“In the Spotlight” profiles Stacy Goodchild, Bucket Media’s SEM Strategist. With clients hailing from industries such as automotive to education to retail, Stacy provided interesting insights into platform testing and hyper local targeting.
How would you describe your company in less than 100 words?
Bucket Media is a full-service advertising agency and a Premier Google Partner. Our online department builds, executes, and optimizes custom digital campaigns in-house. This allows us to have more control over campaign performance and make necessary changes in real-time. Our current client roster spans a variety of industries including automotive, education, financial, government, healthcare, retail, travel, and many more. Our clients vary in size, budget, and goals, which is why each advertising plan is customized to meet individual client needs. All of our campaigns are built to be strong in message, strategy, and execution.
What is the biggest challenge you face in your job?
My biggest challenge as a Search Engine Marketing Strategist revolves around using new platforms. We have to figure out when they make sense, how to measure success, and how to convey their value to our clients. Some of the more established online advertising platforms have common metrics like clicks and impressions that can be compared, but newer platforms don’t always quantify value in the same way. To evaluate new services we look at which advertisers have had the most success with that platform and the core audience it reaches. Measuring success and value are largely tied to whether the campaign has the intended effect. Sometimes there is an obvious metric to track, while other times things like website behavior or in-store traffic and sales are the best indicators.
What do you think is the most interesting recent trend in digital advertising?
I think the most fascinating recent trend is the focus on hyper-local targeting. It’s been around for a few years, but it’s still on the rise and every month we see tweaks that make it more accurate, and new features being added. It is intriguing because it focuses on user wants and needs in the moment. We incorporate this type of advertising into our plans when there is a specific location or event that aligns heavily with our target audience. Car dealers love to target users at competitor lots. Home services get great engagement from targeting users at home improvement stores. It really comes down to thinking like the consumer. Where do they go, what do they do, and what does their conversion funnel look like? [ctt_hbox link=”ElRru” via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]
What trends do you see in PPC reporting?
As digital campaigns become more mainstream, clients are asking for more data in their reports, and they expect to receive them quickly. They use the detailed reports to understand their customers better than they’ve ever been able to before. These insights often help shape not only their online campaigns, but their entire advertising strategies. Being able to view this information in an expedited manner helps them make relevant changes when they will have the greatest impact. Tools like Swydo help us to consolidate multiple data sources and get reports out in a timely fashion.
What are the top 5 tools you use almost every day?
Asana – This is the current project management software our company uses. It allows you to assign tasks to others, follow project process, attach files, assign tasks directly from your email, and so much more. You even get occasional unicorns that fly across your screen for checking off tasks.
Boomerang for Gmail – This Chrome extension allows you to return an email to your inbox at a designated day & time in the future. You can also write emails to be sent at a later date.
Pocket – This is another Chrome extension I use regularly to declutter my inbox. It allows you to keep articles in one place to view later and they can be tagged for easy sorting.
Google Tag Assistant – Can you tell I like Chrome extensions? This one will show you what Google tags are on any given page and if they’re functioning properly.
Uptime Robot – This free tool is fantastic and I highly recommend it to anyone managing digital campaigns. It monitors URLs and notifies you via email when they go down. This helps us prevent wasting ad spend on sites that are down.
What is something that’s surprised you about digital marketing which you didn’t expect when you got started?
When I started in digital marketing I had no idea that ads could be targeted in such intricate ways. Coming from a background in television and radio advertising, I had never thought of targeting users by things like past behavior or future intent. It opened up a whole new world of possibilities.
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