As we ramp up for Unbounce’s upcoming PPC week, we thought we’d revisit some of our favorite PPC posts from the archives. This post was originally published in May 2015 but is as relevant as ever. Dig in!
If you’re anything like me, you’ve participated in a couple of DIY home improvement projects. At the beginning of these projects, with YouTube training videos as my sidekick, I have an irrational sense of confidence in my handyman abilities. When I’m tracking down my supplies at the local hardware store, I often find the products priced and displayed as “good,” “better” and “best.” The frugal side of me tries to argue that “good” is good enough, but is there something about the “best” product that will secure my DIY victory? With PPC advertising, we often face the same dilemma; we need to decide which metrics are “best” to measure the success of our campaigns. There’s a wealth of content and opinions on how to measure PPC success, which can get confusing. This post will help you understand how different metrics can paint very different pictures of PPC campaign performance. I’ll show how traffic-focused metrics can be a good starting point, how conversion-focused metrics are even better and how ROI-focused metrics provide the most complete picture for making meaningful changes to your campaigns. Let’s dig in. Good PPC metrics are traffic-focusedMany advertisers will default to looking at the click-through rate or cost per click when determining the success of a campaign. AdWords provides a lot of traffic-focused metrics that are incredibly useful, including underused gems like device segmentation and impression share. And while those are definitely a good start, it’s important not to get so distracted that you lose sight of your basic business goals: generating a profit. My agency has serviced or audited over 1,000 AdWords accounts. Believe it or not, almost half of them had not set up conversion tracking. Conversion tracking allows you to measure conversion actions like a purchase or a lead submission in your ad platform, usually by placing a code snippet on a thank you or order confirmation page. Without that piece of code, the only metrics you can measure are related to traffic, such as search impressions, clicks and click-through rates. Let’s look at an example to see why this is problematic. What traffic-focused metrics tell youImagine you’re a mortgage company and each new paying customer is worth on average $3,500 in revenue with 50% in gross margin. If you haven’t set up conversion tracking, you’ll mostly end up looking at reports like this: If we’re only looking at traffic-focused metrics, our top campaign seems to be Campaign 5, which has the most clicks, the best click-through rate and the lowest cost per click. Meanwhile, Campaign 4 has expensive clicks – which looks like a red flag! But the truth is this data alone can’t really tell us whether the campaigns are successful to a company’s bottom line. For our mortgage company, we need to know whether the clicks are actually translating into useful leads. Better PPC metrics are conversion-focusedIf you’re already using conversion tracking, pat yourself on the back: you’re better off than much of the competition. If you’re not, then get conversion tracking set up immediately. It’s easy to set up on most platforms like Google AdWords and Bing Ads (and if you’re using Unbounce you can put the tracking code right on a built-in thank you page). Think beyond web conversionsConversion tracking is more than just web leads and sales: among new accounts I’ve audited or onboarded, I’ve found that approximately 75% of advertisers who take phone leads don’t track them as conversions. For many industries, phone calls are the main source of leads, so it’s critical to include calls in your conversion tracking! Many call tracking platforms have built-in ways of setting this up, and Google has a solution for AdWords advertisers here. Call leads are more valuable for some businesses than for others, so you’ll want to keep in mind that not all types of conversions are necessarily equal – but the first step is making sure everything is tracked and measured. What conversion-focused metrics tell youLet’s say our mortgage company joins the big leagues and sets up conversion and call tracking. Here’s how that report looks:
Now we can track how many people are actually signing up for the service, not just clicking our ads.
Now we can start identifying our top-performing campaigns using cost per lead data (cost per conversion in Google AdWords). You’ll notice that Campaign 5 has the best cost per conversion, so it still looks like our top performer. Campaign 4 still looks like trouble. But while conversions are great, at the end of the day what really matters is whether leads became paying customers. Conversions tell us how many leads our company got, but not how many actually signed up to refinance their homes or how much revenue they brought in. Your PPC campaigns aren’t just about clicks. Don’t lose sight of what matters: generating a profit. The best PPC metrics are ROI-focusedFor marketers who want to use the most meaningful data, let’s move to the golden metric: actual ROI! That means tracking leads from click to close and measuring revenue on a per-lead basis. When you understand which campaigns, ads and keywords are actually generating revenue, you’ll be way ahead of competitors who have no idea where they’re making or losing money. What ROI-focused metrics tell youLet’s say our mortgage company decides to figure out exactly which leads are earning revenue. We can track specific leads in our CRM back to each campaign, set up separate phone numbers for each campaign and record which calls led to sales. Using our customer value numbers from above, we can calculate the following report:
We calculated revenue by having our CRM capture the Campaign ID in Google Analytics, then created unique phone numbers for every campaign so we could track every sale back to its source. Then we calculated the revenue value of every customer attributed to a PPC campaign.
Suddenly Campaign 4, which looked so bad before, is now our hero! Not only does it have the best ROI, it brings in the most revenue and the most sales — and that’s with the fewest conversions and second-fewest clicks. Now we know something much more useful than cost per conversion — we know how valuable a conversion is. We know where to focus our marketing efforts to maximize revenue, and where we can make improvements that impact the bottom line. We could then respond by allocating more budget to Campaigns 4 and 5. Meanwhile, Campaign 3 gets a lot of traffic and conversions but has a poor ROI, so we can get to work at rewriting ads and landing pages to better qualify those leads. Those are the kinds of changes that have meaningful results! 3 simple ways to track and measure your PPC ROIThe example above mirrors what we often see in the lead generation space: more expensive leads can often be the most qualified and produce the most revenue. But without breaking down campaign ROI you never know. Costly PPC leads are often most qualified. Break down campaign ROI before you do anything drastic. So how do you move beyond conversions and start focusing on ROI? Here are a few simple ways to get started:
Every metric mattersPPC marketing leaders know that all the metrics we’ve discussed are valuable – they work to improve the three categories over time, while focusing most of their efforts on ROI to move their profitability in the right direction. Traffic data like impressions, clicks and cost per click tell you how much search demand there is for your service and how many people are responding to your ads. Better metrics like conversion data tell you how effective your ads and landing pages are at generating leads, as well as how much your leads cost. But nothing tops actual ROI data: how much conversions are worth to your company’s bottom line. As we’ve seen, that kinda of data lets you focus on making changes where you can make the biggest difference! At the end of the day, the key is to look at the right metrics for the right situations and use that data to make the most meaningful changes to your campaigns. via Blogger These Are the PPC Metrics That Actually Matter
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As we ramp up for Unbounce’s upcoming PPC week, we thought we’d revisit some of our favorite PPC posts from the archives. This post was originally published in June 2015 but still rings true. Enjoy!
Have you ever been kicking so much AdWords Search Network butt that it made you raise your chest and gave you instant super powers? You know, the type of confidence that makes you walk with a pep in your step and hair bouncing around?
Kinda like this mini-horse. Image source.
Feels AMAZING. But sometimes you hit a ceiling with the keywords you’re bidding on, and there’s literally no more Search Network traffic out there (since your impression shares are all around 98%). You immediately think of using the AdWords Display Network, simply because you know there’s more traffic, cheaper clicks and much more potential ROI just waiting to be grabbed.
Actually, don’t do that. It won’t get you conversions. Image source.
As you may already know, the AdWords Display Network (also known as the Google Display Network/GDN) is the biggest digital ad network in the world. It allows you to advertise on publisher properties like websites, mobile apps, Gmail, YouTube and more. Compared to the AdWords Search Network, the Display Network also houses the largest viewership of any online platform. YouTube itself has a monthly viewership equivalent to 10 Super Bowls – so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that display advertising is said to capture 34% of all online ad spend and about 10% of all marketing budgets. But with new channels come different strategies. What you’re doing on the AdWords Search Network will not perform the same way on the Display Network. If the Display Network is uncharted territory for you, here’s how you need to adjust your current PPC strategy to get the results you want. Different user behavior calls for a different strategyThe biggest difference between the AdWords Search Network and Display Network can be seen in the sweet visual I had my designer custom-make below. In the “Chuck Norris” action cycle above, you can see how the power of keyword intent in the Search Network can put people really close to taking action (AKA converting), but the Display Network typically has visitors who are a few steps behind. This is because people who are on the Display Network aren’t actively searching for what you offer. As Erin Sagin puts it, they’re rarely in “shopping mode.” Instead, Display Network visitors are most likely in the research phase when your display ads are hitting them. They’re on forums, blog posts, or watching that YouTube vid trying to gather enough information to make a decision. They don’t know what they need yet, so your job is create awareness. If you’re selling more of an “emergency” service like being a locksmith or roadside assistance, then you’ll have a hard time using the Display Network to your advantage. This is simply because ads on the Display Network are not triggered from a search engine like text ads on the Search Network are. The Search Network works as a demand harvester (your ads are grabbing the intent), while the Display Network works as a demand generator (your ads are creating awareness). So how do you change your strategy from the Search Network to also make the AdWords Display Network a money making machine? Create trust and deliver valueAs I mentioned, your Display Network ads could be interrupting someone who’s reading the news, reading a blog or watching a video. Because of that, the level of commitment it takes for someone to stop what they’re doing, click your ad, then call you or fill out your landing page form is high and much more unlikely compared to the Search Network. In other words, you can’t expect to have the same campaign conversion rates on the Display Network as you do on the Search Network. If you’re offering “Free Quotes” on the search network because people are actively searching for someone who can relieve their problem, it might actually be better for you to lead with valuable educational material (i.e. your content) on the Display Network. A perfect example of this is my crush of an email marketing company, Emma. Emma uses the AdWords Search Network to drive sign ups, but they use the Display Network to give you great, fun and actionable value. Here’s what some of their Display Ads look like (click on them to go to the accompanying landing page): I reached out to Cynthia Price (the Director of Marketing at Emma) and she gave me this golden nugget about how they use the AdWords Display Network:
You already know that content marketing’s core foundation is about adding true value. Your display ads should be no different. On the Display Network, your first goal is to establish trust by giving value, and then nurture the visitors down the road to become paying customers. Revisit your targeting optionsOnce you have a great piece of content that delivers value and educates your audience, it’s time to figure out how to target it to people who actually want it. Let’s have a look at the five targeting options that’ve been found to drive the biggest impact on the Display Network. To illustrate how each one works, let’s pretend you’re a dog walker. Your name is Lori and you live in Huntington Beach, CA. You’ve been advertising on the AdWords search network and this is your landing page: What are your best targeting options? Placement targetingPlacement targeting allows you to advertise directly on certain publisher sites. This means you could have your ad show up on Forbes or CNN if you’d like. Best practice advice: Make sure the website or page’s audience is relevant to what you’re offering. Don’t shotgun approach all of CNN – sniper shot individual placements within CNN if you can. Contextual/Keyword targetingContextual/Keyword targeting allows you to give Google your keywords and have it automatically find relevant placements for your ads. Best practice advice: Mix this with placement targeting to be even more laser focused with your targeting. Topic targetingTopic targeting allows you to go more broad than regular placement targeting. For this, you could target the topic of Pets & Animals directly and cast a wider net, with the possibility of your ads showing up on FerretLovers.com (yes, that’s a real site). Best practice advice: See what Topic targeting gives you, then exclude unwanted placements from your campaign once things are running and data is coming in. Interest targetingInterest targeting is kind of similar to topic targeting, but instead of judging the context of websites, interest targeting tracks behaviors of web users. This targeting method can be even more vague than topic targeting. Best practice advice: Every industry is different, so always test things out and see the performance. Be quick to pause and exclude irrelevant placements once data comes in. Combining targeting methodsThis is where you’ll have a lot of fun and potentially get better results. You’re not locked into using just one targeting method with the AdWords Display Network. In fact, Alistair Dent over at Search Engine Watch and many others highly recommend never going with just one targeting option, but combining multiple together. You can target certain placements with the addition of contextual/keyword targeting to tell Google that you only want your ads to show when a visitor is on CNN and reading an article about dog walking. Or you can target different interests with contextual/keyword targeting as well. Create multiple ad groups, each with their own targeting specifications, and see how they perform against each other. Once you’ve hit your stride and conversions are coming in, pause the other ad groups that aren’t working, and make variations of the ad group targetings that are working for you, so that you can squeeze more out of your PPC dollars. Wrapping upWow! Quite a bit of info huh? Now that you clearly know why your Display Network strategy has to be different from your Search Network strategy, what do you have to lose? Get started now. Try different targeting combinations, and never forget to offer true value. What have you found to be the best driver of conversions on the AdWords Display Network? How different are your strategies compared to the ones we talked about? via Blogger How Your PPC Strategy Should Differ on the AdWords Search VS Display Network
If you’re into AI then you’re going to love this TED Talk by Joseph Redmon. He works on a project called the YOLO (You Only Look Once) system, an open-source method of object detection that can identify objects in images and video… Think spotting zebras in images to reading stop signs in videos… all in [...]
Related posts:via Blogger TED Talks: YOLO AI Instant Object Recognition This is the second part of a two-part series on non-paid content promotion strategies. If you haven’t read the first part, I suggest you do so before moving on. DR: When we last spoke, we were talking about the ability to leverage content communities, and I would like for you to talk a little bit about executing this strategy. AC: Sure. So, there are groups of us, and we live on an island, and it's a bad thing that we're on an island in some ways, because we tend to just talk to ourselves and stay within our groups, but it's a good thing to be an island in a way, because you can build a community, and you can become more active with people. So, an example - I think one of the things we were talking about was like private Slack boards, and different LinkedIn groups, things like that? So, here's an example. I'm publishing a piece of research, it's a survey of a thousand bloggers, and I've been working really hard at it, and it's going to live on Thursday, and I'm hoping people pick it up, and cover it, and talk about it. So, this morning when I got to work, I took a minute, and I posted a little taste of it, a couple of charts, on several private Slack boards, and the immediate response was, 'I'd like to write about that', and people start sending me direct messages. I reply with more research. It was a tactic that took me minutes, really. Right? Maybe I spend a half hour on it total, but because of that, there are probably half a dozen websites that will all be writing about this research that we're publishing. Benefits of Private GroupsDR: Can you back up a little bit though, to private Slack boards? I bet you that that's not common knowledge for people, and then we can talk about what's going to happen. Can you talk a little bit about that real quick? AC: So, there is a startup that is a darling in the venture capital community called Slack. Slack is a messaging platform. There's a free version, and I'd recommend it for organizations to communicate with each other, that is a little bit like an overlap between like G-chat, or any chat messaging system, and like a private version of Twitter. You can have a Slack board, which is like your team, and within your Slack board, there's little groups. like chat rooms, which are the different streams, and anyone in that room can post, and people can direct message each other. So, there are several of these out there now that I know of, probably hundreds of them, which are simply groups of content marketers who are all in these little like mutual beneficial promotion groups. I'm in one called Growth Chat, there's another one called Boost Chat, or Growth Slack. DR: How do you find them? AC: You can make them. All you do is start a Slack account and just reach out to twenty-five people who are all interested in getting more traffic, and we're all consistent publishers who all have good quality, and who all have a similar social following, and just create one. I know one of them was made by Jonathan Dane, I know one of them was made by Sujan Patel. There are just different people who have just made these things. There's no magic to it at all. So, one of the little rooms in there, or streams, is called Promotion Help. That's by far the most active. So, the real purpose of these Slack boards, or a private Facebook group - there's nothing magical to Slack. What content marketers are doing is creating little private communities. Some of the more interesting social media is actually happening inside these little private communities, and what people are doing is just helping each other get traction. So, let's say right now, David, you and I start a group and we've got twenty-five people in it, and one of the channels in there is the Promotion Help. If you post something, me and twenty-four other people all share it immediately. If I post something, you and twenty-five other people all share it immediately. It's like an unfair advantage. I can say 'Hey, I posted this on this community. Can everyone please go help me with some votes?' People upvoting each other's stuff. 'I've got a new thing live on Facebook. Can people go help me share it or like it?' It's a big benefit, because a lot of those things like Instagram, and Facebook, and LinkedIn, they have algorithms that decide how many people will view something. So, if you can share something with a little community, or a group of helpers who all take action on it quickly, you can trigger the feedback loop inside these algorithmic social platforms that make that thing more visible to a much larger group. For example, take like Hacker News, or Reddit, or inbound.org, or Growth Hackers. These are communities where if people start to view something, or like something, or interact, or comment, then that thing is much more likely to become visible to a much, much larger audience, right? It's algorithmic. There's a curve. So, the goal is to quickly push it up the curve, so that's just one of the ways in which people are using these groups to help and find good stuff - I mean, I've found great articles that these people are sharing with each other - and to find good stuff to share with your audience, promoting industry stuff, and to get your stuff promoted better. Finally, they're just great collaborators, so if I say, 'Hey, I'm looking for someone to contribute to a piece I'm doing on topic x,'. I'm going to find them very quickly inside these groups. The Return is Dependent on Your InvestmentDR: What about other communities, that aren’s quite as intimate- like business to the community, inbound.org, even BizSugar, Triberr, Blog Engage, things like that. Do you suggest posting there as well? AC: The return is going to be dependent on your investment. So, what's not going to work is to just do a drive by, and to cruise past the community, and just dump a link there, and then leave and not interact. So, the entire point of any community is trust, and mutualism, and reciprocity, so you should be prepared to give first. So, any of them, any of these groups that you find that are like that, if you want that network to be there for you, to share something when you post it week, you should be there this week, and if it's Slack it's actually pretty easy, because the app is nice, and the user interface is beautiful. But whatever you do, anywhere you go, anything at all, you've got to give before you get. There are two ways to make yourself more effective and move the fulcrum over. One is delegation, the other is automation. There are tools for making simple tasks much easier, and making them kind of automatic. One of the tools that I use that saves me probably six or eight hours a month at least, is a tool called Edgar. It is fifty bucks a month, it might be more now. Edgar is a way for you to load up your content just as if you would with Buffer. It keeps things in rotation forever. Buffer runs out, Edgar keeps going. So, it's going to keep sharing these things repeatedly over time. So, that's a type of automation, one of the few types of automation that I use. Actually, there's another tool that I'm using now which is brilliant, it’s called x.ai, and it's like a virtual assistant, but it's a robot. So, her name is Amy, and if you wanted to set up a meeting with me, which we are planning to do here soon, I can just be like, 'Hey, let's meet maybe sometime in a week or two.' I'm copying Amy on this email, and she has access to my calendar, and she'll help us find a time. Amy then writes to you and says, 'Andy is available at these four different times,' she can see my calendar. You email back and forth with her. Once you settle on a time, she puts it on my calendar, I'm done. She set up nine meetings for me last week, and she is not a human being, she's a total robot. Now, what I've done the last few weeks is, the first thing I do every morning is I document another process like that, and now I have like an eight-page handbook on everything - how to do social media promotion for anything that touches this company. Now, it's probably like a twenty dollar an hour person, right? It's like a VA. Hire a VA, write the instruction manual for all of those routine tasks, and then hire a VA. If it doesn't work, no problem. Try another one. Because you have the instruction manual, just keep trying until you find someone who works. You'll save yourself probably four hours a week. Best Practices for DistributionDR: Give me some of your best practices for this distribution. Well, first of all, tell me if you do agree that it is a gem, and number two, talk about some of your best practices in regards to collecting emails, sending them out, and the like. AC: I love email. Of all the sources of traffic that you have, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google -- those are all companies that are not really trying to help you make money, they're doing their own thing, they're trying to make money themselves, so you can't rely on them long term to create a sustainable source of traffic for you. You don't own them, you don't own your Facebook likes, you don't own your Google ranking. The only things you own in your marketing are your content, your website, and your email list. That should be enough to convince you that yes, the same way that a financial advisor would say diversify your sources of income, or your portfolio, you need to diversify your sources of traffic. So, I'm a huge fan of e-mail, it decouples you from these companies that you really can't control. Facebook's going to change again forever, Facebook and Google are making more money than ever and it's not surprising. So, grow your list. It puts you in control. Live up to the promise and send people whatever you committed to. The 3 P's to Gaining Email SignupsThe first trick is to grow the list, and step one is to make sure you have a high converting email signup form. The three Ps for your email signup form are going to be next to the content, which is where people are most likely to describe.
DR: Awesome. And what about thank you pages? I've recently seen some good tips on that. Can you have something like after somebody subscribes, what they get? AC: Yeah. The main message about thank you pages is to never create a dead end on your website. There should never be a page that has nothing subsequent for the person to do. So, after the person does subscribe, they should land on a page. Not a thank you message, like a little message box, but a thank you page, like a URL. That URL lets you create the destination goal using Google Analytics. So, when someone takes an action on your website, and they convert from a visitor into a lead, or a visitor into a subscriber, there's actually five things that should happen. 5 Steps of an Email Conversion
So, email isn't totally reliable as a way to get your leads, but storing them in a database is a nice thing to do. You might integrate it with MailChimp or something else, so you don't have to migrate them in manually. The downside to integrating with MailChimp and having each person who subscribes go directly into MailChimp is that you might not get exact control over the thank you page. MailChimp might want you to do a double opt in the process with lots of little things in which you lose control. You trade. It's like, 'Oh, I don't want to manually move anybody.' That's nice, but you're going to make some other tradeoffs. DR: You can get your list and download it into Excel or something. AC: Yeah. Ask yourself this question - how many subscribers are worth the same as Facebook likes? I'd rather have one subscriber than 25 Facebook likes. Promoting Your Content Through SEODR: Can you talk about the most important things to consider for each specific blog post? AC: Well, if you're serious about an SEO strategy, then you have to understand authority and your relative likelihood of rank. Google doesn't share the so called 'page rank data' anymore, so we all use a proxy, or like a substitute metric that Moz created, and it's called domain authority. So, you should really only target phrases in Google on your content. If your domain authority is kind of in the same range as the domain authority of the other websites that rank for that phrase, if you are targeting a phrase with the other websites that rank for the phrase that have a much higher domain authority, you really don't have a chance of ranking, and no matter what you do, nothing's going to work. So, that's an important first step, is to understand, and I could give you an article as a link in the show notes or something but that's an important first step to understanding how SEO works, and how to target phrases for which you really do have a chance. The next thing is to just indicate the relevance of the topic. So, you want to use the targeted key phrase in the title, in the header, and in the body text. That's it. That's pretty simple. It's called relevance. So, authority is half of it, relevance is the other half. Now, Google likes deep content, and long pages with lots of information in detail, thorough information. So, it's going to benefit you to make what is quite literally, and in your view without question, the best page on the internet for that topic. So, let's say I have a low domain authority, and you want to write something about private content marketing communities. You need to target like a long specific phrase because there'll be less competition for it. 'How to find private social media groups for marketing'. Okay, that's a really long like seven-word phrase or something. You could probably rank number one for that with very little effort, even if you have a young website with low authority. If you want to target more competitive phrases, you need a higher level of authority, such as 'private marketing communities'. That's probably a much more competitive phrase, it's a three-word phrase, but regardless, either case, no matter who you are, you're trying to make the best article on the internet for private marketing communities, or how to find a private social media group for marketing, whatever it might be. That thing is probably going to be like a thousand words long, and you're going to be covering that topic from every angle. You're going to answer all kinds of related questions. You're going to be writing bullet lists and numbered lists, and tips, and putting contributor quotes, then you're going to find statistics and trends, and you're going to be citing useful resources. So, you made a great page on the topic, you targeted a phrase you had a chance of ranking for, you use the phrase appropriately in the title, in the header, and in the body text - that's pretty much it. Everything after that is kind of a much more detailed, fine tuning thing, like link to the post from other posts, link to the new thing you made from something old. Here's a tip, almost no one does this. You're not done publishing something new until you link to it from something old. So, go back and find another article you wrote on the topic, and link to your new article from that old thing, and put the keyword in the link from the old thing to the new. So, you found an old article on your site that mentions private marketing groups, and you link the new thing with the key phrase in the link 'private marketing groups'. Another thing you can do that is kind of fine tuning, is to make sure that you're not just using the target key phrase in private marketing groups. Find related words that Google thinks are connected to the topic and use those phrases. It’s called Semantic SEO. DR: Why don't you dig into that? Just wanted to bring some extra attention to this. AC: So, let's take 'private social media groups'. If I search for 'private social media groups', at the bottom of the Google search results page, it says 'searches related' to private social media groups, and it says 'private social network for business', 'private social network platform', 'private social media sites', so the words business, platform, network, sites - those are all words that are connected to my topic, but that did not appear in my initial target phrase. So, I want to spread out my meaning across not just the target phrase, but across the broader topic, by finding those semantically connected words, and I just told you one place you can find them, and then using those somewhere in my article. Pretty prescriptive, a little bit more of like a fine-tuning thing, definitely a smart way to approach SEO for the long run, but that's sort of a very basic way, understanding authority, indicating relevance, and then finally getting a little bit fancier with it. DR: I would like to just point out that you were mentioning if you don't have a chance to rank for those, if you're a new site, and Andy I'm sure doesn't want to either, and we don't want to discourage people who are just getting going on blogging, and even a new company, a new website. You just need to understand that it's not going to happen immediately. But you want to have a strategy, and to find out what we're talking about, keyword competitiveness and search volume, you're going to have to most likely use a service like an SEO Moz, or a SEM Rush, or someone like that to help you, because I think Google has kind of removed some of the data from what they offer. So, you want to use that as a starting point to see low hanging fruit and what you want to go after, but if you do the things that Andy's suggesting, and find the ones that you want to go after in general, and some of them could be higher competitive ones, because those are going to be the higher search volumes, so you're going to want to obviously have an eye on them, but just don't expect anything right away. But if you do the things that Andy's talking about, and you do them consistently, and you're blogging once/twice a week, and you're putting stuff out, over time you have a chance to rank for those things, but it's going to take time for something. So, I think the point you were making is, don't expect anything this one time. Slow and Steady Wins the RaceAC: It's the slowest form of marketing I can think of. DR: It's the slowest, but it's the most powerful if done over time. AC: So powerful. DR: And that's the key to marketers and agencies that are trying to sell other accounts and marketers who are trying to sell to their bosses the proper strategy. You've got to invest. It's a marathon, not a sprint, but you're building a brick house. But to build that brick house, you've got to lay the bricks right, you've got to lay the mortar right, you've got to do all this stuff right, and that's what Andy's giving you. So, don't get discouraged that you can't do it. Just understand it's going to take time, but don't just frivolously put stuff up or do it the wrong way, because then at that point, just don't do it at all. Go walk around the block and start knocking on doors, because that's going to be more effective. But if you do it the right way, over time you will have a chance to rank, just understand what you're dealing with on that. Now, what are some other on page ideas you can give to help drive traffic? And what I mean by that aren't the elements within the blog like you just mentioned, I'm talking about other strategic actions you can take, such as putting stuff on your home page and what not. Can you talk about that? AC: Well, do you mean the construction of content, like the aspects of an article that make it successful? DR: Not necessarily. Things that you can do strategically, putting it on your home page possibly - we talked about already putting it in your thank you page, you could have a super duper piece of content that you want to like, 'Hey, thanks for subscribing to my email list. By the way, check out -' stuff like that. AC: Everything I do is free. I'm the type of person that, I don't do any paid advertising at all, but there are lots and lots of little things that you can do to make an article more visible. The idea is actually to figure out which of your articles gets the biggest percentage of visitors to subscribe first, and then those are the ones that you want to do this with. And there's a special way to do that which, we could talk about another day, but it's how to calculate the conversion rate from a visitor into a subscriber from each of your pieces of content. So, let's say we've done that, and we know that these are the three articles that when people see them they're the most likely to take action and become a newsletter subscriber, Great. Now, the places I can put those, my email signature I think you mentioned, my home page if I have a content area on that, I can put them at the bottom of other high traffic posts. That's probably the best trick. You have certain high converting posts, you have other high traffic posts - one of the fastest ways to get better results is to connect the traffic champions to the conversion champions. That's the one link that will grow your list the fastest. If you have three minutes to do marketing, that's it. Connect your best cheese to your best mousetraps. That's what very few marketers do, but it's a no brainer when you think about it. The trick is just to look at your analytics and figure out what's your best cheese, what's your best mousetraps. DR: Fantastic pointer. That's something that I haven't really put emphasis on. I know we do other related articles, we try to make them related, but I haven't taken that next step and thought that through, so thank you on a personal level there. Awesome. AC: And it's probably like ten x. You've got a small number of articles that are getting much, much more traffic than others, you've got a small number of articles that are inspiring much, much more conversions than others. As soon as you know what those are, I don't even need to make any recommendations. You will get sixty-five ideas on how to either create more traffic and conversion champions or how to connect these things. One of the things that may be less obvious, I know a guy, Larry Kim from WordStream. He says, 'These are your unicorns. They'll jump out at you, and as soon as you find a unicorn, your job is to make baby unicorns.' You need to go, and whatever that thing was, that article that you wrote about private social networks or something like that, now you want to go and make that article into a video, make that article into a diagram, make that article into an interview, write that article for someone else. Do a roundup on that topic. Now that you know that this is the thing that is working well for your readers, you want to create more stuff on that topic. Now the people who subscribed, or the people who followed you, or the people who clicked on the search result, have more to dig into. 5 Ways to Show Related ContentWhy is Wikipedia such a time stock? Because there's related stuff for everything. If you don't have the related thing, if your unicorn is a solo thing, like it's all lonely out there, that visitor is not likely to fall into that click hole and stay longer, so definitely, as soon as you find these champions, traffic or conversion champions, you want to promote them, and there's like five ways. You want to publish on different:
So, now you're building a hub of interrelated content. Very few marketers do it, and just that alone will put you in the top one percent. If you've published for even a year, you probably have one or two of these on your site. Time to build up more on that interrelated, interconnected content, go deeper, be more persistent, be more structured. This is how the greats really do it. They're just making decisions based on a little bit of data, and then turning that winner into a whole family of winners. Now you've got a lot of unicorns. DR: That's wonderful. Do you have a certain procedure, how you make sure you remind yourself to do that over a certain period of time? AC: Well, one of the things that I'm doing is tracking my performance in Moz for different key phrases. Now, if I know that I'm tracking a hundred or more key phrases in Moz, and I know that these are traffic magnets, I'm not just tracking the traffic, I know the rank, and Moz will track the rank over time for me. It's like a hundred-and-twenty-five-dollar tool, it's one of the few tools I pay for. So, what Moz lets me do then, is to see what's going up and what's going down. I'm watching for things that are close to tipping points, or behind a threshold, and if I see that I've got an article that the rank is starting to drop out of the top three, or the rank is almost on page one, then I'm going to focus on that. I have literally a list called Focus, and when I am invited to write for something, or I have to decide what to publish next, I'm going to focus on things that I know are going to give me better results, because they're right there on that edge. I'm going to strategically focus on those things where the smallest effort gets me the best results. DR: How often do you do that? How often do you review that? AC: I get a notification email from Moz once a week, so I'll look at it once a week. I update the Focus list about once a month because it doesn't change that fast. Probably once a month I'll decide to make a list of five or so things that I'm going to be rotating in and out of my focus, mentioning it other places, including in contributions or that kind of thing. DR: How can people continue to learn from you? AC: David, this is great. Aside from this podcast, you can find me on orbitmedia.com/blog is where I put my latest and greatest. I write there about every other week. The book is anywhere, it's in its fourth edition, you can find it on Amazon, it's called Content chemistry. I've got a podcast which, if you search for it, is called Content Matters, my Twitter handle is my last name. I'm an easy guy to reach. Andy Crestodina, of Orbit Media, has been in the web design and interactive marketing space since January of 2000. In that time, he’s helped thousands of people do a better job getting results online. He’s a true evangelist for content marketing and ethical digital marketing. Together with the team at Orbit Media, Andy has put out some of the best digital marketing advice available in hundreds of practical articles, including posts on virtually all of the top marketing websites. Then there’s his book, Content Chemistry, which currently in its fourth edition. Not only is Andy a founder of Content Jam, Chicago’s largest content marketing conference, which is currently in its fifth year, but he’s also a regular face on the national circuit, and if you go to a content marketing conference, the one Chicagoan you’re mostly likely to hear is Andy Crestodina. ABOUT ANDY CRESTODINAAndy has been in the web design and interactive marketing space since January of 2000. In that time, he’s helped thousands of people do a better job getting results online. He’s a true evangelist for content marketing and ethical digital marketing. Together with the team at Orbit Media, Andy has put out some of the best digital marketing advice available in hundreds of practical articles, including posts on virtually all of the top marketing websites. Then there’s the book, Content Chemistry, which is currently in it’s third edition. Andy is also a regular speaker both locally and nationally. Not only is Andy a founder of Content Jam, Chicago’s largest content marketing conference (currently in it’s fifth year) but he’s also a regular face on the national circuit. If you go to a content marketing conference, the one Chicagoan you’re mostly likely to hear is Andy Crestodina. Get a Free Consultationvia Blogger How to Promote Your Content for Free 8/3/2017 Master Your Next Feature Launch: How Vimeo Uses Unbounce Landing Pages to Go to Market FasterRead NowYou’re a product marketer and it’s five weeks away from a major launch. The office is buzzing with excitement and tensions are rising by the day. Your marketing team is busy prepping all the essential pieces in your marketing launch toolkit, from email communications to paid advertising to PR initiatives and beyond. But something’s missing. Your website needs updating to reflect the launch of your new feature or product… and then you need somewhere to send your paid campaign traffic. If you’re relying on your developers to build a new page for you, it could take weeks (or longer). Besides, shifting your devs’ focus away from the product launch probably isn’t the best use of their time. Adding work to their plates could mean having to delay going to market (and miss your launch deadlines) — and that could be deadly for business. The marketing team at Vimeo has experienced this stress first-hand. Garrett Bugbee, Manager of Search and International Marketing, recently described to me how product launches have put a strain on his team in the past:
Fast forward to today, Garrett and his team have removed many of these pre-launch bottlenecks. When it came time to launch their new product, Vimeo 360, they’d mastered the art of going to market with new products on time and on budget. So what’s Vimeo’s secret recipe to making every product launch a smash hit? Garrett teases at it in the video below. Have a look, or read on for the blueprint to their success.
Make every product a smash hit: Watch this video to learn how Vimeo removed bottlenecks from their launches so they could go to market faster.
Meet Vimeo and their latest product, Vimeo 360As one of the internet’s most popular video sharing websites, Vimeo attracts more than 100 million unique visitors per month and is home to over 50 million creators worldwide (and counting). As their popularity increases so too does the competition. In order to stay on top, Vimeo has to evolve and innovate. With at least four new video products or features being introduced to the platform each year, a failed launch for Vimeo could mean a loss of thousands (dare we say millions) in company dollars, so there’s infinite pressure to get it right — every time. You can imagine then, the pressure that Garrett (the hero from our intro) must have felt when he and his team set out to launch Vimeo 360, a new product that allows users to upload 360-degree videos in stunning high quality: Because some of Vimeo’s competitors were already dabbling in 360-degree video, Garrett knew they had to launch quickly — and with a splash:
Removing bottlenecks from the campaign launchVimeo’s main goal for the 360 launch was to drive engagement, measured by new subscribers and 360 video uploads. While part of their homepage was to briefly feature Vimeo 360, Garrett and his team wanted to build out a page to better explain the product and all the amazing things it could do, including:
That’s a lot of heavy lifting for a website that is also serving a general audience, so Garrett and his team turned to Unbounce to create a click-through landing page for their campaign:
Garrett’s team used Unbounce design features like parallax scroll to appeal to his visually-inclined user base. Click to view full-length landing page.
Beautiful isn’t it? Garrett explained why empowering his marketing team to build this page themselves was key:
Don’t pull devs away from work – your marketing team can build launch landing pages themselves. The best part? The campaign landing page that the Vimeo marketing team created drove engagement, which was the campaign goal. Garrett explains:
Better performing paid and social advertising campaignsA beautiful, engaging landing page is well and good, but at the end of the day, your boss wants hard numbers that show that your campaigns performed. Since adding dedicated campaign landing pages to their marketing launch toolkit, Vimeo has also seen better results for their paid and social advertising campaigns.
Some paid ads created by Vimeo for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, the Google Display Network and DoubleClick Bid Manager.
Before Unbounce, Garrett humbly admits that they were letting their website get in the way of their campaign success:
But now that Vimeo is sending paid traffic to product launch-specific landing pages like the one above (as opposed to generic pages like their /upload/ page and homepage), their campaigns are kicking serious butt. Check out these impressive results:
Bonus: Dedicated landing pages aren’t only bringing Vimeo better campaign results — Garrett explained that they’re also improving user experience and Google’s relevance score:
Unbounce’s Dynamic Text Replacement (DTR) feature gives Garrett and his team the capability to swap out text on their landing page — so that their ads and landing pages present exactly what visitors searched for.
Unbounce’s Ryan Engley explains how Dynamic Text Replacement works. See DTR in action here.
That level of message match across the entire buyer journey is key to strong PPC performance. When prospects click on an ad and see a landing page with a headline that matches exactly what they searched for, they’re reassured that they’ve made a “good click” and are more likely to stick around (and even convert) — and that in turn positively impacts Quality Score in AdWords. What you can learn from Vimeo’s successIf there’s one thing we’ve learned from Vimeo’s 360 campaign, it’s this: Yes, product launches are a lot a pressure, but they don’t have to be painful — not when marketing teams are empowered to move nimbly without bottlenecks. According to Garrett, it’s all about focusing on your core competencies:
By making Unbounce landing pages an essential part of your marketing launch toolkit, not only can you gain the competitive edge by going to market faster, you’ll also:
And that folks, is why you should NSAPLCWADLP… Never Start A Product Launch Campaign Without A Dedicated Landing Page. ;) via Blogger Master Your Next Feature Launch: How Vimeo Uses Unbounce Landing Pages to Go to Market Faster Being a modern-day Paid Media Manager can make you feel a bit like Sisyphus. Your VP of Marketing has charged you with rolling a boulder uphill (continuously optimizing your AdWords campaigns even when you’ve reached your quarterly objectives).
Image via Shutterstock.
This becomes especially painful when you’re getting diminishing returns out of your optimization efforts. There are many tactics to choose from, but many of them may be a waste of time and may leave you with minimal impact. When the going gets tough, you need to get creative and find cost/time-effective ways to keep optimizing your campaigns as granularly as possible. Here are five advanced strategies for getting big optimization wins in AdWords. 1. Reach people who ignored you due to your budgetBefore investing time into extensive research, ask yourself:
Chances are, you’re losing market share for your target keywords (and locations) due to budget caps. To grow your campaigns, reduce the market share loss due to budget caps. Reality check: Are you losing market share due to budget?Check the “Search Lost IS (Budget)” metric in Google AdWords. You’ll find it in the Competitive Metrics category. So what’s your number? 2%, 12% or 32%? Here’s an example: our client’s account was losing up to 32% of market share due to budget by week four. That means they were pacing stronger at the beginning of the month, but needed to slow down towards the end of the month to meet the monthly budget goal.
Search lost due to budget chart (via SCUBE Marketing)
Once you know how much market share you lost at account level, you can dig deeper into the campaign level data. You’ll know exactly which campaigns contribute to the loss. Those gems are your growth opportunities.
Search lost due to budget by campaign (via SCUBE Marketing)
Action plan: Increase daily budgets… with performance in mindOne path you can take here is to increase the daily budgets based on performance. Use three performance buckets to make decisions:
Shared Budgets will help you manage your campaign budgets easier. Here’s how to prioritize your campaigns and group them into Shared Budgets:
Here’s something else you can do to grow your AdWords campaign. 2. Improve market share lost due to low Ad RankAnother great way to grow your AdWords campaigns is to reduce lost market share due to low Ad Rank. If you’re not familiar, I’ll give you a quick, practical overview. Ad Rank is like MTV Top 40 (and if you remember Scatman, I will give you a high five). Instead of rank being based on sales of audiocassettes, vinyl and other formats across a seven day period, Ad Rank is based on three variables for each search query:
Scatman (via Giphy)
I will skip ad extensions, as most serious advertisers use them already (and I hope you’re one of them). The two variables that matter are your bids and your Quality Score. If they stay constant in your account, but your competitors keep increasing theirs, your Ad Rank relative to competitors decreases and your market share (impression share) is lost due to Ad Rank increases. Reality check: Are you losing market share due to Ad Rank?Just as you did with your budget, check the “Search Lost IS (Rank)” metric in Google AdWords. It’s in the Competitive Metrics category.
Search lost due to Ad Rank metric (via SCUBE Marketing)
Once again, find your number for both the account and campaign levels. Once you know, you’ll know what direction to take things in. Your growth menu is limited to two options:
Action plan: Increase your bidsIf your Quality Score is high already (attempts at improving it may result in diminishing returns or a negative impact on your conversion rate), and your CPLs are healthy, you have no other choice but to increase the bids. Your CPL will go up, but you can gain a lot more conversions. Action plan: Improve your Quality ScoreIf your Quality Score is low, work on improving it. You can affect your Quality Score with three factors (directly from Google):
Recently, Google has improved its Quality Score reporting. You can see the makeup of your score using historical data. This helps you to evaluate how the previous account changes affected your score.
New Quality Score reporting (via SCUBE Marketing)
The problem: you can’t take your Quality Score to the bank. It’s not a KPI. Given that, if your conversion rates are healthy, don’t sacrifice your results for the sake of Quality Score. Yes, you may improve your Quality Score a bit, but if your conversion rate tanks, cheap clicks won’t matter. If your conversion rates are not healthy, you can either:
Once you’re satisfied with the conversion rate, go back to increasing the bids. On to the next move you can make to strengthen your campaigns. 3. Expand into a new buyer stageBuyers have different stages in their journey. You need to understand the buying stages for your customers, understand their differences and finally adapt your marketing to them. To illustrate the difference between them, I’ll use an example that revolves around unicorns. Let’s say you kept your unicorn enclosed in a submarine for a few years. Your unicorn was exposed to asbestos and got a sick with mesothelioma. You decided to sue the owner of the submarine and you started looking for a lawyer. A good one. Someone like Saul Goodman.
Saul Goodman can sue anyone (via YouTube)
You may be going through any one of three different stages:
In fact, we used this approach for real law firms. One law firm had their eyes set on the strategy behind the decision stage. We identified opportunities to expand into the consideration and awareness stages. New stages helped to double the leads. Let me visualize it:
Double your leads by expanding into new buyer’s journey stages (via SCUBE Marketing)
Reality check: Are your campaigns assigned to specific buyer stages?Go through your campaigns and map them to the appropriate buyer stages. If you’re not deliberate on your buyer stages, your conversion rate may be affected due to poor matching between the offer and the intent of the buyer stage. Think of the traffic temperature concept covered by Molly Pittman and Johnathan Dane. Then, review your offer and make sure it matches the intent of the buyer stage.
Offers matched to traffic temperature, with cold leads (awareness) on the left and warm leads (decision stage) on the right. (via KlientBoost)
Action plan: Identify gaps and expand into new buyer stagesOnce you map your campaigns to specific buyer stages, identify the opportunities to expand. Expand into the stages that you haven’t covered. For example, if you’re focusing on the decision and consideration stages, expand into the awareness stage. Once you identify the missing stage(s), do the following:
Let’s take a look at the next step you can take toward growing your AdWords campaigns. 4. Expand into new locationsLocations may be an overlooked avenue in which to expand. Let’s say you own a unicorn breeding business and are targeting locations within a certain radius of your office. You assume you should be targeting people living near your business.
Unicorn breeding farm (via Giphy)
Think about it again. You may be missing your opportunity. Take these two facts into consideration:
If you don’t have these in your targeted locations, you’re missing out. For example, one client, selling custom kitchen cabinets, provided us with a recommended list of locations with a wealthy population. We ran ads at those locations and the traction was small. We didn’t use the whole budget. Then, we identified a new set of geographies — where the target audience may be working — and tested again. The leads went up by 155% in month 1 (after the change) and 30% more in month 2.
Location targeting (via SCUBE Marketing)
Reality check: Are you targeting all possible locations?Check your target locations. Are you targeting based on where people live, commute and work? If you’re missing any location categories, identify them. Action plan: Expand into new location categoriesOnce you identified the gaps, do your research and expand. You can expand based on the following scenarios:
5. Expand your offerNew customer acquisition matters — a lot. It doesn’t matter if you acquire them selling the core product or a loss leader. (If you’re not familiar with the loss leader concept, here is the rundown. A loss leader is a product that opens doors for new client acquisition.) Once you get a customer, your goal is to increase their lifetime value. I’ve covered customer lifetime value extensively in another article. Let’s take Starbucks, for example. There’s a reason why they’re one of the unicorns of the industry. Their marketing isn’t focused on selling a five-dollar Unicorn Frappuccino (they actually exist), it’s about acquiring a loyal customer who will generate $14,099 over the lifetime.
Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino (via Starbucks)
Reality check: Do you have a unique offer you could sell to acquire new customers?Consider cell phone companies. Their core product is not the cell phone. It’s the subscription service. See what happens when I search for “cell phones” — I get ads from the cell phone companies.
Cell Phone Offers (via Google)
What does that mean? These companies expanded their offers to include additional products that serve as new entry points for new customers and growth. My question to you is this — do you have a new offer you can use to acquire new customers? Action plan: Expand your offersExecuting this is easier than it seems. Follow these four steps to expand your offer:
Final thoughtsYou made it! Now, you have five different ways to grow your AdWords campaigns. Remember, start with the analysis first, and take action second. Once launched, don’t forget to evaluate often, and revise. Your analysis isn’t always right. You need to try, try, and try again — until you find success. What effective ways have you found to grow your AdWords campaigns? Share in the comments below. via Blogger Seeing Diminishing Returns in AdWords? Here Are 5 Advanced Optimization Tactics
The new Dunkirk movie is meant to be epic. And EPIC is this: the new WebVR Experience for the feature film. This co-play experience requires two people to play. You can ask a friend to join, or team up with a random player from around the world – your choice! Players become Allied troops on [...]
Related posts:via Blogger Dunkirk: An Immersive WebVR Experience
Right. This is it. The world’s first feature length VR film for Oculus. Picture this. You’re in the 80s and you’re a robot. Yes. A Robot called “Miyubi”. The immersive VR film puts you as the lead, a robot who is now loved by a very typical American family after “dad” gets back from Japan. [...]
Related posts:via Blogger Miyubi: Oculus’ Feature-Length VR Experience When’s the last time you felt special? Go ahead… close your eyes and visualize the last time your boss called you out in a group to recognize your excellent performance. Or the last time your grandmother mailed you a special batch of your favorite cookies. Now, imagine being able to replicate that feeling for your audience with a marketing campaign.
Hyper-personalized marketing campaigns make your prospects feel special… and positively impact your KPIs. Feeling those warm fuzzies yet?
Problem is, one-to-many communication is difficult. And while you may not be able to give people the exact same feeling they get from a special delivery of grandma’s cookies, showing empathy and delivering personalized messages really can make prospects feel like you understand them. (And that can have a positive impact on your campaign’s KPIs.) But you need to be willing to go further than just calling them out by name… Unbounce’s recent pricing update campaignIn March 2017, Unbounce launched a campaign to roll out our new pricing plans. We knew pricing plan updates were a sensitive subject, so we wanted to go above and beyond to explain exactly how our new pricing plans would be delivering more value to our customers. We injected a bit of humor and a whole lotta personalization into the campaign:
Learn about all the assets we included in our pricing campaign (and the strategy behind them) by watching the recording of Unbounce Customer Communications Specialist Alexa Hubley’s talk at the Call to Action Conference.
We learned a lot along the way, and we want to share step-by-step instructions for three of the most effective tactics we used to created ultra-personalized messages for an audience of 10K+ Unbounce customers:
Let’s put all that data you’re collecting on leads to good use, shall we? Idea #1: Create a custom image and boost email click-throughsAs they say, the most-loved word in any language is your own name. For our campaign, we experimented with sending an email that contained an image thumbnail customized with the reader’s first name:
Every email we sent included this image, personalized with the name of the recipient.
We hypothesized that this would result in an increase in email click-through rate. How’d it perform?Before we rolled out the personalized thumbnail in our own campaign, we did a small batch test to validate our hypothesis that a personalized image could increase click-through rates. Here’s how it played out:
While a two percent difference may not seem like anything to write home about, that’s a relative difference of 50%. Using a personalized thumbnail helped us reach our conversion goal and it even spurred replies like this: I thought you’d never ask! How to personalize a video thumbnail imageFirst, we built the base image (the picture of Kieran above) and edited the image in Photoshop to add the text. Next, we uploaded the image to a third-party tool called Cloudinary, which performed all the heavy lifting of customizing an image for 10K+ readers: Cloudinary stored the base image and changed out the text for each individual name. You can get into all the nitty gritty details of their cloud image manipulation by reading Cloudinary’s documentation, but here is an overall explanation of what we did:
Idea #2: Personalize your landing pages with Dynamic Text ReplacementNow that we had secured a healthy click-through rate on our emails, we wanted to ensure that the post-click experience was just as delightful for customers. To match our hyper-personalized emails (left), we created a single landing page for each cohort in the campaign, personalized with the reader’s name and plan type (right): We also included this customized image in the footer of the page, for customers who needed extra help and wanted to speak to support: How’d you do that?Dynamic Text Replacement (DTR) is an Unbounce feature that allows you to swap out landing page copy to be super relevant to readers. The power of DTR is in its ability to help you create flawless message match between your emails and corresponding landing pages. Strong message match increases conversions because it reassures people they’ve come to the right place. We hypothesized that personalizing the landing page with the customer’s name would let visitors know that they made a “good click” — and by seeing their own name throughout the page, visitors would stay long enough to read through the new plan details. How to Use Dynamic Text ReplacementThe first step is to ready your landing page for Dynamic Text Replacement so you can sub in your prospect’s name (or other piece of personal information): Next, you’ll want to generate a URL that will pass parameters (e.g., first_name) from your email to your landing page using DTR. Use the following format to make the URL that you’d like to link to: [landing page URL]?[parameter]=[value] For example, your link might look as follows (where *|FNAME|* is the first name merge field in MailChimp): http://www.yourcampaignURL.com/?name=*|FNAME|* Once you’ve generated that link, you can hyperlink it from your email’s call to action button. Now, your prospects will receive an email with their name, click through the CTA and land on a landing page that also calls ’em by name. Beauty, eh?
Bonus tip:
Sometimes we’re so focused on getting the lead that we forget about what happens next. The thank you page or confirmation dialogue box that appears after a visitor converts is all part of the experience. Use DTR to personalize your form confirmation — it’s a simple tactic, but it adds a whole lotta delight. So instead of this: Your visitors will see a customized form confirmation message, like this: Idea #3: Help users set a personalized reminderWhat if your reader is interested in your offer but they’re not quite ready to take you up on it? Don’t let them bounce and completely forget about it! In our campaign, we offered abandoning visitors the chance to set a calendar reminder the week before their deal expired with the help of an on-exit overlay and a tool called AddEvent: The overlay prompted the visitor to create a personalized reminder directly in their calendar tool of choice. Customers who set this up would receive a reminder a week before their custom deal was to expire. (Bonus: this allowed our team to better forecast when a bunch of conversions were about to roll in.) How to prompt visitors to remember your offerOnce you’ve created an AddEvent account, setting it up in Unbounce is as easy as one, two, three:
Is it delightful? Or just creepy?Like anything else you implement on your page, you’re going to want to thoroughly test these tactics to see what effect (if any) they have on your conversion rates. (Better safe than sorry!) And remember to keep your personalization tactics in check… the goal is to delight the customer, not creep them out! Over to you: How do you personalize your campaigns? Let us know in the comments! via Blogger 3 Ideas to Steal from Unbounce’s Hyper-Personalized Customer Marketing Campaign |