Online Marketing
Paid Traction Channels
Paid Search | Paid Search Ads
For an introduction to SEA, what it is, how it works, its history and evolution, and the different campaign types, we would like to refer you to this blog article about the history of SEA.
Below we will mainly explain our vision on search engine advertising, why SEA is still the most important performance marketing channel and why it is best to call on our expertise.
SEA: the °1 Performance Marketing Channel
In almost all sectors, but especially in e-commerce and lead generation, SEA is still by far the most °1 Performance Marketing Channel that will help your business grow in the short and medium term.
SEO + Direct traffic – when managed correctly – should always make up a larger share of your revenue, but are more long-term oriented and require minimal brand awareness.
Depending on the size of your company and the sector in which you operate, you can also use Bing Ads, but until recently this advertising solution from Microsoft mainly followed the steps of Google and is limited to a share of 5-8% within SEA.
Our opinion and approach
As experts, we know Google and Bing, their advertising platforms and campaign types inside and out and we recognize that they offer fantastic solutions that provide undeniable added value for your company. On the other hand, we believe that the ever-increasing complexity of the customer journey, the importance of privacy, the fact that Google's monopoly position has come under increasing pressure in recent years, combined with the rise of artificial intelligence or AI, over the past 7 years has led to a absolute proliferation of new products and (too quickly) changing legal & product requirements.
SEA therefore requires special expertise, experience and maturity, certainly for search, but also for the more recent 'black box' solutions from Google such as Performance Max.
Our main task
For all companies, large and small, we have seen for years that moderate or poor management inevitably means that a large part of the hard-earned money be wasted unnecessarily to Mediaspend. Money that would have been better spent on growth and entrepreneurship!
We see it as our main task to show you as entrepreneurs how much money you are losing, to stop the bleeding as quickly as possible and to protect you from the pitfalls of advertising. Both the results with our current clients, our proven track record as our numerous references confirm and underline this.
Our solutions
How do we ensure that you can save on your advertising expenditure on Google, and that these savings allow you to spend more on media budgets that actually yield a return?
We are not going to tell you all about our tricks of the trade here, but essentially we do this by (1) working on efficiency, (2) ensuring the best possible relevance and quality and (3) intelligently increasing quantity.
At the same time, we know the interrelationships between the channels and their effects on each other like no other and we can also seamlessly coordinate each component within broader, effective 360° marketing campaignsAs performance marketing specialists, we not only look for visibility, engagement and traffic, but especially for the right return in turnover and profit.
Correct expectations
Although Google presentations (and possibly on this site as well, according to you) often present a good news show with superlatives such as “amazing” and “fantastic”, we would like to temper expectations for some sole proprietorships and smaller SMEs. Depending on your sector and competition it is not always the case that your business will immediately make huge leaps when you start with this. Sometimes it is more the case that your business will not be able to sustain itself or grow steadily in the long run if you not advertises online.
There is indeed a management cost and a media budget required that is not the case for smaller players – in some sectors – is not immediately in equilibrium with the profit margin yield. Digital transformation is effectively vital, but everyone must embark on it at their own pace and (budget) possibilities.
We help you with that. It is our job to estimate your return in advance and then guide you from the start. to demonstrate transparently what the results are. And we can proudly say that after our optimizations we have achieved an average of increase turnover by a quarter with a quarter less costs.
For larger companies, enormous growth is possible and we sometimes achieve it up to 50-60% more total turnover with a 25-30% higher SEA investmentFor all clients (large and small), we see it as our task not only to win against advertisers who offer more than you, but also to keep competing advertisers with deeper pockets (sufficiently) at bay in the long term.
Why we can help you better
We defend your interestsTogether with our peers and competitors, we continuously question the results and products of the advertising platforms.
We conduct tests to verify that the claims made by the providers are correct.
Or we connect to the Ads & Reporting API to find out, for example, for Performance Max which ad formats are shown on which networks and whether or not this is disadvantageous for you.
Or we challenge Google specialists and Account Managers on issues we see as shortcomings or missed opportunities in the hope that they will adopt and develop our product improvements.
Finally, we believe that we can serve you better than our competitors because of our knowledge of feed based advertising with feed management tools such as Channable or Search Ads 360 or because we look beyond just direct revenue. For example, we measure the impact of increased paid advertising on your bottom line or profit margin via marketing automation tools such as Adobe Advertising Cloud, Hubspot, Salesforce or your Order Management System or OMS.
With our down-to-earth data-driven approach, we primarily want to provide answers to your impasses and the issues that keep you awake at night (or should keep you awake at night). We always maintain a rock-solid focus on direct results which we can also deliver in the short term, but at the same time with a well-considered vision and sustainable approach so that we can continue to steadily build on the total long-term impact.
Are you sure you are making optimal use of search engine advertising?
We are happy to map out for you how your company scores in terms of SEA or Search Engine Advertising (Search Engine Advertising, Search, Shopping, Performance Max) & DV (Display & Video) and can immediately provide you with the tools to optimize your account as efficiently as possible and maximize your return.
We investigate whether everything is optimal and whether you are using all possibilities to maximize your turnover and profit. Maybe you are looking for a sounding board or 2nd opinion to know whether you (or your current Agency) are doing well with the right Google Ads efforts? Or maybe you want more automation in your account with scripts and feeds. Or you want to set up dynamic remarketing or just higher in the funnel to address more people with Display & Video Advertisements aimed at acquisition. In any case, we focus more or less on the components that require our attention because they pose an opportunity or threat to your performance.
We spend 1 day with 2 senior profiles on collecting all accesses and data and presenting the findings and recommendations afterwards. Depending on the number of days we are allowed to spend on the analysis and elaboration of the document itself, we distinguish the 4 types of analyses below. All components described below are covered in each of the 4 analyses but are discussed superficially or in more depth as more time becomes available for the analysis.
Baseline measurement
SEA Basic Research
Reporting: Do you measure and report correctly and manage your SEA based on the right (data-driven) insights into your return?
Keywords & Biddable Items: Are you bidding smartly on the right keywords, dynamic targets or products to optimally reach your target audience?
Advertisements: Are your ads and extensions of sufficient quality, relevance and variety, and do they lead to the right landing pages and websites?
SEA Quick scan
Average Accounts
Targeting: Are you using the right targeting options to reach your target audience in the most cost-efficient way?
Shopping / Performance Max: Are you making optimal use of the possibilities of Shopping and/or Performance Max to maximize your product sales?
Performance: Can you still improve your performance in terms of structure, efficiency, automation, advanced bidding strategies, artificial intelligence, new features & betas, budget and other engines?
SEA Audit
Advanced Accounts
Competition: Are you sufficiently aware of your relationship with your competitors, their gaps and do you respond to this to the maximum by not attacking them on the right fronts or by attacking them on the right fronts?
Automation: Are you making sufficient use of scripts, dynamic remarketing and/or feed-based advertising to limit manual work and work scalably where possible in order to increase your efficiency and relevance?
SEA Full Audit
Depth Analysis
Upper Funnel: Are you reaching (sufficient) new prospects at the top of the conversion funnel?
Expert: Do you use advanced tools such as attribution, predictive forecasting, media mix modeling and hyper-personalized messaging and do you have a 360° view of the complete omnichannel Customer Journey?
Get up to half your money back* if you decide to implement the plans from the audit with us**
Setting up, managing and optimizing Google Ads campaigns is complex. Google Ads changes quickly and the possibilities are endless. From a media spend of €24K per year or an average of €2K per month we will yield for you. At the same time, we have experience with media budgets that amount to several €Mio per year.
It pays to hire specialists because you lose too much time and waste money unnecessarily if you try to master it yourself.
So ask now Google Ads baseline measurement, quick scan or audit and discover how much more turnover and profit we can generate for you. For almost every account, the minimum improvement in return is 10%. Improvements of 20-25% are common and can go up to 33% and higher. If you then hire us to realize that for you, we will also give you a Discount from 50%! Always a Win-Win for you!
*50% Discount for Zero Measurement, Quick Scan & Audit. 45% Discount for Full Audit ** For Collaboration from 3 Days per Month
Video & Display Ads
What is it?
Under display & video advertising we understand all advertisements that are not triggered by search queries but are aimed at users from your target group while they have certain websites, apps or social media visits, by showing banners or other advertising formats such as (a combination of) text, images, flash animations, video and audio. As mentioned earlier, the main goal of such campaigns is often to increase the:
- Branding, Visibility (impressions), Staying Top of Mind
- Engagement (click-through rate (CTR), view ratio (VR) or engagement rate (ER))
- Traffic (clicks, sessions)
- Return (leads, lead value, revenue, profit)
The main successes for the Display network in terms of performance we consistently achieve Dynamic remarketing campaigns, Smart Display Campaigns (smart campaign with machine learning that optimizes based on conversions), Google Discovery Ads (on mobile) and YouTube Remarketing Ads (Video Action Campaigns).
Display ads are shown on over 3 million websites, in over 650,000 apps and in Google services such as Gmail and YouTube and are therefore extremely suitable for branding, awareness & consideration purposes. Each (sub)network and advertising format has certain strengths that you can or cannot use depending on your objective(s).
Your ° 1 Conversion Booster is your Banner or Video
Your most important conversion booster for Display & Video is by far your banner, rich media, interstitial or video ads. We can definitely help you track all of them best practices so that you can create banners, videos and ads that can prevent so-called banner blindness and will reach your target audience grab and attract them to your website.
For video / youtube we currently book the best results with Video Action Campaigns and Video Reach Campaigns. Here too, all kinds of things apply best practices that increase your chances of sales and long-term branding impact such as the ABCD of effective video ads or the choice for the right YouTube ad formats, or adding video cards or annotations to increase the click-through rate to your website.
Purchasing advertising space and managing settings, targeting and ads is also quite complex here, so we recommend that you make use of our experience as this will save you money.
Programmatic Advertising
Are you a large advertiser, retailer or A-brand that operates in at least 4 markets/countries? Then the Google inventory may be too limited for you and you probably also need more automation, (targeting) possibilities, efficiency and a simplification of your workflow. Such as the management of your media across the different channels.
Advertise with Display & Video 360 and Campaign Manager 360 out of the Google Marketing Platform or GMP* – or Adform – might be something for you. (*) GMP was formerly known as the DoubleClick advertising stack, and is currently still considered the Rolls Royce of corporate advertising.
This way you get access to a wider inventory / more exchanges – in the same interface, you can more easily create impressive ads from the wide range of interactive advertising formats from the Rich media gallery, and you get access to tons of extra features, such as controlling how many times a user will see your ads across your different channels (frequency cap).
In addition to purchasing on the open auction, you can also purchase more premium inventory via the private marketplaces or preferred deals; via automated guaranteed or programmatic guaranteed, in addition to setting up direct deals.
Paid Social Media Marketing (Paid Social)
Meta (Facebook & Instagram)
Together with Display & Video, Meta occupies a shared second place as the most important paid marketing channel. Facebook changed its name to Meta at the end of 2021. It brings all other companies under it as sister companies (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.). The new name should better reflect where the company wants to go with its technology, namely the Metaverse: a digital world where people can move between different devices and communicate in a virtual environment.
Purchasing advertising space and managing settings, targeting and ads is also quite complex here, so we recommend that you make use of our experience as this will save you money.
Depending on your sector and campaign objectives, we can often also marketing, sales and Analytics recommend LinkedIn solutions from their range of professional tools. Would you rather get started with LinkedIn yourself? Then there is also a complete skill building / learning / certification platform that can best be continued.
Marketplaces & Affiliate Marketing
Depending on your sector and campaign objectives, we are also happy to increase your sales and turnover by setting up or optimizing other high performance channels such as marketplaces & affiliate marketing. We are also happy to see how we can best help or assist you.
OUR WORKING METHOD
Strategic annual plan including all costs
Every year we estimate how much setup & management hours – and if applicable – media spend per channel we think we need to achieve the stated goals and we record these in mutual consultation.
In addition to the monthly averages, we also record a maximum upper limit (and/or lower limit) fixed of both agency fees (hours) and media spend. This way you know in advance exactly what your maximum (and/or minimum) invoice is, including all additional costs such as paid software.
With us, you know exactly where you stand in advance and you will never be faced with any unpleasant surprises.
100% Transparency
We are also very proud of our time tracking and invoicing, who 100% transparent and detailed is.
With us, no vague description with a single amount next to it for the entire month, but a clear overview with the totals per channel, with a detailed printout of each performance per day as an attachment, logically divided per channel and component and provided with a detailed description which provides further explanation.
Yes, you guessed it right: with us you know exactly what to expect in advance and you will never be faced with any unpleasant surprises.
Finger on the pulse
To keep our finger on the pulse of the results, we work on top of our ad hoc contacts with:
- Real-time reporting & clear dashboards so that the necessary stakeholders have a correct picture of your performance at all times
- A Real-time dashboard of our project management in which you can consult all tasks per channel, per status, and according to priority in complete transparency: this way you always know what we are working on, in what order and how long each task takes.
- Monthly meetings via video call or in real life in which we analyze the results together, go through all current affairs, adjust priorities, eliminate bottlenecks, discuss new wishes, needs or threats, schedule additional tasks, etc.
- Business reviews in which we measure to what extent the set (sub)goals were achieved, analyze which components or segments catalyzed or slowed down growth and we perform in-depth analyses to understand and map the underlying reasons for this. Depending on the needs and the space for this, this is done quarterly, half-yearly or annually.
Clear Layout of our managed services
The same method is used across all channels (both paid and non-paid).
Often it starts with checking or setting up the measurements of the website, app or interfaces (trackingThe measurements can be used to map the current situation or to perform a zero measurement (analysis). Based on this data and the market situation, a goal is determined and a (digital) strategy is devised to achieve this goal (strategyFor this purpose, the necessary traction channels are set up (setup).
Any action where we act reactively (for example to keep the channels in line with necessary requirements such as changing product requirements or legal requirements – we log as maintenance (maintenance).
When we proactively implement changes to achieve better results, we speak of optimization (optimization).
Afterwards we will re-analyse whether improvements are possible and what these are (analysis) and the cycle starts again.
We log for you separately per channel how much time we spend on each component or next step to make our work as transparent as possible for you.
You prefer to do it yourself, but would like a sounding board?
In addition to our full service offering, where we take care of both strategy and implementation, you can also contact us for support, management (project management), advice (consultancy) and training (training).