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If you follow my blog at all, you know that I typically talk about ways to generate web traffic via ranking high on Google, best SEO practices, and even social media content creation and advertising. I even get into tracking data via Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and digging into Google Search Console and Google My Business.  But there's one Google Product I haven't really blogged about much, and that's Google AdSense. I know this product very well from my days as a publisher. From 2006-2011, I ran an online publication that was able to generate revenue through a freemium content model. Part of that revenue was from advertising, mainly through Google AdSense.  AdSense is the other side of Google AdWords, meaning the sites that companies promote their sites on via the Google Ads Display Network, are the sites that publish those same ads on their site via the AdSense product.  Looking to monetize your web traffic by running some ads on your site? This video shows you how to get started with Google AdSense, create an account, grab the code snippet needed, embed it into your website, and what to expect next!

The data says that Instagram Stories are where your consumers and clients attention are. Regardless of your target persona, audiences are flooding to Instagram, and if you're not posting to your Story, you're barely visible on the platform. The metrics I've tested to gain this knowledge are: Story Views vs. Profile Views vs. Follower Count. If your business has enough followers (usually 10,000 or more), then you will be granted access to be able to add a "link" to your story, which allows the user viewing your story to be taken to a web page with more information about your business on it. I refer to this as the "Instagram Story Swipe-Up-To-URL" Feature. If you have enough followers to have this enabled, you have no excuse not to be posting 3-6 :15 second story slides per day on Instagram that link to various products, services and landing pages about your business. But there is yet another way to gain visibility now at a low cost per audience attention, and that is to run Instagram Story Swipe-Up Ads. This is done through Facebook Business Manager / Facebook Ads Manager, and this video shows you how, along with this earlier Data Driven Daily Tip. To run an Instagram Story Swipe Up Ad, you'll need to do the following: 1. Log into Facebook Ads Manager. 2. Choose any Ad Objective (but I recommend the Consideration Column and something like Traffic). 3. Name your ad, upload an image that is 1080 x 1420 px. Here is a link to the official guide on Instagram Story Ad Creative Dimensions and Guidelines from Facebook. 4. Have fun filling out your Website URL Link, ad Text, and Budget, and then click Confirm!

I've been using Facebook Ads SUPER ACTIVELY since 2016. I mean, I've run every single kind of Facebook Ad known to man or woman, and I continue to be a practitioner of the Facebook Business Manager, Facebook Ads and Facebook Events Tracking Platform.  It really is and / or should be integrated into everything every business does digitally, and I know that makes some old school IT and HR/Ops people cringe, but it's just the truth.  There are many examples of how Facebook Ads is an amazing brand building and customer acquisition platform, but the one I'm focusing on in this video is how to Narrow Down Your Target Audience for an ad/audience. For example, you may be a convenience store trying to appeal to "Mom's On The Go" in a particular geographic region of say, Tennessee. :) You may also be running a sale on say, AquaHydrate, a fitness water product. You can literally build an audience targeting all Women in Tennessee, then narrow it down to Mom's of Kids Age 8-10, then narrow it down to "with an interest in Fitness," then narrow it down to "interested in fitness waters" or even the brand AquaHydrate. Granted, your audience is going to get smaller and smaller the more you narrow it, to the point where it could get TOO NARROW and Facebook Ads will tell you your audience is too small and you need to re-expand it, but this is the era of marketing we're in now, and you need to familiarize yourself with it. It's amazing.

Google Domains Tip: How To Forward A Domain Name And Why You'd Want To: Data Driven Daily Tip 256 As you can imagine, having built and launched websites for more than 12 years, I've come across all kinds of domain name registrars and web hosting companies. One of the newest ones that I've come across, and seems to be more and more popular, is Google Domains. My understanding is that it's a new(er) product offering from Google, and makes sense as part of the GSuite for Businesses, which I'm a big fan of and have blogged a lot about. So having used Google Domains frequently now over the past year, I can tell you that one thing that isn't as intuitive as you might think, is how to simply forward a domain name from one to another. Why would you WANT to forward a domain name? Many reasons, including: - Marketing purposes - maybe you have a URL like myawesomepodcast.com, and you want to simply forward it to your URL on anchor.fm - Company name change. Maybe you want to rebrand from SallysSkinCareNashville.com to SallysSkinCareUSA.com or something similar. You can easily forward one to the other so that your users find you in both places. - Many entrepreneurs I know literally have 50-100 domain names in their accounts that are being unused, and are variations or misspellings of their primary domain URL. I'd strongly advise all of them and all of you to take the time to forward those to your primary URL. This will result in an increase in web traffic - even if a tiny one, it could still help! This video shows you HOW to forward a domain name using Google Domains.

How to use Google Analytics INSTEAD OF Google Optimize, to run A/B Tests or Experiments on your website. Now, WHY would you want to use Google Analytics, instead of Google Optimize? I've blogged and vlogged a lot about Google Optimize and have used it a ton for both Data Driven Design and our clients, and it is an amazing A/B testing tool. But Optimize is meant for true "experiments" like deciding with design or content elements within a page work best at converting users. Typically, this works best for "higher traffic sites" with already low bounce rates, because higher traffic sites with already super high engagement rates really need to get super detailed into further optimization using data. Optimize also works well for sites seeking higher traffic, with already strong engagement rates but looking to decide things like: - Which headline or sentence should I use as my web copy? - Which color should a Call To Action button be? - What should that button say? - Which of these two or three photos would best engage users for a particular space? What Google Optimize DOESN'T DO WELL, that Google Analytics does well for A/B Testing, is allow you to create completely separate layouts and test them against one another. This is done through simply creating a variant or multiple variant pages at different URLs. So your variants are PAGES, not ELEMENTS OF A PAGE. This is excellent for website redesign projects in which your business might be debating over two or more homepage "concepts" or running marketing campaigns to landing pages and what to do some initial testing around which one to spend the most money against. Watch this video to see how to set up these kinds of experiments in Google Analytics and get them live on your website.

I've been building a lot of Membership websites for clients over the last couple of years, mainly using WordPress and exploring the best membership plug-in options, which I've documented here...  My number one choice is MemberPress. As such, I wanted to show you real quick how to set things up to have your Members hit the page you want them to hit upon logging in. In other words, this is how to redirect your users to a custom URL upon log-in, using Memberpress.

I've blogged a lot about the Facebook Tracking Pixel, and posted dozens of videos about Facebook Ads, and now I'm starting to get follow up questions from the Data Driven Daily Tip community. I love it. This is another Data Driven Daily "Follow-Up Tip" courtesy of @Tarek Sidani. His question is here, based on this DDD Tip. And after doing a bit of research, I like to start with something super simple to answer Tarek's question, that many of you may be wondering, and that's how to track YouTube embed video views on your website with the Facebook Tracking Pixel, so that you can remarket via Facebook Ads back to an audience of people who you know have viewed the video. Great question Tarek. Here's my take on the simplest way to get this done on your website, YouTube, and Facebook Ads. :) I hope this helps, and have a great day!

The thing I absolutely love about building Membership Websites using WordPress is that any subject matter expert can build their own business. For example, you may be the #1 aficionado on comic books, baseball cards, fitness supplements, or things to do on Thursday nights in small rural towns. Or, you may have an amazing client services business that you want to scale into a premium consulting offering that you want give access to high end clients via a membership site. Or, you may be the administrator or moderator of a user group for a particular type of software. It doesn't matter what type of business you have, chances are, a premium membership website would be a fit for you, and the good news is - they're NOT hard to build. In fact, I wish I would have done a better job of this back in 2006-2011 when I built my fantasy football premium membership website. Don't get me wrong, things can get complicated, depending on what type of CRM integration you want, but they don't have to be too hard. Here's more information on which WordPress Membership Solutions / Plug-ins we've used and why we prefer MemberPress over all of them. And, this Data Driven Daily Tip looks at something super important that you need to know when setting up Stripe payments in MemberPress that is NOT well documented in MemberPress documentation. If you do not manually create an API endpoint for your Stripe Webhook, your users will get an error message when trying to access their content, even through their payment went through. Listen to the audio, and you're welcome. :)

This is my favorite kind of Data Driven Daily Tip. I'm calling it a "Follow-up Tip." It also encompasses my favorite thing about digital marketing.... THINGS CHANGE ALL THE TIME. I wrote a blog a few months ago about the important difference between Facebook Ads Metrics (Website Conversion Value) and (Website Purchase Conversion Value). Since then, Facebook has changed the way that they allow analysts and marketers to add these metrics. They've made it easier. They've removed the "Website Conversion Value" and basically just made one metric that only accounts for the value of real purchases by default. This video breaks down how.  Thanks to Bennett Hardeman who found this article and wrote me directly to ask this question: Where Did Website Purchase Conversion Value Go?

How To Use WordPress and Gravity Forms to Show Users Different Confirmation Pages and Route Emails to Different Employees. Data Driven Daily Tip 250. We've had several clients with multiple business locations ask us how they can automate feedback for a particular store or office location directly to the manager or supervisor of that location, based on a client or customer on the front end selecting that location. We've also had several clients ask how to show a different message or lead users down a different path based on a particular option they choose on a form. Like a "Choose your own Adventure" book. I loved those as a kid. Well, one of the cool things about Gravity Forms is that you can use Conditional Logic on the Notifications Level and on the Confirmation Level to make all of the above happen. This podcast explains how. Enjoy building in WordPress and Gravity Forms!