Category: Digital Marketing

Explore our library of digital marketing articles and discover the digital marketing tips you need to boost your digital visibility.

Categories
Digital Marketing

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.

Categories
Digital Marketing

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!

Categories
Digital Marketing

Creating a Digital Marketing Plan for the Holidays

What’s that, you say?

It’s only September?

Marketers, let’s take the “only” out of there – it’s putting your holiday campaigns at risk. The bare truth of the matter is this: if you haven’t started planning your holiday marketing campaigns yet, you are officially behind schedule.

Stores started putting out back-to-school gear in July and Halloween supplies in August. Before you know it, the aisles (and the internet) will be filled with holiday decor. Meanwhile, those of you who haven’t started preparing yet are left to scramble to get noticed at the last minute.

You can avoid all of this scrambling and haste by starting to prepare right now. You need to have your digital marketing campaigns up as soon as possible so that you can end out the year strong, pleasing shareholders and consumers alike.

So, how exactly can you do that? Let’s walk through the basics of creating a digital marketing plan for the holidays. Better late than never!

Map Out the Dates

It helps to have a clear idea of what holidays you are going to target and the dates. The dates aren’t just the actual holiday dates, but the days and weeks leading up to them – the time where the real magic happens.

You might offer specials that focus on being “thankful” before Thanksgiving. This is a wise idea, but the majority of your marketing plan for the holidays will be focused on the days immediately after. Knowing which dates have the most impact for your audience is critical and essential to your success.

Which holidays you target will depend on your business. That said, these dates are the most common you need to be aware of:

  • Thanksgiving – November 22
  • Black Friday – November 23rd
  • Small Business Saturday – November 24th
  • Cyber Monday – November 26th
  • All December Holiday Dates
  • New Year – January 1st

Those are just the most popular post-Thanksgiving shopping days. You can alter the rest of the month of November and December based on your preferences.

Don’t feel limited to a specific set of holidays, either. Often, businesses love running 12 Days of Christmas campaigns that span a two-week period to keep people paying attention for longer periods. Others prefer to stick to general holiday campaigns or may incorporate aspects of Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and other holidays, while still others diversify with “less official” dates. The decision depends on how your target audience will respond.

It’s Not Just About Sales

While your holiday marketing plan will obviously have sales goals, you’ll want to make sure you are focused on the long-term effects it may have. For example, what are your lead generation goals? How many new email sign-ups do you want to obtain before the holidays? Strategize to determine how you can meet these goals with your efforts.

Don’t forget to capitalize on the “premium VIP” phenomenon. Entice your audience with campaigns that ensure they are the first to know about holiday specials and deals or the first to know when your new holiday shopping app launches. This makes your audience feel special, building loyalty and long-term relationships.

Does your organization support a specific charity or cause? Your holiday marketing campaigns can (and should) align with those goals as well. Portions of your sales may be donated to your cause of choice, or you may give someone who supports your cause a special discount as a thank-you.

Define Your Goals

Goals don’t always have to be sales. What are your actual goals for your business? Would you like to simply increase your brand awareness, or is your desired outcome to increase website traffic over time? Perhaps you’re hoping to have more people create links back to your website or mention you on social media instead. These are all admirable, worthy goals – you just need to be aware of them fully before you start to meet them.

Knowing what type of engagement you’d really like to get will help you to build the right type of campaign. No matter what, all of your goals need to be attainable, measurable, and time-bound. Be realistic about what you try to target. You don’t need to become as famous as Google as of end of year, but bringing on 10,000 new Facebook “likes” is totally possible.

Come Up With an “Offer”

Even if you aren’t a B2B or retail business, you can still create a holiday-centered offer that benefits your audience. Discounts on your ebooks, white papers, templates, and online courses are great offers. Discounted or free (limited time) consultations are also enticing.

Ultimately, holiday offers need to be balanced between providing the customer with something of value and achieving your business goals. Focus on what you have to offer that will help your audience jumpstart their goals and take them into the next year.

Do the Research

An important component of your 2018 campaign will be the research you do in terms of the results of your 2017 and previous campaigns. Here’s a few questions to help guide you in the right direction:

  • What did last year’s campaigns look like?
  • Did you reach your goals?
  • What were your successes?
  • What were your failures?
  • What would you change?

Next, further define with these additional questions:

  • Did you give yourself enough time to plan, create, and implement your campaign?
  • Are there metrics you didn’t track last year that you need to track this year?
  • Did your audience respond glowingly or negatively to your campaign?
  • What kind of responses did you receive (e.g., comments)?

Don’t forget to spend some time looking at your audience. Has it changed over the past year? If so, you may need to readjust your targets to reflect the newer audience. It isn’t helpful to target the same audience you went after last year if they are no longer interested.

Voice Is Important and Ever-Changing

Next, let’s spend a minute talking about voice. Year after year, the way we approach marketing changes – including the “voice” we use. Social trends and even politics can make certain approaches inappropriate, preferred, or even completely unacceptable in just a few short months. We’ve seen this before with holiday PR disaster flops like this one, where AT&T posted an opportunistic image of the twin towers in New York on 9/11 in 2013.

Ultimately, you need to have a clear idea of what motivates your audience, what social channels they use most often, and what really excites them in order to really nail down this “voice.” The biggest mistake you can make is assuming that your long-term audience doesn’t change over time. Voice is all about meeting people where they are and relating to them, even as they evolve or change over time, and that requires thoughtfulness and deep demographics.

Update Your Social Media Profiles

A strong campaign depends on the message getting out to consumers. Update your social media profiles to match your current theme, but make sure you have the tools in place for a smooth transition. Build an eye-catching landing page specifically for your offer. Or, build different versions of your landing page so you can better track the responses from different platforms with solid A/B testing.

Don’t Neglect Your Blog During the Holidays

Have a plan in place for regular blog updates that support your goals, too. Plan a series of blogs that support your long-term goals while also taking part in the spirit of the holidays. Don’t be afraid to be spirited, a little bit lighthearted, or even heartwarming; just keep it professional at the same time. Think “costume day” at the office, not “Jim’s Christmas drinking party after work.”

Just make sure you are including the appropriate call-to-action at the end of each blog post, whether that’s a link to your landing page or to an email sign-up form. Tell them what you want them to do, whether it’s to sign up for the newsletter or “Purchase Today to get 50% OFF!”

Automate Where You Can

Listen, manual marketing efforts can be frustrating. Especially in the middle of Black Friday madness or Christmas holiday shopping, when it feels like you have a tenacious hold on your business in the first place. You’re already worried about letting go of even a single variable, causing a domino effect when everything just spins out of control.

That said, you can and should automate what you can, when you can. Send email campaigns through programs like MailChimp, Constant Contact, Aweber, or your favorite newsletter provider and lighten the load. This approach also lets you design and schedule releases so you can “set it and forget it,” focusing on adjustments and improvements along the way rather than little technicalities.

Launching giveaways or contests? Heyo, Gleam.io, and other platforms are great for tracking entries. Hootsuite, Buffer, and a myriad of other tools will also make it easier to schedule social posts and get the ball rolling in the social sphere. Airtable and Asana make it easier to plan your campaigns and keep everyone on your team on the same page as to what is needed.

The holidays are a fun and exciting time for any business. All it takes to create a strong marketing campaign is a little bit of planning, and that’s the stage you should be well into right now. Gather your team, start brainstorming, and get to work. The momentum you build during the holiday season will carry you well into the new year!

Categories
Digital Marketing

GDPR: What US-Based Businesses Need to Know

The passing of GDPR legislation in the European Union (EU) has changed the way businesses and websites need to do business in order to protect the personal information of consumers and site visitors. While US-based business owners may not think it applies to them, you need to think twice. Websites that attract a global audience may need to comply with certain GDPR regulations or risk being blocked so that citizens of the EU can no longer see your content.

What Exactly Is GDPR?

GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation. All companies that do business within the 28 EU member states must comply with the new legal framework. The GDPR was adopted in 2016 to replace the Data Protection Directive, which had been implemented a little over 20 years earlier and was considered extremely outdated.

As a directive, the original Data Protection Directive allowed for member states to customize the rules and regulations to meet their own unique needs. The GDPR is a regulation that does not allow for any customization or leeway at all; all of the EU’s member states must fully comply.

The GDPR is rather lengthy, with a total of 99 articles that describe all of the regulations and how they obligate business owners and protect individual rights. Most notable is the fact that personal information or data of EU citizens that is imported from various locations and countries outside of the EU must also be protected.

Does the GDPR Apply to US-Based Businesses?

Absolutely. US-based businesses need to pay special attention to the GDPR. If your business or website touches the data of a EU citizen in any way, shape, or form, whether you are aware of it or not, your business must be GDPR compliant. US-based airlines, hotels, and businesses of all kinds must handle the information of EU citizens in a way that complies not only with their own local laws, but with the GDPR as well.

There are certain pieces of personal data that are very specifically outlined by the GDPR.

These include:

  • Anything personally identifying (birthdates, SSNs, addresses, and names)
  • Health information, including genetic testing and other forms of data
  • Anything that is web-based, including IP addresses and cookies
  • Information regarding sexual orientation and/or gender
  • Ethnic and racial information
  • Biometrics
  • Political information

There are certain criterion for identifying whether you must comply with GDPR. Be aware that you should use these as a guideline, but don’t assume you are safe just because none of these entries apply to you. You should always speak with a lawyer to be sure.

The criteria for businesses that must comply with GDPR include:

  1. Processing the personal information of EU residents, whether your business has a presence in the online space or not. E.g., processing catalogue orders or sending out products through the mail.
  2. Having a business with a presence in a member country (any country that falls under the European Union or EU). Find the full list of countries
  3. Having more than 250 employees and/or having less than 250 employees (if the information you regularly collect can impact a citizen’s rights).

How to Comply with GDPR Regulations

When GDPR first went into effect, you probably received a dozen or more emails from companies you do business with letting you know that their privacy policies had been updated.

Even Facebook prompted users to review their privacy settings, putting special emphasis on what information advertisers could see and how they could be targeted.

This made sense at the time because repercussions were VERY serious. Any US-based business with a web presence needs to be in compliance with GDPR regulations at all times; ignorance of the law or regulation will not protect you.

The first thing to remember is that if the EU citizen who is using your website is physically in the EU at the time, your website must comply. If the EU citizen is not physically within the EU at the time they are using your website – perhaps they are visiting the United States – GDPR regulations do not apply.

The second thing you need to know is that there does not need to be a financial exchange for a product or service for GDPR to apply. Marketing surveys, email newsletters, and any forms that collect data require you take action to protect the EU citizen’s personal and private data.

Where things become more confusing is that your website needs to specifically target EU members in order for GDPR to apply. For example, if you are a small B2B organization with an English website that is really geared towards US consumers but a person living in a EU country finds your website and wants to make a purchase, you do not need to be in compliance with GDPR.

If your website specifically targets, in any way, to EU countries, via language and other campaign goals, you must comply. Accepting another country’s currency, having an alternate domain with another country’s web suffix, or having content written in another country’s language makes you complicit as well.

Heavily Impacted Industries and Compliance

The most impacted US-based industries known for doing international operations are those that all into the hospitality industry and travel. Companies that deal in e-commerce, technology, and software should be especially conscious as well. Any website owner who could potentially market in the EU should review their website and organizational practices to be sure they are compliant.

The biggest issue with compliance is that consumers must be able to give consent. There are specific criteria for ensuring consumers are informed and the language must be unambiguous. In other words, clients get to opt-in; you do not get to force them to opt-out.

Even if a customer were to make a purchase from you, doing so does not give you permission to add them to a mailing list and continue to make contact via email promotions. A customer must have a box to check to give permission – no exceptions.

Not sure how to implement opt-ins? Call us at the Sachs Marketing Group office. Through our web design service, we can help you optimize and adjust to ensure opt-ins are present without distracting from conversions.

Complications and Consequences

The documentation and articles that make up GDPR is lengthy, complicated, and can be relatively confusing to the average business. If you have any doubts at all, contact a lawyer with experience in ecommerce and GDPR regulations.

Failure to secure consumer data or to respond appropriately to potential breaches (within 72 hours, usually) can result in hefty fines and penalties. There is no room for error when it comes to securing the personal data of consumers anywhere, but those protected by GDPR are watching carefully for any breach in protocol. Take the steps you need now to revamp your web practices, guidelines, and internal policies so that you don’t end up in news headlines later. 

Categories
Digital Marketing

6 Quick Facts You Need to Know About the New Google Ads Interface

Do you rely on Google Adwords, either for income or for your own ads? If you do, you may already be aware of the fact that Google is rapidly evolving its own platforms to better suit your needs. This includes a recent revitalization and shift to a brand-new replacement platform called “Google Ads.”

The new “Google Ads” platform promises to streamline the ad creation and management process, making it easier for you to control your investment and/or generate income. But it does significantly change the approach to completing certain tasks, meaning that even SEO specialists will need to spend a little bit of time adapting.

In this post, you’ll learn about six of the most important need-to-know facts that have the power to streamline your transition. For your convenience, we have included links to guidelines and information on using the new platform effectively.

You May Not be Invited Yet

Still on the old Google Adwords platform? There’s a reason for that: Google is slowly moving Adwords users over in batches, rather than rolling the platform out all at once. This ensures the search engine giant has testing opportunities and can ameliorate scale-based bugs before they become large and impactful.

If you’re still on the platform, you should know that you likely won’t remain there for much longer. The company set a rough goal in July to have all accounts moved over by end-of-year, but for the moment, you can switch between the two within your accounts. We recommend taking this opportunity to play with the new layout now, before you find yourself forced into it without any experience.

There’s an Interface Reference Map Available

Can’t stand the new platform interface? Feeling totally lost? Sadly, you don’t have the option to go back once you’re switched over by Google, but we do have a spot of good news. There’s an interface reference map available to help you find what you need at this link.

A quick scan of the reference map is all most SEO specialists need, but if you’re a layperson, here’s what you likely need to find most:

  • Navigation menu
  • Page menu
  • Subpage menu
  • Top bar
  • Table toolbar

Use the legend at the bottom to identify new locations. Keyword lists are in column 2, search terms are in column two under the button “search terms.”

While some of the changes may seem convoluted, or as if they have a steep learning curve, they really aren’t that difficult to overcome. Expect to spend a good afternoon exploring if you really want to hone your skills and knowledge.

The New Platform Has New Branding

Seeing a different logo and branding when you try to access your Google Adwords account? Have no fear; you haven’t been hijacked. That’s just the new Google Ads branding and interface. Google chose to update their logos and information at the same time to drive home the concept of a newer, fresher experience for users.

The URL you use to access your Adwords account is also changing. Instead of typing in adwords.google.com, you’ll now type in ads.google.com. Simple, easy, and efficient – easier to remember while on the go, too.

Smart Ads are the New Default

It’s no secret that Google uses some pretty fancy technology, including AI and automation, to run searches and serve users. The new Google Ads platform capitalizes on these technologies to help you handle tasks faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Google’s revamped “Smart Ads” system promises to make it easier for newcomers to step into the ads world – and it will simplify the process for experienced advertisers, too. The system guides you through creation, making suggestions based on your preferences, allowing you to set up and run ads in mere minutes.

This entire new AI-driven process starts with the system asking you for your goals; you tell Google what you’re trying to achieve (phone calls, visits, emails, etc.) and they create ads using proven methods to help you succeed.

Here’s where the Smart Ads interface excels: you aren’t limited to a single goal. In fact, you can enter as many or as few goals as you want, and Google will create a campaign or ad suggestion to push people in the right direction. It’s incredibly intuitive and easy to get used to, shortening the time you spend in Ads.

The Standard Dashboard Really Rocks

The new Google Ads platform also makes it easier to get performance metrics in a few seconds, rather than forcing you to search for information.  The moment you log in, it presents you with a clear and open view of your metrics, including how well your ads are doing and whether or not campaigns are starting to fall off the radar.

More importantly, Google mostly moved this dashboard over into a visually-appealing layout. It segments each metric by color and category, meaning it takes far less time to actually find the aspect you want to confirm than before. The concept here is that advertisers who can find what they need in analytics faster can react to that information more quickly, limiting serious failures and “data paralysis.”

Google’s New Recommendation Engine Excels

Under the new and improved Google Ads platform, you’ll find a “Recommendations” section. This category uses AI-driven analytics and an enormous database of past campaigns to investigate your campaigns, identify areas of concern, and highlight opportunities to take your advertising (or income-generating content sites) to the next level.

What’s really stellar about this platform is how varied your options are. Ask the system to give you recommendations based on potential repairs, bids and budgets, keywords and targeting, or ads and extensions. It will not only analyze with those goals in mind, but provide you with suggestions specifically targeted to those goals at the same time. This includes finding a way forward when you plateau or fixing critical issues you may not even be aware of in the first place.

Ultimately, the new Google Ads system is all about making it easier for new and pre-existing advertisers to get in, get started, and thrive, no matter how small or large their budgets. This is a smart move for Google to make; after all, concerns about expense and ease of entry are by far the most common reasons business avoided Adwords in the first place.

Let us know what you think of the system – is it an improvement? Can’t stand it? Leave your comments in the space below.

Categories
Digital Marketing

Summer Networking Tips for Digital Marketers

 

 

 

As a digital marketer, networking and prospecting is critical to the success of your business. Because the vastness of the internet means you have access to millions of interested people, you need to be a bit more creative in your networking strategies to ensure you’re adding the right people to your pipeline.

Summer is a fantastic time to focus on your network and expanding it for the upcoming fall and winter seasons; here’s how you can make the most of it.

Start Networking with Influencers

According to Nielsen, 92 percent of people trust peer recommendations over brand marketing. No matter what you have to offer, it will ultimately pay off to network with influencers who can benefit from your product or service.

Celebrities often come to mind as top influencers, but anyone who has taken the time to build a strong presence in the online world will prove a beneficial connection.

Targeting the right influencers means knowing your target audience. Once you know exactly what demographic you’re trying to reach, you can look for the influencers who are already connecting with them. Work from there to determine each influencer’s reach by assessing sites like Klout or visiting each of their social channels to see how many followers they have, along with engagement levels.

Finally, determine whether the influencers you’re networking with can naturally promote your product without breaking from their current content strategies and goals. Summer is a great time to promote outdoor events and certain products, but only, for example, if the influencer you’re working with is in the same hemisphere as you are.

Spend Time on Social Networking

Summer is a great time for taking a step back to reassess your social networking strategies. People tend to have a bit of downtime, so while you shouldn’t waste too much time on social media channels, you should definitely spend a little bit of quality, constructive time there. Are your profile images and biographies up to date, reflecting your professional brand and message? Are you regularly updating your profiles with useful, informational (but not stuffy) content?

Connecting on Facebook and Twitter is one option, but only if your prospects are actually active on those platforms. Try to connect with the personal accounts of the CEOs or marketing directors. You’ll get more visibility and a more personal connection than if you simply follow their business pages.

The majority of your networking and prospecting time should be spent on LinkedIn; it’s just a better site for networkers and marketers than most other platforms. Make sure your profile is updated with a high quality headshot, a fun bio description, and a clear outline of your work and achievements.

Once you’re set up, start making professional connections with your prospects and then share some of the links to their blog posts and comment on their content. Be sure to send a message introducing yourself, but don’t sell yourself or your services in your initial intro. Spend some time sharing information of value before you approach a sale.

To succeed, stay focused on the long game. Keep track of where you are in the conversation and bring up what you can offer when the time is truly right. In other words, nurture your prospects over time – don’t dive in for a hard sale.

Experiment with New Strategies

The summer slowdown is a great opportunity to do a little bit of research and implement a few new strategies to make your brand (or your clients’ brands) more visible. Haven’t paid much attention to video marketing yet? Give it a shot. Haven’t ever connected with an influencer? Try it. Client doesn’t have a newsletter or email campaign set up. What are you waiting for? You have plenty of time to outline a new strategy, test it on your own brand, or present it to your clients.

Have you ever run a giveaway? Summer is a great time to try one. You don’t have to spend a ton of money on a prize, which could range from some of your services to something completely unrelated to your business, like a new barbecue or a meal on some nice patio restaurant. The point is to get people to engage, opt in to your email list, and begin networking and engaging with you.

Clean House

Does your website need an overhaul? Now’s a great time to take care of it. While you’re at it, make sure your email opt-in incentive is fresh and new as well. Switch things up if you haven’t done so in a while.

Has your email list gone stale? Clean it up by offering a last chance to subscribers who haven’t opened in a while before deleting them and then segment your list so that you are sending the right messages to the right people at all times. This way you can be sure the people you are emailing are still interested in what you have to offer.

Start Planning for the Holidays

Yes, it’s summer. No, you don’t have a lot of time. Most successful marketers have holiday plans locked in and ready to roll by the time the kids go back to school in late August or early September.

Start reaching out to your network now to find out how you can help them prepare their campaigns, starting with Labor Day and running straight through the New Year. You may even want to start as early as the 4th of July to gain momentum. Trust me: you’ll thank yourself a few months down the road.

Head Out to a Local Event

Ok, it’s not digital, but it’s real. Keep your eyes peeled for local networking events run by your local small business association, Rotary club, or Chamber of Commerce. Summer is by far the most common time for these events thanks to nice weather, yearly conferences, and regular meetups. You may even find a major marketing expo on this list in a nearby city. Step away from the computer once in a while and go network in person.

Can’t find anyone? Consider creating a networking opportunity if none already exist in your area. You may be surprised at the new connections you’re able to make and – let’s face it – it’s nice to get up and away from the computer once in a blue moon, too. Use LinkedIn and sites like Meetup to make events happen.

We hope your summer schedule is jam-packed, but we understand if the summer lull has left you feeling a bit unsure of what to do next. Spend some time looking inward and focusing on your networking efforts and you will be surprised at how quickly business picks up once you’ve gained momentum. As always, if you need advice, just reach out!

Categories
Digital Marketing

9 Ways to Improve Your Email Open and Click-Through Rates

There are several ways to improve your email open and click-through rates. To improve email open and click-through rates, use compelling, personalized subject lines and preview text. Segmenting your audience for targeted content, optimizing email design for mobile users, and including clear, compelling calls to action enhance engagement. Regular testing and analyzing performance metrics for insights into user preferences also contribute to improved rates.

While there are tons of legitimate and valuable methods for marketing your business, email marketing is still one of the most important channels no matter what other changes are happening in the SEO or social media world. As a matter of fact, according to Entrepreneur, email marketing offers an average return of $44 for every $1 spent. Don’t let anyone tell you that email marketing has gone by the wayside.

There are two main components to successful email marketing campaign tracking. The first is your open rate: how many people see your messages in their inboxes, and how many actually open them up to see what is inside? The second is your click-through rate. How many people, after opening your emails, click the links inside to visit your website?

High click-through and open rates mean more conversions, so it makes sense to foster them whenever you can. The good news is that these numbers can be increased with strategic email planning.

Improving Your Email Open Rates

In order to succeed in email marketing, people need to open your emails in the first place. It’s useless to you if they simply hit spam and move on. Here’s the best ways to improve your email open rates without making the process grueling.

Write a Compelling Subject Line

This sounds basic, but it’s not. Your email subject line needs to be compelling – intriguing. You should come up with several subject line ideas and conduct your own A/B split testing, just as you would with a website or landing page. Test two pages, keep the best performer, add another, and keep going. You should always strive for improvement.

Who is Sending Your Emails?

The sender field is incredibly important. Are you more likely to open an email from Eric Sachs or from Sachs Marketing Group? Research shows you’d rather hear from me personally.

Emails that appear to come from a company name or group are also more likely to be filtered into “advertising” folders or marked as spam. Give your email a personal touch by making sure it appears to be coming from an individual associated with your group.

Timing is Everything

One of the most overlooked components in email marketing is the importance of finding the right day and time to send an email. When you send and when an email is received can drastically change how successful conversions are, including open and click-through rates.

A lot of companies find that Monday morning emails don’t do as well because people are focused on starting their work week, digging through client emails, and getting organized. Tuesday morning emails tend to do better because people aren’t feeling as crunched by the start of the week. Some clients find Friday afternoons work well because people are becoming tired and unfocused and are scrolling through emails while daydreaming about the work week being over.

Similarly, lunchtime and early morning tend to be best for targeting B2B. This may seem counterintuitive, but it makes sense because that’s when busy decision-makers sit down to check emails. You’re less likely to access them in mid-morning or mid-afternoon.

You may find that switching the day you send your email doesn’t alter your open rate, but may impact the click-through rate. There are a lot of studies with a lot of different suggestions, but at the end of the day you’re going to need to split test this aspect of your marketing as well.

Avoid Looking Spammy

You email could end up in a spam filter for a number of different reasons. You may be using an IP address that someone has sent spam from in the past, your subscribers may have complained that they didn’t opt-in to your list, and you may not be sending through a verified domain. Language that is heavy on sales is also considered spammy, so you’ll want to avoid using all capital letters or words like “buy,” discount,” or “clearance” too often as well.

Clean Up Your Email List

From time to time you should go into your email list and get rid of the people who haven’t opened your emails in ages. Some companies run campaigns targeting those who haven’t opened in a while, asking them if they’d still like to be on the list. Others will occasionally go in and simply delete the ones that have been ignoring or deleting without opening for months or longer. Getting rid of the dead weight and spam subscriptions will help to improve both the email open rate and the click through rate.

Improving Your Email Click-Through Rates

Once your readers have opened your emails, you’ll need to keep them engaged and convince them to click through to your website. It doesn’t matter if you want them to read a blog post or purchase from your ecommerce site. Your content needs to be compelling and targeted to convince them to click through.

Keep it Simple, Seller (KISS)

Okay – yes, the real KISS acronym does mean something slightly different. We’re not going to go there, though, because we know you’re smarter and more capable than what the real meaning insinuates. You have this!

Long emails tend to overwhelm and bore readers. Keep things as short and sweet as you can. A couple of paragraphs of tight copy will do far more for you than a full page of fluff. It’s fine to write 100 words of really compelling content if that’s what it takes to tell the story and tempt people in. Never inflate your emails just to create filler content – this is the very definition of spam.

Format Emails Properly

A greater percentage of your readers are using mobile devices, so make sure your email looks good on both desktop and mobile platforms. Use a responsive design that adjusts itself to look nice on either device. No one will continue to read the text on your page if they have to keep scrolling to the right and left to get through a paragraph.

Also, make sure any images you include are catchy, but that that any pertinent details are also repeated in the text. That way your readers won’t miss out on important information if an image doesn’t load properly.

Offer Value and Encourage Action

No one will take action if you don’t give them a reason to. You know what your email’s goal is. Your message needs to reflect your goal. If it doesn’t, readers may simply move on.

Let’s say, for example, you simply want your readers to click through and read one of your blog posts. Your email should contain a short, captivating blurb about the article, but it should also contain a very noticeable, clear icon or call-to-action your reader can click on to get to the blog post. Make it easy for your readers to take the action you want.

Experiment with Content Types

Your readers will tell you what they like. Some respond really well to videos embedded within the newsletter content. Others like feeling as though they are getting an exclusive announcement about a new product or special before the general public.  Include the link you want people to click through on several times in the email, in different formats. Offering a special or sale? Include a deadline. You may find your readers respond better if what you have to say has an urgent tone or nature.

Email marketing is part science, part art. The numbers don’t lie when it comes to how successful email marketing can be, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Take some time to set up different campaigns, conduct careful A/B testing, and experiment. Have fun with it. You’ll be amazed at how well you can do with email and content marketing once you hit your stride.

Categories
Digital Marketing

All the Facts You Need to Know on Google My Business API

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard about Google My Business. This unified tool lets businesses manage their online presence across multiple Google-owned interfaces across the web, including Search, Maps, Reviews, and even Google +. It’s handy, easy to use, and a fantastic tool to have in your SEO toolbox – as long as you use it right.

GMB isn’t new; in fact, Google first rolled the tool out in 2014, it didn’t pick up in popularity with most agencies until later in 2016. By mid-2017, agencies were actively recommending catering to GMB because results were showcasing just how much weight a solid presence had on SEO.

If you’re new to GMB, or you’re still finding yourself a little stymied by all the excitement, rest assured you aren’t alone. There’s nearly as much assumption and conjecture out there about how to use GMB and how it benefits SEO as there are real-world benefits. This short guide will help you get to know the tool so you can make it a solid part of every campaign.

How to Access Google My Business

First things first: just how the heck do you access the GMB platform? Fortunately, you don’t need to log into each individual sector of Google’s services; that’s the beauty of the GMB tool. Instead, you log into a single access point here, using your Google account email to access the information you need.

If you’ve never used GMB before, and you don’t currently have any listings on Search, Maps, or Reviews, you can create your listing after logging into the platform. If you already have a listing, or if someone else listed your business, you can claim it and identify yourself as the owner instead.

To register your business, sign in or create an account, then follow the prompts and enter your business name, address, and contact information. GMB will prompt you through the rest of the information needed to get you set up.

Alternative Methods for Map Entries

There is an alternative method for claiming your business, especially if it’s already listed on Google Maps. This method works whether it was you who claimed the business in the first place or someone else (like an agency and/or past employee).

First, search your business on GMB. Then, look for the text that says “Claim this business.” Google will require that you take a telephone call or a postcard; this process can take some time. Once you complete it, the business information is in your hands.

If it appears that someone else has claimed your business, you still have options. Follow the instructions here to request ownership. Note that you can appeal a denial if you have documents proving ownership, but Google does still make you walk through the initial request process first.

Editing Your Google My Business Listings

Once you’re into the tool and you have ownership of your listings, it’s time to tweak. Editing your listings for accuracy and SEO is highly recommended; not only will it improve your SEO results and search accuracy for people attempting to engage with your niche, but it will also make your business appear more polished and professional when they do find you.

The GMB tool lets you edit a long list of options:

  • Business name
  • Business address
  • Date of creation
  • Hours of operation
  • Special hours (e.g., holidays)
  • Telephone/fax/email contact
  • Website URL
  • Social media links
  • Appointment URL (if relevant)
  • Service list (with pricing, if desired)
  • Special attributes (e.g., “offers WiFi”)
  • Description (short, 75 to 100 words max)

Carefully go through the tool and correct or add information for as many of the options available as you possibly can. A fully-developed profile is much more compelling and far more likely to convince a customer to actually buy or visit your business. Even simple facts like your creation date can help to show searchers you put effort into reaching them – and there’s good evidence it benefits your rank, too.

Categories

GMB also gives businesses the option to categorize themselves using niche keywords and phrases. If you look at the entry for Sachs Marketing Group, found here, you’ll see that ours is listed as “Internet Marketing Service.” Try your best to match your category as closely to what your business actually provides as you can, keeping SEO best practices in mind.

Not sure what to list as a category? Have a look at your competitors. Often, they’ll target similar key phrases and category designations. Just remember that competitiveness also matters here, just as it does on Adwords and other platforms. If you’re still a baby in terms of growth, it may be more profitable to target a slightly less competitive category.

If you “fit,” it’s also worth listing yourself as one of these high-ROI industries. These categories are among some of the most searched in the world, and should get you seen at least part of the time.

Industry Specifics

Another really interesting and useful GMB feature is industry specific information. Depending on your niche or industry, you may have the option to enter additional information about your business once you identify your category.

For example, GMB often provides restaurant owners with an option to give a menu URL or link to an online ordering and reservations tool. Similarly, healthcare facilities often have a space to enter telephone numbers for after-hours care and/or links to appointment-setting platforms.

The only effective way to see which industry-specific information slots the GMB platform gives you is to completely fill in all available information. Additional slots will become available as you fill out sections like category or location. Use these to your advantage whenever you can; today’s customers want to feel informed, and more information is almost always a good thing.

Photos

Yes, GMB is also media-rich, too. The platform provides plenty of space for photos, videos, and other media formats, so don’t be afraid to upload those gorgeous snaps of your storefront or images from the last community event. That said, you do need to be aware that, like other social media platforms, there are restrictions on photo size and dimensions.

Here’s the standard best-practice dimensions:

  • Profile photos: 250 x 250 pixels to 5200 x 5300 px
  • Cover photos: 1080 x 608 pixels to 2120 x 1192 pixels
  • Posted images: 497 x 373 pixels to 2048 x 2048 pixels

As with other platforms, just because you can use bigger or smaller images, doesn’t mean you should. Images that are too large will often be truncated or experience loss on upload. Images that are too small will render hard for visitors to see, making them useless. You want crisp, clean images in excellent quality without skewing too far in either direction.

One small tip many business owners discover the hard way: GMB photos display in a 4:3 ratio. Keep this in mind when adding photos and try to structure the ratio of each picture similarly. Otherwise, you may find your images cut off or truncated on the main GMB listing display.

Posts

Last but not least: GMB’s new post feature. Like Google +, GMB also gives your business the option to create posts and updates. These posts link to Search, Maps, Google +, and other GMB-linked services. But it’s much less of a pain to create them because you can create the post once from the tool and roll it out across all Google services at the same time.

GMB posts are limited to between 100 and 300 words – be snappy, concise, and get to the point quickly. SEO best practices apply here, so don’t be afraid to use keyphrases and words that have shown campaign success in the past.

GMB also gives posters the option to add a call-to-action (CTA) button. Unfortunately, you can’t self-define the message, but you do have a few different options:

  • Buy
  • Book
  • Sign-Up
  • Get Offer
  • Learn More
  • Order Online

Choose whichever is best for your business or service needs, and then enter in any CTA-driven action info requested (such as a link to a booking app).

Finally, let’s talk turkey about how you should use GMB posts. First, GMB isn’t the same as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or even LinkedIn. People aren’t browsing GMB listings in an attempt to see what your business is up to; they’re usually looking to find answers to a problem or locate a service/product provider. Structure your posts around this desire whenever you can.

Posts that work well include sales information, critical business updates (such as a move), coupon links, and other helpful information for visitors. Avoid anything overly pushy, extremely salesy, or obviously SEO-driven. Instead, be conversational, helpful, and include images every time.

Something else to be aware of: GMB only generally shows around the first 50 to 100 words of your post, even on full-scale PCs and large, high-definition monitors. Although you have up to 300 words to work with, you should keep your posts much shorter than this unless you have something critical to share. Truthfully, most visitors aren’t going to click on the link to see the full post, anyway – they’ll just read what’s immediately available and then move on.

Categories
Digital Marketing

10 Important Digital Marketing Strategy Statistics for 2018

Are you prepared for this year’s new digital marketing environment? Whether you’re sure you have your strategy locked down or you’re still trying to find the best approach, shaping campaigns always starts with knowledge. The more you know about what you’re up against, the better you can react to it and adapt.

Make the most of the coming year with this list of 10 critical marketing strategy statistics. From what matters the most in terms of specs to special new strategies you should consider, this list has a little something for everyone.

Mobile Pages Must be Fast

Google recently announced algorithm changes that make mobile page speed a significant ranking factor. If you haven’t yet mobile optimized your website, or if your mobile port is poorly optimized, your page loading speed may suffer as a result.

Just how fast is fast enough? This article claims that mobile websites with a loading time of 3 seconds or less enjoy bounce rates nearly four times lower than sites that take up to 10 seconds to load. If you’re closer to the long end of this spectrum, reassess your elements and media to see if there’s anything you can trim back.

Start Ranking for Voice Search

WordStream claims that 50 percent of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. Think that’s too far in the distant future? It’s actually just a year and a half away, meaning you should start laying out a path to optimize for voice search results now, rather than waiting.

You can improve your voice search ranking by targeting common conversational phrases people commonly ask, like “Find me the telephone number for Red Lobster,” or “Where is the nearest library?”

Increase Your Average Content Length

Long-form content is becoming longer once again. What originally started as a preference for 500-word articles quickly moved to 750 words, then 900 words, then 1,000 words. This year, some resources are showing the best average content length for conversions to be around 1,800 words.

Be prepared to include more of this long-form content, but don’t forget to swap in shorter, snappier pieces, especially for social media and mobile sharing campaigns. The goal is always to strike a balance and keep it useful.

Shopping Cart Reminders Work

Experian, a big data analysis company, recently held a study on whether or not shopping cart reminders (emails letting shoppers know they didn’t complete their purchase) work. They found that shoppers who received at least two to three emails were 2.4 times more likely to follow through by coming back to the site and processing the payment.

Our recommendations here are to make shopping cart reminders a part of your e-commerce infrastructure, but be cautious about sending emails too often. Reminders that happen more than once a day may be perceived as spammy.

LinkedIn is Growing in Popularity

Is your B2B business on LinkedIn yet? Are you making LinkedIn a significant part of your marketing campaign? If the answer is no, or if you aren’t focusing on the platform, you may be missing out. The Content Marketing Institute reports that 94 percent of all B2B businesses now use LinkedIn. When they do, they greatly improve trust for consumers if they approach it right.

InfoGraphics are Still Relevant

Infographics can be incredibly useful because they present a significant amount of data in an easily digested format. This is especially true in technical industries and B2B marketing, where statistics and terms may be the norm. Perhaps that’s why Jesse Mawhinney from HubSpot is reporting that utilization of infographics is up by nearly eight percent since last year alone. Mawhinney also claims that infographics are better at directing people to take specific information-driven actions, like signing up or buying a service.

Google is Still King

There’s a lot of buzz around other search engines right now, including Bing and some device-specific search engines. You should at least consider Bing in your campaigns, but in all reality, Google remains king. They’re still responsible for channeling through 96 percent of all smartphone searches and around 94 percent of all organic traffic. This includes voice search, text search, and image search to the tune of 63,000 searches every single minute.

Long-Tail Search Targeting Improves Conversions

Do you target long-tail and semantic search phrases? If you haven’t yet made this a part of your SEO plan, now is the time. This HubSpot article claims that 50 percent of all searches now contain a minimum of four words (and sometimes more). This means the old methods of using a single keyword just aren’t as effective anymore.

The best way to implement long-tail and semantics is to target phrases people actually use when searching Google. Head on over to the search bar; start typing a few related keywords. Watch the suggestions that pop up – they’re hints to help you along on your way.

Promotional Ads Can Result in Penalties

Running a  network of websites with newsletters for ad revenue? There’s a frightening new statistic you need to know. Google is taking a firmer hand against sites that over-use promotional ads and links on-page, especially on mobile. The new rules show that any ads or promotions, including interstitials, banners, and pop-unders, should take up no more than 15 percent of a web page.

Worried about pop-ups for language selection or location – or maybe GDPR warnings and cookie clarifications? Don’t be. Google has clarified that these forms of interstitials will be held sacred and indemnified from penalties.

Business Responses on Social Media Help

Do you respond to your consumers (B2B, B2C, or even P2P) on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter? If you don’t, you’re missing out on a significant opportunity to lock in more conversions. Sprout Social reports that acknowledgment significantly increases brand appreciation, especially when businesses respond publicly.

Simple acknowledgement helps, but it isn’t always enough – you need to respond quickly, too. The same research showed that customers want to be responded to in four hours at the most, meaning it may be time to evaluate off-hours support agents.

Categories
Digital Marketing

How the GDPR is Changing Digital Marketing

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is coming. Only another month until it’s officially in place; do you understand it enough to stay compliant?

It’s no secret that the GDPR is raising some very significant and important conversations across the United States right now, especially in the realm of marketing. While it will mostly impact the European Union (EU) experts are predicting the GDPR will spark mass changes in digital marketing all across the world.

What is the GDPR?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a new privacy policy being rolled out by the European Union this year. It was initially passed into law in April of 2014, but the official enforcement date was set to May 25, 2018 to give businesses and online entities time to make changes and become compliant.

Essentially, the GDPR demands that online businesses must take active steps to protect privacy and submitted data from visitors in the EU. While it is meant to be specific only to EU residents, most marketing experts agree that businesses from other nations are likely to follow suit with similar policies (more on that later in the article).

Unlike general privacy policies, the GDPR is fairly broad and wide-ranging in what it considers “personal identification information.” It includes not only name, address, social security numbers, and credit card numbers, but also IP addresses, cookies, and saved site information that directly relates to each customer (including shopping histories or search histories).

Why the GDPR Won’t Only Impact EU Markets

Companies within the EU and those serving the EU markets will obviously be impacted the most by these new privacy laws. But it isn’t just the EU market that will feel the sting – why is this?

Essentially, experts believe it will become too difficult to create multiple policies for each area of the world, especially if that online entity is straddling multiple markets at the same time. Having a separate privacy policy for EU residents and, say, US residents would demand that website owners and marketers create two different content sets for each market – significantly more work.

As a result, many of these multinational digital marketers and online entities will default to a single, EU-specific policy that gets applied across the board.

How Far-Reaching is the GDPR for Digital Marketers?

The other issue is the misconception that just because you operate outside of the EU or don’t serve an EU market, you don’t need to be compliant. This is patently false. Compliance also applies to anyone interacting with the EU market in any way at all, including:

  • Entities with EU-based servers
  • Entities using EU-based third-party processors/publishers
  • Entities with EU-based offices (online or offline)
  • Entities visited by EU residents (even if not the target audience)
  • Entities using EU-based CDNs or data storage networks

The last point is especially important for digital marketers who outsource services. You must be extremely careful not to outsource to companies in the EU or outside of the EU with shoddy data protection policies. If they fail your visitors in any way, it will ultimately be you who may be held responsible.

The GDPR’s Main Tenets

Now, down to the nitty-gritty. What exactly does the GDPR demand? It can be simplified to seven specific guidelines. We’ll review them in the next few sections.

Lawful, Fair and Transparent Processing

You must be transparent about the data you collect, how it is used, and how you process the data. Visitors, leads, and clients should have access to an assigned Data Protection Officer (DPO) if they have questions about their data or your data collection process. Customers and visitors should have access to this information from your website.

For most digital marketers, the biggest change here will be assigning and training a DPO in the first place. However, it may also require that you expose your third-party partners if you’re associated with other data processors or server providers. It also means you need to be exceptionally careful about who you partner with for data processing and storage.

Purpose Limitation

You can no longer collect data solely for the purposes of collecting data. Instead, you need to have a specific and lawful reason for collecting the data.

For digital marketers, this tenet will be especially important; it means you can’t ask your leads for more information than you lawfully need on signups, campaign interactions, and contact forms.

In practice, you probably can’t ask someone for their home address or telephone number if you ask them to sign up for a newsletter or whitepaper. But you can ask them for that information if you’re shipping them a product.

Data Minimization

The GDPR also indicates that digital marketers must only collect data that is “specifically relevant and limited.” Essentially, you can’t hold on to a significant amount of the data you’re probably using already, including customer behavior data, marketing campaign interaction histories, and possibly even shopping or conversion histories, for later use or “just because it might be useful later.”

Instead, the GDPR demands that entities hold on to the least amount of data needed to serve the visitor or customer. This will make remarketing and campaign analysis much, much harder, and could even eventually impact services like Google Analytics, which tracks customer behavior, usage patterns, and even on-page click zones.

Accurate and Up-To-Date Processing

In some ways, this tenet actually helps digital marketers because it encourages us to better serve our customers. The GDPR states that online entities must take steps to make sure the data they collect and store is accurate, up-to-date, and continuously fit for the purpose it was collected for in the first place.

The biggest change in digital marketing will be how we use data that is constantly collected or saved over time. Instead of assuming what we have is accurate and framing campaigns around the information we have, we need to find ways to validate the data. This may include asking leads to confirm (if there is a lawful reason) or simply running algorithms that detect erroneous data. Digital marketers who simply run with data that contains errors may be considered non-compliant.

Limitation of Storage

Digital marketers won’t be able to store personally identifying data long-term any longer unless there is a specific and lawful need. But the GDPR doesn’t just stop there; it also specifies that entities must have full control over data storage, data movement, data management, and data protection.

This will impact digital marketing in a few different ways. Primarily, you won’t be able to make endless data backups anymore – instead, you need to focus on limiting how many backups you keep. The GDPR also requests that digital marketers take steps to understand how subjects might be identified if a breach occurs, and then work to limit that personally identifying information or access risk wherever possible.

Limitation of storage also impacts where you store your data. For example, digital marketers can’t store data in multiple places, on easily removable data storage options like USB sticks, or on employee-specific laptops. The GDPR considers these locations and storage methods to be insecure and non-compliant, which will likely cause quite a few headaches for the average digital marketing agency, especially if you work with contractors. Agencies and marketers will need to craft tight data retention and management policies to compensate.

Confidential and Secure

The GDPR’s sixth tenet focuses on making sure that data collection measures are confidential and secure, but it isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. The new privacy protocols extend to computer systems, networks, paper records, physical records (e.g., portable storage drives), and even email servers.

Essentially, the GDPR indicates that the entity collecting the data must be responsible for enacting appropriate security measures along the way. This includes how you prevent hacking incidents, how you prevent malicious employees from stealing information, and even how you interact with third-party data processors, including ISPs and server providers.

To become compliant in this specific area, digital marketers will need to create access policies for everyone at the agency or within the business. Employees should have only access to what they need – no more, no less. Systems must be protected from intrusion, both offline and online, including viruses, malware attacks, and ransomware attacks.

Accountability and Liability

Last but not least is the GDPR’s accountability and liability statement. The privacy protocols demand that all entities serving or interacting with EU citizens in any way must be able to actively demonstrate compliance on demand. And that demand could potentially come at any time, especially if you serve an EU market or an EU citizen happens to complain about your data policies along the way.

Exactly what “demonstrate compliance” means is a little bit difficult to pin down. What we do know so far is that businesses must be able to identify how, when, where, and what they do to protect data as per each of these tenets. But marketers must also be willing and able to respond to requests from data subjects, including requests to review data collected and requests to wipe the data from records completely.

This goes beyond just having opt-out options on emails and account deactivation options on your website. In fact, the GDPR doesn’t even consider deactivation as a from of data removal at all anymore. Only full, complete deletion is in compliance with their privacy protocols.

Ultimately, digital marketers will need to create a process that not only fulfills the guidelines, but is also auditable and provable at every single step from collection to deletion. If you can’t do that, or if you break any of the other tenants on this list, you could be held responsible for up to four percent of your global annual turnover, or $20,000,000, whichever is the higher number.

Categories
Digital Marketing

Hiring a PPC Specialist? Here’s What You Need to Know First

Pay Per Click (PPC) can be incredibly lucrative, both for making money outright and in line with a sales or remarketing campaign. But it can also be a pretty high-risk strategy, especially if you don’t fully understand how fast competition can change and what influences your success over time. That’s exactly what drives many entrepreneurs and business owners to seek the advice of a PPC expert in the first place.

The PPC “Expert” Problem

Here’s the problem: a quick Google search will convince you there’s an endless number of PPC experts out there. Pretty much everyone on sites like Fiverr.com or PeoplePerHour claim they have years of experience with PPC. For some, that’s probably true. But how many of them are actually experts, and which ones are using tired, old-school strategies that worsen risk instead of taking a measured approach?

It can be hard to trust the people you find, especially if they aren’t backed by an agency or you use someone from an online marketplace or site. Even if they show examples and have references, they may or may not be up to date on the latest strategies and techniques. And even true experts can falter and produce sour results if they aren’t dedicated and committed to serving their clients.

So, what can you do? Figure out exactly what qualifies someone as an “expert,” which skills fall in line with your goals, and which red flags may point to someone who’s masquerading by claiming they have skills that really don’t exist.

Similarly to hiring an in-house employee, there’s no “magic bullet” that will instantly reveal a scammer to you before you contract an expert. But the next few sections will give you examples of the most critical skills they need.

Google Auction Know-How

Ask if your PPC expert knows how Google Auction works. If they can’t provide a thorough answer, or they seem confused about terms and ideas, that’s a major red flag. Not sure what to listen for? Here’s a quick layman’s explanation.

Google Auction lets advertisers browse for and “bid on” keywords in the Google AdWords program. But it isn’t always just about bidding; the system also scores your web content and decides the strength of your bid using a “Maximum Bid x Quality Score” formula. Your score impacts both your success rate and your Cost Per Click (CPC).

How to Calculate CTR

Click-Through Rate (CTR) refers to the number of times someone actively “clicks through” your advertisement when they see it on the web. A low CTR is an indication of a problem with advertising or placement. High CTR means you’re getting positive results, but be careful; a high CTR alone won’t win conversions.

Gold Standard Tools of the Trade

There are as many tools out there for AdWords and SEO as there are unqualified PPC experts. Many provide at least some value; others are just an outright scam. You should always do your research before using tools, especially if they cost money or require a monetary subscription.

That said, there are a few standards most experts use:

  • Google AdWords platform – Self-explanatory
  • Google’s Keyword Planner tool – Self-explanatory
  • SEMRush – Contains research tools for PPC campaigns
  • Google Trends – Trend tracking and analysis by keyword
  • Bing Ads Editor – Same as Google AdWords, but for Bing
  • Google Analytics – a must-have for content and website tweaks

And this next one isn’t industry standard, but it’s well worth a mention because it’s quickly growing in popularity. Answer the Public is a relatively new website that suggests spin-off keywords from a single keyphrase.

Bing’s Relevance in PPC

There’s a common misconception that Bing is the search no one uses, but that’s no longer true. Bing, a Microsoft product embedded into every Windows installation, corners about a quarter of the market, so it’s worth at least taking a glance at. Some experts believe it’s growing faster than Google thanks to Cortana’s voice search.

Your PPC expert should at least be aware of Bing and how it affects the overall market, including trends. If you’re interested in targeting keywords through Bing, they should have a thorough understanding of how Bing’s platform works.

Amazon Ads Basics

Wait…Amazon Ads? Yes! Amazon offers a suite of self-serve or Amazon-managed PPC advertising options that can be quite lucrative if handled correctly. They’re really only applicable to sellers on Amazon, but if you do sell product, be sure to hire an expert who understands this niche.

Additionally, make this an even more important factor if you’ve mainly been using Google-based PPC to drive viewers to your Amazon sales pages. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with either approach, it doesn’t hurt to diversify.

How Facebook PPC Ads Work

Yes, your PPC expert should understand how Facebook PPC ads work, too, even if you’ve already made the choice to move away from the platform like thousands of other sellers. Understanding the most standard advertising and PPC platforms is an earmark of an accomplished expert; someone who only knows Google or only knows Facebook may be relying on Lynda.com or Udemy for their “schooling” instead of having experience.

Facebook’s PPC works slightly different than other platforms; instead of a bidding system, you set a budget and rate and a time length. Your CPC is calculated by the number of people you reach, not by your quality or payment total.

How Content Factors in To PPC

This one’s a big one, and it’s also a factor many people overlook. Content plays a serious role in PPC success. You can bid on keywords all day long; if you win, it will be all for nothing if you don’t have the content in place for people to access before you get started.

Ultimately, content needs to be “high-quality.” This will mean something a little bit different for every niche and industry. Your PPC expert should have at least a baseline idea of what it means for you because, at the end of the day, the goal is for you to get more conversions and views. Your content should be informative, easy-to-read, skimmable content with flawless grammar, spelling, and flow, all while managing to work in common keywords in a natural way (without stuffing).

Over time, content trends can change. A good, long-term PPC manager should also stay on top of these trends and tell you when you need to adjust. A PPC expert who never touches your website may be simply crunching numbers with little disregard for the end result.

There is one last piece of advice we can recommend: give us a call! We’re more than happy to help out with PPC campaigns and give you a hand with content and SEO at the same time. Everything is completed in-house, so you can always be sure of who you’re working with.

Categories
Digital Marketing

How to Create a Successful Affiliate Program

If you’re looking for a way to increase sales in your small business without a lot of risk to your bottom line, then starting in affiliate program may be the way to go. Since you do not make any kind of payment until a sale is made, you only pay for results. Each affiliate who participates in your marketing program becomes a sales rep who is out there championing for you so they can earn a commission.

However, for your affiliate program to be successful you must put in a decent amount of planning and forethought before launching. If the program is shoddy or does not provide a decent pay out, you will have trouble attracting affiliates to participate and if you don’t have people participating, you won’t have any commissions to pay out because you won’t get any additional sales.

Let’s take a look at what goes into building a successful affiliate program.

Know Your Audience

Knowing your audience ahead of time is a major part of building a solid foundation for your affiliate programs. If you don’t know what your audience likes it will be hard to put together of the right program. Start from what you sell on your site and how you reached to your audience. You wouldn’t set up an ice cream truck in the winter in New York where the people would much prefer hot chocolate or hot Apple cider, would you? It may work in certain parts of California and Florida where it stays warm year-round, but you want something that works everywhere, all the time. Use this line of thinking when you 1st start trying to develop your affiliate program.

If you can’t figure out what your audience wants, start by creating a poll or a survey to find answers to the questions you have.Getting input from the beginning will make it easier to decide if and affiliate marketing program is the way you should go. Involve your first set of customers because they are your backbone. They are the ones that set the tone of stability in your business.  You can’t rely on one-off customers who buy just one or two things because they don’t have stake in your business, or any interest in keeping it afloat. Target your most loyal customers and listen to what they have to say.

Do a Competitive Analysis

Before you begin an affiliate program, analyze what your competitors are doing. Understanding what you’re up against house you make decisions on how you will launch a program as well as how your commissions, arrangements, and targets will work.

Take a look at the cost per action (CPA) and cost per lead (CPL) of your competitors. If your competitor pays $100 per sale and you notice the product as promoted on all relevant websites and marketing channels comment you have two options.

You can either match those commissions and channels, which may be a problem because if you have a limited marketing budget you can’t necessarily afford to pay that much per sale. Or, you can improve your conversion rates.

If you can’t match your competitors cost per action, you can start experimenting with new affiliates to improve your conversion rate because when you have a higher conversion right your affiliates will be paid more. They will prefer promoting your product over someone else’s because they know they can generate more customers and end up making more money in the end.

Determine How You’re Going to Track Sales

When you are building an affiliate program come out you will need to find technology that tracks your affiliate sales accurately. But accuracy isn’t the only thing that matters because the system has to be easy to use. If it’s too complex and doesn’t provide accurate reporting, affiliates won’t stick with it.

Determine Acceptable Tactics and Strategies

Unless you’re clear on the strategies and tactics you allow the affiliates to use to market your products and services, you could be shooting your affiliate program in the foot by competing directly with it. Affiliates drive a lot of business using search marketing. If you are competing against your affiliates with the same keywords common this can cause issues. As such, it is a good idea to tell them you don’t want them to bid on your brand terms, but you must be upfront about this at the start of the program.

In-House or Outsource to a Network?

You’ll have the option to run the affiliate program in house yourself or to work with an affiliate network like ShareaSale or CJ Affiliate, formerly known as Commission Junction. There is no right answer to this question, as what works for one company may not work for you. To find out which one you should choose, answer the following questions:

  • Do you need a reporting system or tracking technology?
  • Do you know your commission rates?
  • Do you want to take care of the affiliate relationship?
  • Are your creatives ready?
  • Are you actively looking for affiliates the first time?

If you answered yes to all of these, you’ll want a network. Working with a network means they’ll charge a commission to cover their costs for managing the program for you. You may also be stuck paying setup costs, which means you’ll pay more than if you manage the program yourself.

If you’d rather work out the affiliate program yourself, there are several WordPress plugins to choose from that allow you to manage the program directly from your website. Running the program yourself is risky and time-consuming, but can lead to higher profits.

Determine Commissions

How much can you reasonably afford to pay for each sale? This will depend largely on the price of the item and your profit margin. Affiliates will expect higher payouts on larger ticket items because they are harder to sell.

If you have multiple items to sell, then choose a flat percentage rather than a dollar amount per sale.

Lots of math goes into this – your cost per customer acquisition, customer lifetime value, conversion rate, and so on.

Your commissions should always pay based on sales or leads – rather than impressions or clicks. Impressions and clicks aren’t guaranteed to earn you money, whereas a lead may make you money, and a sale definitely makes you money.

Provide Marketing Collateral

One of the most important ways to ensure success with an affiliate marketing program is to provide your affiliate partners with the necessary creative and promotional materials to make their job easier. If they have to work too hard to market your products or services, they simply won’t do it. The less work they have to do and the more conversions they can get, the more likely they are to promote your products or services.

Start with banners, social media statuses, and other things that make it easy for them to promote for you. Once you have a decent number of participants, you can ask the partners directly what they believe would be most helpful.

Market Your Program

You could have the most effective affiliate program in the world, but if there are no affiliate partners participating, it is useless. Market the program to people who would be interested in selling the products and services you have to offer. Use social media, PPC ads, and other marketing tactics to get the word out about your program. Turn to your email list, and talk to you most loyal customers. Typically, the people who buy from you most often are already recommending you to friends and family and wouldn’t mind a bit of extra cash for sending you the sale.

Stay in Touch with Affiliates

Your affiliate program is another product, and your partners are another set of customers. Stay in touch with them and make sure you keep giving them what they need to be successful. Run specials just for the affiliates to use for marketing purposes. Run contests to get the affiliates working against each other to send you the most customers. Provide them with educational materials so they can learn how to be a better affiliate marketer for you.

Affiliate Programs Aren’t for Every Niche

The thing that makes affiliate programs complicated is that they don’t necessarily work in all niches, and even those that do, don’t always work the same way for everyone in a niche. The structure of your program depends highly on the nature of your business.

Does your business have an affiliate program? Is it successful? Why or why not? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Categories
Digital Marketing

5 Steps to Teach You How to Use Power Editor for Facebook Ads

The Power Editor tool for Facebook ads allows advanced ad creation and management. It’s useful for handling large ad volumes, offering precise targeting options, and bulk editing features. Understanding audience segmentation, A/B testing, and detailed performance analytics are essential. Familiarity with its interface and features like custom audiences and lookalike audiences can maximize ad campaign effectiveness.

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 social media campaigns.

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. If you need help, check out our Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ads.

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.

Categories
Digital Marketing

37 URL Shorteners and How to Create Custom Branded Shortlinks

When you start adding UTM tags to URLs, they can get even longer, and more complex. We need these tags to help us track the URLs, but the longer they are, the less likely people are to remember them. That’s where the URL shortener comes in to save the day. They shrink the number of characters in the URL to make it easier to share the link online, whether it’s via email, social media, or downloadable PDF.

Some services provide the ability to track the link clicks and keep an archive of every URL you shorten, while others simply provide a shortened URL. A professional digital marketing agency will often use this technology to track progress and adapt based on results.

Many social media scheduling platforms and analytics tools offer built-in URL shortening, as well. Buffer will automatically use their URL shortener to shorten any link you put in their system.

If you’re looking for a service to use to start managing the length of your URLs a bit better, here’s a list of options to choose from.

 

URL Shorteners to Choose From

  1. 7.ly: An easy to use URL shortener that provides click statistics.
  2. ADF.ly: This is a URL shortener service that pays their users for using it. You earn money for every person who visits your link. http://adf.ly/ropye
  3. Al.ly: Another URL shortener that pays you based on the number of clicks on your links.
  4. Bc.vc: Shorten your URLs and earn money on your clicks. Sign up for an account to start earning from your shared links.
  5. Bit.do: A simple URL shortener that allows you to shorten, customize, and track your links.
  6. Bit.ly: Shorten your links and track the clicks on them. Example: bit.ly/c92v5e6
  7. Bitly.com: Another URL used to access the Bit.ly shortener.
  8. T.co: Twitter’s URL shortener – can only be used on the social network.Example: https://t.co/Lwdslj087
  9. Lnkd.in: LinkedIn’s URL shortener – can only be used on LinkedIn. Example:
  10. Cur.lv: The URL shortener by CoinURL.com – a bitcoin-based advertising URL shortener option to monetize your content with bitcoin. Adding a + symbol will allow you to see stats for the link.
  11. TinyURL.com: A popular URL shortener that can generate its own shorter URL but also gives you the option to create a custom alias. The URLs won’t break in email or expire.
  12. Ow.ly: A popular URL shortening service that lets you shorten links, share files, and track visits.
  13. Ity.im: Another URL shortener that pays you based on the number of clicks on your links.
  14. Q.gs: Another URL to access the Adfly shortener.
  15. Is.gd: Shorten links with random or customized URL.
  16. Po.st: Social sharing platform that includes a URL shortener.
  17. U.bb: Another URL to access the Adfly shortener.
  18. Qr.net: QR code creator from your standard URL.
  19. S.id: An easy to use URL shortener.
  20. Ph.dog: Basic URL shortener.
  21. Tiny.cc: Another easy to use URL shortener that provides click statistics.
  22. Sptfy.com: A tool used specifically to shorten Spotify links.
  23. Tny.im: A simple URL shortening tool
  24. Goo.gl: Google URL shortener. Example: http://goo.gl/sjpos4t
  25. Tr.im: Link shortener with the ability to create custom keyword short links to help drive engagement and improve click through rate.
  26. X.co: A URL shortening and URL redirection service from GoDaddy. You must have an account to use this service.
  27. V.gd: Shorten links with random or customized URL.
  28. Cutt.us: Basic URL shortener, also includes a multi-URL shortener tool.
  29. J.mp: Another URL used to access the Bit.ly shortener.
  30. U.to:Shorten any link. You’ll need to create an account and login to see the statistics related to the number of clicks.
  31. YOURLS.org: This is a free open source script that allows you to run your own URL shortening service so you can control the domain. Run your own TinyURL or Bitly, and include stats.
  32. PrettyLinkPro.com: This is a paid service that allows you to cloak affiliate links and shortens URLs. Pricing runs from $47/year to $197/year depending on the number of sites you want to use it on.
  33. Filoops.info: This site offers a URL shortener, a URL tracker, domain WHOIS lookup, and a Google Ad Stripper from AdSense links.
  34. Db.tt: The URL shortener Dropbox uses. Example:
  35. doiop.com: A basic URL shortener that allows you to choose either a random URL or a keyword based short URL.
  36. wp.me: WordPress URL shortener
  37. Yep.it: Basic URL shortener    

 

Custom Branded Shortlinks

Many major brands have their own branded short links, including:

  • am (Instagram)
  • ms (New Your Times)
  • me (Nike)
  • did.as (Adidas)
  • be (YouTube)

When you see the Instagr.am or Youtu.be short links, you’re more likely to click on them because you’re familiar with the brands and trust them. Having your own branded short URL builds trust and credibility, and creates consistency. It can help you build and expand your following, and will stand out more than a standard bit.ly link.

If you want to create your own, you’ll want to sign up for a free account with Bit.ly.

Next, find and buy the custom domain you want to use. You can use a service like Domainr or DomainsBot to generate a list of ideas and to determine which options are available. Some things to remember:

  • Keep it short and make it memorable. Use international domains to create words ending in ly, im, is, co, me, it, or am.
  • If you have a long name, shorten it by dropping letters or using initials.

Once you’ve decided on a domain, you’ll have to choose a registrar for it and purchase it. If you use Domainr, they will provide recommendations for where you should buy the domain, and about how much you’ll pay for it. You’ll also see any promo codes required to get the pricing.

After you buy your domain, go back to your Bit.ly account. Follow these steps:

  1. Go to Settings in the top right menu.
  2. Click “Advanced”
  3. Select “Add a custom short domain”.
  4. Type your domain, then add.
  5. You’ll be taken to the verification screen. Follow the steps to verify your ownership of the domain.

At this point, you’ll have to wait about 24 hours for the domain to be added to your account. When you see your domain is added in the custom short name drop down, you’ll know it is available for use.

You can create your own custom short URLs with Bitly tools or using Buffer, Hootsuite, or other tools that work with Bitly.

Use your custom URL for links to any of your content, name, brand, photos, or blog posts. This will build consistency with your brand. Don’t use it for every social media post.

 

Conclusion

URL shortners make it easy to fit long and complex URLs into social media posts where there are character limits. Using the right service also makes it easy to track link clicks, which is helpful when you’re sharing content that you don’t have access to the analytics data for.

Do you have a favorite URL shortener? Share it with me.

Categories
Digital Marketing

Tips for Creating a Stellar “About Us” Page for Your Website

It’s safe to say nearly every website online today has an About Us page or a variation thereof. It’s essential to tell your visitors who you are, what your company does, and what they can expect to find on your website. It’s your chance to showcase your brand, your people, and your purpose.

There’s more than one way to get the job done. That’s what makes creating your About Us page so fun, and yet at the same time, so time consuming and frustrating. Even the best writers struggle to write about themselves from time to time.

Since the About Us page is bound to be one of your most visited web pages, it had better be good!

Let’s discuss how to knock it out of the park.

 

Start with Your Story: Hit the Main Points

You should tell a compelling story about your brand and company. Make sure it addresses the main questions people have:

  • Who?: Tell the story of who is involved with the company. Mention the founders, and give each of them a few sentences. Pack the sentences with details about how each person relates to what the company does – showing why they are essential to the team. Typically, this includes education background, but make sure it doesn’t read like a resume.
  • What?: What have these people done in the field? How did they come to the business in the first place? If they didn’t found the company, did they take it over from another person? Describe the hard work of the early days. Detail their successes along the way. If there have been setbacks, don’t shy away from those either, provided they don’t show incompetence. As humans, we connect with what we relate to. If you don’t show some human side to your company, you’ll struggle to make connections to your readers. Use this space to show why you’re trustworthy, and keep it current with any new information.
  • When?: Give dates – even if it’s just the month and year – of any major milestones in company history. When were you founded? When did you add key staff? When did you add new products or services? You can also use this space to introduce any upcoming milestones. If your company is new, use this space to establish the backgrounds of all your major staff so readers know they’re experienced in the industry.
  • Where?: Tell the story of what’s most interesting to you here. You can keep it simple, only mentioning the location of your corporate office. Or, you can take it further and include areas where your company does business and where you source your products.
  • How?: Include a few sentences about how you do what you do, and how you became a business.
  • Why?: This is the most important part, which is why I saved it for last. Explain why you do what you do, and let your passion shine through. This is your real chance to connect with your readers on the most basic level and building trust.

 

A Picture Really Is Worth 1,000 Words

Don’t just tell your audience. Show them. Use photos to match the names of people to their faces. Use some action shots. Are you a restaurant owner? Show photos of your kitchen working the line during a dinner service. Show your front of the house staff interacting with the guests. Are you a retail store? Show photos of your most impressive product displays, or customers in the store.

Did you know the brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text? If you want to make a solid first impression, make sure there are images to accompany your text. The majority of people won’t read large blocks of text – and those that will aren’t going to read every single word anyway. This is especially the case on a mobile device.

Make sure your text is formatted with short paragraphs, headlines to break up the text, organized with bullet points where necessary. Accent it with photos and video. Including video on a landing page can increase conversion by up to 80%.

 

Tips to Really Add the Wow! Factor

Your About Us page needs an element of Wow so you stand out from the competition. Use this space to tell your clients exactly what you’re going to do for them, and how you’ll get the job done. Share examples of how you’ve overcome industry challenges. This will help your prospects feel more comfortable with you as the one meeting their needs because they’ll be able to see how you’ve helped others.

 

Common Mistakes People Make When Creating Their About Us Page

  • Losing sight of the target audience: If you’re not crystal clear on who your target audience is, you won’t be able to write the best possible About Us page. Even though the information you’re sharing doesn’t necessarily change, the way you write it will need to be adjusted to what will best resonate with the audience. Go back to your buyer personas for a reminder of who you’re “talking” to, and write everything as if you were speaking to your ideal customer.
  • Making it about them: Yes, your About Us page does need to talk about you. But, it must be about more than a list of accomplishments and credentials. It should tell your story, but leave room to show how your business can help your prospective customers. Make sure they know how you can solve their problems, and ultimately make their lives better.
  • Skipping the opt-in form: Just because the About Us page isn’t the most popular page on your site doesn’t mean people aren’t looking at it or landing on it. If you don’t have a visible opt-in form, many of those people won’t ever come back. That’s money you’re just throwing out the window. Email marketing offers a whopping $44 ROI on every dollar spent.
  • Leaving out the website’s purpose: Tell your visitors what makes you stand out from the competition. Why are you the best at what you do? You can show off a little bit. Let them know what they can expect from your website. Give them information about the products and services you offer. Tell them why people work with you and buy from you.
  • Not linking to products/services pages: People won’t go to your products and services pages from your About Us page unless you direct them to. Feature your most popular blog posts and product pages. Tell readers where to go after they’ve learned about your business.
  • Packing it with too much information: Your About Us page isn’t a novel. Keep it limited to 400 or so words – using photo and video to add more information. If you’re struggling to keep it concise, go to your elevator pitch to help you.
  • Skipping social proof: Social proof helps build trust, authority, and credibility. Display testimonials from previous clients. Include logos for press mentions, and screenshots of social media shout outs that reinforce how incredible you are.
  • Not providing contact information: Forgetting the opt-in form is one costly mistake, but not providing contact information is another. It doesn’t have to include an address and phone number, but at the least should include an email address, and where you can be found on social media. If you don’t provide a way for visitors to get in touch, they won’t reach out if they have any additional questions. This is especially important for solopreneurs as people will want to find out more about your rates and services.

 

Awesome About Us Page Examples

Trader Joe’s was founded in the 50s. Their Our Story page tells shoppers how they bring value. Because they’re based on bringing quality food to people at lower prices, many shoppers may wonder how they’re able to do that. It makes sense they’ve made that the main focus of their About Us page. They also have a timeline of their history on a separate page, so customers can learn about everything from when the company was founded until now.

 

Moz has a great About Us page because they get straight to the point about who they are, what they do, and how long they’ve been doing it. And for those who want to scroll through, there’s a great visual timeline that dates all the way back to when the company was founded in 2004. Granted they’ve not updated it since January 2016, but we know they will.

Basecamp does a great job of showing when they were founded, how their company works, and what they do. They also link to products and services to show credibility. It’s concise, yet sells the company well. Previous versions of the page indicate they once had people working in 26 cities, so they’ve also done a good job at keeping everything up to date. You can see the message stays the same overall, but they’ve added more accomplishments over time.

 

Don’t Write it Once and Forget it!

There’s no one “right” way to handle your About Us page. Choose a technique that best aligns with your goals and values as a company. The important thing is you take the time to check on it from time to time – usually once a year is enough. Your company never stays the same from one year to the next. You’ve no doubt gone through some changes and hopefully, growth, since the first year you were in business. Add those successes to your About Us page every year.

When’s the last time you looked at your About Us page? Is it time for an update?

Categories
Digital Marketing

Don’t Waste a Penny: How to Allocate Your Digital Marketing Budget

When you’ve been in digital marketing as long as I have, you tend to notice when brands are making mistakes with their strategy. A lot of brands believe they must be using all available marketing channels to be successful, but in doing so, find they don’t have the budget to properly manage and execute campaigns at that scale. As a result, they’re simply stretched too thin, and running poor to mediocre at best campaigns on a wide scale, when they’d be far better served running absolutely stellar campaigns on fewer channels.

Not all channels are relevant to all brand audiences, and not all channels will support your marketing objectives. That’s why it’s important to continuously revisit your marketing goals, and keep a close eye on data to see how well you’re achieving those goals. It means developing multiple strategies to accomplish goals, and remaining fluid and flexible enough to make changes based on the data you’re seeing, so you can improve your ROI.

A large part of developing any digital marketing strategy for any goal is knowing where and how you invest your money. While I obviously can’t give you a cut and dry approach that works every time for everyone, I hope to guide you so you can be smarter with your money – especially if it’s limited – to help you earn more profit to reinvest back into your business and fuel growth.

 

Assess Your Target Audience and Goals

Your demographics will determine the methods you’ll use to reach your audience. For example, if you’re trying to target an audience of younger people, you wouldn’t want to spend a lot of money on popup ads on various websites, for the simple fact that the majority of your audience will be using ad blockers.At the same time, if you’re targeting an older audience, certain social channels like Snapchat won’t be as effective – and an audience of men means Pinterest isn’t a good choice, either. If you’re spending time and money on places where your audience can’t be found in volume, then you’re doing it wrong.

Now, think about your goals – because this won’t necessarily affect the total spend, but it may mean you spend more in certain places than others.

Common digital marketing goals typically fall into one of two categories:

  • Increasing brand awareness – growing your social media following, increasing social engagement, getting more content views, shares, or downloads
  • Increasing sales – higher conversions for first-time buyers, increasing averageorder value (AOV), increasing customer retention percentage

 

Determine the Channels to Best Reach That Audience

Email marketing is a great channel for most audiences – because everyone uses email. It is, however, a hard one to break into.

You want to invest in social media, but there are countless channels to be involved in – and depending on your demographics, certain channels are better ignored.

 

Key Areas to Invest In

  • Email Marketing: For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $38. One study shows people are twice as likely to sign up for your email list than they are to interact with you on Facebook.
  • Content Marketing: This will likely take up the majority of your digital marketing budget, and can be hard to allocated based on the approach you choose. You’ll need money to pay content creators for the creation of content – whether it’s written, images, or video. You’ll need money to pay for the tools you use to make it easier, and social media and data experts to help you push the content. Content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing, but generates 3x the leads.
  • Social Media Marketing (SMM): You’ll need to grow your social presence, which means spending time creating content specifically for your social channels and running ads on Facebook and other platforms.
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO): People can’t see your content if they can’t find it. Investing in SEO can help you bring in organic traffic from searchers looking for what you have to offer.

If you have past campaigns to analyze, take the time to learn from the data. How much money did you spend in each of these areas? What was your return on investment? Did you, or did you not reach your goals? How close were you to achieving the goal? How far did you exceed your goal? Have you sustained that follower growth or lost some since the conclusion of the campaign? This information will help you as you determine what to allocate where for the next round of campaigns.

 

How Much Money Do You Have?

It’s up to you how much money to dedicate to your total marketing budget. For bootstrapped and small businesses, this can be a meager sum compared to medium businesses and especially enterprises. But, no matter the amount, here’s a good guideline to follow: spend anywhere between five and 15% of your total revenue. As your revenue grows, you can invest more back into the business to keep the momentum going.

Notice I said total marketing budget. You’ll want to reserve a portion of that budget for conventional marketing methods, so your digital marketing budget is only part of it. Of course, because of how popular and relatively affordable it is compared to non-digital options, you’ll want to spend the bulk of that budget digitally. Generally speaking, spend up to half of that budget on total digital marketing – breaking it down into smaller segments over those four key areas.

 

What You Should Spend and Where You Should Spend It

Every business is different, so instead of assigning hard numbers for everyone to follow, if you don’t know exactly what you need, I recommend using the 70/20/10 rule. 70% of your budget goes to things you already know are effective. 20% of your budget goes to experimentation, mostly on what you’re confident is a safe bet. While you’re not completely sure the investments will pay off, it’s reasonable to believe they are a good option. Use the remaining 10% of your budget to do whatever you want. Have a crazy idea that could result in a high ROI, but could also bomb? This is where you allocate the funds to give it a try and see what happens. Play around with the numbers until you find what works best for you, using this as your starting guideline.

 

What Tools Will You Need?

Another important part of budgeting lies in making sure you have the funds for the tools you need to make your job easier. That’s not to say you can’t use free versions of tools that come with free forever plans, but trying to do everything manually will cost you time – and we all know time is money.

At the least, I recommend using a social media management platform, but you’ll also need something for email marketing to handle your lists, autoresponders, and so on. You may also want to invest in other automation tools, or customer relationship management platforms, depending on your needs and what you’re already using. The good thing is, there are highly effective tools available at various price points so you can find something that works for your budget.

 

Digital Marketing is Ongoing

Until your business either changes hands or shuts its doors and you don’t have to worry about it anymore, everything will remain an ongoing process. Take the time to review your budget and progress every month, if not more often. Do a more comprehensive review annually. Your budget should be allocated to areas that will make the biggest impact, and those areas may change as your business grows.

Categories
Digital Marketing

Learn How to Properly Optimize Your Facebook Ads Strategy

If you’re running any kind of ad campaign on Facebook or Instagram, you could be spending way more money than you need to. Before you start running any new campaigns, take a few minutes to read through this to make sure your ads are as optimized as possible.

Are your ad conversions where they should be? Are you paying too much for each click? This guide will help.

 

Get Your Goals Straight Before You Begin

If you don’t know what you’re hoping to get out of your campaign before you start building it, you’re at risk of making missteps that could negatively affect your results – thus causing you to waste money. You can use Facebook ads to:

  • Build your fan base: If you’re looking to increase the number of people who like your page, there’s an ad type specifically for that. You should focus on getting likes only from highly targeted users, so you’ll need to target people who like your competitors’ pages, those with similar interests to your target persona, and using a custom audience to target email subscribers who aren’t already fans of your page.
  • Generate more fan engagement: If you want to get people more active on your page, there are a number of ad types you can use, including link ads, video ads, and photo ads. Regardless of which ad type you choose to use, focus on creatives that are highly visual. Start by advertising directly to your audience of fans. If you don’t have fans built up yet, set you ad targeting to match your customer personas.
  • Generate sales: If you’re in B2C, use page post ads to promote your products and services in the news feed with large images. If you’re in B2B, use a combination of news feed and right-hand column ads to generate leads. Once you’ve got them in your funnel, you can take the necessary steps to nurture them through the pipeline. In either case, you’re trying to get more traffic to your website or landing page. Target based on interests, age, and gender (if you’re marketing a gender-specific product.)
  • Get people to install your mobile app: There’s an ad type dedicated to motivating this action. Run the ad once the app has been published in the app store and ready for people to install it. Use screenshots of the app as part of your creative, and implement Facebook event tracking. Set targeting to match those who are your target app user.
  • Get more people to use your mobile app: Setup a mobile app engagement ad campaign. This targets people who have already installed your app, so you need to be specific and direct users where you want them to go. It’s good idea to use custom audience targeting here. Make sure you’ve got Facebook event tracking setup in the app so you can keep an eye on what users are doing, to target them better.

 

Segment Your Audience

Facebook is capable of reaching millions of people, and though you’d like to reach as many as possible, it doesn’t matter if they’re not interested in what you have to offer. That’s why it helps to break your audience down into smaller segments, so you be sure you’re reaching that target audience of people who are interested, and most likely to buy. You can run simultaneous campaigns to each segment to determine which segments respond better.

 

Run Mobile and Desktops Ads Separately

Because calls to action are likely to perform differently on mobile than they are on desktop, I recommend people always separate their ad campaigns accordingly, even if they’re aiming to achieve the same goal.

This tactic ensures you can optimize your ads for each platform, choosing only the ad formats that you believe will be most effective with each audience. And, you can ensure your bids and conversions are optimized based on device type as well.

 

Use Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences

Custom audiences are completely within your control, and you can set up as many as you need, depending on the goals of your campaign. For example, you can create a custom audience of email subscribers to advertise special deals to, or to encourage them to become your fan on Facebook. You can create a custom audience made only of people who’ve purchased from your company in the past to help encourage repeat purchases, and so on.

Lookalike audiences, on the other hand, help expose you to more people who match the target audience you’re looking to connect with. They share similar interests and demographics as the people who already like your page, or already your customers.

To create your own audiences, login to your Facebook ads manager account and click “Audiences > Choose Audience > Lookalike Audience.” From there, you’ll be able to choose the source of the audience, such as the people who’ve already liked your Facebook page, or people who’ve visited the Thank You page on your website. Then you’ll choose your target audience size. The smaller you choose, the more targeted it will be.

 

Keep Copy Short and Simple

Ad copy needs to be short, simple, and to the point. Focus more on your call to action, because if that’s not what it should be, you’ll have a hard time convincing people to click your ad. It’s a good idea to have a few variants of your ad copy and calls to action for split-testing purposes.

 

Split Test Your Ads and Landing Pages

Beyond the ad’s copy, you should also have variants of images you use with the ads, since no two people will respond to your imagery the same way. Run small scale campaigns with each ad variant and see which one your audience responds to the best. Run a larger scale campaign with that ad to see if you get the same results. Beyond the ads themselves, split-test your landing pages to make sure you’ve created the best possible scenario for your audience.

 

Make Use of Carousel Ads

If you want to use more than one image in an ad – particularly when it comes to showcasing the products you have available in your store, this type of ad is a great choice. You can use it to cross-sell complimentary products, or re-target customers who abandoned their shopping carts.

A variation of this type of ad is the multiple product ad – which allows you to showcase more than one product within a single ad. Or, you can show multiple benefits of a single product. Studies show these ads have a more efficient cost per acquisition, saving up you up to 35% in cost per click because they increase engagement. Not only this, but they can also increase your click through rates up to 300%.

 

Set Up the Facebook Pixel

With the Facebook pixel, you can track events that happen on your website, to translate that to offline activity. You can find out how well your ads are converting to drive traffic, and then see what that traffic is doing on your website.

Lots of people who visit your website are going to be in the research phase. They want to learn more about the products and services and make sure they are getting the best. By the time they’re ready to make a purchase, they may have forgotten about you. The Facebook Remarketing pixel allows you to target anyone who’s visited your website but didn’t convert with ads. This way, you remain fresh in the mind when they’re ready to buy.

To set up the Remarketing pixel, login to your Facebook ads manager. Click “Audiences > Custom Audiences > Website Traffic.” Then, you can start the process of creating your remarketing pixel.

You’ll install the code in the footer of your website, and in a couple of days, you’ll have data you can use to target people with Facebook ads.

 

Schedule and Rotate Your Ads

If you’ve opted for the lifetime budget rather than the daily budget, you’ll have the option to segment your ads by days and hours. Using this approach means you’ll need to consider the total budget of your ad set. If this is your first ad campaign, or previous campaigns haven’t given you a successful performance pattern over time, I recommend avoiding this option. But, if you’ve had success in the past, you can set your ads to run on the days and times you know it will be successful. You can find this option in the “Budget and Schedule” section of your ad set.

 

Facebook Ads Can Be Hit or Miss

Don’t be discouraged if you see an ad you thought would be a hit doesn’t perform like you thought it would. Targeting is important, but getting too targeted could drive the cost per click up. Targeting too loosely could keep the cost down, but dilute your audience. It takes experimentation to strike the right balance – and the more you know about your ideal target audience, the better.

Tell me more about the Facebook ad campaigns you run in the comments below.

Categories
Digital Marketing

The Complete Guide to Image Optimization for the Web

Images are a vital part of the user experience, but they also account for the most data on your page. This means it can have a dramatic effect on your site’s loading time, which we know can impact conversion rates. Research shows 47% of users expect a website to load within two seconds or less, and 40% will abandon a website that takes three seconds or more to load. Each one second delay contributes to a 7% decrease in conversions.

How can you make sure your images are high enough quality to add to, rather than detract from the user experience? Focus on proper image optimization. In this case, we’re not talking about SEO – though that matters too, of course – but file formats and sizing.

 

Online Image File Types 101

There are two categories of file formats you can use for online images – raster and vector.

Raster images are images made of a rectangular grid of pixels. Raster formats include: .jpeg/.jpg, .gif, .tiff, and .png.

Vector images are generated using mathematics, from basic geometric shapes. Vector formats include: .svg, .cgm, .ai, .xps, and .vml.

From the optimization perspective, I’ll be focusing on raster images, but before I move on, it’s worth discussing a bit more about vector images.

Vector images can be scaled up or down to any size, without causing issues with image quality. They will display perfectly regardless of resolution. They are easy to edit and adjust. Since they are made of programmatic instructions, they have small file sizes. This is why vector graphics are the best choice for designing logos, backgrounds, and other graphic elements.

If they’re so perfect, why aren’t they the default choice for web images? Right now, it’s the lack of cross-browser support. Designers must create web assets with a vector-friendly file, and then export them into a range of sizes in non-vector formats on the web. Until all browsers adopt support for Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg) format – the native web format for vector graphics – designers will continue to face this issue.

We’ve been making progress on this front for years, so hopefully we’ll see deployment of vector graphics online becoming more widespread within the next couple of years. Until then – we have to make sure we’re optimizing our raster images as best as possible.

 

Image Compression Types

There are two types of image compression: lossy and lossless. Lossy image compression reduces the file size by permanently removing certain information from the file. When uncompressed, only a portion of the original information is still in the file – but the user may not notice the difference. This kind of compression isn’t limited to just image files, and is commonly used for video and sound.

Lossless compression on the other hand, all the original data in the file remains even after the file is uncompressed. The information is completely restored, so it is a common choice of compression for spreadsheets and other text documents when there is a concern about losing data.

When this translates to images on the web, we can compare two formats. JPEG/JPG is a lossy compression format, where the image creator can decide how much information to remove, making a trade off between image quality and file size. GIF is a lossless format that is widely used on the web.

 

Raster Images

Raster images are essentially the opposite of where we stand with vectors. We have universal browser acceptance, but we’re left with hefty optimization requirements. I’m opting to focus on three main file types that are the most common…  and I’ll throw in another we may see more of in the future.

 

GIF

Graphics Interchange Format was invented in 1987. It produces a small image size, but is limited to only 256 colors, which worked well back in the day. There is support for transparency, allowing images to flow seamlessly onto whatever background, which is why they were so popular in the early days of the web. They died out for a while, but thanks to their ability to support animation and the recent animated GIF craze making a comeback, we’re seeing a new rise in popularity. GIFs are best used for thumbnails and decorative images, because if they are used for large product images, the resulting file size will be large, with no good way to reduce it.

 

JPEG/JPG

JPEG is the current standard for online photos. It is an acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the organization that developed the standard. It remains the universal standard for online photos, and is used on more than 70% of websites globally.

Use this format when you’re working with a large color range, but don’t need support for transparency. They are a good choice for ecommerce websites since they provide a high quality image at a relatively small file size.

 

PNG

Portable Network Graphics is a format invented as an alternative to GIFs due to possible licensing issues. This format provides lossless compression and support for transparency, while still providing a high quality image. This makes it a suitable alterative to both GIFs and JPEGs, depending on the usage.

PNG is available in three formats – 8 bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit. The PNG-8 format acts as a replacement for GIFs with a smaller file size, only supporting up to 256 colors. The 24 and 32-bit options provide alternatives to JPEGs, since they support all 16 million colors. However, you can end up with larger file sizes when using the 24 or 32-bit variants.

 

WebP

There hasn’t been much change in the online image format space until recently, with the introduction of Google’s WebP Project. It’s a proposed new image standard that aims to be able to reduce file sizes by as much as 25%, compared to PNGs. It’s natively supported in Chrome, but we’ll have to wait a while for universal adoption of the forma.

 

Tools for Image Optimization

One method for reducing your file size is using the “Save for Web” option in Adobe Photoshop. I like this option because you can explore various file types with just a few clicks – with a side by side comparison of the compressed version alongside the original. Plus, you’ll get an idea of how long the resulting file size will take to load online, with the ability to make adjustments for various connection speeds. The idea is that you should adjust the image to the lowest acceptable file size, without sacrificing too much in terms of image quality.

Photoshop used to be an expensive program prior to becoming a cloud-based membership option. Now, if you’re looking at just Photoshop, rather than accessing the entire Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, you can pay anywhere from $9.99/month to $29.99/month depending on whether you choose a student, individual, or business plan. But, if that’s still not within your budget, there are plenty of free alternatives to help you resize and optimize your images for use in online projects.

  • PicMonkey: This online tool allows you to design, edit, touch up, and make collages with photos. The tool is free, though there is a premium version available with additional features.
  • Pixlr: There are two versions of this online tool. The editor works much like Photoshop, allowing you to work in layers and move objects around. The express tool allows you to make quick adjustments and add personal touches like overlays and borders. Both these tools are available in your browser, but there are smartphone apps available so you can edit photos on the go.
  • FotoFlexer: This is a fairly advanced online photo editor. You can add effects, text, shapes, and doodles on the photos. You can also retouch, and make advanced adjustments, all from within your browser, for free.
  • PicResize: A bit more of a basic tool just for resizing, this is a quick and easy tool for reducing file size. There are browser plugins to help you speed up the process or integrate it into your workflow. You can batch multiple photos, too.
  • TinyJPG/TinyPNG: One tool is designed for JPG images, while the other is for PNG images. You can’t do anything more than upload the image and download a smaller, more compressed version, but when you’re in a hurry and all you’re worried about is file size, these tools work wonderfully. You can batch multiple photos with these tools as well.

 

Optimizing Your Photos Can Make or Break Your Success Online

Ultimately, customer satisfaction is just one reason why you should make sure your photos are optimized. If your images are bloated, it may even cause your site ranking to decrease, since Google considers site loading time as one its ranking factors. On the surface, it may not seem like images can affect that much, but when you really think about it – they are an integral part of the customer experience on many levels.

Categories
Digital Marketing

Mastering the Use of Device Specific PPC Campaigns

People use different devices for different tasks. Would you go app shopping for new apps on your tablet or smartphone from your desktop? Probably not. Would you try out a new business program on your tablet? Probably not. So, it makes sense to use device-specific PPC campaigns when your business is targeting behaviors that are also device specific.

Search and shopping behaviors are different from the desktop to the tablet to the smartphone. When you’re able to learn how your target audience is using their devices, you can capitalize on this information to enhance your PPC campaigns, thus giving you a chance to improve your ROI.

 

How You Can Use Device Specific PPC Campaigns

Building your PPC campaigns based on user habits is an effective strategy to increase your click through and conversion rates for your product. This type of campaign uses a unique strategy, targeting, and copy to best fit the device you’re targeting.

Thanks to changes to the AdWords platform, you now have more control over your budget and bid adjustments. You can set a default bid for one type of device, while making bid adjustments for the other two. This gives you the ability to focus on mobile, and bid down on tablets and desktops. You can use this strategy to increase your bids on mobile during the hours when your mobile traffic is at its peak.

And because mobile and tablet bid adjustments are now separate, you can save money on campaigns where you’ve targeted toward mobile devices by not having to spend on tablets, and vice versa.

 

Pros of Device Specific PPC Campaigns

  • Desktops will always be there, but mobile device usage is on the rise. More traffic is coming from mobile devices than desktops these days, but that doesn’t mean you need to neglect desktop all together. Device specific campaigns allow you to make adjustments according to the needs of your business and how they align with your target audience.
  • Each audience has a different amount of time for specific searches. People searching on their phones want their search results faster than those who are searching from desktop devices. Generally speaking, those who are mobile are on the go and need something right away, whereas people on desktops are stationary and have more time to browse for the right solution.
  • With device specific campaigns, you can use your budget more efficiently, assigning the exact amount of money to each of your campaigns according to the usage habits of your audience.
  • Messaging can be adjusted for each device, allowing for better targeting and thus, better conversion.

 

Cons of Device Specific Campaigns

  • Device specific campaigns require more effort, and thus more work, because you have more actions to check and more data to analyze. Your time investment will be bigger than if you’re using a traditional campaign. Typically, though, your investment is worth the reward.
  • The data you get from the campaign is distributed amongst all the devices that are part of the campaign, meaning the end result displays smaller numbers. Based on this, data driven decision making becomes a bit more difficult.
  • Not all search engines are offering the ability to run device specific PPC campaigns, meaning your campaigns have to be separated accordingly. This translates to additional information to process, and more effort from a larger workforce.
  • Even though Google allows for device specific campaigns, there is no technical support service. It may mean spending some time on trial and error to ensure your campaigns run smoothly.

 

Is a Device Specific Campaign the Right Choice for Your Business?

This depends entirely on your product and messaging. If you’ve got a campaign that’s advertising a new software, it can be different depending on device. On desktops, you’d include copy with more details, with ads that go to demo or testimonial pages. But on mobile devices, the copy will be more direct, and send users to the app page, or to call your company. In this case, device specific campaigns give you more control than sending the same campaign to all devices.

There are, however, some cases when you should not focus on segmenting your audience by device, such as:

  • When the data is difficult to find: If you’ve got a small data-set, I think it’s a good idea to avoid segmenting your campaigns by device. If you’re only getting a few clicks a day, then you can’t really get enough data to make these changes.
  • When your PPC account is too large or confusing: If the idea of adding something else to make your account even more complex feels like the last thing you’d want to do, then it may be a good idea to avoid going to device specific campaigns. Making the switch means you’ll basically have three times the variables to monitor, so if you don’t feel like you can keep up, it’s okay.

Before you make any kind of changes to your PPC campaigns, consider device user habits, and how they relate to your target audience.

  • Device usage varies based on the time of day.
  • Desktop engagement lasts about three times longer than mobile engagement.
  • Typically, mobile purchases increase on the weekend.
  • Purchases with higher average order values are generally made from desktops.

 

Tips for Mobile and Tablet Campaigns

  • When running mobile campaigns, make use of call and message extensions. You don’t need to waste these on your desktop campaigns, but those who are interested can click to call you and speak to you directly. This makes a great way to connect directly with your mobile customers.
  • If your company has an app, use the AdWords app extension. This extension allows the people who click your ad to download your app, and doesn’t cost you more than the typical click.
  • Consider your cost per click when setting your bid adjustments at the device level. Your tablet and mobile clicks are generally lower than desktop clicks, so keep this in mind as you set the base bid adjustments for each device.
  • Keywords for mobile devices are typically shorter. It’s a good idea to increase bids on direct keywords and those that are shorter in character length.
  • Create a strategy for your landing pages. The user experience varies dramatically from tablet to desktop; and the keywords can, too.
  • Tablets should be treated like a home device. In the evenings when people are sitting on the couch watching TV, they’re more likely to be using a tablet as a second screen. You may want to consider adjusting your bids accordingly.
  • Opt for voice search friendly keywords, as voice search is becoming more popular. Adjust the mobile bids for those keywords accordingly.
  • Segment your brand campaigns to tweak them so they are device specific. You can greatly expand your brand awareness this way – catching target audience members no matter which device they are using.
  • Experiment with mobile, geographic specific campaigns. Create mobile only campaigns that focus on certain geographic areas at various times of day.
  • Experiment with demographic bid modifiers. Millennials use smartphones more than other generations, so it’s a good idea to use this on your mobile specific campaigns.

 

Can a Business Succeed Without Using a Device Specific Approach?

Yes, it can. Device specific campaigns are not a hard requirement for PPC success. However, this doesn’t mean your business should flat out ignore them. Segmentation is always a good thing because it allows for better targeting, there is not always a clear need to segment your campaigns by device type. It’s not the best choice for every website, every campaign, or every keyword. There are some situations where it doesn’t make sense – and that’s why it’s important to spend time thinking about how you can (or cannot) use it specifically for your business and the audience you’re seeking to find.

Do you use device specific PPC as part of your marketing efforts? Why or why not? Share your thoughts below.

Categories
Digital Marketing

Conversion Rate Optimization: Tips and Tricks You Need to Know

You’ve built (or paid for) a stellar website. You’ve invested in market research and built an amazing product, and you’ve got a great sales and customer support team to support it. But, people just aren’t responding the way you’d hoped. They’re either not coming to begin with, or even worse, they’re coming, taking a look at everything, and then bailing on you without converting.

You’re at your wits end. You’re not sure what to do. I have the answer: create a conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategy. Here are some tips to help you get started.

 

Keep a Close Eye on Your Website Analytics

Study your website analytics to get insights on how you’re currently performing. Use the information to guide your strategy. Inside Google Analytics, and many other analytics platforms, you can learn a lot about who your website visitors are, the devices they’re using to visit your website, and what they’re doing while they’re visiting your website.

As we see more cross-device activity, segmentation is critical to your CRO strategy. If you have a landing page with a low conversion rate and discover the majority of the traffic to it comes from a mobile device, then your CRO strategy needs to focus on optimizing the page for mobile traffic.

Inside your web analytics, you’ll also be able to examine your funnel for leaks. You’ll see where traffic drops off, so you can take a closer look at those pages to see what could be done to improve them, and close the leaks. If you see a high exit rate on your checkout page, that’s a good indication that something is wrong with the user experience, because they’re not following through with the checkout process.

 

ABT – Always Be Testing

Split testing will help you see which variations of your website people respond to the best. You can run tests on everything from the color and layout to the copy, the call to action, and even the offers themselves. Split-test one element at a time so you can tell which change had a direct impact on the conversion rate. Before you engage in any kind of A/B split testing, test your landing page against itself to see if the conversion rates are similar. The quality of the traffic you get is more important than the volume of traffic you get when it comes to running split-tests. If you’re not paying attention to the kind of traffic you’re getting during your split tests, your tests could be weaker than you thought. It’s best to run the split test for a certain amount of time, and avoid looking at the results until the test is finished.

Let’s say you have three versions of copy. Test A against A, then A against B, and A against C. Now, test B against C. Then, test the winner against itself to make sure you’re still getting similar conversion rates.

With the variables you can test, it’s feasible to constantly be running tests. And it’s feasible to constantly be making improvements to your landing pages and offers as a result of those tests.

 

Personalize the Website Experience

Website personalization is becoming a buzzword, and while some marketers have made it a priority, many have continued to ignore it. Personalized emails deliver six times higher transaction rates, yet 70% of marketers don’t use them. 74% of online consumers become frustrated when content appears that has nothing to do with their interests.  The same study showed that 28% of people would be willing to give up social media for a week, while 25% would give up chocolate for a month, if they were able to get appropriate content based on their personal interests across all their favorite websites. People want personalized material, but they want control, too. 57% of consumers are okay with sharing their personal information on a website as long as it is for their benefit, but 77% would trust businesses more if they took the time to explain how the information is used to improve their online experience.

To make your personalization effective, you need to be aware of the types of visitors who come to your website. You’ll have to know this so you can offer content that’s specifically tailored to the major segments of your visitors. You can also ask your visitors to choose a persona that they most closely identify with, and then display relevant content to them.

 

Develop a Clear Customer Onboarding Process

If you’re in the B2B market, make sure you’ve got a clear onboarding process. Divide your customers into groups. For example, you could have: pretrial, launching, and adopted.

Pretrial customers are those who haven’t signed up for an account, those who are on a free account, or those who are currently using a free trial.

Launching would be the group of customers who have finished a trial, but have been with you for less than X number of months. These are the ones you want to focus on engagement and education with, to ensure they can see the real value in what your product/service has to offer.

Your adopted customers are anyone who has been with you longer than the already established X months that qualified them as a launching customer. They are the ones who understand your value and are growing their use. You want to focus on their feedback, getting them to adopt all the features you have available to them, and grow their use of your product or service.

 

Keep it Lean and Clean

It’s easy to get caught up in the details of color and text and making sure your call to action buttons stand out. And while those things matter, it can cause you to overlook the clutter that builds up on your web pages. Your number one focus, especially on landing pages, needs to be getting the user to take action.

Keep the design as lean and clean as you can. Yes, keep the button easy to see, but focus more on keeping the copy succinct enough to provide the detail you need, without causing the user to get lost in it.

The more you put on your page, the longer it takes to load. And the longer it takes to load, the less likely people are going to stick around. One study shows that just a one second delay can translate to 11% fewer page views, a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and a 7% decrease in conversions.

Keep the code nice and lean, too, so as to keep your page load time under two seconds. Not sure how long your page is taking to load? Run a speed test with the PageSpeed Insights tool to see what you’re working with now and get recommendations to help improve speed.

 

Mine Customer Reviews for Copywriting

Your customer reviews give you an idea of not only what people have to say about your company, products, and services, but they also give you an idea of how people are saying it. This gives you insight into how people are searching for what you have to offer. Spend some time looking through customer reviews and picking out words and phrases you think speak to your message and call to action. Weave them into your copy. It helps make the copy speak to your audience and can boost your SEO.

 

Make it Easy for Customers to Succeed

Customers ultimately need three things from you to succeed: support, engagement, and education.

Give both general support and more advanced technical support, if your product or service requires it. Make your support team available through a number of channels such as phone, email, chat, and social media. This allows your customer to choose the channel and experience they want.

Engage your customers directly through every stage of the funnel –so they are speaking with someone throughout the entire customer life cycle.

Educate your customers with content that helps them see not only how your product or service can make their life easier or solve a problem for them, but also how to use it, and what to do if they should ever run into any problems with it.

 

Focus Everything on Your Ideal Customer

Any experience you design needs to be focused on your ideal customer, rather than just any customer. If you think it’s a good idea to have two cheaper pricing plans, you’ll likely find that people who are just getting started in your target industry will sign up for one of those. It’ll lead to a burden on your customer support team, and ultimately increase customer churn.

 

Focus on Proper Conversion Tracking

Your goal in CRO should include improving both your micro and macro conversions. It’s always a goal to improve macro conversions, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be tracking how well your micro conversions are performing, too.

All your micro conversions add up to that coveted macro conversion, so it makes sense to make sure they’re performing well. You don’t just have to rely on your website to track micro conversions. You can track social media interactions, blog interactions, and email responses as part of your micro conversion rate, too.

 

CRO Should Be Ongoing

Even if you’ve reached a conversion rate you’re happy with, the work is never done. The market is constantly changing, and to keep up, you must constantly be testing and making improvements where you can. Keep an eye on your data, watching for changes. Continue optimizing your landing pages, and focus on CRO every time you add something new.

What other CRO tips do you have to share? Leave them in the comments.

Categories
Digital Marketing

How to Choose the Best Font Selection for Messaging in Marketing

I’ve already written a post on the importance of considering color theory in your branding, so today I want to extend that and talk about choosing your fonts. Just like color, fonts can evoke certain thoughts and feelings, so it’s important to make sure your fonts match your brand message.

Today’s marketers are saddled with more tasks than ever before, and in the content creation cycle, the constant need to produce stellar content that resonates with your audience is often priority over the design details. Of course, the content matters, but its presentation can make or break how well it sits with your readers, so taking a few minutes to pay attention to the details of the font – such as the letter spacing, kerning, and tracking, is worth it.

When you concentration your typography, you can capture attention, provoke emotion, and deepen the connection with your audience. Never allow fonts to be randomly chosen for any project – instead, follow these guidelines to choose the best font for the job every time.

 

Create Your Visual Hierarchy

In most design situations, you’ll need two fonts – one for the headline and one for the body. You can use a combination of font weights, color variations, or two completely different font families – depending on the project and the brand messaging.

Whatever fonts you choose, the end result needs to:

  • Be easy to scan
  • Allow for quick identification of the most important elements
  • Allow for quick comprehension of how the elements relate to everything else on the screen or the page.

Readers won’t read every single word, especially on a website. Typically, they’ll scan for the headlines and pay attention only to the sections that matter the most to them.

 

Consider Readability and Legibility

Readability refers to the way words and blocks of text are arranged on the page. When you choose the font, think about things like paragraph spacing, font size, line height, and letter spacing. If things look too squished, it’s going to be hard to read. Readers shouldn’t really notice the paragraph spacing or line height, because the best typography is based on function – the function of communicating the message. Of course, you want the appearance of the text to have appeal, but it doesn’t need to be the main focus.

Legibility, on the other hand, refers to the design of a typeface and how well a single character can be distinguished from others. It can also refer to the definition of the word shapes. As such, fonts that look great for headlines aren’t necessarily a great choice for body copy. There are definitely exceptions to this rule, but choose your fonts specifically based on what they will be used for.

Display faces are intended for use in large formats, like headlines. Text, or body faces, are designed to be used in large blocks of text, which is why you see them in books.

A font’s legibility can also be determined by whether or not it is serif or sans-serif. Serif fonts are those that have small lines, or “feet” at the edges of the letters. Sans-serif fonts, lack these small lines at the edges of the letters.

Serif fonts are widely used in printed works, because they are easy to read, and lend a classic feel. But in terms of the web, many designers feel sans serif fonts are the way to go. They work well with current design trends, and have a more modern feel.

Look at this classic #designfail. While the box says, “flickering lights” issues with font makes it at first glance seem like it features an obscenity. That’s exactly why font matters in your design!

 

Use Contrast

Contrast plays a big role in how readable a font is. Use color and space well, choosing a dark font on a pale background. Yes, you can achieve contrast with a light font on a dark background, but this combination is hard to read, and often rough on the eyes. The light background with dark text is favored because it makes it easier to read longer blocks of text. If you’re using color, leave it for headlines and display text.

 

Make Sure the Font Size is Ideal

The font size you choose will depend mostly on the screen or page the message is displayed on. If you’re dealing with multi-line paragraphs, make sure the font size you choose allows for anywhere for 45 to 70 characters per line. If there are more than 70 characters per line, readers will tire quickly, and more easily lose their place as they scan back and forth. If the lines are too short, on the other hand, there could be too many hyphenated line breaks, or too much white space through the paragraphs.

 

Design for Cross-Device Viewing

If you’re designing marketing materials of any sort for viewing on the web, you must design for cross-device viewing. Responsive web design makes it easy for designers to automatically adjust the design for viewing on a desktop, smartphone, smart TV, or tablet, but with that, comes a new set of considerations for your typography.

Responsive typography only changes at set breakpoints, but fluid typographic will resize accordingly to match the width of any device. Smashing Magazine provides an excellent tutorial for getting started with fluid typography. It’s as simple as setting the font size in HTML to a viewport unit.

 

Selecting a Font Delivery Service

A font delivery service, such as Google Fonts, Fonts.com, or Typekit, will ensure your brand fonts are used consistently across the web. These services are subscription-based, but will give you access to hundreds, if not thousands of fonts to choose from for all your branding and marketing projects. Not all fonts will display the same across the web, so when you’re designing for online projects, choose a font you know will work well across the most common browsers.

 

Compare Fonts Side by Side

If you’re struggling to find the font you think will work best for any project, create a card that compares all the options side by side. Seeing what they look like both on the screen and in print will help you determine what looks best for your band.

Work through your font selection process in black and white, rather than letting how color influences the appearance of the font influence your feelings. Color adjusts the psychology of what the viewer sees, so choose the colors after the fonts have been selected.

 

Need More?

This infographic, found at Crazy Egg, does a great job of showing the psychology behind font choices. Use it as a starting point to help you choose the best font families for your project.

When choosing your font – think about the message you want to communicate. If you’re working on something for a formal event like a wedding, then using script fonts is a common choice. If you’re working on something you want to be easily read online, go for something clean and modern.

What’s your favorite font and why? Tell me in the comments below.

Categories
Digital Marketing

How to Protect Your Blog from Copyright Infringement

In today’s society, new content is produced at an alarming rate – and with everything just a search away, it’s super easy to find (and steal) whatever you want. If you’re worried about someone stealing your blog content for use as their own, there are some things you can do to protect yourself.

 

Run Your Content Through Copyscape

Copyscape allows you to check for plagiarism. The free version allows you to paste the URL of the page you want to check, and see if there’s anything else out there like it. Of course, it will find commonly used phrases, and some information such as dates and times that can’t be helped. The premium version, which will cost you a nickel a search, provides more in-depth protection. You can add credits at any time, and they expire a year after they’re added. You can paste your blog post content in the engine to be sure you’re not plagiarizing anyone before you post your content. You can even add the content to a private library to make sure you’re not duplicating yourself – good for avoiding both plagiarism (yes, you can plagiarize yourself!) and any duplicate content issues. Copyscape also has banners you can install on your website to let others know you use the service to protect your content.

You can also sign up for Copysentry, which automatically checks your content and alerts you of plagiarism. Plans start at $4.95/month for up to 10 pages, checked weekly. Each additional page will cost another $0.25/month. If you’d rather have your content checked every day, you can pay $19.95/month for up to 10 pages, and another $1/page/month for each additional page.

When you run a search, you’ll want to make sure you click through to read the page to make sure they are actually copying your content before you take action. Keep track of any pages that are truly copied with a spreadsheet or a text document.

Though I’m not an attorney and I can’t offer you legal advice, I can say this – you could be held liable for legal costs if the website is found to be using your content legally. So, if you’re not sure, talk to a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property law.

 

Include Terms and Conditions and Disclaimers on Your Website

The terms and conditions, also known as terms of use or terms of service, is a legal “document” of sorts that should be featured on your website. It will provide protections for your website and blog content as it outlines what your visitors can and cannot do with what they find on your website. Simply including a sentence that says something along the lines of, “By using this website, you agree not to copy, modify, reproduce, sell, or distribute this content in any manner, or in any medium, without explicit written permission” can help strengthen your case if someone steals your content.

Within your terms and conditions, you should also have disclaimers. These will protect you from liability should someone misuse your content. If you post a recipe on your blog, and then someone makes it, but ends up sick in the hospital – clearly, it isn’t your fault, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t get sued. The disclaimer that you are not responsible for whatever happens should someone use the information you share on your blog helps relieve your legal liability.

While I’m an advocate for hiring an attorney to prepare your terms of service documentation for you, there are a number of tools online to help you generate custom terms on your own. While it is tempting to just copy the terms and conditions from another website, you can’t do that – that’s copyright infringement. Plus, their terms and conditions may be different from what you require on your website. Once you have the terms and conditions drawn up for your website, place them in the footer of your website – on every single page. If you WordPress, this is relatively easy to do, though specific step by step instructions will vary depending on the theme you’re using.

 

Register Your Content with the Copyright Office

Taking the time to register your content with the U.S. Copyright Office gives you the legal ground to sue for copyright infringement. While it’s true your copyright protection is automation and your posts are your property the second they are published, you don’t have the legal right to sue unless they are registered with the government.

You can register your blog content on the U.S. copyright registration portal. All you have to do is submit an application, payment, and your blog posts. It is possible to register a collection of posts at one time at a cost of around $35 to $55. Rather than trying to copyright each post as it goes live, you could submit an application monthly or quarterly. This way, you’ve got it worked into your workflow, and everything is protected.

When you register your website and blog content, if you find that someone has infringed upon your copyright, you have the right to monetary compensation as a result. These awards can range from $750 to as high as $150,000 in some cases – making the filing fees well worth the investment and peace of mind.

 

Add Plugins to Your Website

Though the developer hasn’t updated the plugin in a while, WP Content Copy Protection automatically prevents many of the most common content theft methods. It blocks right-clicking, source code viewing, many keyboard shortcuts, and more. A developer can also manually code these things into your website. Disabling right-click can also help protect your images from theft. If you’d rather not disable right click on the entire website, you can disable it on images only, too.

Though it doesn’t prevent content theft, watermarking your images can certainly deter it. Several plugins can automatically watermark images you upload to the media library, and some can even bulk watermark any images you’ve previously uploaded. Options include: Image Watermark, Easy Watermark, and Image Watermark WP. One thing worth mentioning is that once this is activated, every image you upload will be watermarked. That means if there are images you’re uploading that aren’t originally yours, you’ll need to turn it off before you upload them, so you’re not falsely watermarking them as your own.

 

Send a Cease and Desist Letter

Content and images are taken all the time online – sometimes on purpose, and sometimes by accident. If you know who did it, you can reach out to them and ask them to stop. You can do this in the form of an email that outlines the content that was taken, and ask them to either properly credit you, or to remove it completely. Generally, when someone realizes they were caught, this is enough for them to comply with your request.

If the email approach doesn’t work, ask your attorney to send a formal cease and desist letter. You don’t have to have an attorney to do it, but sometimes having legal representation helps speed up the process.

Your cease and desist letter should outline and reference the posts taken, with summaries, links, and other details. Typically, it will provide a 72-hour window to comply with the request. If your content is registered, include the copyright registration number in the letter. If the letter doesn’t work, move on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act – also known as the DMCA.

 

Make Use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Under the DMCA, if someone takes your content and puts it elsewhere on the internet, you as the owner of the original content can go directly to the platform or web hosting company and let them know. When this happens, the content will be removed. This is the approach you should take if you’ve fallen victim to a content scraper and you’re not sure who is directly responsible for the infringement.

Use Whois to determine who owns the domain and where it is hosted. Once you have this information, you can contact the domain owner and/or host directly. Sites like YouTube and Google have DMCA takedown procedures in place, but if you’re dealing with one that doesn’t, you can email them.

Under the DMCA, as long as the platforms and hosts comply with various rules in the law – such as having a designated agent for handling the takedown notices – they won’t be held responsible for hosting infringed content. These platforms aren’t generally interested in hosting infringed content, so they gladly remove it, allowing it to remain in the one place it belongs – your blog.

 

Copyright Infringement is a Serious Crime

Just as you want to protect your content from infringement, you want to be sure you’re crafting content that’s original, and not subject to infringement. If you must use material from other sources, credit them accordingly – and ask for permission to use anything if you’re not sure.

And to remove my own liability, let me remind you, this article is not intended as legal advice, and instead is for informational and educational purposes only.

Have you ever had your content stolen? Share your story in the comments below.

Categories
Digital Marketing

Micro Conversions vs. Macro Conversions: Why You Need Both

There’s a tremendous amount of data out there for marketers. According to the IDC, we generated 1.8 zettabytes (1.8 trillion GBs) of information in 2011. In 2012, we added another zettabyte. And by 2020, we’re expected to hit 40 zettabytes. With all of it to sort through, it can be difficult to determine what metrics really matter, and which ones to keep an eye on. Should you be paying attention to the number of Facebook likes? The number of web visits? What about bounce rate?

Even if you love getting lost in data and analytics, it can be overwhelming. So that’s why I want to talk to you about setting goals, then focusing on conversions, more so than specific metrics. Since various metrics can play a role in conversions, it allows you to focus on what really matters, rather than on picking and choosing the numbers that you think may matter the most.

What Are Your Goals?

Before you can figure out what matters, you need to create your own definition of success. When setting your goals make sure they follow the SMART model:

  • Strategic: Make it clear, and specific, related to accomplishing your end goal. If it’s not, you won’t be able to focus your efforts the way you need to, or get the motivation you need to achieve it. What do you want to accomplish? Why is it important? Who is involved? Where is it located? Which resources and limits are involved?
  • Measurable: Your goal must be measurable to track your progress and remain motivated. It keeps you focused, allows you to meet your deadlines, and generate excitement because you’re closer to reaching your goal. Your goal should answer questions like: how much? How many? Or, how will I know when it is accomplished?
  • Attainable: Before your goal can be successful, it must first be realistic and attainable. It’s unrealistic to lose 100 pounds in a month, so even though it’s measurable, it’s not attainable. You must be able to answer how you’ll accomplish the goal, and be able to determine how realistic the goal is based on any other constraints you may be facing, like time, budget, and staffing issues.
  • Relevant: This ensures your goals not only matter to you, but are also in alignment with other goals. While you should make plans that drive your entire company forward, you must ensure that each individual is responsible for achieving their own goal. If the goal is relevant, it can answer yes to any of these questions: Is this worthwhile? Is this the right time? Does this match our other efforts and needs? Am I the right person to achieve this goal? Is this goal applicable in the current socioeconomic climate?
  • Time-Based: All your goals should have a target date, so you have a deadline to keep yourself focused. Having this deadline in place prevents your everyday tasks from taking precedence over your long-term goals.

An example SMART goal: “Sarah is responsible for increasing Facebook reach by 10% by the end of 2017.” You should take time to set goals for both macro conversions and micro conversions.

What is a Micro Conversion?

Micro conversions are metrics that show the potential for success, without necessarily equaling success. These are essentials for businesses with long sales cycles, as a full conversion may not happen for months or even a year after the initial contact takes place. There are likely lots of micro conversions hiding in your current marketing strategy, such as:

  • Email list sign up
  • Downloading a free resource
  • Liking or following on social media channels
  • People reading/commenting on your blog
  • Sharing your content
  • Watching a video
  • Followed a topic

None of these activities relate directly to sales, but they do help educate and engage your audience. When someone completes a micro conversion, they are showing interest in your business, which is a necessary step toward macroconversion.

There are two types of micro conversions: process milestones and secondary actions. Process milestones refer to the conversions that represent linear movement toward a macro conversion. Keeping an eye on these helps you learn where any improvements on user experience need to be made. Secondary actions are not the primary goals you’re aiming toward, but rather the actions you want people to take as an indication of future macro conversions.

Process milestones are an essential part of the conversion optimization process. Let’s say you’re running a series of split tests to test design changes in your linear path to conversion. If you spend time looking for significant changes in your macro conversion rates, you may end up skipping over good design changes.

Secondary actions are those I listed above. They are the actions that build trust over time, and ultimately lead to the macroconversion. As such, they can help predict future macroconversions.

What is a Macro Conversion?

A macro conversion is a primary site goal. These can include: requesting more information, contacting the company for a free quote, making an ecommerce purchase, or starting a free trial.

Measuring Micro and Macro Conversions

You can measure both micro and macro conversions within Google Analytics, using the Goals feature. Goals are setup in the Admin section of your account. You can choose a variety of goals starting from templates, such as: revenue, account creation, inquiry, or engagement, based on your needs.

You can use goal funnels for your process milestones. This allows you to define the sequence of actions someone takes to get to the macro conversion. You can keep track of this data in the “Funnel Visualizations” reports in “Conversions” in Google Analytics.

Measuring success with Goals in Google Analytics doesn’t allow you to measure the users who take multiple sessions to move their way through funnel. This can be an issue for B2B sites, since it’s normal for people to require multiple visits as they move from awareness to decision. Each of these stages can have a variety of microconversions. If you want to get to that level of detail, you’ll have to use segmentation.

As you define segments, you choose the conditions have to be specific to a session (visit) or can apply across multiple sessions (users.) How you define the conditions will give you the detailed information about how someone arrived at your site, what they saw, what they did, and when they took specific actions. You can define sequences to determine which visitors follow specific paths.

Micro Conversions Get You to the Macro Conversions

In reality, you already have both of these things in your marketing strategy. It’s just taking the time to define exactly what they are, so you know exactly how to track them. Think about what you want or need people to do along the way and make those a list of micro conversions to track. Then, set up your goal tracking to see how well you’re doing. If you notice you could make improvements to get better results, it’s time to start testing!

Categories
Digital Marketing

10 Tips to Crafting a Landing Page Design That Converts

Landing pages are an important part of the sales funnel – they’re where you direct your visitors when you want them to do something – whether it’s sign up for your email list, or buy your new product. You’ll likely have several landing pages to build over the course of your career, since each landing page needs a single message and purpose.

This list of best practices is just that – a guideline to help you get started when designing your landing pages. You’ll have to experiment to learn what works best with your audience. Ultimately, your customers are in charge. Only through paying attention to analytics and split test results will you be able to fine tune something that works for them. And what works in one niche for one product won’t necessarily work for the next.

 

1. Colors Matter

The main call to action – more on that later – should always pop on the page so people can’t miss it. One of the easiest ways to do this is to make use of contrasting colors. Color theory plays an important role in web design in general, but especially when it comes to landing pages.

Make sure your buttons are a contrasting color to your background and surrounding text so they are easier to see. This way when you’re asking your visitors to fill out a form, they don’t have to look hard to find the submit button. With the right colors, their attention will automatically be drawn to it.

Does this mean you have to use bright and annoying colors? Not at all! If you’re using a white background on your form, any dark color will create the contrast you need to draw attention.  You can still pull off a cohesive look that matches the rest of your branding without turning your landing page into a flashing billboard.

 

2. Don’t Waste Time

Humans have a short attention span, and that’s important to consider when it comes to landing page design. They’re not going to take the time to read every single word on the page… and you’re likely not going to read every word in this blog post. Instead, they’re going to skim and look for certain words, so they can find the information they are looking for.

People are on your landing page for a reason, so don’t waste time getting to the point. Address the reason why someone is there, clearly and succinctly highlighting the value of what you’re offering.

Use headers and sub headers to break information down into digestible chunks. Make it easy to scan and read with bullet points to explain what your visitor will get when they take you up on your offer. Place emphasis on keywords and points with bold or italic fonts, and keep things brief.

 

3. Include Video

Video has been shown to help boost conversions by as much as 80%. If you have a rather complex idea that would take a lot of text to describe the way you need to, then video is your best bet. That way, you can still be succinct and get straight to the point, but tell the audience everything they need to know.

 

4. Pay Attention to Your Messaging

The messaging you show on your landing pages (and elsewhere on your website) should be consistent with the messaging in your ads. If there is any kind of disconnect between what you’re promising in your ad and what you’re delivering on your landing page, you won’t see conversions. Don’t run ads to your home page, or any kind of generic splash page. Create visual continuity between the ad and the landing page for a seamless user experience.

 

5. Keep the Layout Clean

The web is becoming increasingly visual, so it’s easy to see why using extravagance on your landing pages may have some appeal. But, you’re not after something that looks pretty here; you’re after conversions. And if your layout is too cluttered, you’re going to distract your visitors from conversion. Plus, the more you have on your page, the longer it will take to load. And the longer it takes to load? The more conversions you’re going to lose. One study shows a one-second delay in page load time not only produces a 7% loss in conversions, but also results in 11% fewer page views and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.

If you don’t need it to support the path to conversion, get rid of it. Keep everything clean and simple.

 

6. Add Your Logo

You should always include your logo on your landing pages because you want your visitors to keep your brand at the top of their mind when they are downloading your content or taking advantage of any of your special offers. Obviously, the logo doesn’t need to be the front and center detail every time – and it shouldn’t be – but you want the logo there to increase brand awareness.

The simple fact is, people are going to be coming to your landing pages from non-branded sources like social media and search engines. Placing a logo somewhere on the page is critical to ensure people recognize the page as a publication from your business.

For consistency’s sake, once you’ve decided on a size and placement for your logo on your landing page, you should include it in the same place on each landing page you create.

 

7. Make Forms Mobile-Friendly

We all know how important a mobile-friendly website is these days since it’s been a ranking factor for a few years now. But as more people use the internet on their mobile devices than their desktop, your form should be mobile-friendly, too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten frustrated trying to fill out a form on my phone. There have been a few times I’ve gone to the computer in my office to finish the form, but I’ll be honest. Most of the time, I either can’t get to my office at that moment to finish and forget, or it just isn’t worth it to me to go to the computer. And you can bet that if people have trouble filling out your form from their phone or tablet, most of them aren’t going to take the time to go back later.

 

8. Include Social Proof

Social proof is worth its weight in gold. With it, you’ll gain credibility from third parties to help build trust with your audience. Reach out to clients and ask about their results to build case studies to share. Search social media for positive mentions of your brand, and embed tweets and Facebook posts into your landing page. Ask people who’ve left positive reviews or testimonials if you can quote them. Have your products or services been featured in major publications or on broadcast television? Highlight those press mentions!

 

9. Call to Action

Your call to action should be big in comparison to everything else on the page. It should also be positioned above the fold. Yes, some people will scroll, but not all – so make it easy for website visitors. Don’t be afraid to use directional cues like arrows or pictures of people pointing to your button to attract attention to it.

“Submit” is a pretty standard call to action. If that’s your default, start thinking about other ways you can say what you want your visitors to do. What is it that your visitors want to do?  Do they want to coach their clients? Grow their website traffic? Get the best sleep of their lives? Whatever it is, try a button with the main action positioned below the phrase “I want to..”

If you’re selling a sleep product, then your CTA button could read “sleep better tonight” instead of “submit.”

Put yourself in your audience’s shoes, and think about what would motivate them the most. Structure your copy around that, and make your CTA button text match the rest of the vibe.

 

10. Split-Test to See What Works Best

If you think you’re going to get the perfect landing page design your first try, you’re wrong. You may get really close, but there’s always room for improvement. It’s always a good idea to conduct a series of split tests to help you see what your audience responds to the best. You can split test everything from the colors you use, to the headline, copy, and call to action, to the layout, the position of the signup form, and even the offer itself. Split testing again and again until you’ve found the best combination of elements to get you the highest possible conversion rate.

When you’re building a landing page, think about things from your customer’s point of view. The idea is to make it as simple as possible for them to get the information they need to make a decision about what to do next. The beauty of it is you can always make adjustments to improve your conversion rate.

What are you waiting for? Go build some landing pages!

Categories
Digital Marketing

Breaking Down and Optimizing Your Business Marketing Budget

No matter what kind of business you’re running, it’s essential that you have a marketing strategy that’s expansive, practical and effective.

Small business owners have some tough decisions to make here. If they’re new to the world of digital media marketing, creating a marketing strategy from scratch can be an intimidating task. With so many options and conflicting information available, it can hard for business owners to decide where to start.

Even if they manage to decide on where to start, actually implementing those systems properly and in conjunction with the other aspects of a successful marketing strategy is no easy feat. Marketing strategies are tough, and marketing budgets are one of the easiest places to get tripped up.

But here’s some good news. If you’re able to decide what your marketing strategy is going to be made up of and you manage to create a reasonable marketing budget, you’ll be that much closer to executing a successful marketing strategy.

For the sake of clarity and brevity, we’ll only be breaking down a balanced marketing strategy, that tackles some of the major sectors that small business owners should focus on when marketing in the world of digital media. Business owners can choose to increase or decrease the amount of attention paid to a particular sector, but this is a great guideline for anyone just getting started.

 

Research

Before you start thinking about what you should or shouldn’t be investing time/money into, it’s important that you take the time to think about who this strategy is for. The most effective marketing strategies ever made were built from the ground up with a particular audience in mind. So before you spend a dime on anything marketing related, clear up time in your schedule to build buyer personas.

Remember that ambiguity is not your friend here. You want to understand as much as you can about the consumers you hope to turn into customers. How old are they? How much do they earn annually? Where else do they shop? It’s unlikely that you’ll only have one type of ideal customer, so feel free to come up with 3-4 buyer personas if you need to.

Where are you going to get this information from exactly? Fortunately, you’re not the first business owner to want a better understanding of their audience. There are a variety of tools already in existence that help you conduct research on your audience. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram have business tools, which are free analytics services that provide you with everything from the general geographic location of your followers to their page likes. They even let you know which times users are most active, allowing you to revolve your marketing efforts around their schedule.

Oh, and the best part? This is all free.

 

Metrics

You’re almost ready to put that marketing strategy into action, but first we need to set up a way for you to ‘keep score’. The world’s best marketing strategy is nothing without feedback. If you’re serious about building an effective marketing strategy, you’ll need to keep track of the metrics associated with it.

To be fair, your social media platforms will likely have some of this built-in already. Still, with the right tools at your disposal, you’ll have a much clearer image of what’s happening within your marketing strategy.

Consider a tool like Iconosquare for in-depth data. If you’re trying to keep track of Instagram analytics, nothing’s going to be better. Aside from having access to advanced analytics, you’ll gain a better understanding of effective Instagram marketing tactics. For $9/month, that’s not a bad deal.

Metrics might seem like the least exciting aspect of this process, but rest assured that nothing is more exciting than watching your marketing efforts succeed because of concrete data.

 

Social Media Management

Now, we need to incorporate social media managers into the mix. If you’re new to this process, they can make a massive difference when it comes to executing a marketing strategy well. Not only do they save small business owners plenty of time, they can also keep your marketing efforts consistent, which is something that’s absolutely worth investing in.

Of course, all you’ll be investing is time, most likely. Tools like Buffer let you manage a single social media account per platform for free. If you’re wondering exactly why you’d need a social media manager, then consider for a moment the incredible commitment it takes to actually create, execute and stick to a long-term marketing strategy.

Posting multiple times every day, ensuring that a portion of it is fresh content, is a challenge for just about any business owner, experienced or otherwise. Take our advice: the more help you can get, the better. Especially if it’s free.

 

Content

Finally, we get to the good stuff. The content you choose to promote via your marketing strategy will shape public perception of your business for years to come. Fortunately, you’ll have plenty of options to choose from. Remember that there are no right or wrong experiments, only the data is going to know what worked and what didn’t, at the end of the day. Feel free to try new things (within reason), and check the metrics to see whether or not your audience responded to it.

Visually, there’s plenty that your business can do. Platforms like Snapchat and Instagram have made stories popular, which is great news for a small business with a modest marketing budget. Instead of worrying about appearing as professional as possible, you can embrace the informal nature of stories and create authentic content for your audience.

Of course, that’s just one possible strategy. You could make short videos on Instagram, create infographics for Facebook, link to blog posts on Twitter. There are only two limits here: your imagination and what the data says about each post’s performance.

 

Advertising

The most awe-inspiring content won’t do anything for your business if it isn’t being consumed. Creating great content is important, but getting that content in front of people on a consistent basis is just as important.

If you’re wondering whether or not ‘guess-and-check’ is a theme for marketing strategies, the answer is yes. Advertising is no exception. There are few definitive places that most small business owners should be investing in paid ads. Facebook and Instagram ads have shown strong ROI, and until that changes, a good portion of your budget should be dedicated to those two.

Where does the guess-and-check component come in? Well, your audience might be more opening to conversions on Facebook than Instagram (or vice versa). The key is to test for a set amount of time, consider the data you collect and make a decision based on that afterward.

Your business marketing budget doesn’t have to be insanely complex or pricey. You could do all of this with less than $100 dollars. All it takes is thoughtful execution and dedication to minor improvements over time.

Exit mobile version
Skip to content