Tag Archive for: Digital marketing news

How To Design Facebook & Instagram Ads That Convert

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There are over 7 million active advertisers on Facebook, according to Statista. With this impressive number, you may be thinking that increasing your Facebook and Instagram ads budget is the only way to outperform your competition. The experts at Onimod Global are here to tell you that is not always true. It is possible to achieve a great ROI when advertising on a budget.

Are you considering Facebook and Instagram as advertising platforms, but you’re not sure where to start? Our Onimod Global team is sharing our best practices for creating Facebook and Instagram ads that convert.

Facebook Desktop

Use square format. On the Facebook and Instagram platforms, square videos fill the screen more and will be more engaging for viewers on both desktop and mobile devices.

Create a visual hook. The more you can get your ad to look like it blends into your customer’s feed, the better. However, you also want to make sure that your content stands out. Use bright, cool colors.

Don’t overuse branding. Advertising is typically a major turnoff for all customers. The less they feel someone is trying to sell them something, the more likely they are to interact with your ad.

Facebook App

Avoid too much detail in images. In this case, less is definitely more. Make your graphics straight and to the point. Too much detail will either confuse or bore your audience.

Write short copy to fill the space. Do your best to avoid the “read more” button on any of your ads. The ad copy should also be very straightforward, with just enough detail to entice your customer but not information overload.

Choose graphics to blend in with news feeds. Similar to how you would choose an image for an ad optimized for Facebook desktop, you want to ensure your ad doesn’t stand out as an advertisement. The more it blends in, the better interaction you will have.

Instagram App

Don’t use landscape images. A bothersome feature about Instagram is their vertical layout of the app. Always use portrait style images and videos for the best look on your audience’s feed.

Describe how people can use your product. For example, let’s say you’re selling LED signs that can be used for all types of home decor. Show the product in action by taking a video showing the light in different areas of the house. Low production costs and the video will blend perfectly into the audience feed, which translates into better interaction on your ad.

Avoid using too many words on your visual. Instagram gives you so many ways to be artsy and creative in your ad. Make sure you’re not overdoing it on the text and emojis, and really let the media visual that you chose speak for itself.

More From Onimod Global

Following these best practices for Facebook and Instagram ads will help you reach success on a budget. Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

The 3 Pillars Of Link Building

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High quality content is the one of the keys to success when it comes to internet presence. Creating high-quality content can strengthen your business’ branding and spark conversions, but not if your audience is never exposed to that content. Link building is your solution to help your content be visible via other websites and in the search results.

Check out this list created by Michael Johnson, sales manager at Page One Power. He explains how to identify relevant linking opportunities, create and leverage linkable assets, and communicate with site owners in a way that compels them to link to your content.

Create audience-focused, linkable assets

Your links will be as good as your content. If you link to a site or an asset of your company that is worthless to the audience you’re selling to, it makes no sense to include in your content. For example, pointing directly to a product page or other pages that provide low-value to your audience of the sites that you target, you will have a tough time converting into paying customers.

Great linkable assets are audience focused and provide informational educational value. Your linkable assets should not be promotional. Johnson specifically cautions against requesting links to lower-value promotional content or product pages because they may come across as paid links, which may also discourage users from clicking through.

Identify relevant, valued and trusted sites for links

Use the following criteria to evaluate which sites are worth including in a link building campaign.

Value for users. The page that you’re interested in getting a link from should provide value to your customers. And of course, be sure the anchor text in the link helps set user expectations when they click through.

Relevance. Your link building should be relevant to the context of which the link is appearing and also match the audience that you want to attract.

Vet every site. Make a thorough investigation on every site. It’s very important that your sources are credible, and that you can be counted on as a trusted source for your audience.  “Always ask yourself the question, ‘In a world without Google, would I still want this link?’” Johnson said, adding, “If the answer is no, then you have to question whether or not that’s an organic link.”

Trust and authority. Always look at the backlinks to the site you’re thinking of incorporating into your content. “If you see that they are linking out to a lot of spam or are posting low quality content on their website, those are red flags that mean you should probably avoid that website.”

Keep the momentum after the link

After acquiring a link, link builders should send a followup communication thanking the site owner. To keep in contact with these brands puts you in a good position of goodwill between brands. Working together to make sure your audience has accurate and reliable information will translate into paying customers for you both.

Johnson also recommends paying attention to the internal linking of the page that earned the backlink. Since product or promotional pages aren’t likely to attract many of their own backlinks, internally linking those conversion-based pages to other pages with a stronger backlink profile will help you to build link equity.

More From Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

5 Google Ads Tips That Will Make You More Money

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Google Ads: one of the top marketing tools which assists you in displaying ads to promote your products or services online. If you are using Google Ads to advertise your goods or services, then you are making a conscious effort to improve your market share and increase your business. When your ads are set up properly, Google Ads can help to increase online traffic, in-store traffic, brand recognition and generate sales while reducing marketing costs. Through the process of helping digital marketing teams assess their campaigns with our expertise, we’ve constructed a list of five essential tips to help optimize your Google Ads campaigns and get the most from your ad dollars.

 

Keywords: Choose Carefully

This has relatively large and powerful effects on not only how much you spend on your campaign, but also how well your Google Ads convert. One of the most common and costly mistakes is focusing all your attention on positive keywords that bring you traffic. Don’t forget to construct a list of negative keywords (words you don’t want people associating with your company) as well. When building your Google Ads campaign, one of the most important things that you will have to do is set a match type for your keyword bidding strategy.  Consider starting with broad match. You can then add the negative match keywords to exclude those searches on Google that aren’t related to your business.

Alter Keyword Match Type Over Time

When launching a brand new Google Ads campaign, start out with several ad groups that have strong themes of similar keywords. Over time, the focus tends to become more a blend of Modified Broad, Phrase and Exact Match words as the data starts to show what actually converts.

keyword match

This graphic from Search Engine Journal showcases how keyword match can modify over time. Each match type is a trade-off between impressions, relevancy, and cost. For most impressions, Broad Match will be a success. However, it can also mean you are matching to a bunch of irrelevant searches and wasting your money.

Relevant Landing Pages

This is one of the most overlooked topics when it comes to paid search. It’s easy to get lost in the paid search platforms, tweaking bids, testing ad copy, and funneling all your energy into the platform itself. A successful PPC ad drives qualified potential leads to a landing page, but that’s only the first half of winning. The second part is getting them to convert into a paying customer. Maintaining consistency between your keywords, ad copy, and landing pages should improve both your click-through and conversion rates while lowering your CPC.

Optimize Google Ads Performance

Perhaps the most critical part of running a Google Ads campaign is making sure that it is optimized for your target audience. Optimizing a campaign consists of establishing profitable keywords and ad campaigns and terminating those without success. This can be difficult to determine when you need to make adjustment or eliminate a campaign entirely.

Onimod Global, a trusted Google Partner, specializes in all AdWords product areas. We can help you create and optimize ads that show up on Google Search. We can also advise on keyword strategy and budget planning. Contact us here to learn more about how we can optimize your Google Ads campaigns to their fullest potential.

Look For Opportunity To Drive Mobile

Many of your future customers use mobile devices, and more and more, users convert on them. Especially after the huge push in digital business during 2020, mobile-focused campaigns can potentially give you the best chance to engage your mobile customers in the right format on their preferred device.

More From Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Google Ad Policy Updates For Housing, Employment, Credit Ads

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Google Ad policy has an interesting new update that ties in with current world events. Google is updating its advertising policies around housing, employment and credit opportunities, the company announced Thursday. The update is planned to roll out in U.S. and Canada this year. The old policy allowed you to include demographic and zip code in your target audience. This audience was used frequently in housing, employment, and credit ads.

The new policy is:

Employment, housing and credit advertisers will no longer be permitted to target or exclude their ads being from being shown based on demographics — gender, age, parental status, marital status — or zip code.

This adds on to existing policies that prohibit targeting based on race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, national origin or disability.

 

When is it coming?

U.S. and Canada will be the first to see the roll-out of the new Google Ad policy. Google says this change is coming “as soon as possible” and before the end of 2020 at the latest. Advertisers that are or will be affected by this change will be notified of the update and of the potential impact on their campaigns in the next weeks.

Why is it significant?

This Google Ad policy comes during a very critical time. With a backdrop of a coronavirus-induced recession that is disproportionately affecting minority communities, this change calls for action to address systemic racism by the Black Lives Matter movement. Google says it has “been working with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on these changes for some time.” Facebook updated their ad policy  prohibit age, gender and zip code targeting for housing, employment and credit ads more than a year ago in March 2019.

Companies and CEOs around the country are denouncing racism and violence due to the Black Lives Matter movement. Since May 25th, the day of George Floyd’s death, Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests have swept a majority of the country and grown into an international movement against racism and police violence.

Read more about how silence is not an option for brands on the BLM movement, especially B2C business here.

More From Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

The Right Social Media Image Sizes In 2020

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With the world searching more and more online during the COVID-19 crisis, it’s important your brand and social image is professional and polished. Using images which aren’t the correct size for each platform’s requirements can impact your brand perception. Low quality and pixelated visuals make you look unprofessional or not up to date. Are you not sure if you’re using the correct image sizes? Use our image size guide to see the key image requirements for all the major social platforms.

Facebook

  • Your profile photo is representative of your brand. We recommend that is a consistent logo among all of your social media accounts. This image must be 180 x 180 pixels.
  • Cover photos are the banner behind your profile picture, and this should also be consistent across social platforms that allow for an image in this location. Cover photos should be 820 x 312 pixels, if it’s anything smaller than this your image will be stretched and distorted.
  • Images that are shared in a post, for example a blog post news update, have a recommended size of 1,200 x 630 pixels.

Twitter

  • Twitter profile pictures have a recommended size of a 400 x 400 pixel square. Keep in mind that the actual Twitter profile picture appears as a circle, so we advise you to have the proper spacing around your logo so nothing is cut off.
  • Twitter also has a cover photo, which should be about 1500 x 1500 pixels for an image size. Pick an image that compliments your profile picture and make sure it is consistent across all platforms as well.
  • Photos in tweets, when expanded, appear at a maximum of 1024 x 512 pixels and a minimum of 440 x 220 pixels. Keep in mind that on mobile, the app collapses photos which could make for an awkward crop situation. Make sure your content is always centered horizontally to avoid odd cropping.

Instagram

  • Instagram profile pictures are small but powerful. These show any time you have a new story, in direct messages, and of course at the top of your profile page. The image size is recommended to be 110 x 110 pixels.
  • Your thumbnails for photos, or often referred to as your photo grid, will appear as 161 x 161 pixels. If you’re going for a certain aesthetic, the thumbnail size is an important one to keep in mind. Individual image uploads can be square or rectangular. Square photos image size is 1080 x 1080 pixels and rectangular images should use a 4:5 ratio.
  • Instagram stories are a must for your brand to remain relevant on the platform and also where you will have the most visibility. The recommended resolution for stories is 1080 x 1920 pixels or an aspect ratio of 9:16.

YouTube

  • Your profile image for YouTube should be the same consistent branding as your other social channels as mentioned above. The image size for YouTube profile picture is 800 x 800 pixels.
  • Attractive and engaging thumbnail images are crucial to success of your videos. For YouTube, make sure your thumbnail image size is 1,2080 x 720 pixels.
  • YouTube also allows for a cover image photo in addition to your profile image. The recommended image size here is 2,560 x 1,440 pixels.

Pinterest

  • On the Pinterest homepage, profile picture image sizes are 165 x 165 pixels.
  • It is recommended to use an image aspect ratio of 2:3 for pins.
  • Pins that are on the homepage or in a board will appear at 236 pixels wide. Once a pin is expanded, it has a minimum width of 600 pixels and the height of the image will scale proportionally.

LinkedIn

  • Your company logo is very important when it comes to the identification of your brand, of course. Make sure it’s visible with the image size of 300 x 300 pixels.
  • The company background image is similar to the cover photos on other platforms, where it takes up the entire top portion of your page. The recommended image size for your LinkedIn background image is 1,536 x 768 pixels.
  • Images in your content posts have a recommended size of 1,200 x 630 pixels. Keep in mind that LinkedIn is a professional social network platform with a large focus on building relationships with industry leaders. Make sure your posts are appropriate for this kind of audience and focus less on driving sales or website traffic.

*Data from Social Media Today

More From Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

New Facebook Report: COVID-19 Impact On Small Businesses

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This pandemic has not only been a world health crisis, it also serves to be an economic crisis. While the world as we know it has been impacted significantly as a whole, among the hardest hit sectors looks to be small businesses. Mom and pop shops are the heart of all of our communities, and they are facing the ultimate challenge. Small to medium businesses generally operate at very tight margins as it is, and they don’t have the same safety nets that larger corporations are able to fall back on. While forecasts for the future are grim, it’s important to capture what’s happening in the moment. How are small businesses dealing with the impact of COVID-19 and how do they feel about their situations moving forward?

The State of Small Business Report, by Facebook and Small Business Roundtable, based on a survey of 86,000 owners, managers and workers in companies across the US with fewer than 500 employees, is a somber image of the struggle they are facing as they fight for their business to survive.  The data also includes 9,000 operators of “personal” businesses (i.e. people who reported that they were “self-employed providing goods or services”). You can read Facebook’s full report here, but below are some of the key points.

Insights of impact

Facebook’s report provides insight as to how many businesses have been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 lockdowns, with a look at the percentage of SMBs in each sector that are currently cannot operate.

small business facebook report 1

As per Facebook:

“According to the survey, 31% of small and medium-sized businesses have shut down [entirely] in the last three months. The situation is worse for personal business (52% of which report shutting down), hotels, cafes and restaurants (43%) and services like wellness, grooming, fitness or other professional services (41%).”

These trends have been in expected in some way, with high exposure businesses of course being forced to close their doors. The numbers also wrap some further context around the 36 million unemployment claims in the US over the past six weeks. The big question is, how many of these businesses will be able to recover and bounce back?

Businesses re-opening

In general, the majority of small businesses remain optimistic with a respective amount of caution.

small business facebook report 2

Lots of “maybe’s” here, but most significant is the lack of “no’s”. This definitely provides hope of most people getting back on their feet and resuming employment, with the economy getting back on track at some stage. Of course, the longer that businesses are forced to remain closed then the path to recovery is significantly more difficult.

Current impacts on revenue

In later notes of the report, Facebook provides some context as to current impacts on revenue, even for those businesses that have remained in operation.

small business facebook report 3

2020 will certainly not be a year of growth for the majority of businesses, if any. However, there are some indications of future potential.

Digital opportunities for small business

small business report 4

More and more business are exploring online opportunities and going digital. This was already a trend, and the pandemic has catapulted all business into the world of online sales and e-commerce. This will most likely end up being the biggest long-term shift we see stemming from the COVID-19 shutdowns. While e-commerce accounted for only around 16% of total US retail sales in 2019, this number is expected to significantly increase in the next years. While retail is the most common e-commerce sector, the pandemic crisis may prompt more businesses to consider their options for digital operations, meeting consumers where they’re spending more and more of their time.

You can read Facebook’s full, 36-page “State of Small Business Report”, which includes a heap of more specific insights and data, here.

More from Onimod Global

Contact Onimod Global today, we are here to help you navigate this uncertain time. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

To catch up on the latest digital marketing news and trends, click here.

How To Link Your PayPal And Google Merchant Center Accounts

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Google announced last month that it will now be allowing free listings in Google Shopping search results. Google also released information that retailers can integrate PayPal with their Google Merchant Center accounts. That integration is officially live!

This means that retailers and brands using PayPal as a checkout option on their site can now link their PayPal account to the Google Merchant Center which will apply to all products for listings across Google. If you’re new to Google Merchant Center, the PayPal connection can also speed up the merchant verification process.

Where to start with PayPal integration

To integrate the PayPal platform is quite simple. Just follow these three simple steps from Search Engine Land:

  1. After you log into the Google Merchant Center, select tools in the upper left navigation.
  2. Select “linked accounts” under the settings menu. Here you will see the option to link your PayPal account.
  3. In order to have your products eligible to be listed on Google Shopping, Search, Images and elsewhere, you will need to opt into Surfaces across Google.

And that’s it, easy and efficient for everyone involved. Total win-win for retailers and shoppers alike.

Why This Integration Matters

At this moment, PayPal is the only integrated platform. Google says there will be more options for integration payment platforms in the future for retailers to choose from. When there is integration of a variety of payment platforms, it significantly lowers the barrier for entry for merchants to list their products on Google shopping search. This helps retailers expand to new unpaid channels and helps Google broaden the universe of products it can show users. Another win-win!

Bill Ready, President of Commerce at Google, also mentioned in the initial announcement additional information to make e-commerce more accessible:

We’re continuing to work closely with many of our existing partners that help merchants manage their products and inventory, including Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, to make digital commerce more accessible for businesses of all sizes.

More From Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

4 Ways PPC Will Rescue Your Business During Economic Crisis

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People may be clicking, but when are they buying? Are consumers buying too much too fast? When do they really decide to convert and make a purchase? When will brick and mortar stores reopen and foot traffic resume? As some questions are answered, they are replaced by new questions under such fast-changing circumstances. The good news: Search marketing is adaptable, measurable, and when done correctly, VERY cost effective. Even with shifting data models, PPC pros can use timely trends to guide strategic decisions.

Trends Emerging

One very helpful tool for marketers during COVID-19 is the Tinuiti COVID dashboard. Here they provide a look at trends in paid Facebook media since the pandemic took hold. It requires you to sign up for free with email, and offers insights into media spend. They have discovered some emerging trends from the data across some volatile sectors. April proved far different compared to March; May will undoubtedly look far different compared to April. The following trends, according to the data shared by Search Engine Land:

Automotive: Spending plunged month over month by 41%, but surged almost 50% week over week across the past two weeks.

Travel: Spend almost evaporated, down 82% month over month, but is showing signs of a cautious uptick.

Consumer packaged goods: Up 27% month over month, and up 50% week over week.

In some cases, it seems that the natural reaction is to slash media spend. But clear thinking and data prove to prevail while figuring out the best strategies for your company.

E-commerce

Fast impact on e-commerce is dizzying to say the least, since e-commerce covers basically everything on the market.

  • Google announced search results on the Google Shopping tab will now include free listings, so any business that sells things should fast-track getting their Merchant Feed into Google. Read more about this hot topic on our news page here.
  • Product hoarding has shifted to “next best alternative” purchasing. For example, consumers got creative about toilet paper shortages, driving interest in bidets and other solutions-oriented products.
  • Market-dominating providers are suddenly prioritizing what gets shipped and when. Smaller providers that can ship fast have the potential for an edge over Amazon, Walmart and other large companies.

Here are some PPC tips from Onimod Global:

  • Make sure you are only showing the ads for things people can actually buy. There’s no point showing ads for toilet paper if none is in stock, or for your new summer shoe line launch if your warehouse is on lockdown.
  • Pay attention to setting better bids and prioritize the campaigns that can still convert.

Home services

Quarantine has people searching around the house looking for anything and everything to fix up. This includes but not limited to: Carpet cleaning, painting, dusty air ducts, spring prep for outdoors. Some are DIY projects, but many are best handled by the professionals, including emergency repairs.

Onimod Global’s PPC tips:

  • Stay on top geo-based performance that is affected by any local regulations impacting performance in your service areas.
  • There’s no point showing ads when all you can do is disappoint a prospect with the inability to fix their problem soon. Ensure your ads are suspended while your limited staff is completely booked.

Hospitality

It’s very evident as to why spend in the hospitality industry is almost completely evaporated. Remember that this is only temporary! History tells us that people will venture back out. It is human nature to do so. Travel is a necessary escape, and essential for business at times. People need hope, that they will soon be able to do this again. Here are our tips:

  • Stay on top of shifting search queries to avoid paying for ad clicks from consumers looking to cancel.
  • Keep audiences for Google Ads up-to-date with your customer/prospects database. This will ensure you’re showing the most relevant ads at the right time to the right groups of consumers.
  • Remember that there are customers who are ready to buy, just maybe unable to because of local restrictions. We suggest to consider shifting away from last-click conversion attribution.

Local brick & mortar businesses

Most likely the largest impacted in business are the brick and mortar businesses forced to close for the near future. Family-owned restaurants may lack infrastructure for delivery services at scale.

Some tips from Onimod Global for PPC are:

  • Build audiences from customer data. Even your manual customer email list in Google Sheets can be uploaded to a Facebook campaign for more effective targeting.
  • Agencies can deploy Rule Engine (for Google and Bing) to automate optimizations. It’s another way to offer lower-cost agency services that can scale.
  • If you’re new to social media advertising, contact Onimod Global to ensure your advertising budget is spent in the most efficient way possible.

More from Onimod Global

Need help from experts on PPC and how to optimize your advertising budget? Contact Onimod Global today, we are here to help you navigate this uncertain time. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

To catch up on the latest digital marketing news and trends, click here.

Google To Provide Free Shopping Listings

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Google Shopping is responding to the coronavirus crisis by taking steps to make it easier for more merchants to sell via the platform free-of-charge. The Google Shopping tab results “will consist primarily of free product listings” starting next week, the company announced Tuesday.

This major shift, after 8 years of Google’s shopping results platform, comes after many brick and mortar retailers have had to close their doors due to the coronavirus pandemic. E-commerce has inevitably boomed, and everyone is quickly catching up to speed on how to best service store owners. This change, while COVID-19 was the motivation, was a planned initiative and will be permanent. Free shopping listings fits into the longer-term vision for the company’s role in digital commerce.

Bill Ready said in a blog post that he expects the change to take effect in the U.S. by the end of April, with the aim of expanding it worldwide by year-end. Ready clarified the win-win of the shopping listings free-of-charge: Retailers gain free exposure to millions of people who search via Google Shopping every day, while shoppers discover more products from more stories. While Google is packaging the change as a gesture to help retailers during an economic crisis, there’s no doubt Google is also seizing the strategic opportunity to expand its role in e-commerce in the midst of this worldwide uncertainty.

Millions of people are stuck at home with almost no options for shopping in brick and mortar stores. Online and e-commerce has and will continue to see a huge rise. So what does this mean for retailers and advertisers?

“For retailers, this change means free exposure to millions of people who come to Google every day for their shopping needs. For shoppers, it means more products from more stores, discoverable through the Google Shopping tab. For advertisers, this means paid campaigns can now be augmented with free listings.”

Why does this matter? This is actually where Google first began, then named Froogle. It became an entirely paid platform in 2012, and in those 8 years 2 things have drastically changed the e-commerce game: data quality and Amazon. Google’s ability to ensure that the information in a product feed matches the data on the site has advanced significantly since this time. In addition to limiting the products available on Google shopping results to retailers willing to pay, their search power was at a major disadvantage.

Another exciting development to the platform is a recent partnership with PayPal. Merchants using PayPal will be able to link those accounts to Google Merchant Center, which will allow Google to pull in seller details faster and to verify trusted merchants. Google also partners with e-commerce platforms, including Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce to make it easier for merchants to manage inventory and products.

As Ready concluded, “Solutions during this crisis will not be fast or easy, but we hope to provide a measure of relief for businesses and lay the groundwork for a healthier retail ecosystem in the future.”

More From Onimod Global

To catch up on the latest digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.