• Rethinking CAT – Core Almost Test

    The Core Almost Test Strategy (CAT Strat, affectionately known as the TACO strategy) effectively segments digital marketing campaigns based on lead generation, awareness, and sales velocity goals. Having managed this approach over the last three years, Obility has seen great success in hitting revenue and cost per opportunity (CPO) goals for our clients. However, in […]

  • Branded Campaigns are Not Lead Gen. Stop Treating Them That Way

    Branded campaigns (i.e. targeting your brand and product names on search) are not lead gen campaigns. Branded campaigns are defensive campaigns. Their purpose is to push down competitor ads and force competitors to pay more when targeting your customers and prospects. Your goal isn’t to hit below a target cost per opportunity; your job is […]

  • Google’s Machine Learning Works And It Makes No Sense

    We had a problem. A client’s best performing campaign targeting competitor keywords hit the skids. Impressions tanked, and despite increasing bids and improving position, we could not get our impressions back. We looked at impression share and keyword auction insights – no clear change. We reached out to our Google reps, and they suggested the […]

  • Proactive Negative Keyword Targeting

    Wasted spend is infuriating. No one enjoys opening up a search terms report and seeing hundreds of dollars spent on irrelevant keywords. Who knew so many folks were searching for “u pull it software” when you set out targeting “IT software”? While regularly reviewing search term reports at the keyword level will help address much […]

  • Agency v Consultant v In-House

    Taking an Agency Engagement In-House Agency vs in-house discussions have recently resurfaced after Uber successfully re-branded using an in-house design team. Like creative agencies, we work with clients who consider taking lead gen programs fully in-house. Clients weigh managing their paid search, paid social, SEO, and content syndication programs under their own roof. In theory, […]

  • Expanded Text Ads – A Signal Alphabet Plans to Acquire Twitter?

    In July, Google increased the length of their text ads to 140 characters, a number seemingly synonymous with Twitter. While Twitter’s 140 limit stems from an obscure typewriter experiment by Friedhelm Hillebrand, Google’s choice in character count is suspect. Why choose 140 characters as opposed to, say, the 160 characters the German initially suggested and […]