The emergence of AI technology is the result of evolved human thinking. And, in some ways, it’s become one of the biggest technology game changers of this generation. However, without being very cautious and aware of the dangers—and significance—of combining human interaction with artificial intelligence, we could head down the wrong path. Personally, a substantial barrier I’ve faced in my life is properly managing my time. At first, I was obsessed with learning the ins and outs of Google Calendar. As brilliant as Google is, the brand has to keep things relatively simple: Everybody who uses a Google product expects, and needs, to be completely comfortable with it. There can’t be a steep learning curve. When we were building Calendar, one of our goals was to help people become more thoughtful. To do that, the app has to use AI to collect existing data to create reminders of important events, moments, or tasks. This can significantly help enhance the relationships between the user and the important people in his life. At the same time, AI won’t automatically know the difference between meaningful and meaningless details people share with the user. You might have had a conversation with someone who mentioned a big event coming up, but you still have to manually input that information. In a less obvious scenario, someone could have just earned a promotion or lost a loved one. The typical calendar application isn’t going to create a reminder to send a congratulatory note or condolences in these unexpected circumstances. AI to ScaleIf we relied solely on AI, we’d miss out on chances to build and maintain meaningful connections. However, without AI, it would be difficult to scale and optimize relationships—there’s a reason we have a standard social circle of 150 people. This example is both a key and a hint as to how marketers should approach AI in different ways. AI needs to be used as a catalyst to connect us with more people on a human level, scaling personalization or helping us identify ways to interact with others that we may not have previously seen. In marketing, it’s vital to gain trust and engage people, so they want to buy from and advocate for you. Therefore, scaling through AI can be an asset. But when there’s a chance to add a human connection, we have to leap at the opportunity. Creating a Balance Between AI and HumansHow can you balance AI technology with human interaction? Here are just three ways to achieve that goal. Create a mix of technology and humanity.We’re already experiencing this transformation in our daily lives — if you have a question about a return policy or the weather, you interact with AI technology to get this information easily and quickly. But what if your question is more specific or requires smarter suggestions? AI can only go so far. We still strive for human interaction. After all, we’re social creatures. AI can’t connect with us emotionally. And, as amazing as the technology is, AI doesn’t have all the answers. For example, let’s say you received a package with a damaged product. A chatbot may be able to provide the basics regarding the company’s return policy. Understandably frustrated, you want to interact with an actual person who can empathize with you and correct the situation. A more “human” AI shares your information with the customer service rep, so you don’t have to repeat yourself. We’ll continue to see this evolve. You can record your meetings, enabling AI to use the information discussed to make smart suggestions for your next meeting. It may suggest when, where, and whom to schedule. AI could also help you develop an agenda and book the meeting. You, however, are still responsible for making sure the meeting is productive and isn’t a waste of time. AI and humans must work together in harmony, not simply focusing on replacing roles and responsibilities. Important decisions still require a human touch.Self-driving cars are a great example of humans still needing to, well, take the wheel. Each vehicle still has a driver just in case the machine has reached its limits or gets confused. Similarly, if you’ve ever called a call center, you’ve likely had your question transferred to a human operator because the machine couldn’t understand you. With your calendar, AI technology may notice that you work on a specific task at an exact time on certain days. As a result, it will automatically generate a recurring block for you, making you unavailable and issuing a reminder. But what if an emergency pulled you away from that task, and everything else on your calendar had to get pushed back? The intelligent calendar doesn’t know that, proceeding as normal. You’re going to have to manually update your calendar, so conflicts don’t arise throughout the rest of the day. Chatbots, for example, can help guide us in making financial decisions or planning our schedules. But would you trust a machine to plan your retirement or automatically fill in your entire year? Of course not. AI technology should be an asset that helps us make smarter, more informed decisions. In the end, it can’t have the final say — the tech simply isn’t trained to handle new situations. For important decisions, a human touch is still needed. Trust in the power of intuition.I recently watched a movie called “Upgrade.” In a key scene, the lead realized the automated car was taking a different route home. His gut immediately told him something was wrong. To avoid spoilers, I’ll just say his gut was picking up on clues his mind might have ignored. As useful as AI technology is and will continue to be, it can’t replace our inner voice. Whether it’s knowing you’re in a dangerous situation or sensing someone isn’t trustworthy, there’s no amount of technology that can replace our gut instincts. Why have your calendar set up a meeting with someone you believe isn’t legit? AI can be used to make suggestions and enhance our lives, but it’s ultimately on us to use our past experiences to respond to certain situations. We’ve learned, as we continue to develop our product, that we need guidelines that permit a human connection at any moment. People want that human-to-human connection, and the more you exclusively use AI, the more that’s taken away. AI technology has its limits, and that’s where the human touch has to take over. The post How to Strike a Balance Between Relying on AI and Emphasizing a Human Touch appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. from https://blog.marketo.com/2019/04/how-to-strike-a-balance-between-relying-on-ai-and-emphasizing-a-human-touch.html
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5 new jobs have been posted to PPC Hero’s Job Board, including new positions open at Hanapin Marketing (the producers of PPC Hero and Hero Conf) and Valve+Meter Performance Marketing.Here’s a brief look at just a few of the newly posted positions: Hanapin Marketing We are adding a strategic Account Director to our Services Team focused on owning our largest and most complex client relationships. As our Account Director, you will be the primary point of contact and trusted advisor to our key accounts to drive strategic initiatives, lead the internal teams supporting those accounts, and ultimately grow our client’s business through PPC. Hanapin Marketing We are looking for a strategic Senior Account Manager to drive strategy for our current enterprise level clients. As a Senior Account Manager at Hanapin, your primary responsibility will be to own and manage 4 to 6 of our client accounts. These clients will look to you to be a trusted advisor to guide their PPC strategy. You will be accountable for your client’s performance, communication, and execution of regular optimizations and strategy. Valve+Meter Performance Marketing Valve+Meter is in search of an ambitious, experienced, full-time Paid Media Analyst to join our growing agency. As a Paid Media Analyst, you will create and manage paid digital media campaigns for both B2C and B2B businesses with guidance from a senior member of our paid media team. You have a passion for data and analytics, are extremely organized and collaborative, and you love to win. Hanapin Marketing We are looking for a strategic Account Manager to drive strategy for our current enterprise level clients. As an Account Manager at Hanapin, your primary responsibility will be to own and manage 4 to 6 of our client accounts. These clients will look to you to be a trusted advisor to guide their PPC strategy. You will be accountable for your client’s performance, communication, and execution of regular optimizations and strategy. Hanapin Marketing We are adding an analytical Paid Social Account Manager to our team. As our Paid Social Account Manager, your primary responsibility will be to drive paid social strategy on the Services Team for both current clients and prospects. You will be accountable for increasing paid social spend, pitching paid social to prospects, and being a paid social resource for our team. The Walt Disney Company Disney Streaming Services is a business unit within The Walt Disney Company’s Direct-to-Consumer and International (DTCI) segment that oversees all consumer-facing digital video subscription services across the company. Disney Streaming is responsible for developing and operating The Walt Disney Company’s direct-to-consumer video businesses globally, including the ESPN+ premium sports streaming service, programmed in conjunction with ESPN; the upcoming Disney SVOD service; and BAMTECH Media, a global leader in direct-to-consumer video streaming products and solutions. Its core mission is to deliver global audiences the freedom to access content on their terms across any connected device, time or location. The Customer Acquisition team is tasked with driving new subscriber growth. The team is responsible for the planning, execution and optimization of user acquisition and performance marketing campaigns. The ideal candidate has a passion for the digital media landscape and understands the intricacies and unique attributes of every step in the marketing funnel. The successful candidate will bring a highly analytical, creative, and flexible growth mindset to the role, which will be critical to delivering breakthrough thinking for this channel. The Shade Store The Shade Store is seeking an experienced and results-driven SEM Specialist to join our world-class marketing team in Port Chester, NY. This role will report to the VP of Digital Marketing and be jointly responsible for the continued evolvement of our digital marketing strategies. Warschawski We are looking for an entrepreneurial, results-driven Digital Strategist with proven experience developing and executing comprehensive digital strategies, including: paid search (SEM/PPC), programmatic display/video, paid social, e-mail marketing and/or SEO campaigns, along with cross-functional experience in social media management, marketing and/or branding. Exceptional communication skills, incredible attention to detail and a “can-do” attitude are absolutely essential for success in this role. In this position, you will be integral in the development and execution of SEM, SEO and other digital marketing communication strategies for the agency’s clients. This involves everything from performing robust data analysis to campaign conceptualization, creation, development, implementation, monitoring & reporting. Ascendancy Digital Ascendancy is a small agency that is focused on doing just one thing: Google Ads management for ecommerce businesses. We are committed to doing excellent work for our clients, and have a track record of achieving outstanding results for them. We are looking for an exceptional candidate to join our team as an Account Manager. You will be working with 8 – 12 clients, and will be responsible for driving strategy for them, achieving outstanding results, and providing a very high level of client communication and service. 1point21 Interactive Are you fascinated by the internet, have knowledge of SEO, and know that a career in digital marketing is your jam? If so, 1Point21 Interactive is the place for you! You will be responsible for managing all SEO activities such as content strategy, link building and keyword strategy to increase rankings on all major search networks. You will also provide training and lead the JR SEO and SEO Associates. Workshop Digital Workshop Digital is a digital marketing agency that is focused on building handcrafted strategies that help our clients achieve their business goals. As a Senior Pay Per Click Analyst, you will be responsible for developing and executing these strategies for some of our top level clients to help them reach their goals. While much of your work will be independent, you will also collaborate with fellow analysts across multiple teams, your manager, account managers, and developers. See More Openings >
from https://www.ppchero.com/5-new-jobs-open-on-the-ppc-hero-job-board/ Being a retailer on Facebook in 2019 might feel a little cramped. Standing out among hundreds of businesses all gunning for a user’s attention can be frustrating, not to mention a money sink. As an advertiser, understanding the technical aspects of Facebook Ads can tremendously increase your ROI without having to completely change your overall strategy. Correctly approach these three to improve your Facebook retail ads. The “Learning Phase”The “Learning Phase” is a time period post-campaign launch where the Facebook algorithm is taking time learning to optimize towards your objective. 50 optimization events will have to occur during your conversion window to complete the learning phase. While somewhat at the mercy of the algorithm, understanding the learning phase for your typical campaign launch can help you neutralize the negative effects. Larger fluctuations towards the beginning of a campaign launch will impact performance, and setting expectations for this is crucial. As you test more campaign launches of various budgets and audiences, you will learn the average time to surpass this conversion threshold. Retailers whose audiences or budget might be too small to get close to the 50 conversion threshold, remain calm! Facebook is still going to take a period of time to learn about your campaigns, work to maximize the objective, and will eventually exit the learning phase. Making drastic changes to your campaigns within the first few days post-launch is only going to send them into more of a downward spiral. If you have launched a campaign and do need to make significant edits, I’ve found more success duplicating a campaign, changing what I need, and relaunching. Custom AudiencesWhether it’s first-party data lists, website traffic, or engagement audiences, there are multiple considerations to make when utilizing this feature. Keeping first-party data lists refreshed ensures the users in these audiences are receiving accurate and relevant advertising. A long sales cycle generally means you can get away with refreshing less often, but there are a lot of factors to consider, like when the email was captured, how the list is being used in targeting, and what the offer is. I use refreshing every month as a good rule of thumb and adjust accordingly. Proper audience exclusions can help you avoid wasted spend. Few things on the customer’s end are more abrasive than receiving an ad for something you’ve just purchased. And few things are more idiotic on the advertiser’s end than spending money trying to get someone to give you money who has already given you money (obviously ignoring cross/up-selling). Having a rolling audience of converters as an exclusion on your campaigns can avoid this and please both parties. Quick Tip: There is a setting hidden within your pixel settings to turn on automatic advanced matching. This is great for smaller advertisers who are wrestling with small remarketing pools.Custom Product SetsProduct sets are the lifeblood of your catalog sales campaigns, and knowing the possibilities within the set creation tool can help drive better performance. Advertisers have the ability to create custom product sets easily within the Facebook interface in the catalog section. You can layer different criteria on each other to create more granular product sets that better align with your creative or campaign structure. If you’re showing a video of a woman with a red T-Shirt on, it might make sense to show similar products alongside it. Furthermore, if you have custom labels in your product feed there’s even more freedom here to get creative with your product sets. Adding a pricing or profitability tier into one of your custom labels is something I always begin with. This allows for more seamless campaign optimizations by having a clear view into which products can most affect the bottom line. Wrapping UpIn conclusion, there is no cookie cutter solution for winning with Facebook Ads in the retail space. Taking time to understand how Facebook learns about your campaigns, how your different audiences perform, and capabilities with your product catalog can bring you one step further to crushing your goals and becoming the hero of your organization. from https://www.ppchero.com/3-ways-to-improve-your-facebook-retail-ads/ When you’re just starting out, it can be a struggle to find simple advice about where you should be advertising your business online. The digital marketing world can be noisy, after all, and everyone has an opinion. Your friend tells you that Google Ads is just too expensive. The blogs all say Facebook is for old people. You’re hearing from others that you simply must be on Instagram. And LinkedIn is dying, right? (Everybody knows it, right?) So how do you know where you should be advertising for your business and your demographic? When it comes down to it, there are three questions you need to ask yourself: What’s your audience? What type of product are you selling? And what are your marketing resources? With these considerations in mind, let’s take a quick spin through four major ad platforms to see which one is right for you. Google Ads (formerly AdWords)Google Ads are those pesky paid listings you probably wish didn’t appear in your Google search. You’ll typically see three to four ads at the top and bottom of the organic listings. DemographicsEssentially, “everyone” uses Google. When 90% of searcher in North America, 94% in Europe, and 93% worldwide are using Google, you don’t need to worry about whether or not your demographic is represented. Your ProductGoogle Ads is an excellent platform for when consumers are actively looking for your product or your brand. For instance, if you’re a popular retailer, like Nordstrom, or you fulfill a common need, like plumbing services, people head to Google first to search, research, validate, and then purchase.
People who use Google are actively looking for something (like plumbing services).
Consumers searching in Google have high purchase intent. They’re either researching because they’re considering a purchase now or in the near future—or they’re in active “buy mode.” That’s why Google Ads operates at a higher cost per click: conversion rates are often higher than other social platforms. Your Marketing ResourcesGoogle Ads is reasonably easy to set up if your marketing resources are limited. If you stick to the search network and avoid display and YouTube ads, you won’t need design work, videos for ads, or elaborate copywriting. The ads are short and just require some creative messaging. However, using landing pages instead of websites can increase your conversion rates dramatically and ultimately increase your ROI.
EDITOR’S NOTE. Building landing pages from scratch can be a further drain on your resources. Using Unbounce’s drag-and-drop builder, you can do it yourself in an afternoon, without a developer.
Facebook AdsOnce upon a time, running ads on Facebook was all the rage, but they’ve lost a little love over the last few years. (There’s still incredible opportunity in the platform, however.) You’ll see these ads about every five posts in your feed and in stories, articles, the marketplace, messenger, and other locations. DemographicsSome say “old” people use Facebook and the younger generations don’t. But, statistically, that’s just not true. What is true is that, while all age ranges are represented, Facebook is the one platform where the older generations are heavily represented. Here are the facts:
Facebook is excellent for all age groups. But if your product sells to people over 45, it’s the best social platform. Your ProductIf your product or service doesn’t enjoy strong brand awareness, Facebook is an excellent way to create exposure. Facebook allows you to introduce your product over time, build brand recognition, establish social credibility (through comments and likes), and ultimately win conversions. For example, I may have difficulty finding MasterClass if I’m searching for “how to grow my business.” But they’re able to introduce the brand to me via Facebook, knowing I’m a business owner through my profile and activity.
Facebook can educate and expose people to your brand long before they’re ready to buy.
Purchase IntentPeople using Facebook generally don’t intend to buy while they’re on the platform. They have low purchase intent compared to someone searching on Google. As I suggested above, that creates an incredible opportunity for you to educate, introduce your brand, and be an option when they are ready to purchase. The lower cost per click on Facebook also helps offset the lower purchase intent. Your Marketing ResourcesFacebook relies heavily on visuals and content messaging. To be successful, you’ll need compelling ad copy, sharp graphics, engaging video, and a clean, high-converting landing page. It’s relatively easy to create Facebook ads, but optimizing them for conversion requires many assets and variables (accurate audience targeting, conversion-optimized landing pages, etc.) all working in concert. Instagram AdsInstagram doesn’t have nearly the placement options that Facebook enjoys. You can place ads in people’s feed or in their stories. However, the organic, visual nature of the platform makes it a perfect spot to highlight the beauty of your brand. DemographicsInstagram has 500 million users of which 80% live outside the U.S. The platform caters to a younger demographic obsessed with sharing their lives and “stories” every day. Here are a few of the defining qualities of the Instagram base:
Your ProductProducts that are visual or represent an aspirational lifestyle do quite well on Instagram. It’s more challenging to sell professional service or B2B products unless you’re developing extremely creative, compelling stories through video or images. In the B2B world, we typically use Instagram for re-targeting and less for first-touch. Purchase IntentSimilar to Facebook, people on Instagram don’t have high purchase intent like they do on Google. It’s difficult to convert someone to a buyer when they’re sitting on the couch catching up with their friends’ lives. However, compelling ads will drive your brand forward when the consumer is ready to buy. Your Marketing ResourcesAlso similar to Facebook, Instagram requires energy in the marketing department. I might argue the copywriting isn’t as important as it is in Facebook ads because of the focus on visuals. However, the visuals must be on-point and compelling video is essential in stories. You’ll need some design and video support for the platform. You can see Zillow used high-quality photography in the example below. The ad also included an image slideshow with animated text to create a visually compelling experience.
High-quality photos and animated text maximize visual appeal to this ad by Zillow.
LinkedIn AdsIf your business is in the B2B space rather than B2C, LinkedIn should be your first spot for posting content and paid advertising. LinkedIn is far from dying. Microsoft bought the company in 2016 for $26.2 billion and has slowly turned the ship around while making drastic improvements to its advertising platform. In two years, LinkedIn has added 123 million members (compared to just 9 million additions on the Twitter network). DemographicsThe professional social network doesn’t boast 2 billion users like Facebook, but with over 590 million professional members, it’s a goldmine for your B2B marketing efforts:
Your ProductIf you sell services or products to businesses, LinkedIn is the best place to be spending your time. CPAs, lawyers, professional service companies, and their decision makers are on the platform regularly. The entry-level staff that you might target in Instagram or Facebook are generally not on the platform. And when they are, it might be to look for a job, not your product. Purchase IntentJust like Facebook and Instagram, it’s a place where you can drive awareness if people have never heard of you. Sponsored content places your product right in the newsfeed and InMail ads send messages right to their inbox. The nature of buying expensive B2B services means that the platform is used to build credibility and open a conversation. It’s unlikely someone will complete a credit card form for your $10,000 consulting services, but they may learn to trust you enough to call and open a conversation.
B2B services (like CRMs) frequently use Linkedin as their primary ad platform.
Your Marketing ResourcesLinkedIn falls in the middle of the pack when it comes to visuals and marketing resources. For sponsored content, you’ll be using a nice graphic or short video to deliver your message. Since the audience is more professional, I’d lean toward something more polished than what I’d put on Facebook or Instagram. The InMail messages require strong copywriting and messaging along with an accompanying graphic, but you benefit from more leniency than a platform that’s 100% visual, like Instagram. Which platform is right for you?As you can see, it depends on your product, audience, and marketing resources. In sum, if your customers are actively seeking your services or product and ready to buy, Google Ads is a good starting point and doesn’t require any creative resources. Alternatively, if you are introducing your brand to your customer and have compelling creative to show off, Facebook and Instagram are a perfect start. And for B2B offerings, LinkedIn is your best bet. Though understanding the nature of each platform is important, these guidelines are just the tip of the iceberg. The next step in your paid media strategy is to design a campaign allowing the different platforms to work together. One might be responsible for driving visitors to your site, for instance, and the rest nurture them for days, weeks, or months. (Editor’s Note. Keep your eyes peeled for a follow-up post by Adam on this very subject. ) What platform is generating the best results for your business? Let me know in the comments below. from https://unbounce.com/ppc/best-ad-platforms/ For the past 20 years, I have journeyed into the lairs of countless marketers. From small startups to national corporations, what has shocked me the most is the lack of unity and communication between the sales and marketing departments. When I first visit a marketing department, I ask its team members to describe their buyer profile as well as their customer’s interests, demographics, and pain points. More often than not, the picture feels incomplete and impersonal—the marketing team seems to have a limited understanding of its target audience. To get to the bottom of the issue, I check in with the sales team. I frequently discover that the sales department’s target buyer is a completely different creature from the one I heard about in marketing. The two teams are speaking different languages and wasting huge opportunities. I can only imagine the amount of money and resources that companies have wasted by marketing to the wrong people. Salespeople and marketers aren’t blind to this disconnect. According to LinkedIn, 58% of sales and marketing professionals report that collaboration delivers improved customer retention. What’s more, 54% stated that aligning had a positive contribution to financial performance. I don’t blame either department for this problem. The two entities traditionally have spent years working in their respective silos. With such a drastic change in consumer behavior, however, it is more important than ever to take a personalized approach to marketing. 4 Ways to Reunite Sales and Marketing for GoodIn a united company, true teamwork is baked into systems, processes, and goals. The sales department has an intimate knowledge of customers, and the marketing department can turn that data into stories. When these two teams share goals and work in communion, companies are able to attract more—and better—opportunities. Here are four steps to better use both departments’ talents and optimize the resources that feed into both: 1. Make sure both departments collaborate on buyer profilesI’m betting that each department has the information the other is missing. Marketers might have more research on anticipated buyer behavior, but salespeople are on the ground, talking with prospects and hearing their concerns. A buyer profile should be a detailed, in-depth representation of your target customers’ preferences and behavior as they research and interact with your business. To get the best picture of who you need to target, have sales and marketing work together to build buyer personas. You might have your marketing team come up with a list of the traits, information, and values they wish they knew about their customers. Meanwhile, have your salespeople call your top customers and interview them to learn more about their motivations, pain points, and researching behaviors. If sales and marketing can combine their skills and insights in answering these questions, they’ll be able to create content based on the needs of their target audiences. This approach will help marketing know where to spend time, money, and attention for prospective clients, and it will allow the sales team to know prospects better throughout the sales cycle. 2. Schedule regular joint meetingsSales and marketing teams are busy. If they never take the time to talk, though, they will always suffer from a disconnect. Solve this problem by arranging regular meetups with a shared agenda to help everyone get on the same page. I suggest having your department heads prioritize this as a monthly meeting. The goal is for both teams to leave the meeting with renewed collective energy. Use this time to motivate both teams while boosting cohesion and team morale. This meeting provides a chance to determine how sales and marketing teams can continue to work together. Ask plenty of questions: “What kind of information should be shared?” “Which channels should we use to share that information?” “What does a ‘qualified lead’ mean for Project A? For Project B?” This meeting also provides an opportunity to walk through ongoing sales or to brainstorm content ideas that would ease the process. 3. Give teams the tools to talk to each otherSales and marketing should have shared tools to track the success of campaigns, follow up with automation, identify lead scoring, and keep each other updated on various progress. Once both teams are effectively using these tools, they naturally will start to speak the same language of data. With your teams on the same page, you can share these insights through weekly updates sent through your email marketing platform and track how everyone is interacting with the email impressions. There are multiple tools you can choose, but here are two must-haves:
4. After every sale, review the process as a teamThe post-sale buzz is a crucial time for sales and marketing teams to stay connected; it’s the perfect moment to learn about the successes and pain points of the process and to figure out how to repeat or alleviate them. Make sure you have a defined, shared process that allows both departments to analyze the information they need to refine their strategies better. One post-sale process that can benefit both departments involves sending out surveys for customers to review. Work together to communicate with customers about their experience with the sales process. Are they happy with the purchase? Was the buying process enjoyable? If it makes more sense for your sales team to call the customer to debrief about the sales cycle, that also works fine. When these customer insights come in, sales and marketing can both benefit by reviewing the information together. It’s time to encourage sales and marketing to incorporate a modern sales enablement strategy to make their jobs easier and more enjoyable. When both teams work together, they can reach more qualified leads and stop wasting money on prospects that won’t follow through. Start speaking the same language, and your customers will begin to hear a unified story that they can believe in. The post 4 Ways to Reach More Qualified Leads by Uniting Your Sales and Marketing Teams appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. from https://blog.marketo.com/2019/04/4-ways-to-reach-more-qualified-leads-by-uniting-your-sales-and-marketing-teams.html The modern buyer is fueled by speedy access to products and services, lightning fast responses to questions and low-friction website interactions. They also love personalized experiences. Let’s call them the “Fast and the Curious.” A study from insidesales.com and the Harvard Business Review found that if you wait 5 minutes to respond after a lead initially makes contact, there’s a 10X reduction in your odds of getting in touch with that lead. After 10 minutes, this stat plummets to a 400% decrease in your odds of qualifying a lead. Let that sink in. The Fast and the Curious are not messing around. If you want to keep pace with the way the modern consumer likes to buy, then you need to be able to meet them wherever they are on your website and in the sales funnel. Cue chatbots…These are an excellent intermediary to help curate customized experiences, lower friction and get buyers the answers they need at the speed of a pop-up window. Chatbots can be used on websites, and across some social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Jon Davis, CEO of Shape, offers a useful way for thinking about chatbots: Envision your website or social pages as a store. The chatbot is the friendly sales clerk asking folks why they came, what they’re interested in, and how they can help direct them. When thinking about how to set up a chat-bot conversation flow, Drift offers this excellent guide: Establishing the right messaging and flow based on user intent and funnel-placement is the first key to success and there are webinars, white papers, & infographics galore to help on this end. One of the more interesting use-cases, especially for B2B, is being able to speak directly to your ABM audiences. Curating a custom bot experience for companies you’re trying to woo that are actively engaging with your site is savvy marketing. Speaking directly to these high-value audiences with customized messaging is a key value of a chatbot. Here’s a great example from an interaction I had today with a chatbot: Another key to success is attribution. This is especially important if you are running paid media campaigns. High-value interactions with a chatbot can be a conversion type. Let me say that again in a different way: if a user comes to your site from a paid search or social ad, and they turn over lead info via the bot, you are missing out on conversion volume if you are not tracking these interactions. Track them! A worth-your-money chat-bot vendor will provide easy routes to properly track the following via paid search and paid social:
This is accomplished primarily by implementing a platform’s custom event tracking snippets within the chatbot’s code. Initial set-up can take time. But, implementation will allow you to track conversions that are happening within the bot across search and social platforms. The goal here is being able to optimize toward these conversion types using automated strategies. You know how across your marketing efforts you’re always trying desperately to target the right persona? You can get demographic and audience-specific insights from your advertising platforms, but one powerful component of the chatbot is straight-up asking if they’re the right fit for your product. You can route them to the right info accordingly. Qualifying leads and properly routing unqualified traffic is a game changer. This way, sales teams can focus only on inquiries that have high-purchasing intent. Better conversations with better prospects positively impact the bottom line. Here’s a great example of using bots to pre-qualify traffic: If you’re interested in getting started with chatbots, there are resources a-plenty and a pantheon of vendors including Drift, Hubspot, Mobile Monkey (Facebook), Aivo, & Botsify to name a few. Chatbots are an important and useful AI that can fill the gaps in buyer expectations and buyer realities. Speed up your response times, intelligently route traffic, focus on high-value interactions and intelligently customize messaging for your audiences. Above all, ensure that if bots are part of your funnel, proper attribution is applied. For more resources on chatbots see Drive Prospects Down The Funnel With Chatbots, Grow Your Business With a Chatbot, & Drive Insane Traffic To Your Chatbot with PPC. from https://www.ppchero.com/the-fast-the-curious-how-chatbots-meet-modern-buying-demands/ When it comes to common practices in digital marketing, practitioners should embrace a “trust, but verify” mindset. Specifically, adopt best practices when possible, but don’t assume that they’ll improve performance – every account exists in a different context with a multitude of different intervening variables that can affect the impact of any initiative. One such best practice that deserves interrogation is the adoption of promotions in ad copy in Google Ads. As advertisers, we’re taught that conversions are a result of putting the right message in front of the right person at the right time, and it is often assumed that time-sensitive promotions highlighting cost-savings can contribute to the “right message” part of the equation. But does that data support such an assertion? For this case study, I’ll be analyzing a client that leases multi-family luxury apartments across the United States. Those properties will periodically run promotions, most of which advertise a certain number of months free (usually 1 or 2) when the renter leases within a specific timeframe. So, for example, one promotion that was included in ad copy had a first description line that read, “Up To 2.5 Months Rent Free. Contact The Leasing Office For Details.” The ads were exclusively ETAs, and, depending on space considerations, the promotional offers appear in either the headlines, the description lines, or some combination thereof. For this client, when a promotion goes live, new ads are created, labeled and inserted into existing ad groups to compete against the evergreen ads. The ads are set to “optimize for performance” rather than “rotate evenly”. New ads were inserted throughout the property’s campaigns and ad groups. MethodologyTo collect the data for this case study, I pulled the last 180 days of data for apartment communities that ran promotion ads and compared the performance of those promotion ads to the evergreen ads only for the dates which the evergreen ads ran. So, for example, if an apartment community had promotion ads live from January 15th, 2019 to February 15th, 2019, the data used for this case study would only be taken from that period – for both the promotion and non-promotion ads. In other words, in order to better control for seasonality, I’m not comparing promotion ads to evergreen ads for periods in which the promotion ads did not run. In order to determine whether or not the promotion ads “won” we compared the ads’ cost-per-conversion, which is the KPI most important to the client. ResultsI’ll be examining results both in the aggregate and the apartment-community-level data to determine whether or not the promotion ad copy has been effective and whether or not it should continue to be used in the future. First, let’s take a look at the aggregate results, which combines the data from 29 different apartment communities that had run promotions in the past 180 days: The initial results look pretty resounding in favor of the evergreen ads. The CPCs for the promotion ads are significantly higher, the click-through-rates significantly lower, and, most importantly, the CPL is substantially higher. However, our ultimate goal here is to determine whether and how to highlight promotions in the future – to answer that question, we’ll need to go a little deeper into the property-by-property data. Ultimately, even though the aggregate data looks pretty resounding, if there are a few outlier apartment communities where the evergreen ads vastly outperformed the promotion ads, we may still want to utilize promotion ads for most properties in the future. The table below includes a count of apartment communities that saw lower CPLs for their promotion ads: Still, it looks as though the evergreen ads were overwhelming more effective than the promo ads. 21 out of 29 (72%) properties saw their evergreen ads outperform the promo ads. Before calling the promotion ads a failure, let’s take a look at one more dimension by limiting our data to non-brand campaigns. Since we would expect these sort of promotions to be more effective users who weren’t searching for a specific apartment community but instead were in the comparison stage of the customer journey, it’s possible that the promotion ads would out-perform the evergreen ads for non-branded searches. The table below has data from branded searches removed: Looks like that hypothesis may have been partially correct, although not to the degree that the promo ads are the winner in the aggregate. While the metrics are much closer than they were when branded searches were included, we still see higher CPLs from the promotion ads. On the other hand, in this comparison, there were more properties that saw performance boosts from the promotion ads in their non-brand campaigns. ConclusionsSo what gives? Why didn’t the promotion ads improve performance? I have a couple of theories:
So, for this specific client, it looks like the best practice of advertising promotions does not always apply. In the future, I’d love to dig deeper into how long running a promotion affects performance, and also the performance of promotion extensions throughout the account. Still, this initial analysis should yield some actionable insights that we can apply right away. Whether or not you work with promotion ads, I hope this case study serves as a reminder to interrogate common practices to make sure that the practice is best for your context. Remember – trust, but verify! Thanks for reading! Reach out with questions or feedback to @ppchero! from https://www.ppchero.com/deals-deals-deals-a-promotion-ad-copy-case-study/ We’ve all had frustrating experiences browsing the web on our phones: load times that seem to carry on forever; pages that are cluttered and difficult to navigate; long, rambling blocks of text that make it tough to understand what you’re even looking at. Well, at Unbounce, we’re putting our foot down. We’re tired of junky mobile landing pages. We want to celebrate the pages that do mobile right, with easy-to-follow copy, super-sleek designs, and crazy-fast load times. And since it’s our blog, that’s what we’re going to do. But before diving into the incredible, Unbounce-built examples, we’ll cover some tips for how to knock your next mobile landing page outta the park. Mobile Landing Page Best Practices(“Duh, I know how to make killer mobile pages. Show me the examples!”) Mobile landing pages aren’t so different from their desktop counterparts, and standard best practices still apply. However, there are some additional considerations for on-the-go visitors, and it’s why you should really be building separate landing pages for mobile (or, at the bare minimum, ensuring that your page is mobile-responsive). Here are some sure-fire ways to build great mobile landing pages:
What does “attention ratio” mean? Attention ratio is the ratio of links on a landing page to the number of conversion goals. Since every campaign has one goal, the corresponding landing page should only have one call to action.
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Best Mobile Landing Page Examples1. Western Rise
Image courtesy of Western Rise. (Click image to see the full page.)
Social media is a massive driver for ecommerce. Something like 54% of people active on social use the platforms to research products, and roughly a quarter click a promoted post in any given month. But driving conversions from social platforms requires a coherent, uniform experience—from the moment someone clicks an ad on their timeline to when they’re trying to remember their PayPal password at checkout. (Was it ‘12345’, or just ‘password’?) Will Waters, Co-Founder and Creative Director at functional clothier Western Rise, described how the company turns mobile visitors into handsomely-dressed customers.
Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:
Bonus: Western Rise uses a popup on the linked store page to promote a giveaway contest and capture leads. (Hey, if they’re not gonna buy, you can at least try to snag their email address.) 2. Glints
Image courtesy of Glints. (Click image to see the full page.)
Marketers sometimes have a way of over-complicating things. (Who, us?) They’ll use a paragraph where a sentence will do. They’ll build an explainer video when all prospects want to see is a screenshot. On mobile, simplicity wins. This landing page from talent recruitment platform Glints is an excellent example of how to do mobile right. The brand uses strong content above the fold that immediately communicates what the service is and why we should care: the copy is concise but descriptive, and there’s lots of white space that lets things breathe. It’s not longwinded or excessive—it’s compact and effective. Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:
3. Promo
Image courtesy of Promo. (Click image to see the full page.)
Promo are experts at using videos to drive conversions on their landing pages (as we highlighted in this post on high-converting pages). And they ought to be: the easy-to-use platform lets customers quickly build videos for sponsored social media posts. Promo not using videos in their marketing would be like Superman not using the power of flight in his marketing. (It’s a bird, it’s a plane? Ah, you’re too young.) But video content can be a big problem for mobile visitors. Deployed carelessly, it can dramatically increase a landing page’s weight and create grueling on-the-go load times. Poor page speed can cancel out any conversions you hoped to gain by including a video in the first place. Yael Miriam Klass, Promo’s Content Lead, described how the company uses video on mobile landing pages without sacrificing the overall experience:
Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:
4. Country Chic Paint
Image courtesy of Country Chic Paint. (Click image to see the full page.)
Emotional marketing is a great tool regardless of medium, but it’s especially useful on mobile. People tend to participate most in social media on their phones, and they’re already being emotionally primed by videos of dogs cuddling with ducks, or whatever you people are into these days. This landing page from Country Chic Paint—built by Webistry—includes an emotional element that makes it more likely to resonate with mobile visitors. Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:
5. ClaimCompass
Image courtesy of ClaimCompass. (Click image to see the full page.)
Making your offer clear is key to winning conversions on mobile. That can be tough when you’ve got a complicated product or service that needs some ‘splainin’—especially when it seems too good to be true. ClaimCompass was also featured in our high-converting landing page examples post, where Alex Sumin, the company’s Co-Founder and CMO, described the difficulty of getting people to buy into the promise of free cash. That hasn’t slowed Alex down, though: in addition to turning one of every three visitors into conversions, this Unbounce-built landing page does a great job of distilling a complex regulatory measure into the tangible benefits for consumers.
Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:
Bonus: The hero image speaks to anyone who has ever been on a delayed flight. Her face is my face. Her pain is my pain. 6. Helix
Image courtesy of Helix. (Click image to see the full page.)
Sleep is pretty popular these days, but archaeological evidence suggests that humans have actually been sleeping for thousands of years. Wild stuff. Mattress company Helix capitalizes on sleep-mania with this landing page that really showcases what’s possible on mobile. Despite including a ton of information, this page never feels overwhelming thanks to some awesome design decisions that make each section feel fresh with a new visual style. What elevates the page to the next level, though, is Helix’s use of relevant testimonials and its smart lead generation tool. Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:
7. Boostability
Image courtesy of Boostability. (Click image to see the full page.)
Lead generation still typically comes down to filling out a form, which can make it a little tricky on mobile. Visitors aren’t eager to tap out all of their personal details on a small screen. And speaking from experience, people struggle to thumb-spell even simple words correctly. Good luck adding [email protected] to your email list. If you’re going to use a lead gen form on your mobile landing page, you’d better make sure it’s autofill-enabled. That’s what the team at Boostability did, and—lo and behold—they’re currently rocking a conversion rate well above industry average. Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:
Not sure how your landing page performs on mobile? Run a test with the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer, which ranks your page against nine specific performance categories including mobile responsiveness.
8. Good Eggs
Image courtesy of Good Eggs. (Click image to see the full page.)
Pitching your product or service to mobile visitors is tricky. People probably aren’t sitting down to read everything you’ve got to say. They’re usually on the move, half-glimpsing at their phone as wait in line for coffee or meander blindly into traffic. Even after you’ve got them on your page, you need to work hard to keep their attention. That’s not the only challenge Good Eggs faced with this landing page. Grocery delivery is an increasingly crowded space, and the company needs to differentiate itself from its competitors. That means having an opportunity to explain why this service is different. Heidi Hirvonen, Marketing Manager at Good Eggs, explained how the company builds landing pages that keep mobile visitors engaged:
Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:
9. Ace
Image courtesy of Ace. (Click image to see the full page.)
Sometimes, a landing page is about more than just getting visitors to understand the tangible features and benefits of your offer. You might want to convey a feeling—make them understand what it’s like to have taken the plunge and experienced transformative results. When it works, it’s powerful. Ace is a test preparation company that helps aspiring students with their Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam, which can make or break their academic and professional goals. Harnessing that emotional element to drive conversions, Ace’s landing page—built by DMR—evokes a sense of aspiration that encourages prospects to dream big. Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:
10. GoBoat
Image courtesy of GoBoat. (Click image to see the full page.)
Like Ace in the previous example, GoBoat goes light on the description of its boat rental service and instead focuses on the experience of seeing Copenhagen from the water—how it feels. Sure, there’s less pirate imagery than we’d like for a company that says we can “be [our] own captain,” but GoBoat includes a ton of beautiful photographs that have already got me planning a summer trip to Denmark. Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:
from https://unbounce.com/landing-page-examples/best-mobile-landing-page-examples/ As a marketing professional, your biggest concern is reaching your audience. The dream is for millions of people to like, share, and comment on a post you cooked up for your organization. In theory, the best way to make this fantasy a reality is to tap into some “trending” topics and capture everyone’s attention. Unfortunately, too many marketers make this rookie mistake, and they end up spending more time recovering from the fallout than engaging with consumers. Attaching your brand to a pop culture topic leads to short-term results at best, as your message gets lost in the thousands of other tweets on the subject. And when the public shifts its focus to something else, your campaign becomes old news. At worst, customers will think the brand is trying to capitalize on an important social movement, and you’ll be left trying to convince them you’re not part of a heartless corporate machine. The goal, then, is to narrow your focus to your most loyal supporters. More specifically, you should use social media to consider what those supporters care about rather than just who they are. There’s always some emotional thread running through your audience, and if you connect your brand to that thread instead of a fleeting fad, you can establish a long, lucrative relationship with your base. Inhabiting a Culture Through Social MediaDiscovering your audience’s passions is easier said than done. It’s difficult to zero in on what motivates your customers to get out of bed every day, and, frankly, they might not know either. And to make things more complicated, your ideal audience might not even be the consumer. Just look at Minecraft. This game about building a virtual world is typically played by children, but they’re not the ones with the credit cards. Because the parents are the intended audience, the social conversation that draws them to the game is the promise that it will build their children’s logic and problem-solving skills. Therefore, the marketing of the game is not necessarily just entertainment; it’s about how Minecraft can strengthen children’s interest in science and architecture in a safe environment. In cases such as these, you’re not just marketing to the person; you’re appealing to an idea that, unlike “trendy” topics, will exist for the long haul. When you examine your audience, you’ll likely find a similar passion that unites your consumers regardless of individual, demographic differences. See whether the following strategies can help you use social media to determine what makes those audience members tick and develop an effective marketing strategy. 1. Pay attention to psychology on socialBecause there are probably several emotional interests across your audience, consider using those interests to divide up your consumers. Everyone knows audience segmentation is key, but grouping that audience based on psychological factors gives you a richer understanding of who you’re marketing toward. Instead of creating a persona based on gender, age group, and other demographic information, pay closer attention to social media interactions. This is where consumers reveal their core passions you didn’t already know about. You might even find different layers of their personalities on different platforms. For example, women who fit the devoted mother persona might express their parenting goals by participating in multiple parenting groups on Facebook. However, Instagram could reveal a clustering of interests and motivators outside of parenting that Facebook would not. Using multiple social media channels lets you understand consumers not as followers of trending topics but as multidimensional characters who interact with their own environments. 2. Avoid appearing salesyConsumers know brands need to sell something. The trick, though, is to disguise that fact while remaining honest in your social media posts. Trying too hard to please customers can have them running to competitors. Communicating your brand’s story is more important than saying what people want to hear. Churning out posts that just list your product’s benefits will appear forced. Instead, just like you’re trying to determine your customers’ passions, don’t be afraid to show them yours. Be upfront about your background, goals, and how your brand is more of a reflection of your organization than an efficient way to make money. 3. Embrace riskUnfortunately, none of these steps are surefire successes. A plan that’s brilliant on paper can still fail miserably and force you to rethink your entire strategy. The real challenge, though, is to continue taking risks. Gatorade, for instance, released a 2016 ad implying the sports drink is primarily for athletes who can afford the excess sugar. Non-athletic viewers who drink Gatorade for the taste alone might have found it offensive, as if the company was reserving its product solely for sports superstars. However, Gatorade’s risky strategy appealed to a specific passion from a specific subset of its audience. With this ad, the company proved that even when it’s not perfect, a daring message can keep your brand alive. Social media can be your lab to test new material and see what connects to your audience. Consider trying out your new idea with a simple tweet or Facebook post. It might alienate parts of the audience, but as long as it’s accurate and you believe in it, chances are you’ll forge a stronger connection with a core audience. These strategies might sound a bit more difficult than they’re worth. After all, it’d be easier to hijack the latest pop culture trend to gain the most traction from the most people. But that method does little to establish long-term brand loyalty among consumers. And if you use social media to better understand your audience’s interests, the trendiest topic on the internet will soon be your brand. The post It’s Not About ‘What’s Trending,’ Find Out What Your Audience Actually Cares About appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/modernb2bmarketing/~3/8-lJTT_7LKE/its-not-about-whats-trending-find-out-what-your-audience-actually-cares-about.html The time to vote for the Top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts of 2019 has come again, but this time, we’re shaking things up a bit. This year, we encourage you to vote for anyone that is influential in the online paid advertising industry, whether they are a CEO of a tool provider that’s disrupting things, a CMO that’s been talking at conferences on some cool new strategies that have worked for them or if its a PPC person at your company that’s been making the rounds on the circuit and starting to inspire others about PPC. They don’t have to do PPC every day, but they do have to influence it. Is there someone that you are following on Twitter that inspires your digital strategies? Have you seen a speaker that made a big impact on your thought process and how you approach your paid ads? Who do you look up to? Whose blog posts do you ALWAYS take the time to read, no matter how busy you are, because you know reading it will just make you a smarter at PPC? Now is the time to give back to those experts that fill you up with knowledge and vote for them as a top PPC expert!AND we’re making another change. Once voting ends (on April 25th), we will announce a Top 50. The Top 50 will purely be based off of votes, so its really important that you pump up your base and get them to vote for you. Once the Top 50 are established, we will score them on a number of metrics as usual to determine the Top 25. __________ A word of caution: Last year, we discovered that some participants were not playing fairly and attempted to “stuff the ballot box.” As a company, we pride ourselves on being transparent, fair, and ethically sound. In running this competition, we expect the same from the PPC community. We’ve taken some extra steps this year to make sure entries are real and will be hyper-sensitive to fake entries. Anyone attempting to play unfairly, will be disqualified from the list. Votes should be cast by the people that respect you and are inspired by your influence in the PPC world. If someone is willing to take the time to vote for you, that means way more than a bunch of fake votes. That’s what makes a person truly influential! __________ You will get one vote per email address, so use your community and ask them to vote for you, send out messages on social, write a blog post about how awesome you’re doing in PPC, etc. There are a lot of ways to promote yourself for this:) Here are “Vote for Me” graphics for those that want to use their social influence to garner votes! Feel free to save and use as you like.
Vote in the below form by
Online Form – Top 25 Votes_2019
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