Michelle Wilding-Baker – Head of Digtal & Content at FreeSat, UK Search Awards Judge and Industry Expert talks Awards!
I have been a Search Awards judge for almost 5 years! Why do I do it?
Well, it isn’t for the money! People think judges are paid, but it is a volunteer role.
The reason I commit my time is because Search is my passion, and the UK Search Awards raise the standards in our industry and ensure the reputation of high quality work. Awards keep the industry in check and the UK Search Awards is one of the toughest to win. The quality and calibre of entries is always extremely high, and if you win or make the final it’s an achievement to get through ‘the gauntlet.’ They are esteemed because the judges are professionals and experts who believe in the quality of the whole industry and because the judging criteria is designed for the Search industry.
Why You Should Enter A Team Award?
When entering an award there is a level of personal achievement and recognition which boosts team morale. Anyone could win a campaign award if they had an epic piece of work, but a team award means so much more. Having led teams in the past and having won a ‘Best In-House Team’ I have seen that a team award entry is definitely a representation of the hard work, personal growth, results, culture and bond a team has. It shows collaboration and discipline which businesses admire whether it’s an agency or in-house brand.
Entries that Stand Out…
Without naming brands/agencies… winners that stand out have cutting-edge submissions where they thought beyond the box and their work was truly innovating and automating. Search is an industry that is only getting harder over time with goal posts constantly moving, loop holes higher to jump through and more data points than ever to sift through… being able to automate and predict is an art.
Top Tip for your 2021 Entry
Judges have to be able to benchmark what ‘great’ looks like and if objectives were achieved or exceeded. Inserting graphs into your entry to visualise your performance, including creatives from your campaign and photos of your team if it’s a team/agency award make a difference to an entry. It’s about the people, not just hard numbers and revenue.
I will be in London for the Awards Ceremony in November and I look forward to meeting the cutting edge of Search, I hope that is you.
Michelle is a globally award-winning digital marketer who specialises in data-first customer acquisition (owned/paid/earned), SEO and content strategy. She graduated with First Class Honours in Communication Studies (Journalism) and is armed with more than a decade of marketing and editorial experience across international, SME and start-up brands in highly competitive FinTech, Insurance, Travel, Beauty, eCommerce and publishing industries. Now leading the digital marketing, eCommerce, editorial, content and social strategy remit at Freesat and consulting on a project-basis for Oh Mishy, she previously completed 2.5 years as Head of SEO & Content at The Telegraph Media Group where she hired and led the ‘Best Brand SEO Team’ of 2019. Michelle regularly judges industry marketing and eCommerce awards, guest speaks at events and co-organises the ‘Take It Offline’ Digital Marketing Roundtable in London and Europe
What does being a sponsor at a Don’t Panic Event mean to you?
Your in-kind support of the digital community shows you care about the same things they do. In relation to our events, that is the recognition and reward of creativity, innovation and tenacity that digital achieves to be outstanding.
In return for your care and support you get…
Direct access to a specific, digital audience who are guaranteed to want to engage with you and your products.
Opportunity to shape your consumer attitudes. Your support will ensure your audience has a positive attitude towards your company. Your association with Don’t Panic also sends the message of ethical, fair and transparent – it is our award motto.
Media exposure and coverage from the Awards industry and related commerce. Your branding will appear on websites and social, but also on email marketing and related news and blog posts. You can even guest blog for an event, if you want to!
The chance to differentiate yourself from your competitors who don’t support the industry. Your relationship with your market becomes personal and the emotional value of that is exponential as it begins the journey to ‘trust.’
Increased reach from word-of-mouth marketing. Your positive interaction and promotional materials allow you to reach beyond the award ceremony and networking opportunities. Don’t Panic offer longevity for your sponsorship. If you get your sponsorship in early then from the moment a website is launched to the relaunch the following year, your name will be associated with the Awards. You are not only connecting to the shortlist and winners, you are connecting to the wider digital community.
There are many more reasons to and benefits from sponsoring an award or two and there are many ways to get involved, from sponsoring a whole event, award category or even an award game or activity, which incidentally go on during virtual events too.
Don’t Panic run 28 digital awards around the world, your relationship with Don’t Panic reaches a global audience by association.
Talk to Helen Barkley, Managing Director to discuss exactly what Don’t Panic can offer, including bespoke packages with opportunities to host webinars or demos, or perhaps you have some ideas of your own on how to join the community and party. Telephone: +44 1706 828855
So this week feels like something of a milestone, Don’t Panic turns 16 years old.
I wanted to take a moment to reminisce a little about the baby I created 16 years ago.
We started, as with all babies, with a lot of nurture, long hours and interrupted sleep whilst we poured heart and soul into doing it right! As it grew we had tantrums, late nights, door slamming and drunken adventures (us not our baby!) At 16 we are heading into adulthood, fully formed, profitable and successful and continuing the late nights and adventures!
I started Don’t Panic back in 2005. I was a hugely reluctant entrepreneur, after leaving ‘Out There Events’ I literally couldn’t get a job in fact I was turned down by quite a few events agencies (I’m hoping they still regret that!) After six weeks of unemployment my husband Andy Wake suggested I should set up on my own Events company and after a little kicking and screaming by me (it runs in the family), we hotfooted it to PC world, bought a computer and installed me in our front bedroom. My baby needed a name and Andy often joked that left to my own devices it would have been called Nicky Wake Events, however after a lot of head scratching, a few bottles of red wine and a bit of brainstorming Andy picked up the book I was reading The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, its cover was emblazoned with the words ‘Don’t Panic’ and the rest is history – big shout out to Douglas Adams.
Next step we needed to dress our precious baby! We visited Bury’s Printing.com and met Adam Hindle, who now runs Fluid Digital. Adam was to be a central part of the early days of Don’t Panic. Adam designed and printed our first iconic pink letterheads, business cards and eventually built our first awards websites and social media wall. Another thank you, that pink outfit still fits today! (If only that was true of all my award outfits!)
Now we were ready to get out into the big wide world. I did outreach before the term even existed! I wrote to literally everyone I’d ever worked with telling them I was setting up and to get in touch if I could help… we then waited patiently for the phone to ring and eventually it did! A few wrong numbers later, I got a call from Philip Young, a lecturer from Sunderland University who had spoken at a few conferences I’d organise. He’d had an idea for a conference about this thing called blogging and how it could perhaps revolutionise PR! Philip was way ahead of his time! After several calls we set about planning a one-day conference called ‘Blogging, RSS and the New PR’. Concurrently I had a call from another PR speaker, Andy Green, known for his inspirational training on creativity. Andy also had a conference idea; an event to explore how PR people could influence communications in the wake of the 7/7 London bombings. Don’t Panic was up on its feet and toddling with our first two events booked. Interesting both were organised on a no risk, no fee basis with Don’t Panic earning and retaining our fees – this was unusual in the events world but became the basis of our future business model. To this day we are an incredibly unique events agency who create, build and own our own events and assets.
The business went from strength to strength and in late 2007 Andy Wake left his well-paid communications job in Greater Manchester Police (gulp) to join Don’t Panic. He was responsible for all our early design, print and built our first ever website. A few years later we hired our first full time employee Rowan Jamieson (now Rowan Schahill) who was a hugely valued member of our team and instrumental in putting some order in my chaotic way of working. During this time we worked with some incredible clients creating brilliant events, they included JustGiving.com , Trimedia , NHS Blood & Transplant, University of Bolton, UCLan, SEMrush, Urban Splash, The Learning and Skills Council, PRMoment.com, Educate North, Royal Liverpool NHS, Tameside NHS, CityCo, Bruntwood, Manchester Digital, CIM, PRCA, CIPR and Click Consult to name just a few. A special shout out is due to Nick Jaspan and Profilic North (previously known as How-Do) who were an instrumental client in our continued growth and I remain hugely proud of some of the joint ventures and collaborations we created – along with a good few hangovers…
Around this time, 2009, we decided to launch Some Comms an awards celebrating the very best in social media. The awards were a great success and much loved by the PR industry. Today they are known as the UK Social Media Awards which better reflects what they are – Andy Wake was way too clever with his branding at times!
In 2010 we were lucky enough to be asked to organise SAScon, a one day conference which was the brainchild of Simon Wharton, Richard Gregory, Pete Young, Ben McKay, Peter Cobley and Richard Hudson. They wanted to create a conference for Manchester’s search community, and over way too many beers, on regular occasions (my favourite ever event planning sessions!) SAScon was born. During this conference we were totally blown away by the impact SEO was having on businesses bottom line and the difference a page one listing can make to profitability is mind blowing. After more beers and after parties we suddenly realised there wasn’t an Awards for the SEO & PPC industry, so we decided to launch the Search Awards. We were lucky enough to secure our headline sponsor Gareth Hoyle, a great supporter of ours over the years, which helped underwrite the risk to Don’t Panic. ‘Entrepreneur’ was beginning to suit me!
The first Search Awards was awesome! We had over 150 entries, 200 plus attendees and a very very messy night, the search crowd loved, and still do, an opportunity to dress up and party. They started calling in the UK Search Awards so we quickly bought that domain! While at that night myself and Andy had the idea of an EU Search Awards in Amsterdam and the rest is history! We now run search awards in APAC, MENA, USA, Europe, UK, Global in New York and are planning launches for Africa and Asia. We’ve also been proud to work with Olga and the team at SEMRush on their Nordic Search awards and Australia Search Awards which led to delivering an event at Sydney Opera House, a particularly proud moment! Thanks also to Dixon Jones, a legend in the search industry who has been a long time supporter and champion of ours and introduced us to Brett Tabke, founder of Pubcon and host to the US Search Awards in Vegas.
Sadly in 2017 Andy fell ill, he had a heart attack which resulted in a catastrophic brain injury and we sadly finally lost him to Covid in 2020. We raise a glass to you Andy and salute all that you did for Don’t Panic.
Fast forward to 2020 and a global pandemic – who saw that coming?! Well apart from Bill Gates! The covid pandemic could literally have decimated the events industry. Thankfully the incredible Don’t Panic team lead by our now MD Helen, Michelle our FD, Sarah Power our Ops Manager and Chloe our Creative Director were hugely agile and quickly pivoted our business model to virtual events. Their quick and creative thinking has ensured our survival and profitability and we even managed to add a few awards to our portfolio! We are now back to a full staff complement of 20, we now own and deliver 35 prestigious awards events around the globe and are looking forward to an office move next week.
We are also FINALLY back to running live events and its never felt better, we literally cannot wait for September and the UK Agency Awards – that is going to be one hell of a party!
Over the years we’ve employed some amazing people, seen a few staff weddings and several Don’t Panic babies born and we are still growing up ourselves.
My news, after 16 years I’ve decided the time is right to take a slight step away from day to day management and I’ve promoted Helen Kirkland to MD. Helen is a brilliant and a perfect fit for the role. I’m confident the business is in very good hands. I’ll still be around causing chaos and dreaming up new awards ideas, networking (basically lunching with our clients, sponsors, judges and supporters!) as well as attending the majority of our awards – well who doesn’t like a party!
I will close by saying the biggest of thankyous to everyone who has been part of this 16 year journey including obviously Andy Wake, Finn my gorgeous son who lets Mummy go on various work trips to Vegas (its hard work honest!) my Dad John Pennington and his wife Mary who have provided countless hours of support, Dog Dog sitting and childcare, my amazing Senior Team, Helen, Sarah, Michelle and Chloe, our non-exec director Richard Gregory, all our incredible sponsors and our fabulous judges without who we wouldn’t have our awards, our loyal customers, the digital industry as a whole who have taken us in the hearts and given us so much support, all our staff past and present, our incredible presenters and speakers, our AV, trophy and print suppliers. Special thanks also to Steve Kunciewicz our trusted lawyer and supporter, Dave Edmunson Bird our chair of academic standards and Judith Lewis, probably our most longstanding judge (and chief wine taster!)
I hope to see you all soon at one or many of our Awards at the end of the year. Good Luck with your entries!
Space 48, like us, have trust at the heart of their philosophy. During their 13 year history they have provided a range of eCommerce consulting services for clients with a focus on designing solutions to improve end-customer experiences and drive online sales.
Experts in eCommerce, Space 48 work with leading brands including Ordnance Survey, Richer Sounds, Irregular Choice, and Menkind. Their depth and breadth of knowledge includes website development, UX and UI design, performance marketing, and app development.
Jon Woodall, MD & Founder of Space48 and proud husband and Daddy, is highly respected and a recognised figure in eCommerce. Jon is fascinated by all things digital, which is why in 2008 he combined his passion with business to start Space 48. What Jon and Space 48 don’t know about eCommerce isn’t worth knowing, which is why he makes the ideal partner for the UK eCommerce Awards.
Jon says…
“The idea for the UK Ecommerce Awards was born from a desire to recognise excellence and success in ecommerce and lead change in the industry. It’s an amazing opportunity to shine a spotlight on various brands, technology partners, and other agencies that are doing excellent work. It’s an event that can bring together our community of like-minded professionals to network and celebrate each other. I think there was a need for an awards event that would be open to businesses of all sizes, celebrating the talent and dedication of online businesses that often fly below the radar. Don’t Panic was the perfect partner to help make the awards come to life without a hitch and we’re looking forward to collaborating with them for the third year.”
To enter the UK eCommerce Awards download your entry form here
Don’t Panic Awards celebrate digital excellence around the Globe. Which is why Pimento are the perfect fit as awards partner.
The Global Award series has shown us that you don’t have to be big to be brilliant. The smaller and independent agencies harbour incredible talent and digital growth is the proven result. Over the past year, our Awards have celebrated and recognised the best campaigns, innovations and people wherever they come from, and we are pleased to have Pimento supporting us in our endeavours.
Pimento are ‘The UK’s Leading Independent Marketing & Communications Network.’ Working with a community of independent consultants and agencies they are ‘built to help brands thrive.’
Pimento build bespoke teams to suit a clients’ specific needs, adapting over time as change happens. They bring together experts in:
Branding
Communications
CX, UX & build
Content & social
Data & insight
Retail & ecommerce
Technology & innovation
PR & reputation
Stephen Knight, CEO and Founder of Pimento said “We are delighted to partner with Don’t Panic again this year. We like to work with the very best and they have a very similar ethos to us. They recognise outstanding marketing across a broad range of sectors including the independent agency community. They share our common values and attitudes, and recognise the talent and creativity that agencies can bring. We look forward to the return to live events this year.”
Stephen has judged the UK Agency Awards 2021. Stephen has held a variety of positions at major international agencies including Bates Dorland, Lowe Howard-Spink and WCRS. Five years with the Walt Disney Company, latterly as Senior Vice-President of Marketing and Brand Management for Europe, Middle East and Africa. He founded Pimento in 2005 and it is now Europe’s leading Independent network.
Don’t Panic second Stephen’s quote about returning to live events, we have already started in the UK and we feel the world awaits.
If you are interested in becoming Awards Partner or sponsoring an event, category or merchandise live or virtual, please contact Shenai on 07546 303745
The UK eCommerce Awards are brought to you by Don’t Panic Events in partnership and powered by Space 48.
The UK eCommerce Awards 2021 are celebrating websites, software, campaigns and teams (agency or in-house).
Website Awards
Across all eCommerce Industry Sectors the judges will be examining the website for creativity, functionality, user experience and conversion.
Innovation/Software/Extension Awards
Innovation and technology are evolving eCommerce. Judges will be looking for new features/tools added to eCommerce experiences in the last twelve months.
Campaign/Initiative/Awards
Campaigns / initiatives are key to increasing engagement. Judges will be looking at the campaign’s objectives, strategy, creativity, implementation and the overall results achieved.
Agency/Team/Individual Awards
Power to the people! These awards recognise the teams and individuals behind websites and campaigns. Judges will be looking for evidence of great team-work: creativity, challenges faced and overcome, and results.
The UK eCommerce Awards are judged by an esteemed panel of industry experts, who work with us to develop categories and judging criteria. The process is a transparent and rigorous two-step process and judges provide feedback on all entries.
Entering and winning a UK eCommerce Award provides industry recognition and informed social proof, increases future business opportunities and is a celebration and appreciation of the people that make online retail happen
Everyone can create social media content. But not everyone can create successful social media content that flies far and wide and returns home with big wins.
At least, not without first making time to strategize a social media campaign for it.
Let’s take a look at the steps you need to take for a social media campaign that meets its goals and makes your clients—and your agency—happy.
1. Know the goal of your campaign
To create a winning social media campaign, however, you first need to define its purpose: A social media marketing campaign is a series of strategic actions designed to focus on one specific marketing goal.
That goal can vary greatly, but it usually is one of the following:
Encourage sign-ups (for a website, program, newsletter, trial subscription, etc.)
Increase brand awareness
Drive more traffic to a website
Get more customers to visit the client’s store
Bring in more sales
Don’t make assumptions about what your client wants to happen. Instead, take time to map out with your client a clear understanding of the goal to be reached.
Keep in mind that not all clients are particularly eloquent. Some may not know exactly how to phrase what they want or even know if there’s a common term for it. (We social media types can fall into the habit of talking in jargon if we’re not careful!)
You’ll have to ask the right sort of questions to determine what your client wants. You will also have to dig into the data. After all, how can you tell whether social media helped boost sign-ups if you don’t have the baseline number of sign-ups before the campaign?
Establish the metrics needed to determine whether this social media campaign is successful.
Ditch the lingo and be very clear in your definitions
Some clients will know exactly what they want. But even so, make sure that you understand each other clearly. If you use a term, know what that term means for the client.
For example, the client may use the term “engagement,” and you may think the client means online interactions with social media … only to find out the client just meant “likes.” (What you consider a vanity metric might not be a vanity metric to the client.)
SMART goals are those that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-constrained. Take time to review your established goal for the social media marketing campaign with your client before you do any brainstorming of content, scheduling, or anything.
After all, failure to plan, as the saying goes, is a plan for failure.
2. Do the research
Once you know the goal of your social media marketing plan, you need to know specifically who you want to reach.
Is it existing clients? Potential clients? Both? People at the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel, or the bottom of the funnel? The whole funnel?
What to look up
Who your client’s audience is Does your client have established buyer personas that you can use? If not, create one, taking into account the audience’s age, location, education level, goals, challenges, and wants. Use Agorapulse’s audience reporting to determine demographics of your audience, for example.
The right channels for your client’s audience Your agency may love Instagram for engagement with your clients. But your audience isn’t necessarily your client’s audience. That group may prefer LinkedIn and Twitter, for example, and avoid Instagram.
Dig into the data to find out where your desired audience is … and meet them there.
What times are best for posting social media content Everyone wants to know the magic time for all the engagement, all the shares, all the love! We do know that daytime is usually the best time to post on Facebook, Wednesday is the best day for Instagram, and LinkedIn is usually best during business hours. But to specifically find the right times for your client’s social media content, you’ll have to dig in deeper. (Agorapulse can help you look at content performance and determine what’s best specifically for your client’s audience.)
What your client’s competitors are doing Brand monitoring can help listen to conversations about your client’s brand, the industry they are in, and even competitors. By taking time to listen to what everyone is talking about (especially social content from the competition that’s doing well), you can start planning a campaign that will do better than theirs.
3. Create a social media campaign calendar
After laying that groundwork, you’ll want to plan out the timeline for your campaign.
Agorapulse’s shared calendars can help agencies plan, create, and approve content for clients.
4. Craft Compelling Content
Now, it’s time to focus on creating unique, interesting, and compelling content. All crafted, of course, strategically—rather than haphazardly or on a whim.
Assemble your team and make sure that you know who is in charge of each content piece. If you are the one-person content team, you’ll want to give yourself realistic deadlines for each piece.
Quick checklist
One purpose for the content piece (Is it to inform? Entertain?)
Sanity check for videos (Blurriness, speed, quality, etc.)
The types of social content that you produce should vary. Include such social content as:
Behind-the-scenes videos
Visual content, such as quote cards
Twitter threads
Tutorials
Screencasts
Checklists
Testimonials and reviews
Lists
Downloadables (e.g., ebooks, whitepapers, etc.)
5. Schedule and launch social content
Use a social media management tool, such as Agorapulse, to upload videos, images, and written content for your social media marketing campaign.
Once the social content is published, you will want to set aside time to engage with your audience. That means staying on top of any comments, answering questions, and getting rid of spam. (Saved replies can help significantly in keeping up to speed with all of them.)
6. Review and optimize
So, how is everything going in your social media marketing campaign?
Check your metrics periodically throughout the life of the social media campaign.
Impressions (including paid, organic, and viral impressions)
Mentions and shares of content
In reviewing the social media metrics, you may discover that some content is doing great and some content is not.
But no worries! You can use that information to now edit, tweak, etc. the content to better hit the goal. You may need to change up your calls-to-action, scheduled times, write content that is better targeted, etc.
Knowing the metrics means fixing any issues that arise and also optimizing what is working.
7. Debrief
Once the social media campaign has run its course, your work is not done.
You’ll need to let your clients know all the details that they want regarding the campaign’s success. (Here’s where social media reporting is crucial once more.) Provide a clear social media report so your clients have everything available to read and digest on their own time as well.
Don’t forget to debrief your team as well. Share lessons learned with one another. Go through the report together. Doing so will equip you with social media and marketing insights to carry into your next social media campaign planning.
In Conclusion
A fantastic social media campaign doesn’t happen overnight. It involves careful research, planning, and a thought-out execution.
The above step-by-step guide should help your agency create a successful social media campaign.
Use a social media management tool, such as Agorapulse, you research, publish, engage, and report on the success of your campaign.
Ravi Shukle – Country Manager Agorapulse UK & Ireland @agorapulseukirl
We did it! We took UK Social Media Awards live in London last Thursday, 8th July and it was a huge success!
It was so incredible to see you all in person. I have to say it was an emotional night for me I got a little bit teary during my welcome speech. It has, for us all, been a difficult 18 months and the UK Social Media Awards showed us the future is looking bright.
As we move towards the end of the year, we have a combination of live and virtual events taking place and I hope you will be joining us for at least one of each!
Thank you for all the support you have shown the Don’t Panic Awards, we are passionate about celebrating outstanding work across the digital industry and our judges tell us you are excelling at outstanding.
For everyone who made it to London, thank you for joining us, for those winners who couldn’t get there your trophies are on their way.
Where next? Back to London tomorrow for the UK Content Awards and then … we will back across the Globe as soon as we can make it happen.
Get involved! We love to hear your Award stories. How it felt to win, what impact it has had on your team, the response from clients to Awards and the excitement related to entering again with a new campaign or project. You can get yourselves in our newsletter and on our blog pages by contacting our Content Manager Sue. And don’t forget if you are not entering an award you can sponsor an event, award category, activities or paraphernalia that attendees can enjoy. Talk to our Sponsorship Manager, Shenai who will arrange the perfect collaboration.
Don’t Panic now own and run 29 industry recognised, trusted, ethical and fair Awards across the digital industry and around the world.
One of the first awards we launched was the Search Awards. Inspired by SAScon, a search industry conference the Don’t Panic Team organised, the awards were born because we were blown away by the positive impact and ROI, well executed SEO & PPC campaigns were having on client bottom lines.
Back then, in 2011, the Search industry had a somewhat ‘dodgy’ reputation because of ‘black hat activity’ but we recognised that outstanding ‘white hat activity’ was taking place and that this needed to be celebrated. The Search industry needed a gold standard, awards to recognise ethical and excellent work and we created one!
Working with a panel of industry experts we established categories and judging criteria that valued and measured outstanding work. The first awards was a great success and went from being UK based to the international stage you know today.
After the Search Awards were launched, we quickly realised that other Digital industries faced the same problems, there was nowhere that recognised excellence or rewarded great practice. So that led us into Content, Biddable, Agency, eCommerce, Business Tech, Marketing, App and in 2021 Company Culture.
All Don’t Panic Awards are judged by esteemed, leading industry experts. Judges who work within the relevant digital fields, who are not allowed to enter the awards themselves! We believe this makes our Award accolades both industry recognised but also trustworthy to clients (existing and future) and everyone involved in digital. They are not a popularity contest, they awarded on merit and if judges feel that a category does not have a deserving winner, they won’t award one!
Judges sign a ‘judging code of conduct’ to ensure confidentiality and to provide peace of mind to entrants. Judging discussions are confidential and material is not shared with anyone outside of the judging panel before or after the ceremony. Neither will judging papers be shared with third parties and they are deleted immediately after judging has taken place.
Don’t Panic Awards have been awarded the Awards Trust Mark, an independent accreditation programme which validates the ethical process on all their awards. As part of the Awards Trust Mark all entrants receive qualitative feedback they can trust on their entries, which we believe provides opportunity for development, growth and direction for future entries.
Don’t Panic are pleased to be partnering with Clever Ads. In support of the Digital Community, Clever Ads are partnering Awards and sponsoring Award categories across a number of Don’t Panic Events.
Clever Ads, value talent and their involvement in Awards is their way of appreciating and acknowledging the success and efforts of their fellow PPC Lovers.
Managing Google Ads when working at an advertising agency is not always easy. Between communicating proposals to clients, creating the campaigns, and the millions of other little things you have to worry about, you are due for some very busy days. If you manage client’s Google Ads campaigns frequently then this post is for you!
If you are looking for some instant inspiration, Clever Ads landing is designed specifically for PPC agencies. Here, you will find some great PPC tools that integrate with Google Chat, MS Teams, and Slack to make working as a team that much easier.
That being said, be sure to keep reading as we have compiled some great tips and tools to boost your productivity, streamline communication with clients, and just, overall, be more organized with your daily tasks.
Improving communications with your clients
Be Transparent
We believe that honesty and being upfront about things are always the best policy. Even if your client is not a Google Ads expert, you should make an effort to make sure they understand the strategies you are implementing. Clients should have access to their Google Ads account to gain some basic knowledge and experience. It can also be beneficial to teach them a bit about Google Ads, as this can help build trust between you and your clients.
Use the best tools
Many PPC agencies use Slack to communicate with clients. Since slack offers a wide variety of integrations to install, it is easy to make communication more efficient and keep everyone well-informed. Clever Ads offers a free tool that you can install to share metrics, reports, and graphs about your Google Ads campaigns. If your team is not working with Slack, this tool is also available for MS Teams and Google Chat. Finally, no more ugly screenshots of the Google Ads interface with too much data to sort through! This will make your life easier, not having to share huge screenshots from the Google Ads interface with tons of data and numbers.
Google Ads Tips for Agencies
Structuring Ads
While the final layout depends greatly on personal preference, there are some standard formats that you can use to save you some time.
Keyword Match Type: by structuring campaigns based on keyword match type, you will have two campaigns, one for broad match and one for exact, which gives you better control of the budget
Ad Groups: if you want to target keywords with specific messages, you can dedicate a group to your top keywords and have more control over which keywords your budget is spent on
Campaign naming!
When you manage multiple accounts, campaigns, and ads, the way that you title them is critical to your agency’s success. It is important to avoid generic names and be as specific as possible to remain organized. When it comes time to filter analytics reports, you will thank your past self for having developed a consistent and clear campaign naming plan.
Don’t get too comfortable with Google Ads Express
While Google Ads Express can be great for bulk actions, it isn’t the best for a PPC agency. It is a tool that leaves you with very limited control over the account, potentially wasting your budget on unprofitable keywords and audiences. This level of automation can be harmful to the campaigns you manage, so you want to ensure you still have lots of control over the account.
A tip for acquiring new clients!
Acquiring new clients is probably the most challenging task for Google Ads agencies; however, a strategy you can use is to conduct a Google Search on businesses you know and see if they utilize Google Ads. For the ones that are using Google Ads, perform an audit and provide them with some suggestions to improve their campaigns that you can help them to implement.
I hope these tips will help you at your online advertising agency and that you will see a big impact. Organization and structure are the biggest things to remember when you are managing data from a lot of accounts. Make sure to always keep them in mind! 😉
Don't Panic has been an invaluable partner to the Craft Beer Marketing Awards. Their unwavering dedication and expertise has played a pivotal role in the evolution and growth of the CBMAS competition each season.
Jimm & Jackie Craft Beer Marketing Awards
Working with Don’t Panic for several years helped to transform The Fashion Network business. It allowed us to focus on the things we are good at whilst a team of professionals took care of all the event logistics.
Dale Hicks, Director The Fashion Network
From the inception of the awards, Don't Panic has consistently demonstrated a passion to help us reach our objectives. Furthermore, the friendliness, professionalism, and responsiveness exhibited by the entire Don't Panic team is commendable.
Jimm & Jackie Craft Beer Marketing Awards
Don’t Panic Events continues to raise the bar of their events each and every year. Participating in each of the Search Awards is always a special experience for us as an organization, they provide an opportunity to celebrate the successes of our amazing industry with so many of our clients, partners and colleagues, all in one room.
Jennifer Hoffman, Marketing Director DeepCrawl
From the initial planning stages to the execution of the event, their team demonstrated unparalleled professionalism, creativity, and attention to detail. Don’t Panic perfectly understood our vision and went the extra mile to ensure it was brought to life. It was like having an extended department within our business!
Dale Hicks, Director The Fashion Network
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