Archives for 2013

My Favorite PPC Landing Page Tips

I’m a huge fan of PPC landing pages! Landing pages are the “on-page” side of pay per click marketing. In the world of SEO, there have always existed both on-page and off-page strategies. Savvy SEO marketers invest a ton of time, both on-page and off-page. PPC, historically speaking, has been more focused on off-page elements (managing campaigns in Google AdWords and Bing Ads). However, I’m here to challenge the norm! I personally recommend that PPC marketers focus a significant amount of time on on-page optimization (landing page optimization). Following are some of my favorite PPC landing page tips.

Landing Pages

Invest in a landing page platform, such as ion interactive. It’s so much easier to build, test, and manage landing pages with a cutting edge platform like ion. Think about the parallels with SEM bid management platforms and how difficult the bidding process is in Excel versus a cutting edge platform. Same goes for landing pages! An added benefit for agencies: Have your client place a landing page platform on their site. This will give the agency control over both campaigns and customer experience! It’s a huge challenge for agencies to have influence over on-site user experience. Landing page platforms bridge that gap.
Stay consistent with your company’s brand guidelines. If brand guidelines don’t exist, develop them yourself by interviewing influential members of your organization. I’m a huge fan of consistency. You want to go big and test big, however you want to also stay very true to your company’s overall brand image. The user experience should never be jarring to the consumer. Even though you manage landing pages and your PM team manages your website, it should all flow the same.
Consider dynamic elements on your landing pages. It’s all about personal customization. Maybe have prices/offers relevant to the geography of the visitor. Perhaps you know a bit about the customer from their past browsing behavior on your site and you present a custom offer/package. Maybe it’s as simple as analyzing the search query in real time and offering up a landing page relevant to that specific search query. The opportunities are endless. A well designed SEM account will always have granular, tightly-themed adgroups. Make sure your landing page strategy follows accordingly.
Consider going beyond a simple landing page, and create a landing page minisite. SEM landing pages are focused. It’s all about making it easy for the consumer. Minisites are awesome because they allow you to get all of that additional information in there without distracting the core flow.
Landing pages don’t just have to be one page. In addition to minisites (see last tip), consider taking more of the flow under your control. If your site offers an API or another means of deep integration, consider hosting/managing the first few pages of the flow as part of your landing page experience optimization. The deeper you can go in the funnel, the more opportunity you have to test and improve conversion rate. Important tip: Make sure you work closely with your PM team and are on the same page.
Building upon the last part of the last tip, share your success stories across your company. Your learnings from PPC landing page optimization have direct impact on other areas of your organization. Offer up your channel as a testing ground. I love digital advertising because you can learn so much so fast. Make sure the landing page part of your program is treated the same, it’s a testing ground for quick learnings across your organization.
Don’t forget retargeting. Make sure your retargeting pixels are placed on your PPC landing pages (and across your entire website). I’m particularly a fan of retargeting PPC traffic because PPC tends to be one of the highest converting and most valuable sources of traffic.

How are you leveraging landing pages in your digital marketing program?

Image of guy looking at landing pages © iStockPhoto – Silent47

Acquisio Innovates With Their Bid & Budget Algos

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jul 7 0

I’m such a fan of Acquisio. These guys have built one of the most amazing performance marketing platforms in existence, one of the most popular for both agencies and direct advertisers. Back in April, I attended ad:tech SF and met with the Acquisio team. It’s there that I first learned about their new bid and budget management algorithms. Since then, they have fully released this new functionality, along with some amazing public case studies. Today, I wanted to take a quick moment to share their new enhancements, and then encourage you to head on over to Acquisio and arrange a demo!

With their new bid and budget management enhancements, Acquisio is upping the game when it comes to digital advertising. The three biggest highlights in my opinion:

Bids are now updated every half hour! Most bid management platforms these days update bids daily. Imagine how much more efficiency is possible when you’re updating bids every half hour, based on intra-day data! The BBM algorithm is the brainchild of Acquisio’s Science Ops acquisition, an algo company that was working with NASA.
Budgets are updated throughout the day based on intra-day performance. Great performing campaigns have an opportunity to scale and spend more money, low performing campaigns get throttled down. Budgets are shared across your suite of campaigns.
Acquiso BBM is fully compatible with all other bid management platforms, and is technology that sits outside of the core Acquisio platform. Therefore, even if you are in contract with another automation platform and are not able to move over to Acquisio, you can still leverage the BBM technology.

Already, Acquisio BBM has driven incredible results. I encourage you to check out the Strathcom Media case study. Strathcom experienced twice as many clicks after implementing BBM in most cases, and experienced tremendous improvements in budget management.

I’m personal friends with Acquisio EVP and Co-Founder Marc Poirier. I’m really thrilled with their new BBM technology, and feel that it’s a major innovation in our industry (one of the biggest of 2013). Way to lead us forward, Acquisio!

Image in this post © Acquisio

My Long Weekend Musings, 4th of July Style

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jul 4 1

Happy 4th of July to all my US-based readers! Happy Friday/weekend to everyone else! I wanted to take a moment here to share some fun musings, an idea originally inspired by my good friend Morgan Linton, domainer, entrepreneur, and awesome blogger who inspired me with the weekend musings idea. Let’s jump into this long weekend’s musings…

4th of July Fireworks

Search marketing swag is awesome! I have accumulated a ton of swag over the years, and have started a fun new experiment on Facebook and Google+ where I share my “Search Engine Swag” of the day. Make sure to follow PPC Ian on Facebook and Google+. My first Search Engine Swag is my cool Yahoo! basketball. Honestly, Yahoo! has some of the best account management in existence and our AM team always thinks of us. When I’m pondering big new ideas, you can often find me bouncing my Yahoo! basketball. I’m not going to add new swag every single day but you’ll find me posting cool new items every few days. Do you have a favorite piece of Search Engine Swag?

I’m so excited for the long weekend. I have a long four-day weekend here and I’m totally thrilled. I’m taking time to really enjoy the weekend with my amazing wife, Nicole. We both work super hard and are thrilled for some time off. I know the folks on my team and pretty much everyone I know in the digital marketing industry works incredibly hard (that’s you). Make sure to take it easy this long weekend! And, make sure to say thanks to everyone who has made our country so special, we are truly fortunate.

Make sure to thank great people in the digital marketing industry. Do you have a partner or vendor who treats you well? Take a few minutes to write thank you emails. Maybe call them out on Twitter. Make sure the thank you emails and words of praise go to your day-to-day rep and also the senior leaders. Call out success and make others look good. If you pause and take time to celebrate the success of others, you will make someone’s day each and every day. What’s better than that?

I’ve been in the digital marketing game since 2004, loving every step of the way. I was discussing with a co-worker on Friday that I’ve now been doing digital marketing for longer than I was in college and high school combined. That’s almost unbelievable, it’s gone by so fast. Digital marketing is intense, never forget that this is your life. Take it all seriously, but never forget to have fun each and every day. Never forget to force everyone on your team to have fun each and every day. As a leader at your organization, you have the opportunity to add great value and impact not only to careers but lives as well.

Treat your team at work like family. You are there to empower and uplift others. Likewise, look to your team for strength and motivation. The power of a team is so much greater than the sum of the parts. Find ways to build an incredible presence of strength, confidence, and results as a team. Digital marketing, at an enterprise level, is definitely not a solo sport.

That’s all for today everyone. Wishing you a fun, happy, and safe 4th of July. I truly appreciate your support!

Image of 4th of July Fireworks © iStockPhoto – triggermouse

13 Lessons Learned As A Blogger

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 30 7

I can’t believe it! I’ve been blogging here at PPC Ian since October, 2009 – that’s a long time. I truly enjoy blogging. It has been quite the amazing journey, and I have learned so much over the years. I originally got into blogging to empower and educate others. However, I also always had the sub-goal of learning all about this wonderful medium and rounding out my own portfolio of skills as a digital marketer. Following are some of the lessons I have learned over the years as a blogger.

Blog Lessons

Get out there and do it, it’s totally worth it! You can learn so much by creating your own blog. It’s not the same reading and attending conferences. When you get out there and invest in your own blog, you learn so much. I can’t believe how much this blog has taught me over the years… I have learned lessons first hand from PPC Ian readers, lessons about SEO, and so many lessons about the technicalities of WordPress.
Try not to multitask while blogging. I cannot tell you how many posts here on PPC Ian I have written while watching TV. It always takes twice or three times as long to write and review a post that way. Focus is so important when writing quality content, and optimizing your own time. Sit down to write your blog posts. Then, go watch TV later. You will enjoy both activities more. Note: I have had a great experience listening to music while blogging. Music is not distracting, but can be very helpful to your blogging experience.
Don’t always blog from the same location. Go to Starbucks, sit at your desk in your home office, sit outside on your patio – change it up! You can get so much inspiration by just moving around. This creates energy, new ideas, and better content.
When you’re on a roll, keep going. Today, for example, I just published a post but am now writing another. Tonight, I may write another. When you’re on a roll, you need to keep going. Great content comes in waves and it’s ok to write a backlog of posts and save them for the future.
Make the most of weekends. We work so amazingly hard as digital marketing professionals. Weekdays after work should be reserved for family, exercise, eating, and fun! I try to get up early on weekends and write a few posts in the morning. This is always a more powerful and positive experience.
Keep it going at all costs. This point almost contrast with the last one and separates the real leaders apart. Really, this comes down to work ethic. Blogging is a tremendous investment. Once your blog is going, your readers count on you. Don’t let them down. Keep going. Don’t have a post? You will need to stay up late or get up early to get that post out. However, I highly recommend the tips above to avoid this last minute type of situation.
Build amazing partnerships with your sponsors. Sponsors are the lifeblood of your blog. They help pay the bills, they can help with content ideas, they can help provide content (guest posts, eBooks, whitepapers, and more), and they can help motivate you to keep going (really it is all about the people, in my opinion). Take your sponsors seriously and give them the best partnership experience ever.
Invest in your top advocates. Over time, there are certain people who will frequently comment, like you in social media, email you ideas, and more. Invest in these key influencers. They are your best friend and can help you so much. I can’t thank my top readers/advocates enough, you guys are the best!
Blog because you are passionate and love what you do. Money comes second. It is not easy to make money blogging and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for the money. Of course, that can be a longer term goal and something to aspire towards, but always remember your passion and why you started (you need a higher value purpose than money).
Keep innovating. Just like paid search, blogging changes ever single day. The only constant is change. Don’t be stagnant. Stay on top of SEO, blogging, and social media trends. Incorporate all the great new stuff into your strategy.
Take your blogging education back to your company. Blogging will make you a well rounded marketer. You will learn so much that could help your company grow. Keep learning and share your lessons at work!
Set yourself up for a blogging vacation form time to time. Get a large backlog of posts, auto schedule them, and then kick back! Everyone deserves a break.
Let your personality come across. Blog about your personal life. Share pictures. Readers want to get to know you as a person, in addition to reading your analysis and insights.

Image of Blog © iStockPhoto gunnar3000

Getting More Digital Marketing Budget

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 27 1

Do you run digital marketing programs in a corporate setting? Chances are you have a set budget for your campaigns. Typically, companies will allocate budget across different marketing channels and divisions. As digital marketing professionals, the trends are in our favor! Budgets tend to increase year after year for performance marketing channels such as PPC, display, and social media because these channels perform.

Today, I wanted to share a guest post I just wrote for the PPC Associates Blog. My guest post is all about Building Your Case For A Bigger Digital Marketing Budget. When you’re in the world of digital marketing, bigger budgets makes natural sense. However, in a competitive situation where all departments/divisions are competing for limited budgets, you need to provide a solid case for your channel(s). My guest post outlines some of my favorite strategies for doing so.

I have had a true blast writing guest posts on the PPC Associates Blog. After reading this one, you may want to also check out some of my other recent ones. I hope you enjoy!

Image in this post © PPC Associates

Why PPC Is The Best Media Channel

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 22 1

As a corporate PPC leader, it’s your job to do what’s best for your company. In my opinion, that’s typically securing more budget for PPC and building enthusiasm for this amazing media channel. For many companies, PPC is going to be one of the best (if not the best) media channel. Of course, all of the below requires an incredibly talented and dedicated team because PPC is a 24/7, incredibly complex marketplace. We never sleep! So, make sure to hire the best and brightest in-house marketers and agencies. Here are some of my favorite reasons why PPC rules.

PPC Click

PPC drives results. By results, I’m talking about scale and also ROI. As compared to other media channels, PPC is one of the best performing, if not the best performing. It takes time to fully optimize, but a savvy search marketer and/or agency managing paid search for a great brand/product will be able to drive great ROI quicker (and of greater extent) than other channels.
PPC is instantaneous. No need to wait. Want to test a new concept? You can have results almost immediately. Why is PPC so instantaneous? Google AdWords and Bing Ads have created truly amazing self-serve platforms. With an amazing in-house marketer and/or an amazing agency (I recommend Rocket Clicks), you will get results nearly instantly.
PPC is a scalable platform for testing new concepts. You can test so much with paid search, quickly. I’m especially a fan of testing ad copy, landing pages, and new keywords. Because of the platform, you’re able to test in a very controlled and scalable (statistically significant way). I view PPC as the testing medium for the entire organization. Solicit input from all departments, leverage the power of PPC to prove/disprove hypothesis before rolling out to other channels/mediums.
PPC is incredibly measurable. Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and platforms such as Acquisio give you incredible, incredible measurement right at your fingertips. With that great measurement comes the opportunity for incredible optimization/refinement (again, right in these impressive search engines and platforms such as Acquisio).
PPC instantly expands your team. Invest and build a great program and Google, Yahoo!, and your automation platform will become part of your team. They will dedicate resources to your account. Your team instantly scales with help from some of the brightest minds in our industry.
PPC keeps improving and changing. I just wrote about Enhanced Campaigns and how I’m a fan. We have just scratched the surface of the potential in PPC. It keeps getting better and better.
PPC builds amazing careers. With the right dedication, skill, and perspective, there are not too many more rewarding career paths than the PPC track, in my opinion. Non only can you grow quickly, but it’s so challenging, rewarding, and fun.
PPC is a growing medium. Search engines rely on PPC revenue to drive their businesses forward. They are always thinking of new, inventive ways to make PPC better. More and more Internet users are getting savvy and interacting with paid ads. This is a great trend to count on for may years to come.
PPC drives results in other media channels. While the ROI is already great on a last click basis (after optimization from a very talented team/agency), that’s not the full picture. PPC assists and lifts other media channels including direct brand type-ins.
In my opinion, it’s all about team work. PPC puts you right in the center of it all. I cannot think of too many disciplines that are more interdisciplinary than PPC. What a great career when you get to collaborate with everyone in your company.

Are you a fan of PPC? What are some of your favorite reasons? Next time you are securing budget and resources for your team, make sure to stress why PPC is the best.

Image of PPC Click © iStockPhoto – pupunkkop

I’m a Fan of Enhanced Campaigns

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 20 2

I’m a big fan of Enhanced Campaigns. The more I learn and the more I experiment, the more I like Enhanced Campaigns. Sure, I was a bit skeptical at first, but I quickly became a believer. I wanted to write this quick post today to share my enthusiasm and a few of the top reasons why I’m a fan of Enhanced Campaigns. There are still a lot of skeptics in our industry. I wanted to write a post to try to change that! So here goes…

Change

Enhanced Campaigns make your life easier. No longer do you need separate campaigns for mobile and desktop/laptop. It’s all about a unified campaign structure. Campaign structures were getting too complex/messy before Enhanced Campaigns. It was nearly impossible to have complete parity across campaigns across devices at all times, especially with very large enterprise accounts. Enhanced Campaigns build in instant parity across desktop/laptop, tablet, and mobile smartphones.
Looking to grow your presence on mobile smartphones? You should! The mobile future is here. Organic search is less prominent on mobile smartphones, paid ads occupy most of the landscape. As such, you want your paid presence on mobile smartphones to be amazing. Enhanced Campaigns make this super easy. Due to the instant parity mentioned above, your mobile campaigns will likely be more built out than ever before.
Enjoy call extensions but have limited call center hours? Enhanced Campaigns make it easy to schedule ad extensions to your days/hours of operation. Ad extensions are becoming a very important component of any Google AdWords program. Enhanced Campaigns give you a lot more control over ad extensions.
If you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a while, you know I’m a tremendous fan of bidding automation. What’s the foundation of the most successful bidding programs around? Great data! Enhanced Campaigns offer some really neat, new ways of tracking and cross-device/cross-media type. One great example is call attribution. If a phone call lasts greater than a certain threshold (say 60 seconds), you can count it as a conversion!
The overall Enhanced Campaigns platform opens up doors for a multitude of new innovations. Google is hard at work taking advantage of their new platform and releasing a ton of new stuff. Enhanced Campaigns pave the way for very exciting second half of 2013 and 2014.
The “issues” with Enhanced Campaigns in my opinion, are not real issues. Moreover, Google is truly listening to advertisers and perfecting the platform. Issue 1: We now have less control over tablets. That said, I do not see this as a tremendous issue. Tablets used to be a novelty. More affluent customers had these new devices, and therefore their conversion rates used to be different from desktops/laptops. However, tablets are no so widespread that they likely convert the same as desktops/laptops for most advertisers. Issue 2: It’s a little difficult to get used to bid multipliers. Solution: The best SEM platforms around are making it easy. Partner with a great SEM platform that truly gets Enhanced Campaigns. Issue 3: Less granularity around mobile bidding. This used to be the case when bid multipliers were on a campaign level. Google listened to our feedback and placed bid multipliers on an adgroup level! Long story short, the “issues” you hear about Enhanced Campaigns are mostly non-issues in my opinion.

The only constant in our industry is change. As digital marketing professionals, it’s all about embracing change. Enhanced Campaigns are here and I highly recommend embracing them. In my opinion, this is just the beginning!

Image of Change © iStockPhoto – iqoncept

Generating Demand To Assist & Complement PPC

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 16 2

PPC is my favorite marketing channel because of its incredible efficiency. After all, you are capturing prospective customers as they are searching for the precise product/service you sell. It doesn’t get much better than that, you are capturing people who are explicitly looking for brands like yours. However, one of the challenges for PPC, especially for gigantic programs, is search query volume. After optimizing your program incredibly well (I’m talking about years of optimization), your growth may start slowing down if search query volume in your category is not growing quickly enough. Of course, you can always do more with the same traffic (you could optimize landing page conversion rate, for example), however you will also continue to face intense competition for those incredibly valuable PPC clicks. What can you do in this situation? I’m a big fan of branching out and actually creating new demand. Creating demand for your brand is not going to be as cost-efficient as PPC, but it’s an important and scalable mid/top funnel marketing practice for the large-scale paid media advertiser.

Idea 1: Target Lookalikes Via Display Advertising

What does your customer look like? How old is your average customer? What gender are they? How much income do they make? What life events trigger your customer to purchase your product/service? Where does your customer live? The list goes on and on… Mine your data and build out profiles for your top performing segments. It’s ok to have segments of your current customer base and also segments for your overall industry, in which you are under-weighted (sometimes this second one works really well because you are not capturing these buckets well via traditional paid search). Truly get to know your customer.

Then, leverage this intelligence to target similar profiles via display advertising. Many of the prospective customers you reach have not yet searched for your specific product/service. (Even if they are, however, marketing is all about multiple touch points.) Because they fit the profile of your ideal customer, you will be able to start generating new, incremental demand. In creating demand, you are expanding the universe of prospective customers searching for your brand. You are no longer constrained by existing search query volume on your brand, product, or service!

Idea 2: Create Amazing Content, Share Via Social Media, and Then Retarget

Partner closely with your social media team. Build amazing content on your blog, YouTube channel, social profiles (maybe run some cool infographics). The idea here is to “go viral”. Once this happens, you are able to retarget! Get your Google analytics/retargeting pixel on your YouTube channel, Google+ page, and your blog. Because this all started with amazing viral content, it is very likely you will attract prospective customers to your cookie pool who were not actively searching for your brand/product on search engines. You are expanding your universe and creating incremental demand via amazing content. The content alone will do a lot of the heavy lifting and brand building. However, to fully close the loop, it often comes back to paid media. Retargeting, in this case, is one of the best vehicles around. When a prospective customer sees your display creative, they will instantly remember your great content and then visit your site to purchase.

Idea 3: Run Paid Social Media Campaigns To Identify New Customers

This tip closely ties into the last one, but is slightly different. Here, instead of letting your content do the heavy lifting alone, you are also combining great content with paid promotion. Run paid “like” campaigns. Promote your tweets and posts. Invest some money behind your social media efforts. This may not yield direct response conversions right away but will expand the universe of prospective customers viewing your content. Then, leverage great content to sell these prospective customers on your brand over time. You will reach prospective customers (who fit into your segmentation model) in social media who are not actively searching for your product/service just yet. Then, when the time is right and after your content has encouraged them to take action, they will remember your brand due to the relationship you have built. Once again, you are building incremental demand by leveraging paid media outside of PPC.

Paid search is an amazing channel. It’s very close to the point of conversion and must always be on. Because of its value, it must be managed closely and watched like a hawk. Leverage the tips above to generate new, incremental demand and you will likely (on a last click basis) see even more incremental conversions on your brand name keywords over time. The boost here is the incremental demand generation going on outside of paid search (across paid display, social media, and retargeting campaigns). Get really great at attribution and make sure to give those assisting new demand generators their fair share of credit!

Check Out My AdLift Blog Guest Post

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 12 0

About a month ago, I attended and spoke at Search Insider Summit. At this amazing conference, I had the pleasure of meeting Prashant Puri (CEO & Co-Founder) and Johnny Shami (Director, Business Development) from AdLift. What is AdLift? It’s one of the best SEO Agencies ever! Based in Palo Alto, AdLift is right in the heart of Silicon Valley and manages SEO campaigns for some of the biggest, most savvy brands around.

AdLift SEO Agency

Today, I had the honor of contributing a guest post to the AdLift blog. Given their SEO expertise, I thought it fitting to write a post about the intersection of SEO and PPC. In particular, I wrote SEO Tips From A PPC Pro. My post highlights 7 SEO tips that leverage intelligence/collaboration with your PPC program. Looking at it from a paid search perspective, this post offers 7 ways in which you can help out your SEO team. There are so many ways in which SEO and PPC teams can collaborate.

Head on over to AdLift today and check out my post. I hope you enjoy! If you are looking for an SEO agency, I highly, highly recommend chatting with AdLift. They are true experts!

Managing Difficult Partners & Vendors

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 8 2

I have been around in the digital marketing career for 9 years! Fortunately, I have not had to manage too many difficult partners. Why? Our industry tends to attract the best and the brightest, and I’ve done my best to filter out potentially problematic situations before they occur. The level of service that we all have become accustomed to almost creates a bubble. Because of this amazing space, however, it is important to keep a well-rounded perspective since you don’t want to let your guard down in all situations. From time to time, you may end up working with a difficult partner. I hope these tips help make your life just a little easier, as we all know that difficult relationships can create a stressful environment for you and your team.

Obstacle

Spend a lot of time qualifying new partners and vendors before you start working with them. Do not assume everyone is like Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. As mentioned above, we are spoiled. Partners/vendors will become part of your team/family. Make sure they are truly great and will give your team leverage, as opposed to holding you back. Treat every new partnership and vendor with a key checklist. It is ok to say “no” and avoid working with a certain partner/vendor. In online marketing, we tend to “do it all”. Learn to say “no” sometimes, especially if a partnership could hold your team back. The best way to manage a difficult partner/vendor is to avoid working with them altogether. Some of my favorite areas to investigate:
- Size of company – Larger companies get bonus points since they have proven they have what it takes to scale. That said, I love startups too.
- Years in business – Has your prospective vendor lasted the test of time?
- Reputation – Is your vendor well-known? Have you seen them in the media? Do they have credibility? Do they have a brand? Do they attend the important trade shows? Do they have someone reputable standing behind them?
- Reference checks – Can your potential partner provide references? Make sure to call them and ask plenty of questions. It’s amazing how much you can learn from a solid reference.
- Case study check – Can your prospective vendor provide case studies that illustrate their success with others?
- Proposal check – Is you vendor/partner willing to fill out a proposal? How good are their ideas?
- Ease of relationship – Based on your preliminary talks, is the vendor easy to talk to? Are they willing to visit your office in-person even if it involves travel? Are they making a strong effort?
- Team check – What does your team think? Make sure multiple people “interview” the prospective partner. Do they fit your company’s core values?
- Go with your gut – You’d be amazed what your gut can tell you. Go with your instincts.
Ironclad legal agreements are key. Invest the time upfront working on really great legal agreements that protect you and your company. This will take more time since we are online marketers, not lawyers, but is critical. You never know how a business deal will end up. Most are great (we live in a truly fortunate world/industry), however you never know what will happen all of the time. Work closely with your legal team to protect your company and you will have such an easier time managing situations if they ever do turn difficult.
Work within your company’s means. Do not commit to something that is not going to be possible to fulfill on your end. It is important to follow partnership agreements, and a partnership is a two-way road. If you agree to something, make sure you follow through. At the same time, make sure to work with vendors who are understanding since roadblocks and changes are the norm in our industry. Flexibility is a key trait I always interview for in prospective partners.
Keep your communication short and to-the-point, once in a difficult situation. Let’s assume you’re in a difficult situation. The best thing to do is stay calm and keep your communication on-point. Don’t get off-topic. Don’t respond to the other party if they try to provoke you. You are a business professional. Keep it professional and calm, even if the other party is not trying to accomplish the same goal. Rise above any drama that may come your way. This is sometimes easier said than done, especially if a vendor is really trying to provoke you. Luckily, this case is very rare.
If in a very difficult situation, solicit the input of others. Your legal team will often have amazing perspective and advice. Finance teams often have a breadth of experience too.
In a difficult situation, loop in senior management. Make sure to inspire confidence that you have a plan and have it under control, but make sure to loop them in as well so they can help out and be aware of the situation.
Be a good person and do what’s best for everyone. Good people get rewarded. We all face challenges from time-to-time. The key here is keeping your cool and keeping the faith. If you follow these tips and your own gut, you will get through any challenging partnership/vendor relationship with ease.

These days, it’s all about diversifying your traffic and marketing mix. This means that digital marketers are not only in the marketing game but also the business development game. Digital marketers are also working across a broader array of digital and traditional marketing channels. Make sure you sharpen your business development skills, and I hope these tips help you prevent/manage any difficult situations that may come your way. However, I truly wish you end up like me – a minimum of difficult partners and a maximum of amazing ones!