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Creating Impactful Meta Campaigns With Less Data in 2023

With over 12 years of combined PPC + SEO experience, Veronika Höller has a trick or two up her marketing sleeve. In this chat, she shares expert insights on her upcoming brightonSEO’s Paid Social talk: “Create Impactful Meta Campaigns With Less Data.”  If you’re still working in marketing silos – here’s your cue to integrate. Here’s her Meta slide-deck.

Tell us about your topic, Create Impactful Meta Campaigns With Less Data, and why you chose it.

I have been working for a company in the health sector for two years. We have the exciting task of running successful campaigns – but many legal requirements bind us. Especially here in Germany, data protection is very tough. As a freelancer, I gained experience in the health sector and the challenge of working with few tracking options. Meta then closed the lid when iOS decided to give users more privacy. It wasn’t a shock since I’ve had to work with little tracking data for several years. That’s how I chose the topic. We have so many options to run successful campaigns despite data protection and the end of third-party cookies; we just have to be a little more creative.

My talk will guide people about why they need to get out of their silos, be creative and courageous, and test, test, test to create powerful campaigns. Even if you sometimes have to break new ground, such as creating test campaigns without targets. 

Could you give us an example of how you used this strategy to help one of your clients? How did you go about it?

As a freelancer, I supervised a great startup that brought healthcare software onto the market. The challenge was introducing a completely new product, which should get brand awareness as quickly as possible, should appeal to investors, and, of course, should be sold. 

Unfortunately, GDPR already existed here, and we couldn’t use every tracking tool we wanted. Therefore, to gather data, it was clear that we had to launch PPC and social paid campaigns as quickly as possible. 

However, since the target groups were so different, doctors and clinic staff, commercial employees, investors, and clinic managers – I had to find a creative way to collect these insights. 

“I worked out the different personas, then developed creatives and messages and set up test campaigns without special target groups – just to see who clicks on the ads and how exactly the target groups engage with the content on social media.” 

The best thing about social media is that you’ve identified your personas and can visualize them based on their profiles and interests. Beforehand,  I looked at the competitors and read the comments from dissatisfied users – perfect for pimping my ads because my software can do better.

Pro-tip: At the beginning of the campaigns, we had a lot of wastage, but after a while, we got more and more insights and data and scaled fantastic campaigns tailored to individual target groups. We analyzed the data and found that brand awareness had increased so much that we were targeting investors in addition to our buyer persona. After that, we decided to scale our campaigns by setting up a special campaign for investors. With the clear objective of finding as many investors as possible for our start-up. And it worked. They came to us. Normally we would not have addressed this target group digitally. We thought it was too impersonal. But we learned from it that investors could also be caught up online. It is only important to collect data once, accept wastage and then scale your campaigns. I’ve documented everything in detail, all failures and successes, so we can now run pretty good campaigns without much effort. And it works! 

The algorithm learns, and we, as social media marketing managers, should learn to trust the algorithm and its target group. And that’s exactly what my speech is about. 

What presentations are you most interested in attending/speakers you are most interested to hear and why?

I like listening to topics that I rarely deal with in everyday life. Machine Learning, Python, or organic rankings on social media platforms. My favorite speaker is Sarah Sal. I love her way of presenting social media topics – she is hilarious. On the PPC side, I love Pauline Jakober and Navah Hopkins because they are both amazing PPC marketers.

Do you see any trends specific to PPC reporting in 2023?

Due to the limited tracking and the end of Analytics UA, we have to start interpreting and merging data better to have a good basis for reporting successes and deriving optimization measures from the data.

“In 2023, we will have to invest more time in reporting, because we have less data available, and we have to work on the reports across platforms.”

Personas have been used successfully in SEO for years – and that’s exactly what we’re doing now in paid social. So it’s important to: 

  1. Know your persona
  2. Know your Unique Selling Points (USPs)
  3. Use a lot of ad texts and claims
  4. Build on your messages and creatives
  5. Create test campaigns without target groups – trust your creatives and messages
  6. Use this data to scale your perfect meta campaigns

We may no longer be able to track everything correctly, but our target groups and advertising messages remain the same. For example, if an ad comes up on Facebook that I don’t like, I don’t click on it. But if I’m interested in that product, I click on it. This way, the algorithm learns to offer me topics that interest me without us having previously made any special settings in the campaigns.

Who are your go-to people/ resources for beginners in digital marketing?

What are the top 5 tools or apps you use daily and why?

1. Google Search Console

2. Ryte

3. Screaming Frog

4. Google Ads Account

5. Facebook Business Manager

I see all data in one view: rankings, conversions, Ads, etc. And when needed, I can directly optimize client campaigns.

What advice would you give yourself when you first started digital advertising?

That’s a good question. I would advise myself to calm down and that it’s not a problem to make mistakes. You should always remain dynamic, creative, and willing to take side paths that lead to success. Not letting yourself be put under pressure –  trusting your own intention and experience and following this path. More self-confidence and belief in yourself; above all, celebrate your successes!

Veronika is a Global Senior SEO Manager and has worked in SEO and PPC marketing for 12 years. She continues developing her PPC and SEO marketing skills and encourages folks to leave the silo mindset.

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Paid Social Marketing from Customer Journey to Conversion

Growthspin Founder Neha Divanji talks about her upcoming brightonSEO, Paid Social presentation on creating paid social marketing plans to mirror your customer journey.

Tell us more about your presentation, ‘Create paid social marketing plans to mirror your customer journeys’

Customer journeys can be very complex. In this talk, I will share strategies to create frictionless customer experiences while thinking of pre-click, click, and post-click user journeys.

PPC reporting is getting more and more sophisticated. Users are now able to track complex customer journeys and attributes based on the multiple touchpoints.

NEHA DIVANJI, FOUNDER, GROWTHSPIN, UK

What tips do you have for attendees to maximize their time on-site at brightonSEO?

Network. Network. Network. It’s one of the largest gatherings of digital marketing professionals in the UK.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business?

Treating the client’s business as our own – this mantra has helped us grow our business.

What do you think is the most exciting trend in digital advertising now?

Facebook and Google’s algorithms are becoming increasingly smarter with the use of AI technology. A lot of it is changing from running manual campaigns to running automated campaigns. You can use the power of AI to test and learn and pivot so quickly.

Do you see any trends specific to PPC reporting?

PPC reporting is getting more and more sophisticated. Users are now able to track complex customer journeys and attributes based on the multiple touchpoints.

What are the biggest challenges you face in PPC campaign management? 

For clients who do not have attribution models set up correctly, PPC becomes a black hole.

What are the top 4 tools or apps you use almost every day and why?

SEMRush – For PPC campaigns and SEO

Data Studio – To analyze campaigns visually 

Google Analytics – For an overview

Calendly – To manage sales meetings and my diary

Where do you see your company in the next 10 years?

I see Growthspin as the leading marketing agency working with most of the tech-first businesses in the UK.

Neha runs a PPC Agency named Growthspin based in London. They work with seed to Series B funded companies with performance marketing. In her last capacity as a full-time employee, she was the global head of digital marketing for a $3bn conglomerate.

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TikTok Boom!

If your brand is not on TikTok yet, it may be time to rethink. In this brightonSEO spotlight, Rachel Fellows, Studio Manager at Red Bullet tells us how TikTok Advertising can make your brand stand out in front of a content-hungry audience. Here’s her TikTok slide deck!

Tell us more about your presentation on TikTok Ads and what you are going to unravel.

I’m going to delve into some insights on the boom of TikTok over the past few years and how companies can leverage this great engaging channel for their businesses. Ever wondered what it’s all about and how you can use it? I’ll be going into detail on that and some tips on how to start.

What has been your experience with TikTok Ads and what trends have you noticed?

From the B2C campaigns I’ve run on Tiktok so far, it’s been an interesting trend of high engagement and high impressions. These campaigns have been mostly upper funnel awareness but we did see some decent conversion as well. You can build up audiences fairly quickly but you have to make sure that your creative is engaging as audiences get bored easily. It’s also interesting to see some companies you wouldn’t necessarily associate with a more relaxed tone of voice really getting into the vibe of the platform. Trend wise make sure you’re creating for sound ON, music is a massive part of the platform!

Metaverse is going to be massive, I know that people are skeptical but I’m fairly confident it will become the new normal if given time.

RACHEL FELLOWS, STUDIO MANAGER, RED BULLET

What are your go-to resources if one wants to learn more about TikTok Ads advertising strategy and optimization?

I would recommend using Tiktok business learning as a starting point on how to start optimizing your ads. I’d also recommend Buffer’s excellent marketing guide to Tiktok; it gives some great practical advice and some background learning as well! I’d also encourage you to use Tiktok as a resource too there are loads of videos on advertising there as well.

Do you use TikTok in your personal life too? What are your fav trends?

I use Tiktok in my personal life ( I have a whole 20 followers!), one of my favorite bonkers trends at the moment is people running with an ‘item’ to Johnny Cash’s song ‘Ring of Fire’. It’s silly but very funny and just goes to show how something simple can go viral.

What tips do you have for attendees to maximize their time on-site at brightonSEO?

Plan ahead, don’t worry about watching everything just go to the talks you’ll get the most out of you can always watch the recordings/look at the slides for the others at another time. Make sure you check out the exhibition stalls as well.

What presentations are you most interested in attending/speakers you are most interested to hear and why?

I’m looking forward to Diana Andreea Mereoiu’s talk on ‘B2B strategy for Paid Social‘ at the Fringe Event on Oct 5, 2022. More often than not the focus is on B2C so it will be great to hear strategy ideas for the B2B nuances.

What are the biggest challenges you face in PPC campaign management?

The biggest challenges at the moment are the uncertainty over CPC cost, budgets keep having to go up and the market is getting more and more crowded. I am also interested in the direction of automation and AI; in a few years’ time what will our role be as marketers?

What are some exciting trends in Paid Digital Marketing?

My favorite thing about Paid Digital marketing is that there are always new channels/things to try out! Metaverse is going to be massive, I know that people are skeptical but I’m fairly confident it will become the new normal if given time. I also think users are becoming more and more aware of their privacy rights and how their data is used.

What are the top 5 tools or apps you use almost every day and why?

  • Headspace – I use this every day to meditate and clear my thoughts, it really helps with my mental health and feeling calm. 
  • Tiktok for obvious reasons. 
  • Google Ads – It’s easy to use and I can keep an eye on my accounts on the go. 
  • Spotify – I find it impossible to concentrate without some music on in the background and the odd podcast.
  • Whatsapp – For obvious reasons again!

What was your worst job and what did you learn from it?

Without going into too much detail, in my worst job, I was really struggling with my mental health and found it very stressful. I was being gaslit by a manager and the work just kept piling on, when I left there I felt the most sense of relief! I learned that no matter what you have to put your health first, no job is worth staying awake at night worrying about it. If you feel like you’re not being listened to, it’s too overwhelming or you’re starting to feel the effects physically then it’s time to move on to something better!

What advice would you give yourself when you first got started in marketing?

Offline marketing is not for you bestie! Try everything you can, learn from the best, and keep pushing yourself.

Rachel is head of client and account services at Red Bullet Web Design and has over 8 years of experience in Paid Digital marketing. Rachel has worked with a range of different sectors and companies enhancing their digital offerings.

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Better Together: SEO and Paid Search

SEO and PPC need not be on the opposite sides of the ring. If you want to get the best bang for your marketing buck, it’s time to harness the power of integrated marketing. Becky Simms, Founder & CEO of Reflect Digital, shares her thoughts in our next brightonSEO speaker series.

Tell us more about your presentation How to integrate SEO and Paid and what are you going to unravel.

My talk at brightonSEO is about the fact that your customer does not care which channel they find you on – which means we should stop being so hung up on our favorite channels and instead look at a more integrated approach. 

I see it happen all the time, specialists fall in love with their channel but forget that part of making their channel more successful is often working closely with other channels. For example, organic search might drive a fantastic amount of ‘awareness’ traffic, but traffic is vanity if nothing happens from it. The SEO leader in this case needs to be talking to their colleagues in email marketing and paid to look at how they can devise a strategy to ensure this hugely valuable traffic is taken on a journey towards conversion. 

It is all about having a more zoomed-out view of the wider strategy to ensure you are truly thinking about how to deliver what the business requires, not a tick box to hit a single KPI.

One piece of SEO advice for folks trying to learn the ropes?

Being inquisitive is key to learning the SEO ropes, question everything, and ensure you are signed up for the many amazing blogs out there to keep your knowledge on the pulse. There is so much to learn and things are changing all the time – finding your best way to stay on top of this is critical to ensure you can be at the top of your game. 

Also, finding a mentor can be really helpful – someone who may either be deeply knowledgeable about SEO or maybe a bit more generalist to help give you wider context for the SEO strategies you are considering. But either way – having someone you can bounce ideas off of, learn from and collaborate with is amazing. 

Understanding your audience and where they spend their time, how they do their research, and what motivates them is gold dust to your strategy. 

BECKY SIMMS, FOUNDER & CEO, REFLECT DIGITAL

What tips do you have for attendees to maximize their time on-site at brightonSEO?

To get the most out of brightonSEO you need to plan ahead of time, there are so many amazing talks going on, to be sure you get to the talks you want to see you need to plan your agenda. Also make sure you use it as an opportunity to catch up with colleagues, clients, and friends – find out who is going and plan the trip – it is so busy on the day you can’t guarantee bumping into someone.

What presentations are you most interested in attending/speakers you are most interested to hear and why?

Oh there are so many, I mentored about 20 of the speakers for this event and I would love to see every single one of them, but as I am moderating this won’t be able to happen. Looking at the schedule, some of the must-sees in my mind include:

  • Alice Rowan – What the (cluster)f*ck? Convince Google you’re an expert and plan your content faster
  • Luke Carthy – A definitive talk on perfecting faceted navigation for SEO and sales growth
  • Areej AbuAli – Unlocking the hidden potential of product listing pages
  • Stacey MacNaught – Journo requests: How to get more out of HARO with less wasted time
  • Hana Bednarova – Proactive and reactive PR: going beyond just awareness calendars 
  • Daniel Cartland – How to get 10x better at SEO, without learning any more SEO

These are all awesome speakers with interesting topics – but this is just scratching the surface of the agenda, there are so many great talks – I am very thankful for the online version to replay sessions!

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business?

Our human-led approach, not just in the work we do, but how we do it. We are a super personable business, we work with clients that we like working with and that like working with us – relationships are key to our success. Our behavioral science approach to marketing is also a great pull for clients, as not only does it sound really interesting – but it delivers the insights we can help our clients achieve, ensure they know their audience better, and can build strategies with a high opportunity to drive results.

What do you think is the most exciting trend in digital marketing right now?

We are focusing a lot on customer journey mapping currently which massively plays into my talk. Understanding your audience and where they spend their time, how they do their research, and what motivates them is gold dust to your strategy. Without this knowledge, you could be alienating your audience without realizing it, or missing a massive opportunity to find them. It is wrong to assume something that works for one audience will work for another, research is the bedrock of good strategy and I am pleased to say I can see more and more businesses coming around to this reality.

Do you see any trends specific to PPC reporting?

We are currently enhancing our reporting to ensure it is easier to see the bigger picture across channels as well as deep dive into individual channels’ performance such as SEO and paid media. Having the bigger picture view aids us and our clients in being more strategic and seeing how the different channels support each other.

What are the biggest challenges you face while running an agency, and how do you cope with them? 

Running an agency is always challenging – when things are good, resourcing tends to be the biggest headache, when things are not so good sales tend to be the biggest challenge. We are currently in the resourcing headache, trying to recruit talented people that are the right fit for today and our future growth ambitions. I cope by knowing there is always something and you do just need to ride the wave – I have an amazing leadership team that helps ensure we’re always in the best position possible, whichever wave we’re riding.

What are the top 5 tools or apps you use almost every day and why?

  • G Suite – is just amazing, we use it across the business for everything from email to word docs, spreadsheets, and presentations – it really aids collaboration.
  • Slack – is our main communication tool in the business and across the wider LAB Group, we also have lots of clients and partners connected on here too. 
  • SEMRush and Search Metrics are my go-to SEO research tools – so when I am looking at sales opportunities they are key to help spot opportunities to talk about. 
  • LinkedIn is my main online networking source, I use it to connect with colleagues/clients past and present and it is probably our number one recruitment tool.

What was your worst job and what did you learn from it?

Tough question regarding the worst job… probably one of the agencies I worked for before starting Reflect Digital. They weren’t bad all the time, but they lacked the integrity that I ensure runs through Reflect, and without that, it made it hard to love working there at points. Although I will be forever grateful to them for teaching me the type of company I didn’t want to create.

Where do you see your company in the next 10 years?

Our 10-year vision is to have a more global presence, we help clients worldwide currently, but we’d like to have more team members in different countries to help support this growth. I see us staying true to who we are today and ensuring we are always pulling our customer’s view back to the big picture to ensure every decision is part of a wider strategic plan with their main business goals in view.

SEO + PPC with Becky Simms

Becky has spent the last 15 years working in digital marketing, starting Reflect Digital in 2011, which is now a team of over 35 digital specialists. In 2021 and 2022,  Becky was listed in the BIMA 100, a list of the top 100 people shaping the future of the digital industry.  Becky’s passion for digital lies within understanding human behavior. It is her belief that as marketers we can best achieve our goals by helping our customers and we can only truly help them if we understand their needs and can craft a strategy around this.

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. So, the first thing to do to start taking your SEO and PPC efforts in the right direction is to draw baseline measurements. For this, you might be collating SEO data from different tools of your choice, such as Google Analytics, Search Console, Semrush, AccuRanker, etc. Consider using Swydo to create SEO audit reports as it will improve your efficiency and help make your audit report readily accessible to everyone on the team (and share results with clients, if you’re an agency). 

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