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As a digital marketer, you might find yourself wishing your PPC bid optimization strategy could always maximize profit margins. Not so you can kick up your feet and watch the money flow in, but because you’ve considered it a potentially meaningful strategy—similar to why you would set revenue maximizing goals with a Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) efficiency constraint. The only way you can know is by constantly testing what’s possible.
Paid search bidding optimization is best done by bidding using your conversions or revenue data to inform the model. Obviously this leads you—or your algorithmic decision engine—to make bid choices that are directly informed by the results you want. But which one is best: revenue or conversions? Well, it depends on your targets and goals, what data is available, and what type of business you run. However, revenue-based goals tend to be the most powerful in driving business results if the data is there. And they are especially powerful (and necessary) if you want to focus on profits primarily in your paid search strategy.
PPC optimization tools have already done a lot to evolve paid search as a marketing channel, and one of the next steps will be to automatically optimize bids against a goal of driving maximum profit from each individual keyword. The availability of this strategy is not seen in many tools, but it’s a very powerful way to transform your SEM program into one that consistently drives peak performance. The bidding strategy is enabled because of value estimation, modeling, and calculation all executed on each individual keyword.
That said, you also need good revenue data. The more accurate your revenue data applied to your keywords, the greater the possibility of getting the best margin results from your SEM program. How? You’ll need clean, organized data and thorough integrations—even to your offline revenue, latent conversions, or LTV stored in CRM or third party database. That revenue data is imperative to driving profit focused PPC optimization.
As the ancient Greek adage goes, “change is the only constant,” and that especially applies to the digital landscape for marketers today. The only way to keep up in this fast-paced and rapidly evolving industry is by continually testing and constant iteration. Adopting a new strategy or technology might seem like a risk, but these steps are often required to become more profitable and take your SEM program to the next level.
One of the oldest and most common ways of storing information is text. Humans have used text for thousands of years to record data long before the existence of Microsoft Excel or databases. Today, most information in an organization exists as text documents, such as emails, Google documents, or even post-its on the wall. That's where Natural Language Processing, or NLP, comes into play.
NLP is a branch of data science. Its main purpose is to turn text (and speech) into structured data to obtain actionable insights. The ‘natural’ in NLP is a contrast to ‘unnatural’ languages used by computers such as C++, javascript, python, etc.
NLP has several applications but can be grouped into two main categories:
Both of which are of incredible use for the largely text-based SEM industry. For SEM, you can use NLP for tasks such as search term reports and keyword expansion tools. Both tasks leverage NLP technology to analyze search queries, detect associated keywords and then suggest related keywords. Other, more complex uses of NLP involve generating audiences based on search term content or forming a baseline bid for long-tail keywords.
Phrase Segmentation
The first step involved in an NLP process is phrase segmentation. Specifically, NLP breaks the phrase down into sections, typically using full stops or commas.
Tokenization
After that comes tokenization, which is a fancy way of saying that we are going to “define the unit of the language”. In the case of English, that means a word that can be easily separated because it is contained between spaces. Then comes a first-grade refresher: deciding what type of word -- verbs, nouns or adjectives -- we are talking about. Tokenization does this easily for certain words such as car. However, it might need context when a word has multiple meanings such as bitter or fair.
Lemmatization
After that, we go to lemmatization, which means drilling down a word to its base form. Some words can vary from the root word, like geese and goose; lemmatization essentially tracks down the base word associated with all of those variations.
Remove Stop Words
From there, we remove stop words or filler words. These are stock words that don't really add any meaning to the phrase itself such as and, is, and, the. NLP removes these words to reduce the noise while interpreting the phrase.
Machine Learning
The following step is perhaps the most complex: using machine learning to understand how each component of the phrase relates to the others.
Noun Recognition
Once we have moved past the grammar portion of this process, the NLP funnel moves into noun recognition, which splits the phrases, but uses nouns as segments to extract information. It works like this: say our NLP system has detected nouns like “EU” “Trump” “California”. Our Named Entity Recognition algorithm (as it is technically called) recognizes that California and EU are geographical locations and that Trump is an American politician.
Coreference Resolution
The final step of the NLP funnel is coreference resolution, which aims to understand pronouns. While humans can determine through context to which noun the pronoun refers, it becomes trickier for a computer.
NLP is not without its challenges. Computer programming is based on understanding the literal meaning of structured languages. Transitioning structured languages to understand unstructured natural language with contextual reference, metaphors, spelling mistakes and all the idiosyncrasies contained in our written and oral communication is a huge leap.
Take, for example, the following headline from a major news publication: “Labor admits Brexit could lead UK to freefall.” A literal interpretation of this phrase is that the physical act of work (labor) has somehow gained consciousness and admits that were Brexit to occur, the entire physical United Kingdom would somehow be sucked into space and dropped off of earth's gravity. Of course, through context and social understanding, we immediately know the real meaning of the phrase. But we only acquire that understanding through years of practice interpreting and reading between the lines. Only context gives the phrase the meaning it really has: that a political party admitted to a potential economic impact were the UK to sever from the EU.
Here’s the problem: the computer not only has to understand the literal meaning of every word (even such terms as UK or Brexit which are acronyms, or terms not present in the English language), but it has to derive the potential contextual meaning from the combination of words in the phrase.
A whole spectrum of new developments are possible thanks to NLP. For example:
NLP also enables a new generation of search engines in which the user searches as they speak, eliminating keywords and topics (this is already present in Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa). The potential of NLP not only looks to the future but also to the past. Once NLP is sufficiently powerful, researchers can use it to analyze all the text data acquired from past activities, thus creating a sort of backfill for all the unstructured data that we have accumulated.
NLP is a branch of data science that uses a series of steps to segment and extract information from text and speech. It aims to solve limitations in software that understand only formal or structured data. Text or language is ‘unstructured,’ so converting into ‘structured’ allows us to convert a collection of information into actionable insights. And it’s becoming a valuable tool in SEM.
NLP tools are flooding the SEM industry for such functions as keyword expansion, search query analysis, predictive search, and voice search. And this is just the beginning of its many use cases. Going forward, we will leverage NLP in new, innovative ways, further bridging the gap between human language and computer data.
Consumer data is a critical performance factor for digital and search engine marketing. In fact, it’s now practically impossible for businesses to gain visibility in either organic or paid search results without relying on consumer data insights. Yet at the same time, the European Union and other government bodies around the world have continued to introduce stringent regulatory compliance mandates governing how that data can be collected and managed—which, needless to say, has significantly affected the way that organizations treat, store and use their most valuable data.
And while forward-thinking businesses need to make every effort to adhere to these regulatory compliance mandates, these regulatory compliance mandates under a new paradigm universally have had an impact on data practices around the world.
Here are some insights into how you can navigate regulatory compliance in the world of SEM.
In 2016, the European Union passed what's known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a stringent and broad reaching law requiring search engines, advertising platforms and individual businesses to do more to protect the data of European citizens—and compelling Google, Bing, and other advertising platforms to place data management and security at the top of their priority list.
Among other things, the GDPR requires any business that uses consumer data to:
While the law only applies to European citizens, its impact is clearly global: any website that collects information from site visitors—even if the business is based outside of Europe—could be subject to these regulatory compliance requirements. And the emergence of GDPR has also inspired similar regulatory compliance mandates elsewhere, including a new state data privacy law in California and several data protection bills gaining traction at the federal level in the US.
So, how does it affect search engine marketing? Simply put, the responsibilities for data protection impact both search engine platforms and the marketers that use them to reach their audience. The extent of your responsibility all depends on who controls the consumer data vs who processes it. If you either control the data and/or process it, then GDPR will govern your regulatory compliance responsibilities.
Consider Google’s in-market audiences, for example. Advertisers use Google’s consumer behavior data to target new audiences with their advertising message. But in-market audience data is both controlled and processed by Google who possess and analyze it for ad targeting—this places the responsibility for GDPR compliance on them.
In another scenario, consider remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) in which you upload a file of your leads’ email addresses to create a new Customer Match audience. In this case, you are the data controller and Google is the data processor. Thus, both you and Google have compliance responsibilities under GDPR.
Additionally, browsers are also affected by GDPR regulatory compliance mandates. To ensure compliance with this mandate, Apple made significant changes to how cookies are tracked on Safari, now deleting third-party tracking cookies after 24-hours, while making it difficult for marketers to use cookies for different forms of tracking like remarketing. While most advertisers might see this change as a huge limitation in their ability to advertise to their audience, it also helps cut down on low-quality spam ads and encourages marketers to target audiences with a relevant message during the most critical time frames.
While GDPR is working to prioritize the best interests of people, it also creates some new challenges for businesses that market through search engines. But despite the strong potential for inconvenience and challenges, business owners can’t ignore their responsibilities toward user privacy if they want to both effectively reach their audiences and remain within the law.
The GDPR is a complex and extensive piece of legislation governing regulatory compliance. And while this post is aimed at giving search engine marketers an idea of some of their responsibilities under GDPR, it is in no way comprehensive or a means of helping you interpret this document and how it pertains to your business. For any questions regarding your regulatory compliance posture, please enlist the help of legal professionals.
That said, here are some key best practices to follow for regulatory compliance as a search engine marketer:
Because the GDPR is open to almost limitless interpretation, even businesses that attempt to be compliant could end up inadvertently in violation of its terms. This had led to a number of businesses outside of Europe taking steps to avoid being subjected to the law altogether, including more than 1,000 US news sites that chose to block European visitors to their sites instead taking the necessary steps to be compliant or undergoing scrutiny under its regulations.
Don’t be tempted to follow suit. Not only would you be blocking your European audience base, you might inadvertently block US site users when they visit or live abroad. It can also negatively impact SEO if Google’s crawler can’t effectively read your site when you have links pointing at your website from other EU sites.
While blocking access to certain site visitors might seem smart from a financial perspective, it’s really only a temporary solution to a growing global data privacy issue that won’t go away anytime soon. The US has already enacted numerous compliance regulations, such as SOX, HIPAA and PCC DSS, which are all becoming more stringent and financially punitive. Thus, thinking ahead, it’s better to comply to GDPR regulations now with your user experience intact, than wait until you’re forced to make similar changes down the road.
Probably the most significant change search engine marketers need to make is ensuring they obtain proper consent for using tracking cookies on their website. This is a necessity if you use cookies for retargeting in online advertising.
In the past, it was possible to track site visitors with site cookies without asking them to opt-in, usually with an alert that read “By using this site, you accept cookies.” That doesn’t fly with GDPR—these days, visitors must give expressed permission before you can start using their data.
When obtaining consent, you should:
What’s more, there are a variety of tools out there that can help you create GDPR-compliant cookie banners for your site, as well as help you track and manage cookie data:
Another important requirement of GDPR is that businesses should only collect the data they need for marketing. Say an individual reaches one of your landing pages from organic search or a PPC ad. If you serve them with an extensive lead form requesting additional information that doesn’t have a direct marketing need, you could be in violation.
Not surprisingly, your landing page lead forms also need a lot of the same wording as your cookie agreement in order to comply, so use clear language to explain how the data they provide will be used by yourself and third-parties.
You should also design your lead form so users can provide clear consent about what you can do with their data. For example, one good practice is to have seperate boxes for users to agree to the Terms and Conditions vs. signing up for your mailing list. You also need to be clear if you plan to use lead form information to build your Google ads remarketing lists.
What’s more, you can also provide options for what kind of communications they can opt into receiving from you, such as email, phone, or SMS messages.
Essentially, it’s better to err on the side of being transparent on your landing pages about data use. As with your cookie consent, avoid being long-winded on your lead forms by providing prominent options for users to “read more” about how you might use their data for search engine marketing or other purposes. You can then direct visitors to your data security policy.
Optimizing how you collect consumer data for search engine marketing is only the first step in GDPR compliance. An equally important task is implementing and updating a data security policy that details exactly how you will handle the data you collect.
Many businesses simply update their existing privacy policy to comply with GDPR standards, while others create a dedicated data security policy for the regulation. Whatever path you choose, make sure it's thoroughly reviewed by your legal team.
At the very basic level, a GDPR-compliant security policy should include:
This should be a clear, complete explanation of who you collect personal information from (e.g. your site visitors) and what type of data you’re collecting. This includes cookie information, user device and IP address data, what browser they used, search queries they used to reach your website, information about on-site behavior, and geolocation data, among other things. The more detail you can provide about the type of information you can potentially collect, the better. You should also explain how the data is collected, including any third-party tools you might use.
Next, in order to ensure you’re only collecting necessary data about consumers under GDPR, you need to explain the various circumstances in which you might use personal data obtained from your site users. Essentially you need to justify why you’re collecting certain information by explaining your potential use of it. For example, you can use consumer data to define an audience that is most likely to respond to your marketing content, evaluate usage of your website, or market information about your products and services.
Under this stipulation, you should also disclose any third-party vendors or individuals with which you share consumer data, such as affiliates, advertising networks, or cloud service providers.
GDPR mandates prohibit you from retaining consumer personal data indefinitely without reason. Thus, you need to have standards in place that explain how long you will retain data and under what circumstances.
For example, if you collected cookie data from site visitors for the purposes of remarketing, you might retain it for a maximum of 12 months, although the amount of time you hold onto the data really depends on the length of your sales funnel. If you run an ecommerce business that sells leather boots, it makes little sense to retain cookie information for more than a month, as the sales cycle is short. If you collect other kinds of data, such as lead contact information, you can specify another timeframe for data retention.
Under GDPR, data subjects (consumers) have certain rights that businesses must adhere to, including:
This, of course, should be reflected in your data policy that should include details about how people can make these requests, and how long they should reasonably expect to wait before receiving a response.
There’s always the possibility that your consumer data could inadvertently be used in a way outside of your data policy definitions. It could be misused by your own employees, or compromised by hacking, for example. GDPR acknowledges this potential, and requires organizations to have a process in place to notify consumers about data breaches and take efforts to minimize negative impacts. Specifically, you’re required to report necessary information regarding a data breach to all consumers and other relevant bodies within 72 hours of discovery.
GDPR is, to date, the most extensive and comprehensive regulatory legislation addressing data privacy online. But it’s not the first, and it won't be the last. But it anything, this privacy mandate sets a new bar, raising it ever higher, for data security, compliance and consumer data protection.
For many businesses, it has already created countless headaches and compliance woes. And it is sure to create more challenges down the road. But like any challenge, it also entails opportunity. For you as an SEM professional, that means you have the opportunity to get ahead of the game by adhering to its set of data privacy laws. Ultimately, that will mean your consumer data will be more secure, and your customers’ privacy will be protected—all of which go a long way to building trust and loyalty, both within your audience and in new markets.
Ignoring it is not the answer—this reinvigorated focus on consumer privacy isn’t going to go away anytime soon. But with a little time, effort and foresight, you can navigate it successfully and even use it to your advantage.
These days, if you’re shopping online, you’re probably also doing other things—which means chances are strong that you’re also shopping on your mobile device. Yet surprisingly, many businesses today often don’t consider differentiating their marketing strategy across devices.
But mobile marketing isn’t just about delivering the same message on a smaller screen. People have different needs and intent when shopping on mobile devices than they do on desktops. Businesses that create specialized mobile marketing strategies that cater to these distinct differences can stay ahead of the competition, uncover new areas of profitability, and lift ROI to new levels.
Here are seven key tips to follow if you want to cultivate and sustain a strong mobile marketing strategy:
When creating a website, designers must consider how it appears and functions on desktop computers, tablets, and mobile devices. Consider these statistics:
There are two ways businesses can address this issue:
Most businesses prefer the responsive design method to investing in a separate mobile website. That said, not all responsive designs are created equal. While your website elements may shrink to fit mobile devices, they’re far from optimized for those screens.
In light of the notable shift to mobile web browsing, most businesses need to prioritize mobile web design over desktop appearance as part of a comprehensive mobile marking strategy. If you rely on responsive design, that means, among other things, you need to ensure that your site elements look good—and not cramped—on small screens.
Your web developer can also use HTML frameworks to hide extra sections of your page on mobile devices to give it a simpler look. As long as you prioritize mobile site experience over other devices, you’re on the right track.
Slow websites have long been a problem for mobile users. If you want your site pages to rank well in search results and drive conversions, improving mobile site speed is a must.
According to Think with Google, the average time it takes for a page to fully load on mobile is 15.3 seconds. This can take a huge toll on marketing performance—especially conversions. In fact, a one-second delay in mobile load times can impact mobile conversions by up to 20%.
To combat this issue, Google made several algorithm updates that include mobile site speed as a major factor in pagerank. Among other things, Google offers free tool called Page Speed Insights that evaluates website load time on mobile and desktop devices. It also offers suggestions on how to improve your page speed.
What many marketers and web designers don’t realize is there are a variety of factors that can slow down your site on mobile; using extra plugins, large images that are hard to render, or other fancy design elements all can negatively impact your user experience and increase your page load time. To minimize impact, be sure to test how these elements affect site speed whenever you add new elements to your web pages.
Prioritizing mobile in your web design is just the first step in mobile marketing: you must also consider it with each site page, landing page, blog post, or lead magnet you create.
The search intent and content needs of individuals vary based on the devices they’re using. People searching from mobile devices aren’t looking to read an ultimate guide or a 3,000-word article. They want quick, easy-to-consume answers to their questions, and this need has to be prioritized with the content you create. A few easy tips: summarize the most important points at the beginning of a long blog post, and use descriptive subheadings and bullet points to make your content scannable. Regardless of the device your audience is using, it’s best to be concise with your content. Get to the point using the fewest words possible.
The same thing goes with any mobile marketing sales funnels you create: the shorter, the better. While a multi-field lead form might work on desktop devices, people don’t want to type out a lot of information on their phones. Instead, try to minimize form fields or even create one-click signup where possible.
SMS messaging is an often overlooked marketing strategy. And since it’s an underutilized channel, it’s a huge opportunity for mobile marketing to reach its audience. Compare SMS to email, for example: email open rates hover around 20%, while SMS open rates average 90%.
In addition, there are a variety of popular messaging apps that businesses can leverage, such as Facebook Messenger and Kik. It’s easy to create a branded chatbot for these messaging apps that can field customer service inquiries and help people shop, among other things. Ebay, for instance, has a chatbot that serves as a personal shopping assistant for users:
Chatbots are also a great tool for collecting important information about your audience that you can later use for mobile marketing. With a Facebook Messenger chatbot, for example, you receive the contact information of every user who interacts with the bot, and you can leverage this information to remarket to them using Facebook ads.
Smartphones provide a wealth of contextualized consumer data. Mobile marketing campaigns should take full advantage of the insights this data provides to create more relevant, timely, and personalized messages for their audience.
The type of device a consumer is using can help you garner a wealth of information about your audience. You can also use geolocation data to create ads or marketing collateral specific to certain regions, states or cities.
Brick-and-mortar stores can even use mobile data to attract in-store visits. For example, they can create targeted advertisements to appear in Google local search results or even Google Maps, promoting products or special promotions related to a user’s search query.
Here’s an example of a Promoted Pin Google Maps Ad that attracts in-store customers with a discount on products they’re looking for:
How people use their smartphones to search for information can indicate a lot about their needs and purchase intent. Use as much of this data as possible to create a more relevant mobile marketing experience.
Google Ads, social media platforms, and other advertising networks are constantly coming out with new ad types designed for mobile devices. Instead of creating generalized ads for any device type, start creating ads that prioritize audience targeting on mobile.
Here are some of the many mobile advertising options available today:
YouTube video ads
Watching YouTube videos is one of the most common mobile device pastimes, so creating YouTube ads that target your demographic audience to gain visibility puts your campaign efforts a few steps ahead. YouTube also offers TrueView ads where you can advertise products in your own video, and Shopping ads so you can display products on other relevant videos. These ads will either disrupt a video or appear as an overlay while people watch.
Full screen mobile ads
Full screen mobile ads are popups that cover mobile device screens, created by using Google Ads or another third-party advertising network. Banner ads on small screens are less effective than full screen mobile ads when it comes to grabbing audience attention. Full screen mobile ads also have better engagement rates. Just make sure your full screen ads don’t come off as annoying by disrupting people in the middle of a task.
Mobile app ads
Creating ads that appear within apps is a great way to target mobile audiences, as they’re designed to blend in with the native app content while not disrupting user experience. Target your audience demographics and online behavior carefully to ensure your ads appear in the most relevant apps available.
Instagram Stories ads
Instagram just recently rolled out Story Ads so your message can appear alongside the Stories users watch from their friends. And they work: according to Instagram, one-third of the most viewed stories on the platform are from brands.
Businesses can use Story ads to broaden their reach, build brand awareness, and attract traffic back to their website. It's just the latest example of the many mobile ad types businesses can use to target audiences through Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat.
Lots of businesses don’t bother creating mobile apps because they seem like a big, labor-intensive investment in development and app maintenance. However, the benefits can greatly outweigh the costs.
Here are a few ways a mobile app can help your mobile marketing strategy:
Build your brand and improve visibility
People spend 89% of their mobile media time on apps, and only 11% on websites. Having an app is a strategic way to reach your audience and build an identity around your brand.
Improve customer engagement
Having a mobile app is a great way to interact with your audience. Businesses can use apps to provide services, help users shop, and recommend products. Mobile apps can help you communicate with your audience in ways that a regular website can’t.
Improve customer retention
Once you get someone to download your mobile app, it’s much easier to retain them as a recurring customer. Having your business' app just a click away on their phone keeps you on the front of their mind. You can also promote special offers through push notifications, attracting users back to your app to make repeat purchases.
Stand out from the competition
Developing an app today is easier than ever, but many businesses still don’t bother to do it. Creating an app that’s actually useful for your audience will help you stand out from competitors who don’t have one.
Smartphones and other mobile devices have become integral to the online shopping experience. And thanks to responsive web design and social apps like Facebook and Instagram, it’s possible for any business to reach its target audience on mobile devices.
For digital marketers, the ability to expand marketing campaigns and endeavors to the mobile world opens up new and lucrative audiences and markets. But it also gives you more things to consider—and more strategies to execute.
By taking the time to prioritize mobile marketing, you can better and more accurately reach audiences while opening up new possibilities in terms of ROI and profitability. And that's an investment well worth making.
In the digital world, technology and trends are constantly in flux—some are so powerful, they become best practices, while others never should have existed in the first place. Read five digital media trends that won't make the cut in 2019.
E-books established themselves as the go-to way for companies to showcase authority in their industries several years ago. Over time, they've become one of the most popular lead-generating elements, as businesses offered them free in exchange for that oh-so-valuable personal contact information.
Due to the number of smartphone users expected to hit, companies have to switch the way they offer information to their audiences because wordy e-books simply don't translate well on the small screens of mobile devices.
What should agencies/brands be offering instead? Scrollable, shareable content, such as:
White papers and e-books still have value, but they'll no longer be the standard way to share information.
Organic reach has been on the decline for several years now. In fact, in 2016, organic reach on Facebook was estimated to be around—a drop from 16 percent just four years prior. Now, with several years’ separation since that near-nothing number was reported, organic reach on Facebook will likely be immeasurably small in 2019.
Back when it was acceptable to simply have words on a webpage to rank well with search engines—keyword stuffing and blogs that didn't offer any value were fine. If you're still doing this in 2019, you will be killing your chances of ranking well on SERPs (search engine results pages). You will also probably be irritating your audience to the point of no return.
To remedy this, don't focus on the quantity of content you're putting out to the world, but rather, the quality. Every post you create should mean something to your audience—otherwise, it shouldn’t take up valuable real estate on the internet. One post every week or two weeks that's filled with a substantial amount of relevant, useful, information is worth far more than a bunch of meaningless words every few days.
Words are important, but they're not the only things that make you rank well in the land of search engine optimization. You have to reduce bounce rates, decrease load times and increase backlinks to reputable sites. If you’re only focused on words, your SEO will surely fall in the rankings.
Let’s face it, fake reviews are just bad for business. Consumers can sniff them out a mile away, and big brands like Amazon are doing their due diligence to ensure they don't infiltrate the true meaning of honest reviews.
If you’re considering employing a fake-review strategy, we implore you to put your energies elsewhere.
Sticking with outdated digital media trends can be incredibly detrimental to the reputation of your business or brand. Refine your reach with a comprehensive digital media platform and request a demo from our Centro team. We can't wait to show you how we're changing the world of digital media!
In the world of SEM, your campaign strategy doesn’t stay the same from quarter to quarter, month to month or even week to week. Like the weather and tide schedules, your paid search campaigns change with the seasons. And as a Paid Search Marketer who has lived through numerous Black Fridays -- and countless promotional SEM campaigns -- you know that some seasons are, well, busier than others.
Safe to say, you might feel like you spend all of your time, bandwidth and energy gearing up for the holidays only to do it all over again with President’s Day promotions or spring sales. To say the least, this can be exhausting, labor-intensive and mentally draining for your Paid Search team. After all, these aren’t just fun-one-time campaigns, but an integral part of your campaign strategy -- as well as the key to higher revenue and conversions. Ignore them or let them slide, and you lose out to competitors more on top of their promotional game than you.
So what’s essential for easing your campaign strategy woes, freeing up bandwidth and ultimately setting you up for success?
We’ll let you in on a little secret: it’s your data. Your data about past promotions and seasonality is the ultimate secret weapon to future campaign success.
In Part II of our Enterprise Paid Search Pain Pain series, “Having Trouble Optimizing Your Seasonal and Promotional SEM Performance?” we talk about just that.
Look, we know that, like many advertisers, you spend a lot of time making these changes manually -- and probably wish that you could easily access centrally located data to make informed and strategic decisions on your next campaign.
We feel you. So in our next installment, we discuss some of the pains from this lack of insight, whether it’s hours of manual work to make necessary adjustments or continually being forced to override your bidding solution.
But, true to form, we don’t present any problem without presenting some kind of corresponding solution. (glass half full, right?) We also explore what non-negotiable features you need to stay competitive, relevant and profitable in today’s market (psst...think strong data integration). And in doing so, we ask you to think hard about what you need, answering questions like:
We know this is not an easy problem to solve. Every organization’s seasonal promotions differ with their unique business objectives, revenue goals and performance metrics.
But on our end, we want your promotion calendar to be armed to the teeth with powerful insights and tools so you can apply the right changes to create a strong, repeatable revenue driver for your business that allows you to take profits and ROI to their full potential.
You can find questions -- and answers -- around this complex challenge here in the latest of our Enterprise Paid Search Pains series: “Having Trouble Optimizing Your Seasonal and Promotional SEM Performance?”
To your success!
In light of the proliferation of ads on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media, digital practitioners are pretty much required to have a video ad strategy in place -- and one that makes them stand out from competitors.
That said, a good video ad strategy is far more than just another addition to your overarching advertising strategy. Scroll through any social media site, and you’ve likely noticed that video ads these days look a lot less like ads and a lot more like, well, creative posts. And even short movies. After all, social networking platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn are designed with the user experience in mind -- and the ads shouldn’t be any different. Thus, it stands to reason that you need to tailor your approach to reach new audiences that are looking first to be entertained.
Below are nine video ad hacks to keep in mind to generate user engagement and keep potential customers coming back.
As you do with regular digital ads, Know Thy Audience. While it might seem like Marketing 101, it’s often surprising how many digital advertisers fail to do this. You might have toiled for hours to optimize your video ads. But it might all be for naught if you’re not reaching the right audiences. Your video ad strategy needs to include a deep and comprehensive understanding of your audience and target customers -- and this includes demographics, what they like, and how they’re entertained (after all, video ads do provide an entertainment factor). There’s no guarantee that Facebook or other social networks will direct you to the right audiences -- that’s on you to ensure that your ad targeting is effective.
Helpful tip: That’s where ad performance reports come in. Among other things, they enable you to review performance based on age, gender, or conversion device. They also enable you to see if your ads are reaching the right target demographic or if they are received by the audience you’re trying to reach, or if they’re converting via mobile, desktop, or another device.
Which comes to the next point -- not every consumer will react to a video ad in the same way. Every nuance in your video serves a different function and resonates with a different set of targets. So feel free to adjust the tone and style to cater to the needs and expectations of your audience.
Of course you’ll want to match the tone of your video ad to the message you’re trying to convey. But also get a sense for audience preference -- whether it’s ads that are humorous, dramatic, or more informational -- and distinguish which ones are more effective for simple brand recognition vs. assessing purchase intent vs. generating actual conversions.
And given that distinct styles and tones of video ads elicit different responses when it comes to conversions, don’t be afraid to experiment to get the right message for the right audience.
It usually can’t hurt to reinforce who you are and what your message is to your audience -- and that even applies to video ads. To that end, larger logos help significantly reinforce brand familiarity -- which in turn can serve to boost customer loyalty and conversions. Large logos are particularly helpful for busy video ads, providing a metaphoric anchor against the backdrop of moving parts. And using large and memorable logos especially applies to video ads shown on mobile devices, which need to stand out on the device’s small screen.
To that end, avoid using blue, gray, or other neutral colors in your copy that might blend it with the video screen or Facebook’s News Feed. Instead don’t be afraid to use bright and bold colors like reds, sharp greens, and oranges, or other colors that make a lasting impression on your targets.
If you are eager to embark on your video ad strategy but have no idea where to begin, stock videos could be one viable place to start.
Let’s face it -- you might not have the time, resources, or expertise to make your own in-house video ads -- and that’s okay. You’re in good company. Yet at the same time, it’s no secret that video ads are becoming a bigger part of a digital ad strategy, simply because they experience a significantly higher organic reach than photos. And as such, yours should too.
While the thought of stock anything might elicit an inward groan, it’s an option for resource and time-strapped organizations. Facebook has continually shown that it’s more willing to show video ads over image ads because people are in general more responsive to videos.
Plus, with such a wide array of different stock websites available, it’s likely you’ll find a type of style that fits well with your brand and messaging. No one needs to know that you didn’t spend a small fortune on your own in-house video production.
A lot of thought has gone into examining the best time to mention brand in the video ad -- but studies have shown that when it comes right down to it, it doesn’t matter.
That’s especially liberating for the digital advertiser, who can freely mention the brand throughout the entirety of the ad without fear of any kind of backlash or negative consequences. What’s more, purchase intent remains the same regardless of where the brand is mentioned. So go ahead, beginning, middle, end, or (tactfully) all three -- feel free to be as creative as you want. Consumers care about relevance, not brand placement. So there’s no wrong answer.
Traditionally, video ads typically run between 15 and 30 seconds. And for a good reason -- they work! In short, they effectively provide necessary information and capture the audience’s attention without losing them. And it’s a length that historically has been successful across multiple goals from brand elevation and awareness to actual conversions, and particularly generating purchase intent.
However, there is such a thing as too short -- five seconds, while perhaps enough to spark interest in consumers, isn’t enough to assess purchase intent or many other business goals.
In general, a good rule is to err on the side of 15 seconds, as that generally seems to be the sweet spot that ignites consumer interest and curiosity without putting them to sleep.
When seeing a video ad on Facebook or other social networks, most people are intent on updating their status or checking in on friends -- that is, they aren’t exactly in a buying frame of mind. Instead, their primary focus is to be entertained -- and your video ads should reflect that.
If your ads are overly promotional, chances are you'll be unintentionally repelling potential customers who might otherwise be interested in your product or service. What you want to do is make it seem less like an ad, and more like a fun or creative video post (think along the lines of guerilla advertising).
So tell a story. Introduce humor. Take them by surprise. Or make them feel something. Don’t make them feel like they’re being bombarded or pitched. They’ll be reeled into your ad before they even know it’s one, and if it’s compelling, chances are they stick around until the end.
In the spirit of entertainment, there will be a lot of viewers who will engage with music -- after all, they watch videos of their friends with the sound on. And music can be just the right tool to help set the tone and feel of your ad -- if anything, well-placed, well-timed music can trigger emotions that can put just about any user in a buying mood.
That said, the type of music you choose will depend upon the message and tone of your ad. In general, avoid music that has the potential to drown out your message, distract your viewers or churn up emotions that steer them away from your product. During your testing process, you can experiment with a few types of music, to determine which would be the best fit for your audience while also matching your content.
A/B testing might seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be incredibly surprised at how often it’s neglected or overlooked as overzealous marketers race to get their video content online before their competitors. Of course, as the old adage goes, “haste makes waste,” and in rushing to get content out the door, they often pay a price in the long run when they later find out it’s not reaching the right audiences or is otherwise ineffective.
So a little investment up front to determine what resonates best with your audiences is often well worth it. Create a few variations on a video and conduct some simple A/B testing to see which ones get the best response, measuring for length of viewing, engagement levels, number of leads and conversions each generated. Then place them on the platforms that make sense.
A little testing can go a long way, saving you significantly when it comes to both ROI and your bottom line.
When used effectively, video ads can provide a relatively cost-effective way to elevate your brand and provide a big boost to engagement. But like any other campaign, it has to be executed strategically. Video ads provide almost boundless opportunities for creativity, capturing the imagination of potential customers, creating connections, and lifting engagement. To do it right -- and to achieve a solid ROI -- you have to strike the right balance between emotion, entertainment, and information. And the competition is becoming increasingly fierce. Knowing what works -- and what doesn’t -- will put you a few steps ahead of the game.
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To learn more about how Centro's technology can help elevate your video strategy, get in touch with our digital media experts.
At Centro, we know that keeping up with the trade pubs and latest trends can be tough and time-consuming. To make that easier, we’ve compiled all the articles, reports, and other bits of awesomeness you may have missed, but should definitely read. Enjoy our latest list below!
Brand winners and losers from Super Bowl LIII [:05]
Digiday breaks down the brands that won the hearts of viewers through commercials (HBO and Skittles)—and those that didn’t. The vast majority of brands marked as ‘losers’ were qualified as such due to lack of diversity inclusion (Sprint, Expensify, and SimpliSafe). Also, the brand noted for featuring the most dislikeable ad of the night, which just happened to be their very first Super Bowl commercial (Mint Mobile). Maybe don’t spend millions of dollars placing an ad called ‘Chunky Style Milk’ next time?
Google is Fined $57 Million Under Europe’s Data Privacy Law [:04]
Google is the first major company to be fined under Europe’s GDPR, after getting slapped with a $57 million fine for not properly disclosing to users how their data is collected across its services for ad targeting.
Econsultancy Marketing and Digital Trends for 2019 [:18]
An annual roundup of digital and marketing trends and developments from Econsultancy’s founder, on what he believes will shape the industry and digital/marketing planning and thinking, in the year ahead across key disciplines.
The Programmatic Marketer’s 2019 Checklist [:04]
Money will continue to grow in programmatic, so find out what you need to do before you move forward. Digiday puts together the best things to keep in mind while working with programmatic ads.
10 Ways Roku Is Growing Its Ad Business [:04]
Roku’s revenue keeps growing as it continues to sell connected TV hardware. However, the new majority of Roku’s revenue is through the advertising over their set-top-box devices. Their ad revenue alone is expected to hit $433 million in 2019 and make a speedy climb to $632 million by 2020.
Basic Private Auctions Are ‘Going The Way Of The Dinosaur’ As Programmatic Cleans Up [:07]
In recent years, buyers have been putting more of their budget towards private marketplaces in hopes to avoid fraud, hidden fees, and low-quality ads often associated with the open marketplace. However, now with third-party initiatives such as Ads.txt, FBI arrests of ad fraud masterminds and Google’s invalid traffic refunds, some parts of the market are beginning to shift with more buyers going back to the open marketplace.
Beyond Marketing: Experience Reimagined [:26]
CMOs are building more experience-focused marketing tools that are powered by emerging technology with a goal to transform marketing from a customer acquisition-focused activity to one that enables a superb human experience, grounded in data.
Throughout the last decade, the rise of new technologies, diverging cultural trends, and the boundless growth of innovative platforms have together helped social networks evolve into the colossal influencers that they are today. According to statistics recently published by global agency We Are Social, the number of social media users worldwide in 2018 totaled almost 3.2 billion, up 13% year-over-year. Without a doubt, it's a phenomenon that has ultimately triggered a great shift in the way the world communicates. And for digital practitioners, social media is a powerful tool to help drive conversions and ROI.
These facts alone should turn the heads of digital practitioners at companies both large and small; cause enough to consider the opportunities that such an influential tool can have on B2B marketing campaigns, and go-to-market strategies in general. But, before you decide to go all in on social channels, it is vitally important that you understand the landscape in your industry. The social media crowd is an ever-changing beast -- never static and always in motion. Users come and go quickly, their interests wane depending on what’s fashionable. The benefits of a well-executed social campaign can be immediate if the right notes are struck with your target audience. That said, if you’re out of tune, a meaningful percentage of your marketing budget could be wasted without much return.
For most businesses, the overarching goals of any social project will be to build brand awareness, boost engagement, and then of course drive conversions. If your bottom line is not moving upwards and right on the metaphorical -- or literal -- line graph, then the investment of both time and resources cannot be justified. With this in mind, we’ve put together a selection of social media marketing strategies that you can implement to drive more conversions and boost your ROI.
Unquestionably the greatest aspect of social media is that you can reach people from Asia to North America, and everything in between, with the simple click of a button. Yet, as anyone who has set up an international virtual meeting will testify, connecting with people across borders can be a challenge in itself. So, unless you want to deprive yourself of sleep and work 24-hour days multiple times a week, you need to be scheduling your posts to beat the distance.
To do this effectively, first take a deep dive into your analytics and research your audience to determine the best networks to use in each region. Are they using Facebook? Most definitely. Are they scrolling through the feeds of Twitter and Instagram? Possibly. Is LinkedIn likely to be open on their browsers? Perhaps. Should you do some digging to learn if they are using networks you haven’t even heard of? Unequivocally, yes. Much of your interaction with your followers should be scheduled according to peak use times within individual time zones -- people trust reliability, regularity, and consistency. If you’re connecting and starting online conversations at the most convenient times during the week -- whether live or through automated tools -- you’re undoubtedly going to start building trust and a positive reputation that will, in turn, lead to long-term brand loyalty and a better ability to drive conversions.
Throughout your initial investigations, you should -- hopefully -- have begun noticing patterns emerging around the type of social content being consumed and shared more frequently in respective target regions. Some may gravitate toward thought-pieces, others might be drawn to e-books and video testimonials -- whatever the trends are, you’ll quickly learn what content needs to be increased and what gaps in your coverage need to be filled.
The key component of any successful B2B content strategy is a cadence of new, informative, and diverse material for your audience to absorb. Your prospective customers want to know that they are dealing with experts who understand the intricate ins and outs of their industry. Every time you publish a fresh blog post, white paper, or case study, you’re showing your current and potential customers how much you know about your space, the everyday challenges they face, and how obstacles can be overcome. Then, when their buying cycles come around, they will remember that your organization had answers to complex questions and provided knowledge that helped them understand and address their pain points -- a critical factor that will drive conversions in both the short and long-term.
Now, this all sounds relatively straightforward; and it is (providing you have the resources). What might seem less obvious is that resharing old, evergreen, content is just as important. Consider these statistics for a second: on Instagram, only 10% of your audience will see your post; on Twitter, the half-life of a tweet is 24 minutes; and on Facebook, organic reach hovers at 2%. These figures underline just how saturated the social media playground is and reveal the small window of time you have in which to reach your audience before your posts get buried under an avalanche of news updates and selfies.
What this all means is that your desired audience may never have even seen your content to begin with. Thus, on most social channels, it simply doesn’t make sense to share your posts just once. Resharing material gives your followers the best chance to read it and also stretches the value of your strongest assets. If you do employ this tactic, though, be sure to tweak your messaging every time you repost: ask a different question, use an alternative call to action, vary the quotes you use, create fresh visuals -- essentially, try to stay original despite the fact that you’re also recycling material. In short, don’t subject your best content to a ‘one and done’ post.
This point is twofold. First, the actual posts themselves. We all know that every social network has its own formatting quirks, each of them handling text, images, videos, and links differently. It is imperative, therefore, that you are knowledgeable about the strengths and characteristics of all the platforms you are utilizing so that you can optimize your output. For example, posts with location tagged on Instagram get 79% more engagement than those without; the best time for B2B businesses to tweet is 3 p.m. on weekdays; and Facebook videos receive 135% more organic reach on average than a Facebook photo -- know what works and where to ensure you’re giving yourself the best chance to capture and drive conversions.
Second, your landing pages. In this context, I’m not simply referring to landing pages in the traditional sense, meaning those containing promotions, advertisements, or access to gated assets. Instead, consider all the pages on which you want a visitor to land, whether they are blog posts, a product page, or a webinar sign-up form. Deliver what you promised -- ensure the copy in your post communicates the value of the page and your visuals convey the primary message. Your social media channels and your website should be very closely aligned so take the time double-check your links and ensure that your messaging is on brand.
Beginning and maintaining an effective presence on social media to increase brand awareness, customer allegiance, and drive conversions will not happen overnight. It takes time, focused research and patience. The social media landscape is constantly and rapidly changing -- and as such, you should continually be analyzing your performance and experimenting with new techniques to engage users, better reach your target audience and ultimately, drive conversions. Social media is the vehicle for reaching billions of people, essential to not only vectoring in on not only your key targets, but entering new and lucrative markets. Putting in the time to execute the right strategy out-the-gate could represent untold benefits in terms of ROI, profits and conversions. And with 3.2 billion people (and growing) to target, the possibilities are endless.