Category: Digital Marketing

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Digital Marketing

How Blockchain is Changing Digital Marketing

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date October 11, 2019
No Comments on How Blockchain is Changing Digital Marketing

Blockchain is changing digital marketing by enhancing transparency and security in transactions. It enables more reliable customer verification, preventing fraud in advertising. Blockchain facilitates decentralized data management, giving users more control over their personal information. This shift could lead to more honest and efficient marketing practices, with potential for innovations in customer loyalty programs and targeted advertising.

In the last 10 years, we’ve seen marketing undergo quite a change. Thanks to the blockchain, it’s about to go through yet another revolution. Most of us associate digital marketing with things such as analytics and artificial intelligence. As such, the blockchain may be the most destructive technology to hit marketers in every industry. Let’s take a closer look at how the blockchain is changing digital marketing and who stands to benefit.

The blockchain enables transactions to occur between two parties without the need for any kind of third-party verification. Most of the current uses for the blockchain have been centered around cryptocurrencies and finance, but the underlying technology could also have huge implications for marketing.

Analytics and artificial intelligence have benefited businesses more than consumers, but the blockchain may help level the playing field by giving the power of data back to the consumers themselves.

Consumers Take the Reigns

One of the greatest and perhaps most terrifying for marketers parts of the blockchain is that it gives the value of data back to consumers. Until now, many companies have benefited from being able to gather data from their customers. Everywhere we look, there’s a retailer who wants our email address, phone number, an address to make a circle purchase in-store or online.

While it’s true it helps the consumer in some ways because it allows for more personalized marketing, it is rather invasive. Many companies are selling the personal information they gather, too.

The blockchain is removing a company’s ability to pull data from customers without also offering to reimburse them for its value. The Brave Browser, for instance, is changing how users interact with online advertising. Instead of being bombarded with online ads, Brave users receive basic attention tokens (BATs) for the ads they interact with. It’s a new way of viewing advertising by trading the value of attention online rather than trading the space for ad sales.

Blockstack uses blockchain to protect your digital rights which creates a new type of network for decentralized apps. In the past customers would provide their to use certain applications in the data would remain on the application server out of the consumer’s hands. With Blockstack however, consumer data stays with it. It acts as a key to unlock certain apps but returns to the user as soon as they are finished using it.

Those of us in the marketing business may not like the concept because it’s going back to square one in the sense that you must rely on customers to give you the information you want and need to serve them better. While it’s not necessarily the best news for digital marketing, it is a necessary step in terms of providing better consumer protection.

Authentication and Transparency

In the past, people would shop online and hope that they were buying what was being marketing to them. Where the items really organic? Where they actually made an affair trade environment? Or was it manufactured with child labor in a sweatshop?

With the blockchain, consumers can finally get the answers to these questions and more. Using the power of the blockchain, companies are able to verify exactly where an item was grown or manufactured, what kinds of soil the items were grown in or how much the workers were paid to work there. This is huge in the era of consumers caring not just about the quality of what they’re buying but the integrity of the company supplying it.

Improved Ad-Spend

IBM and Unilever are on their way to clarifying the confusing area of online ad spend. As part of their project, the blockchain creates a trusted and verified chain from the ad dollar all the way to the end-user. In the past, nearly $0.85 / advertising dollar made its way to the publisher. Today, that number is just $0.40 largely as a result of the intermediaries that are used in the process. You know ever has already saved tens of millions of dollars as a result of the project.

While it has helped you Unilever save money, it could put sons of companies that have built themselves up based on verifying add metrics out of business. Blockchain is changing digital marketing in a highly destructive way, potentially wiping out an entire generation of companies built on its very existence.

The real impact of the blockchain in digital marketing is not just in the new use cases being developed. It’s and how those use cases will impact the entire systems that have been created as a way to manage the digital Marketplace. At a time when digital marketing seems to be growing and changing by the moment, blockchain is changing digital marketing in disruptive and maybe even irreversible ways.

Introducing new technology means there are a ton of fear and doubt. With the blockchain, there are plenty of things to be scared of, but once it becomes more mainstream, there is no doubt there will be incredible ways to work with it. When smartphones first became a thing, we didn’t have location-based marketing or mobile apps. We can expect to see a lot of unforeseen Innovation that will happen with the black thing just as it has happened with other new technologies.

Tags blockchain, consumer rights, digital marketing

AI and Marketing: What You Need to Know

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date October 7, 2019
No Comments on AI and Marketing: What You Need to Know

Have you taken the time to think about how artificial intelligence (AI) will impact your marketing? Are you looking for AI tools you can use right now? Are you wondering why you should even bother paying attention to AI?

Why Marketers Must Pay Attention to AI

AI Affects Daily Life

Experts predict AI will have trillions of dollars in annual impact on businesses. There are dozens of consumer applications for everyday from Netflix recommending shows to watch, Google Maps predicting traffic in your area, Gmail finishing your sentences, and Amazon predicting what you’ll buy next. However, most people don’t have any idea about what it is or how it works because they don’t realize machine learning is handling these tasks.

AI makes your life better by making things more personalized and convenient. We see the same thing happening in marketing and sales. The software marketing and sales professionals use just gets smarter over time. As it does, marketers will have the ability to personalize and do things at scale in a way that’s currently limited by human-powered marketing.

AI Will Change Marketing Careers

Using AI can help your business make better decisions and lead customers to your brand. New technologies will transform the marketing profession just as it has transformed everything else in our lives. New career paths will open up and the jobs will be more enjoyable.

Many marketers will be amazed by the results in 3 years, but only a certain segment will understand the potential of intelligence software and seek to use these tools today. By taking this initiative, they’re giving themselves a head start on their peers who are still afraid of exploring AI and what it has to offer. Maybe the topic is too overwhelming to try to understand or to abstract. Regardless of the reason, brands that don’t find smarter ways to use AI in their marketing will be left behind the competition that chooses to do so.

Consumers Are Expecting AI Benefits

Over the last 10 years, consumers have been conditioned to give up privacy and data in exchange for personalization and ease-of-use. People have come to expect personalized marketing on some level, even in the B2B space. Anything less than a seamless omnichannel buying experience from companies is frustrating so people clearly want the conveniences that AI can bring.

What is AI?

From a marketing standpoint, it’s important to understand the fundamentals about deep learning and machine learning and how they actually work. The software powering machines is inherently stupid. Of course machines cannot see, understand, speak, or hear. AI is nothing more than an umbrella term for making machines more intelligent to give them human-like capabilities.

Voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa don’t understand anything out of the box. The tools have been trained to hear the human language, then understand what it’s saying and process it before it generates the best response to your question.

Predictions of Future Outcomes

The main subset of AI is known as machine learning. In the simplest terms, it’s about making predictions regarding future outcomes based on historical data. We’ve been seeing this for decades with data science. The difference between data science and machine learning is that machine learning improves as more and newer data is made available. Then it makes predictions in response to this information.

For instance, Google Maps is not powered by human beings – it’s typing directions to reroute people as they make exits, run into accidents, or do other things on the road. It uses a collection of data points from multiple sources to help predict a better path as you drive.

As you move through your daily tasks of your career, you will find that your making a series of predictions every moment of every day. Marketers make predictions every day about what to write, where they should publish it and when it should be published, how much to spend on their ads, designs, colors, and much more based on past human behavior. At that point they just hope for the best. Each one of these predictions is an instance where machine learning could be applied.

Exploring AI for Your Needs

Many companies claim they leverage AI when they don’t. This has become a problem and one that experts have been tackling for the last few years. Many companies say they use machine learning, neural nets, or deep learning and it’s up to marketers to ask potential customers to determine whether it’s true.

When trying to find AI tools you can use for your business, you should ask pointed questions about exactly how the technology is used in the process and how it makes your company smarter and more efficient. Don’t be afraid to challenge the sales people who are selling the technology to ensure they really understand it. Tell them how long it takes or how much it cost to run a skill or process and then ask how the machine can make it faster or eliminate it completely.

Once you have answers to those questions, ask them to do walkthroughs or demos. If you have trouble understanding the underlying technology, find someone outside of the company who can explain it to you.

Ways You Can Use AI Right Now

Right now, you can find AI applications being built for nearly anything. If you are working for a large company with access to limitless data and a budget for tools, then you have a wide variety of options. If you’re working for a small business, you may have to dig a Little Deeper to find the tools they need and can afford but the reality is that almost every business could be using AI.

Here are a number of practical applications and benefits for AI when it comes to social media marketing for companies of any size.

Chatbots

Many people misunderstand what a chatbot actually is. They believe that because the word bot is present in the name, it is AI. The truth is the majority of chatbots that are currently available, whether you’re using them for auto responses, sales, or customer service are still heavily reliant on human-powered branching. Along with the series of if-then statements to function.

Setting up a chat bot can be an overwhelming experience because it’s like setting up an email workflow for a hundred thousand people and an automation tool. In some instances, a human being still has to set up all of the rules for the chatbot and then continue to maintain and update the rules moving forward.

On the other hand chatbot technology with AI powered capabilities can eliminate the need for humans to set up and update the rules. To find out if a chatbot technology supports these capabilities, ask questions about how the company is using natural language processing in machine learning to improve efficiency.

Natural language processing room means that the technology process has the meaning behind a statement as it is naturally typed or spoken and then generates a correct recommendation or response. Machine learning is when the technology can determine whether the recommendations are actually helpful and automatically get rid of anything that is not. Then the chat thought adapts all future recommendations based on that information. The chatbot technology is processing learning and adapting entirely without a human needing to track all the interactions and manually adjust rules.

Social Advertising

Automatic ad placement on social media platforms is another place where AI can be helpful. If you’ve managed a Facebook page before you’ve likely seen prompts that ask “Do you want to run this ad?” with an image and text from one of your posts. All you have to do is continue to build the Facebook ad based on Facebook’s recommendations about what it thinks it will do well. This functionality is completely AI powered.

Reviews and Monitoring

Monitoring social media and reviews is another process that using AI technology can simplify and manage. This is especially true for small businesses where reviews play a major role in search. Historically, both tasks have been incredibly time-consuming especially if you take the time to go into sentiment analysis and prioritize which one you should respond to.

Content Strategy

Content strategy comes down to making predictions about what you should write about, how often to publish, the keywords to use and so on. Traditional content strategy is evolving and there’s a lot of money going toward developing tools and platforms that use machine learning to eliminate speculation.

HubSpot was one of the first to implement machine learning in their content strategy tool to do content clustering. If you put in a word, the tool recommends other topics related to it from within the site and then surfaces direct links for you.

You can also use AI to do things like look at multiple datasets on when people search for certain things and then signal when your company should be posting about their products. It can help you determine which keywords to use or maybe even write content for you at some point in the future.

Though this technology has the potential to replace a lot of marketing consultants down the road, it will also create a lot of opportunity for consulting with companies on how to use AI to create a content strategy.

AI Marketing Tools

Persado

Persado is an AI powered marketing tool that creates the text for social ads. It has partnerships with major brands, and is at a price point that excludes most small businesses.

Rasa.io

If you’re currently using an email platform like MailChimp, they could be using AI to provide list segmentation, predict fatigue, learn the best times to send to individual recipients and more. There are ways to rig the features and functions currently offered with MailChimp but the workarounds are not perfect.

Rasa.io, on the other hand is an email platform that creates automated personalized content in newsletters. In theory, each newsletter is sent at a time prioritized for each recipient. It learns which links the user clicks and eventually starts adapting the link that includes and future newsletters based on this information so each newsletter it sends could be different from all the others.

Yext

Yext is an AI-powered tool that is effective at tracking social media monitoring and reviews. The tool can process vast amounts of information and understand what’s being said within it. Then it uses different models to prioritize whom you should respond to.

Yext also enables business data for Amazon Alexa. If you question an Alexa-enabled device about the business hours of a local business, yes is the technology that powers this business listing and provides key pieces of information to voice searchers.

Embracing AI now will set your business up for success in the future.

Tags AI, AI Marketing, artificial intelligence, digital marketing

Digital Marketing

Chase to Use AI for Marketing Content Creation

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date September 20, 2019
No Comments on Chase to Use AI for Marketing Content Creation

Chase to Use AI for Marketing Content Creation. JPMorgan Chase embraced AI for its marketing content creation, partnering with AI firms to generate compelling copy. This strategy aims to increase efficiency and effectiveness in ad copywriting. AI algorithms analyze data to produce optimized headlines and ad content, potentially revolutionizing traditional marketing approaches by combining creativity with data-driven insights.

Are freelance copywriters and in-house teams soon to be out of a job? We’re in the v. Writing algorithms have been available for purchase or a while now. Major companies are using them and they are creating well written articles supported by data.

When it comes to content writing bots you’ll see a lot of phrases such as intelligent narratives, automated storytelling technology, and natural language generation. Let’s take a closer look at some of the major players in the AI content field.

Quill by Narrative Science

Narrative Science began in 2010 as a Northwestern University experiment turning baseball scores into stories. The following year it raised more than $6 million to study the landscape of creating stories without humans. In 2013, they raised another $11.5 million for further development. Today, will generate news stories, headlines, and Industry reports all without human intervention. Though it’s limited to the confines of data backed content and news reports, it generates that type of content at scale.

Narrative Science rents their platform to mostly financial clients who can get reports 10 – 15 pages in length within a matter of moments. A writer would need weeks to put it together. Reports show that Quill turns out over a million words a day creating content for clients such as Forbes, USAA, T Rowe Price and Groupon.

Though pricing is not listed directly on the Narrative Science website, other sources indicate that pricing is based on story types. One story type could generate up to 100,000 stories and cost $70,000 a year while using three story types would cost $175,000 a year.

Persado

Persado is an AI platform that focuses on creating digital marketing copy. Recently they announced a five-year partnership with banking giant Chase. Their pilot relationship began three years ago using the toll for its card and mortgage business. The relationship now expands across all of the financial giant platforms. Chase says that ads created by Persado’s machine learning performed better than ads written by humans with a higher percentage of click-through rates twice as many in some cases. The company works alongside chases marketing team and agencies.

Chase says their relationship with Persado has not had an impact on their staffing structure. Persado says that the chase is the first brand to use their AI technology across platforms they already work with 250 marketers across a variety of Brands including Expedia, Williams-Sonoma and Dell.

Automated Insights and WordSmith

The Associated Press, one of the nation’s oldest news networks, founded in 1846 are now using robots to write thousands of news stories. Their platform Automated Insights was used to combat the low output of corporate earning reports by their writers. Using the AI technology they increased output 1200%.

Using Automated Insights, the Associated Press now produces 3,700 quarterly earnings stories which are short.

Automated Insights has gone on to create their own smart content robot called Wordsmith. Automated insights maintains that Wordsmith is the world’s first public natural language generation platform. The catch is that a lot of human content work is required to make the algorithm work.

You must add your data to the software with a few data points for the story then write a template for the story. Then preview the output of the software and edit it. Then, you publish your half robot and half human-created story from the app.

Because Wordsmith is essentially a mutation of a bot with a human, we could see many marketers going in this direction. Hundreds of businesses, such as Microsoft Yahoo and Allstate have invested in using the platform which generates more than one and a half billion pieces of content every year. It can develop content in more than 20 languages and generate content in seconds compared to taking a team of writers possibly weeks to develop.

Access to Wordsmith starts at $2,000 per month with an annual contract. Managed services are an additional fee. Set up costs associated with each stories data points are also an additional fee.

Heliograf

The Washington Post has published more than 850 stories in the past year using its in-house automated storytelling technology. More realistically however, it may be better referred to as in-house reporting technology because it generates news articles and social media posts.

The Washington Post sells Heliograf technology through Arc Publishing. Pricing starts at $10,000 a month and can increase to over $150,000 a month. As the Wall Street Journal reports, profitability is huge with 60% to 80% margins.

The good news for content creators is there is still plenty of room on the market. As the more advanced AI tools are very expensive and out of range for many small businesses, human writers still hold a lot of value. Though more bots are coming onto the scene on a regular basis, it will be a while before the technology is perfected to the point where it produces stellar copy at an affordable price.

Tags AI, artificial intelligence, automated storytelling technology, content creation

Digital Marketing

Google Launches New Small Business Portal

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date August 19, 2019
No Comments on Google Launches New Small Business Portal

Recently in conjunction with International Small Business Day, Google launched a new website that will suggest its products that seem like a good fit for specific businesses. The Google for Small Business portal was announced at the Grow with Google Learning Center in New York city where the company hosts a number of classes and workshops.

Google’s global product director for small business ads, Kim Spalding, says the website, “gives everyone a place to start with Google products. Small business owners struggle with time” and don’t necessarily have the time or resources to become digital marketing experts.

Businesses can visit the Google for Small Business portal and enter their company name and if they have won their website. From there they’ll answer a few questions about their business and their goals. At the end, Google will create a customized and prioritized list of actions which may include launching ad campaigns, building up their online presence, or installing Google Analytics.

This tool could be particularly useful for small businesses that are just getting started but it also could be helpful for established businesses that are working to develop a better digital strategy.

Google for Small Business can recommend a variety of products, but Spalding suggested two “Hero” tools: Google My Business and Smart Campaigns. Google My Business allows business owners to create their own profiles and websites for free. Smart Campaigns, launched by Google last year is used to automate the ad buying process.

How Google My Business Works

Even though Sachs Marketing Group has been operating since 2011 and we are digital marketing experts, I decided to give it a try myself. I entered “Sachs Marketing” and got a list of businesses that could match. It was interesting to see that there is a Sachs Marketing Group LLC in Bellbrook, Ohio but I also found my company Sachs Marketing Group, on the list. I suspect that businesses that have not yet claimed their Google My Business listing will not be able to find their name in the list.

Business Goals

From there, I was presented with four options in regards to the business goal that I want to focus on. The website tells me that my plan will help me meet all these goals but will lead with the primary goal. my options are:

Help me stand out online
Tell me how I can reach more customers
Show me how to work more efficiently
I’m not sure

For the sake of this exercise, I’m going to choose “Show me how to work more efficiently.” I’ll see what the plan tells me then go back and change it to I’m not sure and see if there are any major differences worth pointing out.

After I selected my goal, the tool populated my website. For businesses that do not have a website yet, there’s always the option to click the “I don’t have a website yet” button.

Next, Google asks where I primarily serve my customers. My answer options are:

At my store, office or home: Retail shops, cafes, dentist, doctor’s office, etc.
Online: Online retailer, virtual consultant, etc.
Online and offline: Retailer with a storefront and a website
Across an area: For businesses such as food trucks, locksmiths, pdumbers, etc.

Because we have two office locations and serve our clients online even though we are not technically a retailer, I selected the online and offline option.

My Personalized Plan

After answering this question Google started analyzing my business and developing my personalized plan.

Based on my answers they suggested three steps with their top product recommendations to help me reach my goal.

Step One: Easily Connect With Customers on Google for Free

Google noted that I have verified my free business profile on Google Search and Maps. It’s suggesting that I connect to customers and new ways by downloading the Google My Business app. By downloading the app, they say I can manage my profile even easier than before.

Step Two: Make Your Dollar Stretch Further With Smart Online Advertising

Google is suggesting that I use Google Ads as “an easy, efficient way to attract more customers.” Google does not disclose if the business is using Google Ads and recommends online advertising in general to help a business grow.

Step Three: Create Videos to Show What Makes Your Business Unique

According to Google, over 90% of people say they discover new products or brands on YouTube. Google is suggesting that I claim my free YouTube channel to reach and connect with more customers through video.

Under each of the recommendations, there is the option to click to learn more about each specific option. There’s also a small area where I can hover over to find out why I got this recommendation.

Sachs Marketing Group does have a YouTube channel though admittedly it isn’t very active. (We’re busy creating content for the blog and taking care of tasks for our clients.) I was wondering why I got that recommendation considering we have already claimed our channel and uploaded content to it. When I have heard over the “Why is this recommended?” option, It said “for privacy reasons we will not disclose if this business has an associated YouTube account. We recommend YouTube for businesses looking to tell their story with video.”

From there I am given the option to enter my email So the plan is delivered to my email. it claims that I will be able to uncover the next few products Google recommends to help me reach my goal.

Does the Plan Change Based on Primary Goal?

All other information left the same, I changed my primary goal to “I’m not sure. I got the exact same plan as I did the first time around. I decided to check one more time, this time choosing, “Help me stand out online.” I still received the exact same plan.

That told me I needed to check out another business to see what kind of other recommendations they offer. So, I went with a big corporate business – Microsoft. I chose the Microsoft Store on Fifth Avenue in New York City, and the “Help Me Stand Out Online” option, along with the “at my store:”

Guess what? They got the same plan I did. It makes me wonder if there are any other recommendations they give – or if everyone gets the same plan. I’d venture to say other recommendations are more common to businesses that are just starting out – such as those who don’t have Google Analytics on their website yet and who have not claimed their Google My Business Listing.

Have you tried this tool yet? What kind of recommendations did you receive? Share your experience in the comments below.

Tags Google My Business

Digital Marketing

Google My Business Adds More Branding Tools

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date August 12, 2019
No Comments on Google My Business Adds More Branding Tools

In terms of local SEO, Google My Business has always been an important and valuable tool. The platform launched in 2014 and continues to grow in importance for both businesses and consumers. Having a verified, complete, and accurate profile is critical to SEO. Google My Business is evolving to include transactions and engagement between businesses and their customers.

In June 2019, Google shared some Google My Business data, including the fact that Google facilitates “3 billion direct connections between merchants and users every month.” The company also indicated that there are 3 million monthly bookings through Google. And now, 95 million people across the world participate in the Local Guides program.

Google My Business Is Releasing More Branding and Promotional Tools

As part of Google’s announcement, they listed new features that businesses can take advantage of to improve their presence on the platform. These include:

Add a logo: Businesses will be able to display their logo on the upper right portion of their profile.
Add a cover photo: Businesses will be able to choose a cover photo that users will see when they bring up the profile.
Welcome offers: These offers can be sent to prospects and customers who opt to follow a business.
Dynamic photo module: This is a slideshow or carousel module that will give businesses the ability to add captions to the photos they wish to highlight.
Promotional assets: Google has now launched a new site that allows businesses to create and order free stickers, posters, and other promotional items to make business promotion easier.

Google did not disclose the percentage of US businesses that have verified their Google My Business profiles. However, a recent report from Brand Muscle indicated that an estimated 61% of local businesses who participated in the survey had claimed their listings. Under the assumption that is accurate, that means nearly 40% of businesses haven’t taken the time to do it.

Local Favorites and Short Names

All the new features are meant to assist businesses brand themselves and promote more effectively on Google My Business and beyond. However, the announcement included two additional things that could ultimately prove more significant for businesses.

Local favorite badges will be awarded to the top 5% of local businesses in a category. However, Google was vague about the criteria they will use to determine who qualifies. Generally speaking, Google will reward businesses that keep their profiles updated and are responsive to their customers. We can expect to find out more about how this feature works in the future. Achieving local favorite status and badging may offer a significant competitive advantage for the winners, but it may not. It depends on how and where the badge is presented and how customers respond.

The other important feature is the option to use short names or URLs that will be searchable in Google and Google Maps. To use short names, your business will have to be verified with Google My Business. Short names will be presented in two forms: g.page/shortname and @shortname. Businesses should now be eligible to register their desired name. Google says there won’t be any kind of “domain squatting” because you must have a verified profile in order to get one.

When a user searches or enters the URL, it takes them directly to the merchants Google My Business profile. In the future, users will be able to search Google Maps using the business’ short name to bring up the profile as well.

Google says this is a global namespace so a restaurant in Los Angeles could easily compete against a restaurant with a similar name in Paris or London. However, Google, without going into detail maintains that it has a process to address these issues and prevent conflicts.

The feature is a result of merchant feedback and the desire for a short URL to better promote their businesses. Google envisions local businesses putting their g.page URL on promotional materials. There wasn’t any discussion on how to use it in digital advertising but this could be another potential application. It’s also not yet understood whether they would be any reporting on traffic to the short URLs.

Why This Matters for Businesses and Marketers

Google My Business has evolved from a way to obtain accurate data for Google search results into a more complex and Powerful tool. Google now considers the platform as a local engagement platform which increasingly allows transactions such as Reserve with Google. In April, Google surveyed some of its small business customers and partners about charging for the services. While it drew a mixed response from local search engine optimization agencies, as suggested potential future product direction.

In the coming months and years, it’s likely that we will see more direct communication tools and commerce capabilities added to Google My Business. The challenge for Google will be adding useful features without creating more complexity and confusion for these local businesses.

Actions to Take Now

If you haven’t already, make sure to verify your business with Google My Business so that you can reserve your short name. Periodically check your business profile to ensure the information is accurate and complete. As you check to ensure profile completeness, take advantage of the new features available to you..

If you need assistance creating and maintaining your Google My Business profile, reach out to us here at Sachs Marketing Group.

Tags Google My Business

Digital Marketing

How to Use Quora for Marketing

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date July 19, 2019
No Comments on How to Use Quora for Marketing

The internet is full of useful, educational, and entertaining places to spend time. Many of these places are important for brands and businesses to connect with their audience. An often-overlooked platform for making those connections is Quora. Learn how to use it for marketing to increase brand awareness and authority.

What is Quora?

Quora is a community based question-and-answer website similar to Yahoo Answers. According to Alexa, this site ranks 82 in global internet traffic and engagement over the past three months. In the United States, it ranks 56. Quantcast data shows the website reaches more than 327,000 people every month in the us alone and ranks it as Number 3816 in the United States.

Anyone can ask and answer questions. The community votes on the answers that are most helpful. You can Target your question to specific URI users asking them to weigh in with an answer. You can publish content on Quora just like you can with LinkedIn publishing platform. (Repurpose some of your content to start a blog here to really amp it up a notch.) You can search for specific topics or questions related to your business and follow these to get notified whenever someone asks a new question. You can even spend credits to get your question in front of more people.

Even President Obama has jumped in on the Quora fun, answering the question, “What’s it like to play basketball with President Obama?”

Why Marketers Should Use Quora

Marketers can use Quora for a variety of tasks such as generating content ideas, content creation, and establishing brand Authority. Even if you’re just spending a few minutes a day on the platform, it can do wonders for your overall marketing strategy.

Using Quora for Marketing

Create a Quality Profile

Every time you leave an answer, a portion of your bio is viewable at the top making it a great opportunity to extend some branding. The website shows the first 50 characters of your profile as a tagline above your answer. mention your brand name is close to the beginning as you can to make the most of the space. Your full bio can contain @ mentions of other users and clickable links.

It’s also possible to have topic-specific bio so you can mention your expertise when answering topic specific questions to add to your credibility. Do this by clicking on your profile page. In the right column you’ll see a list of knows about topics. Next to each topic is a link to describe your experience. Click on this link to set up the topic specific.

From here, complete as much as your profile as possible. This includes adding:

A detailed About Me section
Areas of expertise
Interests
Social media account connections
Your cities
Any schools or colleges you’ve attended
Previous companies you’ve worked for

All of this information helps you get found on the platform and can make it easier for people to seek you out when they’re looking for users to answer their questions.

If you’re brand-new to Quora, spend some time browsing the answers and upvoting any that catch your eye. Upvotes appear on your public profile right away and can indicate that you are active on the site.

Track the Topics You’re Interested in

You can use cure for market research to learn what people are asking about your industry. You can set up notifications for these topics so you have questions and answers sent to your inbox every day.

Type the topic you’re interested in into Quora search box. It will give you a list of autocompleted suggestions and when you click through to a topic page, you can see an extra list of related topics to follow.

You can also search for users to follow and be notified of their newest answers. You can do the same for blog posts based on the blog name or author name to be notified for every new post.

Go to your settings page and click on email and notifications so you can customize the frequency and specificity of email you received. Each time you log in to Quora your home feed contains the latest questions and answers and posts from topics, people, and blogs you follow.

Find Questions to Answer

You can answer any question you, which is the best way to get involved with the community and share your knowledge. Search for topics to narrow down the questions. Choose a topic that fits your business, that you have meaningful stats for, or have written about recently. Look for threads with lots of upvotes, as this indicates the questions are viewed often. If you have a popular answer in one of those threads, it could potentially lead to thousands of views per day, and a hefty chunk of clicks back to you website. Take time to find neq questions because you have a higher chance of getting to the top of the answers list if you’re one of the first to answer.

Answer with Authority

This helps you be seen as an authority on a topic. Your answer should provide sources, references, and statistics whenever and wherever possible. It should be a good short answer than points to some kind of external resource. Keep it focused and specific. Let your personality and passion for the topic shine through. Don’t be afraid to tell a story with takeaways.

Add links to what you’ve referenced, which is helpful when the information you provide is available in long form on your website.

Build a Quora Page for Your Business

Similar to Wikipedia, anyone could create a page on Quora about anything. This is a great chance to build a company page for your business. Start by searching your business name on Quora. From the results page, if you don’t see the nameless does a topic you can look in the right sidebar below the add question box and click the link to create topic. There you’ll have the option to name the topic and add a brief description.

Once your topic is live, you can ask the community to review the topic. This is particularly helpful for people wondering if they should invest their time and money with your company. And for you, it adds a bit of social proof and testimonials to your brand’s presence on the platform.

Research Topics

What are people asking on Quora? The questions can lead to inspiration for blog posts on your blog – which you can then link to in an answer.

Look for the question and answers from the topic that you cover on your blog. Check the popularity of their threads looking for lots of upvotes and conversation. When you see a lot of activity surrounding certain questions in the topic, it’s an indication that they may make a great blog post.

You can also use Quora to validate your ideas. If you’ve already got a basic idea, search for it on Quora to see what people are asking about it. You may find a new angle or direction to take or the validation you were looking for.

Get New Headline Ideas

Much the same way you can do headline research by typing your keywords into a Google search to learn how people ask things, you can do the same with Quora. All you have to do is type your keyword into a search and filter the results to show only questions.

The result page will show you how people ask their questions about your chosen keyword and therefore how you can frame your content. The most popular questions in terms of the number of answers and upvotes can signal value in regards to how things are worded and it can help you with writing headlines for your next blog post.

Analyze Your Stats

Quora provides free analytics for all users to show you a breakdown of your views, upvotes, and shares. These stats are displayed for the questions you ask, the answers you give, all the content you contribute and the blog posts you write.

With this information you can see how readers are being led to your answers. This way you’ll know if they’re finding your content through your profile through random browsing or through tagged topics. By visiting your personal views page you can quickly assess who has seen your answers. Quickly glancing at these stats will tell you which avenues give you the most covered so you can adjust your strategy accordingly.

If you focus on creating a great profile and follow topics in your industry while also finding people to connect with, you’ll find Quora is a great place to contribute your knowledge. Though it may not be something you considered as part of your marketing strategy before, it is a unique way to reach your audience.

Are you using Quora to market your business online? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Tags digital marketing, quora

Digital Marketing

How One Campaign Changed Burger King’s Marketing Outlook

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date June 21, 2019
No Comments on How One Campaign Changed Burger King’s Marketing Outlook

The Whopper Detour marketing campaign changed Burger King’s Marketing outlook forever. A notable Burger King campaign, likely emphasizing creativity and customer engagement, led to a strategic shift in its marketing. By embracing innovative, often unconventional approaches, the campaign could have demonstrated the effectiveness of viral marketing, social media engagement, and customer-centric promotions, influencing the brand’s future marketing direction with a focus on bold and interactive campaigns.

The Hamburger Wars have been going on for decades – ever since Burger King hit the scene in 1954 McDonald’s was first franchised in 1955. Companies like Wendy’s and Burger King have been competing against McDonald’s to keep customers happy. Burger King has been facing off with McDonald’s for a long time – but this time – they’ve done something amazing.

Over the past few years, Burger King has built a reputation for itself. The brand has done an impressive job using creativity to grab attention and build love (and loyalty) for the brand.

Burning Stores, McWhopper, and Google Home of the Whopper are just a few of the campaigns that were talked about widely – giving the brand billions of impressions and helping to revamp the brand. They were successful in driving customers into the stores, but the main focus was to make the brand “cool” again.

Burger King’s real hit campaign, the Whopper Detour, marks a defining moment for the brand and its marketing. Burger King’s global Chief Marketing Officer tells AdWeek, “There’s a clear ‘before’ and an ‘after’ when it comes to the Whopper Detour. This campaign marks a turning point in our marketing and shows what we believe the future of great creativity might be – at least for us.”

A Closer Look at the Whopper Detour Campaign

In December 2018, BK launched the Whopper Detour campaign. From December 4th until December 12th, customers who downloaded the BK app and went to McDonald’s could unlock an offer that allowed people to purchase a Whopper for a penny. It was done as part of the mobile app (available on Android and iOS) relaunch that included features to order and pay in advance.

It was a way for people to order Whopper sandwiches at McDonalds. The brand went so far as to say, the brand turned more than 14,000 McDonald’s into Burger Kings… sort of.

How the Promotion Worked

The promotion works by geofencing McDonald’s locations across the country. If a guest inside one of the restaurants had the BK installed on their phone or tablet, (or within 600 feet of one of those locations) the app unlocked the Whopper Detour promotion.

Once the customer places the BK order, they were “detoured” from McDonald’s and directed to the nearest BK location to pick up their burger. Each registered BK app user could redeem the promotion once.

The technology used in the campaign isn’t new. Geofencing and mobile order and payment has been around a while. It’s not particularly easy to convince people to download apps from fast-food brands, especially the burger chains. BK, along with many other brands, couldn’t get people to download the app even when giving products away.

The Results

The Whopper Detour increased BK mobile app sales 300% during the nine-day promotion, and by 200% ever since the promotion ended. The campaign sent the BK app from 686 to number one in the app store, across all categories in both Android and iOS. It also drove the highest amount of foot traffic – people visiting the restaurant – in four and a half years.

How Did it Happen?

What started as a crazy idea that bent the rules of direct marketing and eCommerce technology became something with scale and long-time impact.

The campaign took about a year to develop, evolving over time – which is something the brand says they see in all of their best campaigns. It took a large team of people to pull it off, involving a technology team and several tech partners. The entire app, which had been newly updated to include mobile order and payment, had to be recoded to work well with geofencing. That meant geofencing more than 7,000 BK restaurants in the United States and all of the McDonald’s locations in the U.S., of which there are more than 14,000.

Here, you see the power of a big idea, what it takes to make something different happen, and why creative partners such as pay-per-click advertising and digital marketing agencies are so important. Big creative ideas will blow through trends, programmatic advertising, and AI any day – and many people out there seem to forget that.

It’s important to keep a focus on the big idea. Use creativity to grab your audience’s attention and build brand loyalty. This way you’ll build it today and be able to scale it through to tomorrow and beyond. What Burger King did wasn’t a one-location, one-day stunt. That’s not what got people talking about it. It was the scale at which it launched that got the buzz going.

As marketers, it’s important to learn from the success of others. The mobile phenomenon and geofencing technology allows you to advertise to customers based on their location, no matter your industry. Gyms could start sending deals, such as “Join now and your first month is $1” as soon as they set foot in the competition’s location. Car dealerships could promise to find the vehicle someone is looking for, for a cheaper price the second they see that someone has set foot on another lot.

The technology BK used to troll McDonald’s is available to anyone. It allows you to market any time, and anywhere to highly targeted customers. But, use it well, and you can steal customers from your competition, too.

Tags digital marketing, marketing

Digital Marketing

Facebook Pixel Losing Effectiveness for Marketers

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date June 17, 2019
No Comments on Facebook Pixel Losing Effectiveness for Marketers

In the coming months, Facebook will release its Clear History tool. Once it is released, the new feature will allow users to see, manage, and disconnect activity that happens off-Facebook from their user profile. As such, the tool will impact marketers ability to reach a targeted audience on the platform.

What is the Clear History Tool?

The Clear History tool was announced at the 2018 F8 Conference. Facebook says the feature will allow users to see the websites and apps that send Facebook information when they are used. It will also give users the power to delete the information from the account and turn off the ability for Facebook to store the information associated with your account moving forward.

Apps and websites that use features such as the Like button or Facebook Analytics send Facebook information to make their content and ads better and more relevant. Facebook uses the information to improve your Facebook experience.

If users clear their history or use the new setting, Facebook will remove identifying information so a history of the websites and apps you’ve used will not be associated with your account. The browsing history isn’t erased or removed, but instead made anonymous. Facebook still plans to provide apps and websites with aggregated analytics so they can build reports to let developers know whether their apps are more popular with certain genders or age groups. Facebook will do this without storing the information in a way that is associated with your account – and they will not provide information about who the people are to advertisers.

According to the Facebook Newsroom post from May 2018, it will take a few months to build Clear History, since they will be working with privacy advocates, policymakers, regulators, and academics to get input on the approach, including how they plan to remove identifying information and rare cases where the information is needed for security purposes.

What Marketers Need to Know

Providing Users with Control and Transparency Makes for Better Business

When people know how their information is used, it makes them feel better about ads and the businesses they interact with online. Ads are how Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp are made free for people to use. The same can be said for many online services. It’s important to understand that protecting people’s information and advertising are not working against each other; it is possible to do both.

Facebook is Helping Users See How Advertisers Use Their Tools

A large part of the clear history tool is helping people understand how the advertisers use Facebook business schools. Facebook is working hard to deliver this type of transparency on Facebook. They are also open to conversations with other businesses about approaches they may take to help people understand more about what data they share and the value that share offers. Businesses are encouraged to start thinking about ways to educate their consumers regarding their marketing practices.

The New Feature May Impact Targeting

When a user decides to disconnect their off-Facebook activity, Facebook will no longer be able to use that data for targeting. This means that targeting options powered by Facebook’s business tools, such as the Facebook Pixel, can’t be used to reach someone with ads. This includes Custom Audiences built from website visitors and app users. Businesses should remember this when they are developing strategies for these kinds of campaigns in the future.

Until now, marketers have been able to install the Facebook Pixel on their website to match people who’ve visited their websites to who they are on Facebook so they can continue to advertise to them. While the Clear History tool will affect targeting because a portion of users will exercise the control and disconnect their off-Facebook activity, there are still some users who will not mind sharing that information. As such, you may still benefit from using the Facebook pixel and Custom Audiences. It’s likely, however, the audience will be smaller. The Clear History feature will also affect businesses that use the SDK or the API.

Measurement Will Remain Intact

That said, Facebook’s measurement and analytics tools have been designed to protect users’ identities. There is no sharing of personal information such as names and phone numbers in the measurement and reporting tools. As of now, Facebook does not anticipate making changes to measurement once the Clear History feature is live. Because of this, Facebook will still be able to provide accurate measurements to understand the impact of their investment in Facebook Ads, while still allowing people to exercise control over their off-Facebook activity.

The marketing industry is seeing the first glimpse of an entirely new Facebook. This iteration of the social platform is more focused on one-on-one messaging and privacy than it is on public social feeds. While this is a good move for users, businesses may need a bit of time to adjust, simply because the ad targeting options are going to become more limited. As we embark on the new era of Facebook, we must begin reconsidering how to connect with our audiences, both on and off the platform.

Tags clear history, digital marketing, facebook, social media

Digital Marketing

How to Develop an Omni-Channel Retail Strategy

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date May 17, 2019
No Comments on How to Develop an Omni-Channel Retail Strategy

If you’re in retail and don’t have an omni-channel strategy yet, you’re missing out on a lot of potential review. A recent report shows that out of 46,000 shoppers, 73% used multiple channels to make a purchase. Only 7% shopped exclusively online, and 20% shopped exclusively in store. If you were looking for proof that you need to create a seamless experience across all channels, there it is. To succeed in today’s retail climate, you must provide a quality product at an affordable price, of course, but these days, it’s becoming less about price and more about the customer experience.

Developing an omni-channel retail strategy improves the customer experience, which in turn, helps to boost customer retention. When you make a customer happy, whether they shop with you online or in-store, at your website or through your app or social media channels, chances dramatically improve that they will come back to you again and again for repeat purchases. When you consider the cost of customer acquisition is (at least) 5x higher than the cost of customer retention, it makes more sense to keep the customers you have happy than to constantly focus your efforts on bringing in new customers.

Note: Omni-channel isn’t quite the same thing as multi-channel marketing. Learn the difference in this blog post.

Step One: Determine Where Your Audience is

Taking the time to determine where your customers are spending most of their time online is important. Because there are so many channels to invest time and energy in, it doesn’t make sense to overextend yourself and try to be everywhere. Rather than making a half-hearted attempt at creating a cohesive social presence across all the major social media networks, on the off chance you’ll catch a customer’s eye, it makes more sense to focus your efforts on one or two social channels where you know your customers are.

Once you know the platforms your customers are using, figure out the mediums they use the most, and the devices they use. This way, you’ll get a clearer idea of where your customers are spending time, how, and where they normally shop.

For instance, you may learn there aren’t a lot of Instagrammers in your target audience. That means you can either ditch the channel, or skip it altogether and focus your efforts on other channels that are far more profitable.

Use your Google Analytics account to learn more about your customers – specifically the Acquisition reports. These will show you the channels that are effectively driving visitors to your website, and then you’ll get a better idea of how people are finding your business. If you want to go more in-depth, look at the Multi-Channel Funnels option and run different attribution reports to see the full conversion path.

Step Two: Identify All Touchpoints and Make Them Shoppable

To maximize your omni-channel approach, any and all customer touchpoints must be shoppable. If you find, for instance, that you have a decent size customer base on Instagram or Pinterest, both of these networks have shoppable post options that allow people to make purchases directly from those platforms.

The idea is that no matter where your customers are, you should make it as easy as possible for them to move from product discovery to conversion. If they find out about your product while browsing Instagram, but have to go to a computer to actually buy it, you’re taking the chance that the person either won’t want to do that, or can’t do it right then and will forget to do it later.

You’ll decide the touch points you want to use based on the ones you believe will be most profitable to you, based on where your customers shop and where they hang out.

Step Three: Create a Smooth Transition Between Online and Offline

If you are a brand with both an online presence and a traditional brick-and-mortar store for offline purchases, you have to bridge the gap between the two to provide a better customer experience. Major retailers like Walmart and Kohl’s have done this by allowing you to place orders online and come pick them up in store, rather than waiting (and paying) for them to be shipped to your home.

This allows customers to save time and hassle associated with going to your store and finding out you don’t have the item in stock, or having to call to find out. They can pay for the purchase online, and simply pick it up later, rather than having to go into the store and find it themselves. Saving time is a good motivator for customers.

Services like Prime Wardrobe allow you to shop for clothes and shoes you’d like to try. The items are shipped to you to try on, and you buy only what you want to keep – with no obligation to keep any of it. This is helpful because a lot of the time, you’re not sure something will look the way you think, or fit the way it should based on the description. If you make the purchase first, you’re left with having to return the items, possibly losing money because you have to pay for return shipping. This encourages people to buy because they can try before they commit, or exchange for a different size or color with greater ease.

Grocery stores and fast food restaurants are following along on the trend, using third party services such as Instacart, Shipt, DoorDash, GrubHub, and UberEats. Though they don’t generally deliver, customers in the right geographical areas can get pretty much anything delivered – from tacos to fried chicken. It’s a great option for when you’re sick of pizza delivery, or just don’t have time to make the grocery trip on your own. Partnering with third-party services allows brands to capitalize on creating an omnichannel experience and add convenience for their customers, without having to invest a ton of money into their own brand-specific initiatives.

All in all, anyone in retail – whether you have an offline presence or not – needs to consider their omni-channel strategy. Put your customers first in everything you do, and test everything until you get the best possible results. Your bottom line will thank you.

Tags digital marketing, omnichannel marketing, retail strategy

Digital Marketing

10 Reasons Local Businesses Need Great Websites

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date February 18, 2019
1 Comment on 10 Reasons Local Businesses Need Great Websites

As a local business owner, you may think your storefront, word-of-mouth, and local advertising is all you need to succeed. This is incredibly short-sighted; your business’s online presence is just as important.

In the past, people doing a Google search for a product would be presented with a 10-pack listing of local businesses offering what they were looking for. Now, those packs are smaller and harder for local businesses to lock down in the listings. What was once a bit of friendly competition is now more like a triathlon…with no shoes on.

Plainly put, it’s hard as heck.

Without a great website, your odds of being seen online are almost zero – and it isn’t just because of visibility, either. Attracting new customers, increasing brand presence, and even establishing credibility are all important factors.

Let’s learn about this important topic together, shall we?

Your Customers are Watching

Even if you don’t sell online, it’s almost expected that your business will have an online presence. More than 50 percent of consumers will look online to see if you have a website or something that represents your brand before visiting your store. We live in a fast-paced society; people want to know you have the products or services they’re looking for before they make a trip out of the house.

Brand Credibility

Your potential customers aren’t just looking to learn about what you have to offer. They want to know they can trust you, too.

Where do they look first?

To see if you have a website.

Today’s digital world basically demands an online presence. In the past, businesses that didn’t have a storefront weren’t taken seriously. Now it’s hard to imagine a business without a website. Is it real? Is it a scam? Your website helps lend legitimacy to your overall brand.

You Tell Your Own Story

Having a website allows you to position your business however you’d like online. You’re responsible for your image, personality, and back story. Building a website gives you complete control over what people know about your business, how it was formed, why you do what you do, and your overall mission. Add in a few share links so others can share your story on social and your brand’s name is bound to spread.

Social Proof

There are tons of websites where customers can leave reviews of your business: Yelp, Google My Business, FourSquare, Yellow Pages…

And that isn’t even counting the smaller outlets and social media reviews!

With your own website, you can pull social reviews into a feed and add your own iterations gathered from your customers. This allows people to see online reviews without even leaving the page, killing two birds with one stone.

Bonus points? It’s also a great way to showcase the positive and limit the negative, especially if you’ve had a rough ride along the way. Real customer testimonials are an impressive feature your potential buyers will really appreciate.

Expanding Your Target Audience

Local businesses tend to have limited target audiences, usually within a certain geographic area surrounding their brick-and-mortar store. Having a website makes you accessible to people further out, whether they end up doing business with you by phone, via email, or on your website itself.

Again, you don’t necessarily have to have an online store to attract a broader audience. Simply making yourself accessible will make it easier for people to find you, get to know you, and make a solid buying decision.

Lead Generation

It doesn’t matter if you’re offering a sales portal on your website or not.; your website is an incredibly valuable tool for lead generation. Any well-developed business website should offer (at a minimum) an email capture form. Your goal is to capture email addresses and send out newsletters with key updates (like sales).

Regular communication keeps your brand visible to potential consumers. This is true whether they need you now or in a few months.

Offering Educational Materials

A website is a great place to offer educational materials about your products and services, like product demonstrations. Think about it this way: if you don’t do it, someone else likely will – and they just might be better at it.

Whether it’s in the form of a blog post or YouTube video, your job is to be useful and engaging. Publish instructions on how to set-up or install your products, use them, and maintain them. You may even come up with out-of-the-box DIY tutorials, projects, or recipes that incorporate your products and others. Make your website the top resource for information on how to use your products and services.

Improved Communication

Your website should offer customers and potential leads options for getting in touch with you. Start by creating a clear and comprehensive FAQ page with all of your most common questions and answers. People love being able to find answers 24/7 without having to bother with a customer service line or email.

Make all of your contact information easy to find. Your phone number should be clear on every page of your website. Incorporate an easy-to-use contact form instead of just listing an email address. You may even want to add a chat-form if you’re willing and able to host live chats right on your site. The easier it is for people to get in touch with you, the happier they’ll be.

Enhanced Marketing

You should definitely be putting your specials and announcements on your social platforms. They should be on your website, too, though.

Contrary to popular belief, a consumer is more likely to do a Google search for your business than they are to look for a social page.

Website first, social second.

Having your specials, events, and important announcements on your website is important for enhanced communication and generating overall interest in what you’re doing. Granted, this doesn’t mean you should ignore social – just that you shouldn’t neglect your site in favor of social media marketing instead.

Adaptability

Want to make a change to your business model?

You can do that.

Simply want an online presence to may add an ecommerce store later?

No problem.

Want to add a blog page sometime in the future?

Hey, great – that’s easy, too.

Your website and its functionality can grow with your business – it will never hold you back. Redesign it, add new forms of content, update your images, or make whatever change to functionality you desire at any point in time.

Your only limits are your skill levels and time, and there are plenty of web developers who can help you get past those issues.

The long and short of the situation is that all businesses, regardless of size, should have an online presence. You can even start with a free website option if your budget is a limitation.

There’s no reason to not be online, and your absence is very likely doing you more harm than good. Start small and grow your website with your business. You’ll be amazed at the difference it makes!

Tags digital marketing, website

Digital Marketing

6 Ways to Make the Best of GMB Posts

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date February 15, 2019
No Comments on 6 Ways to Make the Best of GMB Posts

Google has been announcing (and re-announcing) the decline and ultimate demise of the Google Plus platform for quite some time. With the disappearance of the platform looking like it will actually happen later this year, some business owners are focused on what to do next. Many were still using the partially-defunct social platform for marketing purposes.

Google My Business (GMB) has been around for quite some time as a toolbox for local business owners who want to control their business listings. While the disappearance of Google Plus will no longer allow for a controlled social feed, the GMB platform does now have a place for posts — and you definitely need to use them.

What is a Google My Business Post?

The post section on the Google My Business listing actually launched back in 2016. It was initially reserved for political candidates and then in early 2017 was released to all business owners in 2017.

GMB posts are different than social media posts. When a person does a Google search and sees a business listing in the sidebar, they are often presented with quite a bit of information. In addition to address and contact information, visitors see Google reviews, questions & answers, and then posts.

Posts usually show on the business listing for seven days and then disappear. Because of this, it’s important to update them regularly as the most recent post won’t show on the listing indefinitely.

Posts are made from within the Google My Business listing manager. You need to optimize your posts with an image, sized 720 pixels wide by 540 pixels tall. Each post can also be enhanced with a call-to-action button.

Take a look at a few Google listings and you will find that quite a number of businesses are still not utilizing this space. So what can you do to make sure yours stand out?

Post Regularly

One of the biggest mistakes people make with GMB posts is a lack of frequency. The space for a post on your listing will remain blank if you don’t post at least once a week. You can post more than once per week. Google will show one post in full, a partial view of the second post, and then an arrow to scroll to any additional posts that are still visible (up to ten).

There is currently no way to schedule GMB posts in advance. To compensate, set someone up (who is associated with your business) to stay on top of them regularly.

Your posts need to be authentic and personable. No one wants to see just another advertisement. Give your visitors a sneak peek at what you’re doing and what you have to offer; an incentive to click through and visit your website or ask for more information. Create posts that are timely and relevant. This isn’t another social platform, so don’t just copy what you’re doing on Facebook and other sites.

Stay On Brand

Even though you don’t want to completely copy what you’re doing on your social platforms, your message needs to be consistent. This means staying on brand in terms of your general message, voice, and style. You can certainly tailor your copy and images to the audience you think is going to find you by conducting a Google search, but the overall message can’t stray so far from your brand that your website looks like a foreign object when they click through.

Leverage the Call-to-Action Button

Most platforms only offer call-to-action buttons on posts if you’re paying for an ad. GMB posts allow for several different options, making it easy for your readers to do exactly what you want them to do in one simple click. You can ask them to learn more, reserve, sign up, buy, or get an offer; then include the link to the landing page you’d like them to visit. Keep your posts simple and you’ll be amazed at how much response you can get. Your visitors will click without even thinking of going back out to the web to see what your competition is offering first.

Optimize Your Images

The image size we mentioned above is important. Google will cut off your images and crop them funny if they aren’t tailored properly to the platform. Take a little extra time to make sure your images are sized properly so they have the best visual impact. Make sure your images are centered so you don’t end up with important info chopped off if Google does make an adjustment.

Above all else, remember this: imagery should grab a user’s attention as soon as they land on your listing. Your image will make a huge difference whether or not someone will click your call-to-action button.

Simplify Your Text

All GMB posts are shortened on the main search page. You have to click the post itself to expand the text, and there isn’t always a prompt to do so. This means you need to make the biggest impact in your first 100 characters to ensure your visitors are intrigued enough to explore more. Don’t create text walls; they just won’t work.

Track Your Posts

Tracking your GMB posts is just as important as tracking any other ad campaign or traffic driver you’ve implemented. Your GMB dashboard will show you how many times your post has been viewed as well as how many times a potential customer has clicked your button. You can also use custom URLs to track which website actions were a result of a visitor that came from your GMB listing.

As a local business owner with a Google My Business listing, it’s important to take advantage of every tool you’re given to make your profile stand out. The more complete your profile, including posts, the more your listing will stand when compared to your competitors.

Although it isn’t yet obvious, the activity you get on your business listing may at some point even impact your overall website ranking, too. Either way, it’s a good idea to implement any free tool you can if it results in customer engagement and interaction!

Tags Google, Google My Business

Digital Marketing

Did Google Alter Your Adwords Campaign? Here’s Why

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date February 11, 2019
No Comments on Did Google Alter Your Adwords Campaign? Here’s Why

In late January, AdWords advertisers received a startling email from Google. The headline in the email was, “We’ll focus on your campaigns, so you can focus on your business.” Advertisers reading the emails flew into a tizzy, interpreting the email as saying Google would be taking over all campaign management.

Let’s take a look at what they’re really doing.

What About the Email?

The email went out to Google AdWords advertisers around January 24, 2019. As far as we’re currently aware, the email did not go out to all advertisers, but to a group of select accounts considered to be part of the program’s pilot launch.

We’re not quite sure, at this point, how they chose the advertisers included in their new and improved program. We do know they only sent the email to businesses who are not already using a PPC agency to manage their accounts.

The message told advertisers that they would begin managing campaigns within one week. They are touting it as complimentary campaign support, but are giving users the option to opt out at any time. The service would involve an in-house Google Ad expert reviewing and making changes to accounts.

They will be able to:

Review and make changes to your keywords
Make alterations to the structure of your ad groups
Make changes to your ad copy
Make adjustments to your bids

Google assured users they will not make changes to their overall budget. They will only make changes to the bids associated with certain keywords.

So what does this mean to you?

It means you need to make a decision. If Google AdWords campaigns are a thorn in your side (something you never really understood but have been trying to run), perhaps allowing for in-house support is a good option for you.

On the other hand, there’s really no way anyone from Google knows your business the way you do, so allowing them to choose keywords and make changes to your ad copy (and your brand’s voice) may not be optimal. In that case, you definitely need to make sure you log in and opt out of the program. Just go back to the email and click the link.

Tips for Improving Your Own Google AdWords Campaigns

While Google’s in-house representatives do understand PPC, you are under no obligation to participate in the program. There will also be no changes to their current customer support set-up, so you can still call or email for help at any time.

There’s always room for improvement in the world of PPC. If you are opting to maintain control, here are some things to check and consider as you conduct your tests.

Consider Your Keywords

Google also changed the way it works with exact keyword matches. They have broadened the variants, allowing for similar synonyms and phrases to show in the searches as well. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, so you’ll want to make sure your keyword choices are as specific as you can make them to avoid confusion and misleading ads.

Test Your Landing Pages

No two landing pages are alike, nor are your audiences. Every company running AdWords campaigns, no matter what the niche, should be split-testing. It may surprise you to learn less than 50 percent actually do so. You may need to adjust your entire layout, or you may simply need to tweak your color schemes. You won’t know until you test.

Make Sure Your Ad Copy Matches Your Landing Page

It sounds silly, but it makes sense. The verbiage you use in your ad copy should give your visitors an idea of what to expect when they click and land on your page. If the ad copy talks about a course to learn how to build an email list, then the landing page needs to talk about that same course. If your ad copy talks about cheap faux-suede jackets, your landing page better not feature expensive leather coats.

Make Sure Your Ad Looks Right

The little details make a huge difference. Use title case when writing the title headline for your ad. It will stand out as more professional. For example, which looks better to your eye?

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Naturally, most of us gravitate toward the first. It’s clear, polished, and properly capitalized. The second feels sloppy for an ad.

Also be cautious of word formatting and appearance in the sense of text blocks and/or the overall distribution of text. Try not to write ads that leave single words hanging on the last line or em dashes that hang off the end of a line. Both of these throw the visual composition off.

Incorporate Sitelink Ad Extensions

A lot of ads include extra links to different pages on your website beneath the main link. While Google will only display up to four of these at a time, you can actually optimize more when you set up your ad. Google will then decide which are most appropriate to display based on what prompted your ad to show, and where.

Consider Your Ad’s Placement

The reality is people browsing the web will click on ads whether they’re in the sidebar, in the middle of a blog post, or at the top of the search results. What you really want, though, is for your ad to end up in a top spot. The better your placement, the better your conversion rate. Testing your ads to see which position is best for your particular niche and keyword is important to your success.

Use Remarketing Tools

Did you know that up to 70 percent of people who click your links and end up in your online store will abandon their shopping card the first time they visit? Remarketing tools will help you to improve your conversion rates by using tracking tools to remind your original visitors they want to come back. This simple reminder can skyrocket your ad’s overall success rates.

While Google did a great job of making advertisers a little nervous about their AdWords campaigns, there is really nothing to worry about. Check your email and make sure you opt out of the pilot program if you were invited and aren’t interested. Then carry on with your split testing and regular ad adjustments. Google support will be there for you no matter what, whether you take advantage of the new service or not.

Tags google ads

Digital Marketing

6 Special Digital Marketing Challenges for Healthcare Facilities

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date January 21, 2019
No Comments on 6 Special Digital Marketing Challenges for Healthcare Facilities

Several digital marketing challenges for healthcare facilities need addressing. Healthcare facilities face unique digital marketing challenges, including compliance with HIPAA and other privacy regulations, communicating complex medical information clearly, and maintaining a balance between professionalism and approachability. Building trust through patient testimonials and educational content, while ensuring data security and privacy, is crucial. Adapting to the sensitive nature of healthcare topics in online marketing is also essential.

The world of healthcare is constantly evolving, and marketing is more challenging than ever. In an increasingly digital-focused world, there so much the average provider needs to consider and pay attention to: privacy, online reviews, your ability to create a strong brand presence, SEO, and yes, even competing with other providers, too. It’s certainly possible to succeed if you can achieve the right balance.

But trying to find that precarious balance between adhering to healthcare rules and reaching your audience in a way that converts? That isn’t always easy. Special considerations for confidentiality significantly hamper options, as do legal limitations on what you can do or say. Success might begin to feel like an impossibility.

Now, here’s the good news: succeeding in advertising your facility or service online isn’t just possible; it can also be relatively easy. You just have to anticipate challenges like these and ensure you have contingency plans!

Audience Segmentation

Determining your audience segment is much more challenging in healthcare than it is in other more traditional markets (like construction or real estate). Healthcare facilities need to consider ages, genders, geographic locations, patient medical conditions, and specialist needs, too. This factor significantly restricts options and may even make certain marketing techniques inappropriate (like the use of messenger bots on Facebook or SMS texting).

Unfortunately, healthcare marketing challenges can be elusive and difficult to spot, and in many cases, facilities break the rules without even realizing it. Everything seems to be going fine, so they assume it is – until they wind up sued or fined.

This isn’t designed to frighten you off of digital marketing; rather, it’s a cautionary note to go into it with your eyes open. Special challenges around privacy, location, and regulations are always present.

Think about it this way: it’s often easy to create a digital ad for individuals seeking a primary care provider in your local hometown, city, or even state. Fine-tuning the target audience for cardiology or cancer care? That ramps up the difficulty significantly because targeting patients with certain conditions is considered a form of discrimination.

Add to this the lack of ability to pry into someone’s personal history (HIPAA laws always come first) and most healthcare facilities are forced to cast a wider net. Insurance network limitations further limit conversions.

As someone marketing in the healthcare industry, you also need to take customer loyalty into consideration. Educated consumers usually seek out the very best care from top providers in well-known facilities. Your digital marketing techniques need to speak to this segment in the right way; they‘re more likely to stay loyal to your brand as long as you provide quality service. This audience segment is also the most willing to wait for an appointment or even drive a bit further than the average patient.

Healthcare Wants and Needs

There’s no doubt about it: patients rate healthcare facilities on everything from the end result of patient care to the quality of customer service. Even hospital accommodations play a role in how patients rate you. Uncomfortable beds? That’ll end up on Yelp. Nurse took too long? Expect a complaint about that, too.

We’re seeing hospitals, for example, remodel themselves so that almost every patient has a private room and isn’t forced to share. Outpatient facilities must be clean, calm and welcoming, with a quiet, comfortable ambiance and plenty of amenities (like coffee, televisions, and other waiting room perks). These benefits might not have anything to do with saving a life, but they still matter to patients.

In digital advertising, success comes from focusing on patient care and what the facility itself offers that puts it a step above the rest. Patients need to see your facility will connect them with the best doctors in the field (needs) while providing access to the most comfortable, high-tech, and spacious facilities (wants) in the area.

Transparency in Operations

Now, here‘s another problematic side of the coin. Healthcare consumers don’t want to scour the web for reviews of healthcare facilities. What they appreciate more than anything is the ability to visit a facility’s website and see ratings on page — even if they aren’t all 5-star comments. Larger hospital systems get their digital teams to either scrape review feeds from other sites; others incorporate honest patient feedback submission options right on-site. Either approach has its own merits.

Consumers also hate having to wait on hold for an hour just to find out they can’t get book an appointment with a specialist or provider in the near future. This is an evolving caveat that isn’t always easy to overcome, but the slow and steady improvement and accessibility of online booking systems can and will reduce this pain point.

Unfortunately, there are concerns with digital booking systems. There’s the risk of intrusion, hijacking, or even hacking attempts. Cost is also a factor; in fact, it’s so impactful that it’s the number one issue holding facilities back from getting on board with digital booking in the first place. As these systems continue to evolve, costs will come down and they’ll better serve both facilities and patients.

Online Reviews

While transparency is an issue for facilities, especially with regard to reviews, managing online reviews has always been challenging. Dozens of websites allow patients and even their families or friends to read and leave reviews — good or bad. It isn’t always possible to identify who saw the patient or even who treated them. In some cases, it may even be impossible to identify who the patient even was.

The dangers associated are clear: you can gain a bad reputation or find yourself in a PR nightmare. Disgruntled consumers may review facilities or individual doctors causing confusion for potential visitors who decide to go elsewhere.

Then there is the issue of diversity in marketing channels. Most facilities are present on multiple platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, business website, app, you name it). Marketers need to monitor, cultivate, and handle all of these facets at once, and that can suck up hours or even days of time every week.

Furthermore, some platforms aren’t facility-operated. Doctors may find themselves reviewed on Healthgrades, Vitals, Yelp, Google, RateMDs, and a myriad of other large and lesser-known sites. So, too, can facilities like hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics. It takes a lot of planning and implementing a strong review monitoring platform to stay on top of and respond to online reviews constructively.

HIPAA Limitations

America passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in 1996. The goal was to protect patients from fraud and abuse, protect the integrity of medicine, and make patient information more accessible to healthcare providers without risking patient privacy. HIPAA is excellent and so incredibly important, but it does make it difficult to segment campaigns targeted toward specific consumer groups. These regulations also make it exceptionally difficult to interact with patients online without doing a frenzied tap dance around the rules.

Take, for example, re-targeting — the practice in which a website owner shows ads to people who have visited their pages at some point in the past. Healthcare providers can’t use re-targeting because it invariably ends up violating privacy laws (usually by targeting a health condition within future advertisements). Instead, healthcare facilities have to rely on unique impressions and repeat ad views.

Money, Money, Money

Let’s face it: one of the biggest digital marketing challenges in healthcare is a lack of funds. Marketing teams and CEOs rely on old-school marketing methods and are reluctant to expand their online advertising strategies. There’s something to be said about not overspending on digital marketing, but to ignore the digital sphere is a big mistake.

Here‘s the thing; digital marketing doesn’t need to be your only form of marketing, nor should it eat up your entire budget, either. Facilities who enter the online sphere carefully and cautiously could see a huge increase in advertising ROI if they were only willing to expand into new markets with safer, more reliable long-term strategies. Brand awareness is just as important as disease or service-specific marketing. The reluctance to invest often leaves the digital marketing team creating online assets and simply putting them out there, hoping for organic traction. The end result is a campaign that just doesn’t convert as well as you might think.

Healthcare is growing in leaps and bounds. As our population ages, new walk-in clinics, offices, and hospital facilities are popping up regularly to serve patients in newer and more reliable ways. Without a strong digital marketing strategy, most facilities just become static in the online “noise” their competitors create. Success comes from sitting down to create a strong plan with specific goals. The biggest hurdle you’ll ever face is convincing doctors and administrative staff to see the bigger picture.

Tags digital marketing, healthcare

Digital Marketing

What is Voice Search and How Can You Take Advantage of It in 2019?

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date January 14, 2019
2 Comments on What is Voice Search and How Can You Take Advantage of It in 2019?

Does voice search feel a little bit strange to you? Unless you’re already deeply involved with big data and search, that’s to be expected. We’re living in an era where people tend to forego answering the phone and favor text messages instead. The idea of using voice feels like taking a step backward. But there’s more to this story, and it’s important that you understand the full picture.

Here’s the thing: technology changes how we communicate. It was the telegraph first, and then the telephone. Then, fax and the Internet, and finally, smartphones and mobile devices. Those evolutions directly influence our interpersonal communication styles over time. And for as much as it seems as if reverting to voice for search is two steps back, there are really compelling reasons to prove it’s actually a step forward instead.

Ultimately, people are always looking for faster and more efficient ways to find information. Text search (especially boolean search) made it instantly easy for people to find information deeply embedded in databases or large text documents even long before the Internet was commonplace in America. But typing takes time, and tiny mobile devices increase the risk for errors – fumble fingers are a real thing.

In this post, we’ll explain the voice search revolution and why it’s changing marketing. Then, we’ll highlight a few ways you can take advantage of it in the coming year.

What is Voice Search?

New technologies focus on speech recognition instead of text typing to allow people to conduct search engine queries and other searches. While this is incredibly popular on mobile devices where people are often looking for ways to remain hands-free, users with the right microphone setup can also use voice search on desktop, too.

As of January 2018, approximately 1 billion Google searches per month were conducted via voice technology, with 40 percent of adults conducting at least one voice search per day. This emerging technology isn’t limited to the internet and your standard cell phone or tablet, either. Alexa and Google Home devices are also voice enabled, with more and more speaker systems hitting the market every month. Comscore estimates that at a minimum of 50 percent of all searches will be conducted via voice by the year 2020.

How Voice Search Will Impact Your Business

So what exactly does this mean for your business? It means you need to keep your finger on the pulse of changing technology so that your marketing strategies continue to appeal to new search methods. Voice search is a completely separate animal, almost unrelated to traditional mobile and PC searches. It is being used completely differently, especially for local content (like business hours or directions).

Is it realistic to try to create some form of your website that can be consumed completely via voice search and audible answer? No, at least not yet. What you can do is make sure the sources Google is most likely to draw information from are completely up to date. This means regular interaction with your Google Business listing, keeping your hours, address information, and other details up to date at all times.

Again, take special note if you have a local business relying on foot traffic. People are using search most to find business hours or, in some cases, to do general searches about the businesses or things available to do in their vicinity. As of right now, the majority of voice searches are rather simplistic, requiring very simple answers. For example, “What is the current temperature?”

Voice Search Optimization

All of that said, it’s time to start thinking about how we can best optimize our websites and other media outlets to cater to those using voice search. You can’t make every single piece of content on your page available to be read by text technology, but you can make sure your pages are optimized with simplistic opening paragraphs and great meta descriptions.

Why these sections? Simple. If a piece of voice technology is using Google to conduct a search, it is likely to read the featured snippet as the answer. If your pages are optimized to show up in this particular section of the search engine results, you are more likely to find your pages are being used to answer voice questions.

Don’t forget, people can still engage in voice searches from their internet browsers, too. They aren’t only searching from third-party devices. This means they are also likely to do a voice search and then look at their screens to make a final choice. Use tools like People Also Ask or Answer the Public to figure out what sort of questions people are asking about your chosen niche.

Google Analytics also now shows which queries ended up on your website originated from a voice search. You’ll be able to use this type of data to determine which of your pages are performing well and which may need to be optimized a bit more to ensure they show up more frequently.

Voice Search Optimization Tips

How can you make sure your pages are optimized for voice? Keep the following in mind as you make changes and updates, especially in the coming months:

Consider your keywords. Your text optimization may include shorter keywords but people are doing voice searches in more complete sentences. The questions are also more specific. Instead of asking for “sports equipment” on the computer, they may specifically ask “Where can I find soccer cleats for children?”
Conversational writing. That said, your intro paragraphs and meta descriptions need to be as conversational in nature as the questions posed to the voice search tools. Use short, clear statements that a lay person can understand. Save the more complicated jargon for the formal body of your text.
Explore the Google App. There are tools you can use to create “actions” that will make it easier for Alexa and the Google Assistant to communicate with your own business app or website. Don’t bother with this if you’re simply doing it because you’re worried about voice search, though. Do it because the actions will be valuable to your readers. The more they’re actually used, the better they’ll serve you.
Update your website. From a technical standpoint, that is. Sites that take forever to load won’t be quick enough to provide results to voice technology. Check the speed of your pages and make sure things are moving as quickly as possible.

Confused about all of this voice search stuff? Take a deep breath and try to remember that this is a growing area of search. You don’t need to know everything right now; you just need to be willing to learn in the near future.

Ultimately, the big take here is really that your website should be optimized for mobile by now. If it isn’t, there’s no time like the present – and it’s easier to factor in voice search if you’re updating than later on down the road.

We’ll be keeping an eye on the voice search trend and will continue to update you as things evolve. In the meantime, take some time to study your site’s analytics, tweak the optimization on a few of your pages, and keep an eye on whether or not your site is showing up in local voice searches. You may be surprised at how much your site is used, even without a click-through.

Need a hand? You can always reach out to us here about consultations. We’d love to help you move into the future ahead of the game!

Tags voice search

Digital Marketing

10 Digital Marketing Myths You Need to Forget

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date January 7, 2019
No Comments on 10 Digital Marketing Myths You Need to Forget

Common digital marketing myths to discard include the notions that email is outdated, social media suits only certain businesses, content must go viral to be effective, and SEO is a one-time task. Other misconceptions include the irrelevance of websites in the social media era, the necessity of a large budget for effective marketing, and the idea that all traffic converts.

The world of digital marketing is vast and, well, a bit confusing if you’re a newcomer or startup. Millions of tools claim they’re just the ticket to help you win subscribers, grow your sales, and boost your strategies, but do they all really do what they claim? Not even close. In fact, some of the information you read on your journey to becoming a guru is questionable as heck — including these myths.

You Need Multiple Martech Tools

Ok, you need marketing technology tools. You need not use dozens to get the job done, at least if you choose the right tool.

According to Forbes, there were over 5,000 Martech tools available to digital marketers in 2017; that number continues to grow. You’re likely spending more time playing with the tools and their functions than you are coming up with a strong digital marketing strategy. The strategy should come first. Only once you’re settled on the strategy should you choose supplemental tech tools.

You Only Need to Be Online if You’re a Big Business

Nope! Digital marketing is for business of all sizes, whether they’re small, large, local, national, or global. A web presence allows for better communication, more opportunity for sale, and a whole new level of insight in analyzing customer buying habits and preferences. Even better? Your internal marketing team can gather and analyze this data without hiring a research firm to help you out.

You Need a Mobile App

Not really. Your customers don’t need you to have one, either. Apps work best when they fulfill actual needs. Can a customer buy and receive a service through your app? Receive 24/7 customer service? Place a fast-food order? Access medical records or other data? If there’s no serviceable value, don’t jump to apps immediately.

Apps are marketing tools, not an extension of your brand. Don’t waste your money developing one unless you are certain you are offering something useful and actionable. Being perceived as bloatware isn’t a good look.

You Need More Website Traffic

Everyone wants more website traffic. In reality, quality over quantity is important in digital marketing. What if you could make more sales with less traffic? It’s possible if you’re narrowing your audiences and targeting the right people. Spend more time reviewing your customer persona and figuring out where your target demographic hangs out online. Targeting your efforts will improve the quality of your leads.

SEO is Insignificant

People have been saying search engine optimization (SEO) doesn’t matter for years, and they have also been incorrect for the same number of years. Or, at least they’re terribly misinformed. SEO may evolve, but it sure as heck isn’t dead!

Are you still using SEO techniques that worked well a couple of years ago? If so, they may not be working as effectively for you. That doesn’t mean SEO is dead. It means your strategy needs an overhaul, which is just part and parcel of being involved in marketing in 2019.

You Have to Redesign Your Website Regularly

Not exactly. Can you design your site and forget about it? No. Can you test your landing pages and layouts to see which are giving you the best results? Absolutely. This doesn’t mean your entire website needs a full makeover every other month. It means you need to make regular updates to images and text while testing minor tweaks here and there.

Maybe the homepage needs a little bit of an uplift. Maybe your internal link structure needs work. And yes, maybe your entire website needs to be re-created, but that’s rarer than just needing a few tweaks here and there.

Bad Reviews Will Crush Your Business

The occasional negative review isn’t going to kill your business. Most people looking at online reviews find businesses with a lot of positive reviews but nothing negative or below five stars to be somewhat questionable. They can also smell irrational negative reviews from a mile away.

What does matter? The way you reply to your reviews. Politely commenting with an invitation to talk or to find out how you can resolve an issue will show you are paying attention and are engaged. Ignoring negative reviews completely will make potential customers wonder if you’re paying attention. Responding emotionally will make you look unprofessional.

But the reviews themselves? They’re not going to hurt you nearly as much as you’ve been led to believe. If you get a bad review, don’t panic. Do your best to resolve it. If you get 20 in a row, something bigger may be wrong.

Mobile Doesn’t Matter

Okay, it’s not that it doesn’t matter. You need to understand what type of conversions happen on mobile. People are more likely to click on a coupon they can show in a store or sign up for information when they’re on a smaller mobile screen. They are slightly less likely to click on a product (or several products), fill out all of their billing and shipping info on a tiny screen, and then enter payment information. You need to know what result to aim for to ensure your mobile port works with your goals.

People Hate Retargeting

Okay, again…this is a more complex truth than just saying people hate retargeting. It’s an undeniably creepy feeling to search for socks on Google and then suddenly see Facebook advertisers want to sell you socks.

The problem is that most people don’t understand retargeting and they don’t like feeling like their right to privacy is being violated. They do respond to this marketing method when marketers use it in the right way. Make sure you are following best practices when retargeting. Cap your impressions, offer an opt-out feature, and make sure your website is user-friendly.

Additionally, consider the message and medium. If someone searches for at-home STI testing on Google, advertising them at-home tests on Facebook via retargeting may be an insensitive choice. The reality is that personal issues like these are often stigmatized, and if they don’t understand that others can’t see the ad, they may feel anxious and unwilling to interact out of fear others will see it like a regular share. Worse yet, they may even report it.

You Don’t Need to Be On Social

Lies – all lies. Mostly. Most brands should be on social media with the exception of sensitive brands and those that are prohibited by law. For example, people who are looking for hemorrhoid cream aren’t talking about it online, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t have a presence. You just won’t get the type of on-site engagement you’d hoped for and will have to be more creative about sending people directly to your website.

You need to be on as many social media platforms as your team can efficiently handle. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram — they’re all major players and you are missing out on huge opportunities for engagement and growth.

That said, no two channels are alike. Your strategies need to be different and should evolve as the platforms change and update.

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make, small or large, is listening to too many digital marketing “gurus.” They end up lost in a sea of misinformation and conflicting opinions — and there sure are a lot of them out there. Choose a couple of strategies to implement and move on to the next as you become more comfortable with how each ebbs and flows.

Tags digital marketing, seo

Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing & Time Management: Staying in Control

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date December 31, 2018
No Comments on Digital Marketing & Time Management: Staying in Control

Staying in control while balancing both digital marketing & time management is a challenge. Effective time management in digital marketing involves prioritizing tasks based on goals, using automation tools for repetitive tasks, and scheduling content in advance. Regularly assessing and adjusting strategies based on analytics saves time. Setting realistic deadlines and breaking projects into smaller tasks helps maintain focus and efficiency, crucial in the fast-paced digital marketing environment.

The world of digital marketing is fast-paced. It’s easy to start your day with a plan and then get lost in a sea of changes, social conversations, and sometimes, even a little drama. Yes, you do need to stay on top of what’s happening in the digital world. But you also need to create boundaries and manage your time so that you can get your work done and move on with your life. No one should be stuck online 24/7 — even digital marketers (especially digital marketers).

If you’ve been struggling under the weight of your campaigns lately, take heart: help is available. Start with these easy de-stress strategies to make the most of your day.

Multi-tasking Isn’t Always Best

We’re sure that’s not what you wanted to hear, especially since so many people who work in the online world are proud of this ability. The harsh reality is that staying focused on a single task is more efficient. With multi-tasking, you may feel like you’re getting several things done at once. The truth is that you will get each one done faster (and at a higher quality, too) if you give each task individual focus.

Be Clear on Deadlines

Don’t let a client or boss give you a project without a clear deadline. Ask for something specific versus a vague time schedule. This will help you to avoid surprises when someone changes their mind about when a project should be finished – or suddenly decides it was due yesterday, leading to chaos. Deadlines also make it easier to organize your more time-sensitive tasks over those you can work on bit-by-bit at a slower pace.

Incorporate Breaks into Your Day

Your body needs breaks and so does your mind. People working in the digital world know their eyes need a break from the screen, too. Make sure you are taking your lunch or dinner break – and no, that doesn’t mean playing solitaire for five minutes. Get up and move away from the computer! Take a walk every hour or so for 10 minutes or do some stretches. Do not spend your day working non-stop. You’ll exhaust yourself and the quality of your work will suffer, which can lead to big losses.

Categorize and Delegate

Believe it or not, you’re probably doing far more work than you should. As a digital marketing manager, you need to categorize your work. Figure out what tasks you can delegate to a virtual assistant (VA) or to a fellow member of your marketing team.

Tasks that you consider urgent either need to get done right away, or they need to receive an immediate time slot on your calendar, so you can finish them faster. Tasks that aren’t as important should either be set off or delegated to another team member. Stop wasting time on tasks that aren’t moving your goals forward!

Pick Up the Phone

Look, it has nothing to do with being an introvert versus an extrovert. Digital marketers can be either, and both are just as good at what they do. It is sometimes far faster and more efficient to pick up the phone and have a quick conversation than it is to play email tag over the course of an entire day.

Need something that isn’t important to your day or that will take time for the other person to put together? Shoot an email. Need a quick piece of information, like the login for your organization’s Facebook Ads account? Pick up the phone and get the answer you need.

Work in Time Blocks

Working in digital marketing means we’re always connected to our phones, email inboxes, and social feeds. These are all important, but they are also distractions. Set aside a 25-30 minute chunk of time where you will stay 100 percent focused on the task at hand. Do not, under any circumstances, check your phone or email during this time. Set a timer and focus on finishing as much of the task as possible during this time slot. Take a break and then start again.

Thinking this sounds like Pomodoro? You’re right! It’s a slightly-modified version of this and other time management strategies. Use the Tomato Timer if needed.

Set Meeting-Free Times

Meetings happen. Long, boring, wasteful meetings happen, too. Make sure you put some time on your calendar, especially on Mondays and Fridays, where meetings cannot be scheduled. Make it clear to your team that meetings can’t be scheduled during these time blocks – and don’t be afraid to tell them why, either. You just might find they’re happy to get on board.

When you do meet, keep it focused, short, and sweet. Thirty minutes is a meeting; four hours is a collaborative work session.

Try to have your meetings in small standing spaces or while taking a short walk outside (this still works if you are a contractor; that’s what headphones are for). If you do need to meet indoors, have an agenda and ensure the session has specific, defined purposes. You do not need a weekly “team meeting” if there is nothing new to discuss. It eats up time and frustrates people.

Password Management Tools

How often do you find yourself digging through emails, looking for your password book, or sorting through Post-It notes searching for a password you need? Those minutes add up. What starts as five minutes per day becomes 25 minutes a week…or nearly two hours each month.

Use a password storage solution like LastPass or 1Password – this will save all your passwords and keep them secure from hackers, too. Apps like these will let you auto-fill any password you need, at the click of a button. Remember to password-protect the app (the only password you’ll need to remember!), so that no one who randomly sits at your computer can access it.

Look for (the Right) Automated Tools

The digital marketing world is inundated with tools…tools for SEO, tools for finding topics, heck there is a tool for just about any task. You can now automate content curation, social media posting, and even PPC management. Tools are fantastic, until setting all those settings becomes a job in and of itself.

So, here’s how to do it right: Before you adopt a new plugin or program, judge it carefully to ensure you don’t sink more time into it than you would by doing the task by yourself. When you do find the right tool(s) for the job, it can significantly cut back on the amount of time you spend on mundane tasks.

Don’t Micromanage Every Task

In the online world, getting the job done is often more important than making sure it’s perfect. Of course, you want to put out the best work possible, but you shouldn’t spend a week having a dozen sets of eyes look over the same work. Trust your content creation teams (or yourself) to come up with the best digital content possible. Have a realistic number of internal checkpoints and then let the work go.

Yes, you will miss the mark from time to time. There will always be someone who thinks an ad or blog could have been written in a different way. Let go and move on.

While the digital world is a busy one, you still have control over your time and how it is spent. The more organized and focused you are, the less time it will take you to do everything that needs to get done. No one likes to work at the computer all day and night. If all else fails, and you’ve cut back as much as you can, yet still need help, it may be time to hire a digital marketing agency to give you a hand. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help – it’s part of running a stable and successful business!

Tags digital marketing, time management

Digital Marketing

How to Use Google Forms to Grow Your Business

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date December 28, 2018
No Comments on How to Use Google Forms to Grow Your Business

In the world of running an online business, you don’t get much more relevant than Google. In fact, most businesses would find themselves completely lost if the company up and disappeared tomorrow. This includes SEO analysts, social media experts, and even web designers.

The simple fact is that nearly all of us rely on Google to help us create websites and distribute effective messages for our audiences.

If you’re in the startup phase, you’re probably trying your best to find ways to minimize costs and access the right functionalities for growth. Today, we’re introducing you to a tool that will help with those and more: Google Forms. Whether you’re setting appointments or channeling workflows, this handy online app can help you get it done — and best of all, it’s free.

What is Google Forms?

Google Forms is a tool that lets you build custom forms which are then hosted on a Google URL page. This is an easy and effective way to collect information of any kind without putting the form itself on your website.

Business owners often use Forms to gather statistical data about customers and clients. It’s also a popular tool for colleges and universities, where teachers use it in classroom projects and experiments. You can even use Forms to collect information from family members or friends when planning a trip.

Forms is comprised of two individual components: a main survey “form” and a synced spreadsheet Google uses to automatically list and format the data you collect. By auto-shifting data out of the form and into a spreadsheet, the risk of clerical errors is reduced. Previously, the only way to transfer answers from survey forms to your final reporting platform was via data export, usually involving human staff at some point.

Google Forms is almost fully automated. Answers automatically transfer to the spreadsheet upon submission. You can even take this a step further and set up email notifications, so you receive an email when new responses roll in. Simple, fast, and intuitive!

Reasons to Use Google Forms

Collecting data from your customers is an absolute must. Without it, you are essentially flying blind when you try to restructure your digital marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Data can be useful for your internal business practices, too. With the right statistical knowledge, it becomes much easier to streamline company workflows and figure out where bottlenecks exist.

Here’s a few of our favorite reasons to use Forms:

Customer Feedback: Whether your customers shop in person or online, their feedback can provide valuable information on improving. Send a link to the survey form to anyone willing to give you an email address during their time with you. Use the data you gather to improve your customer service and sales processes.
Customer Surveys: Not sure if your customer personas are still working? Or if your demographics are shifting? Use surveys to dig deep and find out critical data points: how, when, and where your customers shop or how they feel about your products or services.
Sales Forms: Want to give customers an easier option for setting up sales carts? Maybe you sell wholesale, and using a cart interface doesn’t make sense. Forms are ideal for businesses that create customizable, difficult-to-price packages and lengthy orders with hundreds of items. Make an intake document or checklist with Forms and customize it to collect only the data you need most.
Time-Off Requests: Need a fast and easy way to collect time-off requests without them becoming lost in an endless sea of emails? Have your employees use an internal form to put in their requests for vacation time or paid time off. Include as many or as few fields as possible to get the right information, like dates, employee numbers, or seniority ranking.
Work Requests: Can someone from finance come down with the monthly report? Use Forms to send a work order to the relevant department. Or, streamline workflows by issuing help and support tickets for your IT department the same way.

How to Set Up Google Forms

Setting up your first Google Form takes a bit of time and patience, but it isn’t difficult. The more you use Forms, the easier it becomes to find new and interesting ways to streamline tasks and save time.

Start here:

Log into your Google account and head to https://docs.google.com/forms. Follow the easy instructions to generate a new custom form and automatically create a linked spreadsheet.
(If you already have a spreadsheet, start there instead. Open the spreadsheet and navigate to File >> New >> Form)
Choose a template from the gallery under “Start a new form,” or choose the blank template to work from scratch.
Edit the existing questions in the template or add new sections to create different answers. You can add short answer fields, paragraphs, multiple-choice questions, check-box responses, and drop-down menu options.
Want images or diagrams? Upload them to the form straight from your computer – you can even add in YouTube video links.

The old Google Forms system required you to create your own separate spreadsheet to store your answers. The newest version handles this entire process for you and stores received answers in the “Responses” tab at the top. You can review your answers there, or you also have the option to populate charts and reports to gain a clearer picture.

Want to copy your data and custom-format it into a worksheet? While in the “Responses” tab, click the small Google Sheets icon at the top right corner to pull the information out into a new, ready-to-format spreadsheet. Then, sort and review.

Once you create your Form, you should take a few minutes to review its settings. Use the “Share” button at the top right side of the page to sort out document permissions or send the form and spreadsheet to another administrator. This is where you can copy a link to the form, too.

To control how the public views your Form, go to the Form Sharing Settings by clicking the gear icon. Decide whether you want entrants to log into Google before they complete your form (limiting them to only one response form per person) or if you want to allow multiple entries. Then, choose if you want to limit sharing to ‘within your organization’ or with anyone who the link is shared with/copied to (or has permission to view).

Other Google Products to Consider

Most businesses rely on Google’s products in one way or another. From Drive to Hangouts, Google does a great job of maximizing functionality on its Google Business platform.

Here are a few other options to explore:

Google Drive — Use it to share and store files from anywhere with internet access. Drive is integrated with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps, the company’s alternative to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
Google Voice — This app is ideal for entrepreneurs who need a business line but can’t justify a business telephone account yet. Register for your free U.S. number to make and receive calls.
Google My Business — Use this to control your online Google Business listing. The newest version lets you customize profile information, website info, photos, video, and posts. It also makes it easy to manage reviews.
Google Calendar — Map out your days, weeks, and months so you never lose track. Share it with your colleagues and use it to schedule tasks (for yourself, your employees, etc.). It syncs flawlessly.
Google Hangouts — Chat and message with your team to cut down on email clutter. Great for short n’ sweet conversations!

Google has so much to offer businesses at every level. The Forms app is one tiny facet of a long list of useful integrations, but it’s an incredible place to start. Whether you’re doing market research or trying to nail down demographics for email promos, it can help you improve and smooth out those rough edges. Need more help? At Sachs Marketing Group, we’re always available to give you a hand.

Tags digital marketing, google forms

Digital Marketing

The Essential Elements of a Great Homepage

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date December 21, 2018
2 Comments on The Essential Elements of a Great Homepage

Unless you’re driving paid ad clicks to a specific landing page, your website’s homepage is the first section of the site your visitors will see. It doesn’t matter if your site has dozens of other pages full of great content. How your customer feels when they walk through your virtual front door will create a lasting impression.

So –let’s talk turkey. How does your homepage measure up? Is it welcoming and easy to navigate, or is it lacking? Your homepage isn’t like a landing page; it doesn’t serve a single solitary purpose. Instead, it is both unique and important, serving a variety of roles. It needs to be designed with careful purpose. Evaluate your page to see if it has the following critical elements:

Clean Identity Branding

Your brand identity must be clear and consistent across the board. Don’t put imagery on your website that doesn’t match the logo or brand you’ve shared on a social media platform or advertisement. Your site visitors should never question whether or not they’ve landed on the wrong page because the branding doesn’t match.

There’s no need to get too fancy when it comes to your logo, either. Keep it clean yet creative. Place it near the top, centered or in the popular top-left position. Leave enough white or negative space around the logo to make it stand out. Never add animation to your logo; it creates visual problems for some visitors and won’t load properly if they’re having website connectivity issues.

Readability

Each element of the homepage needs to be designed with readability in mind. There should be plenty of white or empty space, so that your visitors can easily skim the page and find the pieces of information they need. The more you make them dig, the faster they’ll leave.

Fonts and colors are also an important readability consideration. Both impact your readers psychologically, and they can be the difference between someone bouncing away or sticking around to close the sale. Limit your font choices — usually one for the headers and a super-clean font for the main text is enough. Fancy fonts can help boost sales, but only if they’re large enough and easy to read.

Your color choices should be simple and relatively neutral. Harsh color mixtures are difficult to look at and can send mixed messages to consumers. Limit bold colors to one or two. Again, homepage design isn’t the time to develop a fear of white space.

Related Imagery

People love visuals, but the photos you choose for your homepage need to make sense. There are very few instances where stock images send the right message for a homepage. Everything your potential customer sees should speak to your overall brand and vision. Use photos of your actual products, location, and staff. The homepage is a great place to include video, too.

Simple Navigation

We can’t stress this enough: your site needs to be easy to navigate. No one wants to waste time searching for your toolbar or hidden menus. Make your menu titles intuitive and straightforward, whether they’ve dealt with your industry in the past or not. You can include other links in different places, but make sure that main menu bar at the top is crisp and resourceful.

Clear Blog Integration

Don’t hide your blog. You spend a lot of time creating high-quality content with valuable information. Avoid limiting your blog’s exposure to a link in the drop-down menu. Install a tool or plugin that showcases at least a few of your blog’s posts right on the homepage. The brief description and appealing related visuals will entice visitors and keep them on your site longer. Your blog aids in building brand trust, authority and awareness. Put it to work.

Contact Information

There is nothing worse than digging for a site’s contact information only to be forced to a contact page that lacks an address, phone number or email address. We’re not saying you should skip the contact page altogether — you shouldn’t. We are saying you need to put your address, phone number and/or email somewhere on the page, even if it’s in the footer. Make yourself accessible to those who want to reach out; don’t make them feel like you’re hiding behind your website.

Social Media Links and Integration

Do you have profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social channels? Make sure you’ve included icons, so your new fans can quickly and easily find and follow you on their platform of choice. This helps you keep in touch with current and potential customers. Social links should be noticeable and prominent. Many sites put them in the footer, but they should be near the top of the page as well. Don’t just write out the platform names, either. Use the popular and familiar icons that your visitors will visually recognize.

Social integration tools are an effective method for encouraging better communication and deeper organic relationships with consumers. Make it easy for people to share your content on their social media pages by having a plugin that allows them to repost your content with a simple button click. They’re doing you a favor by sharing your content, so don’t make them work too hard to do it.

Testimonials

A lot of companies have separate pages for testimonials, but again, they’re hidden. Research proves that up to 79 percent of consumers will make buying decisions based on reviews and testimonials. There are plenty of simple tools you can use to showcase some of your best – right on the homepage – while at the same time directing them to the full page.

Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression. Your homepage should have a clear call-to-action, showcase your achievements, and offer an overview of your products or services. Like we said before, this one lonely page has a lot of responsibility. You can’t set it and forget it. Giving your homepage regular attention will ensure it’s the shining star at the top of your company’s online presence.

Tags brand identity, homepage, website

Digital Marketing

Omnichannel vs. Multichannel Marketing: What’s the Difference?

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date December 17, 2018
No Comments on Omnichannel vs. Multichannel Marketing: What’s the Difference?

What is omnichannel vs. multichannel marketing? Omnichannel marketing offers a seamless customer experience across all channels, integrating interactions from online to offline. Multichannel marketing, in contrast, uses multiple channels for outreach but operates them independently, without integration. Omnichannel focuses on a cohesive, consistent user experience, whereas multichannel prioritizes presence across various platforms without necessarily linking the experiences.

The New Year is right around the corner. Hopefully, you’ve already mapped out your 2019 marketing plan, but if you haven’t, there’s no time like the present. Either way, we have an important question: will you take an omnichannel or multichannel approach?

Say what?

No, it’s not a trick question – it’s really important, but far too few marketers ever consider it on a yearly basis as they grow. Are you sending a consistent message to your customers, no matter what platforms they’re watching you on? Or are you planning separate messages and strategies for each platform, creating confusion? Let’s figure it out together in this omnichannel vs. multichannel primer.

What is Multichannel Marketing?

Multichannel marketing is the process of using a wide variety of marketing platforms to get a message out to a customer. These may include the company website, print ads, television ads, social media channels, and even email. The goal isn’t as much about building client relationships as it is about casting a wide net and gaining the attention of as many people as humanly possible.

Companies that use multichannel marketing techniques are doing their best to cater to the idea that their customers have a ton of choices when it comes to consuming information. Yes, they still see television commercials and hear radio ads, but now they’re exposed to new media channels, too. Brands need to figure out how to cater to the people who prefer older marketing styles, as well as others caught up in today’s fast-moving social world.

Now, here’s the drawback: companies focusing on multi-channel marketing often place more emphasis on ensuring multichannel messaging exists than they do on the customer experience. The messages may each ultimately direct a potential customer to the same place, but they’re so different in terms of content that they leave customers who are exposed to multiple platforms feeling a bit confused about the conflicting messages they’re seeing. That’s where omnichannel concepts step in.

What is Omnichannel Marketing?

Omnichannel marketing doesn’t disregard the idea that different customer demographics exist on different platforms. As a concept, its marketing plans are personalized to the platforms but also cater to each unique audience. Customers who view branded content on different platforms perceive omnichannel marketing attempts as a continuation of content, versus something totally different.

It may be surprising, but contrary to popular belief, omnichannel marketing doesn’t aim to cast a wide net. Instead, marketers are challenged to put themselves in consumer’s shoes when they decide how to create a consistent experience. Yes, the end goal is still making a sale (that’s the basis of marketing). But the message the customer sees as they move from an email to a social platform, and then to the website, builds upon the same message and the same core concepts. Each step in the process adds a unique piece of information, but it’s all geared towards marketing the same goal or service. Each piece of the puzzle complements the rest.

Which is Really Better?

If we had to choose, we’d say omnichannel marketing is the way to go. That said, omnichannel and multichannel marketing can (and should) be used together. Think of omnichannel marketing as a method of elevating the multichannel approach from an impersonal strategy to an interpersonal relationship with the customer. Multichannel marketing is a technique; omnichannel marketing is a strategy.

As an example, let’s look at consistency and engagement. The omnichannel approach towards engagement with customers makes them feel heard, appreciated, and understood. The multichannel approach of consistency in posting gives customers a platform for that engagement to take place. The trick is to make sure the marketing team is sending the same message to all platforms so that the PR or social media teams are all on the same page when they’re crafting replies.

Omnichannel marketing strategies incorporate multichannel principles, but they’re often research-driven. Marketers tend to spend more time testing their ads and ordering options, especially across different channels, to make sure customers have seamless experiences. This means their internal and external testers are placing website orders and Facebook platform orders to ensure they’re easy to follow through with from beginning to end. Their goal? To create a process and flow that’s easy to follow.

Omnichannel marketing data and research is also very different from multichannel research. Yes, it’s still important to measure how well each campaign did as a whole. It’s also important to take a close look at how the customers themselves reacted. Did they purchase more in the store or on the web? Were the messages relevant and targeted properly? How can you better segment your audiences in the future while still sending a consistent overall message?

Brands utilizing omnichannel strategies are more conscious of how people use multiple platforms. For example, you might visit a brand’s website on your mobile phone and place an item in your cart. You get distracted or haven’t made up your mind, so you navigate away. Later, you visit that same brand’s website from your desktop computer, but you don’t touch the cart or make a purchase.

Two days later, you get an email with an urgent subject line letting you know the item you were eyeballing is selling out quickly. Being conscious of the platform and device changes along the way allowed the brand to better monitor your shopping habits and create a sense of urgency to nudge your purchase along.

Summing it Up

To sum it up, multichannel strategies aren’t always omnichannel, but all omnichannel strategies are multichannel. The difference is that omnichannel approaches are customer-oriented, taking special care to understand their habits, wants, and needs.

Brands incorporating omnichannel strategies tend to be more receptive and excel at making sure all their marketing platforms are sending the same message, loud and clear. They bend over backwards to make sure the customer experience is almost effortless, and it shows in their sales.

A strong omnichannel approach starts with the product and includes the marketing team, sales department, client service group, and customer success and retention teams. Ensuring everyone is on the same page strengthens your brand and, in turn, increases your bottom line. Remember – always put the customer first. Doing so will ensure the rest falls into place.

Tags digital marketing, multichannel marketing, omnichannel marketing

Digital Marketing

Responsive Web Design: 7 Tips for Launching a New Website

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date December 10, 2018
2 Comments on Responsive Web Design: 7 Tips for Launching a New Website

Designing a new website? Maybe you’re a brand-new startup creating a platform for your business for the very first time. No matter what you do, you need to make sure your design is responsive and adaptable to the many mobile devices modern visitors use when they land on your website. It’s just a part of becoming welcoming!

Having a “fixed” design (these are the designs formerly used when designing for a mostly desktop-centric viewing experience) is fine – but only for people on desktops. It does allow for a ton of space, fancy formatting, and columns.

So, what’s the problem?

Attempting to view that type of design on a mobile device makes your pages look small, distorted, and difficult to read. Everything becomes so large or confusing to navigate that it feels a bit like wandering through an awful maze, leading mobile users to move on without giving your site a second glance.

Traditional caveats of responsive web design claim it’s too limiting, but “responsive” doesn’t need to equal “terrible and boring.” It simply means your site needs to be coded in a way that automatically forces it to load with a different layout on a mobile phone or tablet. Use these best-practices to ensure you get it right.

Avoid Separate Site Versions

Some older schools of thought had website developers creating one URL for desktop users and a separate URL (like m.yourwebsiteurl.com) for mobile versions. There are two main problems with this solution:

Old-school mobile site versions still mostly only cater to one sort of mobile layout, meaning a site that looks great on Android may look awful on iPhone.
Separate URLs, even as subdomains, present SEO issues. You will technically have to create two separate SEO strategies to get the desktop and mobile versions of your site to rank properly. That’s a lot of unnecessary work.

So, with that in mind, let’s tuck into a few more ways to get responsive right.

Responsive Theme Sizes

Your responsive website theme should have three core layout sizes:

Small (under 600px) for phones
Medium (from 600-900 pixels) for tablets or bigger phones
Large (over 900 pixels) for computers.

You can include a lot of the same visual elements on each theme size, but they need to be adjustable in terms of how they’ll show in each layout for ease of navigation.

Mobile users make up more than 50 percent of all visitors for the vast majority of websites on the Internet. A mobile-friendly design translates out well to a desktop or personal computer, while a larger design will not always look right when made smaller. Keep the mobile user in mind first throughout the design process to ensure you strike the right balance for just about anyone.

Make Navigation Visible

Make it easy for your mobile viewers to navigate your website. If you don’t, you risk them wandering off to your competition instead. Any navigation menus need to be simple, easy to follow, and easy to find, too.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t have a drop down menu, but if you do, it needs to be very visible and easy to find. Consider putting your top four or five main links in a more visible location so they are easy to see and find as well. This not only makes your mobile site easier to navigate, but also gives you a little more control when it comes to directing traffic to the deeper pages you want them to see.

Graphics and Speed

Graphics and banners look great on laptop and desktop devices, but they can take up too much screen space and slow loading speeds on a mobile device. Keep the graphics on your site’s mobile designs small and simple. Make sure the sizes are condensed so they are as small as possible to increase loading speed.

Performance goals come into play here, too. Set a minimum/maximum standard for the size of each of your pages. Consider those guidelines whenever you feel you need to add new content or additional elements. Will adding something new put you over your maximum budget? If so, you need to reconsider the design or figure out what other element needs to be removed. This will ensure you are always within a size range that keeps your site operating quickly and efficiently.

Keep Touch Screens in Mind

Site visitors who land on your site from a computer are using a mouse to navigate your pages. This means they have a small arrow they can use to pinpoint small links, even if multiple buttons or links are close together. Users on mobile devices are often using touch screens, which means they’re using a large finger to hit a comparably tiny button on a small screen.

Your site’s design needs to consider ease of navigation for those who are touching instead of simply clicking. Why? Because trying to hit a 5-pixel-square button with a 45-pixel fingertip is a bit maddening (not to mention prone to errors). Keep your touch targets large and well-separated to reduce annoyances like these.

Don’t Forget to Test

Your website will look different on a computer, iPad, iPhone, Android based phone or tablet, or any other mobile device. You must test, retest, split test, and test again until you ensure that all views work; don’t just test the view on desktop and call it a day. Oh, and just looking on your own phone won’t cut it, either.

All of this said, you don’t need to invest in a ton of new devices for proper testing. Find a testing tool that gives you the ability to view your responsive website in a variety of formats. Use it to ensure it is user-friendly across the board.

Your Hosting Provider Matters

Have you modified your page elements, compressed your images, and done everything else you could think of to make your pages move faster across all platforms…yet, you’re still struggling with the slowest website online?

It may be time to consider whether or not your hosting provider is the problem.

Providers often sell low-grade hosting packages from shared servers. These packages force share all resources from the same server across multiple clients (with protections in place to prevent cross-access of data). That’s a great way to keep hosting affordable, but a terrible way to set yourself up with enough resources to support growth over time. Eventually, your site (and other sites) demands too many resources at once, leading to chronic slowdowns or even downtime.

Hosts sell package options for a reason. They want to get you to pay for faster speeds and loading times – it’s better for them, and eventually, better for you, too.

If you’ve tried everything else, take a look at whether or not upgrading your hosting package is a viable solution. If not, you may want to start looking at other hosting platforms. Who knows, maybe you’ve grown to the point where your IT team needs to get you set up on your own server.

Responsive web design is no longer optional. A website that is not responsive to mobile users is not considered user-friendly and offers your visitors a poor experience. Worse yet, Google will penalize you in the search results if it feels your site isn’t mobile-friendly and isn’t measuring up. Make sure you are checking your site regularly to ensure it functions well across all devices. Your bottom line will thank you!

Tags mobile design, mobile responsive, web design

Digital Marketing

8 Tips for Interactive Infographics

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date November 23, 2018
4 Comments on 8 Tips for Interactive Infographics

Last July I wrote a post dedicated to the various types of interactive content. Interactive infographics got a brief mention in that post. I decided to come back and add a bit more detail about how you can be successful in creating your own interactive infographics. It’s a type of content that’s not as widely seen as the standard blog post or video, but can still be highly valuable in nearly any niche.

So, if you’re ready to build an interactive infographic for your business, let’s dive into some tips that will ensure you (and your audience) will have a good experience.

Think About Where the Content Will Be Hosted

Before you start developing the content, think about where it will be when it’s completed. Most of the time, the content will be either embedded in a blog post or another piece of content, or placed on its own microsite.

If you’ve already got a website or blog that gets a lot of traffic, it’s a good idea to embed it in content there. This helps you get more eyes on your content and may even contribute to a boost in traffic to your website through infographic promotion efforts.

But if you want the infographic to stand out on its own, you may want to consider creating a dedicated microsite for it. This is a good option if you’re not happy with your current website, and want to give a fresh face to your content. You can use it as an entrance to your existing website, to give you a better first impression.

You have limitless options because you have total control over the browser window and the web technology you use, but if you embed the content on your existing website, you’re limited to whatever predefined standards are already in place there.

Start with Meaningful Data

Whether you’re creating an interactive or standard infographic, it can only be as good as the topic and data you find. You must research and select the information before you can work on any design elements. Carefully choose your sources and get as much relevant information as you possibly can.

As you’re researching, think about the topic of the infographic, and what you way to communicate to your audience with it. Focus on the main points you want to get across, and find data that supports those main points.

If you don’t focus on those areas, you’ll just get lost spending hours finding data and trying to find a way to include all of it. Every piece of information available on a particular topic does not belong in a single infographic… so keep yourself on track.

Tell the Readers a Story

Once you’ve fathered all the data you need, it’s time to figure out the story you want to tell your readers. Think about the purpose of the infographic. Do you want to promote a product or service? Are you trying to inform and educate the audience to get them to take some sort of action on an issue?

Without the story, you have nothing more than dull and boring data – which is all it was before you started to compile it. Yes, an infographic can take dull and boring data and turn into something readers want to read and share, but it needs the story angle alongside great design to do it.

Consider how you’re going to tell the story and deliver the message. Think about the logical flow of a story, and how you can transform the data you have into a flowing story of its own.

Let the Audience Inform the Appearance and Interactivity

Once you’ve gathered the data and have figured out the story you want to tell and how you’re going to tell it, it’s time to focus on the visual appeal of all the information. Think about the infographic’s overall look and feel. Consider the audience, too.

For instance, if you’re creating an interactive infographic related to a product launch, it should share many of the same elements as the company branding. Knowing who the target audience for the infographic is will also help you decide the style and tone you want to use throughout. If you’re targeting young professionals, create something based on their character and style. If you’re targeting teenagers on the other hand, the content needs to be shorter, and the design more vibrant. If you’re designing for middle-aged people, choose design and functionality features that mimic how they behave on the internet.

Hide Some Information

One way to get users actively participating with the infographic experience is to hide some information that becomes viewable with clicks or rollovers. This promotes curiosity and exploration, but also allows users to skip over the information or topics they don’t find interesting. This creates a unique and personalized experience for the viewer, without suggesting that they don’t need to continue with the rest if the infographic.

Add Scrolling or Pagination

Adding scrolling or pagination will add a bit of required interactivity from your viewers. It typically will trigger some kind of transition or animation, while also enticing users to finish what they’ve started. (It’s the same reason we feel the need to keep turning the lever on a jack in the box toy. We must get to the end.)

This technique also draws your viewers into the story so they feel more engaging without overtaxing their interest limits. You can use scrolling with simple narratives, so that while the content itself is fairly basic, adding scrolling improves the overall communication.

Using a multi-page approach allows users to click through content, rather than scroll. They can click through the content at their own pace, so they can take all the time they need to digest each piece of information before moving to the next.

Proofread, Edit, and Test

At this point, you have a finished infographic design, and you’re ready to share it all over the web. Resist the urge to start promotion just yet. Just one careless mistake can take a great piece of content and turn it into an annoyance for your audience.

Leave the infographic alone for a few days and come back to look at it with fresh eyes. If you can’t wait a few days, ask a trusted friend or colleague who is great at spotting typos to take a look at it for you. Since we know what we meant, it’s harder for us to see the simple typos, so we can look right at one and still be blind to it.

And since this is an interactive infographic rather than static, you will want to take time to test the infographic for bugs. Test it on a number of devices, paying attention to not only functionality but speed as well. If something doesn’t work correctly once it gets to the final audience, it’s going to give them a bad impression.

Promote, Promote, Promote

When everyone who has stake in the infographic is pleased with it, it’s time to make it public. Host it based on how you chose to handle that in the first step – either embedded in a blog post, or on its own domain as a microsite.

Then, get ready to promote the heck out of it. Find influencial bloggers and news sites in the relevant niche, and connect with them. Send them high quality visuals and a summary of the piece to make it easier for them to craft a blog post to share the infographic.

Post the infographic to social media websites such as Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook with relevant hashtags. Consider using social media and other pay per click ads to drive traffic to the infographic.

Submit the infographic to relevant directories, send it out in an email blast to subscribers, and so on.

Get Creative

Not all topics that make for great infographics make for great interactive infographics. It’s important to think about the overall finished product as you build it. If you’re having to force interactivity to make it work, then it’s better suited as a static infographic. Static infographics can still be great for your content marketing efforts, too.

Do you use interactive infographics in your content strategy? Why or why not? Share your thoughts below.

Tags interactive infographics

Digital Marketing

Best Practices for Requesting Reviews from Customers

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date November 21, 2018
No Comments on Best Practices for Requesting Reviews from Customers

Customer reviews matter.

Okay, that’s kind of the understatement of the century, but we think it bears repeating because reviews can be such powerful social proof.

Sure, bad reviews are an important form of feedback…they (hopefully) teach us where we’re going wrong so we can improve. But ultimately, everyone wants positive feedback because it usually highlights your best qualities. It’s also far more powerful in terms of helping consumers decide to actually close the sale.

But too many bad reviews? That’s never a good thing. And it can be a natural result of annoying customers with requests for reviews when they don’t want to give one (for example, when you’ve just ticked them off). It’s important to follow best practices to avoid snafus like these while maximizing on your opportunities to build social proof.

The good news? That’s something we can help with!

Why Reviews Matter

Before we dig further into how to ask for reviews, let’s take a closer look at why reviews matter. According to Mintel, seven out of every 10 consumers will look online for the opinions of other consumers before they commit to making a purchase. Most of the people looking for opinions will go to social media platforms and independent review sites for (what they feel) are unbiased opinions.

Of course, “unbiased” isn’t always true…but that’s how people perceive it, and so for better or worse, that’s what we’re workin’ with.

Some consumers have already made a choice and are looking to validate it before making a purchase. Others are using reviews as a part of the decision making process. Either way, seeking out reviews can help you move them along the sales funnel if you do it in the right way (and they see them at the right time).

Negative reviews aren’t necessarily the end of your business. Everyone gets one from time to time. You may have a legitimate customer service issue (which you’ll resolve), or a customer may have a perception of what their experience should have been. Some reviews will be logical…others will leave even those who read them scratching their heads in confusion.

The upside is that people really do realize that people are more prone to leaving reviews when they are angry or upset about something. They will weigh the pros and cons of what they are seeing, especially if a page is populated with good reviews to balance it out.

Here’s some quick statistics. While 87 percent of customers claim they won’t buy from a business with a low rating, that also means they’re willing to overlook some negativity if the majority of the reviews are positive.

Understanding Review Platform Guidelines

Every review platform has different guidelines, so dig into the terms of service for each one you are focused on before you go and ask your clients to leave reviews. The most notable term is that you should never, ever ask a client for a review in a way that directly or indirectly insinuates that they have to leave you a five-star review. You can ask for the review; you can’t ask for what it contains.

Avoid the Happy-Only Policy

Another important thing to remember is that Google and other platforms don’t really like it when you solicit reviews only from people who are happy. No one is going to make a list of customers and purposely invite those who were not happy, but they don’t exactly want you to cherry-pick your reviewers, either. Your best bet is to put up a sign in your office asking people to leave reviews.

Avoid In-Office Reviews

Never put a kiosk in your office for reviews. You can use a tablet or something in your office to give your customers a place to opt-in to your review list or leave their email address, but you can’t ask them to leave the review from a device in your office put there for that purpose. The review platforms will recognize all of the reviews coming from the same IP address and will know you’re asking people to leave them while they’re still in your location. This is against TOS for just about every platform.

Be Cautious With Incentives

One common tactic for requesting reviews is to offer an incentive. A lot of review platforms are adding terms disallowing this, too; hey don’t want you to offer a discounted service or a gift card in exchange for a review because they feel as though such an offer will be abused. And unfortunately, they’re probably right. Plenty of businesses use fake paid reviews to boost stats. That’s cheating.

If you want to offer incentives, try entries into a sweepstakes, a discount on services, or some other less-specific form of monetary gain. By stripping out the direct benefit, you give customers a voice, show them you’re thankful, but remove the potential for abuse.

A Word About Yelp

Finally, a note about Yelp. This site uses its own algorithm and, while no one really understands it, we do know that Yelp prefers reviews from active members of its own community. A sudden onslaught of reviews from an email you send will end up being flagged and thrown into the “not recommended” category, which falls into an accordian-style hidden zone at the bottom of the page.

Yelp also doesn’t show reviews from people who appear to have created a profile just to leave a review — good or bad. And that’s bad news for your customers, who just wanted to do the right thing and are now being told their review may be fake.

Ultimately, Yelp probably isn’t even worth considering for these reasons. Keep an eye on it and address any issues that come up, but don’t bother targeting it. There are much better options – like Facebook, and the new Google My Business.

Asking for Reviews

Ok, so back to asking for reviews. That’s the key right there — asking. Here are some things to keep in mind as you build your own review acquisition strategy:

Ask for the review as soon as possible after an interaction. Ask them at check-out, hand them a business card with a link, or send a follow-up email. Don’t wait weeks or months.
Make sure you have permission to send an email. A great way to do this is by asking them to put their name and email address on a list.
Consider using an automated reputation management system. You can set up an email template, upload email addresses and names, and even have it automatically send out follow-up requests. This will save you time in the office and will ensure no one is missed when it comes time to follow up.
Make it easy for your customers to leave a review. Offer them Google and at least one other option so they have the choice to use what feels right for them.
Google reviews require a Google account to log-in. There are some platforms that allow anonymous reviews. A person may not have a Google account, but may have a Facebook account. The more options you offer, the more likely you will be to actually get a review.

Every review you receive is an opportunity. If they’re negative, you’ll have a chance to make a correction and possibly a change to the original review. If they’re positive, you’ll have more fuel you can use to promote your business online and offline, whether on your website, in your store, or in print.

As for those negative reviews? They’ll stress you out, but the more positive reviews you attract, the less they’ll matter. Create a steady process for requesting reviews on a regular basis and you’ll definitely see your online ratings grow consistently over time.

Digital Marketing

GDPR Compliance for WordPress Users

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date November 9, 2018
2 Comments on GDPR Compliance for WordPress Users

Getting flooded with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) emails from every service you’ve ever signed up with? There’s a good reason you’re receiving all those notifications. Businesses all over the world had until May 25, 2018, to put GDPR relatulations into place for European Union (EU) customers and visitors.

If you’re just hearing about this now, or you’ve been putting it off in hopes of handling the issue later on, time has run out. It’s now past the deadline, and that means you could be held responsible or even sued if you aren’t compliant.

Of course, that doesn’t mean everything is about to implode under your feet, so don’t panic. If you’re a WordPress user, it’s easier than ever to manage compliance with brand-new plugins that take the pain out of GDPR. But it’s still important to know what you’re facing, including how the GDPR might impact your business.

We’ll start with the basics, then reveal how you can take action with three of the easiest and most adaptable plugins available right now.

What Is The GDPR?

Before you start trying to figure out what to do about the GDPR, you need to know what it is, how it works, and why it exists. The GDPR is a set of regulations set up by the EU to give citizens more control over how their personal data is stored and used. The regulation was initiated in response to abuse of power and breaches at the hands of various companies, like Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, who used information carelessly or maliciously.

The GDPR itself is quite extensive (too extensive to cover here in full), but it can be summarized quite simply by focusing on its demands. The regulation states that you must let people know what happens when they subscribe to opt-in lists. If you use cookies on your website, you need to let them know that you plan to store their information in a cookie. You also have the responsibility to allow people to remove, delete, or limit their data upon request – and you need to be able to prove that’s exactly what you’re doing if someone complains.

Does it Affect You?

Maybe. If you target people in the EU, or are based in the EU yourself, your business is definitely affected by the GDPR. The same is true if you live outside the EU, but serve an EU market in any facet of your business.

Living outside the EU? If you don’t target the EU, you aren’t required to follow the GDPR at all and can essentially ignore it – maybe. (Thought you were scot-free? Not quite.)

Here’s the catch: let’s say you’re attracting people from the EU, even if it’s unintentional and you’re located in the USA. You still have to follow all regulations, even though you don’t intend to serve EU visitors in the first place, and even if they stumble upon you by happenstance.

If you aren’t located in or targeting the EU, and you have no intentions of targeting the EU in the future, the best thing you can do is use region blocking to prevent EU citizens from accessing your content. This may seem draconian, and honestly, it probably isn’t the right choice for most businesses.

Website Changes

The biggest impacts to website content due to the GDPR are the need for robust disclosure in both your Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. If your either are full of legalese, pr are just a cookie cutter template taken from some other site, you need to change them so they are easier to understand. Visitors must be able to get to these pages quickly and easily; then, they need to be able to ascertain your intent very quickly.

Privacy Policies

Your Privacy Policy should contain a GDPR disclosure, including how you access, collect, and store data, and how people can limit, delete, or request changes to their data. This includes cookies and other on-site information. Follow this guide to ensure you hit all of the most critical points with your new policy.

Email Marketing and Mailouts

With regard to non-website content, including email marketing lists and subscriptions, you will need to enact a few changes here, too. First, do away with soft opt-ins; they’re no longer allowed, full stop. Instead, you need to use only hard opt-ins with what the EU refers to as “freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous consent.” In short, be clear and honest about what they’re signing up for, what they’re getting, and how they can opt out if preferred.

Data Storage and Management

On your end, you must maintain a database of consent at all times. This should include a name, an email address, and some measure of indication that the subscriber consents; many businesses are using checkboxes or “YES” textboxes to confirm.

Lastly, you need to make it clear and easy to remove data, request deletion, or retract permissions at any time. This goes beyond unsubscribing and includes confirmation that the individual’s information has been removed – permanently.

The WordPress Plugins

Next, let’s talk about how to get your WordPress-based site up and running with GDPR compliance without extensive manual changes. Here is the good news: many developers updated their plugins for GDPR compliance; some even made new plugins to help you achieve compliance without extensive edits. Use these three examples to get your site compliant in just a few short minutes with very little effort.

IP GEO Block

Not interested in serving the EU, and don’t want to put effort into worst-case protections? Use IP GEO Block and prevent European Union customers from accessing your WordPress website in the first place. IP GEO Block lets you selectively block IPs from specific countries (not just the EU), putting the power of precaution into your hands while also helping you improve market targeting at the same time.

GEO Block is also really useful for developers and webmasters who need more time to achieve compliance. Use it temporarily to prevent a potential issue while you make changes, or set it up permanently to re-route that traffic to a second WordPress site instead.

IP Geo Block also blocks spammers from high-risk areas, malicious attacks, and intrusion attempts, making it useful even after you no longer need to block EU access.

WP GDPR Compliance

WP GDPR Compliance gives you the power to review your website for compliance issues in seconds with the click of a button. It is an incredibly handy tool for developers who are currently in the process of updating to become compliant as well as those who prefer to err on the site of caution with oversight.

This plugin works on basic WordPress websites and integrates with most well-known webshops, including WooCommerce. It also works flawlessly alongside Gravity Forms and Contact Form 7, making it easier to set up consent forms and signups. Best of all, it gives you handy suggestions for potential issues, all from within the back end.

GDPR

GDPR by Trew Knowledge was created to “assist a Controller, Data Processor , and Data Protection Officer (DPO).” It’s a higher-level functioning GDPR plugin that best serves the needs of large-scale businesses, corporations, and sprawling WordPress networks.

“GDPR” is one of the most feature-rich WordPress plugins available to date; it is absolutely packed with functionality. Just look at these options:

Manage consent
Privacy Preferences
Banner and UI Notifications
Privacy Policy Configuration
Version Control for Privacy Pages
Re-Consent Management and Acquisition
Double Opt-In Confirmation Email Mailouts
Erasure and Deletion of Data Request Management
Effective Management and Publishing of DPO Contact Info
Full Data Encryption for User Data and Consent Information
Data Portability and Exporting Management (including JSON and XML)
Two-Factor Decryption with Secret Token Access for Better Security
Data Breach Monitoring and Instant Notification of Access
Batch Email Mailout Options for Data Breach Announcements

Add to this telemetry trackers, tools that prevent visitors from using workarounds like adblockers to skip compliance agreement, and a long list of other options. Best of all, it’s easy to use, easy to install, and easy to manage, even if you’re not a WordPress whiz.

Tags gdpr compliance

Digital Marketing

Using Power Editor for Facebook Ads

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date October 19, 2018
5 Comments on Using Power Editor for Facebook Ads

Power Editor is a Facebook advertising tool designed specifically for large advertisers who need to create, edit, and publish several ads at once, while still maintaining precision control over each of their campaign.

Though a Power Editor account is a bit more complex than the standard Facebook Ads Manager, the main advantage is that new ad formats come to Power Editor before being released to the Facebook Ads Manager – so if you want to be the first to get in on new features, you should rely on Power Editor. Some features within the Power Editor may never actually be released to the standard Ads Manager.

Instagram Ads, behavior and device targeting, and video ads were once only available via Power Editor – though they are now available in the Ads Manager. As of May 2017, Lead Ads, Canvas Ads and Dark Posts are in testing phases and only available to advertisers who are using Power Editor.

Step One: Install Power Editor

Power Editor will only work if you are using the Google Chrome browser. Open the browser on your computer. Go to Ads Manager.

Click Power Editor on the left side of the screen. Install the Power Editor and open it.

Click “Download to Power Editor” at the top. You’ll be able to download all of your Facebook Ad accounts, or just certain ones.

Step Two: Learn to Navigate Power Editor

The Power Editor works much like the Ads Manager in that you set up campaigns, then ad sets within the campaigns, and ads within the ad sets. While the structure doesn’t matter much within Ads Manager, it is really important in Power Editor. That’s why you must know how to navigate Power Editor before you start to manage multiple Facebook Ad accounts with it.

Use filters to sort by campaign, ad set, and more. There’s a search bar on the left side to search for things by name.

Change between ad sets, ads, and campaign views by using the headers at the top. While in the Ads or Ad Sets view, adjust the data presented in the columns by clicking on “List Settings” in the top right. You can choose to add more columns or to remove columns based on the data you need at the time.

Step Three: Set Campaign Objective

Create your new campaign by going to the Power Editor and choosing Campaigns. Click “Create Campaign” and fill in the details including name, buying time, and objective. You should create separate campaigns for each objective.

Step Four: Create Ad Set

Create ad sets within each of your campaigns. Organize your ad sets by audience. Set their budget and schedule. Ad sets will contain at least one ad.

You’ll define the targeting, budget, schedule, bidding, and placement at this level. You should have a different ad set for each audience. This ensures your ad sets won’t be competing against each other.

From within the Power Editor, click “Ad Sets” view at the top. Click “Create Ad Set.” Choose the campaign you want to assign the ad set to. You can choose an existing campaign, or create a new one.

Enter a name for the ad set and click Create. Choose either a daily or lifetime budget for the ad set.

Choose the start and end dates to allow Facebook to optimize it within those dates.

Step Five: Create Ad

Here is where you build the creatives for the ad set. Creating multiple ads within a single ad set can help you test which ones your audience responds to the best. You can create variations with images, video, and text, or links. You are limited to 50 ads per set, though any deleted ads will not count toward this total.

Check your performance often so you can turn off the poorly performing ads and reallocate your budget.

Click the Ads button at the top of Power Editor. Click “Create New Ad.”

Choose the existing campaign and ad set you created.

Enter a name for your ad and click Create.

From here, you can enter the information about your creative and choose your audience accordingly.

Power Editor vs. Facebook Ad Manager

With Power Editor, you can manage multiple ads at one time. You can create, duplicate, and edit multiple ads in your account. You can import ads with Excel. All you have to do is download an import template from Power Editor to Excel, then fill in the information, and import it into Power Editor. You can also use search functions and apply filters to find the specific campaigns, ad sets, or ads in Power Editor.

You can manage ads and Page posts in bulk, and save time by mass-editing ads and Page posts across ad sets, campaigns, and more.

Tip: You can click the “Duplicate” Button at the top regardless of which view you’re in to copy and modify a new campaign, ad set, or ad. You can also select multiple rows to apply the same edits across all rows within any of the views.

In September 2017, Facebook decided to combine Ads Manager with Power Editor into a single platform known as “Ads Manager” so it is easier for everyone to create and manage ads from a central location. The new interface will roll out gradually, and some advertisers may notice things looking different.

If you’ve not already started using Power Editor, you’ll notice that there’s a new workflow for creating ads, but you’ll still have the option to use the original ad creation workflow. You’ll also notice you have to review draft items every time you make a change to an ad. You’ll have to confirm the edits before any changes will be made, and you’ll also use the same process to confirm the deletion of any ads.

As Facebook continues to work on improving the advertising experience for everyone, updates are released every month. You can keep up with the updates as they are released in the Advertiser Help Center.

More and Better Control Over Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads are a wonderful way to build a fan base on your Page, but they can do so much more. You can drive traffic to your website, promote your app and get installations directly from Facebook, and more. When you’re managing multiple Pages and accounts, relying on the standard Ad Manager can get overwhelming. But, for many, the idea of using Power Editor is overwhelming, too.

As long as you understand the hierarchy of Campaigns, Ad Sets, and Ads, there are a number of advantages to the Power Editor features.

Are you happy about the integration between Power Editor and standard Ad Manager? Share your thoughts below.

Tags facebook ads, power editor

Digital Marketing

Leveraging Video Marketing: Why You Shouldn’t Ignore YouTube

Post author By Eric Sachs
Post date September 28, 2018
2 Comments on Leveraging Video Marketing: Why You Shouldn’t Ignore YouTube

There’s no doubt about it – video marketing is huge. No matter what social site or website you land on, you’re bound to see at least a few videos, ranging from vlogs to LIVE sessions to carefully constructed advertisements. Video gives marketers the opportunity to grab the attention of their audiences with short, creative bursts of information, and there’s no end to the litany of unique things you can do to stand out.

As video marketing grows, some people are shying away from YouTube, instead looking towards platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and others. I’m here to tell you that if you’re going to spend time on video marketing, you need to leverage all available platforms.

And YouTube, despite what you may have heard, is far from dead.

Why You Need Video Marketing

According to Forbes, “By 2019, online content will consist of 80 percent video marketing, and mobile consumption of video content continually rises by 100 percent annually.” Those numbers are astounding. Consumers who respond to visuals are retaining more of the details they get from video ads and up to 90 percent admit that video has an impact on their purchasing decisions.

Properly utilized, video marketing can have a huge impact on your business’s organic SEO rankings. A properly optimized video can increase your odds of a front page Google listing 53x. It’s also a lot easier to measure the reach of video content versus plain text. Sure, you can see how many times a blog post was visited, but with video you can track how many times a visitor watched the video, exactly where they stopped watching, and much more. The amount of feedback you can get will help you to better tailor your future campaigns.

Video, in general, drives engagement. Audiences, regardless of niche, love to interact with videos. They will share, like, comment, and otherwise interact with videos they love (and sometimes hate) more than any other type of content, including photos.

Facebook Versus YouTube

While Forbes indicates that 49 percent of consumers consume video on Facebook, another 32% still turn to YouTube. Considering YouTube is still considered the second largest search engine next to Google itself, there’s no reason at all to ignore the platform when creating your online video marketing campaigns.

Youtube and Facebook have both seen huge successes and there is no question as to whether or not video marketing is a passing trend (hint: it’s not). As a matter of fact, YouTube has surpassed live television in terms of overall popularity. Approximately 61% of the American population uses YouTube regularly. The site sees a billion unique visitors each month, globally consuming over 6 billion hours of video. The site is available in 75 countries and 61 languages. That type of reach has huge potential.

Even if you get a ton of engagement from LIVE videos on Facebook, you can leverage the content you’ve created by downloading it, making some simple edits, and uploading it to your YouTube channel as a replay. Anything you create for one channel can be duplicated for cross-promotion on another.

How to Rank Higher on YouTube

Of course, the methods you’ll use to rank and gain engagement are different from channel to channel. As you do create a larger content library on YouTube you’ll want to make sure your videos are properly optimized so that they’ll continue ranking, earning you new views and subscribers (and the future potential for monetization within the platform if you haven’t earned it already).

So what should you do?

Keep your Videos Short

Anything from a minute to three is considered golden. You can go longer from time to time, but the most engaged with videos are usually three minutes or less.

Contribute Something Educational

Don’t make videos that are full of fluff. Be creative about sharing an incredibly useful tip or piece of information your users will eat up. Video marketing isn’t about being salesy. It’s about adding value and educating the public. The sales will follow naturally when your audience realizes your product or service can solve a problem in their lives.

Aim for Quality

Quality beats quantity when it comes to video. Smaller businesses with a cozy personalized strategy can get away with live videos in well-lit rooms with good sound and a stable base for the camera. Larger businesses will need to be more competitive, with good video equipment or a strong video marketing team. The sharper you look, the better your response.

Improve Your Headlines

Your title matters as much on video as it does on a blog or other written work. Keep it short and sweet and try to naturally include a relevant keyword. This is important to the SEO and overall visibility of your video. Never leave a video with a standard numerical file name or title; it will decimate your ability to rank.

Write Clear Descriptions and Add Tags

YouTube’s description box is there for a reason. Use it. Your description should be written for the reader, but should also include some carefully placed keywords. Gloss over what’s included in your video, but try to keep it to a maximum of 3 lines. Less is more. Use the tag section for all of your short and long-tail keywords.

Customize Your Video Thumbnail

Make sure your video contains a clear thumbnail image that will look good on any size mobile device. The thumbnail needs to clearly depict the content of your video and should be high-resolution. You can include the thumbnail within the video or, if your account allows, upload a custom thumbnail after the fact.

The CTA Matters, Too

Just as with any other type of content, make sure your YouTube video has a clear call-to-action. Ask them to subscribe to your channel, like the video, click the link in the description to sign up for your newsletter. No one in your audience is a mind reader. You need to tell them what you want them to do – and they’ll do it!

Video marketing is growing and YouTube isn’t going anywhere at all. Utilize as many video marketing platforms as you find appropriate for your business, but don’t ignore this one. It’s guaranteed to make a measurable difference.

As always, if you’re stuck or struggling to find your next best digital marketing move, I’m available for consultations. Follow this link to reach out. Let’s connect!

Tags video marketing

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