Category Archives: AdWords Agency Blog

Tips and tools for agencies

Spin your agency into the future

Anass Koudiss | Global Education Programme Manager, Leadership

Reading time: 3 minutes

If you’ve read a newspaper or an advertising industry magazine in the last few weeks, it’s very likely that machine learning and automation were mentioned at least once. They’re the hottest new topics in the marketing world.

As the tech evolves, and manual tasks move towards automation, it’s up to agency leaders to make sure it’s being used to provide new value to their clients and spur agency growth.

Since every agency is unique, each will need to take its own approach. Every agency has its own strengths, growth opportunities and resource capabilities. What many agencies have in common, though, is their powerful ability to grow and transform quickly in an industry that’s constantly changing.

At Google, we’re powering our advertising solutions with machine learning. Automated solutions like Smart Bidding, Smart Creatives, and App campaigns take care of routine tasks, freeing up your team to focus on ad-testing, advanced insights, or more face time with clients.

As with any big change, adopting this new approach takes a lot of planning. So we developed a powerful framework called “The Web of Transformation”, to help you envision the future of your unique agency. To get started, bring your leadership team together, print out this A3 poster, and spin your agency web with the following steps:

1. To begin, choose the eight most important dimensions that make up your agency. Specifically, pick the eight things that help you and your clients grow.

2. Feel free to choose from the suggestions here, but make sure you pick dimensions that make sense for your agency.

3. Next, with the help of your team, rank each of the eight dimensions from most important to least.

4. Finally, grade your ability in each dimension on a scale of 1 to 5. Here’s an example of what it should look like.

5. Make sure to evaluate and analyse where you excel, and where you need to step up your game. Ask yourselves the questions below to help drive the discussion.

Together, we can use this process to capitalize on automation and Machine Learning opportunities, as we've done before with mobile, multi-screen, and video. So weave your web carefully, it will give you a glimpse into the future of your agency.

Source: AdWords Agency Blog

At SXSW, creative agencies partner with Ad Council and YouTube to spark stories for a cause

What do Ozzy Osbourne and Prince Charles have in common? A lot, if you're looking at demographics alone; they're both male, born in the same year, and from England. Yet, as has been pointed out many times before, identifiers like age and gender don't give the full picture.

For SXSW, we've partnered with 6 world-class creative agencies to explore how audience signals - beyond demographic data - can enable a spark for better, more relevant storytelling.

Partnering with Ad Council on three causes - empowering girls in STEM, preparing for disasters, and ending hunger - we challenged each agency to each develop two different creatives that would resonate with the intended audience they wanted to engage, from sports fans to technophiles.

The 12 campaigns, showcasing how customized creative can ignite conversations and action around important causes, will debut at SXSW on March 9th.

Check out the full playlist to yt.be/SparkYourStory or dive in more to the story behind the work below.

To Empower Girls in STEM

Research shows that young girls are interested in STEM subjects but get discouraged from pursuing them by outdated stereotypes(1). AMP Agency and Hecho Studios took on the challenge to create ads that would speak to key audiences for She Can STEM and encourage them to empower young women in their lives in STEM.

AMP Agency

While it's often difficult to know what leads a girl down the path to success, AMP Agency recognized that parents and other role models may play the most important role in guiding their futures. A core message unites the two creatives; you can set a young woman's future in motion by clueing into her interests and nourishing her passion for STEM.

Watch the ad designed for tech-savvy people.

Watch the ad designed for bargain hunters.

Hecho Studios

To speak to parents of grade schoolers as well as avid readers, Hecho Studios developed an eye-catching showcase of women who have pioneered STEM fields.

Watch the ad designed for parents of grade schoolers.

Watch the ad designed for avid readers.

To Drive Disaster Preparedness

While the thought of preparing for a natural disaster can be overwhelming, developing an emergency plan can save lives. We Are Unlimited and Energy BBDO partnered with Ad Council to inspire more people to develop household disaster plans.

Energy BBDO

Recognizing that pet-lovers tend to watch humourous videos skiwing toward dog content, Energy BBDO created a funny spot featuring a conversation between a dog and owner. For DIYers, Energy BBDO developed high-action creative after seeing how this audience over indexed on action packed videos.

Watch the ad designed for pet lovers.

Watch the ad designed for DIYers who enjoy building things on their own.

We Are Unlimited

Building different executions from a core campaign idea, We Are Unlimited created two day-in-the-life scenarios to show how an average day for stock-market savvy people versus travel buffs could go awry when disaster strikes.

Watch the ad designed for stock-savvy investors.

Watch the ad designed for travel buffs.

To Combat Hunger

Hunger affects one in eight Americans(2), yet many are unaware of the prevalence. For this cause, BBDO and Grey created ads for four key audiences to drive donations to Feeding America.

BBDO

Creating one central concept that depicts the reality of impoverished meals, BBDO tailored the tone and details of the creative executions to speak to each audience.

Watch the ad designed for gamers.

Watch the ad created for outdoor enthusiasts.

Grey

Grey's overarching creative concept spoke to how hunger can hide in plain sight. Each creative execution featured a unique call-to-action to inspire action from that audience.

Watch the ad designed for sports fans.

Watch the ad designed for green living enthusiasts.

View the full playlist from SXSW here.

———

(1) Source: https://www.adcouncil.org/Our-Campaigns/Education/Empowering-Girls-in-STEM
(2) Citation: Alisha Coleman-Jensen, Matthew P. Rabbitt, Christian A. Gregory, and Anita Singh. 2018. Household Food Security in the United States in 2017, ERR-256, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Source: AdWords Agency Blog

Tasty: A Recipe for Success on the Google Home Hub

Posted by Julia Chen Davidson, Head of Partner Marketing, Google Home

We recently launched the Google Home Hub, the first ever Made by Google smart speaker with a screen, and we knew that a lot of you would want to put these helpful devices in the kitchen—perhaps the most productive room in the house. With the Google Assistant built-in to the Home Hub, you can use your voice—or your hands—to multitask during meal time. You can manage your shopping list, map out your family calendar, create reminders for the week, and even help your kids out with their homework.

To make the Google Assistant on the Home Hub even more helpful in the kitchen, we partnered with BuzzFeed's Tasty, the largest social food network in the world, to bring 2,000 of their step-by-step tutorials to the Assistant, adding to the tens of thousands of recipes already available. With Tasty on the Home Hub, you can search for recipes based on the ingredients you have in the pantry, your dietary restrictions, cuisine preferences and more. And once you find the right recipe, Tasty will walk you through each recipe with instructional videos and step-by-step guidance.

Tasty's Action shows off how brands can combine voice with visuals to create next-generation experiences for our smart homes. We asked Sami Simon, Product Manager for BuzzFeed Media Brands, a few questions about building for the Google Assistant and we hope you'll find some inspiration for how you can combine voice and touch for the new category of devices in our homes.

What additive value do you see for your users by building an Action for the Google Assistant that's different from an app or YouTube video series, for example?

We all know that feeling when you have your hands in a bowl of ground meat and you realize you have to tap the app to go to the next step or unpause the YouTube video you were watching (I can attest to random food smudges all over my phone and computer for this very reason!).

With our Action, people can use the Google Assistant to get a helping hand while cooking, navigating a Tasty recipe just by using their voice. Without having to break the flow of rolling out dough or chopping an onion, we can now guide people on what to expect next in their cooking process. What's more, with the Google Home Hub, which has the added bonus of a display screen, home chefs can also quickly glance at the video instructions for extra guidance.

The Google Home Hub gives users all of Google, in their home, at a glance. What advantages do you see for Tasty in being a part of voice-enabled devices in the home?

The Assistant on the Google Home Hub enhances the Tasty experience in the kitchen, making it easier than ever for home chefs to cook Tasty recipes, either by utilizing voice commands or the screen display. Tasty is already the centerpiece of the kitchen, and with the Google Home Hub integration, we have the opportunity to provide additional value to our audience. For instance, we've introduced features like Clean Out My Fridge where users share their available ingredients and Tasty recommends what to cook. We're so excited that we can seamlessly provide inspiration and coaching to all home chefs and make cooking even more accessible.

How do you think these new devices will shape the future of digital assistance? How did you think through when to use voice and visual components in your Action?

In our day-to-day lives, we don't necessarily think critically about the best way to receive information in a given instance, but this project challenged us to create the optimal cooking experience. Ultimately we designed the Action to be voice-first to harness the power of the Assistant.

We then layered in the supplemental visuals to make the cooking experience even easier and make searching our recipe catalogue more fun. For instance, if you're busy stir frying, all the pertinent information would be read aloud to you, and if you wanted to quickly check what this might look like, we also provide the visual as additional guidance.

Can you elaborate on 1-3 key findings that your team discovered while testing the Action for the Home Hub?

Tasty's lens on cooking is to provide a fun and accessible experience in the kitchen, which we wanted to have come across with the Action. We developed a personality profile for Tasty with the mission of connecting with chefs of all levels, which served as a guide for making decisions about the Action. For instance, once we defined the voice of Tasty, we knew how to keep the dialogue conversational in order to better resonate with our audience.

Additionally, while most people have had some experience with digital assistants, their knowledge of how assistants work and ways that they use them vary wildly from person to person. When we did user testing, we realized that unlike designing UX for a website, there weren't as many common design patterns we could rely on. Keeping this in mind helped us to continuously ensure that our user paths were as clear as possible and that we always provided users support if they got lost or confused.

What are you most excited about for the future of digital assistance and branded experiences there? Where do you foresee this ecosystem going?

I'm really excited for people to discover more use cases we haven't even dreamed of yet. We've thoroughly explored practical applications of the Assistant, so I'm eager to see how we can develop more creative Actions and evolve how we think about digital assistants. As the Assistant will only get smarter and better at predicting people's behavior, I'm looking forward to seeing the growth of helpful and innovative Actions, and applying those to Tasty's mission to make cooking even more accessible.

What's next for Tasty and your Action? What additional opportunities do you foresee for your brand in digital assistance or conversational interfaces?

We are proud of how our Action leverages the Google Assistant to enhance the cooking experience for our audience, and excited for how we can evolve the feature set in the future. The Tasty brand has evolved its videos beyond our popular top-down recipe format. It would be an awesome opportunity to expand our Action to incorporate the full breadth of the Tasty brand, such as our creative long-form programming or extended cooking tutorials, so we can continue helping people feel more comfortable in the kitchen.

To check out Tasty's Action yourself, just say "Hey Google, ask Tasty what I should make for dinner" on your Home Hub or Smart Display. And to learn more about the solutions we have for businesses, take a look at our Assistant Business site to get started building for the Google Assistant.

If you don't have the resources to build in-house, you can also work with our talented partners that have already built Actions for all types of use cases. To make it even easier to find the perfect partner, we recently launched a new website that shows these agencies on a map with more details about how to get in touch. And if you're an agency already building Actions, we'd love to hear from you. Just reach out here and we'll see if we can offer some help along the way!

Source: AdWords Agency Blog

Unleash your creativity

Reading time: 5 minutes

In a world of superheroes, creativity is a real human superpower. Everybody has it. It doesn’t just live within certain types of people within an agency. We all have creative potential. But as we get older, safer and more comfortable, we run the risk of losing that creative spark as life becomes associated with routine and order.

So is there a way to get back into your creative self? What methods from business, innovation or anywhere else are there to help you tap into that wellspring of positive ideas?

We sat down with Doctor Frederik Pferdt, Google’s Chief Innovation Evangelist, for the Google Partners Podcast episode 31, and he offered some fascinating insights (and tips) on how to answer some of those questions. During the discussion, he offers his thoughts on how adults can rekindle some of the creative fire they had as children, and other key takeaways to spark innovation at every level.

Ask questions

According to Doctor Pferdt it’s not only about ideas, but also about asking the right questions, finding good problems and therefore developing a healthy disregard for the impossible. Find a “what if” and a “why”.

As author and marketing guru, Simon Sinek recommends that you see if you can reframe the problem by getting to its roots. “Start with a Why.” Why do you normally approach a certain challenge from the angle you do, and why not step away from the issue and take a completely new perspective? Try something new. Get into a room, fill a wall or even two with post-it notes: what connections can you make and what new associations can you find, when you are free to consider them?

Break routines

Every human being is looking for routines. They give us safety, security and save our brains energy. They make us feel good. That said, routines sometimes only help us to perform to our average level or below. Like putting your smartphone into ‘Low Power’ mode, some of the more complicated applications won’t work. To free us from the shackles of everyday thinking, it can be necessary to break those routines. Go and walk a mile, go check out a local gallery. Or even, as Jan Chozen Bay suggests in Mindfulness on the Go, pause and take a breath every time you walk through a door². You can also make a list of your routines and they see if any of them are worth breaking (just as some will be worth holding onto).

Two modes for thinkers

As Doctor Pferdt mentions, it’s helpful to consider different approaches to thinking. According to him, there are two kinds of thinking: Divergent thinking powers the imagination, so it’s used for generating new possibilities and combining new thoughts. Convergent thinking powers your judgment, when you’re making decisions it’s how you evaluate and it’s the mode you use when you’re testing something or criticizing.

Allow yourself to recognize which of the two modes you are using. For example, try to think divergently when considering your methods or plans, so that you can embrace new possibilities. Give your ideas a chance to breathe before you start to criticize (and think convergently). One practical example writers use: if you have a speech or memo to deliver, try writing it out with a pen and paper before you type it out, and don’t stop to edit yourself. Let the words flow first and come back to edit later. You’ll find the shape of your ideas, which you can then come back to and refine with your critical eye later.

Challenge assumptions

Why is it that way, why can’t it be different? New, radical solutions mostly emerge outside of our comfort zone. Constraints should be welcomed as an opportunity. Consider early users of Twitter. Writing a coherent message in just 140 characters (as it used to be) seemed a crazy challenge. But the constraint became creative fuel to millions of messages and new ways of communicating in shorthand. Just as the rigid structures of the meter, rhyme, and theatrical convention were subverted by William Shakespeare - even as he adhered to them.

From the Elizabethans to the present day, forms of convention and modes of communication move forward inexorably. The most successful thinkers and doers have to be ready to learn new ways and keep themselves learning, so they can stay in touch.

Build innovation into your daily routine

When you consider the pace of change in technology, it makes sense to include ‘innovator’ in your job description, in both your actions and attitude. What can you learn and take on in your thinking that will prepare you for the changes to come?

Doctor Pferdt recommends adopting what researcher Carol Dweck calls a “growth mindset” (the idea that we can grow our brain's capacity to learn and to solve problems), which can start a virtuous cycle whereby believing you can improve, you actually improve. There is also a sense that having an open mind to new ways of working will not just be crucial in 2019 but might also be the key to agency success in the future. Scott Harrison, founder of The Boom! has this to say on learning at work and the importance of a certain kind of versatility.¹

In the end, the challenge comes back to us all. How do you change your everyday approach to get creative?

Tune in to the Google Partners Podcast to find out more; and let us know your thoughts on Twitter.

¹ Kapow! how you can hack, teach, make and steal your way to creativity in digital, Think With Google, June 2018
² Hacking your innovation mindset, re:Work, June 2018

Source: AdWords Agency Blog

Great work around the globe

Reading time: 1 minute

The Premier Partner Awards 2018 recognizes Premier Google Partners for innovation in search, display, mobile, shopping, video advertising and for their ability to grow businesses online. This year, over 1,500 applications were received. Out of these, the companies listed in the regional sites below demonstrated the strongest use of Google technology, innovation, and support for their advertisers.

This year’s winners have been announced and celebrated in ceremonies across the globe.

2018 Winners by region

If you want to take a closer look at this year’s award ceremonies, join in by following hashtags #PremierPartnerAwards and #GooglePremierPartnerAwards on Twitter, Instagram and your local social channels.

You can also follow Google Partners on Twitter and LinkedIn or learn more.

Once again, thanks to everyone who entered and congratulations to the winners. We look forward to seeing more great work from all of you in 2019.

Source: AdWords Agency Blog

Catching the eye with seasonal ads

Reading time: 4 minutes

Seasonal campaigns go beyond the holidays - Cyber Monday, Mother’s Day, and Small Business Saturday are also a huge part of the retail year. They’re less about targeting seasons, and more about finding moments with a common appeal in your client’s industry.

Brands need to be present in these moments, ready to greet panic-driven deal hunters with the perfect solution. So we sat down with Shopify’s CMO Hana Abaza on the Google Partners Podcast to get her top tips for seasonal campaigns that drive sales.

Find your season

Every business has an element of seasonality; times when interest piques and traffic spikes. All you need to do is identify them! Robust Google Analytics reports are a great place to start. Export your data onto a spreadsheet, and with some clever formatting, trends will start to light up like fireworks on New Year's Eve.

Analytics also helps you uncover biases that may be hiding behind “failed” campaigns. For example, if you pumped a lot of your budget into targeting Valentine’s Day last year without success, it would be easy to write the day off as a ‘bad fit’ for your brand. Take a fresh look at the data, carry out an honest review, and you may find that small tweaks are all that’s needed to turn things around next year.

Spot your opportunity

You’ve identified the seasons that matter to your business, now make sure your marketing budget is ready to handle the increased workload. Use Google Trends to spot search trends across each region you’re targeting, then compare that to search volume data in Google Ads to find keywords that fit your offering.

In the build-up of individual events, Consumer Barometer can help you better understand how to reach your audience at the right time, with the right message. Different events bring up different emotions, so keeping track of consumer trends is a great way to make sure your ads strike an emotional chord with your audience.

Create separate campaigns

It’s important that you measure success without the noise of other, non-seasonal campaigns. This helps you identify nuances in each season, and optimize next year’s campaigns with those insights in mind.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with copy. Products like Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) can help you test different messages with very little effort. All you need to do is enter multiple headlines and descriptions about your products, and Google Ads will test different combinations to identify the best fit for your audience.

Don’t miss last-minute shoppers

There’s been a 120% increase in “same-day delivery” searches since 2015¹. For urgent searches, 74% of shoppers say that when they’re searching on mobile, they look for the most relevant information, regardless of the company or brand². As a result, the retailer that provides the most seamless experience wins.

Season-specific promotion extensions help your ads stand out on Google’s results pages, and spotlight special promotions you may be running for the event. Highlighting services like same-day delivery, last-minute sales, or gift-wrapping may be all it takes to tip customers in your direction.

Great seasonal campaigns are all about planning. Arm yourself with industry trends, plan your marketing budget with those trends in mind, and remember to tap into your consumer’s emotions with ads that resonate. With the right tools, a detailed content plan, and thorough research, you’ll be setting yourself up for seasonal success.

Watch the video below and tune in to the Google Partners Podcast for more actionable tips and insights for seasonal success.

¹ How to reach today’s impatient shoppers - whether they’re shopping online, by voice, or in store, Think With Google, May 2018
² How to reach today’s impatient shoppers - whether they’re shopping online, by voice, or in store, Think With Google, May 2018

Source: AdWords Agency Blog

Marketing in the age of assistance

Reading time: 3 minutes

More than ever, people are speaking to devices as part of their daily routine.

In the same way that smartphones revolutionized the way we shop online, the impact of voice assistants is now starting to show through integration with phones, cars, TVs and homes.

We use the Google Assistant to put together shopping lists, manage our finances, and control our homes. But recent research has shown that we don’t just use voice to multitask - we use it to make purchases.

These insights show the massive impact that voice-activated speakers like Google Home are having on the average consumer.

They drive action

62% of people say they’re likely to make a purchase through their speaker in the next month, and 44% make weekly purchases. People are growing more comfortable using voice to shop online, and retail websites need to take notice. Speaking of growing more comfortable…

They're part of the family

Almost 70% of voice searches are made through natural language, not the keywords we use in web searches. And 41% of people say it feels like talking to a family member or friend, using words like “please” and “sorry” as part of the conversation.

They're part of the daily routine

72% of people say their speakers are used as part of their daily routine. From checking commute times in the morning to setting shopping reminders in the evening, smart speakers are now “part of the furniture” in an increasing number of homes.

They're brand-friendly

More than half of the people we surveyed said they want to receive info about sales, deals, and promotions from brands through their speaker. This opens up a huge opportunity for companies to project a literal ‘brand voice’, strengthening their emotional bonds with consumers.

It’s not just special offers either - people want to hear from brands about a wide range of information.

As voice search grows in popularity, it’s up to agencies to stay up-to-date with the tech, and find creative and practical ways to integrate it into their clients’ campaigns. The best way to do this is to get familiar with Actions on Google Assistant.

The Google Assistant is the voice that answers when you ask Google Home for the weather forecast, or the app on your phone for the fastest route to coffee. Actions are the programming signals within the Google Assistant that process these requests. These Actions can be built for free by anyone, simply and effectively.

So if you have a restaurant client, you could build an Action to check the daily specials or order food for takeout. Or if you have a client in retail, you could build an Action for instant checkouts or personalized recommendations.

Google Assistant is available across over 500 million devices, and growing. It’s a major part of the future of online shopping and advertising. Before talking to your clients about its capabilities, check out this video playlist for everything you’ll need to build your first Action.

You can also find out more about how voice assistance affects consumer behavior with this handy video:

Source: Think with Google

Source: AdWords Agency Blog

Moving from integration to synchronization

Reading time: 3 minutes

Consumers are more digitally savvy than ever before, effortlessly bouncing across channels and brands, making up their minds as they go. In fact, 49% of users visit 2-4 websites before they decide to make a purchase.* So how can we make sure our marketing is on-brand and in-sync with our brand message across platforms? By amplifying and strengthening that message with synchronized marketing.

Marketing is a team sport - each message needs to be in tune with another to survive in the ever-evolving advertising ecosystem. Marketers need to start thinking beyond a single campaign, and more about ensuring our messages are in-sync with one another, and the overall brand message.

Simply put, it’s taking integrated marketing ideas and expanding on them with the consumer in mind. There’s no need to abandon your marketing strategies, because a simple tweak may be all that’s missing in your plan. Here are five areas you can fine-tune to make sure you’re nailing your marketing efforts every time.

Define your purpose

What do you offer your clients that others can’t? What problems are you solving and how? Define what makes you unique, and let that message be the anchor that keeps your brand message consistent throughout, even when you introduce new products.

Keep the dialogue going

Thanks to the evolution of social media, marketers can continuously engage with their audience to keep their brand front-of-mind. A conversation that starts on Facebook can easily spill over to Twitter, blogs, and other mediums, amplifying the message for your audience. Let your customers know you care by responding to comments, complaints, and questions quickly and compassionately across all platforms.

Sync up your various platforms

Digitally-conscious consumers often blur the line between online and offline, reality and virtual reality. When marketing is synchronized, all touchpoints feed off each other. The conversational nature of social media is a great way to kick off a campaign online and then use the promoted hashtag on print, out-of-home and video ads, seamlessly marrying offline and online marketing efforts.

Repurpose and recycle content

Create content that you can repurpose across multiple channels. 60% of marketers produce at least one new content piece every day,** but pumping brand new content can be expensive. However, a stimulating white paper can be condensed into a blog piece, excerpts of key learnings can be shared on social media with a link to download the full report, and you can feature it on a company podcast discussing similar topics.

Treat employees like brand advocates

Employees are the heart and soul of the brand and can act as a direct line to a broader audience. People are more aligned with their online profiles than ever before, and happy team members that are proud of what they do will sing about it from the rooftops across multiple platforms. And their reach is incredible - a recent study found that employees have on average ten times more connections than branded channels online.*** They are the messengers that can make or break your brand, so make them feel valued and appreciated.

Synchronized marketing is all about thinking beyond a single campaign, and making sure every message we send out harmonizes across all channels. It’s tougher than ever before to know how and where a customer will see your brand for the first time, so make sure you provide a consistent experience throughout your marketing efforts.

*Source: Gallup

** Source: WordStream

***Source: MSLGROUP

Source: AdWords Agency Blog

Marketing with podcasts

Reading time: 5 minutes

The podcast industry is booming, so it’s no wonder savvy marketers are weaving them into their content marketing plans. They are a great way to reach your audience, and podcast listeners are also a loyal bunch: 80% will listen to a full podcast once they’ve started it, and 45% will follow calls to action after hearing them.*

With the marketplace experiencing a growth spurt and over half a million podcasts to choose from, there are no signs of podcasts losing popularity. But, it takes more than a microphone and an idea to attract such a highly engaged crowd. So, here are some tips on creating a podcast that survives the marketing ecosystem and stands out from the crowd.

Be remarkable

It can be tempting to follow in the footsteps of the podcast greats, but if you want to generate interest and excitement, you should venture off the beaten path and find your niche topic. To do that, become the market and start researching what’s already out there. Start with something that interests you. Show up in the comments on some of the podcasts that you find useful, listen to what could be improved, and participate in the forums. Once you gather all your insights, sit down and deep-dive into your findings - an opportunity will be hiding in there, you just need to listen for it.

Be committed and consistent

Team up with like-minded people who enjoy the same type of content, to ensure you are all aligned on tone, topics and what you want to achieve. Building up interest and listenership takes time and effort, so having people pulling in the same direction is key to getting across the finish line. Consistency is key, so commit to a schedule you are comfortable with and stick with it. To set expectations, make sure you post regularly and at the same time.

Take risks

Don’t be afraid to amp up your promotions or content to be heard. Recycling is great, but reciting the same old repertoire will only get you so far. However, this doesn’t mean that to succeed you have to reinvent the wheel and come up with something completely original. Instead of thinking brand-new, think better-new. Take something that’s already out there and put a spin on it; introduce a new way of looking at the topic, mix it up with a twist on delivery, or delight with a surprising host choice.

For example, the gaming podcast What’s Good Games is hosted by four female experts who are taking the predominantly male gaming industry by storm. The topic itself isn’t new, but the hosts’ unique insights put them at the top of the leaderboard.

Reward your listeners

Making your audience feel special and appreciated is a great way to encourage your audience to tune in to your podcast. So, reach out to them on social channels, and reward your audience with exclusive offers, content, and freebies. Shout outs and special mentions at the end of each podcast can also be an excellent incentive for people to stay tuned in until the very end, and it can help you connect with your listeners on a more personal level. Let them know that you’re listening to their thoughts, suggestions, and concerns. Not listening to feedback is the fastest way to isolate your fans, so ensure you’re actively taking notes on what’s working and what could be amplified.

Podcast promotion

Be loud and proud about your podcast! Learn where your audience lives online, to know how to reach them on channels they love to follow. Make sure to create a call to action - what is it that you would like them to do after listening to your podcast? Visit your website, download your e-book, subscribe to your newsletter? Choose one and sprinkle it at the end of each episode.

Create a buzz around upcoming episodes by teasing your audience with a short audio snippet, sharing fun facts about the topic, and what they will learn if they tune in. Harness the power and reach of social media to let your followers know about your podcast. Don’t be shy about sharing your podcast more than once - the social media landscaping is overflowing with content, and it is more than likely that some people will have missed your original post.

A podcast should be like a pop song - it should be playing on all stations. Make your podcast available on all main directories, such as Google Podcasts, iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, Stitcher, TuneIn, Podbay and Podtail to make it easier to find for your audience.

Repurpose podcast content

It takes a lot of time and effort to record a podcast. Repurpose that content and publish it across different mediums to make the most of it. Write a blog post using key takeaways from your podcast, publish videos of your podcast recordings on YouTube, create social media posts using quotes from guests, and promote your other content within your podcast. Look at your content marketing engine as an ecosystem that supports each other and helps it thrive.

Starting a podcast is no easy feat - it requires a lot of time to build up your audience, and hard work to cut through the white noise. But with a little planning, commitment, and research, this could become your path to a regular, highly engaged audience. Check out the video below for more tips on podcasts that resonate, and the Google Partners Podcast for more marketing insights and these tips in action.

*Source: Podcast Insights

Source: AdWords Agency Blog

The new and improved Google Partners experience

The Google Partners program was built to offer our advertising partners access to industry events, trainings and tools to help boost their skill set. Now, all these benefits will be front and center in your Google Ads experience so you can easily access your company’s badge, specialization status and promotional offers right where you create and manage campaigns for your clients.

Your company’s Partners details can be found in the Google Ads manager account that was associated with your company’s Partners profile. There, you’ll find these three features:

Badge status: All the information about your badge status, company specializations and certifications can be found here. You can also access badge assets and the new public company profile. Find out more about the Google Partner badges here.
Promotional offers: This feature provides promotional offers for your eligible Google Ads accounts, and these can now be automatically applied. Select the auto-apply promotional offers option to take advantage of this feature. You can view all available promotional offers, and see what’s been applied in the last 90 days.
Company details: Check this section to ensure company details like name and location are up-to-date.

Explore and familiarize yourself with the new Partners program section in your Google Ads account and find more information about the changes here.