All posts in Uncategorized

The way people interact with businesses has changed dramatically over the past few years with the rise of online media. In other words, your audience is spending a lot of time online, so you need to market to them there.

Because of these shifts in consumer behavior, digital marketing is now a crucial part of any successful company’s overall strategy. But navigating what needs to go into it is no easy task.

To help you do just that, our latest ebook — Why Digital Marketing? The Essential Guide to Marketing Your Brand Online — explores the digital marketing tactics that will help attract customers and build trust online, while guiding you through creating a digital strategy step-by-step. You’ll learn why digital marketing is crucial for growing your business and the best practices for the major pillars of digital marketing, including:

Setting up and optimising your website
Creating a digital content strategy
Promoting your brand on social media
Converting website visitors into leads
Utilizing effective paid advertising
Turning leads into paying customers
Measuring and improving your marketing

Download your copy of Why Digital Marketing? The Essential Guide to Marketing Your Brand Online here.

Read More »

Easily spotted on the mobile web: holiday ad next to plane crash story;  Muslim dating ad next to KKK story; beauty ad next to domestic violence story; car ad next to emissions scandal story…

[This post originally appeared on our sister site ClickZ.com, but we thought it was so useful we wanted to share it here as well]

Let’s admit it we’ve all had an occasional giggle when we spot an ad prominently displayed next to inappropriate content on the web. But for advertisers this is no laughing matter.

An ad that is not displayed in a contextually appropriate environment is not only a waste of marketing budget, but is a potential embarrassment (if shared on social media) or, at worst, damaging to the brand’s reputation.

Research by inMobi (via eMarketer), July 2016, highlighted in this column on mobile ad fraud  reveals that 26% of advertisers state that concerns over brand safety is preventing the take up of programmatic purchasing (buying ads on the fly via an ad exchange) of mobile inventory.

While this is considerably less than the 48% concerned about fraud/viewability, this is surely a matter the industry needs to address.

The examples pictured in this column were easily found on the mobile web. Try it yourself by selecting potentially controversial stories and waiting to see what ad loads (often ads load slower than the content).

The sites we have featured are not implicitly “toxic”, such as pornography or gambling, but prominent news outlets where some stories will deal with unpleasant matters from time to time.

No one would want these news stories to go unreported. But that doesn’t mean that a holiday company wants its ad next to a plane crash story; a baby food brand ad next to a child sex abuse story; a Muslim dating service ad next to a KKK story; a beauty ad next to a domestic violence story or a car ad next to a story on the emissions scandal.

The ad business calls this brand safety or content adjacency. The issue is a real one.

But preventing brand safety issues has become increasingly complicated because:

Direct relationships between advertiser and publisher have increasingly been replaced by a web of intermediaries including ad exchanges and ad networks companies.
Many sites are implicitly safe, but publish eclectic content that could any subject – i.e. news sites or news stories/user generated content (UGC) on social media sites.
Keeping track of ads displayed on mobile sites and – particularly – mobile apps presents a unique set of challenges, compared with desktop web.

As Kurt Hawks, SVP of cross device and video at digital ad targeting specialist Conversant, explains:

Mobile ad tech is still maturing and while the mobile web operates similarly to desktop display, the in-app environment is a very different and more complex tech ecosystem. A rise in the intermediaries needed to execute in-app has resulted in a more fragmented digital supply chain that is more difficult to monitor.

Text, image and video-based analysis have gotten more adept at assessing brand fit within webpages, but a lack of mobile standardization, particularly in the in-app environment, can hinder the effectiveness of these tools. For example, the VPAID (Video Player Ad-Serving Interface Definition) standard is still not universally supported within in-app environments yet.

This is the forth in our series of columns on mobile ad quality: see also:

Mobile ad fraud 
 Combatting mobile ad fraud
Mobile ad viewability

Brand safety issues easily found on the mobile web

Let’s take a look at some examples of what appears to be untargeted ads appearing next to stories on three mainstream news sites: Inquisitr, Washington Post and The Mirror; and/or via Google’s AMP (accelerated mobile pages) search results.

Please note that brand safety is subjective, we can only guess that the brand, the viewer and the publisher would deem these contexts inappropriate.

It is hard to imagine many mainstream advertisers wishing to be associated with a story about a man being arrested for murder, a KKK march in favor of Donald Trump’s victory, or pictured above a picture of a KKK ceremony. There were plenty of examples spotted on various journals – but this was the most controversial: a Muslim dating site alongside this INQUISITR story.

Are stories of funerals or air crashes ever a good context for advertisers? But surely no travel brand would wish to be pushing overseas holidays against the backdrop of a funeral of the president of a football club wiped out in an air disaster as spotted alongside this Washington Post story.

Child sex abuse is also a topic that most advertisers would consider toxic, but a brand, particularly one of the magnitude of Heinz is will be questioning how an ad for baby meals ended up topping this Daily Mirror story  about alleged child sex abuse at Chelsea Football Club.

Just to be certain, we checked the stories pictured in this column with Melody Gambino, director of marketing at brand safety expert, Grapeshot:

Every one of these examples is poignant. The key to brand safety is not only ensuring you don’t put your advertisement in front of bots or on spam sites, but also that the content surrounding your ad is not offensive. This can be in a broad sense (terrorism) or something specific to your brand (emissions testing for VW, for example).

But no one can say for certain what is considered brand safe or not except the advertiser, explains Melody Gambino

Brand safety means different things for every brand and every campaign, so clarity about what it means for you is imperative to ensure you are getting the most from your brand safety partners. 

Defining brand safety

In the useful New Rules of Brand Safety,  Grapeshot gives the following definition for brand safety:

The term “brand safety” is notionally understood. It represents an environment that is fundamentally not hostile, will not cause perceptions of uncomfortable association or, worse, spur unwelcome sharing or commenting.

The costs of an error in this arena can mount quickly, from the need to craft defensive counter-messaging to lost sales. Only after the fact does the degree of damage become clear.

Dirty dozen of toxic content categories:

There are 12 different content categories which, according to the report, tend to be considered toxic and are routinely excluded by agencies and brand safety tools. These are adult, arms, crime, death or injury, online privacy, hate speech, military conflict, obscenity, illegal drugs, spam or harmful site, terrorism and tobacco.

CASE STUDY

Based on these criteria, the three stories pictured above – the KKK organizer’s arrest, the Chapeco funeral and the Chelsea abuse allegations – all appear to fail the toxic test.

Presumably a rape story, even when associated a classic film such as Last Tango in Paris, is deemed toxic content. But should it be considered universally inappropriate for all brands?

The following ads have no contextual relevance to the film or the news story, but is this an association that charities or luxury brands should avoid? N.B. if you perform a mobile or online search on this story, you will find plenty of other examples, these are not isolated cases:

World Food Program ad on the Chicago Tribune.
Rado Swiss watches ad on the com.
Mercedes A-Class ad on Sky News.

Targeted or untargeted?

Advertisers attempt to improve the impact of ads by targeting the ads at visitors based on the publisher, the visitor, their location, and contextual relevance of the story using keywords, images and metatags.

There is little evidence targeting in the Last Tango rape story, but the following three examples suggest contextual targeting at its most unfortunate.

The Volkswagen emissions story isn’t a universally toxic topic – but it is one that auto manufacturers, such as VW, should and do seek to avoid. The ad targeting software appears to have picked up on the keyword “Volkswagen” on this Chicago Tribune story to serve up ads for a VW leasing service. Unfortunately the ad targeting failed to pick out the word “emissions”, so did not put the break on the ad.

In the second example, the ad targeting seems to pick out the keywords “makeup tutorial” in this Mediaite story to serve up an ad for a Beauty app and a recruitment ad for models. To a computer this will look like a good opportunity, but no beauty brand will want to be associated with the use of makeup to hide domestic violence.

It is unlikely that the CBC house ad “Holiday like you mean it” is contextually targeted at this story 3 about drug use by Hitler and Nazi Army, but a reader would be forgiven for thinking so.

How brand safety works

There are two key methods for avoiding brand safety issues:

Blocking websites/URLs that are known to contain contentious material.
Detecting context from keywords either a) pre-bid, preventing the ad space being purchased at the exchange) or, where not possible, b) post-bid, where the ad is blocked from appearing on the page.

The first approach relies on agencies maintaining vast blacklists (and whitelists) of websites. Ad technology then blocks the ads from displaying on these blacklisted sites. The problem with this method is that it assumes that all content on blacklisted sites is bad for business and all content on whitelisted sites is good for business – which as we have seen above is not the case.

The second approach is more complicated. Ad quality/verification software, from vendors such as Integral Ad Science and Meetrics scan websites for possible issues for advertisers.

Jason Cooper, general manager, mobile at Integral Ad Science, tells how it works:

When web pages load they are requesting content from all across the Internet; text, copy, images, advertising content, tracking and analytics pixels among others. In each one of these requests, a little tout runs ahead declaring the page that is making the request; by intercepting that call, a verification vendor can decide whether that page meets the brand safety threshold of an advertiser before allowing the ad to serve.

However, apps don’t send URL’s, in fact identifying the app name requires a number of different strategies and is something that will be solved incrementally over time.

Issues with mobile (apps)

One advantage of native apps, is that they are scanned – particularly with the Apple Store – for malicious code and inappropriate content, before being admitted to the apps stores. However this does not take account of individual stories, user generated content or content pulled in from third party sites. Unfortunately, as native apps use proprietary code, rather than the web technologies, the web-based (JavaScript) scanning techniques used by the verification vendors is ineffective.

Felix Badura, director product development at Meetrics, explains:

It is not possible to apply state-of-the-art brand safety technology to the in-app environment due to technical limitations with regard to the interplay of native code (e.g. Java, Swift) and web code (HTML, JavaScript) inside the webview container that actually displays the ad.

Due to the fact, that native apps and content loaded via a webview cannot exchange information, JavaScript based ad verification for instance cannot scan the content of the app on the fly.

Tips and common mistakes with brand safety

Don’t assume that because you are buying ad space on a known app it will be safe for your brand. Apps don’t need to be porn free to tick the box of ‘safe’. An article about performance enhancing drug scandals next to Reebok or Nike ads can be equally as damaging. – Melody Gambino, Grapeshot.

Brands must be especially vigilant and engage vendors that have robust brand safety capabilities (semantic analysis of text; tags; imagery and tonality of web pages and apps; video-level data), but must also ensure these partners are capable of handling the nuances of brand safety in-app. – Kurt Hawks,

Only serve ads via the big marketers like AdMob or MoPub and keeping the pressure high on insisting to have a third party measuring the data. – Felix Badura,

While it is a good idea, to retrieve and analyse the Package names of the apps where an ad is running, one should be aware that even problematic apps might be uploaded using inconspicuous names to stay below the radar. – Felix Badura, Meetrics.

This is Part 39 of the ClickZ ‘DNA of mobile-friendly web’ series.

Here are the recent ones:

Mobile ad viewability: what is it and does it matter?
How agencies and advertisers can spot and combat mobile ad fraud
Mobile advertising accounts for nearly half of digital spend, but it comes at a price: ad fraud
Where is Google heading with mobile local search?
Is Google killing mobile organic search

 

Andy Favell is ClickZ columnist on mobile. He is a London-based freelance mobile/digital consultant, journalist and web editor.

Contact him via LinkedIn  or Twitter @Andy_Favell.

Read More »

Here at HubSpot, we’ve been giving a lot of thought to the concept of a growth stack — the set of tools that marketers and sales teams use to drive growth. As you might imagine, we’re working to build our products to serve as a strong foundation for your growth stack. But what does that look like?

To dig deeper into what the typical growth stack looks like, we recently partnered with Datanyze, a platform that can track a large number of technology categories. Together, we set out to determine what technologies HubSpot customers have enabled on their websites. 

In this post, we’ll break down our customer adoption, and show which of the more notable technologies are being used.

7 Key Technologies Used by HubSpot Customers
1) General Technologies

Among HubSpot customers, we saw a widespread adoption of technologies that, when it comes to marketing and sales, are pretty standard — things like analytics, email, social sharing, and CMS, to name a few.

2) Analytics Technologies

Under the analytics category, we can see that Google dominates the market, with 98% of all HubSpot customers leveraging Google Analytics — that’s great market share.

What we found to be even more interesting was the supplementary set of tools that our customers use to enhance and disseminate their content, which follow below.

(Note: The Leadin product has since been rolled into HubSpot Marketing Free.)

3) Video Platforms

Over half of our customers — 53% — have an online video platform enabled on their websites. We’ve seen from previous research that video is very popular among consumers, and demand for video-based content continues to grow. Video adoption by our customers indicates a recognition of that demand — They’re keeping up with changing content preferences.

The top-used video platform — by wide margin — is YouTube, followed by Vimeo and Wistia. Note: Many websites use multiple tools.

4) Ad Networks and Retargeting

A good number of customers — 29% — are also leveraging ad networks, and 26% are retargeting to reach a wider audience. True to our inbound philosophy, our customers are focusing mostly on unobtrusive search ads and social media ads.

Retargeting, meanwhile, allows our customers to re-engage with prospects who may have left items in a shopping cart, or viewed specific webpages. For those efforts, 71% of customers use Facebook, with Google Remarketing and Dynamic Remarketing rounding out the top three tools.

5) Support and Chat Technologies

To better serve customers and prospects, about one out of five of the websites we examined enable support and chat tools, in order to directly communicate with website visitors. There’s no obvious leader in the chat tooling space, with the majority of websites using lesser-known chat tools. In our sample, Zopim and LiveChat were the chat leaders.

We saw a more clear-cut leader in the support tool space, with 44% of customers using support technologies opting for Zendesk. As more customers expect on-demand service, businesses who hoping to leverage superior service as a differentiator will continue to invest in both support and chat technologies.

6) Payment and Ecommerce Tools

The last technologies crucial to growth are ecommerce and payment tools. Obviously, businesses and buyers alike always welcome a seamless way to collect payment.

Overall, payments and ecommerce show relatively low adoption, with just 4% and 2% of websites using each respective technologies.

For websites with payment collection capabilities, 33% use PayPal and 21% use Stripe. The rest of the market is scattered among smaller players.

WooCommerce is a leader in the ecommerce category, with 43% market share within our sample.

7) Other Observations Based on Demographics

Finally, we crunched the numbers and reviewed technology adoption based on our customer demographics. We found some interesting differences, and plan to follow this research with additional insights from our data set.

In the meantime, check out some of the more interesting figures we discovered:

34% of B2C companies use retargeting, compared to 24% of B2B companies — a 10% difference.
44% of larger companies (more than 1,000 employees) use advertising networks, versus 27% of small businesses (1 to 50 employees).
Our customers in France have the highest use of online video platforms (49%), while Brazil had the lowest (43%).
Brazilian customers had the highest use of retargeting software (41%). Only 12% of customer in the Netherlands had retargeting enabled.
Companies in the software industry have the highest use of support and feedback tools (21%).
ecommerce sites have the highest use of both retargeting tools (50%) and chat software (31%).
Non-profit and education sites have the highest use of online video platforms (68% and 66%, respectively).

What’s in Your Growth Stack?

The technology groupings identified in this data are powerful levers for rapid growth. By examining the use of video, ad networks, retargeting, support, chat, ecommerce, and payments, you might begin to see what a growth stack could look like for your business.

Do you agree? Let us know what your growth stack looks like in the comments.

Read More »

Jaipur station in Rajasthan was among the first stations to be connected to Railwire Wi-Fi.

“I visit [Jaipur station] every 3 to 4 days to get fast access to the Internet. I stop there for a few minutes, download apps, update them and get things my daughter wants. She is in 10th grade and uses my smartphone in the evenings to fulfill her educational needs. She also teaches my wife, her mother, to read and write using my smartphone.” 

This is the story of Bhagwan Sahay, whom our team met at Jaipur Railway station, one of the earliest stations to be connected to Railwire Wi-Fi this year. It’s one of the many stories we’ve heard from people across India who are using this Wi-Fi in many ways, big and small, that improve their daily lives. 

With Railwire Wi-Fi rolling into Udhagamandalam (Ooty) today, we’ve now brought high-speed Internet to 100 of the busiest railway stations across India. That means the 10 million people (think the entire population of Sweden) who pass through these stations every day now have access to fast enough Internet to stream (or offline) an HD video, research their destination or download a new book or game for the journey ahead. And for 15,000 people, every day, these stations connect them to the Internet for the first time.

We’re really excited about how far we’ve come since announcing our partnership with Indian Railways and RailTel to provide Wi-Fi at 400 railway stations across India. But what has really inspired us are the stories of how people, like Bhagwan, are using this high-speed access to the full and open Internet to make their lives a little bit better.

Somesh Singh, an engineering graduate, has been using the Wi-Fi at Hazrat Nizamuddin station in Delhi to search the web for job opportunities and prepare for interviews. The high-speed connection helps him save money and time since he doesn’t have to wait for slow-loading pages or worry about the cost of browsing. Ajay Jain, a teacher, uses the Wi-Fi to get schoolwork done on his daily commute from Indore to Ujjain, so he can spend more time with his family once he gets home. And Sandesh Awasthi, an avid cricket fan, has been having a lot more fun while waiting at Churchgate station in Mumbai, since he can now stream his favorite games to his phone in HD.

A traveler calls home while waiting for his train in Pune 

“I am migrant worker from Bihar and I travel to Rajasthan for work. Traveling usually means I won’t have a good connection. I got so excited when I saw free Wi-Fi here at the station. I just called my wife, and the voice and picture clarity were so good. I haven’t seen her face this clear in so long, whenever I talk the image is blurred because the network isn’t great. She also got so excited to see my call, she was very surprised to see me. I feel so good after speaking to her. I can’t stop smiling.” —Bholu

A look inside Churchgate station, one of Mumbai’s busiest, which came online in August. 

A traveler checks train timetables online

A young boy keeps himself entertained using the station Wi-Fi while his family waits for their train in Jaipur. 

Our team at Udhagamandalam (Ooty) station today. Ooty is also the terminus station of Nilgiri Mountain Railway, a beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

What’s next? In September we announced Google Station, which gives partners an easy set of tools to roll-out Wi-Fi hotspots in public places. With all the possibilities that our partnership with Indian Railways and RailTel have created for 10 million Indians passing through 100 stations every day, we look forward to the many more opportunities that Google Station will open up to every Indian and the stories we hope to hear from them.

Read More »

Did you know that the search result in #1 position on Google gets 33% of search traffic? And that page 1 search engine results resulted in 92% of all traffic, dropping off by 95% for page 2?

Numbers don’t lie. If you want to climb to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), well-written, engaging content alone won’t cut it. You also need to focus on writing SEO-driven, keyword-focused content that attracts not only website traffic, but the right kind of traffic. You might be thinking, “That sounds great, Courtney! But, how do I get started?”

We’re sharing 5 essential tips for creating SEO-friendly blog posts without sacrificing user experience and engagement, tips you can start using today: 

1) Pick highly-effective keywords

Google handles over 40,000 search queries a second. Staggering, right? If you want to cut through search result clutter and outrank your competitors, you need to target the specific keywords and phrases your potential customers are searching. How else will they find your content and website?

To identify those hot keywords, head on over to the social platforms your target audience frequents and see what’s trending. Pay close attention to the exact phrases they use and monitor popular industry terms and topics.

Google Trends can also give you a feel for what keywords are popular at any given time. If you see searches are steadily declining over time for a specific keyword, you know that’s probably not the right keyword to target for your marketing and vice versa for increasing trends.

If you’re ever running low on keyword ideas, get inspiration from your competition. Use tools to see what keywords they’re currently ranking for — if these keywords are relevant to your business, consider using them too! SEMRush lets you enter a competitor and see the keywords they’re ranking for, their position in search results, traffic received for that keyword and other key metrics.

Keep in mind that the most obvious keywords aren’t always the best keywords. Searchers tend to use very specific “long-tail” keywords, keyword phrases and questions when they’re looking for something. Long-tail keywords comprise up to 70% of all search traffic and can unlock the door to successful SEO. When WPBeginner, the largest WordPress resource site for WordPress beginners, adopted a long-tail SEO strategy, they increased their organic search traffic by 20% in just two months!

Because you face fierce competition for shorter, more general keywords, you often have a better chance of ranking in the top results for long-tail keywords. And, long-tail keywords allow you to zero in on higher quality website traffic that often knows what they’re looking for and may be farther along in the buyer’s journey.

Once you’ve done your research and built a list of what you think are the most valuable, relevant keywords, plug them into a keyword research tool like Google’s Keyword Planner, Moz’s Keyword Explorer, Ubersuggest, Keyword Tool and so on. Many keyword research tools give you the monthly volume for any given keyword. Test out different keyword tools — marketers are drawn to different ones for different reasons.   

Depending on your business or industry (or budget or bandwidth for SEO efforts), it may be important to rank for high competition, short tail keywords. Still, try to also optimize for a healthy dose of long-tail keywords that are high in search volume but low in competition. You may find it’s much easier to rank for these words.

Remember that your focus keywords will evolve over time as trends shift, terminology changes or your product/service line changes. Be sure to conduct keyword research periodically to ensure you’re still focusing on the right keywords for your target audience and not missing out on vital ranking opportunities.

2) Naturally integrate keywords throughout your posts

Once you’ve decided on a list of target keywords, it’s time to write a blog post focused on one of these keywords. Brainstorm blog topics with your team and decide on a topic that will entice and engage your target audience.

Keep your buyer personas, their motivations, challenges, interests, etc. in mind throughout the brainstorming process. Choose a topic that will emotionally resonate with your potential customers and their needs, desires or pains.

As you write your blog, your keyword and natural variations should be regularly interspersed throughout the post. Your primary keyword should appear in these key places:

Title
Headings and subheadings
URL if possible
Image alt text (search engines can’t read images)
Meta description
Throughout the content

Remember that you’re writing for humans, not search engines. Focus on engaging readers with a natural writing style that takes their needs and interests into account.

Be sure to avoid overusing any keyword (also known as “keyword stuffing”) at all costs. Keyword stuffing may lead to a website being penalized or banned in search engine results pages either temporarily or permanently. But even more importantly, if your keyword appears too often and feels forced, you sacrifice a reader’s experience, insult their intelligence and compromise the article’s quality. Don’t give readers any reason to hit the back button and turn to a competitor’s blog for answers.

3) Link to influencers

As you build out your blog post, don’t be afraid to link to other articles or blogs. Linking to applicable and reputable websites not only offers blog readers additional reading material to expand their knowledge, but it also shows Google and other search engines that you’ve done your research. And the blogger or writer may even return the favor and link to your site.

Nothing strengthens a blog post like hard-to-argue-with, research-backed statistics from influential websites. Compelling stats help you build a more convincing and concrete argument that will get your readers thinking (especially when they’re from trustworthy sites they know and love).

4) Aim for scannable, longer posts

In an age of short attention spans (average of 8 seconds for humans), you would think shorter blog posts are the way to go. But search engines actually prefer longer, in-depth blog posts.

The longer your blog post, the greater its chance of appearing in the top search engine results. SerpIQ found that the 10th position pages have 400 fewer words than 1st position pages. Longer posts will rank more easily for your target keyword.

Think about it: the more content on the page, the more clues search engines have to figure out what your blog is about. We recommend writing a minimum of 300 words per blog post. This length gives search engines plenty of keywords and text to crawl and helps them understand what your blog is about.

The downside to longer blogs is that they may scare off your readers. We live in a world of skimmers and scanners. In a heat map analysis, CoSchedule learned that only 10-20% of their readers were making it to the bottom of their posts. So, the million dollar question is, how can longer blog posts appeal to today’s online readers?

You can write scannable, readable blog posts that hook online readers by tightening up your sentences and paragraphs. Turn a long-winded sentence into two. Keep your paragraphs to 2-3 sentences max.

Also, take full advantage of bulleted lists and subheadings that grab reader’s attention. By following these tactics, you’ll create blogs that are easier to read (especially on a mobile device!) and less intimidating to the scanner’s eye.

5) Don’t forget internal links

Linking to other pages or blog posts on your website helps search engines crawl your website and create a more accurate sitemap. It also helps your audience discover more of your content and get to know you as a trustworthy, credible source of information. Internal links to other valuable content keep users on your site longer, reducing bounce rate and increasing your potential for a conversion (and isn’t that what it’s all about?).

When linking to any pages on your website, or even outside sources, use natural language for your anchor text. Avoid using spammy or generic text such as “top-rated cheap laptops” or “click here.” Instead, use descriptive keywords that give readers a sense of what they will find when they click on the hyperlink, such as a search engine optimization guide.

Never force feed links to your top webpages, featured products or discounted items. These types of links will only turn off readers and could lead to search engines penalizing your website.

A word of caution: don’t overdo your internal linking or any linking. We know it’s tempting to link to all of your blogs and webpages, but only choose the ones that best enhance the point or insight you’re writing about in any particular blog. Always think about whether or not these links naturally tie in with the subject matter and if they will offer significant value to your readers.

Bottom Line

If you want your blogs to rank at the top of page one (and why wouldn’t you?), your main focus should be on creating blogs that both users and search engines will love. By optimizing your blogs for both, you can earn higher rankings in SERPs, get more qualified web traffic and increase conversion rates. And wasn’t that the exact reason you started blogging to begin with?

What are your strategies for optimizing your blogs for SEO? Did we miss any? Share with us in the comments below.

Read More »

If you’re just getting started with your business, figuring out who should manage your AdWords campaigns and what to do first can be a challenge. Columnist Brett Middleton offers tips to get you on the right path.

The post How your startup should be using Google AdWords appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Read More »

With the end of 2016 fast approaching, we list some of the best ecommerce and cart abandonment stats we’ve seen this year.

1: SMS Remarketing

This year we won at the MOMA Awards for our work with Firefly on SMS Remarketing. The stats below give an idea of just how effective SMS can be.

2: Which Days Have Most Abandonments?

Based on data from more than 1 billion abandoned carts, we know that Tuesday is the ‘worst’ day of the week for cart abandonment.

Fewest abandonments happen on a Saturday between 8 and 9pm, while abandonment is lowest around Christmas and similar sale periods, as people have less reason to delay purchases.

3: Add to Cart Rates by Device

Add to cart rates are highest on desktop and tablet devices (10.4% and 10.3% respectively). Overall conversion rates were 2.5% for Q3 2016.

4: Reasons for Cart Abandonment

Unexpected shipping costs, perhaps revealed late during checkout, are the number one reason cited for cart abandonment.

Other key issues include making customers register before they checkout, concerns about security, and confusing checkout design.

5: Cart Abandonment Rates by Sector

Abandonment rates vary by sector, with fashion retailers enjoying the lowest abandonment rates.

Relatively easy purchase processes and ease of return help here, and also explain why retail abandonment is lower in general.

Travel and finance abandonment is highest, partly due to the generally longer application processes, and perhaps the relative lack of digital maturity when compared to retail.

 

6: Sales by Hour on Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Using data from our clients, we had a look at sales and abandonments on Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2016.

The chart below shows sales patterns compare to a ‘normal’ shopping day, as well as the peak times for during the Black Friday weekend.

The peak period for completed sales was between 8 and 10am on Black Friday morning, while the second peak happened on Monday evening as the sales were coming to a close.

7: Why People Abandon Travel Bookings

Many travel bookings tend to be more considered purchases, with customers taking 45 days and visiting multiple sites before making a decision.

So the reasons for abandonment are different from retail. Indeed, the top two reasons are around research and price comparison while retail abandonment tends to be about checkout process issues.

 

This post originally appeared on the SaleCycle blog, and is reproduced with permission. 

Read More »

Most people are familiar with Black Friday and Cyber Monday as some of the busiest shopping days of the year; businesses spend months preparing their holiday campaigns in order to make the most of these two days. But each year it seems that more and more companies are also taking advantage of #GivingTuesday by finding ways to entice their audience not only to purchase holiday gifts, but to donate and give back to charities and nonprofits.

In this article, we’ve analyzed 8 of these campaigns from 2016 to find out which ones have what it takes to engage readers and meet their fundraising goals, and which ones unfortunately fall flat. Read on to learn more about what makes a #GivingTuesday campaign a winner or a loser.

The Winners
#1 The San Diego American Marketing Association (AMA)

The San Diego AMA is a nonprofit, professional organization geared towards providing information, education, resources, and connections for those looking to further their career in marketing. They created this #GivingTuesday campaign in order to encourage people to donate to their 2 scholarship programs: The Social Impact Scholarship and the Diversity Leadership Scholarship. There are quite a few things they did right in this campaign, namely:

They explained briefly what #GivingTuesday is all about
They included their goal (to raise money for the scholarships) in the beginning of the email
They linked the 2 scholarships to pages that give more information about them
They included a plug for a future event the organization is hosting
They included a section dedicated to teaching readers about how to refuel their content strategy, which is essentially a preview of what the organization does for those who join.
Finally, they thanked the groups that sponsor them.

All in all, I consider this a winning #GivingTuesday campaign for the AMA because it was simple, eye-catching, and full of great content.

#2 The San Diego Fleet Week Foundation

The San Diego Fleet Week Foundation is a nonprofit group that supports Military Veterans by putting on entertaining events during Fleet Week. The event is held annually, and any proceeds raised that exceed the operating expenses for Fleet Week are donated to military charities.

We consider this #GivingTuesday campaign a win because:

They included pertinent facts about why Fleet Week is a necessity in San Diego (they have the largest military concentration in the world)
They explained their goal clearly and in the beginning of the campaign- to encourage people to donate $20 to provide lunch for a family of 4
They explained how this campaign has been a success in the past (they’ve provided over 1200 meals for service members and their families)
They included a button to donate right in the email, making it quick and easy to give money
They provided a link to their website for those looking to learn more
The email is colorful yet easy to read, and it contains real pictures of servicemen and women in the community who will benefit from the donations.

#3 PayPal

Most people are familiar with PayPal seeing as it’s one of the most popular ways to send money electronically. It only makes sense, then, that they would create a #GivingTuesday campaign devoted to sending money to those who are less fortunate. Their campaign is a little different; for one thing they’re not a nonprofit, and instead of supporting one group, charity, or organization, they let users choose the charity they wish to support. Here are some reasons why we consider this campaign a great one:

They created a campaign that compliments their business. PayPal is all about making it easy and simple to send money to others, and that’s the premise behind this fundraiser. They’ve made it easy and simple to donate to thousands of charities around the world.
Another major bonus is that they plan to add 1% to each donation made; this adds up to a pretty substantial number, and there aren’t many companies offering to do so.
They included 2 separate buttons for people to donate, truly making it quick and easy.
They explained the security of their donation process, which also emphasizes the security of PayPal in general.
They included a nice photo of a young girl to put a face on the donations.
They suggested several big-name charities that people have the option to support, and made it possible to click on their icons to learn more about the charity and as another way to quickly donate money.
Note: If you do choose to click on a charity icon, it directs you to a nice page that explains that 101% of your donation will go to the charity, PayPal will cover all the fees, and you’ll immediately receive a tax receipt.
Finally, they included a link at the bottom of the email encouraging users to go to their website to purchase a variety of gift cards to meet their holiday shopping needs- a plug we think they deserve considering their offering to add money to others’ donations.

#4 Illinois State University

The University in Normal, IL hosts a #GivingTuesday campaign every year with the purpose of raising money for various programs and projects across the campus. This campaign is successful because:

They are asking readers to break last year’s record of donations, which creates a sense of purpose and urgency in the campaign.
They state, in numbers, exactly how much money they’ve already raised and how much more they’d like to raise, making their goal transparent and easy to understand.
They provide a link for people to donate right in the email
They’ve also created their own special hashtag, #GivingTuesdayISU, to spread the word about their campaign on social media
The email is short and sweet but still contains all the pertinent information that readers need to know about the campaign
They send readers periodic updates on how the campaign is doing, and if you click on the “donate” link you’re taken to a page that shows exactly how much they still have left to raise.

#5 Workshops for Warriors

Workshops for Warriors is a nonprofit school that trains and certifies veterans into advanced manufacturing careers. Their #GivingTuesday is a great one- here’s why:

The headline clearly states the purpose of the organization- to support military veterans
Throughout the campaign they provide videos of veterans explaining why they need assistance and how Workshops for Warriors is able to provide the much-needed help. This gives a very personal touch to the fundraiser.
They also included a specific goal for the funds raised- to build a new building that can train 450 veterans as opposed to the current 120.
They include an easy-to-see donate button.
They use a pull quote to help break up the catch and keep interest
They link to social media at the end so you can share the campaign and also access more success stories from veterans.

A Few Campaigns That Could Use Some Work
#1 Pro Kids The First Tee of San Diego

Pro Kids is a sports program that teaches kids the game of golf while also teaching them life lessons and leadership skills. While the program seems to be full of positive attributes, unfortunately their #GivingTuesday campaign didn’t use this to their advantage. Note that this message did come into my inbox the day before Giving Tuesday, but there were still opportunities missed. They ended up on this list because:

The “Be ready to support Pro Kids” headline seems like they’re telling readers to donate as opposed to asking them.
Because of this poorly worded tagline, I almost missed the part where the board of directors have agreed to match all donations. This should be a huge part of the email, not just a small line tucked away at the top (still though, wonderful idea!).
There are no personal stories, photos, videos, etc. anywhere in the email. While it says you’ll be helping 100 underprivileged kids, I have no idea who these kids are. Where are their photos? Where are the success stories?
The email doesn’t say anything about what the Pro Kids organization is; I had to Google it myself in order to learn about their goals and mission statement.

One thing I will say though is that the colors are excellent in this campaign. The designer did a great job, it’s just the content and CTAs that need some improvements.

#2 Monarch School

The San Diego Monarch School is a K-12 program designed to help San Diego’s homeless youth receive an education. While their website provides a ton of information about the great work the program is doing, their #GivingTuesday campaign email unfortunately didn’t meet the mark. It’s on the list because:

It explains very little about what the Monarch program is, their purpose, and their goals. It also doesn’t link to their website, which fortunately does provide this important information.
It states that donations will help their literacy program, but it would be nice to have been provided some more information about exactly how the money will be spent- on more books, computers, a nicer building?
They came up with the GREAT idea to have a 3rd grade class take over Facebook and explain why reading is important, but we don’t see any of this in the email. Instead, all they provide is the Facebook logo and expect you to click on it and travel to another site.  People most likely won’t do this unless they’re already hooked on this campaign.  It would have been nice if they included a preview of what some of the students said (and their photos) in the initial email. Then readers might be more inclined to visit another web page to learn more.

#3 Kinship United

Kinship United is a group that works with underprivileged countries throughout the world, helping widows and orphans get the resources they need to survive through the church and rescue groups.  While it certainly is a noble cause they are working for, and their hearts are in the right place, this #GivingTuesday campaign falls a little short. Mainly because:

They don’t give any information about the specific #GivingTuesday project they are launching- their goal(s), what group they are targeting, etc.
There are no photos or anything else to personalize the campaign.
The email is disorganized and hard to follow because it’s missing headings and subheadings. It appears that random phrases and sentences have been bolded without a lot of thought into why.

However, one thing this campaign did great is ask others to share, which is something none of the others on this list can say. A great tactic that simply gets overlooked.

Make sure to check out this article to learn how to make the most of your email marketing strategy. Do you know any more #GivingTuesday campaigns that make good examples? Comment in the section below!

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer for HigherVisibility, a full service SEO agency, and a contributor to SEW. You can connect with Amanda on Twitter and LinkedIn. 

 

Read More »

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m an online retailer’s worst nightmare. On more occasions than I care to count, I’ve found myself browsing through page after page of online stores, adding items to my cart, and then abandoning it altogether come checkout time. While it isn’t always to the fault of the retailer, the problem of abandoned shopping carts is widely shared across e-commerce sites.

Sometimes it’s just the nature of the buyer, but in many cases, there’s a part of the user experience that deters them from completing the checkout process. The months between September and February are some of the most shopping-heavy points of the year, which means we’re currently knee deep in e-commerce season. If you’ve been noticing spikes in shopping cart abandonment, it may be one of these common issues.

Complicated check-out process.

Obviously, a complicated check-out process that requires users to jump through a bunch of hoops to make a purchase will result in shopping cart abandonment. But what many people don’t realize is that even the slightest deviation from simplicity can turn a customer off from fulfilling their purchase. Here’s an example of how this happens with me:

Me: Fills cart with items, clicks check out, begins filling in information fields (Name, address, etc.). Sees “Company Name” field. Immediately closes out of browser.

Don’t ask me why, but even the tiniest request for unnecessary information, specifically the “Company Name” field, makes me not want to put my personal information in. It sounds crazy, but studies have actually shown that the less information you require users to enter, the higher percentages of conversions you’ll see.

How to fix it: To ensure that you have a clean, simplified check-out process, start by making sure it’s broken up into bite sized chunks. Common steps include a section for entering information personal info (name, email address), a section for entering shipping information, and a section for payment-three simplified steps. In each section, make sure there aren’t any excess fields for users to fill in. Try and get them from purchasing to the confirmation page in as few clicks as possible.

Lack of incentive.

If you’re really trying to push users over the shopping cart abandonment hump, a little incentive goes a long way. Believe it or not, many customers actually factor incentivized deals into their decision making process when finalizing their purchase.

More and more, consumers have started looking at shipping costs as an additional tax. That’s why membership programs like Amazon Prime and Zappos Premium are so successful-because they eliminate several steps from the online buying process and often include shipping for free.

Another frequently seen problem is the “coupon code” field some check-out processes display. If the user doesn’t have a promo or coupon code, there’s a good chance they’ll start scanning the internet to find one, or abandon their shopping cart because they feel like they’re over paying.

How to fix it: Incentivize purchases however you can. You might even consider factoring shipping into the cost of the items you sell online, because people will see “free shipping” and conclude that it’s a more cost-effective purchase. Another possibility is to offer rewards or added incentives with every purchase. For example, if you do have the promo/coupon code field, but the user doesn’t have a coupon, maybe include a note underneath that says “10% off your next purchase if you order now” or “refer a friend to get $10 off this purchase.” The tiniest nudge can be all users need to get through that check out process.

Read More »

Survey questions cover everything from SEO agency size and revenue to services offered and retainer fees.

The post BrightLocal opens its 2016 local SEO survey to see how the industry has changed over the last year appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Read More »