run Google Ads campaign, there are three important questions you must ask yourself. Question One: "What's the max budget I can pay for a conversion?" When you run Google Ads, you need to make a budget plan. Are you going to run the ads for only one day or one week or one month? The longer you run the ads, the more money you have to pay. Moreover, you may also need to bid on some top search keywords which are another cost. Even though you run the ads, it doesn't mean consumers will buy it whenever they click the ad. Most time consumers click the ad, visit the shopping page, and leave. Maybe in a few days, they will come back to make the purchase or never come back. However, every time they click the ads, you have to pay for it no matter they take effective action or not. Therefore, it is necessary to make a thoughtful budget plan an...

In the fashion world, the design is one of the most competitive elements. When people shop for brand clothing, design and style are the key points to make the final decision.  For the Z generation, pursing personality and creativity are common psychological needs. Being cool and different become their main fashion style. Vans catch those young consumer's pain point: to be no one and to be different. They allow consumers to customize their own Vans sneakers online.  I feel very interesting, so I visit the Vans Custom page  to check it out.  There are four categories to customize: men's, women's, kids, and backpacks.  There are eight parts of the shoes you can customize: vamp, quarters, heel counter, binding, collar lining, foxing, foxing stripe, and elastic gore.  I begin to try different colors and features on each part of the shoes.  If you don't like those online features, Vans also encourage consumers to upload an image and make...

Pepsi Cola, a global brand with over one-century-old, has always been at the forefront of global pop culture. They learn and create new way to activate enthusiasm of every generation.  Pepsi China launched the "Pepsi pop up Store" campaign in 2017. Consumers can come to the Pepsi pop up store with the CDK code inside the Pepsi bottle cap and have chance to win the special discount, lottery, and limited fashion product. This year, Pepsi pop up store offers limited bike, white sneakers, and Pingpong set.  image from loftooo.com Create Young Energy In order to fit in young consumer market, Pespi China create young energy by applying popular language and pop songs in the store and campaign ads. Those new energy theme make young consumers feel motivated and excited. From Social Beta Combine Offline Experience With Digital Experience By carefully observing young consumers shopping behavior and learning their psychological needs, Pepsi built the pop up store...

In the world of marketing, there are two main types of "people": brands and consumers (users). Just like definition of marketing, which is the brand to pass the right information to the right consumers through the right channels. What is KOL? As social media becomes one of the most popular channels to promote brands and reach the target audience, the third type of "people" stands out. They are KOL (Key Opinion Leader).  KOL, Key Opinion Leader,  are experts in a certain field, and they have their own fans, so  many brands love to cooperate with KOL to promote new products and reach more target audience.  For example, one of my favorite makeup  KOL on social media is Deepica Mutyala. She has 226k followers. Her makeup tutorials are very popular and fun to watch.  Therefore,  many cosmetics brands cooperate with her to promote the new makeup products. For example, Deepica always teach how to use lipstick to make beautiful and shin...