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Customer data is gold for marketers and advertisers. The more you know about a potential buyer, the better you're able to target your offers and drive sales. But it's not enough to have data. You need to be able to use it. That's where Google Customer Match comes in. Customer Match lets certain advertisers build custom audiences from online and offline lists. Think of it like a more targeted version of remarketing, or Google's version of Facebook Custom Audiences . Here, we'll break down how Google Customer Match works, who can use it, how to set up audiences, and how to automatically keep them up to date. Google Customer Match: The basics At its core, Google Customer Match is pretty simple. You upload a list to Google Ads, and those folks see your creative (and hopefully convert) in: Search Google Display Network Google Shopping Gmail YouTube There is some complexity, though. The first thing to know is that Google Customer Match won't work for e...

Have you ever gotten lost in a mall? It's not your fault. Malls are intentionally confusing, a sort of modern labyrinth. The idea is you'll get lost, see some random stuff you don't need, then spend money on said stuff. It's called the Gruen transfer , and it's just one example of design choices specifically made to change your behavior. Another example: grocery store shelves. You might think some employee arranges cereal boxes as they come in, but each placement is the result of a ridiculously complicated series of negotiations . Food companies pay grocery stores a lot of money so their products are at eye level because, statistically, you're likely to grab whatever's right in front of your face. This is why store brands are frequently on the bottom shelf. The physical world is full of design choices like this—seemingly random decisions that are actually made with intention, because of a specific agenda. Software isn't any different. App notificatio...

I could never be a social media manager because the anxiety would eat me alive. What if a user pointed out an embarrassing error? What if I scheduled a post that would've been fine one day, but poor taste the next due to a current event? Apps like ContentCal help social media teams plan and execute their social strategy, so those kinds of meltdowns (publicly or privately) don't occur. If you're managing social strategy, you're juggling between posting to several networks—and what works on Twitter won't work on Instagram. With Zapier, you can automatically send information from one app to another, helping you reduce manual tasks. With our automatic workflows, which we call Zaps, you can post to social media, create an archive of your posts, and more. We've rounded up a few Zap templates—what we call those pre-made workflows—to get you started. Just click on one, and we'll guide you through the set-up process. You can read more about setting up Zaps here ....

Ever made a mistake? Me neither. Obviously. But hypothetically, were I to make a mistake, I imagine it would prompt terrible thoughts. Things like "How could I do that?", "Am I going to get fired?", or (one imagines) "Maybe I don't know how to do my job after all." This might not actually be hypothetical. I've been calling these "thought spirals" because it feels like you're just circling around the same few thoughts over and over. I'm not good at my job. I don't deserve to be here. Everyone's thinking it—they just haven't told me yet. Repeat from step one. Other people call this impostor syndrome. When I brought it up to my therapist, though, she called it something different: an octopus attached to my face. I was not expecting…that precise phrase. When she went into more detail, though, it made perfect sense: if I had an octopus on my face, I wouldn't be able to think about anything besides the octopu...

I'm a marketer that relies on GSuite. Where should I start with Zapier? — Lisa B We're answering this question as part of Ask Zapier, a series where we answer questions submitted by Zapier blog readers and social followers. If you'd like to ask us a question about automation, Zapier, productivity, apps, remote work, or anything else that's not quite right to send to our support team, scroll to the bottom of this article and enter it in the form. The good news: There are many ways to set up automated marketing workflows for Google apps—now known as Google Workplace—using Zapier. How to get started with Zapier No matter what your role or industry, if you're just getting started with Zapier, these are the things we recommend: Identify the tasks you'd like to automate Good candidates for automation meet one or more of these criteria: Are repetitive Happen on a schedule Involve moving information from one app into another For more on how Zapier works, ...

Customer service can make or break a brand. You remember the companies that went above and beyond, and you also remember the brands that treated you poorly. Customer support isn't just about being nice. ( Though it helps! ) Along with soft skills and product knowledge, your customer service processes need to be airtight. You don't want to miss a customer's request just because they emailed the wrong person for help. Zendesk is a customer service app that lets you customize your ticketing process to suit your business needs. If you already have a ticketing system in place but still have a few holes in your process, Zapier can help plug them up. We're an automation tool that connects web apps to take care of tedious tasks. Through our automatic workflows, which we call Zaps—you can send information from another app into Zendesk, so you can take care of customer issues right away. We've rounded up a few Zap templates—what we call those pre-made workflows—that can ...

In 2016, I was running a SaaS business, which was struggling due to one big problem: we were based in Sydney, Australia, but our customers and leads were based almost exclusively in New York and London. When we chatted with customers and leads live—even virtually—we would close sales and create great relationships. But timezones made this nearly impossible. We were having trouble connecting with current customers, retaining those customers, and connecting with new leads in a human way. That's when I had a lightbulb moment. I decided I should send personal videos to connect with my leads and customers when time differences made a call impossible. One problem: no tools existed for this yet. So I decided to hack something together. How one Zap sparked a six-figure business My team calls me Papa Bear. Together, our CTO and I built a little MVP product that would create a task whenever we got a new lead. Once a task was created, we would record a short video for the lead and hi...

2020 has been such a long decade. And so many things are outside of our control right now, which means it's easy to feel helpless. This begs the question: what do we have the ability to control and change? I've been thinking about this question a lot and have changed a few things in my daily situation as a result. They're small, but together they've had a positive impact on my productivity and general well-being. Your strategies might need to be different, but hopefully this encourages you to find small ways to feel a little more in control of your own life. "Unschedule" yourself Most people fill their schedule with work, then allow themselves to have fun with whatever time is left. What if you reversed that? Neil Fiore calls this "unscheduling" in his book The Now Habit . He challenges you to flip your relation to work and play by scheduling play first. This helps you see that there are only so many hours in the work day. He suggests maximizin...

Do you often feel like you're pulled in more directions than you even thought existed? Me too. I work as the Marketing Director at Lawyerist , where I'm responsible for a lot of different projects and a few employees on two different teams. In addition to planning and analyzing campaigns, I train team members, speak to new partners, host and produce our weekly podcast, create email and general marketing strategy, plan webinars and events, and even coach attorneys on their law firm marketing strategies . Having no two days be the same can be the spice of life. But it can quickly turn into the stress of life too. One of the best ways I've found to manage this is through batching, which helps your brain focus on one task at a time for more efficiency—and far less overwhelm. Why batching? In a given day, do you hop from your email inbox to a video conference call to deep focus on an assignment to giving feedback in a project management app—over and over again? If so, you...

For a long time, any SEO campaign could be summed up with two general goals: Produce better content. Find quality backlinks. But 2020 spelled a lot of changes for the SEO world, from the Core Web Vitals update to small things like Google My Business adding a COVID news feature. The need for great content will never change, but what about backlinks? Link building isn't simple, so is it even worth getting into for a small business that needs to manage its resources more wisely than ever? The short answer: yes, but not too much. But let's dig a little deeper. Do you need backlinks at all? Practicing SEO experts love backlinks . Anyone who knows SEO will tell you that having backlinks to your content will improve your chances of ranking. But what none of us can know for certain is how many backlinks you need for what kind of ranking boost. My suggestion: conduct your own experiment to see how many backlinks are needed to rank in your particular competitive vertical. Sta...

Shopify is one of the best eCommerce platforms for building your online store. It's easy to set up and has all the essential features you'll need. But compared to building a Shopify site, getting people to visit one is not quite as paint-by-number. But that's not necessarily a bad thing—you're free to customize your marketing strategies to your brand, target your particular customers, and experiment with strategies that might not work for other sellers. Here are four marketing strategies that you can use to make the most of your Shopify store. You can tailor each of these concepts to your business goals, so think of them as starting-off points to inspire you. Save time managing your Shopify store by automating how it works. Here are 4 ways to automate Shopify to help take your store to the next level. 1. Post new products to Pinterest While everyone else is focusing on Facebook or Instagram, don't forget about Pinterest, which is a great social channel for eCo...

Managing leads is an important part of running a successful real estate business. Tampa-based Eaton Realty receives leads from potential buyers, sellers, and renters from more than 10 different sources—like Zillow, Hotpads, Realtor.com, their website, and more. Keeping all of those leads moving from submission to close takes work, and Shawn Eaton, director of operations at Eaton Realty, turned to automation with Zapier to help manage that process. "In just one month this year Zapier processed over 500 leads," Shawn said. "That would be my full-time job if not for Zapier." The initial challenge: How to get leads from various sources into their communication platform People contact Eaton Realty for information about buying, selling, and renting. Keeping all those contacts in their ecosystem took a lot of time. "We needed to distribute those leads to our agents quickly and automatically for timely follow-up," Shawn said. "We looked at some off-the-...

Whenever you need to handle complex information, such as payment information or signatures, a data collection tool will get the job done better than traditional form builders. Even so, sometimes you need to move the info you're collecting to other places, such as your billing app or appointment scheduler. Instead of downloading and importing CSV files, or worse—copying and pasting information—Zapier can automate your information between web apps. Our automatic workflows, which we call Zaps, send information from one app to another, so you can reduce repetitive data entry, and focus on more meaningful work. We've rounded up a few Zap templates—what we call our pre-made workflows—to help you optimize your data collection and get more done. You'll need a Zapier account to use the workflows in this piece. If you don't have an account yet, it's free to get started . Save data to a spreadsheet or database With all the data you're collecting, you'll need a p...

At the beginning of the pandemic, Rhiannon Menn was feeling helpless. She was looking for a way to support the families in her community while still following stay-at-home orders and keeping her family safe. "My daughter and I started making and delivering meals to any mom who was struggling—economically, emotionally—by posting to local moms groups on Facebook," she says. The response was overwhelming. What started as Rhiannon and her toddler making a few meals has since turned into a national grassroots movement with over 2,000 volunteers: Lasagna Love . From a single sheet pan to a successful nonprofit Rhiannon never expected this project to grow beyond her kitchen, but dozens of people on Facebook immediately responded, saying that they wanted to help. Within a few months, the project had grown organically to over 70 volunteers—who Rhiannon calls Lasagna Mamas—across the country. And now, just seven months after delivering her first lasagna, Lasagna Love is a robust...

What is automation? There are a lot of conflicting ideas about it. Until recently, I thought that, at best, automation was too complex to be worth thinking about; at worst, it was robots coming for my job. Turns out automation is neither of those things, but myths like that mean a lot of people don't think of automation as a tool. And that's too bad. Here are four common automation myths—and how we can approach them differently. Automation is just about robots It's too complicated to learn It's for big businesses It's going to take my job Automation is just about robots Be honest: are you thinking about robots right now? It's ok: robots actually are a kind of automation, and they're really useful in some contexts. If you're making cars, for example, a giant robot arm can do repetitive assembly line tasks quickly. But giant robotic arms are less useful if you're a salesperson or a writer. Unless said giant robotic arm can acquire coffee, in...