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 CustomersThe 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 & PrayToday’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 CreativeContext 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. from https://www.ppchero.com/brand-attention-the-metric-you-are-not-thinking-about/
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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 integrationMaking 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.
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 revenueSuccessful 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 collaborationFortunately, 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:
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 resultsMarketing 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. from https://blog.marketo.com/2019/04/how-seo-can-drive-your-marketing-initiatives.html 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 StrategiesHow 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. NotificationsInside 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. RecommendationsShould 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 CampaignsIn 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 CampaignsIn 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 ExperimentCompletely 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 ThoughtsRun 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. from https://www.ppchero.com/apply-or-dismiss-automatic-google-ad-recommendations/ 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 JourneySocial 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’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 MarketingThe 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 SalesTo get your social commerce high-ticket funnel up and running you’re going to need a few things:
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 IdentificationBefore 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:
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:
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 CampaignUsing 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 DetailsIf 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 CustomersSocial 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:
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 PagesOnce 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:
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 ConversionsYou’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:
Overload the Top of Your Funnel with Social CommerceSocial 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. from https://unbounce.com/lead-generation/social-commerce/ 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. from https://www.junglescout.com/blog/jungle-scout-hiring/ 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! KeywordsMany 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 CopyWe 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;
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 GoalsLast 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;
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. ConclusionThis 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. from https://www.ppchero.com/adjusting-between-e-commerce-and-lead-generation/ 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:
from https://www.ppchero.com/master-your-cross-channel-paid-social-strategy/ I know what you’re thinking: Drip campaigns? They’re about as relevant as Michael Bolton. But here’s the thing about Michael Bolton: He’s always relevant! Truth is, the concepts behind drip campaigns—sending communications to customers and prospects on a regular basis—remain as relevant today as ever. The difference is that marketing automation has made this process much more sophisticated. Now, instead of scheduling the same series of emails to go to the same people on the same day each week, you can send your audience valuable personalized communications based on actions they took, content they engaged with, or segments they fit. So, while the idea of traditional drip marketing may sound out of date, there are still plenty of key areas where it can come in handy. Who should be using them? And when?Great questions! Email drip campaigns are perfect for new companies with few prospects or businesses with small marketing departments. They’re also ideal for marketers just starting out their careers. That’s because they’re generally cost-effective and easy to set up and run. They focus on what’s happening in the moment, so there’s limited long-term planning involved. And not many people are required to execute them. Essentially, all you need to do is create communications, determine a cadence, and send out your messages. This gives you an opportunity to regularly connect with prospects and educate them enough to make a purchase. Drip marketing can be particularly effective when you’re:
If nothing else, drip marketing offers your business a great way to regularly remind people why they connected with your brand in the first place. What drip campaigns are all aboutRegardless of how you use them, the most important thing to remember is that drip campaigns are all about building relationships and nurturing leads. To do that, your communications must provide constant value. Your audience should trust that you’re going to deliver what you promised. Your messages should be relevant to your readers’ needs. The experiences you deliver should be consistent across multiple channels. And your campaigns should be continually tested and optimized so they pack the most punch. Fail to do all of that and you’ll have to deal with “Unsubscribe” getting the most clicks in your emails. Download What Is Lead Nurturing? to learn more. The post Don’t Call It a Comeback: Drip Campaigns Have Been Here for Years appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. from https://blog.marketo.com/2019/04/dont-call-it-a-comeback-drip-campaigns-have-been-here-for-years.html The month of madness did not disappoint this year. Brackets shattered left and right. Virginia sought redemption and fought their way to a championship. The Walt Disney Company now owns 21rst Century Fox. Captain Marvel is breaking records for a female-led film. Truly it has been a busy month. In the midst of all this madness, Facebook continued updating their Campaign Manager and other features leaving us marketers to play catch up. Fear not, this posting will have you all caught up with the top 5 updates and ready to enjoy the flawless April weather (*cough cough* early April blizzard). 1. NotificationsFacebook added more functionality to their notification feature to help better organize how the interface flags certain instances. Their main focus was on accounts, ads, & pages which they deemed the 3 major categories that marketers care to be notified about. This update could also be the reason that inboxes were filling up with post comments, page interactions, and generally more notifications than before the update. The biggest takeaway from this update is to manage and reorganize your notification settings to fit within the scope of accounts, ads, & pages you manage. To some, this means turning off post notifications and to others, this means turning on billing and overall account notifications. Directions for customizing your notification settings can be found here on Facebook’s Ad Help Center. 2. “On Behalf of” DesignationAnother cool organizational update that Facebook rolled out in March is the “On Behalf of” designation for accounts. This simple update does not affect performance or anything within the account, rather, it allows agencies or marketing partners to designate which accounts they work on behalf of other organizations. Why does this matter?This small tweak allows companies to better control the extent to which agencies or marketers can access their information or change certain settings. It also allows for companies to grant or revoke access to the marketer with the press of a button. More information on this designation can be found here. 3. Carry Over Existing Interactions When Duplicating AdsThis is my favorite update that Facebook rolled out in March. If you duplicate ads without changing the creative; you now have the option to carry over existing engagements with that duplicated ad. Engagements include comments, likes, shares, etc. Additionally, this feature is still in implementation and may not be available to everyone yet. Why is this so cool?Traction! You can target new audiences and hit new geographical locations while still appearing like your ad has been there the whole time. The likes and comments carry over and your ad looks as engaging as ever. 4. 1 New All-Encompassing Creative SelectorThis is a relatively minor update meant to clean up the ad section of the Campaign Manager and improve workflow. Sometimes it is about the little things. The new format selector in the ad section of the Campaign Manager is meant to unify the creative selection process and make it easier to edit and select the right creatives. The new selection is called “Single Image or Video”. 5. Review & Editing UpdatesThe final Facebook updates worth noting are about the review process after changes have occurred. The highlight update is straight out of the editor style playbook and I’m sure it will be quietly rejoiced. The Campaign Manager will have the ability to highlight any edited fields of previously published fields making bulk operations more seamless. Editing should become a simpler process due to the use of color indicating where changes were made in a more visual manner. Additionally, outside of color-coding, you will have the ability to see your before and after changes side-by-side making comparisons and performance reviewing that much easier. These review features are also still rolling out to all advertisers so please be patient and stay on the lookout! That’s All Folks!That’s it for March updates! Thanks for reading and if you want to check for updates from previous months, you can visit here. from https://www.ppchero.com/5-cant-miss-march-facebook-updates/ Content overview: Certain states will start charging taxes on top of Amazon seller fees and fulfillment costs, though which ones is currently unknown.. Amazon states that they are not increasing seller fees. Sellers are already in an uproar over the news, seeing it as “unconstitutional” and “double-taxation.” Certain states will start taxing Amazon fees. If you’re a seller on Amazon, or if you logged into Seller Central today, no doubt you came across the following from Seller Central: “Starting June 1, 2019, some states will consider specific Selling on Amazon fees such as per item, order, and refund fees as a taxable electronic service. Similarly, some states will consider FBA inventory prep fees such as bubble wrap, polybag, taping, and labels as taxable. Seller fees [are] not increasing however; you may see tax applied to some seller fees. Tax collected will reflect with the order fee on the transaction details of your Payments Reports. Date range payment reports will continue to reflect the sum of fees per order.” Additional information about states taxing Amazon fees: This letter was sent out to sellers, letting them know about the upcoming taxation: Dear Seller, We are reaching out regarding the possible tax implications ... Read More The post States Will Begin Taxing Amazon FBA Fees appeared first on Jungle Scout: Amazon Product Research Made Easy. from https://www.junglescout.com/blog/states-tax-amazon-seller-fees/ |