ICYMI in January 2020: Paid Media & social roundup

New in the last month, in case you missed it.

GOOGLE ADS: *BETA* Custom dimensions

Spotted in Spain late last year.

Google Ads Custom dimensions are just starting to appear in some of my UK accounts. They are still in Beta, but if you want to create extra depth to your reporting, get stuck in.

Custom dimensions add extra information to your campaigns and can contain multiple layers of information. This enables you to create reports that are tailored to your business.

You can use custom dimensions for:

• Long term annotations that reflect key categories of your business or marketing strategy
• Annotations that imply multiple levels or hierarchical relationships
• Use secondary dimensions to add structure to your annotations (rather than creating complex naming conventions)
• Annotations that you need to apply consistently across your campaigns

You can also add a custom dimension column to a reporting table and apply a filter, or simply visually scan to see which campaigns aren’t yet associated with a custom dimension value. 

Here’s Google’s support page, which nicely details (in a table) the differences between label and dimensions, and what each is best used for. 

And here’s more screenshotting infamy for me in Search Engine Land and PPC hubbub.

VERDICT: COULD BE USEFUL FOR BIG CAMPAIGNS

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS: *NEW* Request a quote

Well thought out, and it works now.

At first, I couldn’t get this to work. It might have been a bit buggy when it initially started to roll out, but also I think it only works for certain business categories. Maybe there’s more to come on this…

So, unfortunately I couldn’t add some of my clients, but I got it working for us.

You will need to turn messaging on in the Google My Business app. In testing, it showed that an enquiry will come through to me, as a Door4 employee, on text and email.

There’s a glaringly obvious footnote here: claim your GMB. It’s becoming an increasingly more important player in your SEO strategies as well as anything else.

A common scenario is that Karen/Colin, who was your office manager/apprentice, set it up six years ago, left the business without telling you the password, and you haven’t got access to their email any more. It’s a painful process to claim it back, but not impossible, and it’s worth it.

Sidenote: also get team access to a password manager.

VERDICT: HAS POTENTIAL

GOOGLE ADS: *BETA* Google will create videos for you

Will they be as good as Facebook’s original slideshow version with their excellent overlay features?

Google will create a video for you from your headlines, descriptions & images. An actual video, from your content.

What, no cheesy stock music?

Thanks to Mark B Clicky at Clicky Media for the heads-up.

Questions, questions… Do you use responsive display ads? How would a 90 character description fit into the video slideshow ad? Would it be a sexy edited subtitle overlay like the ones on The Dodo? I simply dodon’t know yet.

VERDICT: WORTH PLAYING WITH

We’ve curated and updated the best snippets. To engage in the debate, see Steven’s profile on LinkedIn and follow #door4 so you don’t miss any updates. 

Alternatively, find out how Door4 can help grow your business with our Paid Search & Shopping services.

Photo by Eric Aiden on Unsplash.