Right before the holidays, Instagram snuck in an update for its most second-most popular spun-out app, Boomerang. The app currently sits in the top 250 on the App Store’s free apps.
The changes, although subtle, will probably make its users super happy. The premise of the app is to make little clipped-together videos, similar to an animated GIF or an Apple Live Photo. It feeds into… Read More
Can you remember the last time a friend or relative popped out of the woodworks to scare the bajesus out of you? That’s how I feel when I see new ad tests on the SERPs. Nerdy, yes, but PPC and SEO people who spend their days analyzing the SERPs can likely relate.
If you’ve been too busy collecting all of you Cyber Monday shipments to notice the crazy ad tests that have been running on Google and Yahoo this week, don’t fret, I’ve got the 411 for you. The tests spotted over the last few days have proven what we already know to be true, the SERPs are constantly changing! Without further or due let’s dive into the three tests that have left me spooked this week.
Wait, what now? More competition? No thank you. Those with solid organic listings are not psyched to hear this news. For the last several years the max amount of paid ads above the fold has always been three, but this week Jennifer Slegg reported seeing four when searching on Google.co.in.
According to Slegg there’s no need to adjust your strategy just yet. “It does seem a limited test at the time,” she wrote earlier this week. “It is only showing up on Google India and not all searches trigger the four ads above the fold, even when there are multiple ads to display.” However, as of today the test is showing up in the US too for about 1% of keywords.
So, what does this mean for advertisers? If four ad slots are made available, it means more opportunity to rank in the top spots, so PPCers would likely be pleased if this test is ever released across all of Google search.
Yah, you heard me. Scary, right? Yahoo has always had an interesting approach to search, but this test really takes the cake. Yahoo began testing a full-screen size autoplay video ad which basically engulfs the entire search engine results page. Yikes! Even though the videos starts on mute, the searcher must scroll down to pause or stop the ad from playing.
When scrolling down, the ad also includes ad text, the website URL, and a “Learn More” button directing to the advertisers landing page.
I’m guessing the majority of both advertisers and searchers are rolling their eyes at Yahoo. Is this level of obnoxiousness really necessary?
Slegg agrees, “This is a whole new level for in-your-face advertising on organic search results from a major search engine. Yahoo is making a big push for some of the in demand ad dollars…but you do have to wonder if this move will start alienating those hard-fought searchers who might jump ship to Google or Bing as a result.”
Google’s Jerry Dischler has been spreading rumors about new ad formats for specific industries since the Google AdWords Livestream in May, and now we’re seeing them come to life in the financial industry. Google is testing a sponsored mortgage comparison feature, similar to the credit card comparison tool.
According to Moz’s Dr. Peter J. Meyers, “Listings appeared to be paid, but details of this program are unknown at the time.”
The SERPs continue to change faster than the seasons in New England, but luckily we’re here to keep you updated. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these new ad tests in the comments below!
Margot is a Content Marketing Specialist at WordStream with a background in PPC, SEM, content and digital marketing. Margot is passionate about writing and is also a regular contributor to Search Engine Journal and Social Media Today. Margot was recently named the 25th Most Influential PPC Expert in 2015 by PPC Hero. She enjoys running, sleeping on the beach, and eating ice cream during her free time. Follow her on:
Twitter: @ChappyMargot
Google+: +Margot da Cunha
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/margotdacunha
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Online shopping is a favorite hobby of mine, mainly due to the convenience factor.
Recently, I was shopping online for a new coffee table and found myself with a dilemma. I found a website that had a great assortment of coffee tables: different sizes, shapes and every color you could think of. They had it all. After navigating through the website for a few minutes, I realized finding the right one was going to be difficult. I was having trouble sorting through the different styles and began to feel overwhelmed and frustrated.
I had great tables laid out on the page in front of me with no way to organize them how I wanted. Not only was I having trouble with the layout of the page, but there was also a pop-up continuously asking me to sign up for the newsletter and for my personal information.
I quickly became annoyed and overwhelmed, and I left the page.
This made me think of a concept that we teach at MarketingExperiments’ parent company MECLABS: the inverted funnel.
The inverted funnel
By flipping the funnel to illustrate customers climbing up the sides of it, we change the way marketers think about the funnel. Marketers need to realize that their customers are being powered up by decision; if the funnel is not inverted, it is uncontrolled. There is a sequence of micro-yes(s) that a customer must make in their journey up the funnel that will, in the end, lead to conversion.
Personally, I was a customer that fell out of a funnel when looking for the right coffee table. I was having a hard time finding the style I was looking for. After hitting too much friction on the page, I instead found myself making my purchase from a different website. The website I purchased from had everything laid out on the page clear and concise. I was able to sort through the different tables by size, color, brand, etc. This made it easier for me to find exactly what I was looking for with less anxiety.
Today, we’re examining two strategies to consider when trying to increase conversion and power your customers up the funnel.
Strategy #1. Fight the friction
The first concept to look at when trying to power customers up the sides of the funnel is the friction on the page. At MarketingExperiments and MECLABS, we define friction as the psychological resistance that interferes with a customer making a purchase.
Friction is psychological; it does not exist on your webpages but rather in the mind of your customer.
The website I was shopping on could have easily avoided losing me as a customer if its website had been simplified a little. I continuously ran into walls when trying to find the right coffee table. A marketer should always put themselves in the mind of the customer.
From our research here at MECLABS, we have learned that “difficulty friction” can weigh heavily on a customer’s cognitive conclusions about a purchase.
One factor we as marketers need to focus on is the eye path on a page. Ask yourself these questions:
Getting to know your customers and being able to provide a page that shows them exactly what they are looking for is an easy way to decrease friction and help push a customer up the funnel.
Strategy #2. Alleviate anxiety
The second concept to look at when trying to prevent customers from falling out of your funnel is their anxiety. At MECLABS, we have found that anxiety — a psychological concern that interferes with a sale — also weighs heavily on a customer’s decision to make a purchase.
In my own personal example, I began to experience anxiety with the pop-up. It continuously asked me to give them my personal information for their newsletter. Not only did I not want the newsletter, but I also didn’t want to provide my personal information.
It is necessary to think about the customer when you decide to place something on your webpage. Ask yourself, what will make them feel safe? You can add certain cybersecurity features to make them feel secure in giving you their information, such as security seals, credibility indicators and testimonials.
Being able to decrease the anxiety of the customer is another way to increase conversion and move customers up the sides of the funnel.
We have now reviewed two strategies to consider when you are trying to prevent someone from falling out of your funnel. Once you have controlled the friction and eased the anxiety of a customer, it becomes easier to push them up the sides of your funnel, thereby increasing conversion.
As a customer shopping for furniture, I encountered a lot of friction on the website, unable to sort through to find the furniture. Most marketers forget they should focus on the customer’s eye path and thought sequence to try to create a fluid flow on the page.
We also discussed how anxiety can cause a customer to fall out of your funnel. For me, this happened with a pop-up. I was already frustrated from the layout of the page, and on top of that, I was experiencing concern with a pop-up that continuously asked me for my personal information so that I could receive a newsletter.
When marketers begin to use customer-centric logic, they will more clearly see when an ad or pop-up or even a question evokes anxiety from their customers. As we discussed, imputing certain features to help reduce customer anxiety will in the end increase conversion. From our research, we have found that when we focus on the customer and how they make choices, we can increase conversion and move customers up the sides of the funnel.
You might also like
MarketingSherpa Summit 2016 — At the Bellagio in Las Vegas, February 22-24
Customer Anxiety: One element of the MECLABS Conversion Heuristic explained
Ecommerce: How parent brands can reduce user friction and anxiety
The Marketer as Philosopher: 40 Brief Reflections on the Power of Your Value Proposition [From MECLABS]
Facebook has a well known "real names" policy, but what if your name turns out to be a bit too real for Facebook?
Take the experience of Isis Anchalee, a San Francisco-based engineer, also known for kicking off the #ILookLikeAnEngineer campaign earlier this year that promoted women in STEM.
On Tuesday, she wrote on Twitter that Facebook had closed her account. Anchalee suggested the reason was because her first name is the same as the shorthand for the Islamic State — ISIS — the group responsible for the recent Paris attacks, among other atrocities. Read more...
More about Facebook, Australia, Social Media, and Us
During my junior year of college, as I licked the cheese off of my Dorito decorated fingers, I came to the realization that I was letting myself go. After polishing off a carton of Ben & Jerry’s for breakfast, something in my brain awakened, and I started running.
One mile eventually turned into two, two into three. My newly found running habit boosted my energy and confidence, and I was seeing results! Yet, upon graduation I was still at somewhat of a standstill weight wise. The 20 lbs I had packed on throughout the four years filled of binging on Dominos and beer just wouldn’t kick rocks, so I decided to sign up for a half marathon. At the time, the idea of running 13.1 miles seemed nearly impossible. Today I have successfully completed eight half marathons and two full marathons, and I’m just getting started.
That’s me sitting on a duck after completing the Boston marathon.
What does this anecdote have to do with paid search and advertising on Facebook? You turned to paid search to grow your business. You’ve seen results that you’re pleased with, but just as I failed to shed the 20 pounds until I pushed things farther, you’re failing to convert a pool of visitors that previously came in through search. You’re also likely ignoring a huge scope of qualified leads. If you’re limiting your business to only advertising on paid search, you’re not even coming close to reaching your full potential.
Nowadays one of the first things an infant learns is how to swipe and unlock an iPhone. It’s insane to watch my 14 month year old nephew open various apps before he’s even able to form full sentences. Between our phones, desktops, and iPads people are constantly connected, and according to BI Intelligence, Americans spend more time on social media than any other Internet activing, including email!
But, what about your audience? Well, let’s look at the numbers. As of August 2015:
Facebook has 1.49 billion monthly active users.
Twitter has 316 million monthly active users.
Google+ and Instagram each have 300 million monthly active users.
LinkedIn has roughly 97 million monthly active users.
Facebook is bigger than the largest country on Earth! Your audience is there, but with so many users, how do you find then? Strategically using ads on Facebook is a guaranteed way to get in front of the right people when they’re ready to buy.
Good question. Back in the day Facebook was just a place for college students to connect, plan parties, tell jokes, and share photos. Nowadays, the space is cluttered with parents stalking their children, singles looking for love, and businesses promoting their products and building their brands.
Having an organic social strategy is critical for the times when loyal customers are looking to further engage with your brand, site visitors are looking for more information or investors are trying to better understand your business. Unfortunately, none of these scenarios account for the person that hasn’t had exposure to your business or the distracted shopper that has forgotten about your products or offerings they previously discovered through search.
Since the space is packed, posting organically and praying for results won’t get your social strategy off the ground. Think about it, if you’re posting about your new clothing line on Facebook, your un-tapped audience won’t see your ads unless you appear in their newsfeed, which will only happen organically if one of their friends happens to like your brand or engage with a post on your page (and with over 1 billion active users, this is unlikely!).
Moral of the story is that there is a huge opportunity to expand your audience and re-connect with past visitors with ads on Facebook to entice them to convert, but…
Between Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, SnapChat, Instagram, Periscope, etc. where in the world should you start?
There’s one thing we know for sure: your customers are clicking on Facebook ads. With 22 billion ad clicks per year, Facebook is providing businesses with the biggest advertising opportunity since search. At WordStream, 85% of our new customers are already advertising on Facebook or plan to start soon. Not to mention Facebook has an insanely granular level of targeting capabilities, remarketing functionality, and other tools to connect with the exact right people at the exact right time.
But, what about Twitter? Whilst the advertising capabilities are similar on Twitter, Facebook attracts roughly 7x the engagement that Twitter does, according to BI Intelligence.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t advertise on Twitter, because several businesses (including WordStream!) have seen great return from adverting on the platform. The problem is, “if you don’t know what you’re doing you could end up wasting a ton of money,” says WordStream’s Paid Acquisition Coordinator Brett McHale. Check out Brett’s step-by-guide to using Twitter ads here.
When getting started with advertising on Facebook it can be difficult to determine budget allocation. The good thing is that ads on Facebook tend to cost less than other forms of online of advertising (such as search ads on Bing and Google). But, how much should you spend? This question is hard to answer since it varies per industry, audience size, and goals. Rather keep these tips in mind to determine proper budgets for your business.
To shed some insight on budgeting I spoke with Brett to understand how he determined budgets. “I ran a remarketing Facebook campaign for my sister’s small business and $5 a day was sufficient to reach 200 people that had visited her site in the past week,” says Brett. “Her prospecting campaign however was targeting over a couple thousand people and I put $20 a day for that.”
So, you’ve built a Facebook page, agreed to Facebook’s Terms of Service, and set up your billing, but what now? Between choosing which content to promote, building compelling ads, determining how to properly allocate your budget, and putting your ads in front of the most relevant audience, Facebook ads can be more challenging than a Rubik’s cube.
One thing you can do is leverage your paid search data and apply a similar strategy to advertising on Facebook. Check out these 3 hacks to get started:
Quality Score is to search as relevance score is to Facebook. Poetic, right? If you’ve been in the paid search game for some time now, you are well aware that maintaining higher Quality Scores is insanely beneficial to getting better results for less money. Quality Score in the mystery metric that takes into consideration factors such as an ad’s click-through-rate and relevancy (keywords, to ad text, to landing page) to determine a score on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest. If your Quality Score is above 5, you end up getting a discount for each click. For instance, with a Quality Score of 9, you could end up in position 2 but still paying less per click than the advertiser below you in position 3 or 4. So you get more visibility for less cost!
Facebook’s relevance score works the same way! Just as CTR plays a significant role in determining an ad’s Quality Score, post engagement (think likes, shares, and comments) plays the largest part in determining an ad’s relevance score.
So, the hack is to become a “VIP Socializer” on Facebook by stealing the highest CTR ad copy and creative from your paid search/display ads and re-purposing it in your ads on Facebook. If you create derivative ideas based on the ads that resulted in your highest CTR’s in paid search, it’s more likely than not that strategy will work across other platforms, such as Facebook, leading to higher relevancy scores and better ROI on social. It’s a great place to start!
PPC search clicks add up! Especially the ones that don’t convert into customers. The number one reason marketers get fed up with paid search is because they’re spending all of their budget on a handful of clicks that never turn into customers, but the issue is not paid search; rather, the problem lies in that they’re not taking measures to push these leads that come in through search further down the funnel.
Someone clicked on your ad and visited your site. This is a good sign. We know they’re interested at some level, BUT they need a bigger nudge. There’s thousands of marketing messages being cluttered into their tiny brains, so give your PPC leads a push by remarketing to non-converters on search through social.
I like to call this technique “The Savvy Social Stalker,” because remarketing is creepy, but it can become even creepier (and more relevant and effective!) when done through ads on Facebook. Don’t remarket to every person who visits your site, but rather a smaller percentage that’s most likely to buy.
Social remarketing differentiates itself from remarketing through Google’s Display Network (GDN) in that you are able to get much more granular with your targeting capabilities. For instance, you can remarket to visitors that came in through search in a certain age range with specified interests, job titles, etc. Facebook’s remarketing through customer audiences allows to get more precise to go after visitors that are much more interested and likely to buy your products.
Who wouldn’t want to clone their converters? You probably didn’t think it was possible to expand your audience even further, but the power of lookalike audiences on Facebook ads makes this possible. Lookalike audiences allow you to reach more people who share similar traits with your current customer base (think age, gender, and interests).
By “cloning the cream of the crop” you can combine the power of lookalike audiences with your customers that have already converted through search to find demographically similar people to target. How do you do this? By using the conversion pixel from your PPC landing pages, you can create a lookalike audience in Facebook to expand your reach to a new audience that has a higher likelihood of converting, since their clones have already converted.
Moral of the story: don’t be the leisurely 3-miler, but rather become the marathon runner of your industry and start converting more leads into customers by combining paid search with ads on Facebook to create a money-making marketing machine.
Margot is a Content Marketing Specialist at WordStream with a background in PPC, SEM, content and digital marketing. Margot is passionate about writing and is also a regular contributor to Search Engine Journal and Social Media Today. Margot was recently named the 25th Most Influential PPC Expert in 2015 by PPC Hero. She enjoys running, sleeping on the beach, and eating ice cream during her free time. Follow her on:
Twitter: @ChappyMargot
Google+: +Margot da Cunha
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/margotdacunha
So you cheated on a test in 5th grade? Skipped English class in high school? Perhaps you paid your rent late or consumed too many cocktails on a work night? As marketers, we sin all the time, but in another fashion that could waste loads of money and potential ROI…
Come again? I’m referring to the deadly PPC sins you may be committing within your very own PPC account. Last month, my colleague Erin Sagin and I explored the seven most devious PPC sins that one can commit, and how to turn your crimes into good money-making deeds.
So, you think you’re an angel? Think again! All this month, we’ll be blogging about the Seven Deadly Sins of PPC. Follow along to see if you’re committing a crime that needs to be addressed before your start paying (literally) for your sins.
Let’s get this guilt fest started with PPC sin #1: GLUTTONY.
Gluttony, otherwise known as overconsumption, is often thought of as inhaling too many nachos and Ben and Jerry pints, or consuming several bottles of wine in a single evening.
In the PPC world, gluttony is when your PPC is account is a disorganized and overstuffed mess. How do you know if this is the case? There are several warning signs to consider.
Perhaps your ad groups are jam-packed with keywords or your account has so many campaigns and ad groups that your head begins to spin as you attempt to optimize (like the account below):
This a problem for several reasons. For one, the majority of your overpopulated keyword farm isn’t even receiving impressions, but rather cluttering up your account and making it more difficult to optimize. More importantly, when your account is packed with campaigns and ad groups, your budget ends up being stretched too thin, eliminating the chance to focus on the keywords, ad groups, and campaigns that are actually bringing in a profit.
Clearly, if you’re committing this overconsumption sin, you need to get into gear and makeover your PPC account before you end up in PPC hell. Consider these three solutions to fix the mess you’ve made.
If you’re unsure why your account is structured the way it is or if you’re taking over the account from an unsuccessful past employee or third party, restructuring is most likely in order. Even if you set the account up yourself originally, it may make sense to structure your account in a more profitable manner. Check out our Ask the Experts video below to get some inspiration of ways to structure your AdWords account to yield more profitable results with your PPC efforts.
In a WordStream analysis of an account with 269,765 keywords, we found that only 1.2% of the keywords in that account are getting any impressions at all! That means that 98% of their account is packed with unproductive junk!
If your account looks similar you need to delete the clutter. Sort by impressions and determine which keywords are simply rotting in your account. Your focus should be on optimizing the keywords that are actually doing well and slowly testing out new keyword opportunities, ensuring that if the tests are unsuccessful the keywords are eliminated.
If you haven’t heard of Perry Marshall you’ve probably been living under a rock somewhere. Perry is to PPC as Ina Garten is to the Food Network i.e. legendary. Anyhow, Perry coined the term “Peel and Stick” years back as a strategy when one pulls out the lowest performing keywords, typically in terms of lower CTR’s and Quality Scores, and moves them into a separate ad group. Then you would focus on the highest performers to allocate more budget to as well as create move relevant ads and landing pages.
Margot is a Content Marketing Specialist at WordStream with a background in PPC, SEM, content and digital marketing. Margot is passionate about writing and is also a regular contributor to Search Engine Journal and Social Media Today. Margot was recently named the 25th Most Influential PPC Expert in 2015 by PPC Hero. She enjoys running, sleeping on the beach, and eating ice cream during her free time. Follow her on:
Twitter: @ChappyMargot
Google+: +Margot da Cunha
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/margotdacunha
If you are following the battle of the short messaging systems, you might think it is a one-dimensional contest between the systems that maintain your chat history for all time – like Twitter and Facebook – and the so-called disappearing messengers – like Snapchat – where messages vanish after being read. Read More
35 million people run into a Facebook email and password login roadblock on iOS each day, and over half of them bounce. That’s why Facebook confirms to me that it’s testing a new tool that lets users log in to Facebook on Safari with one tap, rather than having to type in their credentials — which most don’t. It could ease frustrations for users while boosting… Read More
Curvy girls are no longer banned from Instagram, thanks to new technology implemented by the social media platform.
After the hashtag "curvy" was banned earlier this month from being searched on the site, Instagram is using new, automated systems designed to keep the hashtag "clean" of porn and nudity, a spokesperson told Mashable.
"We’re unblocking it, but we are also unblocking it in ways so the content's going to be able to stay clean on the hashtag," he said.
See also: 8 times Instagram policed women's bodies
The same technology, when needed, was previously implemented on trending hashtags to make sure they were free of nudity, porn, hate speech and other "bad" content, the spokesperson said. Read more...
More about Social Media, Social Good, Activism, Instagram, and Online Activism 
