The WordStream Blog

"Up, up. Down, down. Left, right. Left, right. B, A. Start."

Anyone recognize that? It’s the legendary cheat code that most famously appeared in the Nintendo hit video game from the 1980s, Contra. If a player worked their fingers as such across their controller while the game loaded, they were granted 30 lives instead of the standard three, and they suddenly had a true,...

A couple weeks back, I presented some new data around Facebook Lead Ads at Mobile Monkey’s 2019 Facebook Ads Virtual Summit. Facebook advertisers have two main options when running lead gen campaigns: using the Conversion campaign objective to send prospects to landing pages or using the Lead Generation objective (and lead...

If you’re running Display campaigns, you understand the value of awareness campaigns. And to help boost awareness for my clients’ brands, I love to use YouTube as well. But targeting placements for video campaigns differs greatly from how we choose placements on the Display Network.

I’m going...

One area that seems to elude many digital marketers is the relationship between conversion tracking and website analytics. Often, when businesses get started with online advertising, they have established each piece of the puzzle separately, with Google Analytics monitoring site traffic, and paid channels (like Facebook and Google Ads) tracking conversions individually within their respective...

Legend has it there’s a castle deep in the heart of the second page of Google. Guarding a castle is a monster named Bowser. Every so often, Bowser will creep from his home and attack innocent listings on the first page (as well as the occasional princess) to bring them back to his castle never to be seen again… until now!

Are you ready to play Super Marketing Bros?

In...

Social media marketing is a rather counterintuitive field. It looks like anyone could do it: post something (anything!) on social media, look for existing content, talk to people, fill your company’s Instagram account with your most photogenic team members. Sounds like a task for any kid of today’s social media era.

However, if you want your ROI to grow, this isn’t the way to go....

George Orwell was a prolific and insightful dude. An English writer who lived during the first half of the 20th century, Orwell was (and remains) known for his criticisms of political language.

A key source of Orwell’s discontent was the use of “meaningless words”—those words that, due to rampant and ambiguous usage, lose their meanings altogether.

“Data,” in...

What a week it was! Nearly six months have passed since we first fired up our Great Google Getaway contest. A refresher—here’s what we wrote about it then:

Imagine, if you will, spending an entire day on Google’s campus with unfettered access to their product and marketing experts… Now, imagine getting...

This post was co-written by Gordon Donnelly and Kristina Simonson.

With Valentine’s Day approaching, you’re likely finding yourself in one of two camps. You’re in the heart-shaped-box-of-chocolates camp or the solo-pint-of-ice-cream camp. The late-night-Casablanca-for-two camp or the gently-sobbing-Narcos-binge camp. You’re getting gnocchi in an old Italian...

Have you ever seen a dog catch a mailman?

I haven’t either. It’s probably never happened. But let’s pretend that it happened one time and we were both there to witness it. We laughed and high-fived and basked in the eternal warmth of friendship.

Remember what happened after the dog caught the mailman? That’s right—nothing happened. The...