Facebook is putting its short-term money where its mouth is, reducing the presence of viral videos in an effort to boost well-being of users of its site. In Facebook’s Q4 2017 earnings report today CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that “Already last quarter, we made changes to show fewer viral videos to make sure people’s time is well spent. In total, we made changes that… Read More
Despite worries about Russia and that passive News Feed scrolling hurts us, Facebook beat expectations again in its Q4 2017 earnings report. Facebook now has 1.4 billion daily users, up 2.18% compared to growing 3.8% to 1.37 billion users in Q3. That’s a sizeable slow down, and the lowest quarter-over-quarter percentage daily user growth ever reported by the company. That could be… Read More
Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp sounds smarter and smarter. Today CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on the Q4 2017 earnings call that WhatsApp now has 1.5 billion users and sees 60 billion messages sent per day. That’s compared to 1.3 billion monthly users and 1 billion daily active users in July. The massive growth makes Facebook’s choice to pay over $19 billion… Read More Facebook is putting its short-term money where it’s mouth is, reducing the presence of viral videos in an effort to boost well-being of users of its site. Today in Facebook’s Q4 2017 earnings report CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that “Already last quarter, we made changes to show fewer viral videos to make sure people’s time is well spent. In total, we made changes… Read More
Twitter has now updated the number of people engaging with Russian trolls during the 2016 presidential campaign to 1.4 million. That’s more than double the initial 677,775 Twitter originally said had seen, followed or retweeted one of these accounts earlier this month. The new number reflects those who may have also replied to or @ mentioned these accounts. “We have expanded the… Read More Despite worries about Russia and that passive News Feed scrolling hurts us, Facebook beat expectations again in its Q4 2017 earnings report. Facebook now has 1.4 billion daily users, up 2.18% compared to growing 3.8% to 1.37 billion users in Q3. That’s a sizeable slow down, and the lowest quarter-over-quarter percentage daily user growth ever reported by the company. That could be… Read MoreOld-school industries don’t get the credit they deserve.
Every blog online focuses on the hot new startup.
People write case study after case study on the trendy new subscription box.
But no one ever talks about offline companies.
Even though, many times, there’s WAY more money at stake.
Take ‘tax relief,’ for example.
The latest IRS numbers show that people fail to pay $458 billion a year in taxes. That accounts for almost 69% of our annual deficit.
Obviously, people don’t get away with avoiding taxes for too long. Eventually, they’ll be caught.
And then they’ll need to pay back the IRS.
The problem, of course, is that they probably won’t have the money on hand.
So what will these desperate people do?
They’ll start looking for help from tax relief companies.
These companies specialize in helping people reduce or avoid certain debts.
What’s the problem?
This is a heavily commoditized market. Many of these providers are offering the same services, more or less.
If a ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ refers to uncontested markets, tax relief is a very, very, molten lava, red-hot, competitive market.
It’s among the most competitive in the world. You have massive companies all chasing the same few people who owe lots and lots of money.
You know what else that means?
There is no room for error.
These companies literally cannot afford to make a mistake.
They’re among the highest-priced PPC terms, for instance, reaching up to around $40-50 bucks a click.
And that’s just for a single visit!
They still have to try and convert those visitors. So the actual cost per lead is well into the hundreds of dollars, easy.
That’s why we should be studying these old school industries. They might not have the flashiest designs or most cutting-edge tech.
But they are slogging it out, day in and day out, with competitors who’re all spending a TON of money.
In this article, I’m going to show you strategies from the best in the tax relief business. At the very end, you’ll be able to take these tips and instantly increase your own PPC campaigns.
First, however, we need to start by getting a lay of the land.
PPC is one of my favorite marketing tactics.
I love it because it produces results almost immediately. You can turn campaigns on and make adjustments on the fly.
Do it right and customers start flowing in within a few days.
I also love it because it’s consistent. You can predict what kind of results you’re going to get.
And you can predict them, because a simple competitive analysis will give you almost all the data you need.
For example, before this post, I knew nothing about tax relief. Thankfully!
My trick to uncovering the best marketing tips isn’t to watch what people say. It’s to watch what they do.
If you want to know more about ‘tax relief,’ let’s start by Googling the competition.
So far so good. The first four ad results show they know what they’re doing.
My search query was “tax relief Seattle.”
But all of them do a good job bringing up benefits of their service.
Why does that matter? Because just over a year ago, Google opened up the ‘expanded’ headline.
This way, you could hit the keyword in the first headline. And then add a secondary benefit to get people to click.
Here’s an awesome example:
“Take 60 seconds to cut taxes” helps the searcher hop over the first objection hurdle: It’s going to be too long or boring.
When this new expanded headline debuted, WordStream ran a study and found that adding an additional benefit like this can increase your click-through rate by 400%!
Just a few simple queries like this will help you quickly find a whole slew of companies.
Stick to big, popular queries at this point.
The reason? Keywords like “tax relief” will also be among the most expensive in the space.
Which means the companies you see advertising on them will have the big bucks.
They’ll be the most aggressive.
And you can use them as a benchmark.
For example, Precision Tax Relief had an excellent ad earlier. They used ad extensions like star ratings and reviews.
So you know they’re legit.
Now, I’m going to grab their URL and drop them into two tools.
First, let’s see what their site brings up in SpyFu:
Check that out.
Two seconds and you can see:
And then, you can even drill down into the individual keywords in their account.
Each one will show a cost per click, the total ad budget on each, and where they’re showing up for them.
SEMrush will show you similar data:
In this case, you’re able to sort the keywords they’re bidding on by search position.
See something interesting already?
Precision Tax Relief is paying for the #1 position of a competitor, Optima Tax Relief.
Judging by this traffic estimate, they’re also stealing a TON of their clicks, too.
Look further down the list and you see more of the same.
Why should we spend time looking up competitors?
Because these tools will uncover the strategies the best companies in the industry are using.
So far, we can see that Precision Tax is using a branded search strategy.
Instead of just dominating their own name, they’re actively bidding against the competition’s.
But that’s not the most important thing buried in here.
For starters, they’re giving us the 800LB gorilla in the tax relief space: Optima.
Which means we can now go research them to see what’s making them so successful.
Let’s start with reverse-engineering their keyword strategy.
There’s a trick I use to shortcut keyword research for SEO.
Instead of wasting tons of time on inaccurate tools like the Google Keyword Planner, I do the same thing every time I get a new site:
Fire up an AdWords campaign.
The reason? It saves me a ton of time.
The hardest part about optimizing a brand new website is that you don’t know the ‘money’ keywords.
You have no idea which keywords will deliver the best bang for your buck. Or hours.
AdWords can help you solve that.
You can add a bunch of keywords from five minutes of research. Set up a decent daily budget.
Then, the AdWords Search Terms report will tell you exactly which keywords are worth focusing on.
That’s what we want to replicate in this case, too.
Right now, we still have no idea which keywords perform best.
Sure, we saw that some companies are going after the competition hard.
But you often can’t rely only on competitive brand queries.
Instead, let’s look up the top keywords for Optima Tax Relief. They were one of the biggest in the space.
So they probably have a pretty good keyword strategy already in place.
Here’s what that looks like in SEMrush:
Notice what they’re doing?
They’re employing a location-based keyword strategy.
A lot of the estimate monthly volume is really low, too. ~200-300 monthly queries is nothing.
“Tax relief,” by comparison, gets over ~8,000 monthly searches alone. It’s also expensive, with CPC’s that can range up to ~$40 a click:
Instead of going after just those big keywords, Optima is going after a ton of long-tail keywords.
That’s good and bad news.
It’s good news because long-tail keywords should offer better conversions and cost less per lead.
But it’s bad news because there’s often not enough of them to go around.
In other words, you have to piece them all together to get the end results you’re looking for.
You can’t grow a business off one or two conversions each month. Instead, you need to stack those like bricks.
You need thousands to really take off.
Clicking on those individual keywords they’re running will also show you the different ad creatives they’re using.
And you’ll get to see the other similar search terms their ads are appearing on.
For example, here’s what it looks like when you click on “tax attorney nyc”:
Now, you’re seeing all of those little long-tail variations that go together.
And you’re looking at the exact ad copy they’re using to drive clicks.
See how this works?
With about ten minutes of research, you can start piecing together a winning campaign.
Even in an industry where you have no prior experience.
Of course, this is just a start.
There’s actually a whole lot more involved in a successful ad campaign.
We’re only scratching the surface right now.
Keywords and ads get people to click. But they’re not why people convert.
Most of the time, that happens when people start interacting with your site.
Your site’s landing pages not only determine conversions, though. They also can end up determining how much you’re going to pay for each click.
Here’s how.
Back in the day, when I first started out, AdWords didn’t have a Quality Score.
That meant anyone could advertise on any keywords and there was no penalty.
As long as you had the money to spend, it was fine.
That created a problem for users, though. The results were often irrelevant.
Google’s Quality Score changed all that.
It factors in a bunch of different variables, like ad relevance or expected click-through rate, to determine which ads are best.
Generally speaking, the better the score and your Ad Rank, the less you often end up paying.
In this video, I give 5 tips for increasing your Quality Score:
So while AdWords is an auction, you can sometimes pay less than the people showing up below you. If your scores are better.
Years ago, Larry Kim analyzed millions in ad spend and found a 16% cost difference based on Quality Score. A point higher and you paid less. A point lower and you paid more.
Jacob Baadsgaard repeated this experiment a few years later and found a 13% correlation.
In other words, your Quality Score can often directly influence your costs.
Now, here’s the kicker:
A huge component of your Quality Score comes down to message match.
Here’s what that means:
Those three elements should be in perfect harmony.
The more they’re aligned, the better the message match, the higher the Quality Score, and the lower cost you pay.
Still with me so far?
Let’s go back to our original example from Precision Tax Relief.
Here’s what their ad looked like again:
Notice how the headline is: “Best Tax Relief Seattle”?
The ad copy below also uses “attorneys,” among other keywords.
Compare that ad to the landing page people see when they click:
Not bad, right?
Technically speaking, the headline on this page (“Best Seattle Tax Attorney”) is a little off. Ideally, you’d make them the exact same as the ad and keyword.
But think through what that means, now.
Earlier, we saw how Optima tax relief was using a bunch of different long-tail keywords, sorted by location.
That means you’d have to create unique landing pages for almost every one!
You’d probably want to keep the same overall design to make your life a little easier.
However, you’d want to at least customize the text to better reflect what sent people here in the first place.
That means you might have one example for
source https://blog.kissmetrics.com/what-startups-can-learn-from-tax-relief-ppc-campaigns/
Marketers are a lot like those realtors on HGTV’s “House Hunters.” The same way they’re trying to find a bungalow with beach access that also has a downtown industrial-loft feel (and stays within a $50,000 budget …), we’re constantly striving to create content that accomplishes many things.
We need to create content that’s thoughtful and well-crafted — content that speaks to our audiences, deeply engages them, thoroughly answers their questions, and helps them do their jobs better. And we also have to ensure our content is effective, that it ranks in search for the right terms and phrases, and that it drives results both within and beyond the marketing department. We need the quaint-modern-beachfront-cottage-mansion in the best school district. Achieving all of this can be quite difficult, which is why we’re holding a webinar on February 8th on how to get it done.
The list of things your content can accomplish could seriously go on and on. And on. I think Celine Dion sang a song about it.
Creating content that meets your audiences’ needs as well as meets your monthly KPIs can be a #struggle — especially if you aren’t applying the right insights to your content creation process. Or if marketing is asking for a fenced-in backyard and sales wants a high-rise.
The best way to create that kind of content is to uncover the answers to a couple of key questions and use those insights to guide your content process.
Question 1: What do your audiences want?
Answer: An authentic story and original, valuable content they can connect with.
Question 2: What do search engines want?
Answer: Unique, long-form content that addresses searcher intent and substantiates claims with relevant data.
Enter: Qualitative and Quantitative Insights
Creating thought leadership content that shares expert insights through a compelling story and also delivers measurable results is all about looking at both sides of the coin: qualitative and quantitative insights.
In other words, it’s about bringing together art and science for the perfect content formula.
This means applying basic storytelling ideas to your content by putting your readers in the protagonist’s seat, speaking to their needs, and giving each piece an arc that they want to follow through to the end.
It also means applying hard numbers, facts, and data to each piece of content and to your strategy overall to make it more powerful.
At Influence & Co., we’ve applied these qualitative and quantitative insights to our own content marketing, and we’ve seen great results. We create relevant content that helps us engage audiences, build our network, and generate and nurture leads. Outside these key marketing goals, we also put our content to use in our recruitment efforts and employee training, sales enablement, client service, and thought leader brand-building efforts. Basically, we’ve built the content marketing version of an open-concept kitchen that’s as functional as it is beautiful.
Want to dig deeper and learn how to use these insights, data, and storytelling to create content that fuels your business? Then join us for our webinar with Kissmetrics on Feb. 8 at 12 a.m. CST/10 a.m. PT.
Author description: Brittni Kinney is a VP at Influence & Co. and loves discussing how content marketing can help any marketing strategy achieve its full potential. She likes her coffee black and her whiskey straight; she also enjoys traveling.
Actress Maisie Williams, best known for her role as Arya Stark on Game of Thrones, is the latest celeb to venture into tech entrepreneurship, with the launch of a new company aimed at connecting creatives, called Daisie. Available later this summer as a mobile app, Daisie will offer a platform where creators can network, like, share and collaborate on projects within a social networking… Read More
A California appeals court has sided with Allan Candelore, a man suing Tinder over the pricing for its premium service, Tinder Plus. Specifically, Candelore and his lawyers argued that by charging $9.99 per month if a user is under 30, versus $19.99 per month if you’re 30 or older, Tinder is discriminating based on age, in violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act and the Unfair… Read More
Instagram today made a long overdue change to its product that social media managers have wanted for some time – it will allow businesses on Instagram to schedule their posts. Before, there were unofficial means to aid with this – like tools that would send out a push notification to remind you to publish a post at a given time, for example. But no functionality was available in… Read More
Now you can customize your Snapchat Bitmoji avatar with 40 skin tones, 50 hair colors, 50 hair treatment options and more so it looks just like you no matter what you look like. Today Snapchat launches Bitmoji Deluxe, a more configurable version of its cartoony avatars that embraces the growing diversity of its users. The feature offers an easier front-end builder that instantly previews… Read More
The slings and arrows of outrage keep flying at Facebook. Today a coalition of child health advocates has published an open letter addressing CEO Mark Zuckerberg and calling for the company to shutter Messenger Kids: Aka the Snapchat-ish comms app it launched in the US last December — targeted at the under 13s. Read MorePosted by Angela_Petteys
Digital marketing thrives on data. No matter what type of site you have, whether it’s a large e-commerce site, a personal website, or a site for a small business, it’s essential to understand how people interact with your site. Google Analytics can provide a lot of the important insights you’re looking for, but when used alone, it does have its limitations. But by tagging your site and using Google Tag Manager in conjunction with Google Analytics, you’re able to collect much more data than you can otherwise.
Tags are snippets of code which are added to a site to collect information and send it to third parties. You can use tags for all sorts of purposes, including scroll tracking, monitoring form submissions, conducting surveys, generating heat maps, remarketing, or tracking how people arrive at your site. They’re also used to monitor specific events like file downloads, clicks on certain links, or items being removed from a shopping cart.
Sites commonly use several different tags and the amount of code needed to create them all can be pretty overwhelming, especially if you’re trying to add or edit tags by going directly into the site’s source code. Google Tag Manager is a tool with a user-friendly, web-based interface that simplifies the process of working with tags. With GTM, you’re able to add, edit, and disable tags without having to touch the source code.
While GTM is, obviously, a Google product, it’s hardly limited to just working with tags for other Google services like AdWords or Analytics. You can use it to manage many different third-party tags, including Twitter, Bing Ads, Crazy Egg, and Hotjar, just to name a few. If there’s another tag which doesn’t have a template in GTM, you can add your own custom code. There are only a few types of tags GTM doesn’t work well with.
By far, the biggest benefit to Google Tag Manager is that it makes it easier for marketers to implement tags without having to rely on web developers to do it for them. Developers are usually busy with other high-priority projects, so tagging often ends up on the back burner. But since Google Tag Manager helps you avoid touching the source code, marketers can quickly add and make changes to tags on their own. This is a big advantage if, for example, you only need to use a tag to collect data for a very brief amount of time. Without GTM, there’s a good chance that it would take longer for the tag to be added than it would actually be live for.
Although GTM helps reduce the reliance on developers, it doesn’t completely eliminate it. You’ll still need someone to add the container code to each page of your site. And while GTM has plenty of tag templates to choose from which are easy enough for a non-developer to work with, more complex customized tags will likely require the help of someone who really understands coding. If you have existing tags that were manually added to your site’s source code, those will need to be removed first so that you don’t end up with duplicate data.
Businesses of any size can potentially benefit from GTM. Since GTM makes it so much easier to add and edit tags without a developer, it’s great for smaller businesses that might have limited access to technical support. And since sites for enterprise-level businesses can easily use dozens of tags, GTM makes it easier to manage them all and improves site speed by helping them load more efficiently.
One issue with traditional tracking tags is that if they fire synchronously, they can slow down site speeds. When tags fire synchronously, one tag being slow to load slows down all the other tags that are waiting on it. And the longer a site takes to load, the more likely it is that people will leave without converting. But tags created in GTM load asynchronously by default, meaning each tag can fire anytime it’s ready to. If you need to control the order in which your tags are fired, there is tag sequencing and firing priority functionality to let you do that.
You’re not even limited to just using GTM with standard websites. GTM can also be used to manage tags for AMP sites and mobile apps. In the case of mobile apps, GTM can be a huge help since it lets you add and edit your tags without having to issue an updated version of your app, which users might not be quick to actually download. In some respects, using GTM for AMP sites or mobile apps is pretty similar to using it for a regular website, but they do have their differences. In this guide, we’re going to focus on using GTM for web.
On the surface, tags and tag managers are pretty straightforward. But before you can start working with them, there are a few main concepts you’ll need to know about.
When you start working with GTM, the first thing you’ll need to do is create a container. A container essentially “holds” all the tags for your site.
After creating a new container, GTM gives you some code to add to your site. This is your container code and it will need to be added to the source code so it displays on each page of your site. Some CMSes, such as WordPress, have plugins to help add the container code for you, but you may need to contact your web developer to have it added. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to add, edit, disable, or remove your tags as needed through GTM.
Each tag on a site needs to serve a specific purpose. Maybe you want to have a tag send information when someone downloads a file, when an outbound link is clicked, or when a form is submitted. These sorts of events are known as triggers and all tags need to have at least one trigger assigned to it; otherwise, it’s not going to do anything.
Triggers can be broken down into two main components: events and filters. When you go to configure a trigger in GTM, you’ll be given a long list of types of triggers to choose from. These are your events. Once you choose an event, you’ll be able to set up your filter.
Filters can be divided further down into three parts: variables, operators, and values. We’ll talk more about variables in just a minute, but in this case, it refers to the type of variable involved. The operator tells the tag whether an event needs to equal (or if it should be greater or less than a certain value, contain a certain value, etc.) And of course, the value is the condition which needs to be met. Even though the word “value” is typically used in reference to numbers and prices, remember that in this case, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a numerical value. In many cases, your value will be something like a URL or a keyword.
For example, let’s say I wanted to see how many people were reading the blog content on my site in depth. I could create a tag with a Scroll Depth event trigger that should fire when the vertical scroll depth reaches 75%. If I wanted this to fire on every page of my site, I could leave the “All Pages” option selected in the trigger configuration box and I wouldn’t have to create any further filters. But since I’m focusing on blog content, I’d choose “Some Pages” and create the filter “Page URL” “Contains” “fakewebsitename.com/blog.”
There might also be some circumstances when you don’t want a tag to fire. In this case, you can create a blocking trigger to prevent it from firing on those occasions. GTM prioritizes blocking triggers over other types of triggers, so if you have a blocking trigger that contradicts a condition set by another trigger, Google Tag Manager will follow what’s specified by the blocking trigger. For instance, if you have a tag that’s set to fire on all of your pages, but there are a few pages you’d like to have excluded from that, you can just use a blocking trigger to prevent it from firing on those few pages.
While tags depend on triggers, triggers depend on variables. Variables contain the value a trigger needs to evaluate to know whether or not it should fire. The tag compares the value of the variable to the value defined in the trigger and if the variable meets the conditions of the trigger, the tag will fire.
Tags also use variables to collect information that can be passed onto the data layer as a user interacts with the site. A common example of this would be if a tag was set to fire when a person adds a certain amount of products to their shopping cart.
Variables can often be reused between tags. One of the most popular tips for using GTM is to create constant variables with the ID numbers or tracking codes you’ll need to use more than once. For example, if you’ll need to use your Google Analytics property ID number in multiple tags, you could just create a constant string variable with the value being your ID number. That way, instead of repeatedly having to look up and enter your ID number, you could just select the variable name.
When using GTM, you’ll be working with two different types of variables: built-in variables and user-defined variables. Built-in variables are some of the most commonly used types of variables, so Google went ahead and made them easy to access in GTM.
Once you select a built-in variable, you’ll be able to configure its settings however you’d like. Note that these are just a few of the built-in variables for regular web containers. You can find more built-in variables by clicking the “Configure” button. If you’re using GTM for AMP sites or mobile apps, you may see different options to choose from.
If you need another type of variable that’s not included as a built-in variable, you can create a user-defined variable. When you go to add a user-defined variable, you’ll be given a list of types of variables to choose from. For more information on each type of variables, Simo Ahava has a very helpful guide to different variable types.
Variables can be created from the GTM dashboard by clicking on the “Variable” option on the left side menu. You can also create them while you’re creating a tag by clicking on the button next to the field that looks like a Lego block with a plus sign on it.
Tags need information to know whether or not they should fire, but how (or where) do they get that information? One way they could find it is by checking the page’s HTML structure, but that’s really not an ideal solution. When tags need to search through HTML to find what they’re looking for, it can take longer for them to fire. And if the site’s HTML structure changes over time, tags can break. Besides, there are certain types of information a tag might need which won’t be found in a page’s HTML, like a transaction total.
A data layer is a JavaScript object which keeps the information tags need separate from the rest of your site’s code. Since tags don’t have to spend time searching through the HTML to find the information they need, this is another way GTM can help improve site speed. Instead, everything they’re looking for can be found in one place and it’s readily available when the page loads.
Technically, data layers are optional. You don’t have to specifically define one yourself; GTM can initiate one for you. But if you want to use GTM to track specific events, you’ll need to have a data layer.
To start off with, a new data layer object will look like this:
When adding a data layer, the object needs to be placed before the GTM container code. If the data layer object is placed after the container code, GTM won’t be able to access the information in it and the data layer will basically reset after loading.
Once the data layer object has been added to a page’s code, the brackets in the second line can be populated with information, variables, and events. Some types of information can be written directly into the data layer, but other types of information can be pushed into the data layer dynamically as a user interacts with your site, such as if someone downloads a file or if they add a certain amount of products to their shopping cart.
To get started, go to tagmanager.google.com and create an account. Under “Setup Account,” enter the name of the company whose site is being managed and hit “Continue.”
Next, you’ll set up your container. Enter your domain name as the container name, choose which type of page or app it will be used on, and click “Create.” If you choose iOS or Android, you’ll also have to specify whether you’re using Firebase SDK or a legacy SDK.
Note that I specifically said to use the company name as the account name and the site’s domain for the container name. In theory, you can name these anything you want. This is just how Google recommends naming them as a best practice. Generally speaking, one of the best things you can do when working with GTM is make sure everything is named very clearly. Otherwise, it’s very easy for mistakes to be made.
Multiple GTM accounts can be managed within a single GTM account, but Google advises creating one container per domain. You don’t have to create separate containers for each individual tag or for every individual page on a site; all tags can all be placed within one container.
For most companies and organizations, one container is all they’ll need. But in the case of a company that has subsidiaries or owns separate businesses, the website for each subsidiary/business should get its own container and all the containers can be managed from one main GTM account. If a site has a subdomain that is treated separately from the main domain, the subdomain should also be given its own container.
When a marketing agency is managing tags on behalf of a company, Google recommends that the company create their own GTM account, then add the agency’s Google account as a user. This way, the agency can access GTM, but it’s easy for the company to revoke access should they decide to change agencies.
After creating your container, accept the GTM terms of service and you’ll be given your container code.
Once the container code has been added, you’re able to start creating tags. But before you get started, it’s a good idea to take some time to figure out exactly which tags you want to add. Even though there aren’t any limits to the amount of tags you can put in a container, for best performance, Google advises keeping the amount of tags you use to a minimum. If you’re migrating your tags to GTM from another tag manager or are making the switch from tags coded in your source code, this is a good time to review the tags currently on your site. In many cases, sites have tags that are associated with services they’re no longer using or were used to track things that aren’t being monitored anymore, so this is a good opportunity to "clean house," so to speak.
When you create or select a container, the first thing you’ll see is the GTM dashboard. We’ll eventually get around to talking about almost everything you see here, but let’s begin by creating a tag. Click “Add a New Tag” to open up a window where you’ll be able to name and configure your tag.
Before we go any further into the process of creating tags, remember to name your tags very clearly. Since sites often use several different tags, you won’t want there to be any confusion about which tag does what. Google’s recommended tag naming convention is: Tag Type - Detail - Location. For example, a Google Analytics tag that tracks form submissions on a Contact Us page would be named “GA - Form Submission - Contact Us.” Including the location of a tag in its name is a good idea because it helps distinguish it from similar tags on other pages. So if I had other GA form submission tags on my site, specifying that this one is on the Contact Us page would help me avoid editing the wrong one by mistake.
Putting the tag type at the beginning of a tag name also helps keep your tags organized. GTM lists tags alphabetically, so if you’re creating multiple tags for the same service or tool, all of those tags will all be grouped together and easy to find.
Now, back to creating a tag. When you click “Add a new tag” on the dashboard, this is the window you’ll see. Choose “Tag Configuration” and you’ll be given a long list of tag templates, which includes many of the most commonly used types of tags. If any of these are what you’re looking for, click on it and enter the information requested. If you don’t see the type of tag you want to create listed, choose “Custom HTML” to add your own code.
Since the exact information you’ll need to provide will vary depending on which type of tag you’re working with, I can’t possibly go into how to make every single type of tag. But as an example, let’s say I wanted to notify Google Analytics anytime someone views my pricing page. After choosing Universal Analytics, this is what I’d see:
All I would need to do is choose “Page View” from the “Track Type” dropdown menu, then enter the variable with my Google Analytics account information. If I hadn’t created that variable ahead of time, I could make one now by clicking the dropdown menu under “Google Analytics Settings” and choosing “New Variable.”
If I wanted to make changes to the tag firing sequence or create a firing schedule, I could do that by clicking on the “Advanced Settings” option. Click outside the tag configuration window to go back to the previous screen.
Next, you’ll need to create at least one trigger. Click the “Triggering” box underneath “Tag Configuration” to get started. If you don’t have a previously created trigger to choose from in the list that opens up, click the + sign in the upper right corner of the window. This will bring up a new window where you’ll be asked to name your new trigger. Do that and click on the “Tag Configuration” box so see a list of trigger types. In my case, I’d choose “Page View.”
Since I only want my tag to fire on one page, I’d choose “Some Page Views,” then create a filter specifying that the page URL needs to equal the URL of my pricing page. If I had another filter to add, I could click the plus (+) button next to the filter to set one up. If I had created multiple filters for this tag and later decided to get rid of one of them, all I’d have to do is hit the subtract (–) button next to the filter in question. When you’re done, click outside the window to exit.
Once your tag and trigger have been configured, save it and you can either keep working by creating more tags or you can preview your tag and make sure it’s working correctly before publishing it.
GTM’s “Preview & Debug” mode lets you test tags before publication so that you can make sure everything is working correctly and that you won’t have any errors throwing off your data.
To enter “Preview & Debug,” click the “Preview” button in the upper right corner of the GTM dashboard and you’ll see an orange banner notifying you that you are now in “Preview” mode. Next, open the site you’re tagging. If you already have your site open in another tab, refresh the page and you should see a “Debug” panel at the bottom of your screen. (Don’t worry, visitors to your site won’t be a
source https://moz.com/blog/an-introduction-to-google-tag-manager
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“Our brand is strong”
“Brand equity”
“Our brand is admired around the world”
These words and phrases make most entrepreneurs and employees roll their eyes. They view brand as an overused term that means very little to the world outside the company.
But your brand may be the most valuable asset your company has. It’s also the most fragile.
Here’s why a brand is so important, what can happen when a brand is damaged, and how to create a great brand.
“Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” – Jeff Bezos
A company brand is an intangible asset because it is not a physical object. This is opposed to a tangible asset, such as your company office and company equipment.
And while it is not a physical asset that you can look at or hold onto or assign value to, it is perhaps the most valuable and fragile piece your company owns. One mistake or PR blunder and your brand, and thus your company, will be damaged.
A brand is what people think of when they think about your company. If you’re in the airline business, you want your brand to be known for reliability and quality. You don’t want to have a customer service disaster like United Airlines had, which meant significant damage to their brand.
Brands are built overtime, but can be damaged very quickly and result in a significant loss of sales. Public companies routinely place maintaining their brand reputation as a risk factor in annual reports. This means that your company, no matter how small, cannot ignore your brand.
Brands are not built overnight. Instead, they are built up over years and can be destroyed in days.
To further understand the impacts that a brand has on a company, let’s look at what happens when a brand is damaged, using a few examples we all know.
If you asked a person in spring 2015 what they thought of Chipotle, they’d probably tell you they served delicious burritos. The food was quality and the prices were reasonable. And shortly after telling you that, they’d go to Chipotle and order one of those delicious burritos.
Ask that same person in 2016 and they’d tell you that it would be risky eating at Chipotle and there are probably some better Mexican food options nearby.
The difference?
The e coli and norovirus outbreak at Chipotle restaurants. This outbreak resulted in significant damage to the brand (could anyone say their food is quality?) and declining sales. Just look at what happened to the company’s value after this outbreak:
This is what can happen if your brand is damaged. Your company value can be cut in half. And if you’re a startup, you could be put out of business if you lose customers and investors trust.
Today, Chipotle is still recovering from the damage their brand took from the food safety issues. As I stated, building a quality brand takes years, but can be damaged in days. That’s what happened to Chipotle, and they’re still working to restore their brand to what it once was. It will only take time and a long string of no food-borne issues.
Similar to Chipotle, Equifax had another safety issues. Except this time it wasn’t about food safety, it was about information safety.
Because of poor security measures, Equifax was hacked and left the extremely private information of hundreds of millions of US customers vulnerable to cybercriminals.
After the hack was announced, there were more bad headlines about how poor the security measures were at Equifax:
Equifax has taken steps to restore public trust and rebuild their brand, but they’ll have a long way to go before anyone can trust them again.
Today, would you use Equifax for any of their services? Probably not, as you couldn’t trust that they’d do a good job or keep your data safe.
Remember Yahoo? Some of you may still use it. Personally I haven’t used Yahoo in a number a years because their competitors offer a better product.
Yahoo used to have a strong brand. The classic shade of purple, the yodel, the beautiful design, and the array of features that came with the Yahoo brand.
But that was early to mid 2000s. Over the last few years, Yahoo has suffered a decline. The board hired Google executive Marissa Mayer, and while she gave a valiant effort to rebuild the empire, she ultimately came in too late for it to be saved.
Yahoo was acquired by Verizon and while it is still around today, it’s nowhere near its peak.
So what happened?
Hacking, malware attacks, privacy concerns, increasing criticism, and a product that didn’t keep up with competitors or the times has led to Yahoo’s downfall.
And while Yahoo is still one of the most visited websites, their brand has been damaged and will likely never recover.
Travis Kalanick created an innovative new service that changed the world. Uber made it possible for anyone in an urban area with a smartphone to be picked up with the touch a button. It took over, growing to billions of dollars in annual revenue in only a few years.
Then came a PR nightmare.
He was caught on camera telling a driver to take responsibility and boasts that a tough culture is needed to win.
Then the influential New York Times did a feature piece that didn’t shed the best light on him. And another piece was published that reported that Kalanick had knowledge of Uber’s sexual harassment problem but didn’t do anything about it.
Apple CEO reportedly threatened to kick Uber off the App Store because it violated Apple’s privacy standards.
Kalanick wasn’t always well behaved, but he was a tremendously talented entrepreneur. But by the time he grew Uber and the brand, the Board decided it was time for Kalanick to go and Kalanick submitted his resignation.
Today, Uber has a new CEO. He’s got a big job to do in rebuilding trust in the brand, but has a strong company behind it.
I’ve experience one of my companies brand’s being damaged. The company I cofounded, KISSmetrics, took a hit to our brand when we were sued. It resulted in significant damage to our brand at the time, and it still lingers today.
The lesson here is that your brand is the most valuable asset. It needs to be built up and protected. A good brand can take your company a long way.
Now, let’s look at companies with strong brands and what we can learn from them.
Brand building is an important step in starting a business. People that are looking at your new business need to know what your company stands for.
This is the most important step. Great companies have brands that stand for something. Here are some examples:
You have to know what your brand will stand for. “Selling quality food” isn’t a stance. Any company can say they sell quality food.
“Selling the highest-quality organic and natural food” is a stance because you know what you’re getting when you go that store. You can’t buy Skittles and Coke when you visit this store. You can buy organic food there. People now know what you stand for, and will visit your store when they’re seeking those items.
A lot of companies will say they build world-class products. Many of those companies also have dozens of products. The simple reality is that you can’t be world-class at 12 different things. You need to know what you’re willing to be bad at.
In this video, Scott Belsky discusses why companies have to be willing to be bad at certain things in order to exceed in others. I’d recommend setting some time aside to watch this.
There will have to be tradeoffs. If you have great customer service, you may have to have higher prices to maintain your margins.
Just look at a company like Apple. Consumers know that Apple products are quality. There aren’t a lot of bugs, it’s well-built, and their products generally last for years. Any bad news about their product quality is going to significantly affect their brand. That’s why they go a long way to protect it.
So when the issue came out about the battery usage on older iPhones, Apple had to go to great lengths to win consumer trust back. They wrote a message to customers and offered a battery replacement for only $29, a $50 reduction in price. This means that Apple will make less money, but consumers ran to Apple stores to get their batteries replaced.
The takeaway here is simple – if you screwed up, admit it to customers (even if it was a misunderstanding). Then offer a discount or something else to win their trust back. For 8/10 customers, this will work great. The other 2/10 will never be pleased.
Make your brand something memorable that stands out in a crowded market.
So when you know what you stand for, you can then effectively message this to consumers.
You know what you stand for, now it’s time to make sure customers know.
Remember this viral video?
Believe it or not, this is actually a video promoting a brand.
The video features Trent Kimball from Texas Armoring, a company that builds armored vehicles. If you were looking for an armored vehicle (chances are you aren’t, but stay with me) then it would be difficult to not buy something from this company. It’s the owner of the company literally standing behind his protect while three gunshots are fired.
This is Kimball doing his best to message his company’s brand. While you don’t have to go to similar lengths, you should do all you can to make your brand message stand out and be memorable for people.
Let’s look at a couple other examples of how companies message their brand.
Spotify’s message is simple. They can message the “Music for everyone” because their music catalog has something for everyone. No matter who you are, you know that Spotify will have music for you to enjoy.
Lifelock wants you to connect two terms – data breach and Lifelock. When you hear about a data breach, think of Lifelock. They are the protection against any breach on your data.
Many B2C companies message their brand through their website and advertisements. It’s also common to use social media to message your brand to followers.
Just look at the social media followings of companies like Skittles, Wendy’s, GoPro, Denny’s, and many more. In many cases, most people wouldn’t even know much about these brands if they didn’t follow them on social media. These companies aren’t just tweeting and sharing promotions, they’re showing their brand personality.
Taco Bell is perhaps the one we all know about. When you think of Taco Bell, you think of a fun place to grab a quick bite to eat. And their social media supports this brand message.
Now, let’s get into the last step of brand building. This is perhaps the most important step because if you ignore it, you’ll lose public trust and your company will have big hurdles to overcome.
Some entrepreneurs will tell you that a brand is overrated. Just create your product and customers will create your brand.
You are what they say you are and there’s nothing you can do about it but change your business. Once you change your message, then eventually customers will change what they say about you.
This is all true to some extent. The issue I have is that it’s a passive mentality. It means that you’re not doing all you can to message your brand.
You need to message your brand and build the products and services that support that brand message. Think of Whole Foods. We all know them as an organic grocer. Can you imagine if you went into one of their stores and saw Pepsi and Mike and Ikes for sale? The brand would be tarnished for you. Their loyal customers would be furious.
This is why your business must support your brand. Once you do that, and message your brand effectively, your brand will become a fixture for consumers. They’ll know what your company is about. Warren Buffett says it best:
“Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.”
In this video, I’ll go deeper into explaining not just why you need to build a brand, but also how to measure your brand using a simple tool from Google.
Entrepreneurs and managers frequently think of branding as unnecessary and a waste of time.
But when you have a company, you’ll have a brand attached to that company. It’s what consumers will think of when they think of your brand.
Brands are fragile. One minor slip up can damage your brand, which is why good PR skills are necessary. The good news is that a good brand will last forever.
As an entrepreneur, how have you been building your brand?
About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.
