SEO Tips and Tricks

Those of us managing paid media accounts might be neglecting strong insights which are available to improve our mobile sites. This is especially true when using Smart Bidding since device bidding is relatively hands-off compared to Manual CPC bidding. Google Ads updated their Test My Site tool earlier this year to include more custom recommendations for mobile site improvements.

While Google Ads account managers likely have little power to improve mobile site speed, mobile user experience directly impacts the performance of our marketing initiatives.

Mobile Speed Metrics

To begin, let’s review the mobile speed metrics available in the Google Ads UI. Once you’re in the Landing Pages view in Google Ads, you can see each of these metrics for your landing pages. The below example shows that several landing pages have less than a 7/10 on mobile speed score. While all of these pages are mobile-friendly, there are needed improvements to load times.

Mobile speed score

Measurement of mobile page load time on a scale from 1-10

Mobile-friendly click rate

Percentage of clicks going to what Google considers a mobile-friendly page

Valid AMP click rate

Percentage of clicks going to an AMP page

Test My Site Tool

To begin the testing process, enter the domain of your site on this Test My Site page. The tool then provides a rating and monthly trend. Below are the results for the website where we’re seeing 5/10 and 6/10 mobile speed scores. Advertising outside of the United States? Google provides a drop down for different countries and networks.

Building a full report using the tool is simple. The Test My Site tool next walks you through steps to benchmark your mobile site’s performance.

Comparing Against Competitor Mobile Site Speed:

Input domains of your top competitors to see how your site compares. Comparing this report to auction insights of the same domains can help in developing insights as to why certain competitors in the auction are able to spend significantly more than you.

  Estimated Revenue Improvements:

The Test My Site tool even provides an estimated lift in annual revenue based on current site visitors, conversion rate and average order value. This estimate can help clients and colleagues understand how much a poor mobile site speed is impacting overall revenue.

Specific URL Recommendations:

I find this section of the tool most useful. Google provides specific recommendations for any URL on your domain. For example, the below recommendations are for the highest spending landing page in the Google account that currently has a 5/10 mobile speed score in Google Ads. Rather than ask a developer to improve mobile speed, provide these recommended mobile site updates to point them in the right direction.

Once you complete each report step, share with your clients or colleagues and begin making the recommended improvements.

Additional Mobile Testing Tool:

Mobile/Responsive Web Design Tester

This Chrome extension allows you to see what landing pages look like on specific mobile devices. Oftentimes, mobile user experience is an afterthought. Before utilizing new landing pages in your ads, preview the page using this tool. Better yet, do an audit of your top trafficked landing pages and identify opportunities for mobile site improvements.

Lead generation is the number one challenge for marketers today. And it’s only going to get harder now that most Google search results pages have become saturated with promotional lead magnets masquerading as “great” content.

There are millions of free resources out there already competing for attention. And customers are quickly catching on to the fact that most of these “Ultimate Guides to Dog Grooming” aren’t really worth giving up their personal information for.

Jessica Meher, VP of Marketing at Notarize, put it really well on Twitter:

So many #SaaS companies today produce the same content mktg formulas as they did 10 years ago.

E.g. ebooks on "the complete guide to X" or blog posts on "5 reasons why." etc.

This shit works, until it doesn't. Now's a good time to invent the new ebook. Get creative.

— Jessica Meher (@jessicameher) February 6, 2018

To stand out, you need more than quality content. You need to think outside the box. Try something a little bit different. Maybe even a little bit experimental.

For inspiration, we talked to some of the most legendary marketers working today and asked them to share their most creative lead gen examples. And believe me—some of these folks needed QUITE a bit of convincing to spill their most useful and interesting ideas.

But we got ‘em here for you: 10 unique examples lifted straight from the private swipe files and secret marketing playbooks of the pros. Use these ideas as inspiration for your next lead gen campaign. Or, just keep them handy for the next time you want to try something more interesting than creating another ebook or webinar.

Ready? Let’s get cooking.

Jump to a Creative Lead Gen Example

Create an Interactive Tool

Embed Your Lead Gen Forms in Videos

Interview a Third-Party Expert

Send Attention-Grabbing Direct Mail

Share a Customer Experience to Spark Brand Searches

Connect via Communities

Promote a Personalized Template

Look for Unique Cross-Promotion Opportunities

Start an Interesting Side Project

Publish a Surprising Quiz

If you’re creating a lead gen campaign, make sure you check out our professional landing page and popup templates. You’ll be able to optimize your page design to earn more conversions and qualified leads.

1. Create an Interactive Tool

There’s a good reason why so many brands—including HubSpot, Moz, and, yes, even Unbounce—have invested time and effort to create free tools. Tool-based marketing is popular because even simple interactive ideas can generate boatloads of qualified leads.

For example, Larry Kim, CEO of MobileMonkey, says they developed a Free Keyword Tool for the Wordstream website. Marketers could use it to research and prioritize new keywords in just a few minutes.

And while developing an interactive tool might seem like a lot more work (you might need someone who knows how to code), Larry says they were able to generate a huge number of leads as a result.

Here’s how the tool works: you start out by entering a keyword or website URL that you’re interested in analyzing. To hone the results, you can also choose the industry and country you want to focus on.

What makes this tool particularly clever is the way it displays the results. Hit the “Search” button, and you’ll instantly be able to see some of the related keywords. But all the other information? It’s hidden, blurred out, or obscured in some way.

This smartly creates a curiosity gap for visitors, who feel like they’ve already started the process of doing research on their keyword. All they need to do is take one teeny-tiny extra step to get their results.

That final step? You gotta give up your email address.

Boom, lead generated.

This simple tool took just 3 months to build, yet has generated over a million email signups.

PRO TIP: Even a simple tool can be expensive to create. When considering your tool-based marketing idea, speak with a sample of your target audience first to see if they’d be interested.

2. Embed Your Lead Gen Forms in Videos

I believe it was old Billy Shakespeare who once wrote: “To gate or not to gate? That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous website traffic, or ask for an email address against a sea of troubles…”

At some point, every marketer faces this dilemma. You have an amazing piece of content—now are you going to give it away for free as a way to attract organic traffic? Or do you gate the content and use it as a lead gen magnet?

Cara Hogan, Content Strategist for Zaius, considered these options and asked—why not both?

For their Marketing Unboxed series, Cara says they took a hybrid approach to gating each video. Rather than lock up their content entirely behind a lead gen form, they actually embedded forms into each video so they showed up as you watch.

We created the Marketing Unboxed video series as a top-of-funnel piece of content designed to engage our target audience of B2C and commerce marketers. By including a lead gen form within the video itself, we encourage people to subscribe, but we don’t require it.

The forms draw just the right amount of your attention, without being too distracting. It slides off the video if you move your mouse off the screen, but then pops back on whenever you come back. All in all, a very classy approach that Cara says has driven some serious results.

We’ve generated hundreds of net new leads from this video series so far. We’ve only published 10 total episodes, and older episodes continue to earn subscribers over time. Some of these subscribers have since been nurtured to become new Zaius customers.

3. Interview a Third-Party Expert

For many brands, consistent blogging is one of their main sources of lead generation. Every time you put out an article, it’s an opportunity for someone new to visit your site, discover your brand, and opt in for more communications.

And there’s nothing wrong with looking outside of your own organization and team for content, either. Stepping outside of your comfort zone and providing a fresh perspective can actually be a fantastic way to bring in new audiences.

Take, for example, this lead gen example brought to us by Aaron Orendorff, Content Strategist for iconiContent. To help Shopify Plus rank for some valuable keywords, such as “ecommerce replatforming,” Aaron interviewed a high-profile expert in the industry.

Aaron says it’s the quality of the interview that makes this lead gen example work.

Rather than a heavy-handed sales pitch, the piece is an interview with Paul Rogers—one of the brightest and most respected leaders in ecommerce … That objectivity—and framing the article as an honest conversation about a ‘dirty word’—is highlighted throughout.

But wait, how do you actually generate leads with an interview or blog post? Well, Aaron explained that they peppered the article with three separate lead gen CTAs (including an Unbounce popup) to present visitors with downloadable content upgrades, related to the topic of the interview.

Popups and sticky bars can turn any high-traffic page into a lead generator. Find out how you can use these targeted offers to drive more conversions.

4. Send Attention-Grabbing Direct Mail

Direct mail might seem like an old school marketing tactic, but that’s exactly what makes it so darned interesting for lead generation. Why not focus your efforts on a smaller customer segment, and put together packages that really get them to sit up and take notice?

Take, for example, these direct mailers that Hero Conf sent out to promote their PPC marketing conference. The event organizers took a pretty interesting approach to get the attention of marketers like Casie Gillette, Senior Director of Digital Marketing at KoMarketing:

Oh man. @heroconf this is one of the coolest pieces of direct mail I've ever received! Who knew video could be so amazing in such a small package? pic.twitter.com/aQnlV2y71G

— Casie Gillette (@Casieg) January 31, 2019

Each piece of mail embedded a small video screen to show clips of the presenters who would be speaking at Hero Conf. And while these must have cost a fair bit more than a typical event brochure, Casie says the unique packaging really helped to win her over.

What got me was if you played the video to the end, they had a free ticket offer—you just had to respond to the email they had sent earlier … By placing the offer at the end, only those who watched the video all the way through would learn about the offer. A really cool way to grab attention.

5. Share a Customer Experience to Spark Brand Searches

Andrew Davis, best-selling author and keynote speaker, recently pointed out that most video testimonials are pretty dry. They’re usually just a lot of talking heads, with nervous customers babbling on about all the reasons why they like some marketing brand.

But there’s also a different type of video testimonial—one that actually tells the complete customer story. And although these can be harder to produce, they can also serve up a different type of indirect lead generation for your business.

As an example, Andrew suggests watching this video on YouTube that recently went viral: Vance’s Incredible 365-day Transformation. The video currently has over 31 million views and 50,000 comments on YouTube.

Unlike other video testimonials, this customer story is shot in real time. It’s compelling, it’s emotional—and it doesn’t have a single call to action.

Instead, Vance mentions throughout the video the diet and exercise program he is using to lose weight. The references start out subtle, but eventually become a main focus of the video. Andrew calls this an “implied CTA” that generates leads by inspiring viewers to take the next step.

A great testimonial video needs no call to action. It actually should create a moment that inspires people to do the next search … It doesn’t need a button, it just invites people who are so inspired to actually check out the next step of the product.

If you want to try this for yourself, all you need to do is start thinking about how you can frame your customer stories more like, well, stories. Connect with viewers on a personal or emotional level, and tease out the results so they get curious to learn more.

6. Connect via Communities

For freelancers, consultants, and smaller marketing agencies, you might have to take a slightly different approach to lead generation. While you can still build lists using your website and landing pages, a lot of your success will also come from word of mouth and social interactions.

For example, Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré, B2B SaaS Consultant, says their go-to lead generation strategy has been to build sincere connections with other people, in both online and offline marketing communities.

Being an active member of my favorite communities has lead to me receive leads from other members, because I’m demonstrating expertise in that domain.

Nichole says that being an active community member on websites like Growth Hackers has often lead to them becoming a part of the team, responsible for either community management or growth.

As you build relationships and demonstrate expertise, people will naturally start to think of you or your company for future opportunities. The key is to be genuinely helpful and selfless in your interactions, and to try to build actual friendships with other members of the community.

The thing is, ‘getting leads’ was never my end goal for any of these communities. I was just actively building relationships by bringing value to others.

7. Promote a Personalized Template

The right template on the right page can be a powerful tool for generating leads. That’s because visitors are willing to give up their personal information in exchange for something practical they can actually use.

But while traditional templates are usually just generic PDF downloads, Ross Simmonds, digital marketing strategist, says you can get better results by making a downloadable template that’s more personalized and interactive.

Almost every audience loves a template. If you can think about a simple template that arms your audience with the steps they need to take to solve a problem – it can be a great win. Even better; make it an interactive template that gives the user the ability to download it at the end.

As an example, Ross points towards this Free Privacy Policy Generator created by Shopify.

Privacy policies are one of those things that ecommerce business owners know they need, but probably don’t have time to create. And while Shopify could have given their visitors a sample policy or instructions on how to create their own, instead they decided to go above and beyond by building a personalized template generator.

The form you fill out to generate your privacy policy serves two purposes. Not only does it help personalize the template with your company info, but it also lets Shopify follow up meaningfully with every lead that uses the tool. How cool is that?

The template approach is interesting because there’s a true value exchange. If you’re offering a template that is closely aligned with your product or service it can be both a rewarding user experience and a rewarding lead generation tactic.

8. Look for Unique Cross-Promotion Opportunities

Cross-promotion isn’t a new idea, but it’s not something too many marketers think about strategically when it comes to lead generation.

The hard part, of course, is finding the right brand to partner with. If the other company is too similar, then your audiences might already be overlapped. If the other company isn’t similar enough, then you run the risk of promoting to people who just don’t care about your brand or products.

This is where a bit of outside-the-box thinking can come in handy. Britney Muller, Senior SEO Scientist at Moz, points to this particularly clever example of cross-promotion between Hydrate IV Bar and Live Love Lash:

Rather than partner with another health or fitness company for their cross-promotion, the marketers at Hydrate IV Bar decided to try a different strategy. They thought about different places where their target customers might be available to try an IV bar, and struck up a smart partnership based on that:

The Hydrate IV Bar team was brilliant in thinking outside the box for local lead gen! In what instances are people in a position of stillness/rest where they could also benefit from IV therapy? Lash extensions! This cross-marketing has done very well for both businesses and feels like an efficient use of time for their customers.

And the thing is, there are all sorts of unique cross-promotion opportunities available that marketers might miss. Let’s say you’re a running shoe company, for example. The obvious cross-promotion opportunity would be a sports store, right? But you could also partner with a gym or training facility, and target athletes in the places where they spend the most time.

9. Create an Interesting Side Project

Sometimes, the best leads can come from the projects that have very little to do with your actual business. If you dig into related topics, you can discover whole segments of customers who otherwise might not have been exposed to your brand or marketing.

And when it comes to side projects, Ryan Robinson is a self-described aficionado. Once, he launched a public challenge on his blog to validate a random business idea in under 30 days with only $500.

The project took up a lot of Ryan’s time for that month, even though it was something he was doing on the side. He figured it would just be an interesting way to educate readers on how to validate their business ideas, and perhaps bring in some new audiences to his blog. But he was surprised by the number of leads he was able to generate as a result.

I saw a sizable surge in traffic during my first week of the challenge. Throughout the course of the full month as I updated the challenge post, I picked up almost 3,000 new subscribers on my blog.

To take advantage of all these new leads, Ryan even built a new course based around his learning.

A couple months after the challenge wrapped up, I launched a course about validating ideas to that new audience … This new group of subscribers that tuned in and kept a close eye on my challenge were very qualified leads, and that course ended up generating over $15,000 in revenue during just the first week of open enrollment.

10. Publish a Surprising Quiz

Online quizzes have been around for years, but many marketers still haven’t discovered their potential for lead generation. They’re powerful because they’re so compelling—visitors actually have fun filling them out, and then get super curious about the results. (“Why yes, I do want to know which piece of IKEA furniture best represents my personality.”)

To find a creative quiz example, we went to the quizmaster herself, Chanti Zak. Chanti is a quiz funnel strategist and copywriter who specializes in creating quizzes for lead gen, and really brings a special flair to the quiz creation process.

As an example, she shared this saucy quiz she created to target entrepreneurs for Jenna Kutcher’s website.

The key to a great quiz? You’ve got to surprise and delight visitors with every click, so they stay engaged throughout the process. Throw them a couple curveballs along the way, and then hit ‘em with results that speak to their unique situation.

The results go deep into what uniquely positions you to create a successful business. The custom results meet people where they’re at and are intentionally designed to empower them to take action.

To attract the most leads, you’ll want to create a quiz that speaks directly to your brand and target market. For this example, Chanti created playful questions and answers that really get in the headspace of a budding entrepreneur.

And the strategy seems to have worked too, with this quiz alone generating over 100,000 leads.

When this interactive and personalized approach is the first impression someone has of your brand, your chances of converting them from onlooker to customer are exponentially higher than with a generic lead magnet.

Are You Ready to Take the Lead?

Of course, we’re only scratching the surface with these 10 ideas. There are all sorts of different ways to generate leads, including more tried and true methods. You could always host a webinar, offer a free ebook download, run a contest, or buy ads on social media.

Whatever you try, the most important thing to remember is that in order to generate qualified leads, you need to offer up quality content. Give those top-of-funnel leads something that’ll educate, entertain, inform, or inspire and soon you’ll be overwhelmed with too many leads. (#firstworldmarketingproblems)

Share in the comments below if you have another method of lead gen that works well for your business, or if you think there’s something we missed. The more ideas we can round up, the better!

In this case study, we compared the transaction data from Alibaba’s company profiles for their suppliers to the data displayed in Jungle Scout’s Supplier Database. We hoped to learn whether or not manufacturers that seem legitimate on Alibaba are, in fact, legit, or if they may be inflating their numbers or are actually trading companies. Here are a few things to know about this case study: Subjects: The five companies selected were chosen at random, using the following keyword search terms: bamboo sticks, drinkware, headphones, yoga mats, and card games. Tool #1: Alibaba is a massive, international retail site that connects businesses with suppliers. The majority of these manufacturers are located in China. Tool #2: Jungle Scout’s Supplier Database gathers transactional importer information from US Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Trade, and then displays the data in an easy-to-understand format. Company #1 – Xiamen Haoliyuan Bamboo Products Co., Ltd. Products: bamboo sticks   What does Alibaba say? According to Alibaba, Xiamen Haoliyuan Bamboo Products Co., Ltd. was established in 2015. The site also states that the supplier generates $1-$2.5 million in annual revenue, with 11.08% of that revenue generated from buyers in North America. What does the Supplier Database say? ... Read More

The post Case Study: Alibaba Sales Numbers vs Reality for Five Random Suppliers appeared first on Jungle Scout: Amazon Product Research Made Easy.

The asset management industry isn’t what it used to be. In the face of continued growth, the market has become increasingly crowded and fiercely competitive. But while competition has increased, differentiation among investment offerings has diminished.

What’s more, there’s been a fundamental shift in the relationship between clients and brands. In today’s customer-centric business climate, investors expect firms to provide them with modern, highly personalized experiences—wherever they are, and on any device they choose.

Consider these statistics:

64% of customers say customer experience is more important than price in buying decisions (Forrester).

70% of buying experiences are based on how customers feel they are being understood (McKinsey).

79% of customers only consider brands that show they understand and care about them (Wunderman).

80% of high-net-worth investors under 40 say they would leave their firm if it fails to provide an integrated channel experience (Frost & Sullivan).

Today’s evolving industry landscape has introduced unexpected challenges for asset management firms—and marketing leaders are under pressure to keep up.

Two Essential Elements of a Modern Marketing Strategy

An asset management marketing team has two central functions: to help recruit and retain advisors and to help acquire and retain clients.

In a crowded market where customer expectations have changed, that’s easier said than done. Indeed, as firms struggle to differentiate themselves, marketers are quickly learning that traditional acquisition and retention strategies are no longer effective.

Today, firms that can build deep, long-term relationships with their target audiences—and deliver truly meaningful experiences—will rise above the competition. The keys to building those relationships are aggregating your customer data and then acting on that information in a timely fashion.

Five Tactics for Creating Clear Differentiation

Here are five ways marketers can deliver superior value to clients—to improve acquisition and retention:

1) Get Personal

Today’s investors expect their communications with asset managers to be personalized and highly relevant to their needs. The challenge, of course, is achieving this level of service at scale; traditional batch and blast emails simply won’t work.

Through the use of demographic and behavioral data, segmentation, and lead scoring, firms can gain the rich, 360-degree customer view they need to deliver the personalized messaging clients expect.

2) Facilitate Communication

Modern clients—regardless of age—have become digitally savvy. They’ve grown accustomed to getting answers and access to information on the go, across multiple devices. The problem is, many asset management firms developed their various touch points in silos, thereby creating a disjointed and sometimes disorienting customer experience.

Delivering connected communications requires an omnichannel approach. The right automation solution should allow teams to deliver seamless conversations—as clients (and advisors) move from their phones to their laptops to their tablets, and beyond—all from a single platform. 

3) Build Trust

Asset management is a high-stakes service and building client trust is crucial. While providing a personal touch is central to creating meaningful relationships, steps must be taken to safeguard client privacy.

Asset management firms must adhere to strict regulations surrounding marketing investment management and the handling of client funds. Indeed, compliance is a fundamental concern. Marketing leaders must ensure that their systems—and their marketing teams—are always up to date on new rules and regulations.

A trusted engagement platform, with high-security standards, will enable marketers to deliver personalized experiences, across multiple touch points—with a keen eye on privacy and regulatory compliance.

4) Find Truth

Historically, the asset management industry has been cautious about new MarTech trends. As a result, many marketing teams are still operating on outdated, disparate systems, including their CRM solutions.

Building and nurturing meaningful client relationships requires a single source of data truth. By creating a centralized repository of data and insights, marketers can move from a reactive acquisition and retention strategy—to a proactive one. A single source of truth will also help brands deliver consistent messaging across sales and marketing.

An automated marketing solution that easily integrates with CRM platforms—as well as multiple solution partners and open APIs—is essential. By gathering multiple data points in one location, it will provide the single source of truth marketers need to create the personalized experiences clients demand.

5) Prove ROI

For many marketing leaders, creating a strong marketing strategy is only half the battle. The next step is to prove their efforts are yielding real results for their institutions.

Marketing teams must be able to effectively measure—and continuously improve—the impact of their programs.

A fully optimized marketing engagement platform—one that puts all marketing data into a single view—will enable more robust reporting. Indeed, it will empower teams to move way beyond click-through rates—to measure multi-touch attribution, pipeline, and true ROI.

The post 5 Strategies to Address New Challenges in Asset Management Marketing appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Several of my clients are in the Education vertical with their main goal of driving more leads to their admissions until finally, a user enrolls as a student. While the goal might sound simple, some of my clients make the task a bit harder by have multiple brands targeting the same keywords or target audiences. Below I am going to walk through one situation with my client where we make specific decisions about when our brands overlapped and other times when it was decided a certain brand was going to take ownership of the impression share.

Getting Down to Business

Rachael Law’s piece, “Analyzing the Impact of Multi-Brand Shared Keywords” is a great place to start to see if you have any overlapping keywords and if so how is each brand affected by the overlap and how to talk to your client about what decisions you need to make moving forward to help each brand. With my client, we started in the opposite direction and we had zero keywords overlapping between the six different brands.  The original theory was that by sharing some keywords we were only going to increase our CPCs by driving up our own prices to get to the top of the page. Also, the client was a bit wary of having two ads for their school showing up side by side and how that could be confusing for the user. Another reason for the hesitance between sharing keywords was how the programs don’t share any budgets. Each program has its own budget from the school and the programs want to make sure they are using their marketing dollars efficiently and not creating an internal bidding way.

The Situation

While our keywords did not overlap for these brands, the target audiences most certainly did. My client is a postgraduate institute with each program separated into its own Google Ads account with their niche keywords. Across all brands, we were targeting people from the ages of 22-44 who were looking to advance their careers by furthering their education. One of their larger programs had the majority of the higher funnel keywords which drove a lot of traffic for people in the research stage of picking their next degree. What this created was a surplus of traffic going to the already popular program instead of allowing some of the other postgrad programs a chance to shine on the top of the SERP.

We noticed this problem when the other programs were having trouble spending their monthly budgets and our keyword expansions hit a wall since we didn’t want to add any keywords that were in the other five accounts. After feeling like we were stuck behind a wall, we decided that we were going to try sharing some keywords across some of the programs. We pulled keywords from the main program which had a lot of high funnel keywords and divided these up among the relevant campaigns. When we split these keywords up there were some programs where the client wanted one program to appear above the other for some keywords and then vice versa with the other keywords. The selling point to the client was that we could potentially have two ads running side by side but with the ad copy being very specific to the program to allow the user to decide which program they wanted to investigate instead of only giving the user one option. In Paid Search, the impressions are free and the user gets to pick their own adventure, for example, do I want to research about getting my MBA full time or part-time?

What Did I Learn

In the beginning, I mentioned Rachael’s blog, but now  I am in a situation where I can utilize her tools for looking into spend for these keywords to see if one brand is performing the other programs. A quick tip I learned was to use keyword labels for the keywords that were shared in the other accounts to pull the reports in a flash. The first report I pulled for this client since our shared keyword implementation was really surprising because the CPCs were relatively the same, the number of clicks was about the same, as well as conversions. We will continue to pull these reports monthly to make sure these keywords are still impacting the right programs and we will continue sharing select keywords to allow more users to select their next great adventure.

Amazon News Roundup, Volume 1 Seller chatter: In a message posted by Amazon_News, in the Amazon Services Seller Forum, sellers were told that there would be some changes made regarding tax collection.  These changes apply to orders shipped to the District of Columbia or Nebraska, and took effect on April 1st, 2019: “Based on changes to the District of Columbia and Nebraska State tax law, Amazon will begin calculating, collecting, and remitting sales and use tax for all orders shipped to customers in the District of Columbia or Nebraska on April 1, 2019. “Your existing tax calculation settings, order details, and payments reporting will update automatically to reflect Amazon’s responsibility. No action to your tax settings or seller account is required. “Answers to common questions are available in the Marketplace Tax Collection FAQ. Consider working with your tax advisor to determine any ongoing tax remittance and reporting obligations your business might have. “For more information, see  Marketplace Tax Collection FAQ 2019 “For more information from Nebraska, click here “For more information from the District of Columbia, click here” – [Thread] It appears that Amazon is clamping down on sellers who have multiple Seller Central accounts: “You have used more than one account to ... Read More

The post Amazon FBA Seller News for the Week of April 19th, 2019 appeared first on Jungle Scout: Amazon Product Research Made Easy.

Video ads are one of the most potent tools in a marketing arsenal. So why do so many event marketers ignore it?

According to a 2018 Animoto report on social video trends, 93% of business score new customers from video marketing on social media. Eventbrite research shows that 94% of event creators who use video say it’s effective. While both reports highlight the power of video marketing, they also note that less than half of event marketers actually use this effective tool.

That’s a lot of business to leave sitting on the table.

Video clearly is engaging ticket buyers, but many event marketers are too intimidated to use the medium. After all, video is one of the most daunting types of content to produce. Your skills as an event organizer may not include filming and editing a promotional video—but it’s worthwhile to learn these few basics.

Create event videos that drive buzz

In an increasingly video-driven advertising space, focus your efforts on three essential videos—two before the event and one after:

A ticket launch video that builds buzz, encourages registrations, and establishes your event as the place to be this year.

A reminder video that answers attendees’ most frequently asked questions leading up to the event.

A memorable recap video that offers nostalgia for attendees and serves as a strong marketing asset for your next event.

If you only have the bandwidth to create one video, prioritize based on your brand’s goals. If you want to drive ticket sales, create a launch video. If you want to improve your attendance rate and engage attendees, create an FAQ video. If your goal is creating clips you can use to promote your next event, create a recap video.

When you release these videos certainly matters, but you must also create something that effectively engages your audience. The following three strategies will help you make videos that are informative and compelling:

1. Make the CTA your MVP

Your CTA (call to action) is key because it shows viewers how to take the next step (buying tickets, for example). But how can a CTA call viewers to action if they don’t actually see it?

Although placing your CTA at the end of a video feels natural, many viewers won’t stick around for the entire video. To ensure audiences see your CTA, place it in the middle of your video.

Beyond perfecting the timing of your CTA, you also need to give viewers clear instructions in terms of what they should do. Instead of saying “Buy tickets,” use clear and specific language: “Swipe up to RSVP” or “Click the link in our Facebook event.” People aren’t going to take the next step if they don’t know how, so make your CTA as clear as possible.

2. Use size to strategize your Facebook spend

It’s counterintuitive, but smaller events mean you should put more funding toward Facebook video ads. At 2.27 billion users, according to NBC News, Facebook holds plenty of reach and is ripe for event marketing. Facebook also has more robust ad targeting, support for video, and searchability for events than any other social platform.

Prioritize Facebook in your budget, keeping your event’s size as the key decision maker when allocating funds. Gather any location, demographic, or other important information about your audience, and then tailor your Facebook campaign to that base. Once you’ve homed in on your target, deduce your exact spend and plan the rollout and execution of each piece. By figuring everything out beforehand, your campaign’s resources will stretch further and your ROI will be more concrete.

3. Promote across online channels

Facebook is incredibly powerful, but a powerful video strategy requires more layers. Not everyone in your audience will be active on Facebook—and even if they are, a multichannel approach keeps them thinking about your event as they’re browsing online.

Use video across these digital platforms:

Your website: It’s easy to embed promotional videos on your homepage. The Animoto report I mentioned earlier suggests that 86% of businesses engage their audiences through this platform.

YouTube: As the second-largest search engine, upload your videos here to build your audience without much additional effort.

Email marketing: Animoto reports including the word “video” in an email subject line increases its open rate by 19%. This method offers low-hanging fruit for increased viewership, helps with viewer engagement, and simplifies connecting with attendees post-purchase and post-event.

There’s no better way for your audience to feel the buzz surrounding your event than video. Event organizers might lag behind other industries when it comes to video marketing, but that doesn’t mean it needs to remain the case. Use these marketing tips to take the mystery out of video—and drive sales.

The post Event Marketers Are Ignoring the Power of Video—Here’s How to Catch Up appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

When it comes to email marketing, one of the biggest challenges that media companies face today is the ability to translate insight into action. The reason? When publishers deploy email campaigns, it’s usually to deliver some value to the advertising side of the business. There may be partners who are sponsoring newsletters, or marketing teams may be looking for added-value ways to drive more traffic to display ads.

But these systems are quickly losing their efficacy. The media industry is in flux, programmatic ad revenues are declining, and revenue teams are struggling to find new sources of profitability. They’re carving out new products for advertisers (i.e. native ads), launching creative monetization channels, and even building their own ecommerce platforms. They’re also repurposing their existing assets, like their in-house creative teams, into services-based revenue arms.

Within this context, email is a low-hanging area of opportunity that’s universally accessible to almost every media company. In addition to delivering content to and engaging audiences, this channel is an invaluable source of data that can be repurposed into new revenue initiatives. Email is one of the most direct ways for organizations to reach their audiences on a 1:1 basis, which means that it is a rich source of information for research and new product development.

3 steps to Translate Your Advertiser Data into Additional Sources of Value

1) Uncover Your Most Valuable Audiences

Connections are the currency of digital media today. Advertisers and audiences alike are looking for deeper, more positive interactions from their networks online. But it can be tough to differentiate a substantive connection from a superficial one when your success metrics are limited to pageviews, time on site, and bounce rates. That’s where email enters the picture.

Media companies can identify their most engaged audiences through their email subscriber lists. Who’s opening newsletters regularly? What content are these individuals reading? Are they clicking on ads?

The answers to these questions will give you the insights you need to generate more advertiser value. At a basic level, you can change your advertisers a premium for reaching your most engaged audiences. You can also develop and deploy custom campaigns that meet a very specific marketing goal. Because you’ll likely be marketing to the same engaged user base at multiple touch points, you’ll also create more predictability in terms of the ROI that you can expect to deliver to your advertisers.

It pays to identify—and market to—your most engaged audiences.

2) Create a Comprehensive Conversion Picture

Your email marketing data exists as part of an ecosystem with your social, mobile, and web analytics. When evaluating engagement with your newsletter, make sure that you look at the overall picture: how audiences are moving between channels and how these engagement patterns translate into results for advertisers.

This information can help your company create unique targeting and campaign concepts that stand apart from other media companies. One compelling example to model here is BuzzFeed. This publisher has created a unique UX that it uses to deliver custom native ad products. And because its model is so tailored to its content and audiences, the company is able to predict and replicate results. The company’s secret? It’s no secret at all—it’s data from its massive inventory of engaging content.

Think of your media experience as a puzzle. As important as email marketing data is, it’s only part of the overall picture. Know how everything fits together into one comprehensive conversion picture.

3) Focus on Optimizations

In addition to helping build new products and revenue streams, your email marketing data can also help you improve upon what’s already working. Use your email marketing data to study engagement on a granular level. What pieces of content are your audiences finding most helpful? How much time are they spending with it? On which social channels are your subscribers sharing your content, and how much traction is it getting?

Use this information to optimize the already-successful programs that you have in place for your advertiser programs. For instance, you could:

Use your newsletter data to recommend content topics for your advertisers’ native ad campaigns

Build additional targeted email lists

Add more granularity to your audience segments

Make improvements to your messaging

Trigger workflows

Share this optimization data with your advertisers, and they’ll be blown away. In a media world where the majority of publishers are still dependent on clicks and eyeballs, you’ll be well positioned to offer something different and of value.

Last But Not Least

If you’re not sure where to get started or how to fully utilize your email marketing data, talk to your advertisers. Ask what solutions and optimizations they’d like to see on the market. Take this information, and evaluate where your own email marketing data fits into the picture. After all, the industry is learning, growing, and evolving together.

  This post originally appeared on HubSpot.

First question: what if you could see how many sales your competitor is making each month? If I asked you that, you’d probably yawn. Nothing new, right? After all, Amazon product research technology has been around for as long as, well…Jungle Scout. Tracking your competitors’ sales is old hat at this point. So my second question is this: what if you could find out who your top competitor uses to manufacture their products, in 10 minutes or less? That might raise a few eyebrows, right? Well, check out this amazing and straightforward way to find the best Amazon FBA suppliers! Say hello to Jungle Scout’s Supplier Database Recently, we rolled out the new Supplier Database as part of our suite of Amazon seller tools. What this new Database does is it lets you find suppliers quickly and easily, without having to use a site like Alibaba. In addition, you can reverse engineer your competitors’ vendors just by typing in their brand name. So, as a test, we decided to check out all of the suppliers used by Jungle Scout’s Jungle Stix competitors. We wanted to verify the accuracy of the Database’s information. Step 1 – Making a list of our competitors ... Read More

The post We Found All of Our Competitors’ Suppliers in 23 Minutes. Here’s How! appeared first on Jungle Scout: Amazon Product Research Made Easy.

Time is running out to get your ticket to Hero Conf Philly!

The conference is Tuesday, April 23 – Thursday, April 25 and includes two full, action-packed days of sessions and a 3rd day of workshops. You’ll see a variety of speakers; top-rated veterans that have roamed the world offering up valuable tip and tricks, as well as the newest up-and-comers in the digital marketing landscape. You’ll be surrounded by 44 Pros that are experts in digital media.

The sessions range from beginner level topics to the most advanced strategies happening in the paid media industry. You’ll get everything from a Beginner’s Guide to Shopping Ads to Boosting Your Brand with Instagram Ads to CRO via Voice Search. Here’s a sample of the sessions at this year’s Hero Conf:

Audience Based Marketing: My Sales Team Gave Me These Lead and Prospect Lists. Now What the Heck Do I Do With Them?

Advanced Lead Gen PPC – Qualifying, Measuring, and Nurturing

A Beginner’s Guide to Shopping Ads: From Take-Off to Soaring

Using SEO Tactics to Improve Your PPC

Lead-scoring Your Website Visitors Using Google Tag Manager To Enhance Your Remarketing

Building a Predictable B2B Growth Engine from Social Ads

Pinterest: What I Learned In 365 Days of Marketing On It

The Rise of Conversational Marketing: How To Leverage Chatbots for PPC

Convincing your Boss(es) to Confidently Spend (more) on Advertising

  And just a side note – Hero Conf is NOT just for peeps that do paid media day in, day out, everyday all day. Even if only a small part of your job (for anyone on your team) includes managing your brand’s paid advertising, you will get a ton of value out of attending Hero Conf. Because paid advertising is a must in every brand’s marketing plan. No matter how little or how much you do of it, it impacts the bottom line of your business and provides insights for all your marketing channels.

PLUS, you will literally be surrounded by the people that are the best of the best in the paid advertising industry. And they LOVE talking about paid advertising ? You’ll discover tips and tricks you didn’t even know you needed and make new connections that serve as great resources for your team.

What else can you expect from Hero Conf? ALL THE NETWORKING!

We know that getting the chance to network with peers and the speakers is just as important as the topics presented at a conference. So not only do you get to hear from leading experts on paid ads at Hero Conf, we also make sure there are plenty of opportunities to chat with other attendees and have fun too.

There are 10 unique networking opportunities that will be available at Hero Conf Philly, including events at unique locations with specialty foods from local vendors to night events to networking breakfasts and lunches. Get to know PPC Heroes from across the globe!

  I know, I know. You’re probably thinking, this all sounds great and exactly what I need, but WHAT’S THE COST?!?! Here’s a quick breakdown:

Hero Conf Philly starts Tuesday, April 23rd and will be hosted at the Philadelphia Downtown Marriott. Don’t miss out on this awesome event with the best people in the paid advertising industry.

Register Now

Every day we roll into our office, open our accounts and face new challenges to move the needle for our clients. We do all the things that we have been taught, learned by mistake, and processes that typically have always worked. But what happens beyond that? Our metrics are looking strong, but the client is concerned that they are not growing in the way they have expected.

Has the competitive landscape changed? What about the need for the product/market? Maybe net new potential customers are simply not as aware of the true benefits of your client’s offerings.

To be successful in a fast-paced, ever-changing, and competitive market, it is imperative for brands to think beyond just CPC, CPA, and ROAS in the short term. Instead, they should be equally aware of their brand’s position in the attention amongst their prospective customers, AND increasing the customer lifetime value of their existing customers.

Understand Your Customers

The first step is truly understanding the Customer Lifetime Value of your existing customer base. By understanding this, you can identify the correct behavior signals that provide the most value to your bottom line, customize the customer experience and maintain the customer’s attention and be prepared to react to any potential competitor distraction. To gain additional understanding of how your customers behave outside of your brand, utilize your Facebook audience insights or in-market segments in Analytics. 

When we understand the behavior of our most valuable customers, we can then plan and execute a strategy that will grab the attention of new customers that align with similar traits of existing customers, allowing you to grow and grow profitably.

Stop the “Spray & Pray

Today’s user has limited attention that is divided across multiple devices and channels. It is estimated that the average user is exposed to about 5,000 ads per day. With so much noise, it is imperative to ensure that you are serving your ad to the right audiences, at the right time, through the right channel.

This is not just important for products that have specific audiences who still use mass media and looser targeting, like B2B SaaS or Luxury Brands, but also for those who do fit into a one solution fits all. Deloitte estimates that around 50% of offline grocery stores are influenced by digital and those that were exposed to a brand’s targeted YouTube ads, spent about 40% more than the average consumer.

While a complete shift in this approach acquires increased tracking, risk, and often fear, it allows for the ability to reach better-qualified customers, increased reaction to lack of attention and the ability to customize the message to specific audiences.

Get Creative

Context of ad exposure is not always something that we can control. Is the user, the right user, but checking Facebook while waiting to go into an appointment, or seeing a display ad while researching for work.

One thing we can control is the way the creative is developed, it’s ability to stop the scroll and capture that attention. However, It is important that while the ad must showcase your message, but not be so sales focused that it disengages the user. It should be speaking to the customer, not about you. Create an emotional connection, not a sales connection.

A marathon, not a sprint.

With the vast amounts of data at our fingertips we often, myself included, fall into the trap of the need for instant gratification. While this does happen on occasion, it is not always sustainable. Like any good relationship, you have to nurture it, earn the attention, show that you can provide what the customer needs. If these conditions are met, you in return will maintain the attention, earn their trust and receive their loyalty.

By understanding the customer behavior, utilizing the right tools, testing creative and responding quickly to changes in markets or consumer behavior, you can create a consistent game plan to grow, earn and maintain user attention.

Today’s modern marketing department encompasses a variety of roles that blend expertise in both traditional and digital mediums. Hiring for SEO related roles, in particular, has increased by over 40% in the last year.

Companies are injecting more dollars than ever into organic search and content marketing. This strategic shift calls on SEO and marketing teams to move in concert in order to achieve mutual campaign KPIs. Crossing the collaborative divide requires an equally mindful transition towards consistent communication, project management processes, and teambuilding.

Issues with integration

Making two cross-discipline teams work cohesively can be a challenge. About 75% of cross-functional teams fail. In order to mitigate the risk of a poorly-executed campaign, it’s vital to integrate the day-to-day functions of both marketing and SEO teams. To do that, it helps to take a look at some of the common barriers to success.

Lack of communication, specifically pertaining to goals

No clear method for measuring ROI

Siloed mentality or lack of flexibility

Gaps in technology adoption

It’s incredibly difficult to strive towards a goal that isn’t clearly defined. Expecting teams with different skill sets to work within ill-defined project parameters is even harder. Scope creep becomes a real issue, alongside a general lack of confidence in project deliverables and team cooperation.

Measuring the impact of a product can also be adversely affected by a lack of clarity. If a project doesn’t have a clear, standardized system for measuring ROI, it becomes difficult for each team to understand the impact of their work and fairly attribute responsibility. This is difficult in any cross-functional scenario, but in the marketing world, where ROI has been historically difficult to measure, it can prove disastrous.

Too often, separate teams become siloed, isolated from the larger department by their specialized skill set. Breaking down creative silos means that valuable information is shared more freely across teams, and the resulting output is more dynamic, which is an extraordinarily valuable thing in the world of marketing. Adapting to current trends in SEO and marketing, as well as being able to execute on them within a joint strategy means being receptive to change.

One barrier to entry for cross-discipline collaboration is a technology adoption gap. Although MarTech software applications accounted for nearly 30% of a CMO’s budget in 2018, certain aspects of technical SEO might be harder to conceptualize and fit under a unified marketing umbrella. Implementing standardized technology tools aimed at promoting collaboration and data analysis is a cornerstone of modern marketing strategy.

Impact on revenue

Successful inter-departmental collaboration can be tied to revenue and positive brand impact. Over 90% of Google traffic is observed on the first page, meaning if you are ranking on the second, third, or tenth page, your marketing efforts are unlikely to be seen.

Social media marketing and content strategy have long been the territory of traditional marketers. Hybridized digital marketers and SEO strategists can help drive marketing objectives centered around the most compelling and technical aspects, bringing to the table a unique understanding of how organic search helps drive brand visibility.

Cross-functional communication provides more visibility into emerging trends, ROI modeling, and organizational needs that can inform marketing spends and strategic focus. Nurturing a basic understanding of the relationship between a brand and its customers also helps marketers and SEO experts alike create smarter strategies and drive more profitable results.

Best practices for fostering collaboration

Fortunately, creating a culture of collaboration doesn’t have to be such a heavy lift. SEO strategists and marketers have similar core competencies. Given the right tools and processes, SEO efforts can help drive marketing objectives and vice versa:

Collaboration tools

Workflow processes

Education and employee engagement

Collaborative tools and software platforms are hitting the market with increasing regularity. Implementing these tools can positively impact the way SEO and marketing teams work together as well as conduct day-to-day job functions. From project management platforms like Asana or Basecamp, to collaborative meeting tools like Slack and Google Hangouts, using a standardized set of tools helps empower organizations with distinct departments and enables remote workers to create compelling campaigns in real-time. This also helps teams establish workflow processes that break large-scale projects down into smaller tasks, allowing them to keep a close eye on potential bottlenecks at all stages of the project management life cycle.

Breaking down organizational silos can do a lot towards creating a shared sense of expertise and a shared vocabulary. Defining project objectives and metrics to track against helps improve the collaboration between SEO and marketing teams since all stakeholders will understand how their efforts and area of expertise play into a shared outcome. Not every marketing objective will be SEO focused, but it’s still important to get stakeholders in the room to talk about keyword targets and opportunities, as well as conduct training sessions.

Keeping employees engaged is one of the best ways to keep collaboration productive and consistent. Scheduling regular standing meetings to go over progress towards objectives, and providing avenues for professional development, certification, and mentoring help cement team building efforts that drive success.

SEO strategy for results

Marketing teams need to be thinking about SEO, and SEO teams need to be thinking about marketing. With more companies throwing their weight behind organic search and adjacent forms of marketing, both teams will be working towards common KPIs. The marketing strategies of the future incorporate a more holistic approach to brand strategy, and companies that are able to foster cross-functional collaboration are setting themselves up to be more able to respond to the changing market.

The post How SEO Can Drive Your Marketing Initiatives appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Ever since Google rolled out the Optimization Score, all accounts are full of notifications and recommended changes that may improve your account score. These recommendations range from keyword suggestions, targeting changes, ad suggestions, and automated smart bidding strategies. Should you apply or dismiss these recommended changes?

In an account, you might see a score like 77.5% and several ways you can improve this score. If we applied all the recommended changes, we could have a 100% score. Although it is a good idea to review each and every suggestion and determine if it makes sense for your campaign goals and account strategy. One of the top recommendations in most accounts is around Smart Bidding Strategies.

Smart Bidding Strategies

How does Smart Bidding work? Google’s system evaluates your Search campaigns and uses machine learning to make recommendations for your account. The system will evaluate settings, historical performance, hour of day, location, and real-time auction information. These recommendations are designed layer on advanced machine learning to your campaigns to help you achieve an outcome. This means you are turning keyword level bidding and letting Google manage it on your behalf.

It is possible that these bid strategies and Google’s algorithms can use account signals to make changes that can have a positive impact on your campaign’s performance. However, we have also had situations where the automated bid strategy was not a good match for our campaign and had a negative impact. Just read the article about When Target CPA Isn’t Hitting Your Target for one possible outcome.

These smart bid strategies can be used to help increase your visibility, clicks, or conversions. They can also be used to maintain a specific cost-per-conversions (CPA) or improve your return on ad spend (ROAS). Target CPA bid strategies may work great for lead generation but may have a negative impact on ROAS. There may be cases where a CPA may be higher for a particular term, but the revenue generated is significantly above the ROAS goal. One of my colleagues wrote an excellent article about the difference between CPA and ROAS that still holds true today.

Notifications

Inside every account, you will see Google’s notifications that can range from highlighting disapproved ads, billing issues, keyword conflicts, as well as other smart bidding strategies. In one campaign it suggests switching several campaigns to Maximize Conversions or Target CPA bid strategies. You will have to look deeper to determine if these strategies make sense for these particular campaigns.

If you click the View button, it will take you to another screen where it gives additional information about the Target CPA strategy and how it will raise your optimization score by +9.9%. According to Google, this score is determined by real-time statistics, existing settings, and performance history. It would be tempting to click Apply All and make these changes, but is this a good idea?

In another account, the system is recommending we switch to Target ROAS strategy. However, the interesting thing to note about this account is that they are lead generation and so revenue is not being recorded. So, this is a bid strategy that would be worth dismissing. This is exactly the reason you need to carefully consider each recommendation before applying them to your campaigns.

Recommendations

Should you make these recommended changes to your account or not? One thing to consider is the machine will never understand user intentions. Google doesn’t know the difference between someone looking for a Charger Car or a car charger for your phone. Just consider how many irrelevant terms show up in search query reports. This is where we come in and are able to analyze the searcher intention and exclude irrelevant terms. Google also does not understand the purpose of your campaign it just looks at data and suggests recommendations.

These bid strategies can be applied to lower volume campaigns, but the machine learning algorithms are going to be more successful with more data. One Google rep said that bid strategies do not work as well with campaigns with wild conversions fluctuations. According to Google support information, they suggest in order to maximize results using Target CPA you need 30 conversions in the past 30 days. Target ROAS bid strategies require 50 conversions in 30 days.

Another thing to think about is your attribution settings in your account. Many accounts are still set to Last Click attribution which gives 100% credit to the last ad click. It may be a good idea to switch to a Multi-touch point attribution model instead. This will give partial credit to other campaigns that are part of the journey. One option might be Position-Based Attribution that gives partial credit to the first and last touch-point and splits the remaining credit to anything in between. You will also want to make sure all your conversion actions are important before letting an automatic bid strategy use that data to make decisions in your account.

Target CPA and Branded Campaigns

In one account, one of the campaigns bucketed into the Target CPA recommendation is the Branded campaign. In this account the CTR is high, CPCs are low, and the revenue is high. The purpose of the Branded campaign is to protect these keywords from competitors, control the ad message, and dominate the Search Engine Results Page. Therefore, using a bid strategy could limit the number of impressions for our branded terms. Do we really want to limit the number of times our branded terms can appear in auctions? In these campaigns, I prefer to use enhanced manual bidding (eCPC).

What if we decided to switch this campaign over to the Target CPA strategy? The system recommends we set the Target CPA bids at $16 based on the account average. One of the branded keywords has a higher CPA at $35, but the ROAS is 1476%. It is possible the system could limit this keyword due to the higher CPA even though it has high revenue. Other options would be to go with Target ROAS bid strategy, but again this would focus around revenue and could limit how many times we appear in the auction.

Another campaign that was recommended for this strategy is our Non-Brand mobile campaign. This campaign had 15 conversions in the last 30 days. According to Google, they recommend you have 30 conversions in the past 30 days in order to maximize the results. Another thing is Google is only able to use the information obtained from Google ads.

  Assisting Revenue Campaigns

In Analytics, we can see that this campaign is assisting revenue to other channels or campaigns. The products sold by this client are expensive and require some planning. Plus, order these items is complex and it would be more difficult to do it through your mobile device. The low bounce rate and high pages-per-session suggest that these searchers are relevant. Another thing we know is that these Non-Brand campaigns serve more as an assisting role to other campaigns or channels. So, if we tested a new bid strategy, we would want to monitor any negative impacts on other channels.

Run an Experiment

Completely turning the reigns over to Google to bid on these keywords based on the CPA would be risky and could impact the assisted revenue. One way to test these goals is to run a 50/50 experiment to see if the system can do a better job. In an experiment, you would copy the original campaign and rung a test with 50% of your total budget. Once you activate the experiment, it is important to avoid making changes in these campaigns while the experiments are active.

In one account, we are running a Target CPA experiment. The experiment CPA is $84.20 compared to our original campaign at $82.56. We can see the average CPC is higher in the experiment, but the conversion rate is also higher. Running an experiment is one way to test out a bid strategy without risking your entire budget. Plus, if the strategy does not work you can just stop the experiment without having to reverse all the bids.

In these experiments, if you do not see the blue asterisk, this means that the test has not reached statistical significance. It needs additional time to run. Keep in mind, it is a good idea to set the experiment end date further into the future. You can always end an experiment early, but if the test concludes early you will have to start over again.

Closing Thoughts

Run some experiments with these automatic bid strategies to determine if they will work well for your campaigns. Also, if you decide to go with an automated bid strategy, it is a good idea to continue to monitor it regularly. In the past, I have had automatic bid strategies that performed well initially and then suddenly had wild performance changes. Also, for another perspective, read When Target CPA Isn’t Hitting Your Target by Laura Lowery.

Have you ever seen that video of the kid trying to collect water in a wire bucket?

It’s pretty hilarious:

Problem is, it’s also painfully reminiscent of a lot of marketers’ strategy.

Sure, they’re working hard and hustling. But the processes, funnels, and journeys they use create more leaks than that kid’s bucket. And when each leak is losing you thousands in potential revenue, it’s something that needs your attention.

Check most funnel visualizations and you’ll see something similar to the example below: a massive loss of customers at every stage.

A pretty standard example of a funnel (via ConversionXL)

In the above example, a grand total of 1.66% of users completed a reservation.

This isn’t a standalone case either. Leaky funnels like this one are everywhere, and most marketers aren’t doing enough to fix them.

One of the major problems is that people are too aggressive with their funnels. They’re pushing the wrong product at the wrong time—to the right people.

Fortunately, there’s an easy fix, which comes down to attracting people with low threat sales before up-selling them to your main money-making products.

I’m going to run you through a sneaky little tactic that big brands—like Marvel and Ben and Jerry’s—use to drastically increase their conversion rates. And then we’re going to look at how you can leverage the success of those initial sales to fill your upsell funnel and double down on your success.

Social Commerce Streamlines the Buyer’s Journey

Social media has quickly become one of the best ways to engage and attract new customers. But you’ve got to ask yourself, why are people on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter to begin with?

Most of the time, if we’re being honest, it’s to waste time or avoid boredom. People check out what their friends and colleagues are saying. They lose themselves watching funny videos of dogs, or maybe to get ideas for new workouts.

Very rarely do people head to social just to shop, which is why the average conversion rate is so low compared to other referral sources:

Data based on $1 billion in sales over Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2017 (via Smart Insights)

Social media users have low purchase intent. They’re looking for a distraction, not a new widget. Sure, you might pique their interest with a well-optimized social media post, but that desire wanes with every step they take:

This is a highly unscientific graph based on the general trends we’ve seen with users of jumper. This one is just for illustrative purposes only.

To increase conversions, you’ve got to push for the sale while purchase desire is high. And the best way to do this is to remove unnecessary steps.

How?

With a two-step checkout that takes users immediately from seeing something they want to actually buying it. This is what social commerce allows you to do.

Social commerce allows brands to sell products directly through their social media channels. It turns the posts and ads you’re already running into automated checkouts so your users can buy your products directly from their Facebook feed, your Instagram stories, or your latest tweets. A person engages with a post of a product they want, and then they’re then able to buy it through an automated chat.

Social commerce has helped brands like Marvel, who implemented the strategy when promoting Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp, achieve a 58% conversion rate.

For instance, Marvel added an automated checkout bot to posts on their social channels. The posts would include something like: “comment #Ant-Man below to buy your tickets!”. And when someone commented, an automated chatbot like the one below would kick in to help users find the cinema and showtime that best fit.

Below is the actual sequence used for Ant-Man and the Wasp in Singapore:

Allowing users to purchase tickets directly within the social network they were actively engaged with is a sure fire way to increase your sales and conversions.

The above Marvel campaign is proof of the concept as the simple social commerce strategy helped them achieve the below:

It allowed Marvel to achieve a 58% conversion rate in a single campaign, rising to 68% when retargeting was taken into account.

It also generated 18X as many comments as the next best campaign which massively increased reach.

It’s one of the best ways for brands to increase their sales. And honestly, I think it’s going to play an increasingly important role in the coming years.

But here’s the thing. It’s far from perfect…

Social Commerce Is Not a Replacement for All Marketing

The stats above make social commerce seem almost too good to be true, right?

I’m a huge proponent of social commerce. I can count more than one client over the years who operate solely in this space. But I’m not going to say it’s the perfect solution for every brand out there.

It’s the perfect solution for low-cost impulse buys like cinema tickets or ice cream. But it’s not a great solution for high ticket items.

If you’re selling $10,000 TVs, for example, then it’s not going to be a good solution for you. How many people spend that much on an impulse? How many people are scrolling through their social feeds, see a $10k item and say “go on then, I’ll treat myself.” (Very few, if any at all.)

If you check the average order value for social commerce, in fact, they all fall below $100 (most below $50):

Widely shared data about the average order value from social (via Big Commerce)

People don’t intend to shop on social, so they’re not going to spend vast amounts of cash.

Don’t despair if you are selling high ticket items, though. I’m going to run you through a couple of ideas that will help you turn the customers you attract through those low-cost impulse buys into repeat customers.

EDITOR’S NOTE. Interested in capitalizing on social media as a source of inbound traffic? You can read through Unbounce’s library of social media learning here.

Using Social Commerce For High-Ticket Sales

To get your social commerce high-ticket funnel up and running you’re going to need a few things:

A low price product that’s related to the high ticket item (more on this soon)

A social commerce solution (like jumper)

Some way to collect, store, and segment contact details (a good CRM)

A reengagement channel (email with landing pages from Unbounce)

If you’ve got all of these then you’re ready to continue.

The long and short of this is you’re going to use social commerce to sell a low-cost product, something that would be a logical impulse buy but is still related to the main product you’re trying to sell.

You then collect the user’s details and add them into a relevant upsell funnel through your email service. And the emails point back to a personalized landing page which sells the high-ticket item most relevant to their initial purchase.

This is what it looks like:

Depending on the price disparity, you can do this in one leap—or take some time to really nurture the user to get them there.

To provide an example, here’s how Ben and Jerry’s moved 5,000 free product samples in three days before upselling paid products:

They didn’t overcomplicate things and kept the whole process super simple.

But I hear what you’re saying: Moving a user from a free product to a $5-10 purchase (for ice cream, no less) isn’t difficult, nor is it representative of your brand’s products.

You’re right. It’s not. But the process is the same.

Let’s imagine you run a store targeting audiophiles and you’re trying to shift a $5,000 sound system. Your social commerce strategy could be shifting a $75 paid or in earbuds that provide superior sound. For those that purchase, you could then upsell those people on a $150 pair of noise-canceling headphones. Then a $500 set of speakers or $1,000 turntable.

With each upsell, you’re not just making more money, but qualifying the user while leading them toward the end goal.

The great thing here is that you’re never going to leave empty-handed. At the very least everyone in this funnel has paid for the $75 earbuds. If you really wanted, you could even sell them the $5,000 system piecemeal.

That’s what social commerce is great at—sorting the wheat from the chaff. You’re not just attracting “audiophiles” or whatever, but “audiophiles who will buy things from you.”

So let’s get into the details of how to set this up for yourself.

Step 1. Product Identification

Before you start looking into how to set up this funnel, you’re going to need to find the right product pairings. For the initial offer you need something that is:

not too expensive (ideally in the ~$50 range)

extremely relevant to the high ticket item you’re pushing

likely to sell well on social (highly visual marketing is a must)

You’ll also need to look at the high ticket item.

A lot of people will pick a low-cost item that’s an accessory to the high ticket item. For example, for an iPhone Xs people would sell something like the case. It’s a great cross-sell, but if someone is buying the case then they already have the phone. So a couple of better options for an iPhone Xs might be:

Cases for an iPhone 6, 7, and 8 (sell the Xs as an upgrade)

A printer for iPhone 7 (promote the Xs on the merit of its superior camera)

You get the idea right.

These kind of items are within the acceptable price range for impulse buys. They also give you an idea of the kind of needs the user has which makes retargeting and upselling much easier. And they’re related to the end product.

Once you’ve figured out your pairings, it’s time to move onto the next step.

Step 2. Set Up Your Social Commerce Campaign

Using a social commerce solution, you can now get your campaign set up.

For instance, if you head to jumper.ai (here comes the shameless plug…) you’ll be able to sign up for a free account.

After filling in all of those business and bank details (so you can get paid!) head to the “add product” menu item on the left. Fill out your product details, pricing, variations, and other relevant information.

Once you’ve done that click “save” and follow the link to the “manage products” page.

Find the product you want to share and click the little tag icon. You’ll be allowed to choose the network you want to share through. Click the one you want and you’ll see a page like the one below:

You can either go with the default text or customize it. Whatever your choice, as soon as you’re ready, hit share to send it out to that social network. Just like that, your social commerce post is live. An automated chatbot will take the user through the purchase process and collect their details and payment.

Step 3. Capture User Contact and Purchase Details

If you’re running your store on something like Shopify or WooCommerce, there are native integrations to carry the user’s information across.

If not, no worries. You can simply set up a Zap to copy the user’s details over to your ESP. I’d recommend copying over their contact details and relevant product information so you can get them into the right funnel.

Then it’s on to the fun upsell stuff.

Step 4. Email Marketing to Nurture Customers

Social commerce is great for those initial contacts and to help with the transactional stuff.

But it’s not great at nurturing relationships.

Most people engage on their mobile (with its small screen) and, thanks to the chat medium, want very short correspondence.

If you’re looking to nurture your users then email is still going to be the best method. After you’ve got the thanks out of the way you’re going to want to start increasing the user’s desire for that higher priced item.

It’s gonna take some testing your part, but I’d recommend starting by helping them get the most out of their current product purchase.

For example, if we look at the iPhone 7 printer above then I’d send emails in the below order:

A short series on the products key features

A short series on how to take better pics with an iPhone 7

Intersperse some news pieces or features of the Xs throughout to put it on their radar

Start with some sales emails that promote the Xs as the ideal solution to the pain points this segment is having

Here’s the thing with this stage: you’re not gonna get it right on your first go. You’re going to have to play around with the content of the emails and the timeline to make users feel comfortable with the price jump.

You could also try things like throwing in an incentive to push the sale:

Just remember that with email marketing value and relevance are key.

Step 5. Create Personalized Landing Pages

Once you get to those sales emails though, you’re going need to send the users somewhere.

Let’s say you’re pushing the iPhone Xs. And let’s imagine that you’ve got three buckets of users who opt-in to your lower-priced lead gen products:

First Bucket: Shutterbugs

Second Bucket: Audiophiles

Third Bucket: Annoying people who boast about having the latest iPhone

You could create separate landing pages for each and every group. It wouldn’t be a bad way to go, but it’ll also take a ton of time. And the more bucket segments you have, the more difficult completing this task becomes.

This is where Unbounce’s Dynamic Text Replacement (DTR) will help out. Dynamic Text Replacement allows you to edit certain elements of a landing page to be more relevant to the prospect.

For example, switch the headline so users who come from link A see variant A and those from link B see variant B:

DTR allows you to change key elements without creating new pages (via KlientBoost)

It’s an easy way to increase the relevancy of your landing pages.

In the iPhone example, you could create one general landing page that details the major benefits of the phone, but then switch key elements to appeal to each demographic. It cuts down on your time so you can roll out more campaigns, but it keeps the relevancy high and the messaging in line with your sales angle.

EDITOR’S NOTE. Dynamic Text Replacement can also be used with search keywords to enhance message match in your PPC campaigns. You can read about applying DTR to your Unbounce landing pages here.

A Sneaky Bonus to Further Grow Conversions

You’ve read 2403 of my words. And that deserves praise because, well, they’re words from some guy in his home office. I like you.

So, to offer a little thanks, I’m gonna let you in on a secret. (Don’t tell anyone this I shared though. It’s only for the determined readers like you.)

The customers who work their way through this funnel were initially engaged by a social checkout. Offering the same method of checking out on the landing page should make it easier for these users to convert because:

It’s a method they’re comfortable engaging with.

They have experience in chat led conversions.

The tool should remember their details so they can check out in a few clicks.

It’s something you can easily achieve through a handy chat bubble that triggers when the user clicks the buy now button.

Overload the Top of Your Funnel with Social Commerce

Social commerce, conversational commerce, and chatbots are the three current hot topics in digital marketing. A lot of the advice out there will tell you they are the perfect solution to every problem.

But they’re not. While they will help solve a bunch of issues within your business, they’re not ideal for high ticket item sales.

The transactional, conversational solution they provide is incredible for small impulse buys. But if you want to sell something that costs a little more you’ve got to get creative. Merchants and marketers need to understand that social commerce is not a replacement for the channels you’re currently using. It’s an addition to your low-cost product sales and top of funnel strategy.

Understand that, and you’re well on the way to increasing your ecommerce store’s revenue.

Jungle Scout is Hiring We’re looking for 16+ people in various roles, both remote and at one of our two offices in Canada or the US. If you’re interested, go ahead and check out our available Jungle Scout vacancies. And if you’d like to learn why I love working for Jungle Scout, keep on reading. One Night in Bangkok I’m tired. Exhausted. No surprise, really. Yesterday I was running through a street market in Bangkok trying to outrun Becky Frost in a race to find a carrot. Yes, a carrot. And she runs pretty darn fast, too (by the way, this would be the first of many battles that Frosty and I would get into this week). In fact, there were a few of us from Jungle Scout running to find this elusive carrot. Shane Stinemetz, the Vice President of Operations. Patryk Wójcik, one of our customer success specialists. Kaia Olson, a full stack developer. Most of us were dropped off by a tuck-tuck driver with little to no direction or clues. This made the scavenger hunt pretty tough. Eventually, we figured out where the carrot was and moved on to the next challenge in the race. And that was just ... Read More

The post Jungle Scout is Hiring: A One-in-a-Million Chance Doesn’t Come Twice in a Lifetime appeared first on Jungle Scout: Amazon Product Research Made Easy.

After four years of being an Account Manager, I still feel the pressure of switching my mindset from the thinking of an E-Commerce account to a Lead Generation account and vise versa. While they are the same in many ways, there are several differentiations between the two. Should you be scared if you have only had e-commerce accounts and your boss calls and says that you are taking the next lead generation account? No way! Look at it as an opportunity to expand your skill set and to refresh what you have already learned in training at the beginning of your time as a PPC mastermind.

This small guide is going to focus solely on Google Ads as a jumping board into the rest of the pay-per-click world. Many of the ideas and differences indicated in this article can and will carry over between various platforms, however, every platform is different and will require adjustments not only based on the platform but the account(s) that you are running. So let’s get to it!

Keywords

Many may think that keywords are the same across both types of accounts. However, I’m here to tell you that is not the case. When thinking about keywords, you must first think of the product or products you are promoting and then combine that thinking with the audience.

For e-commerce, you want to be intentional but can safely make some assumptions. For example, if I search for a ‘women’s tunic blouse’, you can safely assume that is what I’m looking for and you as an advertiser will want to get in front of me if that’s a product you sell.

For lead generation, it’s slightly more vague. If your product requires a sales team to step into the process once a user’s information is processed, you need to make sure that the user is qualified and fits the demographic and/or audience you are intending to reach. As an example here, if I search for ‘how to budget my money’, an accounting firm that aims to help small businesses, should avoid bidding on that term. However, if I search for ‘budgeting for small businesses’ you are safe to assume I’m in the market for something other than a little spreadsheet that calculates how much I spent on coffee and what’s left for bills.

Bottom line: Keywords show intent but they can also simply be someone not looking to purchase and rather just doing a quick Google search. Use keywords as the first point to qualify users.

Ad Copy

We all love writing ad copy, sometimes. This is the second point that is going to vary between e-commerce and lead generation.

For e-commerce, I love a good deal. If I’m searching and get the following two ads, which one do you think I’m going to click on?

Me personally, I’m going to click on the second ad that shows the following value props;

5 star-rating

$10 off your first order

Free shipping

Free returns

Styles 

While I have been looking to buy the first brand for a while, I’m giving only a quote from a customer, and information about the styles.

For lead generation, it’s a different ball game in some ways. A user wants to know what you offer, your experience, and what it’s going to cost them.

For the ads above, I simply searched for “injury attorney” and immediately I’m given the information that it won’t cost unless they win for me. I’m also given the information on a free case review and that they cover car accidents. In this situation, either one would be fair to click on so I would probably start at one and work my way down.

Bottom Line: While they may not differ vastly, you have to throw in specific value props pertaining to your business. Give the user what they want because if you don’t offer it, you may save yourself some $$ by avoiding that click.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

To me, this is the biggest difference between the two, so I’ll keep it simple and to the point.

For e-commerce, we want to know how much revenue we are generating. Return on ad spend (ROAS) will 9/10 be the metric that you want to focus on when determining the success of your campaigns. One exception to this is if you offer an on-going subscription, it may shift slightly to lifetime value but the end goal would still essentially be revenue. As a side note, while I have always focused on this for my e-commerce accounts, always listen to the client and ensure that you are aligning yourself with what their goals are and the KPI’s they want to focus on.

For lead generation, the majority of the time, if revenue is not tracked, you will most likely focus on conversions and cost-per-conversion. For example, if you are tracking form fills, you will want to know for every form fill, how much is it costing us. This is something that needs to be discussed with the business to determine the value of a conversion so that an appropriate goal can be set.

Bottom line: You will focus on different KPIs for each business type, however, you always want to confirm with the client or business what they are focusing on internally. Because if that doesn’t align, you will be optimizing toward a metric that may not matter in the long run and essentially hurt their business.

Conversion Goals

Last but certainly not least. Things are tracked differently between e-commerce and lead generation. This is the main thing that sets them apart and that you need to know!

For e-commerce, the main conversion goal is typically going to be purchases. When a user hits that ‘complete purchase’ or ‘confirm purchase’, you want to track what they bought (this is typically done via Google Analytics or similar platform) and how much total they spent. Simple.

For lead generation, there are a plethora of conversion actions that can be tracked such as;

Complete form fills

Phone calls

Newsletter sign-ups

Subscriptions

Video views

Chats

..and more.

You don’t want to discount an action that a user may take when it comes to lead generation. From experience, by tracking more conversion actions it gives you the ability to learn how people interact. For example, for one of my clients, I know that if a user calls the business and completes a newsletter sign-up, they are more like to purchase the product in the interim.

Bottom line: Know what’s valuable to the business and what actions customers are taking prior to investing in the overall product or service.

Conclusion

This is a minor list of difference between lead generation and e-commerce that focuses solely on Google Ads. There are a ton of other blog posts that dive more in-depth into the strategy between the two but without a core foundation, sometimes it’s hard to think about long-term strategy. My suggestion to you is to always step back and consider the user, the audience, and what the goal is of the business.

With so many paid social options to invest in, it can be hard to understand (and convince to your boss) how your strategy can work across many different channels. How do you customize your creative to each platform, but have a consistent message that carries through? How do you put together a strategy that achieves the same overarching goal, but meets the audience requirements and nuances of each social channel? How can you use search to help your social campaigns? In this webinar, we’ll explain it all.

  This Thursday, Paid Social experts Emma Franks from Hanapin and Paul Wicker from AdStage team up in this webinar to dissect the perfect cross-channel paid social strategy for you to save budget and achieve huge results.

  You’ll learn:

Top performing creative and copy for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, Spotify, Pinterest, and YouTube ads

How to use dynamic ads in your strategy

Expert UTM strategies for cross-channel measurement