Monster Mash 2019 - VOL 1

Monster Mas JANUARY 2019

Greetings There has been a lot happening in the exciting world of digital since our last edition. Google AdWords is no more and was replaced by the all new Google Ads, Facebook integrated lots of great new features into their platform and we have seen our customers get amazing results utilising some new targeting options on Microsoft.

We also won the European award for growing business online and were the only UK agency to win an award at the Google Premier Partner Awards in November. In this update, we will cover the latest news and digital and provide tips & tricks from our staff to help you grow and have a superb 2019.

Thanks for all your support. We hope you enjoy the issue, please send any comments to - hello@pushgroup.co.uk

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Push has won more Google Awards than any other agency We were very honoured and privileged to win the Google award for Growing Business Online last November. In 2016 we won the Google award for Highest Customer Satisfaction and in 2017 we won 2 awards for Mobile Innovation, both in Europe and Globally. With this new award we have now won more Google awards than any other agency as well as being the first premier partner to win an award 3 years in a row.

There was strong competition from Europe at the 2018 awards with winners from Austria, Greece, Spain, and Ukraine.

We were the only partner to win from the UK. In this article we briefly wanted to share the key reasons we won and how this can benefit our customers:

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WE PUT OUR WINS DOWN TO: Diversity - Some agencies asked us “How do you keep winning?”, “What's your secret?”. We believe it It is our diversity that sets us apart. Having a team from the widest possible mixture of backgrounds absolutely kills off complacency. All of our team know instinctively that there is no barrier to what they can achieve, no glass ceiling, no special favours for people from the right background.

Speed - We drive a culture of innovation in Push but know that to be successful we have to innovate at speed. We encourage customers to launch new BETAs so they stay ahead of the competition and to achieve the best results we need to be achieving a blended marketing mix across Search, Display, Facebook, Bing.

Our customers - When we apply for awards we also include a customer case study that provides real evidence of campaigns in practice and we submitted

some amazing case studies this year and are extremely grateful for the support of our customers. In one of the case studies that contributed to the award, we showed how we helped drive over a 1,000% increase in relevant enquiries to a website.

THESE AWARDS HELP OUR CUSTOMERS BY: Push profile in Google - The awards help increase our profile in Google and the support we get, which ultimately helps our customers get quicker responses and greater support to help them grow.

BETAs - Push is one of the first agencies Google approaches to test new BETAs and we, in turn, can then launch with customers who will benefit from such innovations. As well as winning the Growing Business Online award we were finalists for Search Innovation, Display Innovation & Shopping Innovation and we have proved to Google that our customers can take the maximum advantage of new features.

Reassurance - Reassurance that you are with an agency that can compete with the best agencies in Europe and is always striving to improve our innovation and ultimately the results we drive for our customers.

Thanks again for your support in helping us win these awards and we look forward to competing to win again in 2019.

Grant Barber Marketing Director

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How to maximise your growth in 2019 Looking back at 2018, what a crazy year it’s been. In fact I would say it’s probably the most significant year for digital change ever. Some significant changes not to be forgotten are: Google AdWords Rebranding as Google Ads. Google updating their interface for the first time in 15 years.

Google Ads doubling in size (character caps).

Love it or hate it The introduction of GDPR. Smart campaigns - Automated shopping & display Ads. Campaigns to pay per CPA and not clicks! & many many more.

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Looking at the future and into 2019 I was hugely enlightened at the Google Marketing Live event in California earlier this year. Apart from having to watch England Vs Croatia in the States for the world cup semi-final (at least we found a pub called The Brit!!) it was a brilliant trip!

I wrote an article which some of you may have read earlier in the year but I think it’s important again to pick out the key changes from Google and in the digital space to focus on and be aware of in 2019.

The next few pages have a quick list that also includes some of my own projections and notes.

Google AdWords changes its name! As you know the name has changed inline with the features. Google Ads is no longer a keyword targeting platform. This introduction and constant improvement of measuring audiences via their actions means a huge array of new ways to target potential customers. Watch out for lots of new ways to target without keywords in 2019. There are hundreds of in market audiences to choose from and your account manager can run through the best options.

Part of the new audiences are under a new category called - Life Events. This allows you to target based on areas such as - parental status, education, marital status, homeowners or renters and soon by income bracket!

The form Ads will be much closer to Facebook lead Ads which typically work well in bringing down cost per acquisition numbers.

Bing bringing in LinkedIn Audience data - This should be a fantastic addition to targeting and particularly benefit B2B businesses. It’s early days but we’re hoping this will launch end of Q1 or Q2 2019 and should allow business to target by sector and individual businesses. It remains to be seen exactly how much detail we can drill into, but this should be huge!

Videos are becoming lead generators new changes mean that forms will be built into video Ads and options to click directly through to products are already in place.

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Google begin building websites! Google like to look at overall issues blocking use of their tools as ‘their problem’. If there’s no internet in the area - that’s their problem! If the tool is too hard to understand - that’s ‘their problem’!

If thousands of businesses don’t have a website - that’s ‘their problem’! At the Marketing Live event it was announced that this tool has already been made available and tested. This along with Youtube Director will give small businesses the ability to set up a business with almost no set up costs. Whilst these are basic, it’s important to grasp that competitors can get up and running with very little investment which will no doubt affect bids and page space in the future.

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Look out for changing ‘pay per’ models in the future. Everyone knows most of the tools on Google Ads are Pay Per Click.

This year a BETA was released based on Pay Per Conversion! Google realises with it’s machine learning it can almost guarantee getting leads for you at a certain rate which is a massive shift and allows companies to invest with the certainty that costs won’t fly up.

Anyone that has heard of ‘Home Service Ads’ will know this is a completely new model where Google is literally generating enquiries for Locksmiths, Plumbers, Pest Control and more for a fixed cost. Rather than set up an account you will register your business, fill in details and bid for jobs. This model is the start of what could be a big shift into new ways of helping business growth. Whilst it’s a great opportunity it’s also a big threat to some businesses who’s Ads will no doubt be thrown to the bottom of the page if this model takes off.

Finally it’s time to start testing more automation/machine learning! - Many of the above points have automation at their core already but a lot of users don’t know there is a significant amount of automated options now within Google Ads. On bidding you have CPA, maximise conversions, enhanced CPC, maximise clicks, ROAS bidding and lots more.

We’ve seen mixed results depending on which business we’ve run these with so there will be a lot of trial and error over the course of this year.

There are also multiple campaign types like Universal Shopping, Universal App Campaigns, Smart Display, and more, that are 100% automated and you have little to no control of any settings. Our position is to embrace these changes but also try and balance out with a level of control.

A lot of our scripts will aim to use these features but also give back power to the advertiser. Without this everything becomes a quantity game and numbers based rather than persona, quality and clever advertising.

Charlie Carrol Customer Relationship Director

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As you can see there are lots of new changes and innovations and our suggestions could be completely different in 3 months! One thing that will be constant next year however will be the need to diversify your marketing and work across multiple platforms. For the first time this year we’ve seen Facebook and Bing results surpass those on Google for some clients. However we always recommend running across all 3 if possible. If you’re interested in expanding into Bing Ads, Facebook or LinkedIn please reach out to us. If you already run some of these but through another agency, please introduce us as working together we can achieve a lot more!

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Explosive Growth: How We Are Matching Pace With Facebook

In the third quarter of 2018, Facebook reported 2.27 billion active users on the platform, which presents a huge opportunity for any business to grow a community around their brand, remarket to their existing customer base and reach customers across new markets.

This year the Push Facebook Team has grown alongside the platform itself.

Facebook is known for it is ever-changing nature, however as a team we have managed to stay one-step ahead with constant testing, creative thinking and above all, positivity! To meet a growing demand, we employed two new brilliant minds with diverse skills to work on finding new solutions to everyday problems.

An ‘omni-channel strategy’ might be the new marketing buzz phrase, however it is a scaling strategy that we have seen at work. We are passionate about scaling SME’s online and have found utilising both Facebook and Google alongside each other results in sustainable business growth.

As a team we value difference, which applies to our diversity and finding different answers to the same-old marketing questions. Here we follow Einstein’s trail of thought, as it would be the pure definition of madness applying the same marketing strategies again and again expecting different results.

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When we are out of our office, we are usually attending a Facebook Blueprint Live event training at FB HQ to ensure we are always at the cutting edge of all new platform features. Facebook platform has grown in sophistication with automation giving advertisers more options to reach customers across different channels including Instagram Stories, Facebook,

Messenger and soon WhatsApp. The rise in Instagram vs some of it’s rivals tells its own story. Our hard-work and belief in the platform’s potential paid off as we are now within the Top 25 Facebook Agencies within the UK. Achieving this within only a year made us realise that we are only at the very beginning of something big and we readjusted our resource to ensure our customers can benefit from the opportunity.

Like Google the Facebook Ads platform have been refining their machine learning algorithms and in 2019 we expect to see many opportunities to scale on their various platforms. The ability to find customers like yours is the current stand out AI algorithm.

Gineke Helberg Head of Facebook

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New relationship with Microsoft & how Bing can help you grow in 2019 At the end of last year we entered into a new relationship with Microsoft to be a channel partner for Bing and they have given us great support. The goal is for Push to be an Elite partner in 2019. Bing has 21% of the PC desktop search market in the UK and Microsoft has other businesses that can help make Bing even more successful such as audience data from LinkedIn. In this article we will discuss how Bing can help you grow your business in 2019 as well as the benefits of this new partnership we have.

HOW OUR PARTNERSHIP CAN BENEFIT YOU: Bing Engineering - We have access to Bing engineers and will be a key partner

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for new BETAs that are brought to the market. There are many exciting developments for 2019 across the Microsoft audience network that can be a real benefit to customers.

Incentives for customers new to Bing We will roll our incentives for customers that haven’t tried Bing to give a financial benefit to launch on the platform. These incentives offer a large Microsoft contribution to the first month spend on Bing.

Events at Microsoft - We will hold customer events at the Microsoft office in London, which is very close to Paddington Station.

THE BING AUDIENCE IS VERY DIVERSE IN THE UK: 10% is in the UK’s top-earning bracket 41% of users are married 56% of users are under the age of 45 39% of the audience is University educated.

HOW BING CAN HELP YOU GROW IN 2019: Audience reach - Bing is the default search engine on a lot of platforms Microsoft Edge, Office, Xbox and powering Cortana on Windows 10 devices, Amazon Kindle, Fire TV, image search results on Apple (There are over 700 million devices running Windows 10).

LinkedIn Profile Targeting - Bing Ads are expanding reach to LinkedIn users in LinkedIn Profile Targeting for text Ads, shopping campaigns, and dynamic search Ads in 2019. This is currently in BETA stage in the UK. LinkedIn Profile Targeting will cover 145 industries, 80,000 companies and 26 job functions.

Bing Ads have less competition and cheaper CPC’s - Bing has numerous benefits from a lack of competition, such as better ad positions and cheaper costs per click (We estimate CPC saving of at least ⅓).

Bing Ads has better device targeting options - Bing advertisers can still exclude desktop and tablet traffic from their campaigns. Sophisticated advertisers can even target mobile devices using select operating systems.

Bing Ads allows you to control search demographics - Probably the most innovative and underused offering from Bing is the ability to control which age and gender demographics see your search Ads. Demographic targeting can be controlled at either the campaign or ad group level within Bing Ads. It is important to know that there are 400 million monthly searches in the UK on Bing.

Grant Barber Marketing Director

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We believe that advertisers are missing out on the many opportunities Bing offers. Please speak to your account manager to discuss how Bing can help you grow in 2019.

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Fight against the machines 2018 has been the year tech has really come to the forefront on businesses and agencies using AdWords. Earlier in this Monster Mash we have seen updates coming from Google and Facebook.

We have been using technology from the very early days of AdWords and Facebook and it has always been designed to uncover what is really going on in these platforms. The data is there but often hard to find so we use technology to uncover the data that matters. However, with some of the new initiatives from Google and Facebook they are taking away some features e.g. we used to be able to block mobile apps easily from display campaigns but now despite exclusions they still appear.

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As such we have written technology to automatically exclude apps if they have a cost over x and no conversions or more than 5 clicks with no conversions.

This is an example of the type of technology we are building. We have over a hundred of these use cases that are deployed on your accounts.

Over 2018 we have been building Analyser 2.0. This will migrate some of our reports into a new platform which will provide alerts to our account managers on items such as: Spelling errors Budget overspends Conflicting keywords Ad extension analysis Display exclusions Click fraud AI anomoly detection Excelessive clicking Google shopping reactivation Bid stacking script Integrated Bing, Facebook & Google reporting

Click Fraud Our new click fraud technology will fingerprint the device so if anyone tries, with browsers or networks, to click on your ad we will be able to block them from the device. The technology will also allow us to exclude converted customers so that we do not waste budget on current customers.

Google shopping reactivation With Google shopping the problem we see is if the machine starts to see something does not work it can start to kill it off. Google decides many products are not worth showing if the CTR is too low at the start.

We have built a process to get these to reappear by identifying the products that are no longer being delivered and then starting new campaigns. We then set a bid strategy to push them in the auction and get them alive and kicking again.

We have seen some large e-commerce sites double revenue with this strategy

alone and will be rolling this out to all e-commerce customers once the tech is ready.

Once the platform is live your account manager will take you through a screenshare. Over the year there will be continual updates which we will keep you aware of.

AI and machine is interesting but I actually think ahead of this is the power battle between Facebook, Google and Amazon. If you look at Instagram’s rise in Google trends you can see a shift happening. For us this means the average business is not clear where to put their advertising dollars. Many will be on the wrong platform and many will not have the right balance. A must for me is everyone having a presence and strategy across Google, YouTube, Bing, Facebook and Instagram. This applies for large and small businesses.

Ricky Solanki Co-CEO

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Push International Our CEO Steve clocked up some air miles in 2018 travelling to Beijing (twice), Lisbon, San Jose, Milan, Dublin, Athens, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Zurich.

We are taking Push into new markets and are taking our customers there too. In spite of Brexit, we are seeing a huge interest from International Brands and businesses looking to work with London’s agencies to grow in Europe and the USA. It’s not surprising that businesses outside the UK want to work with British agencies when you look at the chart Opposite.

Fig1* As a nation we spend more on digital Ads than France, Germany and Russia combined. We were also the first country in the world where more than half of all Advertising revenue was invested in digital rather than old media like TV, Press, Outdoor and Radio.

(This landmark was reached in 2016).

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Top 10* countries in Europe, ranked by digital ad spending, 2016 (billions of €) 1. UK

Fig1*

€14.2

2. Germany €5.9 3. France €4.2 4. Russia €2.6 5. Italy €2.3 6. Netherands €1.7 7. Spain €1.6 8. Sweden €1.6 9. Belgium €0.9 10. Switzerland €0.9

Note: figures are actual gross income; inlcudes classifields /directories, display, mobile and search; includes agency commisions; *out of the 27 countries from which IAB Europe and IHS aggregated data.

Source: Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB Europe) and IHS, “Adex Benchmark 2016” as cited in press release, May 23, 2017.

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Of all the countries Steve visited China really stands out. It’s an enormous market with a growing consumer base eager for European Brands and services. The digital landscape is very different though. Unlike Europe and North America where Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon dominate, in China the key players are Baidu, Tencent, WeChat and Alibaba.

Take a look at a snapshot of the landscape here:

China’s growing consumer base - With a population of nearly 1.5 billion, it’s easy to see why businesses are seeing China as the land of opportunity. China has the largest social media market, however access to sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are blocked. This means foreign businesses wishing to crack the market need to get to grips with local sites such as the two dominant players, WeChat and Sina Weibo.

WeChat - A mobile multi-purpose messaging, social media, mobile and payment app.

Region

Internet Users

% of Population

Smartphone Users

% of Population

Asia - Pacific

2.03 Billion

49.7%

1.52 Billion

37.1%

Latin America

364.3 Million

57.6%

249.8 Million

39.5%

Western Europe

335.7 Million

78.4%

282.3 Million

66.0%

Middle East / Africa

328.6 Million

21.5%

151.8 Million

10.0%

North America

311.4 Million

85.0%

255.3 Million

69.7%

Central / East Europe

269.8 Million

62.9%

206.6 Million

48.2%

Global Digital User Metrics

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The platform was developed by Tencent and has approximately 1 billion active monthly users. The platform is feature rich, offering the ability to send messages via text, voice, phone or video. In addition, they are able to shop using e-commerce stores that reside on the platform, where they can use the app to make payments. Businesses can use the platform to chat with followers via the private message function. Many use the app to accept payments and provide customer service.

Sina Weibo - An open social media platform that was developed by Sina.com (with Alibaba owning an 18% share) and has approximately 500m active monthly users. Weibo is often referred to as the Chinese Twitter, because of it’s 140 character limit. However, the platform also supports rich form content such as long text and videos, making it the ideal platform for creating, distributing and discovering Chinese language content.

Content Marketing in China - Chinese audiences are looking for entertaining

and fun content. Businesses are looking to create content specifically for this market rather than translating foreign articles. The audience are looking for unique experiences and to understand a brand's values. Video has also become a very powerful tool for Chinese content marketing. Many e-commerce businesses are using short (5 - 15 seconds) video content to share their brand message.

Baidu - Baidu is the top-ranked site in China with nearly 80% of the domestic search engine market, and the 4th most popular site in the world, after Google, YouTube and Facebook with over 2 billion users worldwide. Similar to Google, Baidu offers a variety of search products, including image, map, and video search.

Baidu has mini-programs embedded, allowing users to listen to music, watch videos, order food and much more from within the app, even though they are developed by third parties.

Steve Hyde Co-CEO

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We are starting to help strategic Chinese businesses offer products into Europe and we are also growing our expertise in helping our European customers sell into China. If you are currently exporting into China and would like our support, or have this as a business objective for 2019, please speak to us and we can share information and help each other grow internationally.

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Meet the team

Monique Position - Head of Multi Market Likes - The Sea Dislikes - Gin in small glasses

Monique has been with Push for over 4 years and brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to our team. She has previously worked with some massive household brands and always has a vision of growth for her customers. Heading up our ever growing multi market team Monique is a champion of self development for her team and is always looking for new ways to be innovative and effective in their approach.

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A good example of this is the creation of reporting for franchisors so they have clear and topline overview of how their franchisee network is performing.

In addition to allowing franchisees to have their own performance dashboards so there was clear transparency in optisations and reporting. When it comes to reporting whatever you desire, Monique can certainly deliver. Plus she knows excel pretty well so i’ll leave you to imagine the possibilities.

Monique joined us as an account manager but we knew straight away she would be destined for big things.

Monique had a real passion for working with businesses that had global aspirations and were looking for opportunities for growth, either by spreading internationally or by opening more branches in the UK. We saw how people thrive when working around her and wanted to ensure her infectious approach was spread, so the multi market team was created to support businesses that need assistance managing marketing campaigns across different territories.

Not only looking at PPC, Monique is always thinking big picture by understanding how other channels are working for the business and using analysis to determine trends and recommended budgets for months to come. This is core to profitability and also being able to understand the story in the data.

She had her first 2 week break in her 8 year career back in June travelling to Canada for the first time in over 10 years to see family. It was on this trip that she rang the office with updates on some reporting features she had wanted for our multi market customers. Nurturing people comes second nature to Monique voted the “Mother Hen” of our office.

Her team often takes on placement students who return to Push after University as fully fledged account managers, many of them leading teams of their own now thanks to her guidance

an unwashed plate in the kitchen sink in the office. I think everyone has had a telling off in one way or another so wash dry and put away.

As a way to switch off Monique will often goes to art workshops which we have right here in the office! Although she will admit they may not always look as good as the original it’s a real way to unwind after a long day. Monique has recently been promoted to Head of Search! A role which was previously held by our in house “PPC Daddy” Charlie, so there are certainly some big shoes to fill.

Being a stickler for organisation process and testing this is a really exciting move for Monique. With the amazing work she has done with the Multi Market team, we are really excited to see this growth across the rest of the business and most importantly your account.

So if you aspire to growth across multiple markets, speak to Monique :)

It’s good to note that I would dare anyone (and we mean anyone) to leave.

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New Pushlings

Flora Hello, my name is Flora and I am one of the newest Pushlings. I started at Push after spending the past 4 years at university in St Andrews, Scotland. While Art History may not seem like the most obvious foundation for PPC, surprisingly I have found that the analytical skills I used understanding masterpieces have been an invaluable tool for analysing our accounts.

I started at Push six months ago and have spent this time learning the ropes. I think it is fair to say that when I started, it was painful for anyone who had to endure my awkward phone manner.

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However, with A LOT of guidance from the team, phone calls are now a breeze.

(Albeit a face to face conversation is still fairly awkward).

For those who haven’t recently endured the graduate recruitment process, it is undoubtedly soul crushing. That is, unless you apply for Push. While ‘training’, ‘mentoring’, and ‘personal development’ are buzzwords readily thrown around as hooks for potential employees, Push doesn’t just have these features as taglines, nor as perks of the jobs but rather, training is at the heart of the company. And it’s not just picking up the phone that the team helped me with, the whole company weekly training means that no one ever stops learning about PPC, business, or how to boost your day to day performance.

When I was asked to write a little something on myself, The team suggested I let you know about my interests and likes. As well as seeing art, I love to go to gigs, plays, see friends

(who doesn’t though?), to cook, to read, listen to podcasts, go hiking, skiing, sailing, and exploring.

Essentially I love nothing more than to be busy; It would be an understatement to say that I am merely energetic. Luckily though, that is needed in the strategy development team. Alongside Jasleen and Renisha, I work with setting up and optimising all the new accounts that come to Push and assist the account managers in the first 5 months of the account going live to make sure that we get the results you want!

To guarantee that your accounts have the best possible foundation, the three of us are tirelessly energetic. At the core, this role requires acute attention to detail, an obscene amount of organisation, passion and a fair amount of chasing up details! I am honestly so grateful to work with such kick-ass women who are truly dedicated, smart, and driven. Trust me when I say that you’re lucky to have your account in their hands.

Push is a results driven agency but work isn’t all that Pushlings do. While the monthly socials are a highlight, lunch in the office is one of my favourite things about working at Push. While it does involve some delicious vegan dishes, spicy curries or questionable kebabs, the lunch tables are also at the heart of Push life. Each morning before work, it’s where everyone catches up about their weekend over coffee and cereal and at lunch is the stage for the most amusing and engaging discussions.

I am sure that you have heard much about Push being ‘diverse’ but the best place to witness this is at lunch where debates on veganism, cults, Trump’s policies, Love Island, conspiracy theories, global warming, football and Brexit are frequent and occasionally heated affairs.

To speak frankly, this is why I love Push.

There are no false pretences. Whether you’re sassy, shy or gym obsessed, everyone is accepted for their quirks because essentially, our differences are what make Push as strong as it is.

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Push Support New School in Calcutta Calcutta Rescue provides free medical care, education and skills training for the poor in Kolkata (Calcutta), India.

They provide life-saving healthcare and health education for over 280 people a day and have over 670 children in their schools.

They help 17,000 poor and destitute people every year.

Our Co-Ceo Ricky Solanki met an old university friend, Jaydeep Chakraborty, at a wedding in India. Jaydeep is now the CEO of Calcutta Rescue. Rescue has just purchased a run-down, 150-year-old house that it wanted to convert into a new school for 350 children from the slums of Kolkata.

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Jaydeep told him about this exciting initiative saying: “The renovation of this school is critical to improving learning outcomes for children, providing them with opportunities and lifting them out of poverty.�

After four frustrating years of searching, Calcutta Rescue has finally managed to buy a building to convert into a new school.

The two-storey premises in Iswar Mills Lane in North Kolkata has been a private house for 150 years and its 16 rooms were added-on piecemeal over that time.

But, once it is refurbished, it will provide an uplifting and safe environment for the 350 pupils currently at No 10 School to learn and grow.

Until now they have been using a former brothel that is dark, overcrowded and on the edge of a red-light district.

The new school is double the size, has several outdoor spaces where the children can play, and is in a safe area near several other schools. And it even has a mango tree in the courtyard!

The aim is to have the school ready to open by next summer. There is a lot to do before then - including raising the money needed to fund the conversion work.

In keeping with CR’s philosophy of ensuring donors precious

money goes as far as possible, this is going to be a no-frills building project which is estimated to cost around ÂŁ100,000.

Push were happy to support this initiative and you can also donate at

www.calcuttarescuefund.org.uk

Ricky Solanki Co-CEO

Any donation will help provide toilets, repairs, classroom equipment and paint for the new school.

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