7 ways publishers and advertisers can beat ad-blockers

Ad-blockers are a major threat to digital publishers- but help is at hand!

Whether you’re an online publisher, advertiser or even simply a consumer, the ramifications of blocking internet advertising will be massive. In fact, according to a recent study by PageFair, the publishing industry suffered a $21.8 billion loss from blocked revenue due to ad-blocking software last year. As a result, the war between publishers and advertisers is only continuing to intensify. There are steps that can be taken to overcome the issues created by this technology. Below are seven popular strategies that online publications have turned to in a bid to fight against the rising numbers of ad-blocking users.

1. Ask Users to Turn Off Their Ad-Blocking

“Thanks for coming to Forbes. Please turn off your ad blocker in order to continue. To thank you for doing so, we’re happy to present you with an ad-light experience.”

Yes, it’s as simple as asking users to uninstall their ad-blocker or whitelist your domain on the software. If you’re using WordPress as your CMS for example, you can use an anti ad-block plugin to track and display notifications to ad-blocking users. These plugins often also present a variety of options including:

• Whether or not you want to restrict access until the requested action is completed.
• How many page views before a user is shown the message (some may consider it quite off-putting for a first time visitor to see a request for uninstallation or whitelisting).
• Selecting whether messaging should be discreet or a page blocking pop-up.

Consider your approach and messaging. Would you rather be direct like Forbes and state your request as soon as the visitor enters the site? Perhaps your website would be better suited to more explanatory messaging such as “Thanks for visiting our website. For us to continue writing good stories, we rely on our display ads. Please consider disabling your ad-blocker before proceeding.” It’s important to customise your messaging based on your intent. A zero-tolerance policy towards ad-blockers would need very  different messaging compared to a more lenient one.

2. Turn It Off or Subscribe

Another strategy often employed by online publications is to offer users the option to turn off their ad-blocker or alternatively subscribe to the publication’s newsletter. If there are goals on your website which drive revenue for your organisation in some way other than advertising, requesting a non-monetary payment like a subscription is certainly a smart approach. The Washington Post offered ad-free content that could be ‘unlocked’ when a reader submitted their email address to receive a newsletter. A solution like this is a potential way to turn a negative into a positive and drum up conversions for your website. However, it’s also important to note that several users may not want to provide their email or join a subscription which necessitates that you offer them a choice on the matter – hence turn it off or subscribe.

3. Turn It Off or Pay-to-access

Undoubtedly you’ve heard of this one before. Online paywalls have been around for years as another source of revenue generation for large publications and entities. Wired, an online publisher, recently started offering a new option to its readers that block ads. Either whitelist the website on their ad-blocker or pay $3.99 for four weeks of ad-free access. Wth the recent development of digital currency, pay-to-access has become a far more feasible option. Micro and nano-transactions have been revolutionised with online currencies such as bitcoin. If you have a devoted customer base, paywalls (given a reasonable pricing structure) could certainly be a viable option for your website.

4. Native Advertising

Not a publisher willing to block access or ask for whitelisting? Still want to present marketing to your users? Native advertising is one option you can consider. Furthermore, if you’re an advertiser suffering from reduced reach due to ad-blocking, it’s time to start integrating an affiliate marketing strategy with these publishers to reel in more customers. Native ads are generally unobtrusive as the advertising is often integrated with actual website content such that it is more relevant for the consumer. Ad creatives can also be hosted on the website’s domain making it hard for ad-blockers to detect. An example of a good native advertising strategy I’ve seen in the past was a sauce manufacturer sponsoring recipes on a food blog. For advertisers, think about how your industry can market unique content through developing relationships with websites with a relevant target market like the above. For publishers, consider offering advertisers the opportunity to develop native ads which can be displayed when ad-blocking users are detected.

5. Fight Back

Want to display your advertising regardless of whether or not someone has an ad-blocker installed? There are in fact ways to hit back against the technology. One such method for video publishers is server-side ad insertion. This process gives publishers the ability to stitch video content and ads together in a single server on the content management system level. As a result, it is harder for ad-blockers (which operate on a browser level), to identify advertising. Facebook also recently announced that it has built a workaround that would circumvent ad-blocking software. The social media company faces huge consequences when it comes to the threat of their advertising being potentially diminished. In response, they are now making the HTML of their web ads indistinguishable from organic content to slip past ad-blockers. With the right team of web developers or through outsourcing to experts in the field, you too can find ways to undermine ad blocking technology. However, it’s also important to keep in mind that ad-blocking software producers will consistently be retaliating against your efforts. Ultimately, it’s a matter of whether or not it will be worthwhile for your business to engage in the game of cat and mouse.

6. Get Whitelisted

Many ad-blocking companies claim that the main purpose for their software is to provide online users with freedom from interruptive, irrelevant and over-the-top advertising. Whilst this is true to an extent, many have their own ulterior motives often involving collecting payments from online publishers to whitelist their website domains. This for me, is my least favourable option given the fact that in order to get on an ‘acceptable ads’ list, websites have to cough up a ransom fee. Regardless of whether this is extortion or not, many publishers feel as though they have little choice in the matter particularly when advertising forms nearly the entirety of their source of revenue. Paying the ad-blocking piper to whitelist your website will work but ensure you weigh up the pros and cons before taking this approach.

7. Focus on User Experience

Most of the above solutions focus on curing the symptoms of rising ad-blocking usage but not the actual cause. Consumers turn to ad-blockers because of the ways in which publishers and advertisers have overwhelmed them with intrusive advertising in the past. There’s little point in barraging your users with ad upon ad when it will simply drive them up the wall instead of achieving long-term marketing goals. Ultimately, the best way to combat the problem is through focusing on optimising user experience on your website. This includes giving people the option to skip video ads, hide irrelevant ads, thumbs down content they dislike, etc. It’s all about giving the user an advertising light experience with choice – after all those who don’t want to see your ads are unlikely to engage with them anyway.

If you’re unsure if ad-blocking is currently an issue for your website and advertising, there are plenty of internet businesses that can help you diagnose the problem. Page Fair for example, provides tools that allow publishers to calculate the cost of revenue lost from ad-blockers. In the current digital sphere, this is not something that should be underestimated given that research shows ad-blocking is only on an upwards trend. If the technology poses a threat to your business, it’s time to take the necessary measures to combat the problem.

Thanks to Mithila for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Mithila is a digital consultant at Living Online, eager to revolutionise the channels of growth for businesses online. She has a keen interest in staying up-to-date with the latest technologies and processes influencing current internet marketing.

 

source http://www.smartinsights.com/online-brand-strategy/7-ways-publishers-advertisers-can-beat-ad-blockers/

Five Black Friday email ideas for you to plan now

If you haven’t started your holiday planning yet, it’s time to push the panic button.

Email marketers often don’t get pulled into the planning process until the end and then it’s often an afterthought or emergency: “Yeah, just send another email”. When email is an afterthought instead of the engine, you’re setting yourself up to fail.

Don’t sit on the sidelines and wait for the coach to send you in. Develop your own plan, including copy and contact strategies. It should fit into the overall brand strategy, but it needs to be your design because you have your own revenue and goals to meet.

Develop your Black Friday strategy now

Although many consumers have already started shopping, Black Friday is still the official kick-off for the season. Locking down your strategy now gives you time to test it and have it in place. You’ll be ready to start building your base of subscribers from the fresh supply of customers that the holiday shopping season can deliver.

That’s not your only challenge, of course. All of those new customers are also fielding messages from every other business they’re browsing or buying from. Optimizing send times and writing snazzy subject lines help, but your strategy needs to go deeper than that if you want your customers to pounce on your emails when they show up in the inbox.

Five Black Friday email ideas

If you start now, you can test and tweak these approaches. By the time Black Friday rolls around, you’ll be ready to go:

1. Give your best customers the VIP treatment.

Put your revenue-producing customers at the virtual head of the line. These are the people who know your brand, act on your emails and have bought from you before.

Everybody likes to go to the head of the line. Use dynamic content modules that let your VIP list know ahead of time about special shopping events. Offer loyalty discounts and early access to upgrades, new products, etc.

2. Use segmenting and testing with your Black Friday emails.

Everybody is looking for a sale on Black Friday. You have to be able to dial it in perfectly and know what your customers want to see. This means testing at both an individual and cohort level.

Test on emails that lead up to your Black Friday messaging. Also, test while you’re sending so you can change content or offers on the fly as needed. Your Black Friday strategy should include fall-back content or offers that you can switch on as needed.

3. Send the email again.

Segment out those who didn’t open and click on your message or who clicked but didn’t buy, and send them your email again.

Maybe they saw your message first thing in the morning but couldn’t act on it because they were waiting for a store to open. Or, they didn’t scroll down far enough in the inbox to find it. This is a good strategy to test now. On Black Friday your customers will likely be occupied elsewhere. If you send in the morning, try a resend later in the afternoon.

Resending is an “occasional use” strategy, one that can give customers a second chance to engage but must be used sparingly. It gets annoying if you use it all of the time. Save it for your best customers or your best promotions.

4. Say “Oops!” (even if you didn’t really mess up).

Every other email your customers see in the run-up to Black Friday, or on the day itself, will have a subject line with some variation on “Black Friday deals start NOW!” or “Free shipping and 20% off!” subject lines. How can you stand out? Say “Oops!”

Send an apology email even though you (presumably) did nothing wrong. We know people love to open “oops” emails because they want to see how you messed up. So, say something like “We apologize for the long lines in our stores. Why not just stay in today and shop these online-exclusive deals?”

Caveat: This is a “break glass in case of emergency” tactic. The apology email works once and only once. So, choose wisely when you look for opportunities to capitalize on it.

5. Consider a “leak” email.

When you have a time-sensitive offer (discount, in-store event, limited merchandise availability, limited shopping window), send your VIPs an advance notice.

If you want to have a little fun with this message, make the email look as if you accidentally sent it early. Design it to look like a test message (copy markups and all) and a subject line like “PROOF – Do not send until 10 a.m.”

This is another one-time-only tactic. You’ll also need to clear this with people who have higher titles than you because you need to coordinate with all of the departments that could be affected and test to be sure it works.

If you’re running a Black Friday preview on Thursday, for example, make sure the products included in the sale are loaded into the ecommerce system and the system recognizes the link in your email.

The last thing you want to do is send out an email that doesn’t work. This time you’ll have to send a real apology email. Plus, you’ll lose revenue and look foolish to your best customers.

Creativity pushes you to the front

The holiday shopping season is the big league when all the time you’ve spent this year nurturing relations with your customers and subscribers pays off in the inbox.

Your holiday email plan, one that fits in with your brand strategy, means you can send smart, strategic emails and resist the call to “just send another email”. 

Thanks to Ryan for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Ryan Phelan brings over 15 years of online marketing experience to Adestra as the Vice President, Marketing Insights. In this position, Ryan is responsible for the marketing efforts of Adestra in the US. Ryan is a respected thought leader and nationally distinguished speaker. In 2013 he was named one of the top 30 strategists in the industry and serves as the head of the EEC Advisory Board, Advisory Board Member for DMNews and is involved with the ESPC. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/email-communications-strategy/five-black-friday-email-ideas-plan-now/

Are you attending International Ecommerce Day 2016?

Free coaching for Ecommerce marketers from Rand Fishkin of Moz and other industry experts at International Ecommerce Day

The Ecommerce world is so crowded with a glut of content and different providers competing fiercely. What’s more, ecommerce marketers often are rushing to implement the latest tactics and technology, which can leave creating a proper strategy and plan being neglected.

There are lots of blog articles, infographics and tutorials about how to build a successful digital business. The problem with this is that there are too many people blogging for the sake of attracting traffic and clicks, and they don’t always offer the best business advice. This means it can be hard for marketers to know what pieces of advice will be useful, and which won’t be.

But, of course, you need to be connected to the latest trends in order to make your business grow and apply innovative techniques to drive up your sales.

One thing you can do to save time and get crucial information about what’s going on in the Ecommerce industry is join the online conference International Ecommerce Day on November 3rd.

The good news is that the event is free. The other good news is that the event is virtual, so it's not going to take much of your time. Plus, if you cannot make it to the live conference, you can still sign up and get the recordings on your inbox

Standing out from the competition has never been harder, or more important.

No one can deny that competition is getting stronger each year that goes by. However, the fact that more and more people are considering starting an Ecommerce business doesn’t necessarily mean everyone has a good business plan. Most of the beginners lack the knowledge and discipline to reach success, which will eventually have a consequence.

This is one of the main reasons behind the International Ecommerce Day online event. The conference strives to boost not only already settled and successful businesses but the ones that are at their early stages  as well.

At  International Ecommerce Day, you don’t have to worry about whether or not the advice will useful in the real world. Everything that you will see and hear is certified, tested and implemented with success in real businesses. Moreover, the presentations come from world-class experts with many years of experience in the industry.

The world of Ecommerce can overwhelm both an expert and a newbie. Given the volume of information that gets out there each day, time-management and discipline can become key elements to success.

This is why we bring world-class experts closer to you. They won’t tell you what to do, they will tell you how to do it. That’s something you don’t want to miss, right?

Top international speakers, case studies, tips and tricks and more

The International Ecommerce Day conference unites more than 20 experts from all around the world.

Here is a sneak peek of what is going to be showcased during the conference:

Rand Fishkin, the founder of Moz, is one of the most well know people in the SEO industry. His presentation is about building an Ecommerce web page that will actually give results in terms of revenue. Breaking everything down to a few essential elements that will show you how to improve an Ecommerce page. The presentation is focused on the core aspects that will increase the conversion rate optimization of your business, from a better design to the little things that " close the deal " .

Brian Massey, the founder of Conversion Sciences, is a frequent guest on webinars focusing on online marketing, conversion rate optimization and many more. His presentation is about something everyone has its eyes on: mobile marketing! The traffic on the mobile platform has exceeded the desktop one, but the revenues are still better on PC and that’s a problem many marketers are facing right now. Whether they accept it or not, the conversion rate is frustratingly low and everybody is looking for answers. Well, here they are, don’t miss Brian Massey’s presentation: " Mobile 2.0 Judgment Day ."

Talia Wolf’s presentation will help marketers dust off old ideas that didn’t work quite as they expected in the first place. " How to Turn your " OK " A/B Testing Results Into Actual Scalable Business Growth " is another enlightening webinar that any digital marketer  should consider.

Karl Gilis, or the G in AG Consult, will share his vast knowledge and experience on the conversion rate optimization problem most businesses face.  With more than 20 case studies based on facts, not premises, Karl’s presentation is structured on 6 reasons why most digital marketers fail in their strategies.

Save a spot now and find out from Karl: "How conversion optimization made me a better digital marketeer ".

What makes this event special?

• It’s an online event  - no traveling/accommodation expenses required.
• It’s totally free.
• 20+ speakers.
• Access to marketing technology tools at great discounts.
• A large variety of topics covered.
• Q&A session after all webinars.

Although it’s all online for ease of access, you can still interact during the conference with the speakers and the other attendees, which makes it even better.

….And if you still have second thoughts, here is what Dave Chaffey said about the event’s previous edition:

“I enjoyed my participation in the first International Ecommerce Day conference. The organisation was highly professional and a good webinar platform was used.”

Thanks to Valentin Radu for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Marketizator Founder, Valentin Radu, has more than 5 years experience in consulting e-commerce companies to grow their conversion rate and revenue. With an entrepreneurial and marketing technology background, Valentin is always able to provide effective ideas for people who want to convert their organization into a growth machine.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/ecommerce/ecommerce-strategy/attending-international-ecommerce-day-2016/

Are hamburger menus good for UX?

Hidden navigation menus, such as hamburger menus negatively affect discoverability, increase task time and perceived difficulty of the tasks.

Quantitative user testing studies aren't as common as qualitative studies in the world of User Experience Research, but this brilliant study by Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) with 179 participants found that hidden menus, such as hamburger menus led to worse discoverability on both desktop and mobile devices.

 

Methodology

The study by NNG used remote unmoderated testing, which involves users recording their screen and voice at home, whilst working through instructions. Six live websites were tested across desktop and mobile, including three types of navigation:

• Hidden navigation: where the main navigation is placed under an icon (e.g. hamburger) and the user is required to click or hover over the icon to display the navigation
• Visible navigation: main navigation shown clearly in a navigation bar
• Combo navigation: a combination of both hidden and visible on the same site

Key findings

1. Researchers found a 20% drop in discoverability on websites with a hidden navigation when compared with combo or visible. Visible or combo navigation led to more people completing the task successfully without having to use the search function on the sites.
2. Hidden navigation led to significantly higher self-reported difficulty ratings, suggesting that hiding navigation makes it harder for users to complete the tasks they are trying to complete.
3. Users were slower on sites with hidden navigation, 39% slower on desktop and 15% slower on mobile, compared to visible or combo navigation.

Key takeaways

Hidden navigation is not good for users, and if it takes longer, as well as being more difficult to carry out tasks on a website, this could harm conversions and revenue. You may wish to consider using visible of combo navigation on desktop and mobile instead of a hamburger menu; it might look neat but it means the user has to work harder and is therefore another barrier to conversion.

Convinced hamburger menus aren't right for your site? You might want to try Pizza menus instead.

• Source: NNG
• Sample: 179 participants
• Recommended resources: User testing 101 and Smart Insights User Testing resources provide an overview on how to do user testing.

 

 

source http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/are-hamburger-menus-hidden-navigation-good-for-ux/

How to monitor your brand through conversational research

Conversational research takes social listening to the next stage

It is more important than ever now to raise brand awareness through conversations. Modern consumers are not as susceptible to advertising and product placement as in the past. Therefore, smart marketers generate brand awareness via influential social media strategies.

Good social media marketing depends on how thorough the keyword research is. It is important to use the best keywords in context, and then monitor them to see how effective they are. Also, the strategy should also employ "social listening." It is a way of getting real-time feedback relating to keywords to perfect the long-term marketing campaign.

The point of using the tactics mentioned above is to monitor your brand’s appeal and efficacy on social networks. Brand monitoring will help your company to gain a distinct leg up over the competition.

Now let’s look at how you can monitor your brand through a useful tactic called conversational research.

What is Conversational Research?

Most marketers are aware of social listening in social media marketing. Social listening is commonly used to gather valuable customer data. The problem is, as mentioned, this is a common tactic. When everyone uses it, it is difficult to stand out with promotional efforts.

This is where conversation research becomes necessary. This tactic is not commonly used, so will most likely help you reinvigorate your existing strategy with new and unique ideas.

Think of conversational research as social listening, but much deeper. Social listening monitors user opinions and sentiments associated with your brand. Conversational research, on the other hand, goes further to analyze the data collected so that a more proactive approach can be developed.

Rather than taking customer reviews and feedback at face value, conversational research helps you make sense of the data you have gathered. Data interpretation in this manner is critical for influencing how a brand is received.

For example, say you uncover some negative reviews for a product with social listening techniques. Your next step would normally be to address the negative reviews to reduce their effect on potential customers. However, this is merely a temporary remedy.

Wouldn’t it simply be better to uncover the cause of negative reviews and address that instead? You will, of course, save time and money in this manner. More importantly, you will be able to reduce the number of negative reviews in the long run.

Monitoring brands through conversational research can, therefore, help marketers unearth underlying problems in the promotional approach.

Here are several steps that you can follow to understand your brand performance better online:

Invest in a Social Listening Platform

Monitoring social media conversations and reviews manually can quickly become a hassle. Therefore, it is worthwhile to invest in a social network or brand monitoring platform like Mention.

The platform you buy will act as a solid foundation for your future conversational research efforts.

Purchasing a monitoring platform is not that expensive. Costs can be as low as $600 per month for the initial years. In comparison, you would have to spend tens of thousands of dollars for research projects to gather the same data.

The biggest perk of a social listening platform is that you will be able to monitor a significant sample of your target audience at low cost. You can gather data over time with large sample bases to refresh long-term social media marketing strategies.

When choosing a social listening platform, think about these points:

• The platform you choose should offer real-time monitoring
• You should be able to segment your audience according to factors such as age and location
• The platform you choose should allow you to track the competition
• It should be co-worker friendly and facilitate collaboration on projects
• Ultimately, the platform should offer solid returns for the investment

Track Brand Mentions

When you have the real-time monitoring capability, you should be able to track brand mentions online. Then, segment or organize them into groups based on channels. Doing so will help you narrow down the amount of information collected.

Mention, the platform described above, helps users modify search results and filter data in this way.

For example, when you track and organize your brand mentions, you might be able to see that people in Georgia say your brand more than others. Granular data like this can help you polish your brand awareness strategy.

Know What the Competition is Doing

It is important to know what the competition is doing to raise their brand awareness. Knowing this will help you avoid doing the same thing and instead adopt unique techniques.

If the competition is doing something good, you can try to imitate the same thing, but not in an obvious way. If something is going well for a competitor, for example, their blog posts might have more social shares, you can similarly create more shareable blog posts as well.

You can use a tool like Mention.com to track brand mentions of competitor’s to get insights into their strategy. Then you can make your strategy more reactive.

Focus on People, Not Keywords

Keyword research is limited. Rather than seeing which keywords led to brand mentions, analyze who is mentioning your brand.

It is ultimately the people who buy the product, not keywords. So, when you know who is mentioning your brand, you will be able to gather crucial insights into your target audience.

Use can use tools like Fanpage Karma and Followerwonk to collect information about people following or liking your brand or a competitor's. Once you know who’s following you, you can then make lasting connections.

Conclusion

Brand mentoring is essential to increasing its long-term reach. While you can use social listening methods to gather data about brand mentions, it is more important to analyze this data. That is what conversational research helps you do.

Conversational research is not a tactic tried by many. Therefore, it can give you a significant advantage over a competitor. You may even be able to understand the competition better with conversational research tactics.

Conversational research requires some amount of patience and ability to pay attention to detail. Even if doing those things is hard, conducting conversation research will help your brand stand out and attract better opportunities.

Thanks to Christopher Jan Benitez for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Christopher Jan Benitez is a professional content marketer and writer. He has helped small businesses achieve their goals by implementing a strong content strategy that emphasizes their unique selling points and promoting created content using effective online channels and methods, in particular social media marketing and search engine optimization techniques.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-listening/monitor-brand-conversational-research/

Creating a Digital Marketing Campaign for an e-commerce Startup: 6 Things You Need to Know

How to Create An Effective Digital Marketing Campaign for Your New e-commerce Business

Creating a digital marketing campaign for an e-commerce startup is a real challenge. You want to make your mark on social media as quickly as possible, and to begin building a following that will ultimately become loyal customers. The challenge is that you don’t have much to go on. Finances are tight. This means limited resources when it comes to market research, or paid advertising. In many cases, it is up to your team to build a campaign from the ground up.

The following six points will outline some very important points to know as you begin to develop your first digital marketing campaign. Keep reading to learn how to develop a strategy that is economical, results oriented, and lean.

1. The Key Starting Point is Great Web Design

As an e-commerce startup, you aren’t a business that has a website. Your entire business model along with any chance of success is wrapped up into your website. This means that you cannot afford to cheap out on things here.

Find a good web designer to help you create a great website, select the best possible shopping cart solution that you can afford, and pick a hosting solution that can handle plenty of transaction volume. Remember that all of the content that you create and curate is intended to drive people to your e-commerce site. Be sure customers aren’t disappointed when they arrive.

Abel & Cole is one example of a well designed and intuitive e-commerce website. The company offers sells various boxes of organic food to health and environmentally conscious consumers. Think LootCrate for foodies. The site is full of great visuals, and offers up lots of great content. This is great for visitors who want to spend some time exploring and getting to know the company.

However, in addition to catering to these customers, Abel & Cole also prominently features a choose your box option on their main page that takes visitors directly to the place where they can select their box and place their order.

2. Use Twitter to Aggressively Seek Out Customers And Build Relationships

There are many social media platforms that you can use to share content and promote your business. You may not participate in all of them. However, it is a safe bet that you will become active on Twitter. It’s a great place to get your voice out and let people know about your brand.

Just keep one thing in mind. If you are only using Twitter to broadcast messages and engage with people who have already found you, you’re missing opportunities. Maximize your use of this platform by finding conversations relating to your industry. Then, jump in with your thoughts, opinions, and knowledge. Find influential people in your space, follow them, and start engaging them and their followers.

Does it work? If you ask Dave Brookes of Teusner Wines, the answer would be yes. Brooks became an active member of Twitter. He searched the platform using keywords relating to the wine industry. He reached out to influencers. He started conversations. He participated in existing conversations. The result was increased traffic and winery tour bookings. This wouldn’t have happened if he stuck to Tweeting about the latest shiraz.

3. Know Exactly Why You Are Using Each Social Media Platform...

...and why you are posting each piece of content. As an e-commerce startup, it’s important to keep things lean, streamlined, an economical. Everything you do in your digital marketing campaign must have a purpose. There aren’t enough resources to jump into a platform, simply because it feels right. Nor is there time to create or share content because ‘some people might like it’.

If you are going to become active on a social media platform, be sure that you can clearly identify your goal in doing so. If you are creating or sharing a piece of content, know what your purpose is. Are you trying to help your branding efforts? This is where content sharing your story and values is valuable. Are you trying to drive people to a landing page? This is where promotional content is best used. Are you trying to boost likes by posting something viral? Stop wasting your time.

Joie De Vivre is a luxury hotel chain in California. They decided to focus on using Twitter as a means to drive sales by offering deep discount offers with extreme time limits. The result was getting reservations for more than 1000 rooms in less than a year.

Remember that you don’t have to be present on every platform. It’s perfectly reasonable to pick and choose. However, when you do decide to go active on a social media website, do so with specific goals in mind, and ensure that your activity on that site furthers those goals.

4. Use Personalization For UX And Retention

Personalization is important to people. In fact, it is so important that many people are willing to give information that they normally would not in order to have a personalized experience with your website. Use personalization to recommend products based on previous purchases. Greet new visitors and let them customize their own user experiences based on their needs. Remind customers about abandoned shopping carts. Create content that meets the needs of all of your buyer personas.

Zumba fitness once took personalization to a new level when they sent invitations to their annual conventions that contained personalized name badges for the recipients. This seemingly small gesture really earned a great response.

Great content marketing strategies involve reaching out to customers in unique and personal ways. Make an effort to provide your audience with content that speaks directly to their needs.

5. Work Hard to Establish Trust And Thought Leadership

Few things drive conversions, engagement, and traffic more than trust and thought leadership. Establish thought leadership by knowing your industry and your products inside and out. Become a source of information. You can do this by trying out a few of the following techniques:

• Participate in Question And Answer Forums Like Quora - Find questions relating to your industry, and provide detailed, expert answers.
• Create Long Form Content Such as eBooks And White Papers - This content tends to be popular with lower funnel followers and decision makers.
• Produce Product Demo And How to Videos - Be the first source for people who are using your products.
• Create And Upload Informative Presentations - This helps potential customers see what you have to offer.
• Be Responsive to Customer Service Requests on Social Media - When customers hit you up on Twitter with questions or concerns, responding quickly and professionally will boost your reputation with them and those who are watching.

If you establish thought leadership, you have already gone a long way towards building trust. To further build trust, be consistent, truthful, and reliable with your content. Here is an article where Forbes weighs in on thought leadership.

6. Using A/B Testing Will Increase Likelihood of Long Term Success

The smallest things can make a big difference in digital marketing. Moving a CTA button, adding a trust badge, changing a font, or even adjusting an image very slightly, can have a significant impact on the way that visitors react and interact with a landing page. This is why A/B testing is extremely important, and why successful companies test and retest each time they make a change.

In one case, Nature Air A/B tested two landing pages. Both were identical except one page had a more prominent call to action box. Testing showed that this small change earned them 591% more conversions. So, what makes changes like this so effective? Behavioral economics is the use of psychology and emotion to influence the behavior of users regarding financial decisions. In this case, creating a larger call to action box provided psychological incentive for more people to convert. In this case, the technique employed was anchoring. Here are a few other examples of behavioral economics:

• Providing Social Proof
• Implying Scarcity
• Establishing Authority
• Limiting Choices

Conclusion

Smart, streamlined, deliberate, informed, data-driven, and aggressive; these are the words that should describe your e-commerce startup’s inaugural digital marketing efforts. By applying the knowledge you’ve received here, you should be well on your way to success.

 

Thanks to Ethan Dunwill for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Ethan Dunwill is an internet marketing consultant and contributing blogger for Grab My Essay You can follow him on Twitter.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/ecommerce/creating-digital-marketing-campaign-ecommerce-startup-6-things-need-know/

How to develop an integrated Paid Search and SEO strategy for e-commerce

Examples and best practice advice on how to maximise your digital marketing reach with an integrated PPC and SEO approach.

When it comes to digital marketing, pay per click (PPC) advertising and search engine optimisation (SEO) are arguably two sides of the same coin. However, all too often companies will focus on one at the expense of the other.

At ClickThrough Marketing we provide an integrated digital marketing approach. Working with large-scale e-commerce sites, we have learnt the importance of combining PPC and SEO activities to gain greater client and market insight as well as streamline our own internal activities.

Here, we look at four ways in which PPC and SEO can work together to deliver better results across the board.

1. Finding SEO opportunities with PPC data

There are many ways in which PPC can support SEO and digital marketers should explore ways to integrate paid search into their SEO strategy. We recommend the following: 

• Sharing keyword data – Due to ‘not provided’, SEO teams can no longer report on what term brought a user to a site organically. However, SEO experts can use the “Search Query Reports” from AdWords to identify what keywords to prioritise when generating content aimed at the user. This is especially valuable when writing product descriptions or brand pages for e-commerce clients. Using the Search Query Report allows SEO practitioners to recognise which search terms are trending and tailor on page content towards these terms. For example, your SEO team may have used the search query report to find popular “How To…” queries to produce creative content, such as infographics and eBooks. There may even be opportunities to create new landing pages or extended landing pages from reviewing PPC keyword data, focusing on impressions, clicks and sales.
• Remarketing – SEO professionals can use PPC remarketing to support any creative content that they produce. For example, a company may decide to remarket to their existing users that they have recently launched a whitepaper or eBook to encourage downloads and further engagement.
• Sitelinks – Our SEO team works with the PPC team to implement sitelinks on Google AdWords campaigns to support blog posts. We find that this method leads to these blogs generating more visits than they normally would and reaching a wider audience. This also brings a greater CTR and interaction rates on the ads and, through the insightful knowledge of the blog, helps to drive more sales.
• Creatives – With the speed of AdWords PPC teams quickly discover what copy works well and can then share this data with their SEO and content marketing colleagues. Look at whether certain USPs or call to actions (CTAs) improve click-through rate and conversion rates? Then feed this back to the content team and watch how this impacts on organic listings and conversions.

2. Finding PPC opportunities with SEO data

Just as PPC data can be used to support SEO and content marketing activities for e-commerce clients, SEO data can support PPC.

• When budget is tight - Where PPC keywords are expensive it may be wise to focus SEO and content efforts on these keywords, especially if they have potential to drive large volumes of traffic. Naturally, the results will take longer to filter through, but this could prove a cost-effective way to see ranking gains as well as providing insight into what search terms really work to drive valid traffic and sales.
• Quality Score - Use SEO content writing skills to help improve keywords with low quality score. Adding SEO content to your landing pages could help better your keywords quality score, improving your ad rank, reducing your cost per click but also with more relevant content driving up conversion and engagement rate.
• Use organic data to plan your PPC strategy – Make a point to review organic traffic trends and consider factoring this in when planning your PPC spend. For example, if organic traffic peaks at the weekend but your PPC spend isn’t reflecting this then it could be a good idea to start pushing more at the weekend to see if this improves performance on PPC.

3. Cross channel considerations for organic and paid search

Taking a holistic approach to your digital marketing efforts will reap rewards, but don’t underestimate the impact of external forces on your campaigns.

• Site downtime - Site problems will not only affect SEO but can cost a lot of money on PPC. If a site goes down the PPC campaign will have to be paused. Continuous site problems will have an effect on SEO performance and can lower keyword rankings. Make sure your PPC and SEO teams are constantly communicating so that downtime can be reduced and campaigns fully optimised. There’s no point sending a potential consumer to a broken page – that’s poor PPC account management and will deteriorate UX and brand value if it is a constantly recurring issue.
• Competitor research - Competitors can be different for both SEO and PPC. However, it’s important that a PPC competitor is also considered as an SEO competitor because at any point they can become an SEO competitor.
• PPC offers a lot of data to identify new competitors or highlight when certain competitors are pushing harder. Run the “Auction Insights” report in AdWords to trend competitor impression share. Then, share this data with your SEO team.
• Overall combined strategy for SERP domination - Combining both SEO and PPC strategies will enable increased exposure and SERP domination. This will increase overall traffic. One way to maximise on this is through local strategies. Link local PPC campaigns to tailored local landing pages to drive traffic online and in store.

Increase your digital real estate with top three spots on paid and organic search and watch the business come in.

4. Site migration

Perhaps one of the most important times to bring SEO and PPC together is for a site migration. Moving your website from one platform to another, or creating a totally new site, is an arduous task dreaded by many marketing managers. However, by combining PPC and SEO activities you should be able to seamlessly migrate across with few glitches. Work together to identify a quiet time to implement your migration, be sure to pause your PPC campaigns while you move across and then work together to identify key SEO considerations after the migration.

• URL mapping documents - URL mapping documents will aid PPC when changing the URLs in the campaigns.
• Keyword rankings - Organic keyword rankings can fluctuate following migration. Increase PPC budget and push keywords that are suffering organically.

Get PPC and SEO working together and you’ll see the benefits of a collaborative approach. Using the same language, talking to the same target audience, and communicating constantly on matters such as keywords, content and even site downtime will present a stronger digital marketing proposition that attracts and converts.

Phil Robinson is the Founder of ClickThrough Marketing, a leading UK digital and search marketing agency specialising in helping companies increase leads and ecommerce sales. Experts in PPC, Display/Remarketing, SEO, Content Marketing, Social and A/B Testing campaigns, they work with brands including Dunelm Mill, Comic Relief, Peugeot and Halfords. Since 2006, Phil has trained over 1000 individuals and is co-author of the books "Pay Per Click Marketing Strategies" and "Search Engine Optimisation: Best Practice Strategies to Successfully Promote Your Website Online", both available from Amazon.  These books and all his eBooks & guides can be downloaded for free ClickThrough Marketing are content partners with Smart Insights.

You can connect with him via LinkedIn or follow ClickThrough @clickthrough.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-marketing/develop-integrated-paid-search-seo-strategy-ecommerce/