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As an agency owner, delivering high-quality, informative reports is crucial to maintaining client satisfaction and driving growth. But you already knew that if you read our article on why white label reporting is important . And while white label social media reports offer a valuable tool for showcasing your agency's expertise and demonstrating the impact of your social media strategies, clear and transparent reports are not always easy to come by in the white label space.  In this blog, we'll delve into the essential data points that should be included in all white label social media reports, focusing on both paid and organic social media. Beyond that, we’ll also explore the different types of reports that could be provided to ensure your agency doesn’t just have the data, but has analysis behind it.  Types of White Label Social Media Reports There’s basically two types of social media reports you can and should be receiving from a white label provider as an agency, or delivering to the agency as a white label provider. Those are: Dashboards Recaps and Analyses White Label Social Media Dashboards Think of the dashboard like a live view into the campaign that’s being run on each social media channel. This includes all of the high level metrics and key data points we’ll get into shortly and is typically represented by connecting the platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc. to a reporting tool like Agency Analytics or DashThis. Or if you’re really good, you can make your own in Looker Studio (spoiler alert, that’s what we did).  Read our blog  on what is a white label social media dashboard  for more details and why dashboards are so important. In the end, the dashboard doesn’t provide any actual analysis of the campaign that’s actually running, it’s all just data represented in one view. That’s where a monthly recap or analysis can come in handy.   Recaps and Analyses Providing a recap and analysis is an essential part of white label social media reporting. Where the dashboard can and should provide key metrics, the analysis provides key insights . For the best output, a social media report, whether it be organic media or paid, should always include the 3 following items.  Performance Towards the Goal: Every campaign needs a goal. Whether it’s a specific ROAS, a cost-per-lead number that ensures profitability for the client, a media/marketing efficiency ratio, or something else that’s quantifiable, there must be a goal. And with that goal, the social media report should always include how its channels are aiding in relation to that goal, whether it has been performing well or not.  What’s Happening: Think of this section as a deeper dive into what’s actually going on in the campaign. This is where the white label report should include an analysis of why the campaign may or may not be achieving the goals set out. Beyond that, it is the job of the white label provider to not only say what changes they’ve been making to the campaign to improve its performance, but the reasons behind the changes so the agency can have a greater understanding of what’s going on before they present it to the client.  Next Steps: This seems like a simple one, but it’s often forgotten. Including next steps not only sets expectations, but it shows proactivity and planning. The added benefit is that the white label provider should be following up on their next steps the next time you talk.  Key Data Points for White Label Paid Social Media Reports Now that we’ve gotten through the basics, it’s time to get specific. Whether the following insights and metrics appear in the dashboard, the recap, or both, they’re imperative to include in a white label social media report.  Primary Goal (CPA [cost-per-action, like leads or purchases], ROAS, etc.):  Stop us if you’ve heard this one before but the primary goal of the campaign should be front and center of the dashboard and the first thing talked about in the recap. After all, this is what the client is measuring the campaign against, and it’s likely the only thing they care about. This requires accurate tracking set up and if you’re showing this in the dashboard as well (which you should be), a connection to the client’s Analytics account, CRM, or wherever the goal is being tracked.  Channel Performance Metrics: Channel-specific metrics give context to how the campaign is performing from a paid standpoint. If the campaign is surpassing the client’s goal and making them money, they’re unlikely to care about metrics like their click-through rate, but they can provide insight or additional context into how effective certain messages are, what audiences are engaging, etc. Some channel-specific metrics to include as support are:  Spend:  Perhaps the most obvious one, the spend simply reflects the dollars that were actually spent within the platform on media. It’s important to maintain transparency with the client how much of their budget is actually going to media.  Reach and Impressions:  Measures the number of unique users exposed to the ads and the total number of times your ads were seen. This can be important to provide frequency numbers, particularly as it relates to prospecting and remarketing campaigns.  Cost per Click (CPC):  The cost-per-click evaluates the efficiency of the ad spend and is one of the most important supporting metrics (along with conversion rate) in determining how you can drive the lowest CPA possible.   Clicks and Click-Through Rate (CTR) : Tracks the number of clicks on the ads and the percentage of impressions that resulted in clicks. This can be particularly useful when assessing ad performance.  Cost per 1,000 Impressions (CPM): Tracks how much you’re being charged for 1,000 impressions.  Conversion Rate:  CR measures the percentage of clicks that led to conversions (e.g., purchases, sign-ups), which can be great to determine not only audience quality, but landing page effectiveness.  Platform/Placement Breakdown:  With so many different ad placement options in social media, particularly on Facebook and Instagram, analyzing where the ads are serving can help advertisers create future ads to maximize their effectiveness.  Audience Insights: Audience insights can also be great supporting metrics that help determine if you’re reaching the right users. Some metrics to include are as follows: Demographics:  Analysis of age, gender, and interests can help determine where the budget is best spent. Device Usage:  Determining the percentage of impressions and clicks that occurred on different devices (e.g., mobile, desktop, tablet) can help the dev team determining which devices they should focus on when building out a landing page, although ensuring every landing page is responsive and optimized for all devices should always be a priority.   Key Data Points for White Label Organic Social Media Reports Measuring the impact of an organic social media campaign can often be a difficult task, but it’s not all that different from paid media in terms of the reporting style.  First and foremost, just like paid, always include the primary goal as your number one focus. For most clients, this is an increase in followers on the organic social media accounts, but regardless of what the goal is, or how effectively the white label provider is managing social media, reporting on the primary goal is paramount.  Beyond that, if you’re already outsourcing to a white label provider for organic social media, chances are key metrics and other social media activities are being tracked in their scheduling platform of choice. Platforms like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, and Cloud Campaign already have API integrations and can paint a picture of what’s going on in the world of your client’s social media. Regardless, it’s important to touch on the following key data points:  Follower Growth: We just touched on this one, but good organic social media content breeds followers, and this should be one of the top data points reported on, even if it’s not the primary goal.  Engagement: Much like follower growth, a good organic strategy facilitates engagement. The percentage of users sharing, liking, and commenting on your client’s content has a massive impact on the reach of the content.  Reach: Reaching as many relevant users as possible is essential to create awareness for a brand, so reporting on this is a no brainer.   Content Performance: Using the three metrics above, identifying the types of content that resonate most with the client’s audience infers future decisions about what a good and bad post looks like.  Audience Insights: Reporting on the audience the social posts are reaching not only helps determine if you’re reaching the right user, but a strong performing post can also uncover demographics your client’s brand hadn’t considered as the type to be interested in their brand. Benefits of Comprehensive White Label Social Media Reports It’s probably pretty obvious by now, but a comprehensive white label social media report comes with a lot of benefits.  Enhanced Client Satisfaction:  Delivering insightful and visually appealing reports helps build trust and loyalty with your clients. Improved Decision-Making:  Provide your clients with the data they need to make informed decisions about their social media strategy. Demonstrated Expertise:  Showcase your agency's knowledge and skills in social media marketing. Increased Revenue:  By demonstrating the value of your services, you can increase your agency's revenue and secure long-term partnerships. Putting it All Together   By providing your clients with both a dashboard and recap with the data points mentioned, you can create valuable resources that help your clients understand the impact of your social media efforts. This demonstrates expertise on your part, leads to enhanced client satisfaction, and likely increased revenue from your now secured long-term partnership.  If you’re interested in working with an elite white label provider with reports just like these, feel free to contact us and schedule your discovery call .

Oct 30, 2020 Successful Domain and Application Whitelists are Rooted in Quality Assurance For successful domain and application whitelisting, programmatic advertising companies need to factor a strong quality assurance standard into their operations. To many, this may seem obvious, but this crucial element of the client experience is often overlooked.  Sure, there are plenty of brand safety integrations you can incorporate to help automate scanning traffic for IVT, bots, etc. However, these solutions are the industry standard for agencies in the programmatic display space. Beyond them, the true value lies in having a team of human analysts further examine results to guarantee quality traffic.  Conduit Digital’s programmatic team’s quality assurance process combines curated automation solutions with human expertise to guarantee deliverables that exceed expectations. This drive to produce work that meets our standards led us to create one of our favorite custom deliverables for clients: manually vetted whitelists that align with specific verticals.  Domain and Application Whitelisting: Conduit Style Because we run campaigns that cover almost every vertical, we established a process to maintain consistent quality of results, no matter the client. To do this, our team has invested a great deal of time, effort, and brainpower to make this reality.  This process involved spending 648 combined hours manually vetting 13,000 domains and applications as part of our major whitelisting quality assurance initiative last year. This massive undertaking resulted in a unique cross-sector knowledge base that can be deployed for any project. And yes, we still manually update our lists on an ongoing basis.  If you have the ability to invest team members’ efforts into doing something similar, we recommend it one hundred percent. It requires a client-first mentality, a drive to produce deliverables that exceed expectations, and maybe a few extra cups of coffee when you hit hour-12.  What is a Whitelist?  A whitelist is a list of approved domains that a client or advertising operations analyst uses to serve ads to target audiences. Maintaining high-quality whitelists puts the campaign manager in the driver’s seat when it comes time to execute a campaign.  How? Instead of casting a wide net with ambiguous returns, a quality whitelist grants the ability to hone in on specific audiences based on the websites they visit.  However, not all whitelists are created equal. There are many services online that offer generic, prepackaged whitelists. These are not customized to your clients’ needs. Cheap whitelists are cheap for a reason.  Generic whitelists create the appearance of far-reaching ads across many properties. In this case, though, many simply are for show and generate minimal returns on the money you’ve spent.  At Conduit Digital, we always recommend that you ensure your domain and application whitelisting strategies align with the verticals your clients serve. This will drastically increase the likelihood that your clients see maximized returns on their investment and that target audiences engage with their brand the way you want them to.  How Can a Programmatic Advertising Agency Use Whitelists? Whitelist strategies can be layered onto other tactics that programmatic advertising agencies can use for narrowed, controlled targeting. They can also be used on their own.   Either way, the goal remains the same: Boost your clients’ reach to the most ideal target audiences possible that are already visiting sites relevant to your business.  Let’s use an example: You have a client that owns an outdoor sporting goods store. They are looking to better promote hunting and fishing gear. Here, you would implement a whitelist of outdoor sports websites with a special focus on hunting and fishing. This will take your reach directly to where qualified buyers are likely spending their time – and their money. In this case, the goal was to match the client’s ad with the most relevant audience possible. This increases the likelihood of more sales, which boosts ROI, and strengthens your client’s trust in your agency. What agency doesn’t want that?  How Do I Scrub Domains and Applications for Better Whitelists? “Scrubbing” encompasses the entire quality assurance process. This requires a team member manually scanning websites and apps to track touchpoints like:  Most importantly – does the site offer space for ad placements?  Is the website legitimate? No one wants to fall into the black hole of serving ads on cluttered clickbait sites.  Does the site offer quality content to visitors?  What vertical(s) does the domain cater to?  What’s the Alexa ranking? Would this be considered a “premium” domain?  If you are thinking of serving ads on an app, read the reviews. Look for complaints about users being spammed with ads.  Is an app you’re considering designed for engagement? For example – does it help the user fall asleep (no eyes on the screen) or does require activity like shopping, social interaction, etc.?  Though this is just the beginning of an in-depth scrub, it will provide the foundation you need to scale your whitelists up into the thousands. Without this manual element, you may be sorting tons of low-quality domains and apps into your whitelists just because they appear to “fit” your target vertical.  On occasion, you should also revisit websites and applications that you originally added to your list. Sometimes, these properties change significantly, are bought by new companies that change the ad format, or are discontinued. If they are no longer serving your whitelist strategy, they should be replaced by better destinations.  The Finished Product: Better Whitelists Your domain and application whitelisting capabilities are enhanced exponentially once you’ve put a quality assurance process in place that combines automation with expert manual analysis. At the end of an initial scrub, you will have 1+ whitelists per vertical/sub-vertical. This allows for even more brand safety and customization for clients’ campaigns.  As a byproduct of this, you can even have an updated global blacklist . This way, you can also proactively determine domains and applications to avoid and advise clients away from them.  The digital marketing industry has become diluted with agencies claiming to have the best solutions in place for the end client. Actually rolling up your sleeves and investing in the process will allow you to have a true perspective on what is unique or valuable to your clients, thus proving why you’re the best. This whitelist project is a great starting point on the road to client satisfaction.  Integrate Better Domain and Application Whitelisting Into Your Product Offering  Conduit Digital offers agencies the chance to take advantage of our robust whitelists through our premium turnkey white label services. If you want to take your programmatic display advertising to the next level faster than ever, schedule an agency growth call anytime.

Nov 23, 2020 Email has thrived in every era of digital marketing. How? Unlike most other channels, targeted email connects you directly to your audience members’ inboxes – a major communication touchpoint in their daily routines.  An agency that wants to scale its product suite cannot afford to ignore email marketing. Possessing the means to send high volumes of messages at scale can set you apart from others.  After reading this Ultimate Guide, you should have a solid understanding of what makes a great email marketing campaign. First, let’s cover some basics.  What is Email Marketing?  Though this may sound self-explanatory, email marketing encompasses so much more than leveraging your audience members’ inboxes to engage with them. Beyond crafting an effective message, there are other key campaign elements to consider like:  Who do you want to receive your message?  What should the message’s layout and design look like?  When should the message be sent?  What action do you want your readers to take after reading?  How will you measure campaign performance?  There are many digital tools and services that you can use to answer these important questions. While this helps create a process with little-to-no friction, your campaign is doomed if it lacks a clear vision.  Respected authors start writing their novels with the ending in mind. The challenge lies in getting the rest of the story there. Approach your email strategy in the same way. Is Email Marketing Dead? While email marketing has existed as a longtime staple tactic for many brands, it is far from dead. Though some parts of the internet may claim that email marketing is dead, the data does not support that.  In fact, email marketing has grown over recent years. Here are some statistics that may surprise you:  126.7 trillion emails are estimated to be sent by 2022.  Over 90% of Americans above the age of 15 read the emails they receive More than 75% of teens consider email a part of their daily life  58% of users check their email before their social media accounts every day. Social media and search engines combined only account for 34% Looking at the figures above, you can see that email is still the most popular digital messaging channel. Businesses, organizations, schools, families, and friends all use email to communicate. Why is Email Marketing Still so Popular?  Email’s popularity can be attributed to a number of factors. Three major reasons are: Versatility: You can use email for personal messages, marketing, eCommerce, sharing files, and much more.  Integration: Businesses can integrate a number of other platforms with their email systems like automation, customer relationship management (CRM), instant messaging, and many other tools.  Privacy: Unlike more public-facing platforms like social media, email allows users to maintain as much privacy as they want. Many people have multiple email accounts for specific purposes. For example, a young adult may have one for their workplace, another for personal use, and a student email if they are in college.  Benefits of Email Marketing  Each communication channel that your business uses offers unique benefits. Email offers ones like:  Reaching People at Their Inboxes Unlike social media and PPC advertisements, email marketing campaigns meet your audience right at their inbox with a personalized message. While your ad campaigns compete against other distractions on a user’s screen, email can capture more attention.  Because inboxes can filter out spam content and redirect advertisements to specific folders, content quality is king. Email is still a trusted medium for most users, and make sure you reward that trust by including engaging content, personalized messages, and an interesting subject line. Even if the reader does not open a single message, you will have your brand at the front of their minds each time a new message is sent.  Targeting Features Most email marketing platforms allow you to segment audiences into specific groups related to almost any vertical and then target them.  For example, for popular industries like Automotive, you can segment your reader base by granular interests like specific makes and models, vehicle body types, and many others.  All About Email Suppression Lists Sometimes, you want to prevent specific audiences from reading your messages. A suppression list allows you to exclude current customers or anyone from your CRM during a campaign. This ensures that your send is focused on incremental reach in addition to driving retention goals.  Screen Real Estate Most other marketing channels are competing for screen space. Social media ads have to fight for visibility against your friends’ posts. PPC ads must match or exceed the quality of organic search results on Google.  Unlike these tactics, with the exception of full-screen OTT ads,  an email message will take up most of your screen’s real estate. This means you are not battling other on-page elements for your audience’s attention. Remarketing Remarketing allows you to keep your brand fresh in your audience members’ minds by re-engaging with them at their point in the user journey.  Using a remarketing strategy, you can target any of the following audiences from your email send:  Non-Openers: Those who did not open your previous message Non-Clickers: Those who have opened your message but did not click any links within  Openers: Those who have opened your message  Clickers: Those who have opened your message and have clicked through to a link in the message  Matchbacks Show your campaign ROI by matching your CRM data with your email marketing platform’s data. This can provide a more holistic view of your success by linking any recent purchases to people who received your email send. This will show if your efforts have a direct impact on revenue.  A/B Testing A/B testing is sending two variations of the same core message to different members of the same audience. This way, if you are deciding between two directions for your email marketing campaign, you can see which one is generating better results and use that to inform your decision making. Here, closely monitoring your analytical data is non-negotiable.  Tips for Successful Email Marketing  Email marketing involves critical thinking, creative skill, and sharp strategy. Though there are many “gurus” online trying to sell you on their systems for success, these are the four cornerstone elements of any goal-crushing campaign:  Aesthetic Appeal Audience Targeting Value-Driven Content Relevant Call-to-Action Let’s look at these in more detail. Aesthetic Appeal What would you be more likely to read in an email message: A wall of text with no images or a creative infographic that combines key points with relevant visuals? You don’t need an advanced degree in psychology to assume the latter.  People are visual beings and spend more time reading content that combines engaging messages with aesthetic appeal. When creating layouts and templates for your campaigns, leave space to insert eye-catching visual elements to enhance the copy. When possible, avoid using stock photos and opt for relevant, branded visuals.  Email marketing platforms like MailChimp help streamline the design process for your emails. MailChimp includes features like block editors and drag-and-drop functions to create a comfortable reading experience for your recipients. Audience Targeting Before you craft your message, you need to know who your intended readers are. Rather than broadcasting to the internet at-large, narrowing down specific audiences will increase your chances of meeting campaign goals. For example, if you own a local coffee shop in New Jersey but your email subscribers are all skiing enthusiasts in Utah, you have a problem. Where are your local caffeine connoisseurs?  Sure, that is not a realistic scenario, but it should illustrate a key point: Always prioritize reaching audiences that share interests with your brand. This helps you tailor your messages to drive further engagement and retain a qualified reader base.  The eCommerce Appeal Audience targeting is also a fantastic email marketing feature for eCommerce strategies. If you own an apparel company and someone purchased a tee shirt from you this past summer, send an email to tell them about that awesome sweatshirt you just released for the fall season.  Value-Driven Content Remember, you are creating email content for your reader, not yourself. This is the time to educate your audience about your products, services, or expertise. If you are selling a product or service, this can provide a great opportunity to give someone a discount code or notify them of a promotion as well. Sharing knowledge to help someone get the most out of their engagements with your brand will result in stronger brand credibility and customer loyalty.  Relevant Call-to-Action  How do you drive conversions or further engagement through your email send? Use a call-to-action (CTA)!  The CTA directs readers where to go next after reading your message. Do you want them to visit your contact page? View a product on your website? Read a new blog post? Make sure you include this.  Popular examples of a CTA include:  Learn More Contact Us Find Out Why Watch the Video  Most email marketing automation platforms include layout elements like clickable buttons that can present your CTA in an eye-catching way. If you can include a button for your CTA, do so.  Choose Your Strategy: Acquisition vs. Retention  When it comes to formulating your email marketing strategy there are two main approaches: Acquisition and Retention. Both are targeted at reaching specific types of audience members.  Acquisition  Acquisition email strategies are targeted at reaching people who may not have engaged with your brand before and are aimed at generating new revenue. Here, goals could include:  Drive web traffic  Increasing awareness of an upcoming event or sale Acquiring email addresses to funnel to your CRM system.  Conduit Digital’s targeted email services focus on the Acquisition approach. Our team specializes in creating strategic funnels that act as a pipeline between your brand’s campaigns and your CRM system for you to then nurture your leads.  Retention  The Retention approach focuses on leveraging contacts in a CRM system or other first-party data platform. These are typically users that have already engaged with your brand through making a purchase, submitting a contact form, or other avenues.   Some examples of Retention emails could include:  Gated offers, for example: “Unlock 30% on your purchase by giving us your email.”  Weekly newsletters  Reminders that you haven’t completed a purchase yet  Offering a discount on your next purchase if you submit a review for your latest one Audience members targeted through your Retention campaigns are often users that you want to reach to drive repeat revenue. Here, engaging and value-driven content is critical. For example, if someone just purchased your product, send them an email the next day with helpful tips for using it.  An Easy Template for Basic Email Marketing Campaigns We’ve covered tons of email marketing topics here, but it’s up to you to put them into action! Here’s a simple template for formulating a successful campaign:  Phase 1: Preparation  Determine the type of user-centric content you want to write about  Conceptualize your campaign’s intended goals  Determine your message and its audience Create the subject line and preview text  Finalize message layout, design, and visual elements Decide on the CTA and its intended destination Determine the key performance indicators (KPIs) you will measure your campaign success against.  Phase 2: Creation  Write your message copy – keep it as short, simple, and readable as possible.  Insert visual elements to support your message.  Add your CTA Have at least one other person look it over to watch for typos or other errors Phase 3: Sending Make sure all messaging, audience members, links, etc. are working together as intended  Send a test email to yourself if you want to see how it looks in an actual inbox  Once satisfied, hit send! Want to Scale Your Email Marketing Capabilities? Let Us Help For over 8 years, Conduit Digital has partnered with agencies to help them meet client demands at scale. The millions of email messages we have sent to countless inboxes have driven revenue in almost every vertical.  We can help you do the same. If you’d like to scale up your email marketing campaigns, contact us anytime.

Mar 27, 2020 Digital video advertising is one of the fastest-growing sectors of digital marketing. In fact, digital video advertising may be one of a marketer’s most powerful tools. 84% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. However, digital video advertising as we know today has had a short history in comparison to the ideas and concepts behind it. Advertising dates back to the beginning of basic societies, and to fully understand what digital marketing is, we need to understand how it has evolved over time. In this blog, we will go over: What Is Digital Video Advertising? Back To The Beginning The First Television Advertisement The Normalization of Television Ads Infomercials – The New World of Video ROI The Challenge of DVR and Ad-Blocker The Influence of Vloggers Society and Privacy Video ROI Today The Future of Video Advertising Conclusion What Is Digital Video Advertising? Digital video advertising is simply the process of marketing your business or company in a video format online in order to build brand awareness or sell a product/service. This can be done through a bunch of different platforms, some of which we will get into later in this blog. Back To The Beginning Long before dollar bills were accepted as currency, trading and bartering was key to sustaining the livelihood of your family within the community. Bartering for goods allowed individuals to no longer have to provide every necessity for themselves. Instead of being responsible for providing food, clothing, shelter, hunting tools. They could now use their talents to maximize what they were best at and trade with other community members for the other necessities. Once communities were big enough to have multiple individuals holding the same commodities advertising was born. Now not only was having a trade and a product necessary but sales also became a necessary skill, having individuals trade with you over what another person could give them. This is by no means the way we think of advertising today but it was the start of the concepts behind today’s advertising. Differentiating yourself from the competition for your own benefit. These are still the concepts marketers focus on today; consumer behaviors, market research, how to sell value, how to differentiate yourself from other comparable products and services. The largest difference is simply the medium in which we communicate our messages. No longer does every product require a face-to-face sales pitch. Communication has evolved and every new medium that has been invented, humans have worked to capitalize on it at a mass scale much more effective than the previous one-to-one sale. The richest and most compelling medium to date, video, has provided a new dimension of advertising that was never available before a narrative and that narrative is still important today from the first television ad 79 years ago. The First Television Advertisement It was July 1, 1941, when a regular-season game of America’s pastime, baseball took place. The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field that day 6-4 but the real history was made before the game even took place. Just prior to the game, aired a 9-second television ad for Bulova watches, a brand that is still prospering today. This was the first-ever video commercial to be aired on television. The ad would be considered incredibly basic as of today’s standards as it was a simple black and white clock in front of a map of the United States with a voiceover of the tagline “America runs on Bulova time.” At the time, however, it was a revolutionary step forward in the world of advertising. The advertisers and viewers of this ad in the New York area likely did not know it at that point, as that commercial cost only $9 to air, however, those 9-seconds were the early start of a worldwide billion-dollar industry in video advertising . The Normalization of Television Ads When Bulova watches aired the first commercial, they were well ahead of their time. In 1941 most Americans had not yet heard of television let alone owned one. The radio was still the most relevant medium of information for things such as the commentary of baseball games. This ad was only seen by about 4000 people in New York at the time, these individuals were technology innovators or friends of one in terms of the technology adoption curve. It was not until after the end of World War II in 1945 that the popularity of the television took off, but that did not stop ads from following suit with Bulova to start their advertising on television. Brands such as Colgate and Coca-Cola would often sponsor programming to have their name front and center at the start of programming. Then by 1952, Mr. Potato head became the first toy to advertise on television in which proved successful as they sold 2 million potato dolls that year. 1952 was also a big year for politics as related to video. This was the first year that political campaigns were run on television. The presidential election in 1952 was between Republican, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Democrat, Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower won by a landslide which can be in part attributed to his catchy television campaign. The minute-long video ad featured a tune titled “I Like Ike” and was animated by Walt Disney Studios. It featured cartoon humans and animals all marching to take Ike to Washington. In this time of early majority having televisions in their homes, it worked to help the public see “Ike” as a likable guy that deserved to be in Washington. This was the start of a long history of video presidential ads, now video ads are a huge factor in getting your message across to voters and making sure they are aware of your platform. The medium in which the public consumes the ads has now evolved to different mediums such as social media and YouTube advertising but the messaging has not. Candidates use tactics to appeal to voters emotionally and connect with their audience to drive influence in decisions at the polls. Even though the medium has again changed, the impact video ads have made on elections over the years started with Ike in 1952. Superbowl Commercials While the first television ad was shown preceding a baseball game, in current society the most expensive television commercials are during the biggest United States sporting event of the year, the Super Bowl. Each year major brands spend millions of dollars to reach a wider audience. This started back in 1967, the year of Super Bowl I, at that time it cost a max of $42000 to advertise a 30-second commercial. This is expensive even by today’s standards for an average commercial, however, is marginally cheaper than the $5.2 million it will run brands today. That is a 12281% cost increase in just a 54-year time span. Brands find value in being able to reach such a large audience across all ages, genders, ethnicities, in one $5.2 million opportunity. Commercials have become such a prominent part of the Super Bowl experience that it is one of the only times per year that Americans actually look forward to ads. Some viewers even claim that they watch more for the commercials than the game. This tradition came about as Super Bowl commercials have a reputation for being the best of the best in terms of video advertising. This makes sense as if a company is willing to spend $5.2 million on 30-seconds of air time they want to make sure their message makes a significant impact during that duration. Advertisers look to arise emotion out of viewers whether it’s humor or sadness they want to make a lasting impression. Every brand strives to be that one commercial that everyone is talking about in the following days and weeks after the big game. They can even overshadow the main event of the game depending on how the teams perform that day each year. Infomercials – The New World of Video ROI In the mid-1980s after the Federal Communications Commission lifted regulations of time limits on advertising air time , video ads took on a new form. The typical 30-second commercials evolved into 30-minute infomercials. Infomercials first arrived on scene in the 70s but took off in the 1980s. Although these ads were delivered through the same medium of television this reinvented the way viewers consumed product information. No longer was a short jingle the best way to capture the attention of your audience, brands were now able to display, demonstrate, and explain the value of a product over an extended period of time. These long-form commercials were great for brands that sold household items as they often required a lower production budget. Budget was needed to spend on the “actors” demonstrating the items but not on any advanced production tools. This is still a prominent tool used today, as there are full television channels dedicated to infomercial programming. The biggest game-changer that infomercials provided was the power of attribution. No longer were advertisers reliant on waiting until the end of the month or quarter to see if they noticed an increase in sales, after airing a commercial. Infomercials allowed for a direct return on investment tracking. For example, if an infomercial aired between 7-730pm, in that 30-minute window, data analysts would be able to see how many orders were received and what the value of each order was during that exact time frame. Those specific numbers were never before available when tracking the impact of video ads. ROI attribution gave marketers the tools to optimize their campaigns based on definitive, concrete data for the first time. Based on collected data they could determine, when was the best time of day to run these ads, at what point within the half-hour were the most calls generated, what selling point seemed to drive viewers most to pick up the phone and order. This ability showed direct value in video advertising that is the groundwork of why digital is so important today, attribution! World Wide Web For a long time after becoming a common household item in the mid 1950s the television was the only screen in the household. It was even a rarity to have more than one television, as it was often seen as a group activity. This was also due to the limited channels, programming and hours per day that content was available. It wasn’t until the 1980s when computers were introduced as a household item that things started to change at an incredibly rapid rate. In the thirty years from the 1950s-1980s Americas went from having one to two screens per household on average. In the thirty years from the 1980s-2010s households went from having two screens to on average seven per household! This was due largely in part to first the amount of content available, where each person in the same household may want to consume different content at the same time. In addition the introduction of so many new devices with screens, mainly cell phones, and tablets. This quick development over time is now allowing more outlets than ever before for advertisers to reach their message to their audience. Through; video streaming sites, social media platforms, websites, video ads are everywhere and the more screens available the more opportunities created for marketers. YouTube The internet took off in the 80s but the introduction of a specific website in the mid-2000s changed video forever. YouTube was introduced to the world in February 2005. It was a new concept where anyone could upload video content and have it be streamed by any viewer, and users grew at an alarming rate. It was only a year and a half before it was bought by Google in October of 2006. Google saw it as “the next step in the evolution of the internet” and they were absolutely right, as today more people watch YouTube than anyone television channel . Then in 2007 YouTube became a new way for advertisers to reach their audience with commercial messaging. In-stream ad space became available on the platform and the YouTube partner program was launched. This program, through this day, allows creators to monetize their content by “selling” ad space on their personal content. Advertisers now had a new outlet to share their commercials and creators had a way to make an income off their content giving them more incentive to upload engaging quality content. This introduction allowed advertisers an innovative way to reach their audience through online targeting. Where television ads were served to a mass audience and advertisers hoped that someone in their target demographic would be tuning in, this was the first opportunity to target not only the content being watched but the individual end-user. By serving ads to the specific consumer not the masses it allowed for more niche targeting than previously available. Their video ads delivered within the then Adwords platform developed overtime to reach end-users through very tactical targeting options. Today, using the same platform, now called Google Ads, advertisers can reach users based not only on what type of content they are watching but on a demographic level can select a specific gender, age, household income, or parental status. Google’s plethora of knowledge about its users works to the advertiser’s advantage. Beyond a demographic level is where the power of the YouTube and Google partnership really becomes powerful in the way of targeting. Collected information about users on the Google search platform allows us to target them with ads on YouTube based on interest and exact searches. Custom Intent Audiences allow advertisers to serve ads based on exact keywords consumers are searching for on Google. This cross-platform integration embraces making the consumers’ ad experience as relevant to them as possible, as consumers want to see ads for products or services most significant to their needs. In addition, advertisers can also take advantage of Custom Affinity Audiences to serve ads to those that have visited websites with relevant content to what they are selling. Ads on YouTube, unlike other formats, allow your ads to be any length, so now you are able to only use the amount of time you need and not be forced to stick within the traditional 30-second format. Another important feature though is that there is skippable and non-skippable content. This has altered the way we work to deliver a message, it is now more important than ever on this platform to include branding or the most important part of your message in the beginning of your ad as viewers can often skip after completing the first 5-seconds. This also provides a unique benefit where you have the opportunity to make branding impressions at no cost if a viewer does not complete your ad. These tools have revolutionized video ads. Having the capability to serve ads to individuals based on past internet activity brings video advertising lower in the funnel than previously possible. Facebook Facebook although founded a year before Youtube in 2004 did not have a video centric platform. Their advertising for a long time focused on display and banner ads. It wasn’t until February 2013 that video ads were released . This is integrated with their current business manager platform making all their available targeting applicable to this new video format. Video ads provided a more engaging medium to catch the eye of Facebook users as they were scrolling through their timelines. Facebook is an advertiser’s dream because users give so much information directly to the Facebook platform on a regular basis. Facebook knows their exact age and gender upon signing up for an account and the more you use the platform the more it tracks your activity and gains valuable insights on your likes and dislikes. Their algorithm can even pair “lookalikes.” This tool allows you to utilize the power of already determined customers and target audiences who are similar to them. Often audiences who are similar to your current customers will also have an interest in your product or service. Serving engaging video content through this medium can drive extremely relevant customers to complete your advertising goals, whether it is to drive awareness, leads, or e-commerce . Based on our own 2019 Conduit insights video ads outperform static images. Driving a bigger reach and a higher click-through rate. One of the biggest things to note with Facebook videos is that, unlike YouTube, a majority of video content on Facebook is consumed without sound . This again has changed the way advertisers need to connect with their audience. As Facebook users scroll through their timeline, the default for videos is to be mute, and the majority of users view content this way. Since silent movies it has never been so important to design video to be consumed by viewers on mute. This can be achieved through different strategies, including making your imagery stand out and tell a story on its own, this can be difficult but also very powerful, the other important optimization would be to always include captions on Facebook video advertising. Having a user view your ad and not understand the message is an incredible missed opportunity! Not adapting to the way users utilize video on the Facebook platform can hinder your campaign performance by not properly conveying your message. The Challenge of DVR and Ad-Blocker As previously mentioned the Superbowl is the one time per year that individuals look forward to seeing commercials. On a day-to-day basis, commercials are more perceived by general society as a nuisance that interferes in their viewing process. So while advertisers work to utilize new mediums to reach their brands to consumers there are now more ways than ever to avoid this messaging. When television ads became popularized in the 1950s the only way to avoid it was to leave the room when it came on screen. Now advertisers struggle with the introduction of items such as DVRs and ad blockers allowing users to fast forward through or avoid ads for what they deem a better-uninterrupted viewing experience. Video platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, Hulu are as well are struggling to find the optimum balance between an optimal viewing experience and advertising as this is how many make their profits. Over The Top (OTT) streaming services often have multiple pricing options, where customers can purchase the basic option with ads or pay a premium to have an uninterrupted viewing experience. This has been one of the biggest influences in making in changing the way advertisers present their products to consumers. Video needs to be presented in a more seamless format now. In the digital world, video ads need to be the opposite of infomercials. Their focus cannot be a hard sales pitch but a storyline where the consumer is taken on a journey to arrive at a conclusion that lines up with a brand’s goals. OTT While Facebook and YouTube are dominating the small screen in terms of video, bigger screens are also still very important to a full-funnel video marketing strategy. Over The Top Television is an internet-based, video-on-demand content format. As more and more consumers, lead by the millennial generation are cutting the cord and are focused on streaming, Over-The-Top advertising has become imperative in reaching your target audience on the bigger screens. This platform is the closest to traditional television commercials where ad formats allow for 6, 15, 30, or 60-second ads most often watched on a big screen and are often consumed by multiple people at once. This is because households are likely to get together to watch OTT content as a group. This platform is unlike television though as it allows for advanced targeting capabilities to reach those who have already expressed interest in your brand or related products, then provides the added bonus of there being extra viewers in the room. Our Conduit insights recommend utilizing 15 or 30-second ads on this platform to best engage your audience. This is what best captures the attention of your audience and to always include a strong Call-To-Action such as a prominent phone number or website you would like your audience to visit as unlike other online platforms ads are not clickable to redirect the audience to further information. Short Form Video: TikTok and Snapchat As generations evolve so does social media. Newer platforms are being built around shorter attention spans. Snapchat and Tik-Tok are among the growing platforms that are centric on short-form content, 15-seconds or less. Both channels have their own advertising platforms to share your ads with their viewers. This again has revolutionized video ads, making sure they are concise and as to the point as possible is more important than ever. Short-form ads on these platforms allow for little interruption between already short content. This keeps audiences engaged as the disruption only lasts a few seconds and is often non-skippable. This again is another platform that combats the growing expansion of ad blockers and consumers trying to avoid ad content. Non-skippable ad space with video content behind it that a user is waiting to watch is extremely valuable to marketers , especially on such large and growing platforms like Tik-Tok and Snapchat . The Influence of Vloggers The importance of the storyline is where influencer marketing makes a huge splash in the world of video advertising. Instead of using traditional commercial style ads looking to make an emotional connection with a potential customer, in 60 seconds or less, influencers are able to utilize their already established connection with their audience to convey the value of a brand or product. As in any relationship, trust is built over time, and many viewers feel like they have a relationship with influencers. Even though they have likely never met in person regularly seeing them online allows them to bond. Connecting with their audience on a regular basis allows influencers to employ their relationship when promoting a product. When viewers see influencers that they “know” vlogging about a product it is perceived more as a friend giving a recommendation rather than a sales pitch trying to pressure them into purchasing something. Consumers often view ads as untrustworthy. This is where the human connection of influencers and vloggers can make all the difference. Influencer marketing can be viewed as product placement on steroids. This is not a new concept, just a different platform. For years people have seen products used by their favorite film stars or professional athletes, in movies, television, and commercials. This is the same principle; that people buy products from people they like and people they trust. Society and Privacy Another major issue facing digital marketers is privacy restrictions. This has always been in place for sensitive topics such as healthcare, where due to HIPAA restrictions things like remarketing for health industry campaigns were not available for obvious reasons. Now, however, people are becoming more conscious of “big brother” and are worried about the information these platforms have. Over the years as the personal information we supply to the internet has increased more laws have been created to protect users. Some countries have stricter guidelines than others in what they find is acceptable information to target users based on. The more these laws develop and take away our targeting capabilities the more challenging it will be for marketers to reach their video messaging to the right audience on the right platform. This is why not only learning who your audience is but what they are interested in is extremely valuable, in being able to reach them in different ways. Video ROI Today Infomercials made direct attribution and return on investment analysis available for the first time with video advertising. With digital marketing, we have now taken that to the next level. We can not only track direct ROI but different steps in the funnel and watch the entire consumer journey unfold in analytics. Through proper tracking, we can see how consumers interact with our website from each different video channel from programmatic, to YouTube, to Facebook. These platforms all work together along with a comprehensive remarketing strategy to drive the consumer down the funnel and we are able to see just that. Through proper implementation of website analytics, we can determine every action taken by individuals once reaching your website. This allows us to determine the effectiveness of your video marketing strategy and make adjustments towards your goals, whether they are eCommerce or lead generation based campaigns. The Future of Video Advertising Video advertising has come a long way since its introduction in 1941, in terms of what kind of content is considered engaging, to the platforms ads are consumed on, to the attribution capabilities. As technology advances and still new platforms are created marketers will work to capitalize on their capabilities. We are sure that video advertising will not go away anytime soon but it will continue to evolve. Soon the up and coming craze will be virtual reality. While this technology is available today and is quite extraordinary it has not yet evolved to being adopted by the majority as a regular household item. As virtual reality gaming and experiences expand so will marketers’ capabilities in reaching this audience. We see this being the next step in the evolution of video advertising and will be focused on the growth of this industry and who its audiences will be. Wherever video heads, virtual reality, or otherwise we know two things are very important when it comes to video advertising. First is that adapting your strategy based on the individual platform is a must. One 30-second “television style” commercial will not be applicable to all video channels. Having an irrelevant format running on the wrong channel will hinder the success of your campaign. For example, designing to deliver your message without sound on Facebook or keeping your ad under 6-seconds for Snapchat. Using the right platforms but failing to adapt your strategy to the right format can lead to an underperforming video campaign. Second, always keep the storyline at the heart of your ads. Conclusion By utilizing digital video advertising for your next marketing campaign, you can increase your ROI in ways that traditional marketing never could. Video is an extremely rich source of media and compared to all other forms gives the biggest opportunity to spark an emotional response. While platforms and media channels may change human emotion will not, providing a compelling story will always drive the performance of your content. If you are looking for a white-label provider to fulfill your digital video advertising needs, don’t hesitate to contact Conduit today! Our experienced and certified OTT and Youtube Advertising teams have the capabilities to bring your digital video advertising campaigns to the next level! If you would like to speak with an Expert at Conduit about how Youtube ads or Over the Top television advertising can be the best strategy in today’s advertising age, contact us here !

Dec 7, 2020 Paid Search Marketing Playbook: Avoid these Google Ad Mistakes Most paid search marketing professionals recognize Google Ads as a gold-standard digital advertising platform. Its intuitive interface, a wealth of features, and reporting capabilities are rivaled by few competitors. Because advertisers are running countless campaigns in the Google Ads platform at any given moment, there are many stories of both successes and trainwrecks. Hopefully, like us, you are not a trainwreck enthusiast. Because the Conduit Digital team works with agencies to scale their businesses, we have executed and managed more Google Ads campaigns than most. Over time, our team has developed strategies that deliver consistent results thanks to this cardinal rule: Successful paid search marketing efforts are about equally knowing what you should and should not do during the campaign. While you can search for an endless list of “Paid Search Best Practices” articles on Google, we want to take the discussion in a different direction. Let’s discuss the worst practices, or, what you should never do during a Google Ads campaign. Mistake 1: Not Using Google Keyword Planner Properly Google Keyword Planner allows you to create a holistic view of the keywords you will be targeting and bidding on during your campaign. It can also provide you with suggestions for new, relevant keywords that you could add to your strategy. When setting up your keyword plan, you should start with broader keywords that relate to the services or products that you offer. From there, look at the other keyword suggestions that Google generates to drill down to even more relevant choices that will appeal to ideal target users and drive more successful conversions for your paid search campaign. Here are some additional tips for using Keyword Planner to provide the most value: Understanding Volume and Keyword Competition When deciding on the best keywords to use for your paid search campaign, you want to target keywords that ideally have high volume and low competition. “Volume” refers to how many users search for that keyword within a span of time. The “Keyword Competition” indicates how difficult it may be for you to rank for that keyword. Sometimes, targeting a high-volume, high-competition keyword will be unavoidable, depending on your business. Here, incorporating a diverse base of other relevant keywords with less competition will allow you to drive additional value where more difficult ones may fall short. This will aid in compensating for the limited results you may receive from that coveted, competitive keyword you just cannot say “no” to. The Downsides of Improper Keyword Planning Failing to use Google Keyword Planner properly will result in three primary unwanted outcomes. You will risk missing out on some high-opportunity keywords that could attract more qualified traffic. You may not be targeting the right users at all. Perhaps the most damaging, your competitors could capitalize on the keywords that you did not include in your strategy and take that traffic for themselves. Understanding Cost-Per-Click (CPC) CPC refers to the actual cost for each click on a certain keyword. In most cases, if the keyword is rather broad and highly competitive, it will cost more. Conversely, some low-volume, low-competition keywords may also cost more if you are paying to dominate that space. Consider the CPC value for your target keywords when developing your strategy. This will ensure that you do not overspend your budget and also prevent your budget from topping out too soon. In an ideal situation, you want to target keywords with plenty of volume, at a low level of competition, and at a price you can afford for the duration of the campaign. Mistake 2: Building an Ads Campaign without Negative Keywords What is a “negative keyword”? Sounds intimidating, right? During a campaign, however, knowing your negative keywords can be your greatest strength. According to Google, negative keywords are search terms you can incorporate into your overall keyword strategy that can steer unqualified traffic away from getting served one of your ads, clicking on it, and inevitably wasting your budget. These keywords tell Google the type of users not to target so that your budget is optimized to reach users most likely to complete your target conversions and help you reach your overall goals. For example, if you sell ice hockey equipment, and you are marketing to people that play the sport, you may add the negative keyword “field hockey” to your list. This will help avoid a syntactical error where Google may list your business in field hockey equipment searches. By doing this, you will ensure that your ice hockey-loving customers will be served your advertisements instead of users with no interest in your products. Before starting your campaign, anticipate any negative keywords that could affect your campaign. Write them down and plan to use them in your Google Ads campaign. You can also use the Search Terms Report as another resource for identifying negative keywords to add, but you may also have some in mind that are more closely related to your specific business. Additionally, you can choose from prebuilt negative keyword lists that may include: Known Competitors Job-Related Searches Informational Searches Bargain/Price Searches Manufacturers Combining your business experience with Google Ads’ powerful AI, you can develop a negative keyword list that is customized to your specific needs and will drive the most qualified customers to your site. Mistake 3: Setting Up Paid Search Marketing Campaigns with the Wrong Automated Bid Strategies Automated bid strategies can streamline your Google Ads campaigns by using machine learning to optimally bid for the goals you set. This way, you can work on other projects while Google does the heavy lifting in real-time. However, just “setting it and forgetting it” will torpedo your strategy before it has the chance to deliver the results you want. Here are some automated bidding tips from Google for establishing a strategy that will meet your goals: Maximize Clicks This strategy will automatically set your bids to help you earn as many clicks as possible within your budget. This method works well for the discovery phase of a campaign where you want to build awareness for your product or service among new users. Conversely, if you are promoting pieces of content and want to drive readership, this can also work as an effective tactic. Target Impression Share Automatically set your bids with the goal of showing your ad as the first result on a search engine results page (SERP), near the top of the SERP, or anywhere else on the page. Depending on your industry and how much your competitors invest in paid search, the results can vary. Target CPA Target CPA will automatically set Search or Display bids to drive as many conversions as possible at your set target cost-per-action (CPA). Depending on your goals and what you want to achieve with target CPA, you may notice that some conversions cost more or less than what you budget for. Target ROAS This strategy automatically sets bids to assist in driving maximum conversion value relative to the targeted return on ad spend (ROAS) that you set. Like with Target CPA, conversion costs will vary and may be higher or lower return than what you set for your target. Maximize Conversions Maximizing conversions will automatically set bids to aid you in generating the most conversions for your campaign while keeping your spend within your set budget. For brands that want to drive conversion quantity, this will be your best option. Maximize Conversion Value Unlike the Maximize Conversions strategy, Maximize Conversion Value drives the quality of conversions to help you generate the best value for your money. This may result in less overall conversions, but the likelihood of reaching more qualified users will increase. Mistake 4: Not Adjusting Conversion Counts In your Google Ads Settings, you can adjust the method for conversion counting. You can set it to “One” or “Every,” depending on your campaign goals. Implementing the proper conversion count will make a noticeable difference in your campaign results toward the goals you want to achieve. If you are not using the right setting, this will result in far fewer conversions than you are reporting on, or vice-versa. One common mistake is where paid search marketing analysts will leave the conversion count set to “Every” when it should be set to “One,” or vice-versa. For example, if you are tracking a button click as a lead, you do not want to track multiple button clicks from the same user. This could skew the data, give your marketing team false insights, and derail your strategy. In this scenario, the analyst could avoid skewed data by setting the tracking to “One.” Here, Google’s AI will count by the IP address clicking the button rather than the number of button clicks from the user. With the “One” setting, a person can click the button a thousand times from the same IP and will only ever be tracked as a single button click within the data. Mistake 5: Limiting Conversion Attribution to “Last Click” When you set up a conversion tracking strategy with Google Ads, it will be automatically pre-set to “Last Click.” This means that a conversion is only attributed in-full to the keyword and ad that a user last clicked on. Fortunately, there are other Attribution Models that you can choose from to further benefit your level of insight into your campaign performance. For example, you could implement the “Linear” model to attribute a conversion evenly across all clicks that result in the eventual conversion. How to Avoid Making These Paid Search Marketing Mistakes for Good Mistakes happen, and marketing campaigns are far from invulnerable to them. However, partnering with a team of experts that drives billions of impressions on a regular basis can increase your chances of optimizing your results. For nearly a decade, Conduit Digital has helped our partners in delivering maximum paid search marketing results for their clients. If you want to start your next campaign off on the right foot, contact us anytime.

Feb 10, 2023 Due to national security concerns, the United States Congress has decided to ban TikTok from federal government devices in late 2022. The video-sharing app generates staggering amounts of data on a daily basis, with an American user base of about one hundred million.  This raised a larger question in politics, media, and society at large. Some on Capitol Hill are also proposing a full TikTok ban in the United States altogether. While we’re not in the business of politics, and we’re not going to start here, we would be pulling the digital wool over our eyes if we did not recognize the concerns this could raise for ad agencies. While the likelihood of a complete TikTok ban across the U.S. is unlikely to happen, the discussion does bring a rather important reminder into the spotlight: diversified marketing. As long as platforms like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and TikTok dominate the digital landscape, advertisers are forced to play by their rules and work within their technical frameworks to drive the best possible results for their clients. Whenever a new update drops on any platform, it could require your strategy to shift completely from one day to the next. For example, when Apple released its iOS 14.5.1 update in 2021, iPhone users were granted the ability to opt out of cross-platform tracking. Did digital advertising become extinct as a result? No, but agencies had to adopt a new paradigm for approaching their campaign strategies for their clients. When you put all of your efforts into a single platform for any of your client’s digital campaigns, there’s an implied risk that performance hinges on the one platform remaining reliable and consistent. If something were to shift rapidly and unexpectedly, would you still be able to continue using that platform as you did before, or would it severely impact the results you’ve expected and projected? In an era where marketing platforms are constantly innovating and evolving, having a diversified and holistic strategy should not be offered as a luxury. It’s essential.  Today, we’re going to highlight some benefits of a diversified marketing strategy and offer tangible tips to create one for your own clients at your agency. Let’s dive right in. 7 Benefits of a Diversified Marketing Strategy 1. Reach More of Your Target Audience Implementing a diversified approach to digital marketing opens up more channels for reaching your client’s target audiences. By increasing the number and diversity of outlets used to connect with potential customers, there is an increased chance that your efforts will be seen by more people who may be interested in what your client has to offer. For example, if you are only running an advertising campaign on TikTok, you could easily extend it to Instagram Reels, which follow a similar format. This could enable you to also reach similar audiences on the platform without having to go through the process of strategizing new creatives from scratch. 2. Diversify Your Risk Diversifying campaigns also diversifies risk by allocating resources across multiple channels. By spreading out spending over several outlets, agencies can better manage their finances while still investing in quality campaigns that may be more costly but bring greater results than cheaper options with little potential return on investment (ROI). When diversifying your risk, you’re also creating more financial flexibility for your client’s budget. If a major platform change happens on YouTube that affects your ads’ performance, you can scale back your spend and reallocate more of that investment where you are seeing steadier growth on Facebook. 3. Collect More Data A diversified approach allows for greater data collection and analysis of customer behaviors across multiple channels. With access to more information from a variety of sources, your agency can further develop its knowledge base about customer demographics and interests which can then be applied to elevating performance for future campaigns.  Gathering data from different platforms also makes it easier for agencies to recognize trends across multiple industries or markets that might not have been detected using only one outlet alone. Depending on the mix of platforms you’re running campaigns on for your client, some may generate metrics that others do not, which you can combine into a single report for a more holistic picture of your ideal customer avatar. 4. More Advanced Tactics Leveraging a diverse range of platforms grants agencies access to more advanced tools, which can provide greater accuracy when targeting desired segments within audiences based on various criteria such as age group, location, gender etc. Agencies are also able to better utilize retargeting methods by gathering information from different sources and combining them into one cohesive message or campaign tailored specifically towards groups that have previously engaged with their content or services before. This ensures that each segment reached is provided with relevant content at just the right time during their journey, which encourages further engagement and ultimately leads to an increase in performance. 5: Improved Frequency of Impressions When you run the same campaign across multiple platforms, you’re also increasing the frequency of impressions that an audience might receive. If they have clicked on your client’s paid search ad and later receive a display retargeting ad later, the brand name and message will continue to persist throughout their entire online session rather than just on a single channel. 6: Greater Upsell Opportunities With a diverse portfolio of digital products and solutions, your agency sales team can also more effectively land and expand accounts and scale more rapidly. When the client experiences success on one or more channels, this presents an excellent opportunity to upsell to a new channel to further increase visibility to more audiences on new platforms.  7. More Credibility for Your Agency When your agency has a full product suite that you can offer to your clients, this establishes your brand as credible and authoritative in your industry. Potential clients will view your team as true experts that they can trust as a growth partner, which can then generate more interest in your brand that can ultimately result in more qualified leads. It’s important to note, however, that we’re not suggesting running a single campaign across 7 different platforms simultaneously if the budget is too limited. Trying to cover too many platforms without the budget to support it could end up negatively impacting a campaign.  For example, if you are working with a $2,500 budget in a large geographic area, running paid search, social, OTT, and display could prove too many platforms at a single time. Instead, focus on the top two that are generating the most return. With the other platforms, you could allocate a small portion of the overall budget for testing to see if results start improving over time. However, testing, diversifying, and creating an effective “Plan B” strategy for your client are all key components of any successful ad campaign. How to Implement a Diversified Marketing Strategy for Your Agency So now that we’ve covered the benefits, how do you actually put them into practice? Let’s start with the first step: Playing to your strengths. 1. Recognize Your In-House Strengths and Weaknesses Agencies often specialize in one or a few digital services. While one might excel at email marketing and social media, another might brand itself as programmatic specialists. Take a moment to review where your agency drives the most success for your clients. Are there any services that you currently do not provide and also lack the means to implement at a high level? If you’re looking to expand, start with new products and services that are most adjacent to your in-house offering.  For example, if you are already dominating Paid Search, you may want to consider adding another Google product like YouTube or to dive deep into search engine optimization (SEO) to reach users through organic search listings. 2. Re-Examine Your Supportive Infrastructure If you want to expand into new services to round out your offering, do you have the internal resources available to do so? From physical equipment to software and team members, take some time to identify what will be needed to make this a reality. With new clients also comes a strain on internal capacity and bandwidth. Can your team handle another in-house product offering with its current size and workload? If not, you may decide that you need to hire or seek help from a partner.  Beyond resources, use this time to also dive deep into your current processes. Are they designed for scalability or have they been slowly developed over time with no rhyme or reason as your business evolved? Having repeatable, transparent, and timebound processes builds your agency for scale.   3. Train Your Sales Team New products and services introduce new information and can raise questions from clients. Will your sales team have the confidence to successfully generate new business through your diversified marketing suite? If not, seek out quality sales materials and training to help them develop new opportunities with confidence. 4. Monitor Performance and Gauge Success Are your new products and services actually contributing to your agency’s success? As you start running new campaigns across a larger suite, monitor your team’s performance against benchmarks that you’ve established for your agency to determine whether you need to make further adjustments to your processes and infrastructure to help ensure profitability and scalability. 5. Want to Skip the Above? Work with a White Label Ad Operations Partner A white label ad operations partner acts as an extension to your in-house team to outfit your agency with a full suite of digital products and services. Instead of having to build the infrastructure yourself, you can instantly onboard new campaigns for your partner’s own team to manage under your agency’s brand. When you’re vetting white label solutions, you’ll typically encounter three types of providers: platforms, vendors, and partners. A platform usually involves heavy usage of software and requires some pre-existing expertise to use most effectively. On the other hand, a vendor will provide high-level services but usually only within a single product category, such as SEO or social. On the third hand (that’s a thing, right?), we have partner. The primary difference between a partner and a platform and vendor is that a white label partner is fully invested in campaign performance and works in lockstep with your agency to provide the infrastructure you need to confidently say “yes” to opportunities that may require services outside of your internal scope. Partners also bring a holistic suite of scalable products to your agency so that you can always prepare to meet your clients’ digital marketing needs. Say “Yes” to Better Diversified Marketing with a White Label Partnership At Conduit Digital, we serve established and successful agencies in North America as an elite white label ad operations partner. Outfitting your agency with a full product suite and an infrastructure built on communication, performance, and reporting, you can pursue bigger and better business development opportunities with the confidence that you will have the support you need to deliver results for your clients. To start your path to partnership, schedule a 20 minute call with us today.

Feb 16, 2023 When we first forecasted connected TV advertising to explode in 2022 , we were right. In 2022, over 48% of the U.S. population alone used ad-supported video streaming services to consume their favorite programming. This number is only expected to increase in 2023; as premium, ad-supported content evolves into a household alternative to traditional cable television. More than 60% of Hulu users alone use an ad-supported version of the platform. If your agency does not currently offer OTT advertising, today is the best time to start preparing for the rise in demand. Here are some reasons why: Top 3 Reasons Agencies Need to Pay Attention to OTT/CTV Advertising: 1. OTT Content is Only Becoming More Premium In its earliest stages, many OTT platforms served primarily as ways to watch older films and television shows. If you recall, Netflix first began as a mail-delivery rental service for DVDs. Thankfully, these platforms have become wholly digital, device-agnostic, and scalable in their pricing models to reach more viewers. As many cut the cable cord, major media brands are taking notice. For example, major cultural events like the 2023 Super Bowl LVII will be streamed live on Hulu, YouTube TV, FuboTV, and Sling TV . As more major media entities invest in their OTT content with original programming and premium broadcasts, more audience members will join the trend. This creates an opportunity for agencies to position their clients’ ads directly in the middle of highly viewed, personalized content where viewers are most engaged. 2. Agencies Have Already Taken Notice With the above in mind, agencies have already started to prepare for the increased demand for OTT/CTV advertising. In a December 2022 survey conducted by Pixability, 75% of agencies reported plans to increase their ad spend on OTT platforms in 2023. As we often say at Conduit, if a client asks for a service your agency does not provide, there exists a high chance that they will instead look for another agency that can and will fulfill their needs. If you do not have the holistic capabilities to offer a full ad operations suite, you could miss opportunities to land new accounts and expand existing ones to drive more scalable revenue. 3. OTT Content is the New Social Media Boom of the 2020s When social media first emerged as a major digital marketing channel in the mid-2000s, many traditional agencies balked at the trend to their own dismay. Now, organic and paid social are essential capabilities for any modern agency. As younger generations migrate away from linear television and increasingly adopt more on-demand digital streaming, they will be experiencing most of their advertisements on OTT platforms. Their audience data will exist here, their purchasing decisions will be influenced here, and the programmatic ads that generate the most return on ad spend for clients will also be found here. Simply put: OTT/CTV advertising is an essential service offering that agencies must have in their product suites to ensure their long-term health as a business entity. As younger generations mature into the professionals that control marketing and advertising budgets, they will want to serve ads on these platforms where they know their peers are most engaged with long-form video content. How Can Agencies Prep for the Rise in OTT Demand? Vet OTT Platforms for Quality As ad agencies plan for an increase in demand for OTT advertising services, vetting OTT platforms for quality is essential. This includes researching viewership levels across different platforms, ad inventory and pricing, potential reach and specific audience targeting capabilities. Agencies should also look into whether platforms have third-party verification systems in place to guarantee accurate campaign measurement. Finally, research any issues around privacy or data security related to each platform. Familiarize Yourself with OTT/CTV Advertising Best Practices In order to prepare for the rise in demand for OTT campaigns, ad agencies should familiarize themselves with best practices for successful campaigns. This includes determining the right duration of ads (between 15 seconds and 1 minute) that will encourage viewers to remain engaged instead of shifting their attention elsewhere. Because OTT is a highly visual channel, some creative best practices to also consider include: Feature the brand’s logo at the beginning and end of the ad Provide multiple ad lengths to serve across a platform’s full inventory Include the website or phone number of the client’s business within the ad Establish clear, easily digestible messaging to promote the product or service Offer real value and create an emotional connection with viewers Determine the Type(s) of Targeting You Want to Leverage OTT combines the appeal of traditional television with the advanced targeting capabilities of digital. One, some, or all of these tactics can be leveraged during a campaign, depending on the budget and scope, to help you reach the right audience. Consider a mix of targeting strategies that could incorporate nay of the following: Site retargeting: Cross-device retargeting to households with a member who visited your client’s website within a specific period of time. Keyword targeting: align your ads with users who search terms or engage with online content on their desktop, tablet, or mobile devices that contain keywords related to the list your campaign is targeting. Addressable geo-fencing: Target your ideal audience at the household level based on data sourced from a variety of touchpoints, including credit bureau, plat line, and GPS data Geo-Fencing/event targeting: Deliver adds to people who have visited a specific geographic location or event in the past 30 days. Demographic and interest targeting: Align your ads with household members that match your client’s ideal demographic or interest-based audience group. Application whitelisting: Determine the exact applications you want to serve your client’s ads on. Dayparting: Choosing the times of day you want to serve ads. Depending on the nature of the client’s business, targeting strategies will vary. For example, if the business only sells products online and doesn’t have a storefront, tracking foot traffic via geo-fencing wouldn’t be a fit. However, an addressable geo-fencing strategy honing on users at the household level who are a demographic and psychographic match for the same client would prove an ideal strategy. Identify KPAs that Indicate a Successful OTT Campaign When preparing for an increase in demand from clients in 2023, agencies should identify key performance actions (KPAs) associated with successful OTT campaigns that can be used to track progress throughout a campaign’s lifecycle. Agencies should analyze metrics such as ad completions, video completion rate (VCR), and view-through conversions. Additionally, QR codes in OTT ads, which famously captured the attention of Whopper lovers during peak pandemic times, enticing them to hit the drive-thru for a free burger, are a new way to generate deeper insights since users can scan the code to visit a landing page with their mobile devices. Users who take the time to scan an OTT QR code already are showing an invested level of interest. After the scan, advertisers can see what actions were taken once the user visited the website via Google Analytics data, which hasn’t been a capability in the past. Being able to monitor relevant KPAs will allow agencies to quickly identify areas where improvements need to be made or where strategies may need adjusting based on market conditions or consumer behavior changes over time. Create Infrastructure for Increased Bandwidth Lastly, as part of preparing for an increase in demand from clients in 2023, ad agencies need to create a strong infrastructure designed specifically for large-scale OTT campaigns so they can handle increased bandwidth requirements without any hiccups during peak times of activity. This involves auditing existing technology solutions across departments like media buying/planning and creative development teams to ensure enough available capacity when needed. Partner with the Right White Label Ad Operations Team Extending your in-house service offering requires time that you may not have when a client is ready to press “go” on a new OTT campaign immediately. That’s where a white label ad operations team comes in. Essentially, a white label ad operations team acts as an extension of your in-house team to provide services beyond your core offering at an expert level. Instead of having to find the right programmatic analyst for your team, training them, and hoping for the best, you can tap your partner’s team of programmatic experts and resell their services under your own brand. In turn, this allows for faster campaign launches with greater control over branding, scalability, and performance. Here’s how the process would typically work if you were to onboard a campaign with a white label partner: 1. Submit an insertion order (IO) to your partner to notify them you want to launch a new OTT campaign 2. Confirm specific details with your partner during a kickoff call, such as overall campaign goals and budget as well as any access credentials they may need 3. Let your partner’s team get to work while you track performance through their re-brandable reports 4. Mark up their services to your client and increase profitability for your agency! 5. Unlike platforms and vendors, a white label partner also enables greater flexibility for your agency. If you need to adjust specific details over time, such as budget or creative assets, you do not have to wait for the current campaign to end. You can continue to leverage them as your resource to continuously drive greater performance for your client. Get White Label OTT/CTV Advertising Support for Your Agency At Conduit Digital, we provide elite white label ad operations solutions to established and successful agencies throughout North America, powered by our own team of platform-certified expert analysts from our headquarters in New Jersey. Along with the rest of our product suite, infrastructure, and reporting capabilities, our team enables you to say “yes” to bigger and better opportunities. If you’re ready to launch an OTT/CTV advertising campaign for your client, schedule a 20-minute call with us today to start your path to partnership.

Apr 24, 2020 With a plethora of digital marketing solutions available on the market, it is becoming harder and harder to know what solution is right for you and your clients. In recent years, white label digital marketing solutions have become some of the leaders in the industry, enabling agencies across the country to offer strategic white label products under their own brand. However, as the landscape continues to evolve, it is becoming more and more valuable to have a strategic white label digital media agency on your side. Both white label marketing solutions and strategic white label digital marketing solutions have their merits. As you research the merits behind each solution, the same question will appear over and over; which digital marketing solution is right for your agency? White labeling has been a growing trend in the digital marketing industry for some time. Many agencies offer white labeled services to their clients. If you have seen the terms “white label” or “white label marketing” appear over and over when doing your research on choosing a digital partner you may be asking yourself, “What is white label marketing?” What Are White Label Digital Solutions? White labeling is the practice of offering rebranded products or services and passing them off as your own. Through this process, the company white labeling a product can provide their audience with a new product or service without needing to reinvent the wheel or develop a complete in-house team. For example, say you have several clients who wish to run a pay per click (PPC) or paid search campaign. Not having much experience in this space, you decide to white label a PPC solution . By working with a reseller company to offer white label PPC marketing solutions, you can rebrand or repackage their services as your own. Therefore while your customers are receiving the services from your company, Agency A, the solutions are provided by the White Label Company, unbeknownst to your clients. How White Labeling Works White-label products or services are produced by a provider, or reseller company, and are rebranded and resold to consumers by another company, for example, Agency A. White labeling gives the provider access to a large distribution network or additional revenue streams while their reseller partners such as Agency A can expand their product or service offerings to their own customers. The key to white labeling is anonymity; consumers who buy the end product are completely unaware it was originally produced by a white label provider. Many products or brands are white-labeled and resold without the consumer even realizing it. What White Labeling Can Do For Your Agency Now that you understand the concepts behind white labeling products and services, you are probably wondering, “What can White Labeling do for me?” Access to Industry Innovations If you wanted to offer solutions without white labeling, it could mean lots of time spent building your own internal team. That means finding the right employees, having the right systems in place, and giving your team room to innovate and shine. Unfortunately, this process can take years and in the end, your internal team might not be able to outperform your competition. When you white-label your products, you gain access to the latest industry innovations since you are working with an experienced team. Great Results on a Budget Without having to recruit, hire, and train an entire team, you will be saving time, money, and lots of headaches by going with a white label solution. As more and more agencies look for expanded marketing solutions, you need to be offering a solution that is more affordable and better performing than your competitors. White labeling enables you to get results while saving a ton of money in employee expenses. Create New Revenue Streams Perhaps the most important aspect of choosing to work with a white label digital company is your ability to create new revenue streams. When working with a top-tier or strategic white label company, you will be able to offer all of their services as your own. This enables you to offer more services to your customers, as well as create new revenue streams for your agency. Learn More: Why Offering A Complete Digital Solution Will Grow Your Agency The Easiest Way To Grow Your Agency’s Revenue White Label VS Private Label Generally, the terms “white label” and “private label” are used interchangeably and are often the same thing when referring to services. The difference is that “private label” is commonly used when referring to tangible products. For example, when a cereal company like Kellog’s “private labels” their cereal to a retailer so that the retailer can offer the same cereal under their own brand or a generic brand. In the digital marketing space, the term “private label” is not often used when referring to a reseller company. No matter how you look at it, a product or service is being sold and is made to be re-brandable so that the seller can sell it to the consumer under their own name. White Label VS Co-Branding While white-label and private label are the same thing, a co-branded product cannot be white-labeled. Co-branding is when the original supplier’s brand is added to the product as well as the branding of the co-seller. This method effectively leverages the brand power of the better-known brand to assist in the sales of the lesser-known brand. An example of co-branding is when Red Bull and Go Pro joined forces to sponsor the “Stratos” event, where performer Felix Baumgartner jumped from a space pod with a GoPro strapped to his body. This event proved to be extremely popular and boosted both Red Bull and GoPro’s brands, especially as GoPro was just starting to make a name for themselves. Co-branding enables you to leverage a vendor’s brand and expertise to boost your own products or services. It allows you to reduce resources and perform faster on-boards since your co-branded vendor already has the infrastructure to quickly onboard clients. There are also some negatives when it comes to co-branding. When you resell a vendor’s brand you may actually be strengthening their branding. You also generate less profit since the vendor’s margins and pricing is controlled. It is also important to keep in mind that a co-branded vendor may end up taking your own customers from you in the long run. White Label VS Co-Branding WhiteLabel Ability to resell services under own brand Set your own margins Don’t have to build an in-house team Offer more services Requires end-customer support Can be challenging to build a personal brand Co-Branding Partner with top brand Leverage the top brand’s existing background and expertise Reduce resources Fast onboarding Controlled margins Dealing with competition Generates less profit White Label VS Outsourcing Outsourcing is when you pay someone else to perform a function of your business, whether it is a one-time thing or a continuous service. A product that is outsourced may or may not be white-labeled. An outsourced product only becomes white-labeled when you buy a product or service and then sell it to others with your brand on it. If you are looking to outsource a function of your digital agency, you are simply re-selling the services under the original company’s brand. If you are outsourcing and white labeling, then you are re-selling services from the original company under your own brand. It is possible to outsource without white-labeling but it is impossible to white-label without outsourcing. You could even consider white-labeling a form of outsourcing. Frequently Asked Questions About White Labeling You aren’t the only agency owner looking for white label digital solutions. Here are just a few of the most frequently asked questions from people just like you looking to offer white label solutions to their clients: What support is offered by the vendor? Just like any business partner you deal with, you want to ensure your white-label partner is there when you need them. Every white-label company offers differing levels of support. It is important to do your research before you choose a white-label solution. How do I pay for services? Every white-label company is unique and offers its services at different rates. Some like to take a percentage of the sales of the white-labeled service, others charge monthly or hourly fees, and others may have a unique pricing strategy. Study your pricing options to ensure your agency has the support and deliverables your clients need at a price that won’t break the bank. What services can I white-label? Some agencies are product specific and don’t offer a complete digital marketing solution. While it may be tempting to think that a service-specific white-label provider may be the right partner, it is actually better to work with a partner who has a holistic view of the digital marketing landscape and can provide insights on more than just one core product. Reasons Why Your Agency Should White Label White-labeling services with a trusted partner can have numerous benefits for your agency and your clients. If you are looking to expand your offerings, white-labeling enables your agency to attract new customers by increasing the scope of your current offerings. For example, if you are a creative agency looking to offer SEO services to your existing clients, then white-labeling SEO services may be right for your company. Being able to offer an expanded list of services will help you to attract bigger clients as you go from a specialized agency to a full-service agency. White-labeling also enables you to enhance your company’s brand. Since you are offering an expanded product list without having to hire and train entire in-house teams, you are able to focus more on building and selling your brand. Delivering exceptional results with your white-labeled services will also help you to build your brand as a trusted player in the industry. By white-labeling digital services, you can focus more on your core competencies, with the peace of mind that the services you are white-labeling will perform. Adding a proven service to your offering saves you risk, capital, and time. You will be able to gain a team of trusted experts with the knowledge and experience needed to build successful multi-product digital marketing campaigns. You get all the benefits of a dedicated team without the costs such as taxes, payroll, insurance, or other overhead. Save yourself the headaches of recruiting, hiring, training, and professional development on employees outside your area of expertise. Pros and Cons of White-Labeling Pros Diversify your service offerings Increase your client’s dependability on your services Expand into new revenue streams Differentiate yourself from your competition Faster to market More cost-effective Integrate with existing brand Bypass steps required to build an internal team Enhance overall brand Time to focus on core competencies Proof of performance Partner with industry leader Cons Consumers will associate mistakes or underperformance with your brand Limited pricing flexibility Need for close continuous support from white label partner Need internal support for customer concerns Harder for lesser-known brands to leverage themselves as leaders Possible branding restrictions White label supplier may be a competitor What To Look For in a White Label Partner If you have decided that white-labeling your digital marketing services are right for your company, it is important to understand what to look for in a white label partner. Here are a few important things to look for when you are looking for a white label partner: Partner with Similar Goals It is important to find a white label partner that has similar goals and vision with your business. Your white-label provider will be a strategic business partner, so you need to be sure that your ideals align with any potential white label partner. They Provide a Service that is Right for Your Business Obviously, you want to offer the best to your clients. Therefore, if you are planning on offering services through a white-label provider, you need to be sure that the quality of the service is excellent. Is your white-label provider consistently making improvements and innovations? Are they user-friendly and accessible? They Have a Solid Reputation A good reputation speaks for itself. Being able to be known as a reliable and trustworthy partner is something that many people strive for, but only a few actually achieve. It is important to do your research on a company’s background, reviews, and track record before re-selling their services under your brand. They are Experienced There is nothing more important when choosing a white-label partner than them having previous experience as a white-label provider. White-labeling services are a lot more complex than simply passing on your customers to an existing product. White-label partners must have extensive processes in place for performance and communication. Well-thought-out strategies and proven results are a must for any potential white-label partner. They Offer Exceptional Service and Support Does your potential white-label partner have organized methods of onboarding and deliverables? Having an iron-tight process for delivery and execution is a must for any potential partner. Your partner must have enough resources to support your company’s growth as well as clear communication with you and your team Transparent Reporting In today’s fast-paced modern world, data is king. It is more important than ever before to have clear and transparent reporting and analytics so that you can improve performance and deliver the best results to your clients. Without being able to show how the product is helping their business, clients will have little reason to stick around. Clear Contract Terms When a potential partner’s contract terms are vague and confusing, it is usually a good indicator that they are not a good partner to work with. As long as the terms and conditions of the contract are clear, both parties can know exactly what to expect out of the partnership. Don’t get stuck with a shady business partner. What To Avoid In a White Label Partner If you have decided that white-labeling your digital marketing services are right for your company, it is important to understand what to avoid in a white label partner. Here are a few important things to avoid when you are looking for a white label partner: Competitors Given the nature of the digital marketing landscape, it may be hard to find a digital partner that you DON’T compete against. The important thing to look for when choosing an agency is to work with a partner that won’t attempt to compete directly with you. Look for market exclusive agencies who only work with one partner per market rather than a company that works with everyone. You don’t want to be paying your own competitor! Too Good to Be True You already know the classic saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” The same applies when choosing a digital partner. If the services they are offering are priced incredibly low or they are promising unusually high results, chances are they are not a truthful or trustworthy partner. Poor Communication Communication is key in any successful business venture. If your potential white-label partner is an unreliable communicator, it can be a sign of things to come. Look for an agency that places a strategic white on clear communication. Inconsistent Branding Make sure your service provider understands your brand and knows how to represent you. A track record of previous brand consistency is important when considering any partner. If you have specific standards or procedures, you should expect your white-label partner to adhere to these guidelines. The services you white-label need to be a consistent extension of your brand. Looking For a White Label Partner? What to Look For Similar Goals Provide a Service that is Right for Your Business Have a Solid Reputation Experience Offer Exceptional Service and Support Transparent Reporting Clear Contract Terms What to Avoid Competitors Too Good to Be True Poor Communication Inconsistent Branding Who Should I Choose as My White Label Provider? Ultimately, the agency you choose to provide you with white-label digital services has to align with your vision and goals for your company. With a vast sea of potential partners on the market, which white-label provider is right for you? Perhaps you should consider working with a strategic white label company instead of just a run of the mill agency. Strategic White Label Just like your clients know that you are the best partner for their marketing needs, you need to be sure your white-label partner is the best partner for your needs. That is why you might want to consider working with a strategic white label digital provider instead of a white-label solution. You may be asking yourself, “what is a strategic white label company? What Is a Strategic White Label Company? A strategic white label company is an experienced, white label provider that offers superior white label services. Strategic White label is far more than just white label. A strategic white label company has extensive experience creating data-driven results for comprehensive digital marketing campaigns. While some white-label companies are product-specific or are smaller in scope, a strategic white label provider is a holistic digital marketing solution. For example, Conduit Digital is a strategic white label digital company that offers comprehensive digital marketing solutions. We offer far more than just single product solutions. The extensive data we have acquired through running thousands of campaigns enables us to provide holistic digital marketing solutions that are far more effective than simple single product campaigns. With a trusted reputation throughout the industry, you can rely on Conduit Digital to provide services above and beyond a typical white-label provider. How Strategic White Label Works Strategic white-label products or services provide services in the same manner as white-label providers. Services are produced by a strategic white provider and are rebranded and resold to consumers by another company, for example, Agency A. Strategic White labeling enables resellers to offer services beyond that of a typical white label provider while still retaining all of the benefits of working with a white label provider. What Strategic White Labeling Can Do For Your Agency Now that you understand the concepts behind strategic white labeling products and services, you are probably wondering, “What can Strategic White Labeling do for me?” Accessibility Regardless of if you are choosing a white-label company or are leaning toward a strategic white label company, it is important to have a partner that is accessible. Strategic White label partners have proven methods of success; open communication and accessibility to the people working on your campaigns are a must-have feature for any potential service provider. Comprehensive Digital Solutions Many white-label providers are product-specific. A strategic white label provider is experienced in an entire suite of digital marketing services and can provide assistance and expertise in every aspect of the campaign. They are more than just single-product solutions; strategic white label providers offer a complete and comprehensive digital marketing solution for your agency and your clients. Proven Results By offering complete digital solutions, strategic white label agencies are able to collect vast amounts of data to assist in digital campaigns. A strategic white label provider has proven multi-product results and can provide the necessary guidance to help you both offer new services and improve your existing offerings. White-label providers simply don’t have the track record that strategic white label providers do. Transparent Reporting Strategic White label providers know that they are better than other white-label providers and they have the data to prove it! Your strategic white label partner must have clear and transparent reporting practices. If you don’t understand your clients’ data, you will never be able to help them. Look for a partner who not only clearly represents their reporting, but takes the time to help you and your clients understand it. STRATEGIC LABEL VS WHITE LABEL The major difference between strategic white label providers and white label providers is the quality of work and the desire to grow the agency they work with. Strategic White label providers are just that; strategic! That means their methods are more effective, communication is clearer, and they create consistent and proven results for you and your clients. If you have already decided to go with a white-label provider, you might as well go with the best and choose a strategic white label provider. Strategic White Label VS White Label Strategic White Label All the abilities of a white label provider Clearer and more transparent reporting Multi-product digital solutions Holistic view of digital marketing Have name and brand recognition/reliability Constant and direct communication Ability to skyrocket growth for agency partners White Label Partner with top brand Ability to resell services under own brand Set your own margins Don’t have to build an in-house team Offer more services Requires end-customer support Can be challenging to build a personal brand Frequently Asked Questions About Strategic White Labeling You aren’t the only agency owner looking for strategic white label digital solutions. Here are just a few of the most frequently asked questions from people just like you looking to offer strategic white label solutions to their clients: What is The Difference Between Strategic White Label and White Label? White label providers re-sell their goods and services to agencies just like yours, enabling you to offer expanded services under your own brand. Strategic White label providers are white-label providers that give you superior results and accessibility. What Digital Services Do Strategic White Label Agencies Provide? Strategic White label digital providers offer a complete suite of digital services. You won’t have to go to one company for one product/service and another company for a different product/service. With a strategic white label provider, you can get all of the services your agency needs with just one dedicated partner. Are strategic White Label providers easily accessible? Despite being larger, more experienced, and offering more services, strategic white label providers are often more accessible than a typical white label provider. They have existing processes that enable them to provide clear and constant communication and data reporting. What To Look For In a Strategic White Label Partner? When choosing a strategic white label partner, look for all of the signs of a good partner like transparent reporting, fair and affordable pricing, clear communication, and most importantly, proven results. Obviously, only you will know which strategic white-label or white label partner is right for your agency and your clients. Developing a trusting and fruitful partnership begins with choosing the right digital partner. What To Avoid In a Strategic White Label Partner? You should be careful to avoid agencies that claim to offer strategic white label services without the background to prove it. As strategic white label providers grow throughout the industry, watch out for the phonies! If an agency claims to be strategic white-label, be sure they have the data, results, and transparent communication to prove it. Who Should I Choose As My Strategic White-Label Provider? As a division of the #21 fastest-growing agency in the world and one of the leaders in the digital marketing industry, Conduit Digital is proud to be one of the first and only strategic white label providers on the market. The agency that you choose to work with has to be reliable, data-driven, accessible, and results-proven. Conduit provides a complete digital marketing solution with proven results that you can see in real-time. We have developed a modern, unique, and customizable Live Report that is completely interactive for both our agency partners and their clients and enables you to see your data in real-time 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Experience a higher level of strategic white label products and services with Conduit Digital. Learn How White Label Partnership With Conduit Digital Can Grow Your Agency Revenue!

Updated 12/6/2023 White Label Digital Marketing Products Can Supercharge Your Agency’s Ability to Scale In our previous post, we covered how white label digital marketing can play an instrumental role in scaling your agency. Today, we are going to shift gears and focus on specific white label products that you should know about for 2023 and beyond. Here are some of the key topics we’ll be covering: What is a white label product? Why add white label digital marketing products to your agency?  Can you white label services that you already provide to your clients?  White-hot white label products you should know about Digital marketing products that never go out of style  How to start a white label reseller program at your agency  What is a White Label Digital Product? The definition for “white label product” varies by industry. For example, a cosmetic company can purchase formulas from a manufacturer and place their own label on them. In the context of digital marketing, white labeling refers to purchasing another agency’s services (or products), marking them up, and reselling them to your client under your own brand. Providers can range from platform-driven software solutions to limited-scope vendors or a complete team of partners. Why Add White Label Digital Marketing Products to Your Agency? The digital marketing ecosystem can experience seismic shifts in a short span of time. As platforms innovate and discover new ways to deliver a better user experience, marketers need to quickly adapt alongside. In our hundreds of conversations with agency leaders each year, some popular reasons for adding white label products that we’ve heard include: You want to offer a more complete suite of services for your clients You want to drive elite performance for your accounts Your account base has grown beyond your internal capacity You want to scale with a predictable cost structure You have landed an incredible opportunity that you just can’t pass up Simply put, white label products give you the ability to say “yes” to quality opportunities. You can prepare for any new business development with the confidence that you have the support system behind you to chase even the largest and most demanding accounts.  Interested in Learning More About White Label Products for Your Agency? Can You “White Label” Services You Already Provide In-House? Absolutely! Your agency can augment your in-house team’s capabilities with another team that specializes in the exact same core competencies. For example, if your agency specializes in SEO and your team is working over-capacity, you can launch an SEO-focused partnership to help manage the high volume of analyst work and deliverables more efficiently. White-Hot White Label Products You Should Know About While digital marketing won’t be going out of style anytime soon, trends do often emerge that are worth noting. As your client’s go-to digital expert, familiarizing yourself with these trends can provide immense value and give your agency the ability to land new accounts and expand existing ones. When your client asks about these popular services (and there’s a good chance that they will), positioning yourself ahead of the curve will enhance your credibility and authority. Here are some of the most white-hot digital marketing products you should be paying attention to: TikTok Advertising TikTok has emerged as one of the most popular paid social media advertising channels to date. In fact, it is the one we are most asked about when talking with agency leaders. Its short-form videos are driving unparalleled engagement among 1 billion global users monthly. Developing a high-performing TikTok campaign requires a combination of killer creatives and advanced targeting knowledge. This ensures that your client’s ads are served to the most qualified audience members to support the most desired key performance actions. OTT Advertising OTT advertising , also known as connected TV, is primed to continue exploding in 2022 . As audience experiences become more personalized and viewers grow more accustomed to streaming on-demand content in the comfort of their homes, these platforms are cementing themselves as both the perfect extension and true rival to traditional cable programming. OTT campaigns target audiences on the biggest screen in the house during points where they are highly engaged. With a white label partner, you can leverage their expertise to target viewers on multiple levels, such as geographic region, platform-specific audiences, demographic characteristics, time of day, and much more. Social Content Saying that the iOS 14.5.1 update fundamentally transformed digital marketing forever would be an understatement. Though we first mentioned it nearly a year ago, it remains one of the most-discussed paradigm shifts for marketers. The update allowed iPhone users to opt out of cross-platform tracking. This both placed an emphasis on first-party platform data and stressed the value of combining paid and organic channels to deliver performance for your client’s campaigns. Social content is the perfect pairing for your client’s paid social campaigns. Engaging, organic posts keep your client’s brand at the top of mind and can continue to foster strong relationships with existing customers. Spotify Advertising Spotify advertising is a smart choice for agencies because it connects clients with a large and diverse audience. The ads, whether they're streaming or in podcasts, are part of the listening experience, so they feel less intrusive. This means listeners are more likely to pay attention. Ad targeting on Spotify works by using a combination of user data and behavior patterns to deliver relevant ads to specific audiences. Spotify collects information about its users' listening habits, like the genres they prefer, playlists they listen to, and podcasts they subscribe to. This data, along with demographic information like age, gender, and location, enables advertisers to target their ads more precisely. Digital Marketing Products That Never Go Out of Style Like a well-tailored suit, there is a broad range of white label digital marketing products that continue to remain relevant, withstanding time and trends. These include, but are by no means limited to: Paid Social (Other than TikTok) Though TikTok is the sharp-dressed new kid on the social block, many other platforms still retain plenty of relevance for paid social campaigns. Channels like Meta (Facebook and Instagram), LinkedIn, and Twitter continue to boast hundreds of millions of regular users. Unlike TikTok, these platforms allow for a greater content variety than just video as campaign drivers. For example, Instagram allows advertisers to run static images, videos, and shopping campaigns all from a single source. Paid Search (PPC) Google remains the go-to search engine for most internet users. The platform’s sophisticated algorithm delivers quality results in a manner of seconds. With an optimized budget and intelligent keyword strategy in place, you can position your client’s business in front of audiences that are looking for solutions. Apply some clever copywriting and attention to detail, and their unique value will cut through the digital noise to inspire further action. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Unlike paid channels, white label SEO emphasizes generating high-quality organic traffic content to your client’s website without an active ad expenditure. Leveraging a combination of strategic content, prime-opportunity keywords, and technical optimizations, the site becomes the central hub for all organic searches on Google. Quality organic content on your client’s website helps build brand authority and reliability. In fact, more clicks and eCommerce traffic are generated from organic listings than paid. Programmatic Display Advertising Display advertising blends eye-catching creatives with tried-and-true targeting strategies across a variety of programmatic channels. Unlike text-based ads, display campaigns can add further context through imagery to showcase the unique value of your client’s products and/or services to the most-desired audiences. YouTube Advertising YouTube is not only the leading video content titan on the internet, but it is also a massive search engine itself. When people are searching for information in video format, they are most likely on the platform. If you hear someone say “I fixed my dryer after watching a video online,” they probably discovered that tutorial on YouTube. YouTube offers multiple ad formats, with video being the most prominent creative option. Because so many users are visiting the platform for information, this positions your client to be a true solution for their needs with the aid of a well-crafted campaign. How to Start Your Own White Label Reseller Program at Your Agency Find the Right Partner The first step to launching your own reseller program is to identify the right white label partner for your agency. Look for features and offerings, such as: Early adopters of emerging platforms In-house teams of certified analysts No offshoring or outsourcing your client’s campaigns A holistic product suite that continues evolving Performance-proving reporting practices Sales support resources for effective reselling Proactive and unified communication When you identify the right white label partner for your business, you can then start aligning with their team to implement new campaigns. The partner should also have airtight onboarding and campaign launch processes to start driving performance as soon as possible. Add Your Partner’s Products to Your Offering Include your partner’s products in your agency’s digital offering. Because you are white labeling these services, you can brand them under your own business without ever having to disclose your partnership. This helps to position your agency with a complete suite of solutions for your clients. Use Your Partner’s Resources to Resell with Confidence When launching your white label product reseller program, your partner will provide you with sales support materials, such as: Product-specific playbooks A detailed rate card for wholesale pricing Case studies to prove past performance A partner portal to effectively manage your new partnership Use these resources to equip your sales team with the knowledge and authority they need to sell with greater confidence. This will allow you to provide effective answers to any questions that your client may have when discussing new campaign opportunities for their business. Press “Play” and Let Your Partner Get to Work! Once you’ve landed on a new campaign strategy for your client, submit an insertion order to your partner and let their team handle the rest! Their established processes will ensure that the campaign is built in compliance with industry best practices so that you can spend more time focusing on sales and the core operations that you love most about running your agency. Add Elite White Label Products to Your Agency Today At Conduit, we serve as the elite white label digital marketing partner for successful agencies around the globe. With a completely US-based team of expert analysts, proven processes, and 24/7 live reporting, we equip your agency with the means to confidently scale. If you are looking to add white label products to your current offering, visit our Agency Partnership page for more information or schedule a 20-minute call to tell us more about your business.

Jul 9, 2020 Most people know or have heard about search engine optimization (SEO) and there are several blogs and articles from seo experts on the subject. Similarly, white labelling digital products is on the rise and white label seo is one of the most popular of them all. With that said, there are still agencies out there that are either not familiar with whitelabel seo services and the many benefits that come with it. If you are a digital, PR or creative agency that does not currently offer SEO as a service or you just started, this toolkit is just for you. So let’s jump right into it… By the end of this article, you should (hopefully) be familiar with and have answered the following questions: What Is White Label SEO? How Does White Label SEO Work? What Is A SEO Reseller vs A White Label SEO Partner? What are the benefits of White Labelling SEO? What Should I Expect From A White Label SEO Partner? How To Choose A White Label SEO Provider What Is White Label SEO? White label SEO is a combination of two concepts – white label or private labelling and SEO. White labelling simply means offering services under your brand that another company produces. This detailed blog about white label marketing services and strategic partnerships , expands on the definition. SEO, is the sum of changes you make to your website and content in order to grow organic search traffic. So white label seo (also referred to as SEO reselling or private label seo) simply means your agency sells or offers SEO services to your clients under your brand, however, all the work is done by another seo agency. So lets say your agency specializes in creative design or public relations or email marketing, however, one of your clients is really interested in running SEO campaigns and wants you to handle that part of their digital portfolio too. Now this is great news and you immediately sign them on! But, slight issue… SEO isn’t your agency’s jam. So instead of trying to learn SEO from scratch, you partner with a white label SEO firm. With several years of experience, your white label or private label seo partner will deliver excellent SEO services to your clients. In turn, you will be able to gain more business and as a bonus, you look like a rockstar to your clients. How Does A White label SEO Partnership Work? Basically, who handles what? Right? Well, the way your agency and a white label seo provider work together depends on who you choose as your provider, the type of partnership you strike and the types of seo services you need fulfilled. We will touch on choosing a white label seo provider a little later. For now, let’s look at partnerships and how they could work for your agency… Account Management & Client Relationships In some cases, when the decision is made to partner with a white label agency, all account management and client facing work is handled by your agency. Your white label provider will then handle all the seo campaign optimizations and deliverables. In other cases, account management and client relationships can be white labelled, which means your white label partner will interact with your clients on your behalf. They become an extension of your agency for SEO. This is extremely beneficial because not only does your agency look like an expert in SEO, you also eliminate the high cost of paying an expert. Sales Enablement Your clients may have mentioned that they’d like to explore SEO as a marketing channel, however, you may not have the collateral to prove your expertise and sell SEO services to them. This is where your white label seo partner comes in. Your provider should supply you with case studies, pitch decks, market research – all branded in your name – that enable you to pitch and close sales. In fact, if that’s the arrangement, they will get on the phone to close the sale on your behalf. Partnership or just services? This is a very important distinction to make. A white label seo company may only be able to provide you with specific services like link building or content management but not both. Others could offer you a full suite of seo services, including strategy, monthly reporting and campaign insights. Figure out which route is beneficial to your agency and your clients before you choose a service or partner. White Label SEO Partner vs. SEO Reseller The term “SEO Reseller” is usually used interchangeably with white label seo programs. However, there are a few differences that separate the two. If your agency decides to simply resell SEO services, then this involves delivering the specific services your clients need from an SEO reseller. There is usually no strategy or reporting involved with this arrangement. Your agency might handle all those technical details including account management, client relationship and sales process. For example, if your client needs blog content and link building services, you can purchase these services from another company and deliver them to your clients. Your agency will then decide how to strategically leverage these services for your client’s SEO efforts and report on monthly progress. A white label seo partnership, however, goes a step further to provide support if you need it. While SEO reseller packages are cheaper, agency partners make a higher margin from joining a white label program than SEO Resellers. Benefits of White Labelling SEO We know what white label seo is now and how a partnership could work. So what’s in it for your agency? Why should you stop using your independent contractors (ICs), freelancers or SEO consultants? How is white labelling SEO going to affect your margin positively? Read on… Make no mistake, if you have a proven process, can handle the workload, and produce high quality campaigns, then an in-house solution makes perfect sense for you. If not, the benefits of joining a white label program are abundant. New source of revenue with no overhead If your agency isn’t currently offering SEO as a service to your clients, then the day you partner with a reputable white label seo company is the day you increase your agency revenue. Since there is no employee training or customer acquisition involved, your overhead is little to nothing. Industry Experience & Expertise Partnering with an seo provider means you do not have to build a process and infrastructure from scratch. It also means you can take advantage of your provider’s experience and credibility immediately. Land & Expand One of the important parts of an seo partnership is the fact that your agency’s success is the white label provider’s success as well. The more clients your agency onboards, the happier your white label partner is with you. This mutually beneficial relationship means your provider will supply you with all of the collateral you need to pitch and win SEO clients. Cost Effective Agency Growth It’s all about the margin! Depending on your markup (as recommended by your white label provider), you can scale your client acquisition, make more money and not have to worry about hiring new seo experts. What You Should Expect From Your White Label SEO Provider Different white label seo companies will have different SEO philosophies. Nothing wrong with that. However, your agency has to decide what works for you and your clients. For example, do you maintain a book of local clients only or ecommerce clients? Then the conversations with your potential provider should be focused around proof that they have done SEO for those types of businesses. Reporting Dashboard Your agency should have access to a seo reporting dashboard that is updated 24/7. We all know how important it is to provide a client with updates on their campaign when they need it. This makes a reporting dashboard a must have for your agency. SEO Campaign Roadmap Especially if you’re choosing to white label seo (as opposed to reselling seo services), your white label seo provider needs to provide you with an SEO roadmap. This roadmap should spell out the proposed SEO strategy, why it was chosen and how it is going to be executed. Additionally, you should expect a benchmark report showcasing results from your client’s current SEO efforts. On-site (On-page) Optimization Title tags, H1s, crawlability optimization and many more form the foundation of your clients SEO success. Off-site (off-page) Optimization At its core, off-site SEO consists of content marketing and promotion and this means being able to leverage the value of your content to get featured or mentioned in other reputable web resources or blogs. One big component of content promotion is link building (also referred to as link acquisition). Content Creation Website content isn’t just blogs. It also infographics, custom graphics, video, slideshows, e-books, polls, quizzes, white papers and many more. Additionally, you should expect that your white label company can add additional content to your pages if that can help improve search visibility. Each white label seo company is going to differ in their content deliverables, but make sure they offer a wide range of options. White Label SEO Pricing Here’s the juicy scoop… SEO isn’t a one size fits all and pricing needs to reflect that. When it comes to SEO services, you really do get what you pay for. There are a host of standard seo pricing models: Monthly SEO Packages Hourly SEO Packages Project-based SEO Pricing Custom Pricing Monthly SEO Packages This is by far the most popular seo pricing model offered by seo agencies. You’re probably familiar with this model, which works on a month-to-month basis. A month-to-month model means you could be locked into a 6-month or 1-year contract with monthly retainers between $500 and $5,000 . Hourly SEO Packages Hourly pricing is very popular among freelancers and consultants. If you’re currently using independent contractors and freelancers, then you know that pricing could range from $75 -$150/hr. Sometimes it exceeds $150, but rarely. Especially if you are building your SEO department, freelancers and consultants can be a great resource. However, managing freelancers and independent contractors can be cumbersome and over time (for long term commitments), the cost skyrockets. Project-based SEO Pricing Similar to hourly based seo pricing, however, this is usually a one-off deal and can be very expensive. Project pricing could range from $1000 to $50,000 depending on the deliverables and timeline. Custom Pricing Remember the juicy scoop above? Well it’s true. The pricing estimates for all of the packages mentioned above do not take setup fees into account. Meaning, your startup cost alone may eat into your margin. So at Conduit Digital, what we did was eliminate SEO packages and setup fees. Instead, all our SEO campaigns and pricing are custom. We conduct a one-time audit for each of your clients and determine exactly what each website needs in order to improve organic traffic. This in-depth SEO roadmap includes a benchmark report, competitor analysis, pricing recommendations and a recommended strategy. How To Choose A White label SEO Agency Communication & Transparency Just like any other campaign, your white label partner should communicate expectations and be transparent about their services, reporting, pricing and campaigns. It really is that simple. If your agency partner is not able to be transparent about any of the above mentioned… RUN. Experience & Credibility Make sure the SEO team you’re going to work with has experience. Request to talk to some of the members of the SEO team and ask for success stories and case studies. Ask about Deliverables & Processes During your discovery or demo call, make sure to ask about how campaigns are executed and what is involved. Use the expectations mentioned above as a guide to ensure your potential partner knows what they’re talking about. Finally, ask about their deliverables – what should your clients expect to see? Always look out for the mention of the end goal here – organic traffic growth. The sum of their efforts, including reporting should be to improve organic traffic to your clients’ website. Wrap Up Search engine optimization takes a lot of time, research and tracking. As a creative, PR or digital agency, your goal is to focus on your core competencies. White label SEO companies are usually experts in their field and a partnership with a good one gives you an edge over competitors in your market. Join The #1 White Label SEO Program Today At Conduit Digital, we believe partnership is proven. For over 7 years, we’ve been amassing experience in SEO and other digital marketing channels in over 95 markets in the US. We provide a seamless onboarding and account transfer experience for agencies looking to switch to a new white label partner. Similarly, we work with your agency to not only execute campaigns but grow both your client accounts and agency. If you would like to know more about what your agency should expect from your white label seo partner, head to our contact page and let’s have a chat .

How White Label Partnership Helps Digital Marketing Agencies Scale  If you are looking for opportunities to scale your digital agency, you might have considered joining forces with a white label partner. One Google search later, and here we are. Today, we’re going to provide a comprehensive overview of what exactly a white label partner is and how you can benefit from leveraging this partnership at your agency. First, let’s compare the different tiers of white label providers. White Label Partnership vs. Platforms and Vendors White Label Platform The majority of white label platforms are packaged as software applications to assist your team in automating particular processes. These provide the most value for teams looking for little more than a stopgap solution that can help with doing some or most of the fulfillment. With platforms, though, there are a few key factors to account for. Because they are mostly software-based, personalization features are often limited, and they require a human user with some knowledge of the digital channel to operate. As a result, the user is left with limited resources and cannot always guarantee a desirable level of quality. In short, platforms are best leveraged as a supplement rather than a substitute. White Label Vendor Vendors are transactional providers that offer one or a limited scope of services. These might be specialist agencies or a freelancer on a website like Upwork. When using vendors, forecasting quality becomes a difficult challenge. The vendor completes their contractual obligation, hands off a deliverable to your team, and disappears until they are needed again. Without the right in-house team to utilize these deliverables effectively, are they providing any tangible value to your agency? White Label Partner Unlike vendors and platforms, a partner operates as if they were part of your in-house team. Their team of analysts completely fulfills your client’s digital needs for your agency. How do you know if a white label provider is a true partner? Consider the extent to which they involve themselves with your client’s campaigns. Are they rolling up their sleeves and tackling ad operations head-on or just sending your team spreadsheets with fancy color schemes? Benefits of Working with a White Label Partner Built-in, Scalable Profitability Because a white label partner shares equal investment in your agency’s success as you do, products are priced to help your business scale profitably. You can forecast your margins with greater certainty and create a pricing structure that allows you to scale without taking a financial step backward. An Expert Extension to Your Ad Operations Team A white label partner acts as an extension of your agency’s in-house ad operations team. Instead of offshoring your work to a faceless conglomerate and hoping for the best, your partner provides tangible benefits, such as: Round Out Your Product Suite Unlike vendors and platforms, a partner offers a complete product suite to help your agency focus on its core competencies and offer clients more services. If you are crushing it on social and display campaigns but are struggling to find the right in-house fit for a qualified PPC analyst, a white label partner closes that skill gap for you. Say “Yes” to Better Opportunities As your agency leverages its partnership to scale, more ideal potential clients take notice. This growth can generate larger business development opportunities with greater expectations that require a more expansive scope. When these opportunities present themselves, the support from your partner enables you to say “yes” to them with confidence. Onboard New Campaigns Efficiently Business gurus like to say “time is money,” and that’s true when your client trusts you with their marketing budget. A premium white label partner will already have the communication, process, and implementation infrastructure in place to allow you to activate your new campaign in a true turnkey fashion. Have a Secret Weapon to Dominate Your Local Market As we say, if you cannot provide the services your client desires, there’s another agency in your market that can and will. This places a greater strain on agencies with a limited in-house scope that needs a secret weapon to remain competitive in their local market. Alleviate Hiring Woes Hiring the right people has never posed a greater challenge for digital agencies than it does right now. When you are ready to scale, you need to have a team in place that can handle the volume that comes with growing your business. Depending on your local market and gaps in your product suite, finding the right person for your digital needs can prove more difficult than others. Finding a qualified OTT advertising analyst to join an agency in a midwestern suburb will require greater use of time and resources than one in Midtown Manhattan. Because a partner’s team becomes your own, you can hire an entire agency’s worth of expert analysts at once. Gone are the long evenings of scouring Indeed and LinkedIn listings and sifting through piles of resumes to find someone that only might be qualified enough for what you need at a critical moment. What to Look for in the Right White Label Partner Aligned Values Do your potential partner’s values align with the ones you set for your agency? If so, this ensures that both your in-house team and your partner’s team will be more closely aligned from day one. For example, at Conduit, we base our values on our “5 P’s”: 1. Building a team of the right people 2. Managing high-impact campaigns at scale through airtight processes 3. Offering a competitive suite of products 4.Driving performance through people, processes, and products 5.Providing a superior partnership experience as a result If you want to add a 6th “P”, we strive to offer our products at a competitive rate that allows your agency to maintain profitability as you scale. When you partner with our team, you’re provided a rate card to help you better forecast your revenue and price services more effectively. Active Communication Communication is the central driver for providing an excellent client experience. When your partner and your in-house team remain in lockstep on campaigns, the client benefits. Campaigns are managed with greater efficiency, turnaround times are streamlined, and each person involved knows their exact roles for driving performance. Expert-Level Implementation The right people are essential to implementing campaigns that generate results. When your partner has a team of certified product experts serving your clients, this allows you confidently anticipate quality deliverables that you can be proud to brand under your agency’s name. At Conduit, none of our campaigns are ever offshored or outsourced. Instead, our team of certified product experts manages every aspect of your client’s campaign in our 25,000 sq. ft. office right here at the Jersey Shore. We have to admit, few things compare to ending a productive summer day at the office with some of the world’s most famous beaches right down the road. A Complete Product Suite When you’re looking over options for a performance partnership, ask yourself, “can this partner provide me what I need to proactively serve my clients?”. Can you launch a new campaign for the products that you want now or will want in the future? As the digital marketing industry continues evolving, having a full range of solutions allows you to also anticipate your client’s upcoming campaign needs before they do. When a client says, “I want to reach new audiences,” you can reach into your partner’s product suite and offer a comprehensive menu of solutions. Measurable Performance How do you know your partnership is delivering results and justifying your investment? The answer: measuring performance. Partnership is built on transparency and the trust that stems from it. When you’re vetting potential partners, ask them how they report their performance. If they cannot provide an answer, you will not be able to gauge how their services are helping you scale. At the time we launched Conduit, this was a major gap in the industry that we sought to correct. As a result, we developed a 24/7 live reporting system that offers your agency objective campaign metrics, real insights from our analysts to put them in context, and a complete track record of the optimizations we perform on a monthly basis. When a client asks, “what have you done for me lately?”, you can leverage your report to tell the complete story. Start Scaling Your Agency by Saying “Yes” to Better Opportunities Since 2017, the Conduit Digital team has been serving as the premier digital performance partner for successful agencies worldwide. With our constantly expanding product suite, team of certified in-house analysts, and our commitment to communication and world-class performance at profitable prices, we position your agency to say “yes” to those can’t-miss opportunities. Are you ready for partnership ? To learn more about how doing white label digital marketing the way it’s meant to be done, visit our Agency Partnership page or book an agency scale call with us below to learn more.

Jan 26, 2022 Deliver a Next-Level TikTok Ad Campaign for Your Clients At Conduit Digital, we have hundreds of conversations with agency owners each year. In recent months, TikTok advertising has become a ubiquitous topic that many agencies want to learn more about. Well, you asked and we’re here to deliver. Here’s our guide for creating killer ads on TikTok. If you are interested in launching TikTok campaigns for your client, schedule a quick 20-minute discovery call with us today: Why TikTok is a Can’t-Miss Opportunity for Agencies in 2022 TikTok is the fastest-growing social media platform in the digital ecosphere today. According to a report from SocialMediaToday, TikTok is projected to surpass 1.5 billion users this year. The largest age groups that use the platform are 10-19, 20-29, and 30-39 . Each of these age groups has an average household disposable income ranging from 30,000$ to 89,000$ USD. This presents an incredible opportunity for agencies that serve B2C clients that are seeking to drive conversions such as online sales and app installs. However, this does not mean that opportunities are nonexistent for B2B clients. Approximately 37% of United States business owners are within the 20-40 years of age. This figure aligns directly with the second and third-largest age groups on TikTok. How to Get Started with Creating Ads on TikTok Similar to other paid social channels, TikTok features an Ads Manager platform for advertisers. Your client’s ads are then sorted into three categories in descending order: Campaigns, ad groups, and ads. Define Your TikTok Campaign Goals and Budget The campaign is the stated objective of your advertising efforts and budget. It is the broadest category for organizing your TikTok ads. Think of campaigns as the “big picture” umbrella for your ad groups and ads to live under. For example, a campaign for a fashion company might be “Spring 2022 Collection” with the intention to promote the brand’s newest releases across the entire line. On a technical level, TikTok provides specific campaign goals for advertisers to select from. These are broken down into three categories: Awareness, consideration, and conversions. From there, you can choose which subcategories you want to build your campaign around. These might include maximizing reach (awareness), increased site traffic or app installs (consideration), product sales (conversions), and a variety of other objectives. After choosing your objectives, you may also opt to control the budget at the ad group or campaign level and have TikTok optimize the spend towards what it views as the top-performing ad groups within your campaign. During the campaign setup phase, you can also determine your client’s budget. You can choose to set a specific dollar amount or proceed without a budget limit. TikTok operates on a bid model for their ad placements, and advertisers can select one of three bidding strategies: Bid Cap (maximum amount per user action), Cost Cap (average amount), or Lowest Cost. Set Up Your Ad Groups Ad groups refer to specific sub-campaigns that all contribute to the larger initiative. These are campaign-related messages targeted to specific audiences. If you have separate creatives for a fashion company’s “Spring 2022 Women’s Collection” and another for “Spring 2022 Men’s Collection,” you can divide these into different ad groups with their own targeting parameters. Currently, TikTok allows advertisers to target users based on the following four criteria: 1. Audience: Lookalike audience, custom audiences, and excluded audiences 2. Demographics: Age, gender, location, etc. 3. Interests and behaviors: personal interests, in-app behavior, and engagements 4. Video interactions: Specific user actions on videos (likes, comments, clicks, etc.) 5. Creator interactions: Behaviors when interacting with other creators on TikTok 6. Hashtag interactions: Behaviors when interacting with specific hashtags 7. Device: connection, model, carrier, price, etc. To further optimize your campaign, TikTok allows advertisers to create scheduling parameters for their ads. This ensures that your ads are delivered at specific times of the day or at a consistent rate to prevent creatives from serving at moments of typically low engagement. Upload or Create Ads Ads are the actual creatives that are served to users’ devices via impressions. Currently, ad groups can house up to 20 ads each. TikTok allows advertisers to create video ads directly on the platform or upload ones that were developed off-app. Another option that advertisers can select is Spark ads. Similar to boosted posts on Facebook or Instagram, you can create a Spark ad by allocating a portion of your budget to extending the reach of your organic posts to more users. TikTok also offers additional formats to managed brands, which are companies that work directly with the platform’s sales team. These other options include: Topview ads – full-screen ads that play at the moment the app is opened Branded hashtags – short-term, engagement-focused content that displays on the hashtag challenge feed Branded effects – creative elements that users can use in their own videos At Conduit, we work directly with a dedicated Tiktok representative and have access to an agency-level business center that allows us to access managed brands formats. This creates new opportunities for your client to add dynamic new campaign creatives to best meet their advertising goals. In fact, we just finished running both the branded hashtag and branded effects campaigns right before we posted this! Creative Best Practices Though there are multiple ad formats, TikTok divides them into two main categories: image and video. Keeping this in mind, here are some general creative guidelines for a high-performing campaign: Align Your Ads with Your Target Audience Develop creatives that appeal directly to the ideal users that receive your ads. Use your ad group’s targeting parameters to influence the messaging, visuals, and features that you will be including in your content. Keep Your Messages Short and Sweet TikTok built its entire platform on high-engagement, short-form content. Though you can create a video up to 60 seconds in length, try to keep your creatives under 35 seconds when able. This will help avoid the dreaded ad fatigue and prevent users from scrolling onward. Think “Mobile-First” When creating a new video for your TikTok campaign, do so with a mobile display experience in mind. Record videos vertically so that your ads can fill up the entire screen without any lost or unused screen space! Place Creative Elements Near the Center TikTok recommends placing your ad creatives near the center of the image or video whenever possible. This will prevent these assets from potentially being cut off by the screen dimensions of a user’s device. Variety is Key TikTok boasts over 50 million users daily in the United States alone. Social score and frequency are important, but serving the same creatives on a neverending loop can also contribute to ad fatigue among your client’s target audience and reduce a campaign’s performance potential. Treat your TikTok campaign as a living, breathing, evolving entity. Plan to update your ads with new creatives to keep your content fresh and relevant on the user’s feed. Prioritize the User Experience Utilize the wide variety of creative features that TikTok provides to advertisers. For example, include audio in your creatives along with text so that the user has a fuller understanding of your campaign messaging and can easily take the next action after experiencing your ad. Keep on the Lookout for New Trends Keep your ears close to the digital ground to identify new creative trends on the platform. Don’t be shy to integrate them into your ad creatives! This will aid in creating more “natural” feeling ads that will better complement the organic content your target audience is already consuming. Satisfy Technical Specifications Like all social platforms that offer video advertising, TikTok provides technical guidelines to ensure that your creatives can be served to as many devices as possible. When preparing your assets, make sure they satisfy these requirements: Aspect ratio: 1:1, 16:9, or 9:16 (recommended) User feed resolution: greater than or equal to 540×960 px, 640×640 px, or 960×540 px News feed resolution: No restrictions, but greater than or equal to 720×1280 px, 640×640 px, or 1280×720 px is recommended. Accepted file types : .mp4, .mov, .mpeg, .3gp, .avi (user feed only), or .gif (news feed only). Duration: 5-60s Bitrate: Minimum of 516 kbps File size: limited to 500 MB Ad description: 100 character limit Brand name: 40 character limit Supercharge Your Agency’s TikTok Advertising with a White Label Partnership As the premier white label digital performance solution for successful agencies, our Paid Social Team at Conduit digital drives billions of impressions for our partners’ clients each year. With a direct business representative at TikTok along with our agency-level business center, we provide your agency with a secret weapon to confidently say “yes” to can’t-miss opportunities. The best part? We make it simple to get started. Just send us an Insertion Order with your client’s campaign goals, budget information, and creative assets and you’ll see your campaign data come to life with our custom 24/7 Live Reports! Make a resolution to scale your agency with the power of TikTok advertising this year. To get started, schedule a quick 20-minute discovery call with us to learn more about the power of partnership!