Google Is Not Waiting for Us to Adopt Best Practices
Google and other digital players are not waiting on people to catch up to best practices — because, people being people, they don’t seem to want to adopt what works or new data. We don’t like change. 
A good example of this is call-only ads. Google is converting these, making the phone icon more prominent and allowing only the phone number on the first line of the ad.
Google says, “On average, advertisers with the new call-only ads design have seen a 14% increase in phone calls, a 16% increase in call conversions and better cost efficiencies with an 8% decrease in overall paid clicks.”
This design makes the phone tap target more prominent, which reduces accidental clicks by people who didn’t want to make a call. (Just a note that our digital team has been using this design for some time. That’s a proof of performance. Now back to the regularly scheduled blog.)
Google has a long list of requirements that they are forcing on advertisers to take human preference out of the mix. If you don’t have a responsive, mobile-first, fast-loading site, you’ll pay more for your clicks and you’ll be lucky to get clicks at all.
Headline length, body copy length and number of characters in a description are no longer being limited by space, but by Google’s research into what works. You may not like the look or the design, but the data, not personal preferences, are leading the digital charge.
Google sells results, not placement.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle. After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant. He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.” Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.” One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College. Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board. Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.
