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How to Create an Editorial Calendar (+Free Template!)

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How to Create an Editorial Calendar (Tips, Tools, & Free Template!)

Being a content creator can be overwhelming. Keeping up with blog posts, guides, and everything else on the agenda is hard work!

Now, imagine a system that keeps track of all the content you want to create, all the steps you have to take when creating it, and where each piece of content is at in its creation process.

Sound like a distant dream? Well, it’s not. It’s called an editorial calendar and in this post, I’m going to show you exactly how to create one, with a free template too!

If you’re looking for a way to streamline and speed up your work flow, read on.

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Table of contents

What is an editorial calendar?

An editorial calendar is more than just a schedule of your content. It’s a visual tool that lets one person or an entire team to plan, create, schedule, and promote content—for the next week, month, or even year. It includes the tasks, team members, and due dates involved at every stage.

Why use an editorial calendar?

The benefits of using an editorial calendar are many, but here are a few:

  • More cohesive content. When you plan out your content in advance, you can organize it into themes and create pieces that support one another each month.
  • Save time. You always know exactly what content to work on next, taking writers block out of the equation. Plus, all of your tasks are prioritized and streamlined. Some editorial calendar tools even have integrations where you can publish and promote across multiple platforms at once.
  • Stay on track. An editorial calendar ensures that you and every team member can progress along with the timeline of a project, and make sure no task is left undone or delayed.
  • Store ideas. Combining an idea bank with your content calendar is very effective idea capturing on the go, especially if you can access your calendar on mobile.

In my experience, using an editorial calendar has made a tremendous difference in the way I work and I have never looked back. Procrastination often occurs when we don’t know what to do next, and so we delay the work at hand.

But for me at least, when I know that all I need to do is conduct the different tasks listed in my specific checklists, I am more productive and I procrastinate much less. Now, I hope it can do the same for you!

Keep reading and I’ll show you how you can use a free template of a Trello-based editorial calendar.

How to create an editorial calendar

Here are some foundational principles to guide you in the process.

1. Establish a loose content strategy

While an editorial calendar can help you to refine your content strategy, you do need to have an initial framework to begin with. You can use our guide to creating a content strategy for a deeper dive, but here are some basic questions to start with.

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  • What are your goals? Are you looking to increase organic traffic with blog posts, generate leads with gated content, produce sales enablement materials? This will help you answer the next question…
  • What type(s) of content are you making? For organic traffic, you’ll need SEO blog posts. For gated content, you’ll need to produce PDF ebooks. For sales enablement, you’ll need to create one-sheets and slide decks. For brand awareness and link building, you’ll likely need to write guest posts.
  • How much content do you want to publish? Based on the content type and team size, you should have some realistic goals and objectives for how much content you want to publish each week, month, and year.

editorial calendar - content marketing matrix

Image source

2. Lay out your work flow

Once you have an idea of what content you want to produce and how much of it, you can lay out your workflow. This includes:

  • Your ideation process. How do you find, store, and manage your content ideas?
  • SEO optimizations. You’ll want to include keyword research and on-site and off-site tasks.
  • Lay out the different stages and specific activities of your workflow, and assign any tags, color codes, or labels that are important to visualize and maintain production timelines.

3. Choose an editorial calendar software

With an understanding of your strategy, workflow, and team size, now you’ll need to find out which software is most suitable for you and/or your team. Which is what this next section will cover.

editorial calendar example by monday

Image source

Editorial calendar tools

There are several different approaches and tools you can use to create your own editorial calendar for free.

Project management software

Project management software like Asana and Trello are often the go-to for editorial calendars. My coworkers and I use the free version of Trello and we love it! With Trello, you have a workspace and within your workspace you can create boards. Within boards are cards where you can add descriptions, checklists, labels, due dates, attachments, and more. This makes it simple to keep track of various aspects of the content creation process.

trello editorial calendar template

You can also invite others to work on your boards. This is great for collaboration, but not the best for large teams since it can become quite messy with too many cards and labels.

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You can upgrade to the paid version for more power-ups and powerful integration features.

Keep reading to download our Trello editorial calendar template.

Spreadsheets

Spreadsheet software like Excel and Google Sheets can be used for editorial calendars if you don’t have the time to learn new software, but they are more manual and not as visual. I have made an example in a spreadsheet to demonstrate what an editorial calendar in Excel/Google docs might look like. Feel free to make your own based on this suggestion.

editorial calendar template - spreadsheet

Regular calendars

Regular calendars like Outlook or Google Calendar can be good choices for visualizing and scheduling tasks fast and easy—plus you’ll get built-in reminders. Furthermore, you can create checklist templates with specific tasks across the different stages of the workflow, and paste them into the calendar note field to keep track of what you have done and what’s remaining.

Nevertheless, regular calendars might not be the best if you want to keep track of status in an orderly manner and see everything in one glance. Here’s a simple overview of how a month’s worth of planned content might look like in Google Calendar, with color codes used to identify the type of content and status.

editorial calendar example

Free Trello editorial calendar template

Ok! Let me share with you my Trello editorial calendar template. It works wonders for me in building out my content marketing funnel, so I want to share it with you!

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Here’s the link:

Trello editorial calendar template

Here’s what it looks like:

trello editorial calendar template

And here are its three components:

  • Lists: The lists are used to represent the different stages of content, from ideation to promotion.
  • Checklists: The checklists are used to add tasks to cards.
  • Labels: Colored labels represent statuses, for example “Pending review”.

When you decide to make content on one of your ideas, simply move the card into the “date assigned” list and set a date for it.

The lists

This Trello editorial calendar board consists of 6 lists:

  1. Guest post ideas: Stores all your ideas for guest content
  2. In-house post ideas – Stores all your ideas for own content
  3. Date assigned – Content ideas that you have scheduled
  4. In progress – Content that are in the making
  5. Published – Published content
  6. Resources – Checklist templates and other resources.

As mentioned above, each list consists of cards, which are your content ideas. You can add checklists, labels, and dates to each card.

The checklists

This editorial calendar has several different checklists, each relevant to different stages of the content creation process. Alright, but what kind of checklist am I talking about here? Well, in fact, checklists for helping you along every step of the process!

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  1. Keyword research – This is the very first checklist you conduct when creating a piece of content. Here you can choose between the free approach, or the paid approach using Ahrefs. I use both methods. I have made a post on how to do free keyword research.
  2. Review draft checklist: Title, content structure, call to action, images identified.
  3. Review checklist. Relevant when editing your first draft and getting it ready for publication. It’s basically on-site SEO stuff, optimizing for social media sharing, quality check etc.trello editorial calendar template - review checklist
  4. Publishing and initial promotion checklist. For publishing and promoting your content. It’s a list of several different channels to promote your content in.
  5. Follow-up promo checklist. Promotion activities one year after publication.
  6. Pinterest publishing checklist: Step-by-step checklist on how to make pins and schedule them for post promotion on Pinterest.

    To import any of these checklists into a card:

    1. Go to the card in which you want to import a checklist
    2. Click the “Checklist” option on the card’s right-hand side.
    3. Choose “Copy items from…” and choose your intended checklist from the menu.

    The labels

    In this template, I use labels for content type as well as status. This is great for staying organized and in control of your schedule.

    You can add new labels as well to customize it as you wish. Here are the labels I use for content types:

    • Blog post
    • Video
    • Email newsletter
    • Guest post
    • Freebie
    • Podcast episode
    • Passive income products

    Here are the labels I use for content status:

    • Draft in progress
    • Pending review
    • Scheduled (publish date)
    • Published

    trello editorial calendar template - labels

    How to get this free editorial calendar template

    Here’s how you get your copy of the board:

    1. If you don’t have a Trello account already, go sign up for Trello at Trello.com
    2. Log in to your Trello account
    3. Once signed up / logged in, click here
    4. Now you should be inside the board. Click the icon with the 3 dots on it at the top right, and choose “More”.
    5. Click on the “copy board” optiontrello editorial calendar template
    6. Now go back to your workspace overview in Trello. You should be able to access your new editorial calendar from there!

    Pro tips for this editorial calendar

    Now I’ll leave you with some final tips for getting the most out of this template!

    1. Customize to your liking

    Note that this editorial calendar is a template, and you can edit it the way you want. The more detailed customization is added to it, the better. If it suits your needs as it is, great!

    2. Get Trello for mobile

    Download the Trello app on your mobile phone and use the widget to capture ideas quickly when you’re out and about. Here’s how

    1. First, download and install the Trello app from Appstore or Google Play
    2. Second, add the widget to your phone’s widget area
    3. Then, wait until you’re hit with a content idea. Now, quickly get your phone out and click the widget’s “Add card” button
    4. Choose the Trello board and the list that you want the card to be added to. This would be one of your idea lists. Like this:trello editorial calendar template -card example
    5. Finally, click the “Add” button, and that’s it! Your new idea has been saved to your idea list.

    3. Use the calendar power-up

    When the calendar power-up is activated in Trello you will see the scheduled posts in the Trello calendar making up to a month’s worth of content visible at a glance. Simply click the calendar power-up located at the top of your board.

    trello editorial calendar template - calendar power up

    Now you’ll see a calendar with all your cards visible at the assigned date, with its labels. I have done some demo scheduling with cards in all the different lists to show you how it looks like in the Trello calendar

    editorial calendar example

    In the calendar view you may click on the cards and view them directly from the calendar interface. Notice that all the status labels are also showing, which gives you a good overview of status of all the scheduled posts. The labels are explained in more detail below together with the other features of the board.

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    4. Use Mammoth

    If you have a WordPress site and write your content in Microsoft Word or in Google Docs, you can use a plugin called Mammoth .docx converter to import a post from your writing client easily into WordPress!

    5. Use Yoast

    Now you can just do the tasks in this checklist and get the stuff done! The YOAST SEO plugin is very helpful when working through this list.

    Start building out your editorial calendar

    Using some form of an editorial calendar is a must for every content creator. I hope you have enjoyed reading this post and that it has provided you with some constructive value.

    Enjoy this editorial calendar! I hope it makes a difference in your workflow efficiency. Please leave a comment if you have any questions and I’ll be happy to answer them the best I can!

    Thank you!

    About the author

    René Frydson is a 33-year-old passionate digital marketer, blogger, and productivity enthusiast from a small city called Forde in Western Norway. Alongside his formal education in marketing management with a specialty in digital marketing, Renè has 6+ years of experience from his own ventures online. He has hands-on experience from his employment in the marketing department of a large energy company in Norway. Join him over at themarketingonion.com where he publishes interesting and informative content within the digital marketing and productivity space.

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11 Actionable Ways to Build Client Relationships That Last

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11 Actionable Ways to Build Client Relationships That Last

Some agencies manage to build a steady client base that strengthens over the years, while others ride roller coasters and eventually close up shop. What’s the difference? Client relationships. Strong client relations make for greater success with projects and campaigns, loyal clients who stay with you longer and refer new clients, and a better reputation for your brand. Even better, they make everyday work more enjoyable for all.

So what makes for a strong client relationship? The same traits that define any good relationship: awareness, communication, empathy, dependability, accountability, honesty, and the list goes on.

In this post, I’ve compiled 11 ways your agency can demonstrate the above and more to achieve the best possible outcomes for you and your clients. I’d say happy endings, but good relationships don’t really end.

Table of contents

Why are client relationships important?

It’s easy to skim over the importance of creating a strong relationship with your clients—you know you have to do it. But when you dig into how it helps your agency grow, you can be more strategic about it.

Reduces churn

It can be 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. You also have a much higher probability of selling a new agreement to a current client than closing a deal with a new one.

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A strong client relationship helps you weather rough patches and identify clients who are at risk of leaving. Both will help you reduce customer churn.

Increases referrals

Customer referrals are an extremely important source of new clients for your agency. That’s because referred customers are more likely to buy, are more loyal, and spend more on average than non-referred customers.

When you have a strong relationship with your clients, you can ask them to give reviews and refer other businesses. That’s especially helpful if your agency serves a niche industry where everyone knows everyone else.

Provides opportunities to learn

Have you ever wanted to know how a new regulation would affect your clients? Or how to best sell a service like PPC? When you have a rock-solid relationship with your clients, you can ask them.

It takes time to build that sort of comfort, but when you do, your best clients become your agency’s de facto advisers.

📣 Learn how 300 marketing agencies manage services, pricing, and challenges in our State of the Digital Marketing Agency report.

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How do you build client relationships that last?

In the following list, you’ll find actionable ways to improve client satisfaction and build mutually beneficial partnerships, with input from PPC agency experts like Mark Irvine, Francine Rodriguez, Akvile DeFazio, and Susie Marino.

1. Gather “hard” and “soft” information

A strong agency-client relationship starts before the client even becomes one. You know that you need as much information as possible about your client to come up with a winning proposal. But the solution you come up with isn’t going to establish a meaningful connection between you and your potential client. It’s how you present that solution with respect to both the business’s goals and the personalities and values of the team you’ll be working with.

This means collecting “hard” information like:

  • Products and services they offer
  • Target audience and the end-users of their product or service
  • Top three competitors
  • Prioritized list of goals and challenges
  • Strategies that have worked and not worked in the past
  • Software are they currently using
  • Budget

But also “soft” information like:

  • What they define as success
  • Their future hopes or anticipations, like scaling, adding on new offerings, etc.
  • The company’s mission, beliefs, and values, and unique selling proposition
  • What makes them different from their competitors
  • Hobbies, interests, and preferences of the individuals you’ll be working with

strengthen client relationships emotional vs logical intelligence

Think with both sides of your brain when gathering information about your client.

Building emotional intelligence about the team you’ll be working with will help you to make communication more personalized as you move through these initial phases of your journey together.

Side note: Be prepared to answer their questions too! Even their non-PPC questions.

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2. Internalize that information

This is the information you’ll be not only including in your proposal, but applying throughout your actual execution and ongoing communication with your client. Take the time to really internalize it so that it shines through organically in everything you do.

  • Gather the information in person (or video): Body language and facial expressions tell a lot. Take note of what gets them excited (and not so excited). Also, be sure to send out a list of the questions you’ll be asking far in advance so the client can have time to think about answers and produce follow-up questions.
  • Iterate back: As you listen, iterate back to your client what you have interpreted so you can make sure you’re crystal clear on the information you’re receiving. Remember, incorporating the tiniest details into your proposal and execution is what will give your clients confidence that you truly understand their needs.
  • Templatize: Have an internal templated document where you can collect all of the information you’ve gathered in one place. This gives every team member something to continually refer back to, and the uniformity makes it easier to internalize.

3. Go above and beyond with your proposal

    From a project standpoint, your proposal shows what you’re going to do to achieve your client’s goals. From a relationship standpoint, it’s your opportunity to reinforce, once again, that you have a deep understanding of your client—both the business and its team members. Speak to both the client’s business goals as well as the more personal pain points and desires of its employees.

    To do this, think in terms of “what,” “why,” and “so that.”

    • The what refers to what you’ll be doing from a process standpoint.
    • The why ties the process to one of the business’s specific goals.
    • The “so that” speaks to the pain point it will address for the business’s team members.

    For example, we’d like to ramp up ad spending in the latter half of the month to drive more signups so that your sales team isn’t scrounging for leads. Just be sure to use the language that your clients used in the initial information-gathering process.

    This strengthens that partnership feel. You’re not just looking to achieve goals, you care about the individuals impacted by them.

    how to strengthen marketing agency client relationship with a winning proposalhow to strengthen marketing agency client relationship with a winning proposal

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    4. Have an onboarding process

    This is one of our customer retention strategies as well. Once you get started, there will be more points of contact added to the roster for both sides. A streamlined onboarding process will set the stage for the clear communication and seamless execution needed for a strong and long-lasting client relationship to form. During this process, you may want to:

    • Mail them a welcome kit: Send along some giveaways like branded swag, a greeting card, and additional goodies based on the more personal information you’ve collected.
    • Take care of housekeeping: Make sure each of you has the access needed for tools, accounts, and dashboards.
    • Have a kickoff meeting: This is to ensure everything is lined up for perfect execution. You’ve also become pretty familiar with one another at this point. This is a good time to have a more informal atmosphere.

    🛑 Free guide >>> The 6 Absolute Best Strategies to Grow Your Digital Marketing Agency

    5. Treat clients like partners

    Treating your client like a business will make your relationship purely transactional (i.e., no relationship at all). Treating them like family leaves too much room for miscommunications and unmet expectations.

    Treating your clients like partners, on the other hand, sets the stage for a healthy mix of personal, purposeful, and transactional encounters where both your and your client’s identities are preserved, and each of you supplies the essential ingredients for success.

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    • Embrace the truth: Remember that at the end of the day, both of you are businesses that want to make money. There’s no need to skirt around that. They need your service to generate revenue, and you need their continued business to generate yours.
    • Maintain structure with some fluidity: Keep deliverables clear and stick to the intended plan as much as possible, but always leave the door open for input and feedback.
    • Let them in: While some of your tools and processes may be proprietary, give them access to dashboards and data when possible. Let them in on (non-confidential) tidbits about your agency that “outsiders” wouldn’t know. Their earning your trust is just as important as you earning theirs.
    • Stay honest: This means giving pushback on your client’s desires or requests that may not be best for long-term success (wants vs needs). A good partnership is not one where both parties constantly agree; it’s one where the two parties come together with different perspectives to bring to the table, resulting in better output than either one could have achieved on their own.

    6. Be proactive rather than reactive

      Akvile DeFazio, President of AKvertise, makes this a priority with clients.

      Her team makes sure to proactively:

      • Share ideas and propose new campaign strategies.
      • Forewarn about upcoming platform changes and any action required.
      • Educate the client to empower them further.

      “This shows care and builds trust, and our clients share that they appreciate our diligent proactivity,” she says. “When we work with clients, we aim to be a seamless extension of their team and genuinely embed ourselves as so. When they win, we win, and proactive communication is the key to success for all.”

      7. Be empathetic rather than defensive

      This recommendation from Mark Irvine, Director of PPC at Search Labs Digital, ties back to the partnership mentality in tip #5. The scenario here is that your agency is doing great work. Performance metrics continue to climb. But the client is upset. They aren’t seeing new business come in.

      “A wrong response here is to dig your heels in,” Mark says. “Telling them that their business is doing fine is at best tone-deaf. Instead, let them talk it out and listen to them. This may even lead them to discover the problem is in their other marketing or sales teams.”

      If this ends up being the case, Irvine recommends that you take yourself out of the problem to prevent it from becoming an “us versus them” situation. Take the approach of teaming up together to come up with a solution. Use language like:

      • “I see what you’re talking about.”
      • “This is a valid concern.”
      • “That really is frustrating, we’re glad you brought this up with us.”
      • “Let’s make a plan to review this and report back with some solutions to remedy this.”

      Position yourself as a partner in their campaigns. Value their feedback. Even if you’re an expert, allowing them to work with you will help build a long, trusting relationship.

      “And remember,” Mark adds, “if you dismiss or fight their concerns, there’s an agency sales rep somewhere else who will be happy to listen to them vent about you all day.”

      8. Establish structure around communication

      Brett McHale, founder of Empiric Marketing, LLC, provides some great tips around communication and setting boundaries:

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      Stay away from being “always available

      Being always available, whether through Slack or other forms of direct communication, blurs the ever-important work-life balance. It can also distract you away from other clients.

      Hold regular meetings with actionable takeaways

      Instead, establish weekly or bi-weekly meetings to check in, review performance, and answer questions. “I always have some takeaway or action item from those meetings,” Brett says. “This keeps me accountable, and when I deliver on things that I say I’m going to do, it helps build trust with the client.”

      Use email and instant messaging

      Brett says, “Email can be very robotic, and I try not to be too professional or polished all the time. Communicating with clients directly via a messenger helps to build rapport and have a more laid back ‘human-to-human’ relationship.”

      He suggests designating instant messaging for urgent matters and email otherwise. This cuts out the back-and-forth emailing and also reassures your clients that while you may not always be available, you will never leave them hanging.

      how to strengthen relationships with clients the seven c's of effective communicationhow to strengthen relationships with clients the seven c's of effective communication

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      9. Share your concerns early

      This suggestion from Mark Irvine is particularly relevant to the many changes happening in the advertising realm lately. The scenario here is that your client has big plans and aspirations, and you want to say yes to everything they want. But in the back of your mind, you’re not sure if they can create that audience in Google or build that campaign on Bing. You’re unsure of how the new iOS updates will impact their Facebook targeting.

      “Don’t nod, say yes, and then stress,” Mark says. “You lose trust with your client if you say you can do something and then can’t, even if that’s not your fault.”

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      Instead, show your expertise by sharing your concerns. Practice saying:

      • “That’s a really good idea. I know that some ad policies might come into play as we explore it, so let me double-check those first.”
      • “This new change could pose some challenges to us. I’ll keep an eye on it as it changes over the coming days.”
      • “It’s tough to say what this means for us yet, but I wanted to make sure we all knew about it in advance.”

      If you really have to put your foot down, try something like:

      “We agree that this is a great idea, but we can’t in good conscience proceed with it until we know that it won’t cost you in the long run.”

      Be transparent and ask them for their trust. Most of the time, you’ll come out as the person who helped them navigate through uncertainty, and they won’t forget that.

      10. Embrace small talk

      Small talk often gets a bad rap, but Susie Marino, WordStream’s Senior Content Marketing Specialist and former Customer Success Specialist, has found that it actually helps with building strong client relationships.

      “I know it can feel cringey or uncomfortable at first, but just go for it,” she says. “You’d be surprised at how receptive clients are. Next thing you know, you’ve got a great rapport going, and the banter at the beginning of meetings becomes more meaningful.”

      “People love to talk about themselves, and clients are no different,” Susie adds. “When you ask them about how that home garden is coming along, they’ll be pleasantly surprised. These conversations reveal how much you truly care.“

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      Clients are people who like to work with real people who also have personalities and personal lives. If you don’t show a touch of personality with small talk, it will be harder to stay connected and to demonstrate your genuine care, outside of campaigns and metrics.

      11. Establish quarterly business reviews

      Francine Rodriguez, former Senior Manager of Customer Success at WordStream, believes that quarterly business reviews are essential for client retention.

      “I think all agencies get into a cycle of monthly reporting and proving that deliverables were completed,” she says. “It is important to take that step back once a quarter and have a focused conversation on high-level strategy.”

      The QBR allows the agency and the customer to reflect on new goals, the efficiency of strategies taken in the past, and what needs to pivot for the future.

      It is also a time to allow your customer to provide insight into how their business goals are changing and perhaps what strategies outside of the agency’s scope they are also planning in the near future. Having that dedicated time to talk without existing action items on the table is a great way to strengthen the relationship, create trust, and become better partners.

      It may also lead to surprising discoveries, where an agency could find opportunities to upsell its customers into new services. If your agency is doing QBRs now and your conversations don’t look any different from your regular monthly check-ins, it is time to change the format!”

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      Start cultivating strong relationships with your clients today

      Strong agency-client relationships are built on virtues like trust, reliability, transparency, and personability, and they result in greater outcomes for everyone involved. If you find that you’re lacking in productivity, loyalty, or the overall feel of harmony with your clients, see if you can adopt or improve any of these strategies for your agency:

      1. Gather “hard” and “soft” information about your client
      2. Internalize that information
      3. Go above and beyond with your proposal
      4. Have an onboarding process
      5. Treat clients like partners
      6. Be proactive rather than reactive
      7. Be empathetic rather than defensive
      8. Establish structure around communication
      9. Share your concerns early
      10. Embrace the small talk
      11. Have quarterly business reviews

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Google change the meaning of “Top Ads”

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Google change the meaning of “Top Ads”

What is Top Ads in world of Google? well it’s changed. Today Ginny Martin, Ads Product Liaison at Google shared a subtle but potential significant change of definition of Top Ads. If your deep in the detail of paid search campaigns on Google this is the kind of tweak that’s easy to miss.

Now Google’s documentation reads;

Google change the meaning of Top Ads

Top ads are adjacent to the top organic search results. Top ads are generally above the top organic results, although top ads may show below the top organic results on certain queries. Placement of top ads is dynamic and may change based on the user’s search.

Google’s official documentation

Ginny clarified on LinkedIn that this is a definitional change (as ads can appear above the organic result or below for certain queries) and doesn’t affect how performance metrics are calculated. And that the definition update clarifies that top ads may show below the organic results for certain queries. Although, for most queries, ads will continue to appear at the top of search results.

Why make the change? Anthony Higman suggested it might be due to the change in how some ads are being presented like in the screenshot below and the general shift towards more SGE on the SERPs and the consequences that change in user experience might have on ad placement. And does seem part of increased amount of experimentation on where ads appear on search engine results pages.

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1711605382 993 Google change the meaning of Top Ads1711605382 993 Google change the meaning of Top Ads



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Dynamic UTM parameters for LinkedIn ads are here!

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A simple graphical illustration of a road with a directional sign pointing to the right against a blue sky background

Praise be. For LinkedIn have just announced the arrival of Dynamic UTM parameters.

A simple graphical illustration of a road with a directional sign pointing to the right against a blue sky background

This is big news because manually configuring the campaign UTM tracking for each URL you use within a campaign can be is a cumbersome, convoluted, time-consuming process. It’s also one which can occasionally (or, let’s be honest, more than occasionally) lead to errors.

Dynamic UTMs automate the process and will mean you only have to get it right once. That’s because you’ll create your parameters once per campaign, instead of countless times.

How they say dynamic UTM parameters work

Marketers – only one time per campaign – will add a dynamic UTM parameter to their campaign and then we’ll automatically pull in the account, campaign and/or creative name into the destination URL so it can be picked up by analytics tools, allowing marketers to more easily analyze results.

If you’re not seeing dynamic UTM tracking within your LinkedIn ad campaigns already, you will soon. They’ll be rolled out globally by the end of this month.

As you’ve almost certainly been deploying dynamic UTMs across your Facebook and Google Ads campaigns for years, it is indeed about time.

But as the famous Chinese proverb goes:

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“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”



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